This is the third of a four-part monograph on Napoleon's connection to the theme of Jewish peoplehood and the right of Jews to self-determination in their aboriginal homeland. Part 1 is available at: http://www.allenzhertz.com/2018/05/jews-napoleon-and-ottoman-empire-1797-9.html
While fighting in Israel in 1799 did Napoleon write one or more proclamations to the Jews? In our own century, historians are divided. But, the deeper story is not simply whether he did so in Israel. Before 1798, Napoleon was already known as a champion of Jewish emancipation in Europe. There was also his support for Jewish statehood in the Mideast, as expressed in his propaganda against the Ottomans. Thus, an important Ottoman-Turkish source says there was, in the Muslim year 1212 (1797-8), a revolutionary proclamation inviting Jews to "establish a Jewish government in Jerusalem" (قدس شريفده بر يهود حكومتى تشكيل). Napoleon's intention to make Jerusalem capital of a restored "Jewish Republic" (Еврейская Республика) is also affirmed in an August 1798 letter from the Russian Emperor Paul. April 1799 reports from Constantinople caused at least twenty European newspapers in May 1799 to describe Napoleon's proclamation inviting Jews to return to Jerusalem. His evocation of aboriginal restoration echoed for decades, about an age-old People that for millennia kept demographic and cultural ties to its ancestral home. For Napoleon, restoring the Jews was initially linked to his plan to soon start digging a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez—in 1798, the clear strategic rationale for launching his Mideast campaign. Much evidence suggests that he perhaps wrote the anonymous June 1798 "Letter from a Jew to His Brothers." This calls on world Jewry to organize itself to ask France to negotiate with Turkey, so that the Jews could return to their native land. Finally, revealed only in 1940 was a 1799 translation, from Hebrew into German, of his letter (April 20, 1799) recognizing the hereditary right of the "Israelites" to "Palestine."
Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).
Role for a Jewish Republic
Revolutionizing all the subject Peoples of the Ottoman Empire and potential help from Jewish bankers were not the only practical reasons that Napoleon had for discreetly wooing Jews, including during his 1799 "Syrian" expedition. Written around 1819, his own history of his war in the Mideast links the strategic importance of the Holy Land to Egypt, exactly as in the 1798 Lettre d'un Juif which is perhaps also from Napoleon's pen.
Today, the Chinese generals of the People's Liberation Army still revere the strategic thinking of ancient China. In the same way, Napoleon was deeply impressed by the example of the great strategists of Classical antiquity. Thus, he mentions (1819) that Cyrus the Great had "protected the Jews and had their Temple rebuilt," because Cyrus was thinking about conquering Egypt from the east. Napoleon also writes that Alexander the Great, similarly attacking from the east, "sought to please the Jews so that they might serve him for his crossing of the [Sinai] desert."
Here, Napoleon's strategic logic makes it easy to understand the companion idea of a Revolutionary Jewish Republic helping to guard the eastern gateway to French Egypt. This makes sense in the larger context of a Near and Mideast dominated by la grande nation. This revolutionary concept required replacing the reactionary Ottoman Empire with a series of satellite republics. The ethno-religious beneficiaries on Mount Lebanon would be the Maronites, the Druze, and the Shia Twelvers or Motouâly. Elsewhere, there would be republican, national homelands for Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Greeks, etc.
Using such independent, eastern allies to guard the road to Egypt was a strategy that Napoleon had read about more than once, in a book about the Mideast that was a bestseller during the last years of the 18th century. To the point, Egypt is treated in the fourth volume of the famous Mémoires du Baron de Tott, sur les Turcs et les Tartares (Baron de Tott's memoranda on the Turks and the Tatars). There, French diplomat, soldier and turcologist, François de Tott discusses the rise of the Mameluke potentate Ali Bey (1785):
Napoleon's history of the Mideast campaign also tells us that, during his 1799 siege of Acre (1819):
The April 20, 1799 letter which Napoleon addressed to the "Israelites" has been discussed. Similarly, we have already seen that, at the start of the siege of Acre, Napoleon sent secret agents to the two Armenias. Such emissaries likely carried handwritten or printed propaganda in Armenian characters, in either or both of Armenian and Armeno-Turkish. In 18th-century Italy, there was Armenian printing, at least in Venice and at the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome. The multilingual typeface of these Italian centers was a rare resource that Napoleon fully exploited for the Army of the East.
Eyewitness Nikula ibn Yusuf Al-Türki says Napoleon designated premises on Cairo's Ezbekiye square "for establishment of the printing press that he had brought from Rome, and with which he was able to print in all languages." Elsewhere, Nikula refers to "presses brought from Rome" and specifies printing in French, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic. However, we know that, in the Mideast, the French also printed in Italian, Greek, and Ottoman-Turkish, and likely found ways to get papers printed in other important Mideast languages like Hebrew and Armenian.
Whether in Egypt or Ottoman Syria, Napoleon always had some help from individual Armenians, such as his personal bodyguard Rustam Raza. Moreover, we have already seen some quotations from the contemporary European press that stubbornly claim that many Armenians were serving as soldiers for Napoleon, during his Mideast campaign. The Observer says (March 10, 1799): "Several Greeks, Jews, and Armenians who had joined the French have been excommunicated." Also in a military vein, Napoleon—on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz—pointed to Armenians as soldiers, in his retrospective estimate of the lost opportunities of his 1799 campaign against the Ottomans (December 1, 1805): "C'est par des Arabes, des Grecs, des Arméniens que j'eusse achevé la guerre contre les Turcs!" (It's through the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Armenians that I would have won my war against the Turks!)
Significantly, Napoleon testifies that, several weeks after the battle near Mount Tabor (April 16, 1799), he received an Armenian delegation (circa 1819):
During his Mideast campaign, the Armenian People placed great hopes in Napoleon. Armenians made sure to aid him in various ways. For example, an Armenian banker, Eghiazara Mihra Aguentsi, was intermediary between the central administration and local governments in Egypt. According to Nikula ibn Yusuf Al-Türki, Napoleon named as Ağa of the janissaries, "the Muslim" Mehmet Kethüda, who was an Armenian by birth. Armenians also cared for sick French soldiers in Jaffa. And, Armenians generously shared with Napoleon current information, from their far-flung intelligence networks.
The Russian Emperor Paul was in 1798 completely credible in saying that Napoleon aimed at establishing the Еврейская Республика, the "Jewish Republic," to be based in Jerusalem. Such plans for the Jews were entirely consistent with Napoleon's intentions for the other Peoples of the Ottoman Near and Mideast. Moreover, we have already seen that the utility for France of Jewish restoration in the Holy Land was also understood in 1798-9 by Pierre-Louis Roederer, Thomas Corbet, and the anonymous author of Lettre d'un Juif.
Complementary inspiration came from British colonial practice. As a young man, Napoleon was always interested in learning more about 18th-century India. He described British methods and predicted (1793) their growing success there. The British indirectly ruled large Indian populations, via a series of partner jurisdictions. Thus, revolutionaries easily imagined that France could, if necessary, replace the Sunnite Ottomans, just as the British had inserted themselves in India, at the expense of the Sunnite Mughals. If so, a "regenerated" Near and Mideast could be indirectly ruled by the Revolutionary French Republic, in partnership with a series of satellite republics.
This French Revolutionary strategy was well known to Selim III. "Everywhere weak republics would be created which France would keep under its tutelage, so that everything everywhere would go according to its arbitrary will." As indicated in Part 1, the Ottomans astutely grasped the gambit implicit in the idea of la grande nation. Their accurate understanding is evidenced in the September 1798 memorandum, justifying the Sultan's decision to declare war on France. This Ottoman memorandum was shared with the diplomatic corps, and soon published in various European languages—for example, in German in the Wiener Zeitung on October 10, 1798. Much later, it was printed in Ottoman-Turkish, in the official imperial history by Ahmet Cevdet Pasha.
Polymath Eloi Johanneau sent the editor of Le Moniteur, a long letter, in which he pertinently pointed to Ottoman Anatolia as a future revolutionary republic, la République Gallo-grecque. He described the worldwide role of "la Grande-Nation" as the mère-Patrie (mother country) of all the current and future sister republics. His expansive list of imminent republics also included Ireland (République hibernienne), Scotland (République calédonienne), and even dangerous England (République d'Albion). Referring to revolutionary republics everywhere, Johanneau argued (April 9, 1798): "They ought to link their destiny with ours, imitate the mother country, and make common cause with her; and thus we will justify the title of Grande-Nation which, in fact, belongs to us."
This satellite formula follows Napoleon's 1797 understanding. Le Moniteur (August 8), the Journal de Paris (August 9), La Clef du Cabinet des Souverains (August 9), and the Journal de Francfort (August 14) are among the 1797 newspapers that highlight both his July 30th letter to the Maniote chieftain and his companion August 1st letter to the Directory. For Napoleon and his contemporaries, the Maniotes are prestigious as descendants of the ancient Spartans. Also referring to la grande nation, Napoleon tells the Directory that the Maniotes wish "to be useful to the great people (le grand peuple) in some way."
Writing to the Maniote leader, Napoleon acknowledges the chieftain's "desire to see French ships in his port, and to be of some use to the brave French soldiers of the Army of Italy." Napoleon assures the chieftain that "the French esteem the little, but brave, Maniote people (le petit, mais brave peuple maniote), who alone from ancient Greece, knew how to preserve its liberty."
If these few Maniote descendants of ancient Sparta merit homeland, self-rule, and a vassal relationship with la grande nation, why not Georgians, Armenians, Druze, Maronites, Shia Twelvers, and Jews? Like the Maniotes, Jews were also one of the subject Peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Make no mistake! From 1796 to 1799, Napoleon and the Revolutionary French Republic did not discriminate against Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish People. Rather, almost everywhere outside the Mideast, French revolutionaries fiercely discriminated against Catholics and the Roman-Catholic Church.
Exactly such satellite status for Jews is specified in Lettre d'un Juif which is perhaps from Napoleon's pen. This "grande nation" ideology is also the larger context for references by Ahmet Cevdet Pasha to "establishing a Jewish government in Jerusalem" (قدس شريفده بر يهود حكومتى تشكيل); by the Emperor Paul to Bonaparte's "Jewish Republic" (Еврейская Республика); by Bonaparte to "Israel's inheritance" (Israels Erbteil) in the letter of April 20, 1799; and by Mallet du Pan to the revolutionary plan to recreate the "Hebrew Republic" (République hébraïque).
Invite to Jews starts with idea for Suez Canal
Clearly, there were global stakes, because Napoleon always wanted to restore the ancient canal across the Isthmus of Suez, which is mentioned by Herodotus and some other Classical Greek and Roman writers. The canal of antiquity features four times in Napoleon's youthful notebooks. He also read about the historic canal in two 1780s bestsellers about the Mideast. First are the 1784-5 works of the aforementioned François de Tott. Second are two volumes by Constantine Volney, about his 1783-5 travels in Egypt and Syria (1787).
Napoleon certainly knew from De Tott's famous writings that, during the Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774), the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III had ordered De Tott to prepare a proposal for digging a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. De Tott wrote that the Sultan intended to dig this canal when peace returned. Unfortunately, Mustafa died (January 1774) too soon to realize this ambition.
De Tott's account of 18th-century Ottoman intent is supported by 16th-century Turkish precedents. The Ottoman Turks first conquered Egypt in 1517. From that time forward, they were always well aware of the possibility of digging out water ways linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1529, the Ottomans had twelve thousand workers and teams of engineers making an unsuccessful attempt to cut a freshwater canal between the Nile River and the Red Sea. In 1568, the Ottomans were seriously exploring the feasibility of cutting a saltwater canal straight across the Isthmus of Suez. However, Turkish surveyors there, poured cold water on the project, which was judged to be impractical and too expensive.
The words "Isthmus of Suez" appear in General Desaix's diary (September 1797) in one of the entries noting Napoleon's conversations about a potential Egyptian campaign. This clearly means that Napoleon then revealed to Desaix, an intention to dig a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. This hydro-scheme had stubbornly figured in French strategic thinking about Egypt, across the entire 18th century—the central part of the golden age of canal construction in Europe. During 1797, Napoleon's rising interest in seizing Egypt and building a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the isthmus was likely first stimulus for his 1797-8 propaganda aimed at the Jews of the Ottoman Empire.
Weighty evidence are the 21,345 iron digging tools (pickaxe-hoes, rock-picks, shovels, and axes) that Napoleon shipped from Europe to Alexandria. This astonishing statistic is drawn from the cargo tables in volume one of the authoritative L'Expédition d'Égypte, 1798-1801 (Paris, 1899) by Clément de La Jonquière. This total of more than twenty-one thousand, iron digging tools is not inconsistent with the thinking of Napoleon's chief civil engineer, Jacques-Marie Le Père. According to Ferdinand de Lesseps, who eventually built (1859-1869) the Suez Canal, Le Père had already calculated that cutting the Suez Canal would take ten thousand workers four years.
What do we learn from studying the topic of such earth-moving tools (outils de pionnier)? Whether Royal or Revolutionary, late 18th-century French armies of comparable size (circa 40,000 men), normally did not carry anything like the 21,345 iron shovels, pickaxe-hoes, rock-picks, and axes that Napoleon brought to Egypt to dig a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. For example, François de Tott in 1779 prepared a secret plan for the French conquest of Egypt and the digging of shallow, freshwater barge canals, from the Nile River to the Red Sea at Suez. To cut these canals, De Tott recommended that the expeditionary force be equipped with two thousand picks and six thousand iron shovels.
Napoleon also took aboard the French fleet sailing to Egypt, almost 600,000 empty sandbags, perhaps because Volney (1787), and others before him, had written that blowing sand quickly blocks desert canals. This desert disadvantage was said to be the experience of antiquity. According to 1870 oral testimony of De Lesseps, it was a widespread "phantom" and "prejudice," during the first half of the 19th century, to believe that "it was impossible to dig out in the desert a canal which should not at once be filled up with sand."
To dig a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, the 1798 Army of the East was accompanied by nineteen civil engineers, and sixteen surveyors and cartographers. It is no accident that these 35 technicians formed the single largest contingent of Napoleon's famous Commission on the Sciences and the Arts.
Cut the Isthmus of Suez!
"Couper l'isthme de Suez" is the clear command in the Directory's terse, secret instructions for the General-in-Chief of the Army of the East. This means actually digging the saltwater canal for seagoing ships, as is clear from the preamble (April 12, 1798):
Contemporary Paris speculation about the purpose of the "secret expedition" immediately includes the possibility of digging a saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. For example, twenty-two year old civil engineer, Jean-Baptise Prosper Jollois, writes to his father (April 10, 1798):
France's politics and press were carefully watched by British spies abroad and by UK officialdom at home. Though debate persisted as to the Toulon fleet's destination, some astute London observers started discussing the danger of a French plan to seize Egypt and build a saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus. The Secretary of State for War, Henry Dundas, was early focused on Egypt. By contrast, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Spencer, needed almost two months more to become confident that Napoleon was really aiming at Alexandria. At 3 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, Dundas wrote to Earl Spencer (April 17, 1798):
Napoleon likely prompted Eschassériaux to speak out, about Egypt in general and about the ship canal project, in particular. Can it be mere coincidence? Eschassériaux addresses the Chamber, on the very day that the Directory secretly creates the Army of the East and issues Napoleon top-secret instructions for seizing Egypt and building the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez.
Eschassériaux does not refer specifically to Jews, and only implicitly points to Ottoman Syria. But, Eschassériaux's powerful presentation is nonetheless an important part of Napoleon's propaganda to prepare the public for France's imminent move in the Mideast. Thus, Eschassériaux's much neglected speech deserves to be carefully studied, alongside Le Breton's article and Lettre d'un Juif.
The Times sees through the smokescreen sent up by Eschassériaux's wide-ranging talk about geography, revolutionary ethics, and the pros and cons of colonial acquisition. The Times notes that Eschassériaux states "openly the grounds upon which the French Government are to seize on the land of Egypt."
Eschassériaux is directly quoted on the subject of digging canals. He is razor sharp in advocating the execution of two distinct Egyptian projects. The first is a deep, year-round, saltwater, ship canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The second consists of shallow, freshwater, barge canals from the Red Sea to the River Nile—which the 18th century knew to be only seasonally and partially navigable. However, the initial stretch between Suez and the Bitter Lakes would be common to the two potential waterways (April 24, 1798):
Nile seasonal, never for seagoing ships
Eschassériaux's reference to rebuilding the canal of Sesostris would, according to Jacques-Marie Le Père, require relatively shallow, freshwater, barge canals along three routes. The first cut from Suez to the Bitter Lakes. The second running from the Bitter Lakes to the River Nile. To avoid the Nile Delta, the third would extend from the River Nile to Alexandria.
