On the night of the 22nd August 1799, Napoleon left the inhospitable land of the Pharaohs never to return. There were grumbles and desertions on the part of the troops, which vague promises of relief from France did little to compensate. Kléber remained in command. On board the two frigates, alone available for Napoleon’s use, he found accommodation for many of the best officers, including Lannes, Berthier, Murat, Marmont, and Duroc, useful men to have at any time. Few ships have ever had a more distinguished passenger list. God may be on the side of the biggest battalions, as Napoleon said, but assuredly Providence was with the little band which set out on so hazardous a voyage on that still summer night. The undertaking was fraught with perils, for many British ships were sighted, but having once more gazed on his beloved Ajaccio, where he was greeted with every sign of respect and admiration, Napoleon landed safely at St Raphael, near Fréjus, on the 9th October 1799, after an absence from France of nearly fifteen months. He had not accomplished all he had set out to do, but he had added considerably to his military prestige, and that was everything in the position in which _la belle France_ was now placed. [Illustration: AFRICA] CHAPTER XII How Napoleon Seized the Reins of Government (1799) “We were plunging under full sail back to the abyss of the Terror, without a gleam of consolation or of hope. The glory of our arms was tarnished, our conquests lost, our territory threatened with invasion.... All the efforts made by honest statesmen to secure the legal enjoyment of their rights had been crushed by violence. There seemed to be nothing before us but to return to a bloodthirsty anarchy, the duration of which it was as impossible to foresee as it was to find any remedy.” Thus writes the Duke de Broglie of this period, and his picture is none too black for reality. The attempt to establish a Constitutional Republic had failed; the Directors had proved their inability to hold the reins of government or to check the disaster which almost everyone felt must inevitably come. One gleam of sunshine alone brightened the horizon of the bankrupt nation, namely the news of Napoleon’s landing. From the point of view of the general public this was worth more than Masséna’s victory at Zurich over the Austrians and Russians in the previous month, which had alone saved the unhappy country from invasion.