"Soldiers!" he
cried, pointing to the pyramids, "from the summits of those pyramids
forty centuries look down upon you. You can't see them, but they are
there. No one should look down upon the French, not even a century.
Therefore, I ask you, shall we allow the forces of the Bey, his
fellahs and his Tommylukes, to drive us into the desert of Sahara,
bag and baggage, to subsist on a sea-less seashore for the balance of
our days, particularly when they haven't any wheels on their cannon?"
"No, no!" cried the army.
"Then up sail and away!" cried Bonaparte. "This is to be no naval
affair, but the army of the Bey awaits us."
"Tell the band to play a Wagner march," he whispered, hastily, to his
aide-de-camp. "It'll make the army mad, and what we need now is
wrath."
So began the battle of the Pyramids. The result is too well known to
readers of contemporary history to need detailed statement here. All
day long it raged, and when night fell Cairo came with it. Napoleon,
worn out with fatigue, threw himself down on a pyramid to rest.
"Ah!" he said, as he breathed a sigh of relief, "what a glorious day!
We've beat 'em! Won't the Directory be glad? M.
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