This riverine route would enhance Egypt's internal communications; and offer advantages for the off-loading and trans-shipment of Europe-bound cargo, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean coast, at the two harbours of Alexandria. But, whatever the utility of the revival and improvement of these ancient, freshwater, barge canals, the Nile itself was intrinsically defective. The waters of the Nile River were periodically too shallow to support year-round navigation, even by barges and other light vessels. This periodicity is explained by Alan Mikhail in Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge, 2011):
A key source is Copies of Original Letters from the Army of General Bonaparte in Egypt, Intercepted by the Fleet under the Command of Admiral Lord Nelson (London, 1798). This book contains observations about the navigation of the Nile. For example, the British editor judges: "The [Rosetta] mouth of the Nile is exceedingly difficult to be passed, on account of the surf that always prevails upon the bar, and asks a thousand precautions which can only be taken in a time of full security."
Commander of the French fleet, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys writes to France's Minister of the Marine and Colonies (July 9, 1798):
Even flat-bottom djermes could not navigate the Nile year round. According to an 1840s observer, djermes are pulled up onto the river bank, during the dry season, and covered with reed mats to protect them from the sun. Nile explorer James Bruce is an eye witness from the 1770s. He describes an annual interruption of navigation (1790):
Britain mostly feared canal cutting the Isthmus
The specter of a deep waterway for seagoing ships across the Isthmus of Suez haunted the British imagination. London greatly feared the potential of a French, saltwater, ship canal, directly joining the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.
The London Chronicle also prints a long résumé of Eschassériaux's speech, and concludes with the news (April 26-28, 1798): "Ten scientific men are employed in the important expedition which is preparing. Their books and instruments have already been sent off from Paris." Moreover, The London Chronicle stays with the ship canal story (May 8-10, 1798):
Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808) is a longtime maritime mapmaker for the British East India Company. From 1795, he is "Hydrographer to the Admiralty." From his respected London pen, the Admiralty receives a long memorandum (May 16, 1798) explaining the important strategic connection between Ottoman Egypt and British India. He vigorously warns about the real possibility that the French intend to seize Egypt, in order to cut a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. From his own voyages in the Red Sea and his travels in Egypt, Dalrymple understands the distinction between: a deep, saltwater, ship canal cut straight across the isthmus to the Mediterranean coast; and shallow, freshwater, barge canals linking Suez with Cairo and Alexandria, via the Bitter Lakes and the highly seasonal waters of the Nile. Dalrymple underlines that digging such an isthmus canal for increasingly larger, seagoing vessels is a great effort, but technically feasible.
Speculation about a French, saltwater canal across the Isthmus of Suez is also in the Paris newspaper Le Patriote français (May 27, 1798):
Thus, it is credible that Napoleon's intention to seize Egypt and build a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez is also penetrated by the Russian Emperor Paul, as indicated in the following St. Petersburg story. This item appears in The St. James's Chronicle (August 11) and then in Bell's Weekly Messenger (August 12). These London reports likely originate in Paris, because virtually the same story is earlier printed in Le Publiciste (August 1), where it is a verbatim copy from Le Propagateur (July 30, 1798):
In Floréal, Year VI (April 20-May 19, 1798), the Journal de physique, de chimie et d'histoire naturelle (journal of physics, chemistry and natural history) prints an anonymous five-page article. The title is "Note d'un artiste, sur la jonction de la Mer Rouge à la Méditerranée" (notes of an artist on the junction of the Red Sea to the Mediterranean). This Paris publication prompts The True Britain to publish English-language extracts headlined, "Junction of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean." The True Britain writes its own introduction that points to Napoleon's Egyptian expedition which is not mentioned in the original French-language article (October 1, 1798):
Napoleon slyly confused canal routes
Whether in Egypt or subsequently, Napoleon was mostly reluctant to be candid and clear on the topic of alternative canal routes. His motivation was likely bonafide raison d'état and/or his own later desire to obscure his ultimate failure to build the deep, saltwater canal. Confusion and ambiguity were easy to sustain, because the Nile River route and the alternative plan to cut a deep waterway, from the Red Sea directly to the Mediterranean coast, both relied on restoring an initial, historic channel from Suez to the Bitter Lakes.
Moreover, repeated highfalutin, cultural references to discovering and confirming the remains of ancient Egyptian waterways always served Napoleon's politics and foreign policy. They were initially useful as a fashionable, antiquarian distraction from the hard, geostrategic motive—namely, digging a deep, inter-oceanic canal to undermine Great Britain's maritime supremacy and to facilitate an eventual attack on British India. And later, after France lost Egypt, strong official and academic emphasis on the historical topic of the canals of antiquity also diverted popular attention from Napoleon's stunning failure to build the deep, saltwater canal.
Pursuant to the Directory's precise order "to cut the Isthmus of Suez," Napoleon twice personally explored the desert to find remains of the ancient canal leading from the Red Sea to the Bitter Lakes. From Bilbeis, he reports his initial success to the Muslim Divan in Cairo. On this occasion, he understandably chooses to conceal the Directory's plan to bypass both Cairo and Alexandria, with a deep, saltwater, ship canal going, via the Bitter Lakes, straight from Suez to the Mediterranean. Thus, for the Divan, he discreetly describes a link from the Red Sea to the Nile River, the depth of which, in the 18th century, famously fluctuates in the course of each year. Thus, Napoleon's letter diplomatically refers to a possibility that can mean nothing more than a shallower, freshwater, barge canal from the Bitter Lakes to the Nile River. Such a freshwater, barge canal could never accommodate seagoing ships which were gradually getting larger across the 18th century (January 2, 1799):
When did Napoleon first refer to differential sea levels?
On January 8, 1799, the Institut National in Paris sent a long letter to its sister society, the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo. The latter was one of the official bodies created by the French occupation. The document contains a list of many research questions proposed for investigation in Egypt. Therein, the Institut National invites the French astronomers in Egypt to share their findings about the tides of the Red Sea. Probably sparked by legends dating from Classical antiquity, the January 8th request also asks these French astronomers "to determine exactly the difference in level between the two seas; and to examine to what extent the ancient Egyptians had perfected their canals."
From his Cairo headquarters, Napoleon wrote to the Directory. He prematurely promised early delivery of the surveys for building the Suez Canal (February 10, 1799): "By the first courier, I will send you the data setting out the elevations above sea level, for the Suez Canal (le nivellement du canal de Suez), the vestiges of which are perfectly preserved."
Back in Cairo after fighting in Ottoman Syria, Napoleon again prematurely promised the Directory early delivery of the surveys for building the Suez Canal (June 28, 1799): "I will soon send you the surveys for the Suez Canal; maps of all Egypt, and of its canals; and also of Syria" (Je vous enverrai incessamment le nivellement du canal de Suez, les cartes de toute l’Égypte, de ses canaux, et de la Syrie).
However, the truth is that the canal survey work was still far from complete. On June 29, 1799, Jacques-Marie Le Père read, to the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo, a paper that, inter alia, included a preliminary report on "the first operations which have been made for developing the blueprint and surveys of the ancient Suez Canal." This brief account features in the Institut d'Égypte's own publication, la Décade égyptienne, Journal littéraire et d'économie politique (the Egyptian weekly: journal of literature and political economy), Volume 2 (Cairo, 1799-1800). Notably lacking therein is any suggestion by Le Père that the level of the Red Sea might be higher than that of the Mediterranean and the land surface of Egypt.
The very same lack of discussion of disparate sea levels marks an 1815 account by Le Père of a conversation with Napoleon in late August 1799, when the latter left Cairo for the last time. According to Le Père, Napoleon then asked: "What can be expected by way of rebuilding the Suez Canal?" Le Père's answer: "We assured him that it appeared to be easy to reopen the canal; and even with greater benefits than ever before." When Napoleon finally sailed away from Egypt (August 23, 1799), Le Père did not yet have the flawed survey data that would later mistakenly suggest that the Red Sea was higher than the Mediterranean. Le Père's key nivellement of the Mediterranean coast was not attempted until November 1799.
Napoleon was back in Paris on October 16, 1799. He went with Monge and the chemist, Claude-Louis Berthollet, to the Institut National for a general session about the antiquities of Egypt. This occurred on the evening of October 27th. This event is described in peculiarly terse and neutral Institut minutes, cited by Ernest Maindron in l'Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1888):
Napoleon might perhaps have responded to a possible audience question about sea levels. If so, his probable reply would surely have been confident assurance that no hydrology problem prevented successful canal completion. Napoleon had very urgent political needs in the run up to his coup d'état of November 9, 1799. On that October evening at the Institut National, Napoleon would never have revealed prejudicial information, potentially suggesting eventual failure of his public plan to dig the Suez Canal.
There is also the real possibility that the reference to differential sea levels in the Institut minutes might have been a politically motivated, subsequent invention, a new version—maybe one of Napoleon's infamous, ex post facto forgeries. If so, the suggested fake minutes were perhaps covertly inserted into the society's archives, some time during or shortly after Autumn 1801, when Paris first got news of the loss of Egypt (August 31, 1801).
Why is suspicion raised that on October 27th, there was no significant discussion of differential sea levels? The doubts come from reviewing early accounts of the evening session, starting with happy news in Le Moniteur (October 31, 1799):
This early favourable report importantly contains no allegation of differential sea levels, and no caution that the waters of the Red Sea might be dangerously higher than the land surface of Egypt. In the same sunny vein is a contemporary item in the Allgemeine Zeitung (November 14, 1799):
Also without memory of any October 27th reference to differential sea levels is Lucien Bonaparte. He says he was present on that evening at the Institut National. His memoirs recall the significantly optimistic words of his brother, Napoleon, as follows (first published 1888):
On December 6, 1800, Le Père writes to Napoleon from Cairo in order to reiterate confidence in the practicability of the canal project. Le Père significantly refers to completion of the nivellement, "as far as the Mediterranean, near ancient Pelusium, in order to know the respective level of the two seas." The foregoing is directly pertinent to any plan to cut a canal straight across the isthmus. To the point, nowhere therein does Le Père positively affirm that the Red Sea is higher. Such agnosticism is fully justified, because Le Père explains that the final calculation of the survey data can only be done later in Paris (December 6, 1800): "C'est à Paris seulement qu'il est possible [...] d'obtenir le complément des données nécessaires à une rédaction définitive."
With French soldiers still in Egypt and Napoleon ruling France as First Consul, he proposes to the legislature a bill lauding the achievements of the Army of the East (January 9, 1801): "Lepeyre [Jacques-Marie Le Père] rediscovers the system of canals that fertilized Egypt, and this Suez Canal which will unite the trade of Europe with the trade of Asia."
Still trying to get the Emperor Paul's support for France's permanent retention of Egypt, Napoleon writes optimistically (February 27, 1801): "Already surveyed [by Le Père] is the Suez Canal which would join the Indian and Mediterranean Seas. It is an easy project of short duration that could produce incalculable benefits for Russian trade."
Sea change with loss of Egypt
As long as France holds Egypt, Napoleon persistently stokes optimism about the idea of building or restoring the Suez Canal. Most of the time, he seems to be referring to the defective Nile River route which could never accommodate seagoing vessels. However, on other occasions, Napoleon seems to be talking about the possibility of a deep, saltwater, ship canal from Suez, via the Bitter Lakes, straight through to the Mediterranean. "Les bâtiments alors, sans rompre charge, iraient de Marseille aux Indes" (then, without offloading, ships will go from Marseilles to the Indies). Circa 1819, this is Napoleon's unequivocal description of the effect of a deep, saltwater, ship canal cut directly across the Isthmus of Suez.
After Autumn 1801, when Napoleon gets first news of the Anglo-Ottoman conquest of Egypt (August 31, 1801), it newly serves his personal and political interests to publicly encourage skepticism about digging the deep, saltwater, ship canal, directly across the Isthmus of Suez. Via Le Père's published report, Napoleon spreads such doubts, even though he knows that this direct route, if cut circa eight meters deep, would be the only option guaranteeing seagoing merchantmen the voyage to and from India, without offloading (la rupture de charge).
Moreover, after the French departure from Egypt, Napoleon sows these doubts about the feasibility of the direct, saltwater route across the isthmus, exactly because it is the only option for a canal, able to accommodate increasingly larger warships, i.e. ships-of-the-line.
In the 1790s, l'Orient was said to be the largest warship in the world. Even the defunct l'Orient could probably have slowly transited the proposed deep, saltwater, ship canal. With the great weight of its normal complement of guns, equipment, and stores, l'Orient's draught was 8.12 meters. According to the July 1798 reckoning of Vice-Admiral Brueys, about entry into the Old Port of Alexandria—l'Orient, if lightened by removal of its 120 guns, could carefully pass with as little as two French feet of water under its keel (2 pieds du roi = .6496m).
Probably encouraged by Napoleon, Le Père's report peculiarly adopts as his ex post facto "canal building" requirement, the patently false premise of an anonymous European Power first taking Egypt as a colony. We know this precondition to be unnecessary. Firstly, we have already seen that the Ottomans had a then well known history of interest in more than one Suez Canal project. Secondly, the saltwater Suez Canal was ultimately constructed (1859-1869) with the consent and cooperation of both the sovereign Ottoman Sultan and his local Viceroy, the Khedive.
Moreover, Le Père suspiciously recommends shallow, freshwater, barge canals linking the (imperfectly navigable) Nile River with Alexandria on the one hand and with Suez on the other hand. Le Père's report specifically acknowledges that his riverine recommendations could only support navigation by light vessels, during the annual, Nile River high water from August to March inclusive.
There is also the riverine flaw identified by Egypt-savvy hydrologist Olivier Ritt (1830-1911). He wrote the magisterial 1869 Histoire de l'isthme de Suez (History of the Isthmus of Suez). Ritt contended that Le Père never did general hydrology calculations. Thus, Le Père did not know that agriculture would suffer—because, year round, Egypt lacked enough freshwater to sustain the full length of his very extensive riverine routes, including the Bitter Lakes.
This less useful Nile River route also had the great political liability of running straight through the heart of Egypt's population. Such bad political advice would surely create more friction with local Muslims. In terms of governance, sound public policy, and agriculture—the far better option was a deep, saltwater, ship canal crossing the uninhabited (or very lightly populated) desert area, from Suez, via the Bitter Lakes, to the Mediterranean Sea.
In this way too, Napoleon is cleverly using Le Père's report to further discourage France's rivals. Napoleon grasps that intrinsically less attractive are freshwater barge canals with locks—the first route from Alexandria to the sometimes shallow Nile; the second from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes; and the third from the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea at Suez. Napoleon also wants France's foreign foes to fear the significant political downside of always struggling with a turbulent Muslim population. Such stubborn Muslim resistance was precisely the French experience from July 2, 1798 to August 31, 1801.
Differential sea levels: an improbable excuse
The strategic, oceanic canal across the Isthmus of Suez was never built by the Army of the East, before Egypt was conquered by the British and the Ottomans (August 31, 1801). Now, with no deep, saltwater, ship canal to show for his great Mideast effort, Napoleon was eager to get some necessary political cover. The most convenient refuge was the mistaken Classical myth that the level of the Red Sea was astonishingly higher than that of the Mediterranean. There was also the companion false Classical superstition that the level of the Red Sea was higher than the land surface of much of Egypt.
A more than thirty-foot sea level differential was the peculiar result that suspiciously found its way into Le Père's flawed final report, about the survey of the Isthmus of Suez. Furthermore, Napoleon's own 1819 account of the Egyptian campaign refers to the concern that the "Nile Valley would be flooded" by the salt water of the Red Sea. This fear was certainly contrary to credible 18th-century science. Thus, we can guess that the alleged danger was only later invoked to provide an excuse for Napoleon's abject failure in Egypt.
France no longer holding Egypt, it made shrewd political sense for Le Père's report to publicly champion shallow, freshwater, barge canals with a series of locks—the one route from the Nile to Alexandria; and the others from the Nile River, via the Bitter Lakes, to Suez on the Red Sea. (His report also refers briefly to the uncertain hypothesis of an additional freshwater canal to exit near Pelusium.) Whatever the depth of these projected, freshwater, barge canals with locks—the 18th century knew perfectly well that the Nile River and its Delta tributaries were only seasonally navigable; and, in any event, year round too shallow to accommodate seagoing vessels, whether merchantmen or ships-of-the-line, both of which were expanding in size across the 18th century.
Despite Napoleon's premature promises to the Directory (February and June 1799), the overall nivellement was calculated by Jacques-Marie Le Père, not in Egypt, but only after Le Père's return to France in late 1801. Édouard de Villiers du Terrage was a nineteen-year-old civil engineer who also did field work on the Le Père survey. According to de Villiers's memoirs (first published 1899):
The published version of Jacques-Marie Le Père's final report is entitled, Mémoire sur la communication de la mer des Indes à la Méditerranée par la mer Rouge et l’isthme de Soueys (memorandum on the maritime route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez). He gave Napoleon this report in draft in 1802. If he followed his usual practice, Napoleon perhaps asked for some politically motivated changes.
