We have already touched upon the secret objects of this armament. The Directory were desirous to be rid of Buonaparte, who might become a dangerous competitor in the present unsettled state of the French Government. Buonaparte, on his side, accepted the command, because it opened a scene of conquest worthy of his ambition. A separate and uncontrolled command over so gallant an army seemed to promise him the conquest and the sovereignty, not of Egypt only, but of Syria, Turkey, perhaps Constantinople, the Queen of the East; and he himself afterwards more than hinted, that but for controlling circumstances, he would have bent his whole mind to the establishment of an Oriental dynasty, and left France to her own destinies. When a subaltern officer of artillery, he had nourished the hope of being King of Jerusalem.[360] In his present situation of dignity and strength, the sovereignty of an Emperor of the universal East, or of a Caliph of Egypt at the least, was a more commensurate object of ambition. The private motives of the government and of the general are therefore easily estimated. But it is not so easy to justify the Egyptian expedition upon any views of sound national policy. On the contrary, the object to be gained by so much risk, and at the same time by an act of aggression upon the Ottoman Porte, the ancient ally of France, to whom Egypt belonged, was of very doubtful utility. The immense fertility of the alluvial provinces irrigated by the Nile, no doubt renders their sovereignty a matter of great consequence to the Turkish empire, which, from the oppressed state of their agriculture every where, and from the rocky and barren character of their Grecian provinces, are not in a condition to supply the capital with grain, did they not draw it from that never-failing land. But France herself, fully supplied from her own resources, had no occasion to send her best general, and hazard her veteran army, for the purpose of seizing a distant province, merely to facilitate her means of feeding her population. To erect that large country into a French colony, would have required a drain of population, of expense, and of supplies of all sorts, which France, just recovering from the convulsion of her Revolution, was by no means fit to encounter. The climate, too, is insalubrious to strangers, and must have been a constant cause of loss, until, in process of time, the colonists had become habituated to its peculiarities. It is farther to be considered, that the most perfect and absolute success in the undertaking must have ended, not in giving a province to the French Republic, but a separate and independent kingdom to her victorious and ambitious general. Buonaparte had paid but slight attention to the commands of the Directory when in Italy. Had he realized his proposed conquests in the East, they would have been sent over the Mediterranean altogether in vain.