La Muiron set sail on a moonless night on 23 August 1799 with one other frigate as escort.

At first they
hugged the North African coast and twice saw British sails in the distance. On one of these occasions
Napoleon was sufficiently alarmed to make preparations for landfall, intending to proceed across the
desert to some other port of embarkation; but the ships of the Royal Navy stood away at the last
minute. Sailing for much of the time in bad weather, La Muiron was forced into the gulf of Ajaccio on 30
September by contrary winds. This was to be Napoleon's last visit to his native island, and he spent a
few nights in the family home which Letizia had so expensively refurbished. But all the time he was
p1agued with anxiety. When learning the latest news from Paris he was heard to say despairingly: 'I will
be there too late.' On 6 October La Muiron put to sea again, only to fall foul of the weather once more.
And no sooner had the full storm on the 7th blown itself out than English ships under Lord Keith were
again spotted. Napoleon ordered the captain to make for Frejus, where landfall was achieved in the bay
of St Raphael on 9 October. Without doubt Napoleon had been lucky to escape naval interception.
When the British realized that Napoleon had passed through their fleets on the return run as well, after
a perilous 47-day voyage in the Mediterranean, popular fury was unbounded. A London caricature
showed Nelson dallying with Emma Hamilton while La Muiron passed through his legs. Napoleon was
lucky in a second sense, in that he arrived in France just four days after the news of his great victory at
Aboukir reached Paris. The Directory, fearful that the huge and growing army of malcontented ex-
servicemen might flock to his banner, dared not impose on Napoleon the strict quarantine regulations
governing all arrivals from the Orient at France's Mediterranean ports; still less could they object that
Bonaparte had deserted his army in Egypt. At 6 o'clock on the evening of the 9th, Napoleon set out on a
seven-day journey to Paris, hoping vainly to arrive in the capital before the Directory even knew he was
in France. Using rapid relays of post horses, he passed through Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, 203 Valence,
Lyons, Chalon and Nevers, arriving in Paris on the morning of 16 October. He was delighted with the
tumultuous reception he got, especially in A vignon, where the people seemed to regard him as a
deliverer. At first sight Napoleon's gamble in going to Egypt and returning only when the Directory was
discredited seemed to have paid off. Until the news of Aboukir reached France, he appeared to be losing
the propaganda battle: the Battle of the Nile, the revolt of the 'angel' El Modi and British disinformation
about atrocities had been cleverly played up by his enemies. Most of all, it became obvious that, no
matter how many victories Napoleon won in Egypt, in the context of a general European war these
made little impact. The sensational news about Aboukir cut through all that, but Napoleon's position
was by no means as good as he would have liked. The principal problem was that France's military
position had stabilized by the time he returned. In Cairo Napoleon had read a litany of French disasters.
In 1799 the Allies finally put their differences behind them and launched a new coalition against France.
The Russians under General Suvorov joined the Austrians in a campaign in northern Italy which rapidly
undid all Bonaparte's work. The Allies overran the Cisalpine Republic, occupied Turin and forced the
French to quit Rome (which they had occupied in February 1798). Suvorov then defeated in succession
the French generals Scherer, Moreau and MacDonald, while the British reoccupied Naples. By the end of
June 1799 the French had lost all their Italian conquests except Genoa and a narrow strip of the Ligurian
coast. Meanwhile in Germany the Archduke Charles repeatedly defeated Jourdan and opened the
passes between Germany and Italy. In Holland the military initiative was held by an Anglo-Russian army
under the Duke of York. Such was the situation when Napoleon left Egypt. By the time he arrived in
Paris, there had been a rapid turnaround in military fortunes. Facing disaster, the Directors made a
string of mistakes, but these were capped by the Allies. First, in June 1799, the Directory enacted a
conscription law which led to wholesale evasion by draftees. The Directors then compounded their error
by detaching large sections from Jourdan's hard-pressed army on the Rhine to round up the draft
dodgers, and then ensured that Scherer lost Italy by insisting on sending every available soldier against
Naples. However, the Allies made the egregious mistake of insisting on clearing the Danube and Po
valleys of opposition before moving against Switzerland, the strategic key to Europe. Then the Austrian
minister Thugut inexplicably decided to switch commanders, with Archduke 204 Charles being
transferred from Switzerland to Holland and Suvorov moving from Italy to Switzerland. This caused a
delay in campaigning which the French exploited. In September Massena won the second battle of
Zurich (in the first, in May, he had been defeated by Archduke Charles), routing the Russians while
Suvorov was being transferred. Even more significant than the military check to the Allies was the
suspicion and mutual recrimination the setback engendered. Austria and Russia blamed each other
bitterly, and the final upshot was that Russia left the coalition in dudgeon in January 1 800. Taking
advantage of the confusion and bickering, General Ney defeated the Austrians on the Rhine. In Holland
General Guillaume Brune brought the Anglo-Russian adventure to an inglorious end and earned the
Duke of York eternal obloquy by a stunning victory in October which had the English scurrying for their
embarkation vessels. The consequence was that when Napoleon arrived in Paris on 16 October the
immediate military crisis was over, removing the justification for a coup d'etat. In particular, the
victories by Brune and Massena made it very difficult for the Bonapartist propaganda machine to
present its man as the 'sword' badly needed by the Republic. Since Ney, Brune and Massena were the
new military heroes and fickle public opinion was likely to turn away from him, Napoleon needed to act
fast. On the other hand, because there was no obvious necessity now for a coup, he had also to move
with extreme caution. While he pondered his next move, he had one immediate decision to take: what
to do about Josephine? When they were reunited with their brother, Joseph and Lucien confirmed the
stories about Josephine's habitual adultery with Hippolyte Charles. The affair had recommenced in
earnest at the end of 1798; Charles would often stay weeks at a time at Malmaison, decamping when
visitors arrived. Charles and Josephine were also a byword for corruption. In addition to the retainers
from Louis Bodin for putting army contracts his way, Josephine was also on a huge sweetener of soo,ooo
francs from another military contractor, Compagnie Flachat. Almost predictably, when Napoleon arrived
at his house on the rue de la Victoire at 6 a.m. on 16 October, Josephine was not there. He flew into a
rage and decided to divorce her without more ado. Barras urged Napoleon to be stoical, but made no
impression. Only when the banker Jean-Pierre Collot put the affair in the context of raison d'etat did
Bonaparte cool down. Collot argued that Napoleon would lose prestige if it became widely known that
he had been cuckolded; the best course was to wait until he had supreme power and then settle
accounts with his errant wife. 205 Had he known the full extent of her treachery, Napoleon would have
been even more angry. She told Barras that she found his letters from Egypt either odd or droll and,
while sending him tepid notes, would be composing passionate and lubricious ones to Charles.