Le Père's report was never a serious and sincere blueprint, for an intended project. Why? Because Egypt was permanently lost to France in August 1801, mostly due to enduring British naval power in the Mediterranean and beyond. This stunning geopolitical verdict was clear even before Le Père first calculated the overall nivellement, and well before he submitted his initial draft report to Napoleon. Thus, from the very beginning, Le Père's report was always a purely academic exercise—or rather, significantly, a propaganda piece.
Did the First Consul secretly ask Le Père to fake nivellement figures in order to establish the existence of differential sea levels? If so, the motive was to bury the premier option of a deep, saltwater canal, to be cut straight across the isthmus. Did Napoleon instruct Le Père to tout non-strategic riverine routes, with locks? Whatever the case, we must never forget the truth-telling fact! Le Père's nivellement, on the ground, had notably included the survey of a direct route, suitable for a saltwater, ship canal—cut at sea level, from Suez straight northward, via the Bitter Lakes, to Pelusium on the Mediterranean Sea.
Some thirty years later, Khedival Egypt's Chief Engineer, Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds (Linant Pasha) carefully reviewed Le Père's work, including via new surveys on the ground. Suspecting problems with Le Père's overall calculations, Linant Pasha said that, ideally, there had to be re-examination of the original field notebooks of 1799-1800. Moreover, Linant bluntly dismissed the pertinence of the alleged divergent sea levels. He presented hydrology calculations showing that, even on the basis of Le Père's wildly mistaken findings, there was still no valid engineering reason to abandon the plan for a shorter, deeper, saltwater, ship canal, across the Isthmus of Suez (1872-3):
A politically convenient, final version of Le Père's report reached Napoleon in August 1803. It was printed for limited circulation in 1807, the same year he burned so many of his Mideast papers. As a separate work, it was published more widely in 1815. In 1809 and 1821, it also featured as part of the multi-volume, Description de l'Égypte.
Le Père's final report is over 200 pages in length. Is it purposely opaque? While "chock full" of patently irrelevant information, it avoids clearly setting out and systematically comparing the full details and advantages of the various potential routes. Instead, it powerfully distracts the reader with meticulously presented toponyms in Arabic script; and long, pointless, pedantic discussions of various ancient canals. At every stage, written after France had already lost Egypt, this report is a fanciful, political "con job."
Prepared during the first Bourbon restoration (1814-1815), the 1815 version displays a—hitherto secret—French military map of Egypt, dated 1802. Also included is a new testimonial lauding the accuracy of Le Père's survey, from eminent colleagues at the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées (royal corps of bridges and roads). This praise for Le Père's work was formally read out at the Institut National on January 23, 1815, during the first Bourbon restoration. What is the motive for this professional endorsement?
Jacques-Marie Le Père sought support from his fellow civil engineers, partly to protect his personal reputation, and perhaps partly to loyally conceal a secret, political stratagem. This postulated trick was likely the intentional perversion in France of the nivellement of the route for a deep, saltwater, ship canal straight across the Isthmus of Suez. If so, the gambit might perhaps have been secretly ordered by Napoleon. Such suggested deception greatly served his own personal ends, but also the vital interests of France, which had already lost Egypt ( August 31, 1801). From either perspective, the aim of certification by the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées was to counter growing scientific scorn for the archaic notion of widely differential sea levels, egregiously affirmed in Le Père's report.
This "differential" story covered for Napoleon's stunning failure to build the required, deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. But, the unlikely tale about the higher waters of the Red Sea was also clever Realpolitik disinformation. The probable aim was to powerfully discourage one or more of France's rivals from digging their own strategic, deep, saltwater, ship canal directly across the Isthmus of Suez. If so, the ruse worked for more than half a century. Better than anyone else, Napoleon understood that such a deep, saltwater, ship canal would offer France's opponents enormous naval advantage, especially in the Indian Ocean and in the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas.
Equilibrium of the seas, the contrary consensus
Were such highly differential sea levels still credible around the year 1800? Not according to France's greatest scientists. Pierre-Simon Laplace and Joseph Fourier were famous mathematicians and physicists. Both Fourier and Laplace personally knew Napoleon for many years. From time to time, they had opportunity to debate with him directly. Laplace and Fourier believed in the theory of the "equilibrium of the seas." Their understanding of sea levels solidly rested on Newtonian principles. Consider the weighty judgment of Ferdinand de Lesseps (1885): "The genius of Laplace, based on his justified theoretical views, had formally denied the possibility of such a depression at a distance of scarcely thirty leagues." In 1870, De Lesseps had already said that La Place and Fourier had denied the theory of differential sea levels "for fifty years before all the Academies."
Fourier served on the Commission on the Sciences and the Arts throughout the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). Moreover, he was permanent secretary of the Cairo learned society, the Institut d'Égypte. As such, he knew about the many scientific and technical questions that arose for the soldiers, sailors, scientists, surveyors, and civil engineers there. Thus, we have to be impressed that doubt about the "differential sea levels" story features discreetly in his 1809 préface historique (historical preface) to the Description de l'Égypte. A draft of this préface historique was vetted by Napoleon himself. Though he required several small changes for political reasons, Napoleon did not amend the paragraph, where Fourier tactfully declines to certify the accuracy of Le Père's improbable finding of highly differential sea levels (1809):
Napoleon's expressed belief in differential sea levels is curious, because he was supremely intelligent and scientifically astute. Did he see some personal and political advantage in touting the patently obsolete notion of such differential sea levels? Otherwise, he had every good reason to be skeptical of Le Père's strange findings.
With a lifetime passion for mathematics and astronomy, Napoleon had to have known about the various implications of gravity, including the theory of the equilibrium of the seas. Moreover, even before Sir Isaac Newton, there was the 17th-century classic Hydrographie by the well respected teacher of René Déscartes. Georges Fournier was simultaneously a Jesuit priest, geographer and mathematician. Describing stillborn efforts to dig the Suez Canal by the ancients, and "in our times" by the Ottoman Sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent, Fournier wrote (1643):
Napoleon had—at least twice—read the Baron de Tott's opinion denying that the Red Sea could be higher than the land surface of Egypt. Referring to ancient attempts to cut a canal from the Pelusiac Gulf to the Red Sea, François de Tott specified (1784):
Strong rejection of the theory of differential sea levels also appeared in a newly published book, first advertised in Le Moniteur on September 2, 1798. The author was former ecclesiastic Victor Delpuech de Comeiras (1733-1805). He developed a reputation as an historian, geographer, and commentator on foreign affairs. The title is Considérations sur la possibilité, l'intérêt et les moyens qu'auroit la France de rouvrir l'ancienne route du commerce de l'Inde: accompagnés de recherches sur l'isthme de Suès, et sur la jonction de la Mer-Rouge à la Méditerranée (considerations on the possibility, interest and means that France would have to reopen the ancient commercial route to India, accompanied by research on the Isthmus of Suez, and on the junction of the Red and Mediterranean Seas).
Comeiras seriatim refutes arguments for the notion that the waters of the Red Sea might be way higher than those of the Mediterranean. He does not see how a saltwater ship canal, at sea level, across the Isthmus of Suez would be any different from the Strait of Gibraltar. He also enthusiastically offers policy support for the idea that France ought to cut such a saltwater ship canal across the isthmus. The book refers to Napoleon as "this general for whom glory is the first need; who carries philosophy to the fields of battle, and consecrates it to the happiness of mankind." But, Comeiras says nothing about Napoleon's Mideast campaign. Nonetheless, because of content and timing, we have to ask: Is this Comeiras effort also an integral part of the 1798 propaganda, designed to enhance public understanding of—and support for—France's bold Egyptian expedition?
Nor was the idea of the higher level of the Red Sea believed by Brigadier-General Antoine-François Andréossy in Egypt. His civil engineer grandfather had built the famous Canal du Midi. In September-October 1798, Brigadier-General Andréossy read to the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo, a "Memorandum on Lake Menzaleh." Therein, he said that there was little cause to believe that canal building would cause "an irruption" of the Red Sea towards the Mediterranean. His view was published in occupied Egypt, in Volume One of La Décade égyptienne, Journal littéraire et d'économie politique (Cairo, Year VIII of the French Republic).
The prevailing scientific view is also expressed in a revealing passage that presumes early knowledge of the official, secret plan to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. The pertinent paragraphs appear in an address on the History of Astronomy for the Year VI. This is delivered at the Collège de France on November 19, 1798, by Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, for 46 years the astronomy professor there. His speech is printed in volume five of the 1799 Magasin encyclopédique ou Journal des sciences, des lettres et des arts (encyclopedic magazine or journal of sciences, literature and the arts):
In the same vein is a very long, expert, front-page article in the Allgemeine Zeitung. The title is, "Über die Vereinigung des rothen Meeres mit dem mittleländischen" (on the junction of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean). There, anonymous correctly pronounces (December 3, 1798): "Daß die Fläche des rothen Meers höher seyn solle, als die des mittelländischen, ist unwahrscheinlich, und kann nicht angenommen werden" (that the level of the Red Sea is higher than that of the Mediterranean is improbable, and cannot be accepted).
John Antes (1740-1811) was an American watchmaker, inventor, violin maker, composer, and Moravian missionary. He met Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and Josef Haydn in London. From 1770 to 1782, he lived in Egypt where he learned Arabic and worked to spread Protestantism among the Copts. In June 1800, he published his earlier German-language papers in an English translation entitled, Observations on the Manners and Customs of the Egyptians and the Overflowing of the Nile and Its Effects. Therein, Antes shows that he knows the important distinction between: freshwater canal routes connecting the Red Sea with the Nile River; and a saltwater channel to be cut straight across the isthmus, to join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, via the Bitter Lakes. He astutely rejects the hypothesis that the Red Sea might be higher than both the land surface of Egypt and the water level of the Mediterranean. However, he leaves open the possibility that high tide at Suez might sometimes be slightly more elevated than along the Mediterranean coast of Egypt (1800):
Napoleon quick to twist science for politics
Is it plausible that—as in the case of differential sea levels—Napoleon sometimes perverted or suppressed science for political advantage? On November 9, 1799, Napoleon executed his right-wing coup d'état that finally ended the French Revolution and its decade-long war against the Roman-Catholic Church. There can be no doubt that, as First Consul, Napoleon sought to suppress science to flatter the Roman-Catholic Church.
In spring 1801, the Marquis de Lafayette had several meetings with Napoleon. Lafayette tried to get Napoleon to adopt the "principle of freedom of religion, complete and independent of the State, as it exists in the United States." According to Lafayette's memoirs (1838), he then understood that Napoleon wanted to conclude an agreement with the Pope to undermine the Roman-Catholic legitimacy of the Bourbon pretender. Lafayette then perceived that Napoleon wanted to be king. With a smile, Lafayette confronted Napoleon: "You ought to admit that all of that has no other purpose, but breaking the ampoule of sacred coronation oil (n'a d'autre object que de casser la petite fiole). "Go fuck yourself with la petite fiole!" was Napoleon's spirited reply.
On July 15, 1801, Napoleon signed the Concordat with the Pope. Napoleon wrote to Police Minister Joseph Fouché (August 6, 1801):
Amidst Napoleon's new desire to pander to Catholic dogma, the zodiacs were nonetheless boldly addressed in a generous extract from an undated letter from Fourier to Berthollet. The long, controversial quotation, setting out Fourier's faulty astronomical and historical hypotheses, appeared in a second letter; this one sent from Marseilles to Paris. The precise date of this Marseilles letter was purposely omitted from the published version. However, it was said to have originated in Nivôse of Year X (December 22, 1801 to January 20, 1802). Quoting Fourier, this Marseilles letter was written by civil engineer Denis Samuel Bernard to René Pierre François Morand, who represented les Deux-Sèvres in the Consulate's new Corps législatif.
At age 58 close to the end of his career in public life, Morand was thirty years older than Bernard. Morand had long practiced medicine in Niort (Nouvelle-Acquitaine) where Bernard was born. Bernard was also well acquainted with both Fourier and Berthollet from common service in Egypt, where young Bernard had been master of the Cairo mint. All three had been members of the Institut d'Égypte, where Bernard likely first learned of Fourier's astronomical hypotheses. Despite—or maybe because of—the publication of his letter to Morand, Bernard became (May 3, 1802) sub-prefect of Annecy, in the French Alps.
Bernard's letter from Marseilles was published under the editorial title, "Copie d'une lettre du citoyen S.B., membre de la commission des sciences et arts d'Égypte, au citoyen Morand, membre du Corps-législatif" (copy of a letter from citizen S.B., member of the commission of the sciences and arts of Egypt, to citizen Morand, member of the legislative body).
Curiously, Bernard's letter found its way into print, despite the prevailing censorship. Under the heading "Antiquities, Science and the Arts," it significantly appeared in Le Moniteur (February 14, 1802). It is no accident that this rare, published account of Fourier's controversial views about astronomy has such a complex and undated paternity. This confirms that—apart from anything else—the printing of this highly sensitive item was, politically, an important expression of elite, anticlerical opposition to the Concordat.
In addition to some generals of the army, the Abbé Grégoire was among many prominent ex-revolutionaries who firmly rejected the Concordat. By way of protest, he resigned (October 8, 1801) as Bishop of Blois. Moreover, within the Consular regime itself, the treaty with the Vatican was strongly opposed by ex-Jacobin Fouché. As powerful Police Minister, he perhaps purposely permitted publication of Bernard's letter. The July 1801 Concordat was not enacted, proclaimed, and promulgated in France until April 1802.
What happened to Napoleon's shovels?
Were most of Napoleon's digging tools shipped from France aboard the transports able to enter the shallow entrance to the Old Port of Alexandria? Or, were most of those iron tools carried as ballast by the ships-of-the-line that had to anchor in Aboukir Bay? If the latter, Napoleon's failure to follow the Directory's orders to build the saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was perhaps partly due to the possibility that the bulk of his outils de pionnier was lost when Nelson sank the French warships (August 1-2, 1798).
Conjecture about the loss of most of Napoleon's iron tools is supported by his exculpatory report to the Directory. After the fact, he probably lies to shift blame to the fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Brueys, who had been killed in the sea battle. To the point, Napoleon suspiciously claims that, on July 6th, he had ordered Brueys to bring his warships into the Old Port of Alexandria within twenty-four hours (August 19, 1798):
Moreover, Napoleon already knew that Brueys believed that the entrance to the Old Port was too shallow to permit safe and timely entry by fully armed, ships-of-the-line. Brueys had already told Napoleon so, in a letter of July 3rd. Therein, Brueys wrote that he would first anchor in Aboukir Bay, and then use light djermes and avisos to send to Alexandria the "artillery and other objects" still aboard his warships. Brueys likely reiterated all this information directly to Napoleon, during their last face-to-face meeting in Alexandria on July 4th.
Whatever the truth about his alleged July 6th orders to Brueys, Napoleon's August 19th report testifies to his belief that the French warships still had, on board, important items yet to be brought ashore. For example, underwater archaeologists confirm that some of the famous Malta treasure and a printing press were lost along with the French battle fleet. But, a Brueys letter to the Minister of the Marine can perhaps be read as contrary testimony. Therein, Brueys claims that, no later than July 7th, he had already (July 9, 1798): "disembarked all the soldiers and the property belonging to the land army" (je débarquai toutes les troupes et les effets appartenant à l'armée de terre).
Perhaps Brueys knew that the shovels were not immediately needed and—in any event—mostly pertained, not to the Army of the East, but rather to the civil engineers of the Commission on the Sciences and the Arts. In 1798-1801, there was, indeed, a clear juridical distinction between the Army of the East and the civilian Commission. Moreover, the French soldiers of the Army of the East keenly resented the experts, scholars, scientists, and engineers of the Commission.
Were other valuable items left aboard Napoleon's ships, after the early July débarquement général? After the crushing defeat in Aboukir Bay, strengthening the batteries overlooking Alexandria's two harbors became urgent. This comes from an account by an eyewitness, the architect Charles Norry. Back in Paris in late 1798, he writes that, after the naval disaster (August 1-2), the city commandant, General Kléber, feared an early British attack. Therefore, he unloaded cannon from ships in the Old Port, and hauled them up to the heights, in order to better defend Alexandria.
Thus, it is possible that, like some other key equipment and cargo, most of the outils de pionnier had yet to be unloaded. Throughout July 1798, most of the axes, shovels and picks, possibly remained iron ballast for the warships riding at anchor in Aboukir Bay. These iron tools were perhaps shipped as ballast, because the Toulon fleet was very carefully loaded, with an expert eye to maximizing the amount of strategic cargo that could be carried across the Mediterranean, for the Egyptian campaign. This hypothesis explains why documents attest that, in 1798-9, the Army of the East was strangely short of shovels.
