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Updated: April 30, 2025
During the remainder of the night the utmost agitation prevailed on board the Muiron. Gantheaume especially was in a state of anxiety which it is impossible to describe, and which it was painful to witness: he was quite beside himself, for a disaster appeared inevitable. He proposed to return to Corsica. "No, no!" replied Bonaparte imperiously. "No! Spread all sail! Every man at his post!
"My reason," said he, "makes me incredulous respecting many things; but the impressions of my childhood and early youth throw me into uncertainty." He was very fond of talking of religion. In Italy, in Egypt, and on board the 'Orient' and the 'Muiron', I have known him to take part in very animated conversations on this subject.
Thwarted in his schemes of world-conquest in the East by Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith, Bonaparte returned to pursue in Europe the same visionary but mighty designs. In Napoleon's career the voyage on the frigate Muiron marks the moment analogous to Caesar's return from Gaul, January, 49 B.C. But Caius Julius crossed the Rubicon at the head of fifty thousand men. Bonaparte returned from Egypt alone.
The Croats, constantly reinforced, poured in so deadly a fire as to check the advance: Muiron, Marmont, and a handful of gallant men still pressed on, thereby screening the body of their chief; but Muiron fell dead, and another officer, seizing Bonaparte, sought to drag him back from certain death.
The beneficent ruler is merged once more in the visionary of earlier times, dreaming by the Nile, or asleep on the heel of a cannon on board the Muiron. Napoleon was fighting for a dead ideal with the strength of the men who had overthrown that ideal how should he prosper?
In particular it must not be forgotten that among many men of minor importance he there began his relations with some of his greatest generals and marshals: Desaix, Marmont, Junot, Muiron, and Chauvet. The experience launched him on his grand career; the intimacies he formed proved a strong support when he forced himself to the front. Moreover, his respect for England was heightened.
Alvinzi retreated finally, though in decent order, upon Montebello. It was at Arcola that Muiron, who ever since the storming of Little Gibraltar had lived on terms of brotherlike intimacy with Napoleon, seeing a bomb about to explode threw himself between it and his general, and thus saved his life at the cost of his own.
Perhaps these few words to the widow of one of his late officers are even finer: "Muiron died at my side on the late battle-field of Arcola. You have lost a husband that was dear to you; I, a friend to whom I have long been attached: but the country loses more than us both in the death of an officer distinguished no less by his talents than by his rare courage.
Fourier also presided in Upper Egypt over these memorable works, when the Commander-in-Chief suddenly quitted Alexandria and returned to France with his principal friends. Those persons then were very much mistaken who, upon not finding our colleague on board the frigate Muiron beside Monge and Berthollet, imagined that Bonaparte did not appreciate his eminent qualities.
Gantheaume arrived, and Bonaparte gave him orders to fit out the two frigates, the 'Muiron' and the 'Carree', and the two small vessels, the 'Revanche' and the 'Fortune', with a two months' supply of provisions for from four to five hundred men.
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