Before 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the whole Turkish army was destroyed. Hardly an individual escaped. About two thousand prisoners were taken in the fort. All the rest perished, either drowned in the sea, or slain upon the land. Sir Sydney Smith, who had chosen the position occupied by the Turkish army, with the utmost difficulty avoided capture. In the midst of the terrible scene of tumult and death, the Commodore succeeded in getting on board a boat, and was rowed to his ships. More than twelve thousand corpses of the turbaned Turks were floating in the bay of Aboukir, beneath whose crimsoned waves, but a few months before, almost an equal number of the French had sunk in death. Such utter destruction of an army is perhaps unexampled in the annals of war. If God frowned upon France in the naval battle of Aboukir, He as signally frowned upon her foes in this terrific conflict on the land. The cloudless sun descended peacefully, in the evening, beneath the blue waves of the Mediterranean. Napoleon stood at the door of his tent, calmly contemplating the scene, from whence all his foes had thus suddenly and utterly vanished. Just then Kleber arrived, with his division of two thousand men, for whom Napoleon had not waited. The distinguished soldier, who had long been an ardent admirer of Napoleon, was overwhelmed with amazement in contemplating the magnitude of the victory. In his enthusiasm he threw his arms around the neck of his adored chieftain, exclaiming, “Let me embrace you, my General, you are great as the universe.” [Illustration: Napoleon and Kleber.] Egypt was now quiet. Not a foe remained to be encountered. No immediate attack, from any quarter, was to be feared. Nothing remained to be done but to carry on the routine of the administration of the infant colony. These duties required no especial genius, and could be very creditably performed by any respectable governor. It was, however, but a barren victory which Napoleon had obtained, at such an enormous expenditure of suffering and of life. It was in vain for the isolated army, cut off, by the destruction of its fleet, from all intercourse with Europe, to think of the invasion of India. The French troops had exactly “caught the Tartar.” Egypt was of no possible avail as a colony, with the Mediterranean crowded with hostile English, and Russian, and Turkish cruisers. For the same reason, it was impossible for the army to leave those shores and return to France. Thus the victorious French, in the midst of all their triumphs, found that they had built up for themselves prison walls from which, though they could repel their enemies, there was no escape. The sovereignty of Egypt alone was too petty an affair to satisfy the boundless ambition of Napoleon. Destiny, he thought, deciding against an Empire in the East, was only guiding him back to an Empire in the West.