For example, General Jean-Louis-Ebénézer Reynier reported to Napoleon from Salheyeh (August 17, 1798): "The sappers who were sent here do not even have 100 picks and only three shovels, hardly any axes and just one saw." In Cairo, Napoleon too was short of iron shovels and axes, as specifically indicated in his August 25, 1798 orders for General Berthier. Reynier again wrote to Napoleon from Salheyeh that lack of shovels was limiting progress on fortifications (September 10, 1798):
Companion scandals of Jews and Canal
Before the end of 1801, the French troops were repatriated, mostly aboard British ships. Written in exile around 1819, Napoleon's own account of the Egyptian campaign repeatedly refers to Jews, but discreetly offers nothing about any letters or proclamations inviting their return to the aboriginal homeland. Similarly, his own history of the Egyptian campaign says so much about Suez canals, but nary a word about his 21,345 shovels, picks, and axes. Therein, Napoleon tactfully hides the fact that he had been ordered to actually dig the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Instead, he and his supporters persistently seek to distract. They "flood the zone" with mostly irrelevant references: to undertaking praiseworthy antiquarian research about ancient, freshwater canals; and to executing some preliminary "feasibility" surveys and studies.
From Cairo, Napoleon wrote to the Directory (September 8, 1798): "Master of Egypt, France will in the long run be master of the Indies" (Maîtresse de l'Égypte, la France sera à la longue maîtresse des Indes). But, an early start digging a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was certainly the immediate political, economic, and military purpose for launching the Mideast campaign. This bold attack was virtually pointless without completing the key isthmus project. The geostrategic motive was to use the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the isthmus to strike a lethal blow against England's naval dominance, global commerce, and Indian empire.
A cover up was necessary because Napoleon never managed to dig the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, and the British and Ottomans conquered Egypt (August 31, 1801). Thus, he always took great pains to avoid signaling that he had spectacularly failed to do that which had been specifically required of him. All too common were his forgeries, exculpatory omissions, dissimulations, and destructions of documents. Such disinformation was especially true in relation to his failed Mideast adventure. We can reasonably suppose that Napoleon's infamous archival bonfires included very many Mideast documents, not only about Jews, but also about the projected, saltwater canal across the Isthmus of Suez.
Subsequent spin and concealment ought not to distract. To his great credit is the large extent to which his vast plans were really revolutionary, bold and creative. He was a strategic genius. Building the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and restoring the Jews are two good examples. Both were part of Napoleon's innovative agenda, well before he sailed from Toulon to Alexandria. Furthermore, the "Jewish" and "ship canal" initiatives were strategically related, as suggested by Lettre d'un Juif, and hinted at in Napoleon's own history of the Mideast campaign.
Britain copied Napoleon's canal strategy
After ten years' construction by Frenchmen and others, the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was finally opened in 1869. Accommodating ocean-going vessels, it is a waterway across the direct route, completely at sea level, without need for locks. Great Britain eventually imitated Napoleon's geostrategic perspective on the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, and the Jews.
In 1875, the British government became the principal shareholder in the Suez Canal Company by buying stock held by the Khedive, the autonomous Ottoman viceroy of Egypt. In 1878, the Ottomans granted Great Britain the right to administer Cyprus. From 1882 to 1914, Great Britain occupied Egypt, in partnership with the Khedive, and under the titular sovereignty of the Ottoman Sultan. To the benefit of Great Britain, this diplomatic fiction realized something like the scenario that had been mooted by Talleyrand and Napoleon in early 1798. Moreover, like Lettre d'un Juif, the British later adopted a "Jewish" pretext to justify taking control of Palestine, which was seen as the eastern flank of the Suez Canal.
During and immediately after the First World War, the French Revolutionary idea of a Jewish jurisdiction was revived by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Thus, what for the French had been a dream of a Revolutionary Jewish Republic, sister to la grande nation, for the British became the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1922 Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations.
Lloyd George himself genuinely favored Jewish return to the Holy Land. Nonetheless, it is still fair to say that he skillfully exploited Zionism as a diplomatic ploy to sway the President of the United States. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was warm to the millennial rights of the Jewish People, but stone cold to European imperialism. And, winning Wilson's consent was certainly necessary before Palestine could become part of the worldwide British Empire. But first, President Wilson had to be assured that the Jewish People would be the main beneficiary of British rule there.
After Palestine was bagged for Britain, interwar events increasingly exposed this brief interlude of official Zionism under Lloyd George, as a superficial cover for Realpolitik. With the 1939 UK Palestine White Paper, finally flagrant was failure to honor UK treaty promises to facilitate immigration for "close settlement by Jews on the land." This clear breach of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty on Palestine was instantly grasped by USA Senator Harry Truman.
On May 25, 1939, Senator Truman used the Congressional Record to protest against the UK Palestine White Paper. The Missouri Senator said that Britain "has made a scrap of paper out of Lord Balfour's promise to the Jews." That commitment was solidly embodied in the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. In May 1939, nobody in London heeded Truman's words. Even after he became President in April 1945, it took a surprisingly long time for UK ministers to accept that Truman was seriously engaged on this issue. With regard to Jewish immigration to Palestine, President Truman stubbornly held British feet to the fire.
From 1938-9, King George VI, military and civil officialdom, and the Conservative Party were dead set against further Jewish settlement in Palestine. For geostrategic and other reasons, these British players were, at heart, reluctant to imagine ever relinquishing Palestine. Sir Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner in Jerusalem (1938-1944), repeatedly advised transforming the Mandate into a Crown Colony, to be governed bureaucratically, like British Hong Kong. In the same vein, Viscount Bernard Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946-8), urged disarming the Palestinian Jews.
By contrast, President Truman doggedly championed mass immigration by some of the Jewish refugees who had survived Hitler's Europe. In Spring 1947, Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin surprised the world by suddenly agreeing with Truman that some of the Jewish refugees should go to Palestine. The postwar imperative to admit at least 100,000 of these Jewish refugees was the powerful diplomatic engine that soon pushed an impoverished and isolated Britain out of Palestine (May 15, 1948).
[The fourth part of this monograph appears in a separate posting entitled, Jews, Napoleon, and the Ottoman Empire: the 1797-9 Proclamations to the Jews (2025 edition), Part 4. It is available on this website at:]
http://www.allenzhertz.com/2025/01/jews-napoleon-and-ottoman-empire-1797-9_20.html
Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).
Role for a Jewish Republic
Revolutionizing all the subject Peoples of the Ottoman Empire and potential help from Jewish bankers were not the only practical reasons that Napoleon had for discreetly wooing Jews, including during his 1799 "Syrian" expedition. Written around 1819, his own history of his war in the Mideast links the strategic importance of the Holy Land to Egypt, exactly as in the 1798 Lettre d'un Juif which is perhaps also from Napoleon's pen.
Today, the Chinese generals of the People's Liberation Army still revere the strategic thinking of ancient China. In the same way, Napoleon was deeply impressed by the example of the great strategists of Classical antiquity. Thus, he mentions (1819) that Cyrus the Great had "protected the Jews and had their Temple rebuilt," because Cyrus was thinking about conquering Egypt from the east. Napoleon also writes that Alexander the Great, similarly attacking from the east, "sought to please the Jews so that they might serve him for his crossing of the [Sinai] desert."
Here, Napoleon's strategic logic makes it easy to understand the companion idea of a Revolutionary Jewish Republic helping to guard the eastern gateway to French Egypt. This makes sense in the larger context of a Near and Mideast dominated by la grande nation. This revolutionary concept required replacing the reactionary Ottoman Empire with a series of satellite republics. The ethno-religious beneficiaries on Mount Lebanon would be the Maronites, the Druze, and the Shia Twelvers or Motouâly. Elsewhere, there would be republican, national homelands for Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Greeks, etc.
Using such independent, eastern allies to guard the road to Egypt was a strategy that Napoleon had read about more than once, in a book about the Mideast that was a bestseller during the last years of the 18th century. To the point, Egypt is treated in the fourth volume of the famous Mémoires du Baron de Tott, sur les Turcs et les Tartares (Baron de Tott's memoranda on the Turks and the Tatars). There, French diplomat, soldier and turcologist, François de Tott discusses the rise of the Mameluke potentate Ali Bey (1785):
Ali Bey also knew that he could not govern Egypt peacefully without making Sheykh Daher the master of Damascus and of Syria as far as Gaza, which Ali Bey kept for himself. At the same time, he wanted to assure the independence of the Druze and of the [Shia Twelver] Mutualis, in order to make them his allies. It was only after erecting this impenetrable wall against Ottoman power that Ali Bey was secure enough to think about placing the crown of Egypt on his own head.Accordingly, on March 20, 1799, Napoleon sent his aforementioned letters to the Emir of the Druze and to the Chief of the Motouâly. Written in the third person, Napoleon's own account of the Mideast campaign tells us about his cooperation with the Motouâly whom he estimated at only 5,000. Recalling late March 1799, he wrote (1819):
The Motouâly presented themselves [at the French camp near Acre] en masse—men, women, seniors, children, to the number of 900. Only 260 were armed, of whom half were mounted and the other half on foot. The general in chief dressed the three chiefs in ceremonial fur coats and restored to them the lands of their ancestors. Formerly, the Motouâly numbered 10,000. But Djezzar [Ahmet Cezzar Pasha] killed almost all of them.In April 1799, the Motouâly were actively helping the French forces, far more than were the Druze and the Maronites. Moreover, the Motouâly promised to contribute 500 well-armed horsemen for Napoleon's march on Damascus, anticipated for May 1799.
Napoleon's history of the Mideast campaign also tells us that, during his 1799 siege of Acre (1819):
Christian, Jewish, and Muslim agents were dispatched to Damascus, to Aleppo, and even as far as the [two] Armenias. They reported back that the French army's presence in Syria was turning all heads. The general in chief received secret agents and very important communications from several provinces of Asia Minor.In precisely this context, and around the same time, Napoleon dispatches a secret emissary to King George XII of Georgia. This characteristic initiative is described by the King's son, Prince David, who writes to the Armenian Archbishop Joseph Argun. A Russian translation of David's revealing letter is reproduced in А.А. Цагарели, Грамоты и другие исторические документы XVIII столетия относящиеся к Грузии (charters and other 18th-century historical documents about Georgia) Volume 2, Part 2, Saint Petersburg, 1902 (April 15, 1799):
The French General Bonaparte sent to my Sovereign Father a special envoy. Crossing the Turkish provinces as far as Akhaltsikhe, this emissary was discovered by the local [Ottoman] Pasha who understood his intentions. The Pasha hanged him and burned all his papers. Of course, you are more aware of the circumstances, but it is said that the French took many cities in Egypt and that they intend to spread their conquests further.Petre Laradze was a Georgian artist, calligrapher and poet. On September 3, 1799, Laradze predicted that "Bonaparte within two months will capture Constantinople which will be of great benefit for us."
The April 20, 1799 letter which Napoleon addressed to the "Israelites" has been discussed. Similarly, we have already seen that, at the start of the siege of Acre, Napoleon sent secret agents to the two Armenias. Such emissaries likely carried handwritten or printed propaganda in Armenian characters, in either or both of Armenian and Armeno-Turkish. In 18th-century Italy, there was Armenian printing, at least in Venice and at the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome. The multilingual typeface of these Italian centers was a rare resource that Napoleon fully exploited for the Army of the East.
Eyewitness Nikula ibn Yusuf Al-Türki says Napoleon designated premises on Cairo's Ezbekiye square "for establishment of the printing press that he had brought from Rome, and with which he was able to print in all languages." Elsewhere, Nikula refers to "presses brought from Rome" and specifies printing in French, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic. However, we know that, in the Mideast, the French also printed in Italian, Greek, and Ottoman-Turkish, and likely found ways to get papers printed in other important Mideast languages like Hebrew and Armenian.
Whether in Egypt or Ottoman Syria, Napoleon always had some help from individual Armenians, such as his personal bodyguard Rustam Raza. Moreover, we have already seen some quotations from the contemporary European press that stubbornly claim that many Armenians were serving as soldiers for Napoleon, during his Mideast campaign. The Observer says (March 10, 1799): "Several Greeks, Jews, and Armenians who had joined the French have been excommunicated." Also in a military vein, Napoleon—on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz—pointed to Armenians as soldiers, in his retrospective estimate of the lost opportunities of his 1799 campaign against the Ottomans (December 1, 1805): "C'est par des Arabes, des Grecs, des Arméniens que j'eusse achevé la guerre contre les Turcs!" (It's through the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Armenians that I would have won my war against the Turks!)
Significantly, Napoleon testifies that, several weeks after the battle near Mount Tabor (April 16, 1799), he received an Armenian delegation (circa 1819):
The battle of Mount Tabor had the result that one would expect: The Druze, the Maronites, the Christian populations of Syria, and several weeks later, representatives of the Christians of Armenia, were abundant in the French camp.During his May 1799 meeting with the Armenian deputies (députés des Chrétiens d'Arménie), Napoleon must have described for them the homeland and freedom that Armenians would enjoy, after they helped defeat the Ottomans.
During his Mideast campaign, the Armenian People placed great hopes in Napoleon. Armenians made sure to aid him in various ways. For example, an Armenian banker, Eghiazara Mihra Aguentsi, was intermediary between the central administration and local governments in Egypt. According to Nikula ibn Yusuf Al-Türki, Napoleon named as Ağa of the janissaries, "the Muslim" Mehmet Kethüda, who was an Armenian by birth. Armenians also cared for sick French soldiers in Jaffa. And, Armenians generously shared with Napoleon current information, from their far-flung intelligence networks.
The Russian Emperor Paul was in 1798 completely credible in saying that Napoleon aimed at establishing the Еврейская Республика, the "Jewish Republic," to be based in Jerusalem. Such plans for the Jews were entirely consistent with Napoleon's intentions for the other Peoples of the Ottoman Near and Mideast. Moreover, we have already seen that the utility for France of Jewish restoration in the Holy Land was also understood in 1798-9 by Pierre-Louis Roederer, Thomas Corbet, and the anonymous author of Lettre d'un Juif.
Complementary inspiration came from British colonial practice. As a young man, Napoleon was always interested in learning more about 18th-century India. He described British methods and predicted (1793) their growing success there. The British indirectly ruled large Indian populations, via a series of partner jurisdictions. Thus, revolutionaries easily imagined that France could, if necessary, replace the Sunnite Ottomans, just as the British had inserted themselves in India, at the expense of the Sunnite Mughals. If so, a "regenerated" Near and Mideast could be indirectly ruled by the Revolutionary French Republic, in partnership with a series of satellite republics.
This French Revolutionary strategy was well known to Selim III. "Everywhere weak republics would be created which France would keep under its tutelage, so that everything everywhere would go according to its arbitrary will." As indicated in Part 1, the Ottomans astutely grasped the gambit implicit in the idea of la grande nation. Their accurate understanding is evidenced in the September 1798 memorandum, justifying the Sultan's decision to declare war on France. This Ottoman memorandum was shared with the diplomatic corps, and soon published in various European languages—for example, in German in the Wiener Zeitung on October 10, 1798. Much later, it was printed in Ottoman-Turkish, in the official imperial history by Ahmet Cevdet Pasha.
Polymath Eloi Johanneau sent the editor of Le Moniteur, a long letter, in which he pertinently pointed to Ottoman Anatolia as a future revolutionary republic, la République Gallo-grecque. He described the worldwide role of "la Grande-Nation" as the mère-Patrie (mother country) of all the current and future sister republics. His expansive list of imminent republics also included Ireland (République hibernienne), Scotland (République calédonienne), and even dangerous England (République d'Albion). Referring to revolutionary republics everywhere, Johanneau argued (April 9, 1798): "They ought to link their destiny with ours, imitate the mother country, and make common cause with her; and thus we will justify the title of Grande-Nation which, in fact, belongs to us."
This satellite formula follows Napoleon's 1797 understanding. Le Moniteur (August 8), the Journal de Paris (August 9), La Clef du Cabinet des Souverains (August 9), and the Journal de Francfort (August 14) are among the 1797 newspapers that highlight both his July 30th letter to the Maniote chieftain and his companion August 1st letter to the Directory. For Napoleon and his contemporaries, the Maniotes are prestigious as descendants of the ancient Spartans. Also referring to la grande nation, Napoleon tells the Directory that the Maniotes wish "to be useful to the great people (le grand peuple) in some way."
Writing to the Maniote leader, Napoleon acknowledges the chieftain's "desire to see French ships in his port, and to be of some use to the brave French soldiers of the Army of Italy." Napoleon assures the chieftain that "the French esteem the little, but brave, Maniote people (le petit, mais brave peuple maniote), who alone from ancient Greece, knew how to preserve its liberty."
