Bonaparte in the East

Washington approved the war-measures of the government, and in July he was appointed by the President commander-in-chief of all the forces raised and to be raised, with the commission of lieutenant-general. That commission was borne to Mount Vernon by the Secretary of War (Mr. McHenry) in person. When he arrived, Washington was in the fields not far from the mansion where his people were gathering his grain-harvest. The Secretary, without doffing his thin traveling cloak (for the day was cool), went out to meet him and presented the document to Washington in the open field. The Beloved Patriot, then sixty-six years of age, obeyed the call of his countrymen with alacrity. "You may command me without reserve," he wrote to the President, qualifying his remark with an expressed desire that he should not be called into active service until the public need should demand it, and requesting the appointment of his friend Alexander Hamilton, then forty-one years of age, as acting general-in-chief. For this purpose, Hamilton was commissioned the first major-general. Washington held a conference with all the general officers of the army at Philadelphia, in November (1798), when arrangements were made for a complete organization of the regular forces on a war-footing. But from the beginning he believed that the gathering clouds, portending a fearful tempest, would pass away and leave his country unscathed by the lightning and the hail of war.

Events soon justified Washington's faith. Circumstances speedily allayed the fear of England, to whom the Americans looked as a possible friend in the event of a war with France. The victorious Bonaparte, who had threatened England with invasion, had gone off to Egypt with a fleet and army with the avowed object of conquering that country, invading Palestine, taking possession of Jerusalem, restoring the Jews to their ancient heritage, and rebuilding the Temple. This was only a cover to his ambitious designs for accomplishing his personal advancement. But his fleet was utterly vanquished by Nelson in the battle of the Nile; and another French fleet, that hovered off the coast of Ireland to encourage an insurrection there, was scattered by English ships-of-war under Admiral Warren. These and minor victories by the English humbled the pride of the Directory; and when there appeared omens of other disasters to their cause in Europe, and they heard of the prevailing war-spirit in the United States and the appointment of Washington to the command of a provisional army, the Directory paused in their mad career. The wily Talleyrand, ever ready to change his political coat, caused information to reach the United States government that the Directory were ready to receive advances from the former for entering into negotiations.

Without consulting his cabinet or the national dignity, President Adams nominated William Vance Murray, then the representative of the United States at the Hague, as minister plenipotentiary to France. Congress and the people were amazed, and the Senate determined not to confirm the nomination. No direct communication had been received from the Directory, and this advance after unatoned insults, seemed like cowardly cringing before a half-relenting tyrant. The President stoutly persisted for awhile, when he consented to the appointment of three envoys extraordinary, of which Mr. Murray should be one, to settle all disputes between the two governments. For this purpose Oliver Ellsworth and William R. Davie were appointed to join Mr. Murray, but they were not to proceed to Europe until assurances should be received from France of their courteous reception there. Such assurances came from Talleyrand, and in November, 1799, the two envoys sailed for France.

Fortunately for all parties concerned, a change occurred in the government of France in the month when the envoys departed from our shores. For a long time the quarrels of factions had threatened France with anarchy. The Directory had become unpopular, and the excitable people were ripe for revolution. The brothers of Bonaparte informed him of this state of affairs at home, and he hastened from the East, with a few followers, and suddenly appeared in Paris. His brilliant exploits in the Orient had so fascinated the French, that they hailed him as the good genius of the republic. With his brother Lucien, who was then president of the Council of Five Hundred, and Seyes, one of the Directory and of great influence in the Council of the Ancients, he conspired for the overthrow of the government and the establishment of a new one.