At the moment of departure, Buonaparte made one of those singular harangues which evince such a mixture of talent and energy with bad taste and bombast. He promised to introduce those who had warred on the mountains and in the plains, to maritime combat; and to a great part of the expedition he kept his word too truly, as Aboukir could witness. He reminded them that the Romans combated Carthage by sea as well as by land--he proposed to conduct them, in the name of the Goddess of Liberty, to the most distant regions and oceans, and he concluded by promising to each individual of his army seven acres of land.[365] Whether this distribution of property was to take place on the banks of the Nile, of the Bosphorus, or the Ganges, the soldiers had not the most distant guess, and the commander-in-chief himself would have had difficulty in informing them. [Sidenote: SAILS FROM TOULON.] [Sidenote: May 19.] On the 19th of May, 1798, this magnificent armament set sail from Toulon, illuminated by a splendid sunrise, one of those which were afterwards popularly termed the suns of Napoleon. The line-of-battle ships extended for a league, and the semi-circle formed by the convoy was at least six leagues in extent. They were joined on the 8th June, as they swept along the Mediterranean, by a large fleet of transports, having on board the division of General Desaix. The 10th June brought the armament before Malta, once the citadel of Christendom, and garrisoned by those intrepid knights, who, half warriors and half priests, opposed the infidels with the enthusiasm at once of religion and of chivalry. But those by whom the order was now maintained were disunited among themselves, lazy and debauched voluptuaries, who consumed the revenues destined to fit out expeditions against the Turks in cruises for pleasure, not war, and giving balls and entertainments in the seaports of Italy. Buonaparte treated these degenerate knights with a want of ceremony, which, however little it accorded with the extreme strength of their island, and with the glorious defence which it had formerly made against the infidels, was perfectly suited to their present condition. Secure of a party among the French knights, with whom he had been tampering, he landed troops, and took possession of these almost impregnable fortresses with so little opposition, that Caffarelli said to Napoleon as they passed through the most formidable defences,--"It is well, general, that there was some one within to open the gates to us. We should have had more trouble in entering, if the place had been altogether empty."[366]