If these few Maniote descendants of ancient Sparta merit homeland, self-rule, and a vassal relationship with la grande nation, why not Georgians, Armenians, Druze, Maronites, Shia Twelvers, and Jews? Like the Maniotes, Jews were also one of the subject Peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Make no mistake! From 1796 to 1799, Napoleon and the Revolutionary French Republic did not discriminate against Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish People. Rather, almost everywhere outside the Mideast, French revolutionaries fiercely discriminated against Catholics and the Roman-Catholic Church.
Exactly such satellite status for Jews is specified in Lettre d'un Juif which is perhaps from Napoleon's pen. This "grande nation" ideology is also the larger context for references by Ahmet Cevdet Pasha to "establishing a Jewish government in Jerusalem" (قدس شريفده بر يهود حكومتى تشكيل); by the Emperor Paul to Bonaparte's "Jewish Republic" (Еврейская Республика); by Bonaparte to "Israel's inheritance" (Israels Erbteil) in the letter of April 20, 1799; and by Mallet du Pan to the revolutionary plan to recreate the "Hebrew Republic" (République hébraïque).
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| Napoleon points to a canal from Suez to the Nile. Print from Bonaparte in Cairo (Bonaparte au Caire) published in Paris in late 1798 or the start of 1799. |
Invite to Jews starts with idea for Suez Canal
Clearly, there were global stakes, because Napoleon always wanted to restore the ancient canal across the Isthmus of Suez, which is mentioned by Herodotus and some other Classical Greek and Roman writers. The canal of antiquity features four times in Napoleon's youthful notebooks. He also read about the historic canal in two 1780s bestsellers about the Mideast. First are the 1784-5 works of the aforementioned François de Tott. Second are two volumes by Constantine Volney, about his 1783-5 travels in Egypt and Syria (1787).
Napoleon certainly knew from De Tott's famous writings that, during the Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774), the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III had ordered De Tott to prepare a proposal for digging a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. De Tott wrote that the Sultan intended to dig this canal when peace returned. Unfortunately, Mustafa died (January 1774) too soon to realize this ambition.
De Tott's account of 18th-century Ottoman intent is supported by 16th-century Turkish precedents. The Ottoman Turks first conquered Egypt in 1517. From that time forward, they were always well aware of the possibility of digging out water ways linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1529, the Ottomans had twelve thousand workers and teams of engineers making an unsuccessful attempt to cut a freshwater canal between the Nile River and the Red Sea. In 1568, the Ottomans were seriously exploring the feasibility of cutting a saltwater canal straight across the Isthmus of Suez. However, Turkish surveyors there, poured cold water on the project, which was judged to be impractical and too expensive.
The words "Isthmus of Suez" appear in General Desaix's diary (September 1797) in one of the entries noting Napoleon's conversations about a potential Egyptian campaign. This clearly means that Napoleon then revealed to Desaix, an intention to dig a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. This hydro-scheme had stubbornly figured in French strategic thinking about Egypt, across the entire 18th century—the central part of the golden age of canal construction in Europe. During 1797, Napoleon's rising interest in seizing Egypt and building a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the isthmus was likely first stimulus for his 1797-8 propaganda aimed at the Jews of the Ottoman Empire.
Weighty evidence are the 21,345 iron digging tools (pickaxe-hoes, rock-picks, shovels, and axes) that Napoleon shipped from Europe to Alexandria. This astonishing statistic is drawn from the cargo tables in volume one of the authoritative L'Expédition d'Égypte, 1798-1801 (Paris, 1899) by Clément de La Jonquière. This total of more than twenty-one thousand, iron digging tools is not inconsistent with the thinking of Napoleon's chief civil engineer, Jacques-Marie Le Père. According to Ferdinand de Lesseps, who eventually built (1859-1869) the Suez Canal, Le Père had already calculated that cutting the Suez Canal would take ten thousand workers four years.
What do we learn from studying the topic of such earth-moving tools (outils de pionnier)? Whether Royal or Revolutionary, late 18th-century French armies of comparable size (circa 40,000 men), normally did not carry anything like the 21,345 iron shovels, pickaxe-hoes, rock-picks, and axes that Napoleon brought to Egypt to dig a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. For example, François de Tott in 1779 prepared a secret plan for the French conquest of Egypt and the digging of shallow, freshwater barge canals, from the Nile River to the Red Sea at Suez. To cut these canals, De Tott recommended that the expeditionary force be equipped with two thousand picks and six thousand iron shovels.
Napoleon also took aboard the French fleet sailing to Egypt, almost 600,000 empty sandbags, perhaps because Volney (1787), and others before him, had written that blowing sand quickly blocks desert canals. This desert disadvantage was said to be the experience of antiquity. According to 1870 oral testimony of De Lesseps, it was a widespread "phantom" and "prejudice," during the first half of the 19th century, to believe that "it was impossible to dig out in the desert a canal which should not at once be filled up with sand."
To dig a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, the 1798 Army of the East was accompanied by nineteen civil engineers, and sixteen surveyors and cartographers. It is no accident that these 35 technicians formed the single largest contingent of Napoleon's famous Commission on the Sciences and the Arts.
Cut the Isthmus of Suez!
"Couper l'isthme de Suez" is the clear command in the Directory's terse, secret instructions for the General-in-Chief of the Army of the East. This means actually digging the saltwater canal for seagoing ships, as is clear from the preamble (April 12, 1798):
By infamous treason, England has made herself the mistress of the Cape of Good Hope. This makes it very difficult for the ships of the Republic to reach the Indies by the usual route. Thus, it is necessary to open for the Republican forces another route to arrive there.
Contemporary Paris speculation about the purpose of the "secret expedition" immediately includes the possibility of digging a saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. For example, twenty-two year old civil engineer, Jean-Baptise Prosper Jollois, writes to his father (April 10, 1798):
I forgot that I have yet to tell you that politicians claim that it is a question of cutting the isthmus of Suez (couper l'isthme de Suez), in order to establish a communication between the Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. But, putting aside all these conjectures, and coming straight to the point, I am part of this expedition.According to Le Moniteur, Gaspard Monge and eighteen other scholars are also "part of the great expedition that is being prepared" (April 12, 1798):
The instruments that are to serve them already left Paris yesterday morning. The one says that they are going to Egypt; the other that they are going to India; a third adds that they are going to cut the Isthmus of Suez (percer l'isthme de Suez). The fact is that one gets lost in conjectures, and cannot do any better, as long as the government carefully guards its secret.
France's politics and press were carefully watched by British spies abroad and by UK officialdom at home. Though debate persisted as to the Toulon fleet's destination, some astute London observers started discussing the danger of a French plan to seize Egypt and build a saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus. The Secretary of State for War, Henry Dundas, was early focused on Egypt. By contrast, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Spencer, needed almost two months more to become confident that Napoleon was really aiming at Alexandria. At 3 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, Dundas wrote to Earl Spencer (April 17, 1798):
If any great European Power shall ever get possession of that country, the keeping it will cost them nothing, and that country so getting possession of Egypt will in my opinion be possessed of the master key to all the commerce of the world.In the last years of the 18th century, the name François de Tott is frequently tied to the topic of cutting a saltwater canal between the Red and Mediterranean Seas. (However, he recommended to ancien régime France nothing more than shallow, freshwater, barge canals joining the Nile River to the Red Sea.) Nonetheless, the prospect of a deep, saltwater canal cut straight across the Isthmus of Suez is the light in which we have to evaluate the reference to "Monsieur de Tott" in the anonymous memorandum on the "Importance of Egypt to the French," which Earl Spencer sends to Dundas. Perhaps sparked by recent Paris press reports, this document specifically points to the survey of the Isthmus of Suez, executed for France, during the 1777 secret mission led by the Baron de Tott (April 20, 1798):
The probability of the French taking possession of Egypt, naturally leads us, as a great commercial nation, to consider the question of the probability, as well as the consequences that may arise from the accomplishment of such an undertaking. I believe it will be generally admitted, that the possession of Egypt has been a long time an object of French politics; the sending of Monsieur de Tott to survey the levels and roads practicable across the Isthmus of Suez remains as full proof of such a design.Eager to raise British awareness of the great strategic importance of Egypt, Dundas perhaps pushed The Times to publish an article entitled, "French Expedition to Egypt" (April 24, 1798):
It seems that General Buonaparte is to be the hero who is intended by the Directory as the Conqueror of the East, whither it is now generally thought by the best informed persons that the French expedition to the South is directed, proceeding by the route of Egypt. Innumerable as are the difficulties in the way of this expedition, it is generally believed that it will at least be attempted; and the Directory will thus get rid of a General, who is too great not to be an object of their envy and their dread; and at the same time find an export for many thousand vagabonds who are too numerous and troublesome to remain inactive in France.The rest of this article in The Times is a résumé of a long and significant speech, delivered in the lower house of the French legislature (April 12, 1798). Two numbers of Le Moniteur (April 19 and 20) are perhaps the Paris source. In any event, five days, inclusive of printing at either end, suffice for publication in London of news drawn from a Paris newspaper. The speaker is Joseph Eschassériaux (1753-1824). He is most significantly the son-in-law of Monge, who is Napoleon's close confidant. Later, Eschassériaux is an enthusiastic supporter and beneficiary of Napoleon's coup d'état of November 9, 1799.
Napoleon likely prompted Eschassériaux to speak out, about Egypt in general and about the ship canal project, in particular. Can it be mere coincidence? Eschassériaux addresses the Chamber, on the very day that the Directory secretly creates the Army of the East and issues Napoleon top-secret instructions for seizing Egypt and building the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez.
Eschassériaux does not refer specifically to Jews, and only implicitly points to Ottoman Syria. But, Eschassériaux's powerful presentation is nonetheless an important part of Napoleon's propaganda to prepare the public for France's imminent move in the Mideast. Thus, Eschassériaux's much neglected speech deserves to be carefully studied, alongside Le Breton's article and Lettre d'un Juif.
The Times sees through the smokescreen sent up by Eschassériaux's wide-ranging talk about geography, revolutionary ethics, and the pros and cons of colonial acquisition. The Times notes that Eschassériaux states "openly the grounds upon which the French Government are to seize on the land of Egypt."
Eschassériaux is directly quoted on the subject of digging canals. He is razor sharp in advocating the execution of two distinct Egyptian projects. The first is a deep, year-round, saltwater, ship canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The second consists of shallow, freshwater, barge canals from the Red Sea to the River Nile—which the 18th century knew to be only seasonally and partially navigable. However, the initial stretch between Suez and the Bitter Lakes would be common to the two potential waterways (April 24, 1798):
These two great projects wait, perhaps for the genius of Frenchmen to be realized. One is, the junction of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, by the Isthmus of Suez, one of the most vast ideas formed by the ancients, but which they did not dare to execute. The other is, the reconfection of the canal, which in the time of Sesostris [19th century BCE] carried to the mouths of the Nile the merchandise of the Indies, transported by the Arabian Gulf.
Nile seasonal, never for seagoing ships
Eschassériaux's reference to rebuilding the canal of Sesostris would, according to Jacques-Marie Le Père, require relatively shallow, freshwater, barge canals along three routes. The first cut from Suez to the Bitter Lakes. The second running from the Bitter Lakes to the River Nile. To avoid the Nile Delta, the third would extend from the River Nile to Alexandria.
This riverine route would enhance Egypt's internal communications; and offer advantages for the off-loading and trans-shipment of Europe-bound cargo, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean coast, at the two harbours of Alexandria. But, whatever the utility of the revival and improvement of these ancient, freshwater, barge canals, the Nile itself was intrinsically defective. The waters of the Nile River were periodically too shallow to support year-round navigation, even by barges and other light vessels. This periodicity is explained by Alan Mikhail in Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge, 2011):
The annual cycle of agricultural cultivation [and Nile navigation] in Egypt was, of course, timed to the Nile’s flood. Summer rains in the Ethiopian highlands swelled the river, causing it to rise in Aswan in Upper Egypt by June and in Cairo by early July. Water continued to rise through the summer, until its peak in Cairo in late August or early September. From then, it began to fall steadily, reaching half of its flood height by the middle of November and its minimum by May before the cycle began anew.Claude Étienne Savary's Lettres sur l'Égypte (letters about Egypt) was a 1786 bestseller, certainly read by Napoleon and also by many of his companions on the Mideast expedition (1798-1801). Savary said navigation was possible only on the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile River Delta. However, there were serious challenges crossing the high sand bar at the mouth of each of these branches of the Nile. There were many shipwrecks upon entry and exit—always a difficult transit. Experienced river boatmen were invariably needed to carefully sound the safe passage. Both Nile River mouths were regularly impacted by strong winds; persistently shifting sand bars; and powerful sea and river currents conflicting at narrow, shallow, and changing channels. The high Damietta sand bar was "no less dangerous than that of Rosetta." Savary added that, for several months each year, the Damietta mouth of the Nile could not be navigated, even by smaller boats of the country.
A key source is Copies of Original Letters from the Army of General Bonaparte in Egypt, Intercepted by the Fleet under the Command of Admiral Lord Nelson (London, 1798). This book contains observations about the navigation of the Nile. For example, the British editor judges: "The [Rosetta] mouth of the Nile is exceedingly difficult to be passed, on account of the surf that always prevails upon the bar, and asks a thousand precautions which can only be taken in a time of full security."
Commander of the French fleet, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys writes to France's Minister of the Marine and Colonies (July 9, 1798):
Our troops entered Rosetta yesterday, and the army is now in full march for Cairo. We have pushed into this branch of the Nile as many of our light vessels as possible; and the Commander in Chief [Bonaparte] has asked me for the Chief of Division [Emmanuel] Perrée, to command them. The flotilla sailed this morning to try if it be possible to get over the bar of Rosetta.Nile Flotilla Commander Perrée writes to Brueys (July 24, 1798):
The Nile is very far from answering the description I had received of it. It winds incessantly, and is withal so shallow that I was compelled to leave the chebek, the galley, and two of my gunboats, thirteen leagues below Cairo, which I reached yesterday evening.Napoleon from Cairo writes to General Jean-Baptiste Kléber in Alexandria (July 27, 1798):
The army is in the greatest need of its baggage [...] Send us our Arabic and French printing presses. See that they embark all the wine, brandy, tents, shoes, etc. Send round all these articles by sea to Rosetta: and as the Nile is now upon its increase, they will find no difficulty in passing up that river to Cairo (envoyez tous ces objets par mer à Rosette, et vû la croissance du Nil, ils remontront facilement jusqu'au Caire).To his friend, Louis-Jean-Nicolas Le Joille, Captain of Le Généreux, at anchor in Aboukir Bay, Perrée writes (July 28, 1798): "I can assure you that we have been miserably deceived respecting the navigation of the Nile. No vessel that draws more than five feet can ascend it at the period that I did..."
Even flat-bottom djermes could not navigate the Nile year round. According to an 1840s observer, djermes are pulled up onto the river bank, during the dry season, and covered with reed mats to protect them from the sun. Nile explorer James Bruce is an eye witness from the 1770s. He describes an annual interruption of navigation (1790):
The boatmen, living either in the Delta, Cairo, or one of the great towns in Upper Egypt, and coming constantly loaded with merchandise, or strangers from these great places, make swift passages by the villages, either down the river with a rapid current, or up with a strong, fair, and steady wind: And, when the season of the Nile's inundation is over, and the wind turns southward, they repair all to the Delta, the river being no longer navigable above, and there they are employed till the next season.These hard navigation realities decreed that the Nile River route would never be able to accommodate large merchantmen and ships-of-the-line, both of which were trending bigger across the 18th century. Thus, cutting a shorter and deeper, year-round, saltwater, ship canal, all the way from Suez (via the Bitter Lakes) to the Mediterranean Sea, would be far more efficient for international trade, and key for maritime strategy. A deep, year-round, saltwater, ship canal along this direct route was the only option with revolutionary implications for global naval power.
Britain mostly feared canal cutting the Isthmus
The specter of a deep waterway for seagoing ships across the Isthmus of Suez haunted the British imagination. London greatly feared the potential of a French, saltwater, ship canal, directly joining the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.
The London Chronicle also prints a long résumé of Eschassériaux's speech, and concludes with the news (April 26-28, 1798): "Ten scientific men are employed in the important expedition which is preparing. Their books and instruments have already been sent off from Paris." Moreover, The London Chronicle stays with the ship canal story (May 8-10, 1798):
Private accounts from France state, that the Directory certainly mean to carry into effect their plan of cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, about sixty miles into the Red Sea, by which the voyage to the East Indies will be shortened very near three months.
Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808) is a longtime maritime mapmaker for the British East India Company. From 1795, he is "Hydrographer to the Admiralty." From his respected London pen, the Admiralty receives a long memorandum (May 16, 1798) explaining the important strategic connection between Ottoman Egypt and British India. He vigorously warns about the real possibility that the French intend to seize Egypt, in order to cut a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. From his own voyages in the Red Sea and his travels in Egypt, Dalrymple understands the distinction between: a deep, saltwater, ship canal cut straight across the isthmus to the Mediterranean coast; and shallow, freshwater, barge canals linking Suez with Cairo and Alexandria, via the Bitter Lakes and the highly seasonal waters of the Nile. Dalrymple underlines that digging such an isthmus canal for increasingly larger, seagoing vessels is a great effort, but technically feasible.
Speculation about a French, saltwater canal across the Isthmus of Suez is also in the Paris newspaper Le Patriote français (May 27, 1798):
Buonaparte and the republican army are now on the high seas (sur les humides plaines). Where are these new Argonauts going? Some say to Egypt; they assure that there a canal de communication will be opened across the Isthmus of Suez, between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. But is a canal fifty leagues long to be dug as easily as a moat? There are forty thousand men for this vast operation. But, what is this number for such a great work, formerly begun, but subsequently abandoned, by the kings of Egypt and the first caliphs? Even if we suppose early success, the effort would still require several years of work. Even if our goal is reached, would we then be any further along toward the imperative to compel England to accept our peace plans?The British Foreign Office also understands the potential of a secret plan to seize Egypt and build a ship canal across the isthmus. This is confirmed by George Canning's humorous "conjectures" on the peace terms which the French delegates had submitted (May 3, 1798) at the Rastadt negotiations. Canning asks about the motives behind France's demand for freedom of navigation on Germany's rivers, including the Danube. Thus, satire in The Anti-Jacobin portrays the plan to dig the ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez as a "gigantic and extravagant speculation" (May 28, 1798):
Paris is to be converted into a seaport, and the commerce of India to be navigated through the Isthmus of Suez... They may expect to establish throughout Europe a system of internal navigation, which shall rival and ruin the commerce of Great Britain—to bring the merchandise of the East through their projected communication to the mouths of the Danube, and from thence to the sources of the Rhine.Canning's later parody of a Napoleon letter to the Directory also reveals familiarity with the secret plan to seize Egypt and dig a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. This point is evident from the imagined words that The Anti-Jacobin puts into the mouth of Napoleon (June 25, 1798): "In the course of the next Decade [ten days] I shall sail to the canal which is now cutting across the Isthmus of Suez." On June 28, 1798, The True Britain reprints, mistakenly as authentic foreign intelligence, Canning's satirical letter parodying Napoleon.
Thus, it is credible that Napoleon's intention to seize Egypt and build a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez is also penetrated by the Russian Emperor Paul, as indicated in the following St. Petersburg story. This item appears in The St. James's Chronicle (August 11) and then in Bell's Weekly Messenger (August 12). These London reports likely originate in Paris, because virtually the same story is earlier printed in Le Publiciste (August 1), where it is a verbatim copy from Le Propagateur (July 30, 1798):
Petersburg, 2 messidor [June 20, 1798]. — [The Russian Emperor] Paul I seeks to distinguish himself by some great enterprise. He heard it said that Bonaparte intends to cut the Isthmus of Suez to join the Red Sea with the Mediterranean: suddenly he [Paul] thought about joining the Black and Baltic Seas. Already under construction are the [Russian] canals necessary for the realization of this ambitious project...
In Floréal, Year VI (April 20-May 19, 1798), the Journal de physique, de chimie et d'histoire naturelle (journal of physics, chemistry and natural history) prints an anonymous five-page article. The title is "Note d'un artiste, sur la jonction de la Mer Rouge à la Méditerranée" (notes of an artist on the junction of the Red Sea to the Mediterranean). This Paris publication prompts The True Britain to publish English-language extracts headlined, "Junction of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean." The True Britain writes its own introduction that points to Napoleon's Egyptian expedition which is not mentioned in the original French-language article (October 1, 1798):
Among the objects for which the Expedition of Buonaparte is supposed by some at Paris to have been undertaken, is that of forming a junction between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The Commercial advantages that France would derive from such a measure being carried into effect, have favoured the opinion, and the Philosophers of the Republic have employed themselves in endeavouring to prove its practicability. The following observations on the subject are extracted from the Journal de Physique, a periodical French Publication.In a similar vein, The London Chronicle reports (October 16-18, 1798):
Letters from Naples [September 18, 1798] state, that the French engineers who accompanied Buonaparte to Egypt, had already made preparations for uniting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean: — eight thousand men will be employed in digging the canal which is to form the communication.This news about eight thousand men digging a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez is soon echoed in The Observer (October 21, 1798):
The French papers state, that Buonaparte had employed 8000 men under the direction of skillful engineers, to open a canal across the Isthmus of Suez, for the purpose of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.
Napoleon slyly confused canal routes
Whether in Egypt or subsequently, Napoleon was mostly reluctant to be candid and clear on the topic of alternative canal routes. His motivation was likely bonafide raison d'état and/or his own later desire to obscure his ultimate failure to build the deep, saltwater canal. Confusion and ambiguity were easy to sustain, because the Nile River route and the alternative plan to cut a deep waterway, from the Red Sea directly to the Mediterranean coast, both relied on restoring an initial, historic channel from Suez to the Bitter Lakes.
Moreover, repeated highfalutin, cultural references to discovering and confirming the remains of ancient Egyptian waterways always served Napoleon's politics and foreign policy. They were initially useful as a fashionable, antiquarian distraction from the hard, geostrategic motive—namely, digging a deep, inter-oceanic canal to undermine Great Britain's maritime supremacy and to facilitate an eventual attack on British India. And later, after France lost Egypt, strong official and academic emphasis on the historical topic of the canals of antiquity also diverted popular attention from Napoleon's stunning failure to build the deep, saltwater canal.
Pursuant to the Directory's precise order "to cut the Isthmus of Suez," Napoleon twice personally explored the desert to find remains of the ancient canal leading from the Red Sea to the Bitter Lakes. From Bilbeis, he reports his initial success to the Muslim Divan in Cairo. On this occasion, he understandably chooses to conceal the Directory's plan to bypass both Cairo and Alexandria, with a deep, saltwater, ship canal going, via the Bitter Lakes, straight from Suez to the Mediterranean. Thus, for the Divan, he discreetly describes a link from the Red Sea to the Nile River, the depth of which, in the 18th century, famously fluctuates in the course of each year. Thus, Napoleon's letter diplomatically refers to a possibility that can mean nothing more than a shallower, freshwater, barge canal from the Bitter Lakes to the Nile River. Such a freshwater, barge canal could never accommodate seagoing ships which were gradually getting larger across the 18th century (January 2, 1799):
At the present moment, I am arranging for the operations necessary to determine the place through which to make waters flow to join the Nile River with the Red Sea. This communication formerly existed, because I found traces of it in several places.
When did Napoleon first refer to differential sea levels?
On January 8, 1799, the Institut National in Paris sent a long letter to its sister society, the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo. The latter was one of the official bodies created by the French occupation. The document contains a list of many research questions proposed for investigation in Egypt. Therein, the Institut National invites the French astronomers in Egypt to share their findings about the tides of the Red Sea. Probably sparked by legends dating from Classical antiquity, the January 8th request also asks these French astronomers "to determine exactly the difference in level between the two seas; and to examine to what extent the ancient Egyptians had perfected their canals."
From his Cairo headquarters, Napoleon wrote to the Directory. He prematurely promised early delivery of the surveys for building the Suez Canal (February 10, 1799): "By the first courier, I will send you the data setting out the elevations above sea level, for the Suez Canal (le nivellement du canal de Suez), the vestiges of which are perfectly preserved."
Back in Cairo after fighting in Ottoman Syria, Napoleon again prematurely promised the Directory early delivery of the surveys for building the Suez Canal (June 28, 1799): "I will soon send you the surveys for the Suez Canal; maps of all Egypt, and of its canals; and also of Syria" (Je vous enverrai incessamment le nivellement du canal de Suez, les cartes de toute l’Égypte, de ses canaux, et de la Syrie).
However, the truth is that the canal survey work was still far from complete. On June 29, 1799, Jacques-Marie Le Père read, to the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo, a paper that, inter alia, included a preliminary report on "the first operations which have been made for developing the blueprint and surveys of the ancient Suez Canal." This brief account features in the Institut d'Égypte's own publication, la Décade égyptienne, Journal littéraire et d'économie politique (the Egyptian weekly: journal of literature and political economy), Volume 2 (Cairo, 1799-1800). Notably lacking therein is any suggestion by Le Père that the level of the Red Sea might be higher than that of the Mediterranean and the land surface of Egypt.
The very same lack of discussion of disparate sea levels marks an 1815 account by Le Père of a conversation with Napoleon in late August 1799, when the latter left Cairo for the last time. According to Le Père, Napoleon then asked: "What can be expected by way of rebuilding the Suez Canal?" Le Père's answer: "We assured him that it appeared to be easy to reopen the canal; and even with greater benefits than ever before." When Napoleon finally sailed away from Egypt (August 23, 1799), Le Père did not yet have the flawed survey data that would later mistakenly suggest that the Red Sea was higher than the Mediterranean. Le Père's key nivellement of the Mediterranean coast was not attempted until November 1799.
Napoleon was back in Paris on October 16, 1799. He went with Monge and the chemist, Claude-Louis Berthollet, to the Institut National for a general session about the antiquities of Egypt. This occurred on the evening of October 27th. This event is described in peculiarly terse and neutral Institut minutes, cited by Ernest Maindron in l'Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1888):
He [Napoleon] then gave an account of the trip undertaken to discover the Suez Canal. He described at length the details about the present state of the canal; and about the difference in levels between the two seas, and between the Red Sea and Egypt. Some engineers are currently busy drawing up the blueprint for this canal, so important for the trade of Europe.On October 27th, did Napoleon literally say that the level of the Red Sea is higher than both the land surface of Egypt and the sea level of the Mediterranean? The minutes are suggestive. But, they do not specifically indicate that Napoleon then positively affirmed that the level of the Red Sea is higher. Why is such a positive affirmation unlikely? Because, at that point, Napoleon did not yet have Le Père's flawed data, mistakenly showing differential sea levels.
Napoleon might perhaps have responded to a possible audience question about sea levels. If so, his probable reply would surely have been confident assurance that no hydrology problem prevented successful canal completion. Napoleon had very urgent political needs in the run up to his coup d'état of November 9, 1799. On that October evening at the Institut National, Napoleon would never have revealed prejudicial information, potentially suggesting eventual failure of his public plan to dig the Suez Canal.
There is also the real possibility that the reference to differential sea levels in the Institut minutes might have been a politically motivated, subsequent invention, a new version—maybe one of Napoleon's infamous, ex post facto forgeries. If so, the suggested fake minutes were perhaps covertly inserted into the society's archives, some time during or shortly after Autumn 1801, when Paris first got news of the loss of Egypt (August 31, 1801).
Why is suspicion raised that on October 27th, there was no significant discussion of differential sea levels? The doubts come from reviewing early accounts of the evening session, starting with happy news in Le Moniteur (October 31, 1799):
He [Bonaparte] affirmed the ancient existence of the Suez Canal which had joined the two seas. It is even very possible to rebuild it on the ruins which remain of it. He said that he had ordered the execution of the plans and surveys that are necessary for this great enterprise. These plans and survey data will soon be brought to Paris by the engineer in charge of the project. Monge and Berthollet accompanied Bonaparte. The former added several points to supplement the information provided by the general.
This early favourable report importantly contains no allegation of differential sea levels, and no caution that the waters of the Red Sea might be dangerously higher than the land surface of Egypt. In the same sunny vein is a contemporary item in the Allgemeine Zeitung (November 14, 1799):
They say that the remains of the ancient Suez Canal that united the Red and Mediterranean Seas, are so significant, that they [Napoleon and Monge] can guarantee that the restoration work would not cost more than a million and a half francs.
Also without memory of any October 27th reference to differential sea levels is Lucien Bonaparte. He says he was present on that evening at the Institut National. His memoirs recall the significantly optimistic words of his brother, Napoleon, as follows (first published 1888):
He [Napoleon] assured that still visible are the remains of the Suez Canal which joined the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and that it was very possible to rebuild it. He predicted early arrival in Paris of the plans and nivellements necessary for this great work. He said he had arranged for these designs and surveys to be done with great care and attention to detail. Monge and Berthollet added their observations to those of their colleague.
On December 6, 1800, Le Père writes to Napoleon from Cairo in order to reiterate confidence in the practicability of the canal project. Le Père significantly refers to completion of the nivellement, "as far as the Mediterranean, near ancient Pelusium, in order to know the respective level of the two seas." The foregoing is directly pertinent to any plan to cut a canal straight across the isthmus. To the point, nowhere therein does Le Père positively affirm that the Red Sea is higher. Such agnosticism is fully justified, because Le Père explains that the final calculation of the survey data can only be done later in Paris (December 6, 1800): "C'est à Paris seulement qu'il est possible [...] d'obtenir le complément des données nécessaires à une rédaction définitive."
With French soldiers still in Egypt and Napoleon ruling France as First Consul, he proposes to the legislature a bill lauding the achievements of the Army of the East (January 9, 1801): "Lepeyre [Jacques-Marie Le Père] rediscovers the system of canals that fertilized Egypt, and this Suez Canal which will unite the trade of Europe with the trade of Asia."
Still trying to get the Emperor Paul's support for France's permanent retention of Egypt, Napoleon writes optimistically (February 27, 1801): "Already surveyed [by Le Père] is the Suez Canal which would join the Indian and Mediterranean Seas. It is an easy project of short duration that could produce incalculable benefits for Russian trade."
Sea change with loss of Egypt
As long as France holds Egypt, Napoleon persistently stokes optimism about the idea of building or restoring the Suez Canal. Most of the time, he seems to be referring to the defective Nile River route which could never accommodate seagoing vessels. However, on other occasions, Napoleon seems to be talking about the possibility of a deep, saltwater, ship canal from Suez, via the Bitter Lakes, straight through to the Mediterranean. "Les bâtiments alors, sans rompre charge, iraient de Marseille aux Indes" (then, without offloading, ships will go from Marseilles to the Indies). Circa 1819, this is Napoleon's unequivocal description of the effect of a deep, saltwater, ship canal cut directly across the Isthmus of Suez.
After Autumn 1801, when Napoleon gets first news of the Anglo-Ottoman conquest of Egypt (August 31, 1801), it newly serves his personal and political interests to publicly encourage skepticism about digging the deep, saltwater, ship canal, directly across the Isthmus of Suez. Via Le Père's published report, Napoleon spreads such doubts, even though he knows that this direct route, if cut circa eight meters deep, would be the only option guaranteeing seagoing merchantmen the voyage to and from India, without offloading (la rupture de charge).
Moreover, after the French departure from Egypt, Napoleon sows these doubts about the feasibility of the direct, saltwater route across the isthmus, exactly because it is the only option for a canal, able to accommodate increasingly larger warships, i.e. ships-of-the-line.
In the 1790s, l'Orient was said to be the largest warship in the world. Even the defunct l'Orient could probably have slowly transited the proposed deep, saltwater, ship canal. With the great weight of its normal complement of guns, equipment, and stores, l'Orient's draught was 8.12 meters. According to the July 1798 reckoning of Vice-Admiral Brueys, about entry into the Old Port of Alexandria—l'Orient, if lightened by removal of its 120 guns, could carefully pass with as little as two French feet of water under its keel (2 pieds du roi = .6496m).
Probably encouraged by Napoleon, Le Père's report peculiarly adopts as his ex post facto "canal building" requirement, the patently false premise of an anonymous European Power first taking Egypt as a colony. We know this precondition to be unnecessary. Firstly, we have already seen that the Ottomans had a then well known history of interest in more than one Suez Canal project. Secondly, the saltwater Suez Canal was ultimately constructed (1859-1869) with the consent and cooperation of both the sovereign Ottoman Sultan and his local Viceroy, the Khedive.
Moreover, Le Père suspiciously recommends shallow, freshwater, barge canals linking the (imperfectly navigable) Nile River with Alexandria on the one hand and with Suez on the other hand. Le Père's report specifically acknowledges that his riverine recommendations could only support navigation by light vessels, during the annual, Nile River high water from August to March inclusive.
There is also the riverine flaw identified by Egypt-savvy hydrologist Olivier Ritt (1830-1911). He wrote the magisterial 1869 Histoire de l'isthme de Suez (History of the Isthmus of Suez). Ritt contended that Le Père never did general hydrology calculations. Thus, Le Père did not know that agriculture would suffer—because, year round, Egypt lacked enough freshwater to sustain the full length of his very extensive riverine routes, including the Bitter Lakes.
