to him late one evening, and commanded him to join the fleet instantly, on pain of being denounced as the enemy of the government; that the general ordered his horses the same hour, and was on his way to Toulon ere midnight.  These circumstances may or may not be truly given.  It is not doubtful that the command of the Egyptian expedition was ultimately regarded, both by Napoleon and the Directory, as a species of honourable banishment.  On reaching Toulon, Buonaparte called his army together, and harangued them.  “Rome,” he said, “combated Carthage by sea as well as land; and England was the Carthage of France.—­He was come to lead them, in the name of the Goddess of Liberty, across mighty seas, and into remote regions, where their valour might achieve such glory and such wealth as could never be looked for beneath the cold heavens of the west.  The meanest of his soldiers should receive seven acres of land;”—­where he mentioned not.  His promises had not hitherto been vain.  The soldiery heard him with joy, and prepared to obey with alacrity.

The English government, meanwhile, although they had no suspicion of the real destination of the armament, had not failed to observe what was passing in Toulon.  They probably believed that the ships there assembled were meant to take part in the great scheme of the invasion of England.  However this might have been, they had sent a considerable reinforcement to Nelson, who then commanded on the Mediterranean station; and he, at the moment when Buonaparte reached Toulon, was cruising within sight of the port.  Napoleon well knew that to embark in the presence of Nelson would be to rush into the jaws of ruin; and waited until some accident should relieve him from his terrible watcher.  On the evening of the 19th of May fortune favoured him.  A violent gale drove the English off the coast, and disabled some ships so much that Nelson was obliged to go into the harbours of Sardinia to have them repaired.  The French general instantly commanded the embarkation of all his troops; and as the last of them got on board, the sun rose on the mighty armament:  it was one of those dazzling suns which the soldiery delighted afterwards to call “the suns of Napoleon.”

Seldom have the shores of the Mediterranean witnessed a nobler spectacle.  That unclouded sun rose on a semicircle of vessels, extending in all to not less than six leagues:  thirteen ships of the line and fourteen frigates (under the command of Admiral Brueyes); and 400 transports.  They carried 40,000 picked soldiers, and officers whose names were only inferior to that of the general-in-chief;—­of the men, as well as of their leaders, the far greater part already accustomed to follow Napoleon, and to consider his presence as the pledge of victory.