According to Barras, her verbal indiscretion was notorious. In a masterpiece of projection she described
her husband thus: 'He is a man who has never loved anyone but himself; he is the most ingrained and
ferocious egotist the Earth has ever seen. He has never known anything but his own interest and
ambition.' Unaware of these dark currents, Napoleon contented himself with a policy of humiliation.
Though urged by his family to move to the rue du Rocher, Napoleon stayed put and decided to lock
Josephine out. He cleared the house of her enormous wardrobe of clothes and sent them down to the
porter's lodge, with instructions to the porter that he was on no account to admit her. Napoleon
assumed she was with her lover, but the truth was more singular. Alerted by letters from her son
Eugene and by confidential advice from Fouche, with whom she was developing a kind of business
relationship, she hastened south to meet her husband, hoping to get her version of events in before
Joseph and Lucien arrived with the truth. But when she arrived in Lyons, expecting to meet him on the
Burgundy road at any time, she learned that Napoleon had already gone north by a different route, via
Bourbonnais. She turned round and headed for Paris. Forty-eight hours after Napoleon got to the rue de
Ia Victoire, a despairing Josephine arrived with her daughter Hortense after a long and tiring journey,
the latter stages through thick fog. It was I I p.m. The porter told her he had orders not to let her in, but
Josephine softened him with tears or browbeat her way to her husband's door (the account varies).
When Napoleon refused to admit her, she camped outside the door on the last spiral of a narrow
staircase, from where she directed sustained and piteous pleas through the wooden threshold. Eugene
and Hortense arrived to add their lachrymose pleas to those of their mother. At last Napoleon relented
sufficiently to allow Eugene and Hortense to enter. Tearfully they pleaded her case, adding that her
heart was broken. Finally Napoleon admitted Josephine herself. An initial angry explosion and bitter
reproaches were followed by a cooling-off period, then by sexual overtures. When Lucien called next
morning he found Napoleon and Josephine in bed, beaming with seraphic expressions. The entire
Bonaparte family was scandalized and furious at this unexpected outcome, but even Letizia dared say
nothing. None the less, the balance of power in the marriage had decisively shifted and from this point
on Napoleon had the psychological advantage. 206 During this honeymoon period Josephine put him in
the picture about his old love Desiree Clary. Napoleon had earmarked her as the wife of General
Duphot, but he was assassinated in Rome late in 1797, thus triggering French occupation of the eternal
city. On 17 August 1798 she married Bernadotte, apparently more for a desire to be married than
because of any overpowering coup de foudre for the Gascon. The marriage was a scheme by the
Bonapartist clan to neutralize or co-opt a dangerous political rival. Joseph, Lucien and their wives had
attended the wedding ceremony and Desiree now regularly passed on to her sister Julie Ooseph's wife)
full intelligence on the Bernadotte household: who visited, what was discussed, what was the attitude to
Napoleon. Josephine had apparently done her best to conciliate Desiree, but Desiree strongly disliked
her and used to mimic her mercilessly to Julie, the only member of the Bonaparte clan to have a soft
spot for Napoleon's wife. The dynamics of the extended Bonaparte family were becoming increasingly
complex. The constant was the hatred felt for Josephine by all female members of Napoleon's family -
Letizia, Pauline and, especially, Elisa. Desiree's distaste is more easily explained as simple jealousy. There
is even evidence that Desiree was still besotted with Napoleon and dreamed of displacing Josephine and
getting him back. When she became a mother in 1799 she asked Napoleon to be godfather. The subtext
was clear: she could bear children while Josephine could not. Napoleon asked that the boy be called
Oscar after Ossian, the hero of his beloved Macpherson epic, and Desiree duly obliged. Desiree was an
important transmission belt between the ultra-Jacobin circle of Bernadotte and friends and the
Bonapartes. She supported Napoleon's ambitions even to the point of spying on her own husband;
Bernadotte, besotted with her, turned a blind eye. But she was the focus of sexual jealousy, with
Napoleon resentful that an enemy like Bernadotte was married to 'his' Eugenie, and Bernadotte fuming
that Napoleon had had his wife's virginity.