This less useful Nile River route also had the great political liability of running straight through the heart of Egypt's population. Such bad political advice would surely create more friction with local Muslims. In terms of governance, sound public policy, and agriculture—the far better option was a deep, saltwater, ship canal crossing the uninhabited (or very lightly populated) desert area, from Suez, via the Bitter Lakes, to the Mediterranean Sea.
In this way too, Napoleon is cleverly using Le Père's report to further discourage France's rivals. Napoleon grasps that intrinsically less attractive are freshwater barge canals with locks—the first route from Alexandria to the sometimes shallow Nile; the second from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes; and the third from the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea at Suez. Napoleon also wants France's foreign foes to fear the significant political downside of always struggling with a turbulent Muslim population. Such stubborn Muslim resistance was precisely the French experience from July 2, 1798 to August 31, 1801.
Differential sea levels: an improbable excuse
The strategic, oceanic canal across the Isthmus of Suez was never built by the Army of the East, before Egypt was conquered by the British and the Ottomans (August 31, 1801). Now, with no deep, saltwater, ship canal to show for his great Mideast effort, Napoleon was eager to get some necessary political cover. The most convenient refuge was the mistaken Classical myth that the level of the Red Sea was astonishingly higher than that of the Mediterranean. There was also the companion false Classical superstition that the level of the Red Sea was higher than the land surface of much of Egypt.
A more than thirty-foot sea level differential was the peculiar result that suspiciously found its way into Le Père's flawed final report, about the survey of the Isthmus of Suez. Furthermore, Napoleon's own 1819 account of the Egyptian campaign refers to the concern that the "Nile Valley would be flooded" by the salt water of the Red Sea. This fear was certainly contrary to credible 18th-century science. Thus, we can guess that the alleged danger was only later invoked to provide an excuse for Napoleon's abject failure in Egypt.
France no longer holding Egypt, it made shrewd political sense for Le Père's report to publicly champion shallow, freshwater, barge canals with a series of locks—the one route from the Nile to Alexandria; and the others from the Nile River, via the Bitter Lakes, to Suez on the Red Sea. (His report also refers briefly to the uncertain hypothesis of an additional freshwater canal to exit near Pelusium.) Whatever the depth of these projected, freshwater, barge canals with locks—the 18th century knew perfectly well that the Nile River and its Delta tributaries were only seasonally navigable; and, in any event, year round too shallow to accommodate seagoing vessels, whether merchantmen or ships-of-the-line, both of which were expanding in size across the 18th century.
Despite Napoleon's premature promises to the Directory (February and June 1799), the overall nivellement was calculated by Jacques-Marie Le Père, not in Egypt, but only after Le Père's return to France in late 1801. Édouard de Villiers du Terrage was a nineteen-year-old civil engineer who also did field work on the Le Père survey. According to de Villiers's memoirs (first published 1899):
Once the operations were finished, all our notebooks were returned to [Jacques-Marie] Le Père. With the help of his [younger] brother [Gratien Le Père], he took on the task of coordinating all the results.Also a civil engineer with the Commission on the Sciences and the Arts, Gratien had been Napoleon's classmate at the Brienne Military Academy (1779-1784). There is an air of impropriety attached to entrusting such a great public responsibility to the unsupervised activity of close family members—namely, to the two brothers Le Père.
The published version of Jacques-Marie Le Père's final report is entitled, Mémoire sur la communication de la mer des Indes à la Méditerranée par la mer Rouge et l’isthme de Soueys (memorandum on the maritime route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez). He gave Napoleon this report in draft in 1802. If he followed his usual practice, Napoleon perhaps asked for some politically motivated changes.
Le Père's report was never a serious and sincere blueprint, for an intended project. Why? Because Egypt was permanently lost to France in August 1801, mostly due to enduring British naval power in the Mediterranean and beyond. This stunning geopolitical verdict was clear even before Le Père first calculated the overall nivellement, and well before he submitted his initial draft report to Napoleon. Thus, from the very beginning, Le Père's report was always a purely academic exercise—or rather, significantly, a propaganda piece.
Did the First Consul secretly ask Le Père to fake nivellement figures in order to establish the existence of differential sea levels? If so, the motive was to bury the premier option of a deep, saltwater canal, to be cut straight across the isthmus. Did Napoleon instruct Le Père to tout non-strategic riverine routes, with locks? Whatever the case, we must never forget the truth-telling fact! Le Père's nivellement, on the ground, had notably included the survey of a direct route, suitable for a saltwater, ship canal—cut at sea level, from Suez straight northward, via the Bitter Lakes, to Pelusium on the Mediterranean Sea.
Some thirty years later, Khedival Egypt's Chief Engineer, Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds (Linant Pasha) carefully reviewed Le Père's work, including via new surveys on the ground. Suspecting problems with Le Père's overall calculations, Linant Pasha said that, ideally, there had to be re-examination of the original field notebooks of 1799-1800. Moreover, Linant bluntly dismissed the pertinence of the alleged divergent sea levels. He presented hydrology calculations showing that, even on the basis of Le Père's wildly mistaken findings, there was still no valid engineering reason to abandon the plan for a shorter, deeper, saltwater, ship canal, across the Isthmus of Suez (1872-3):
On voit donc que toute crainte était puérile, même en admettant la différence de niveau présumée entre les deux mers (therefore, it is established that naive was any fear resulting from the presumed differential between the level of the two seas).
A politically convenient, final version of Le Père's report reached Napoleon in August 1803. It was printed for limited circulation in 1807, the same year he burned so many of his Mideast papers. As a separate work, it was published more widely in 1815. In 1809 and 1821, it also featured as part of the multi-volume, Description de l'Égypte.
Le Père's final report is over 200 pages in length. Is it purposely opaque? While "chock full" of patently irrelevant information, it avoids clearly setting out and systematically comparing the full details and advantages of the various potential routes. Instead, it powerfully distracts the reader with meticulously presented toponyms in Arabic script; and long, pointless, pedantic discussions of various ancient canals. At every stage, written after France had already lost Egypt, this report is a fanciful, political "con job."
Prepared during the first Bourbon restoration (1814-1815), the 1815 version displays a—hitherto secret—French military map of Egypt, dated 1802. Also included is a new testimonial lauding the accuracy of Le Père's survey, from eminent colleagues at the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées (royal corps of bridges and roads). This praise for Le Père's work was formally read out at the Institut National on January 23, 1815, during the first Bourbon restoration. What is the motive for this professional endorsement?
Jacques-Marie Le Père sought support from his fellow civil engineers, partly to protect his personal reputation, and perhaps partly to loyally conceal a secret, political stratagem. This postulated trick was likely the intentional perversion in France of the nivellement of the route for a deep, saltwater, ship canal straight across the Isthmus of Suez. If so, the gambit might perhaps have been secretly ordered by Napoleon. Such suggested deception greatly served his own personal ends, but also the vital interests of France, which had already lost Egypt ( August 31, 1801). From either perspective, the aim of certification by the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées was to counter growing scientific scorn for the archaic notion of widely differential sea levels, egregiously affirmed in Le Père's report.
This "differential" story covered for Napoleon's stunning failure to build the required, deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. But, the unlikely tale about the higher waters of the Red Sea was also clever Realpolitik disinformation. The probable aim was to powerfully discourage one or more of France's rivals from digging their own strategic, deep, saltwater, ship canal directly across the Isthmus of Suez. If so, the ruse worked for more than half a century. Better than anyone else, Napoleon understood that such a deep, saltwater, ship canal would offer France's opponents enormous naval advantage, especially in the Indian Ocean and in the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas.
Equilibrium of the seas, the contrary consensus
Were such highly differential sea levels still credible around the year 1800? Not according to France's greatest scientists. Pierre-Simon Laplace and Joseph Fourier were famous mathematicians and physicists. Both Fourier and Laplace personally knew Napoleon for many years. From time to time, they had opportunity to debate with him directly. Laplace and Fourier believed in the theory of the "equilibrium of the seas." Their understanding of sea levels solidly rested on Newtonian principles. Consider the weighty judgment of Ferdinand de Lesseps (1885): "The genius of Laplace, based on his justified theoretical views, had formally denied the possibility of such a depression at a distance of scarcely thirty leagues." In 1870, De Lesseps had already said that La Place and Fourier had denied the theory of differential sea levels "for fifty years before all the Academies."
Fourier served on the Commission on the Sciences and the Arts throughout the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). Moreover, he was permanent secretary of the Cairo learned society, the Institut d'Égypte. As such, he knew about the many scientific and technical questions that arose for the soldiers, sailors, scientists, surveyors, and civil engineers there. Thus, we have to be impressed that doubt about the "differential sea levels" story features discreetly in his 1809 préface historique (historical preface) to the Description de l'Égypte. A draft of this préface historique was vetted by Napoleon himself. Though he required several small changes for political reasons, Napoleon did not amend the paragraph, where Fourier tactfully declines to certify the accuracy of Le Père's improbable finding of highly differential sea levels (1809):
Of all the enterprises which the Egyptian occupation can realize, one of the most important is the project of joining the Arabian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea by a canal de navigation. This is a longtime, famous question which today has perhaps been fully settled. In fact, whatever the respective level of the two seas and whatever opinion one holds about works to this same end, executed at other times, it will be easy for European engineers to establish and maintain this communication.By contrast, Napoleon stubbornly persisted in promoting Le Père's bizarre calculations as accurate. For example, written on Saint Helena around 1819, Napoleon's own account of his Mideast campaign twice affirms such a radical differential: "At Suez, the Red Sea lifts itself up, at spring tides (vives eaux) 30 feet, 6 inches, higher than the waters of the Mediterranean at Pelusium." Highly significant is this reference to French measurements at this particular geographical spot beside the Mediterrean Sea. The coast near Pelusium (18th-century "Tell el-Farama") would have been the natural terminus for a deep, saltwater canal cut directly across the Isthmus of Suez.
Napoleon's expressed belief in differential sea levels is curious, because he was supremely intelligent and scientifically astute. Did he see some personal and political advantage in touting the patently obsolete notion of such differential sea levels? Otherwise, he had every good reason to be skeptical of Le Père's strange findings.
With a lifetime passion for mathematics and astronomy, Napoleon had to have known about the various implications of gravity, including the theory of the equilibrium of the seas. Moreover, even before Sir Isaac Newton, there was the 17th-century classic Hydrographie by the well respected teacher of René Déscartes. Georges Fournier was simultaneously a Jesuit priest, geographer and mathematician. Describing stillborn efforts to dig the Suez Canal by the ancients, and "in our times" by the Ottoman Sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent, Fournier wrote (1643):
A vain fear held back some of them, because they were persuaded that digging the canal would cause the flooding of all Egypt. At that time, their reason was that they estimated the Red Sea to be higher than the Mediterranean. And in this respect, they gravely erred: because these two seas already have reciprocal communication through the Ocean Sea via the Strait of Gibraltar and via Mecca (la Megue) opposite Cape Gardafu [the Horn of Africa], dubbed by the ancients Promontorium Aromata. Therefore, it is impossible that the one sea be higher than the other. [...] It is necessary that all waters, which are in mutual communication, be of the same height and level. Therefore, it was a panic of terror (une terreur Panique) to believe that Egypt would be submerged, given that there is no part of Egypt where the surface is lower than the surface of the sea.
Napoleon had—at least twice—read the Baron de Tott's opinion denying that the Red Sea could be higher than the land surface of Egypt. Referring to ancient attempts to cut a canal from the Pelusiac Gulf to the Red Sea, François de Tott specified (1784):
Darius, King of Persia, continued to work on it. But, he stopped the effort pursuant to the advice of several engineers who told him that, in cutting the land, he would inundate Egypt which they thought to be lower than the Red Sea. [...] In fact, nothing can justify the fears of the engineers of Darius, even if they had taken their measurements (nivellement) at the time of the highest tides.Moreover, Napoleon certainly knew that Volney's famous Mideast book (1787) firmly rejected antiquity's belief that the Red Sea's level was higher than that of the Mediterranean. Differential sea levels were also judged to be "improbable" (pas vraisemblable) in the aforementioned April-May 1798 article in the Journal de physique. This refused "to lend credence to the habitual superiority which the Red Sea is alleged to have over the Mediterranean."
Strong rejection of the theory of differential sea levels also appeared in a newly published book, first advertised in Le Moniteur on September 2, 1798. The author was former ecclesiastic Victor Delpuech de Comeiras (1733-1805). He developed a reputation as an historian, geographer, and commentator on foreign affairs. The title is Considérations sur la possibilité, l'intérêt et les moyens qu'auroit la France de rouvrir l'ancienne route du commerce de l'Inde: accompagnés de recherches sur l'isthme de Suès, et sur la jonction de la Mer-Rouge à la Méditerranée (considerations on the possibility, interest and means that France would have to reopen the ancient commercial route to India, accompanied by research on the Isthmus of Suez, and on the junction of the Red and Mediterranean Seas).
Comeiras seriatim refutes arguments for the notion that the waters of the Red Sea might be way higher than those of the Mediterranean. He does not see how a saltwater ship canal, at sea level, across the Isthmus of Suez would be any different from the Strait of Gibraltar. He also enthusiastically offers policy support for the idea that France ought to cut such a saltwater ship canal across the isthmus. The book refers to Napoleon as "this general for whom glory is the first need; who carries philosophy to the fields of battle, and consecrates it to the happiness of mankind." But, Comeiras says nothing about Napoleon's Mideast campaign. Nonetheless, because of content and timing, we have to ask: Is this Comeiras effort also an integral part of the 1798 propaganda, designed to enhance public understanding of—and support for—France's bold Egyptian expedition?
Nor was the idea of the higher level of the Red Sea believed by Brigadier-General Antoine-François Andréossy in Egypt. His civil engineer grandfather had built the famous Canal du Midi. In September-October 1798, Brigadier-General Andréossy read to the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo, a "Memorandum on Lake Menzaleh." Therein, he said that there was little cause to believe that canal building would cause "an irruption" of the Red Sea towards the Mediterranean. His view was published in occupied Egypt, in Volume One of La Décade égyptienne, Journal littéraire et d'économie politique (Cairo, Year VIII of the French Republic).
The prevailing scientific view is also expressed in a revealing passage that presumes early knowledge of the official, secret plan to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. The pertinent paragraphs appear in an address on the History of Astronomy for the Year VI. This is delivered at the Collège de France on November 19, 1798, by Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, for 46 years the astronomy professor there. His speech is printed in volume five of the 1799 Magasin encyclopédique ou Journal des sciences, des lettres et des arts (encyclopedic magazine or journal of sciences, literature and the arts):
An important and celebrated voyage has raised new hopes for astronomy and geography. On 26 ventôse (16th March) the government sought astronomers and selected instruments for a secret trip: we soon learned that it was to be commanded by the famous general Bonaparte. I could do no other than to nominate citizens [Nicolas-Antoine] Nouet, [François-Marie] Quénot and [Jérôme Isaac] Méchain, junior. They lent themselves to this fine enterprise. They set out on 5 floréal (24th April). They got on board on May 10th. They disembarked in Egypt on 14 messidor (July 2nd). I am certain that this voyage will be of utility to geography and even to astronomy. I wrote to all the astronomers of Europe to alert them to cooperate by observations corresponding with those that would be made by the astronomers of this expedition. [...] I made sure to tell our own astronomers that I do not believe the oft-repeated story that there is a great difference between the levels of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
In the same vein is a very long, expert, front-page article in the Allgemeine Zeitung. The title is, "Über die Vereinigung des rothen Meeres mit dem mittleländischen" (on the junction of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean). There, anonymous correctly pronounces (December 3, 1798): "Daß die Fläche des rothen Meers höher seyn solle, als die des mittelländischen, ist unwahrscheinlich, und kann nicht angenommen werden" (that the level of the Red Sea is higher than that of the Mediterranean is improbable, and cannot be accepted).
John Antes (1740-1811) was an American watchmaker, inventor, violin maker, composer, and Moravian missionary. He met Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and Josef Haydn in London. From 1770 to 1782, he lived in Egypt where he learned Arabic and worked to spread Protestantism among the Copts. In June 1800, he published his earlier German-language papers in an English translation entitled, Observations on the Manners and Customs of the Egyptians and the Overflowing of the Nile and Its Effects. Therein, Antes shows that he knows the important distinction between: freshwater canal routes connecting the Red Sea with the Nile River; and a saltwater channel to be cut straight across the isthmus, to join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, via the Bitter Lakes. He astutely rejects the hypothesis that the Red Sea might be higher than both the land surface of Egypt and the water level of the Mediterranean. However, he leaves open the possibility that high tide at Suez might sometimes be slightly more elevated than along the Mediterranean coast of Egypt (1800):
To have a communication with the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by water, a canal either directly from the one sea to the other, or by the former and the Nile, would be the only practicable way. There would be one inconvenience as to the first proposal, namely, that there is no harbour, nor any place for shelter for vessels upon the whole coast, where such a canal could join the Mediterranean, nor any fresh water to be found anywhere near to it.
