BATTLE OF THE NILE.

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Sicily was joined by Admiral Brueys, with a squadron of Venetian ships of war from Corfu. That officer then hoisted his flag, as commander-in-chief, on board the Orient, of one hundred and twenty guns. After a run of eighteen days, this formidable armament, now swelled to three hundred sail, including men of war and transports, appeared off Malta, of which island, hitherto deemed impregnable, instant possession was taken, not by valour, but through treachery. This valuable post being secured, the fleet again set sail, and on the 30th of June came to anchor in the roads of Alexandria.

Buonaparte, well knowing that his route could not escape British vigilance, disembarked his troops immediately, with the intention also of securing the fleet in the port of Alexandria. Here, however, he was disappointed, for the ships drew too much water to admit of their passage over the bar, even without their stores and artillery. Under such circumstances, he ought to have sent his large ships to Malta, in which case his frigates and lighter vessels might have been sheltered from any other attack than that of boats, which even Nelson would hardly have attempted. Instead of adopting this obvious measure of precaution, the commander moored his fleet in an open bay, presenting, indeed, a formidable battery seaward, but one that was far from being a sure defence; as the event proved, by the facility with which the English ships passed withinside of the French, who from their position were thus exposed to a double fire. According to Denon, who witnessed the action from the shore, "Buonaparte, wishing to bring the fleet into the harbour of Alexandria, offered two thousand sequins to any one who should accomplish it; and it was said, that several cap

tains of merchantmen had sounded, and found a passage for the whole into the old harbour. The evil genius of France, however, counselled and persuaded the admiral to moor his ships in the bay of Aboukir, and thus to change in one day the result of a long train of successes." Thus concludes the French artist: "We found that our situation was altered, and that, separated from the mother country, we were become the inhabitants of a distant colony, where we should be obliged to depend on our own resources for subsistence until the peace. We learned, in short, that the English fleet had surrounded our line, which was not moored sufficiently near to the land to be protected by the batteries; and that the enemy, formed in a double line, had attacked our ships one after the other, and had by this manoeuvre prevented them from acting in concert, rendering one half of the fleet a witness of the destruction of the other half. We learned, lastly, that the first of August had broken the unity of our forces; and that the destruction of our fleet, by which the lustre of our glory was tarnished, had restored to the enemy the empire of the Mediterranean; an empire which had been wrested from them by the matchless exploits of our armies, and which could only have been secured to us by the existence of our ships of war."

This involuntary encomium from an enemy forcibly illustrates the emphatic observation of Nelson, that the battle of the Nile was not a victory, but a conquest. It was so in the fullest sense of the word, by totally changing the aspect of the war, and rousing the torpid energies of all the great European powers, including even the Ottoman, to vigorous exertion against French domination. But it merits a remark, that the expedition