had enriched the museums of Paris with priceless masterpieces of art, whose army had captured 150,000 prisoners, and had triumphed in 18 pitched battles—­for Caldiero was now reckoned as a French victory—­and 47 smaller engagements.  The Directors, shrouding their hatred and fear of the masterful proconsul under their Roman togas, greeted him with uneasy effusiveness.  The climax of the official comedy was reached when, at the reception of the conqueror, Barras, pointing northwards, exclaimed:  “Go there and capture the giant corsair that infests the seas:  go punish in London outrages that have too long been unpunished”:  whereupon, as if overcome by his emotions, he embraced the general.  Amidst similar attentions bestowed by the other Directors, the curtain falls on the first, or Italian, act of the young hero’s career, soon to rise on oriental adventures that were to recall the exploits of Alexander.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

EGYPT

Among the many misconceptions of the French revolutionists none was more insidious than the notion that the wealth and power of the British people rested on an artificial basis.  This mistaken belief in England’s weakness arose out of the doctrine taught by the Economistes or Physiocrates in the latter half of last century, that commerce was not of itself productive of wealth, since it only promoted the distribution of the products of the earth; but that agriculture was the sole source of true wealth and prosperity.  They therefore exalted agriculture at the expense of commerce and manufactures, and the course of the Revolution, which turned largely on agrarian questions, tended in the same direction.  Robespierre and St. Just were never weary of contrasting the virtues of a simple pastoral life with the corruptions and weakness engendered by foreign commerce; and when, early in 1793, Jacobinical zeal embroiled the young Republic with England, the orators of the Convention confidently prophesied the downfall of the modern Carthage.  Kersaint declared that “the credit of England rests upon fictitious wealth:  ... bounded in territory, the public future of England is found almost wholly in its bank, and this edifice is entirely supported by naval commerce.  It is easy to cripple this commerce, and especially so for a power like France, which stands alone on her own riches."[90]

Commercial interests played a foremost part all through the struggle.  The official correspondence of Talleyrand in 1797 proves that the Directory intended to claim the Channel Islands, the north of Newfoundland, and all our conquests in the East Indies made since 1754, besides the restitution of Gibraltar to Spain.[91] Nor did these hopes seem extravagant.  The financial crisis in London and the mutiny at the Nore seemed to betoken the exhaustion of England, while the victories of Bonaparte raised the power of France to heights never known before.  Before the victory of Duncan over the Dutch at Camperdown (October 11th, 1797), Britain seemed to have lost her naval supremacy.