His performance at Toulon was so spectacular that it attracted attention at once, and caused his promotion to the command of the artillery in Italy. Here he was able to suggest projects that received approval and brought successes. One plan conceived and developed by him, however, was disapproved. It consisted essentially of dividing the Piedmontese and Austrians, crushing the Piedmontese, and then driving the Austrians out of Italy into Austria and following them thither. Later, this plan was approved, and he himself was put in command in Italy. It was this plan, executed by the Bonaparte of those days, that began the career of the Napoleon of history. So original and brilliant had been the conception, so mathematically correct and practically feasible had been the plan which Bonaparte developed from it, and so furiously energetic were his operations in carrying out the plan, that the sluggish Piedmontese were defeated before they quite realized that war had been begun. A like catastrophe happened to the equally mentally and physically sluggish Austrians; then another catastrophe, and then another, and then still others; and in such rapid and bewildering succession, that in a year and a month after his arrival in Italy he had driven the Austrians out completely, formed the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics in the north of Italy, and signed the armistice of Leoben with the Austrians, within fifty miles of Vienna. Napoleon's next invention was a project for ruining England by attacking her East Indian possessions by a campaign beginning with an invasion of Egypt. Everything proceeded in substantial accordance with the plan developed, until August 1, 1798. In the evening of that day the whole project was destroyed by Horatio Nelson. It was destroyed in a battle near the mouth of the river Nile, that was decided in fifteen minutes, though it was not wholly concluded until it had been raging for nearly four hours. In fifteen minutes, the French fleet on which depended Bonaparte's communications with Europe, had been so severely damaged that the failure of Bonaparte's project was decided.