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Home The French Revolution and the Great War, 1789-1802 Isolation of Great Britain and her Victories on Sea, 1797-1798 1797-1798; Part 2 |
1797-1798; Part 2Our dangers, however, were not yet over. At the beginning of 1798, Napoleon was sent to Brest to decide upon the feasibility of an invasion of Ireland. If his decision had been in its favour, and he had arrived in Ireland in the summer of 1798, just at the time that the rebellion broke out, the result might have been disastrous. But fortunately Napoleon decided against an invasion. Indeed his mind was captivated by ideas of Eastern conquest, and he projected an invasion of Egypt, with the ultimate object perhaps of marching upon India, The French Government agreed, and preparations for the expedition were secretly made. Napoleon left Toulon in the spring of 1798 and took Malta. But he was extremely lucky even to arrive in Egypt. Nelson had just been sent to reoccupy the Mediterranean, and, but for the absence owing to a storm of his frigates - on which he relied for information - he must have caught Napoleon. He had to wait for reinforcements, and then guessing that Napoleon's objective was Egypt, he sailed from Sardinia for Alexandria. Shortly afterwards Napoleon left Malta for the same destination, though his fleet steered first for Crete. The tracks of the French and British fleets during one night must have crossed, and for three days the fleets were steering roughly parallel courses some sixty miles apart. Nelson sailed the faster and reached Alexandria first. Finding no signs of the French, he thought that he had guessed wrongly and doubled back to Sicily. Napoleon's fleet meantime, after coasting by Crete, sailed to Alexandria, and his troops landed, won the battle of the Pyramids against the Mamelukes, who then governed the country, and took Cairo.Nelson heard of Napoleon's arrival in Egypt, sailed back to Alexandria, and upon August 1 sighted Napoleon's fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay close to the mouths of the Nileo The French fleet had made the two great omissions of not anchoring their fleet as close to the shore as possible and of not joining their vessels by chains. Nelson could trust his captains, as he said, " to find a hole somewhere", and they quickly realized that they were able to pass on both sides of the French ships as well as between them, and to concentrate their forces first on the van and then on the centre and rear of the French fleet Beginning at six o'clock in the evening, the battle lasted far into the night and was continued the next morning. The French flagship, L'Orient, blew up at 10 p.m., and before the battle was over eleven out of the thirteen French ships had been captured or sunk. It was a brilliant victory, in which all the captains, fighting, as Nelson said, "like a band of brothers", had distinguished themselves. |
Chronology |
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