As to the latter, I cannot see any great difficulty, except the labour and expense. Much greater undertakings have been accomplished in England in that way. Some writers have asserted... that there was a danger in spoiling the water of the Nile, by cutting a canal from the Red Sea to the Nile, as they... believed, the level of the Red Sea to be higher...
I should imagine, that the laws of gravity are the same all over the globe, and that therefore such seas, which have a connection with each other, as the Western and Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Baltic, etc., etc., would naturally all find the same level.
Napoleon quick to twist science for politics
Is it plausible that—as in the case of differential sea levels—Napoleon sometimes perverted or suppressed science for political advantage? On November 9, 1799, Napoleon executed his right-wing coup d'état that finally ended the French Revolution and its decade-long war against the Roman-Catholic Church. There can be no doubt that, as First Consul, Napoleon sought to suppress science to flatter the Roman-Catholic Church.
In spring 1801, the Marquis de Lafayette had several meetings with Napoleon. Lafayette tried to get Napoleon to adopt the "principle of freedom of religion, complete and independent of the State, as it exists in the United States." According to Lafayette's memoirs (1838), he then understood that Napoleon wanted to conclude an agreement with the Pope to undermine the Roman-Catholic legitimacy of the Bourbon pretender. Lafayette then perceived that Napoleon wanted to be king. With a smile, Lafayette confronted Napoleon: "You ought to admit that all of that has no other purpose, but breaking the ampoule of sacred coronation oil (n'a d'autre object que de casser la petite fiole). "Go fuck yourself with la petite fiole!" was Napoleon's spirited reply.
On July 15, 1801, Napoleon signed the Concordat with the Pope. Napoleon wrote to Police Minister Joseph Fouché (August 6, 1801):
Citizen Minister, the First Consul desires that you make known to journalists, whether political or literary, that they must abstain from speaking about anything that might concern religion, its ministers, and its various cults.Eager to conciliate Roman-Catholic opinion, Napoleon actively discouraged public expression of anti-Christian skepticism, including archaeological challenges to Biblical chronology. Thus, the Ministry of the General Police started censoring newspaper articles questioning traditional Roman-Catholic teaching about the geological age of planet earth. Eyewitness testimony comes from the recollection of archaeologist Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac (1844):
It consequently happened that the consulate, and the empire above all, demanded—albeit tacitly—an annually increasing caution on the part of authors on the topic of the antiquities of the East, the Church having been recalled to the aid of civil society.For example, there was the scientific controversy over the zodiac of Denderah. This 1799 archaeological discovery in Egypt was mistakenly interpreted by Fourier and others. For wrong reasons, they arrived at the conclusion that the antiquities of Egypt proved that the age of the earth was older than the Biblical cosmogony then backed by the Roman-Catholic Church. Champollion-Figeac wrote (1844): "Egypt scared pious persons who hardly ever bothered to study it. The zodiacs passed for monuments of atheism and irreligion."
Amidst Napoleon's new desire to pander to Catholic dogma, the zodiacs were nonetheless boldly addressed in a generous extract from an undated letter from Fourier to Berthollet. The long, controversial quotation, setting out Fourier's faulty astronomical and historical hypotheses, appeared in a second letter; this one sent from Marseilles to Paris. The precise date of this Marseilles letter was purposely omitted from the published version. However, it was said to have originated in Nivôse of Year X (December 22, 1801 to January 20, 1802). Quoting Fourier, this Marseilles letter was written by civil engineer Denis Samuel Bernard to René Pierre François Morand, who represented les Deux-Sèvres in the Consulate's new Corps législatif.
At age 58 close to the end of his career in public life, Morand was thirty years older than Bernard. Morand had long practiced medicine in Niort (Nouvelle-Acquitaine) where Bernard was born. Bernard was also well acquainted with both Fourier and Berthollet from common service in Egypt, where young Bernard had been master of the Cairo mint. All three had been members of the Institut d'Égypte, where Bernard likely first learned of Fourier's astronomical hypotheses. Despite—or maybe because of—the publication of his letter to Morand, Bernard became (May 3, 1802) sub-prefect of Annecy, in the French Alps.
Bernard's letter from Marseilles was published under the editorial title, "Copie d'une lettre du citoyen S.B., membre de la commission des sciences et arts d'Égypte, au citoyen Morand, membre du Corps-législatif" (copy of a letter from citizen S.B., member of the commission of the sciences and arts of Egypt, to citizen Morand, member of the legislative body).
Curiously, Bernard's letter found its way into print, despite the prevailing censorship. Under the heading "Antiquities, Science and the Arts," it significantly appeared in Le Moniteur (February 14, 1802). It is no accident that this rare, published account of Fourier's controversial views about astronomy has such a complex and undated paternity. This confirms that—apart from anything else—the printing of this highly sensitive item was, politically, an important expression of elite, anticlerical opposition to the Concordat.
In addition to some generals of the army, the Abbé Grégoire was among many prominent ex-revolutionaries who firmly rejected the Concordat. By way of protest, he resigned (October 8, 1801) as Bishop of Blois. Moreover, within the Consular regime itself, the treaty with the Vatican was strongly opposed by ex-Jacobin Fouché. As powerful Police Minister, he perhaps purposely permitted publication of Bernard's letter. The July 1801 Concordat was not enacted, proclaimed, and promulgated in France until April 1802.
What happened to Napoleon's shovels?
Were most of Napoleon's digging tools shipped from France aboard the transports able to enter the shallow entrance to the Old Port of Alexandria? Or, were most of those iron tools carried as ballast by the ships-of-the-line that had to anchor in Aboukir Bay? If the latter, Napoleon's failure to follow the Directory's orders to build the saltwater ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was perhaps partly due to the possibility that the bulk of his outils de pionnier was lost when Nelson sank the French warships (August 1-2, 1798).
Conjecture about the loss of most of Napoleon's iron tools is supported by his exculpatory report to the Directory. After the fact, he probably lies to shift blame to the fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Brueys, who had been killed in the sea battle. To the point, Napoleon suspiciously claims that, on July 6th, he had ordered Brueys to bring his warships into the Old Port of Alexandria within twenty-four hours (August 19, 1798):
And, if his squadron could not enter there, to promptly unload all the artillery and other property belonging to the land army, and to sail to Corfu (et, si son escadre ne pouvait pas y entrer, de décharger promptement toute l'artillerie et tous les effets appartenant à l'armée de terre, et de se rendre à Corfou).Starting with British criticism in late 1798, Napoleon's August 19th account about his alleged July 6th order, has often been rejected as a falsehood. Sailing to Corfu was never at issue. Such a voyage was impossible. The French fleet was critically short of food, water, firewood, and crew. The likely truth is that Napoleon always wanted to keep the fleet close by.
Moreover, Napoleon already knew that Brueys believed that the entrance to the Old Port was too shallow to permit safe and timely entry by fully armed, ships-of-the-line. Brueys had already told Napoleon so, in a letter of July 3rd. Therein, Brueys wrote that he would first anchor in Aboukir Bay, and then use light djermes and avisos to send to Alexandria the "artillery and other objects" still aboard his warships. Brueys likely reiterated all this information directly to Napoleon, during their last face-to-face meeting in Alexandria on July 4th.
Whatever the truth about his alleged July 6th orders to Brueys, Napoleon's August 19th report testifies to his belief that the French warships still had, on board, important items yet to be brought ashore. For example, underwater archaeologists confirm that some of the famous Malta treasure and a printing press were lost along with the French battle fleet. But, a Brueys letter to the Minister of the Marine can perhaps be read as contrary testimony. Therein, Brueys claims that, no later than July 7th, he had already (July 9, 1798): "disembarked all the soldiers and the property belonging to the land army" (je débarquai toutes les troupes et les effets appartenant à l'armée de terre).
Perhaps Brueys knew that the shovels were not immediately needed and—in any event—mostly pertained, not to the Army of the East, but rather to the civil engineers of the Commission on the Sciences and the Arts. In 1798-1801, there was, indeed, a clear juridical distinction between the Army of the East and the civilian Commission. Moreover, the French soldiers of the Army of the East keenly resented the experts, scholars, scientists, and engineers of the Commission.
Were other valuable items left aboard Napoleon's ships, after the early July débarquement général? After the crushing defeat in Aboukir Bay, strengthening the batteries overlooking Alexandria's two harbors became urgent. This comes from an account by an eyewitness, the architect Charles Norry. Back in Paris in late 1798, he writes that, after the naval disaster (August 1-2), the city commandant, General Kléber, feared an early British attack. Therefore, he unloaded cannon from ships in the Old Port, and hauled them up to the heights, in order to better defend Alexandria.
Thus, it is possible that, like some other key equipment and cargo, most of the outils de pionnier had yet to be unloaded. Throughout July 1798, most of the axes, shovels and picks, possibly remained iron ballast for the warships riding at anchor in Aboukir Bay. These iron tools were perhaps shipped as ballast, because the Toulon fleet was very carefully loaded, with an expert eye to maximizing the amount of strategic cargo that could be carried across the Mediterranean, for the Egyptian campaign. This hypothesis explains why documents attest that, in 1798-9, the Army of the East was strangely short of shovels.
For example, General Jean-Louis-Ebénézer Reynier reported to Napoleon from Salheyeh (August 17, 1798): "The sappers who were sent here do not even have 100 picks and only three shovels, hardly any axes and just one saw." In Cairo, Napoleon too was short of iron shovels and axes, as specifically indicated in his August 25, 1798 orders for General Berthier. Reynier again wrote to Napoleon from Salheyeh that lack of shovels was limiting progress on fortifications (September 10, 1798):
General, the redoubts which you have ordered have been laid out and begun... This work could be pressed forward more quickly if there were enough shovels. However, we only have 60 of them, which are insufficient for the excavations that we have to do. If we had 300 or 400 shovels, the redoubts would be quickly complete.From Cairo, Napoleon wrote to General Jacques-François Menou at Rosetta (September 12, 1798): "The army is still without tools (outils)." With respect to 1799, artist and archaeologist Dominique-Vivant Denon wrote the book entitled, Voyages dans la basse et la haute Égypte (travels in lower and upper Egypt). Therein, Denon testified (1802):
We planned to put Syene in a state of defense: Engineer Garbé had chosen to build a fort on a platform on high ground, to the south of the town, which commanded all the approaches... We lacked shovels, picks, hammers and trowels; but were able to forge everything.According to the campaign diary of Artillery Captain Jean-Pierre Doguereau, there was initially an embarrassing shortage of shovels at the siege of Jaffa (March 4, 1799). On June 28, 1799, Napoleon from Cairo wrote to the Directory. He asked them to send reinforcements and badly needed equipment, including a specific request for "10,000 outils de pionniers."
Companion scandals of Jews and Canal
Before the end of 1801, the French troops were repatriated, mostly aboard British ships. Written in exile around 1819, Napoleon's own account of the Egyptian campaign repeatedly refers to Jews, but discreetly offers nothing about any letters or proclamations inviting their return to the aboriginal homeland. Similarly, his own history of the Egyptian campaign says so much about Suez canals, but nary a word about his 21,345 shovels, picks, and axes. Therein, Napoleon tactfully hides the fact that he had been ordered to actually dig the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Instead, he and his supporters persistently seek to distract. They "flood the zone" with mostly irrelevant references: to undertaking praiseworthy antiquarian research about ancient, freshwater canals; and to executing some preliminary "feasibility" surveys and studies.
From Cairo, Napoleon wrote to the Directory (September 8, 1798): "Master of Egypt, France will in the long run be master of the Indies" (Maîtresse de l'Égypte, la France sera à la longue maîtresse des Indes). But, an early start digging a deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was certainly the immediate political, economic, and military purpose for launching the Mideast campaign. This bold attack was virtually pointless without completing the key isthmus project. The geostrategic motive was to use the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the isthmus to strike a lethal blow against England's naval dominance, global commerce, and Indian empire.
A cover up was necessary because Napoleon never managed to dig the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, and the British and Ottomans conquered Egypt (August 31, 1801). Thus, he always took great pains to avoid signaling that he had spectacularly failed to do that which had been specifically required of him. All too common were his forgeries, exculpatory omissions, dissimulations, and destructions of documents. Such disinformation was especially true in relation to his failed Mideast adventure. We can reasonably suppose that Napoleon's infamous archival bonfires included very many Mideast documents, not only about Jews, but also about the projected, saltwater canal across the Isthmus of Suez.
Subsequent spin and concealment ought not to distract. To his great credit is the large extent to which his vast plans were really revolutionary, bold and creative. He was a strategic genius. Building the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and restoring the Jews are two good examples. Both were part of Napoleon's innovative agenda, well before he sailed from Toulon to Alexandria. Furthermore, the "Jewish" and "ship canal" initiatives were strategically related, as suggested by Lettre d'un Juif, and hinted at in Napoleon's own history of the Mideast campaign.
Britain copied Napoleon's canal strategy
After ten years' construction by Frenchmen and others, the deep, saltwater, ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez was finally opened in 1869. Accommodating ocean-going vessels, it is a waterway across the direct route, completely at sea level, without need for locks. Great Britain eventually imitated Napoleon's geostrategic perspective on the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, and the Jews.
In 1875, the British government became the principal shareholder in the Suez Canal Company by buying stock held by the Khedive, the autonomous Ottoman viceroy of Egypt. In 1878, the Ottomans granted Great Britain the right to administer Cyprus. From 1882 to 1914, Great Britain occupied Egypt, in partnership with the Khedive, and under the titular sovereignty of the Ottoman Sultan. To the benefit of Great Britain, this diplomatic fiction realized something like the scenario that had been mooted by Talleyrand and Napoleon in early 1798. Moreover, like Lettre d'un Juif, the British later adopted a "Jewish" pretext to justify taking control of Palestine, which was seen as the eastern flank of the Suez Canal.
During and immediately after the First World War, the French Revolutionary idea of a Jewish jurisdiction was revived by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Thus, what for the French had been a dream of a Revolutionary Jewish Republic, sister to la grande nation, for the British became the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1922 Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations.
Lloyd George himself genuinely favored Jewish return to the Holy Land. Nonetheless, it is still fair to say that he skillfully exploited Zionism as a diplomatic ploy to sway the President of the United States. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was warm to the millennial rights of the Jewish People, but stone cold to European imperialism. And, winning Wilson's consent was certainly necessary before Palestine could become part of the worldwide British Empire. But first, President Wilson had to be assured that the Jewish People would be the main beneficiary of British rule there.
After Palestine was bagged for Britain, interwar events increasingly exposed this brief interlude of official Zionism under Lloyd George, as a superficial cover for Realpolitik. With the 1939 UK Palestine White Paper, finally flagrant was failure to honor UK treaty promises to facilitate immigration for "close settlement by Jews on the land." This clear breach of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty on Palestine was instantly grasped by USA Senator Harry Truman.
On May 25, 1939, Senator Truman used the Congressional Record to protest against the UK Palestine White Paper. The Missouri Senator said that Britain "has made a scrap of paper out of Lord Balfour's promise to the Jews." That commitment was solidly embodied in the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. In May 1939, nobody in London heeded Truman's words. Even after he became President in April 1945, it took a surprisingly long time for UK ministers to accept that Truman was seriously engaged on this issue. With regard to Jewish immigration to Palestine, President Truman stubbornly held British feet to the fire.
From 1938-9, King George VI, military and civil officialdom, and the Conservative Party were dead set against further Jewish settlement in Palestine. For geostrategic and other reasons, these British players were, at heart, reluctant to imagine ever relinquishing Palestine. Sir Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner in Jerusalem (1938-1944), repeatedly advised transforming the Mandate into a Crown Colony, to be governed bureaucratically, like British Hong Kong. In the same vein, Viscount Bernard Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946-8), urged disarming the Palestinian Jews.
By contrast, President Truman doggedly championed mass immigration by some of the Jewish refugees who had survived Hitler's Europe. In Spring 1947, Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin surprised the world by suddenly agreeing with Truman that some of the Jewish refugees should go to Palestine. The postwar imperative to admit at least 100,000 of these Jewish refugees was the powerful diplomatic engine that soon pushed an impoverished and isolated Britain out of Palestine (May 15, 1948).
[The fourth part of this monograph appears in a separate posting entitled, Jews, Napoleon, and the Ottoman Empire: the 1797-9 Proclamations to the Jews (2025 edition), Part 4. It is available on this website at:]
http://www.allenzhertz.com/2025/01/jews-napoleon-and-ottoman-empire-1797-9_20.html
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