Surely now was the time for the fulfilment of those glowing oriental designs beside which his European triumphs seemed pale. In the autumn of 1810 he sent agents carefully to inspect the strongholds of Egypt and Syria, and his consuls in the Levant were ordered to send a report every six months on the condition of the Turkish Empire.[240] Above all, he urged on the completion of dockyards and ships of war. Vast works were pushed on at Antwerp and Cherbourg: ships and gunboats were to be built at every suitable port from the Texel to Naples and Trieste; and as the result of these labours, the Emperor counted on having 104 ships of the line, which would cover the transports from the Mediterranean, Cherbourg, Boulogne and the Scheldt, and threaten England with an array of 200,000 fighting men.[241] In March, 1811, this plan was modified, possibly because, as in 1804, he found the difficulties of a descent on our coasts greater than he first imagined. He now seeks merely to weary out the English in the present year. But in the next year, or in 1813, he will send an expedition of 40,000 men from the Scheldt, as if to menace Ireland; and, having thrown us off our guard, he will divide that force into four parts for the recovery of the French and Dutch colonies in the West Indies. He counts also on having a part of his army in Spain free for service elsewhere: it must be sent to seize Sicily or Egypt. But this was not all. His thoughts also turn to the Cape of Good Hope. Eight thousand men are to sail from Brest to seize that point of vantage at which he had gazed so longingly in 1803. Of these plans, the recovery of Egypt evidently lay nearest to his heart. He orders the storage at Toulon of everything needful for an Egyptian expedition, along with sixty gun-vessels of light draught suitable for the navigation of the Nile or of the lakes near the coast.[242] Decrès is charged to send models of these craft; and we may picture the eager scrutiny which they received. For the Orient was still the pole to which Napoleon's whole being responded. Turned away perforce by wars with Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Spain, it swung round towards Egypt and India on the first chance of European peace, only to be driven back by some untoward shock nearer home. In 1803 he counted on the speedy opening of a campaign on the Ganges. In 1811 he proposes that the tricolour shall once more wave on the citadel of Cairo, and threaten India from the shores of the Red Sea. But a higher will than his disposed of these events, and ordained that he should then be flung back from Russia and fight for his Empire in the plains of Saxony. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXII THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN