The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 810 Napoleon Arrives

"Citizens, today, let me introduce you to a new hero, a hero of the Republic, a hero of all French people, General Napoleon Bonaparte!"

"The past three years have been great for the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, as they have taken over the whole of Egypt for the Republic."

If it weren't for the desperate obstruction of the English villains, General Napoleon Bonaparte would have already recaptured Jerusalem and established a new Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem!

"The Republic needs a strong leader, a hero who can lead France to victory after victory on the battlefield."

For example, General André Masséna of Switzerland, and our great Eastern conqueror, General Napoleon Bonaparte!

In October, Paris was filled with this sentiment: the future Emperor Napoleon is indeed very capable.

To later generations, Napoleon's escape from Egypt was nothing short of a clownish act, an indelible stain on his life.

Although there was a compelling reason for Napoleon's actions, the flaws outweigh the merits, and the excesses do not outweigh the deficiencies.

The Egyptian expedition was proposed by Napoleon, and the escape was carried out secretly without the knowledge of most people. Therefore, even Napoleon's fans have to admit that this was immoral.

But at this time, Napoleon's escape from Egypt could be packaged as a hero.

If we disregard the fact that the Egyptian expeditionary force had no way to retreat and could not return to its homeland, it can indeed be said that France is currently winning big.

Napoleon Bonaparte conquered all of Egypt with only 40,000 men, as well as part of the former Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem on the eastern Mediterranean coast. He also almost annihilated all of the Ottoman Empire's mobile forces and fought a brilliant battle in which he lost 200 men but killed 20,000 of his own. By all accounts, this was a glorious victory!
As for the navy's crushing defeat, the navy was not under my command, General Napoleon Bonaparte, so what did their defeat have to do with the army?
Therefore, as long as the people don't know that Napoleon secretly fled back from Egypt, he will be a hero until Egypt is recaptured by the Ottomans.

Well, or rather, even though Egypt was lost, he was still a hero, because Egypt wasn't lost to Napoleon.

Of course, the common people, unaware that Napoleon had secretly returned, were even less aware that a new coup, one that would bring far greater changes to France than any before, was on the eve of its eruption.

In fact, a bloodless coup had already taken place in France in June, before Napoleon returned.

In this very covert coup, the Jacobins, who had previously dominated the French Revolution, lost power.

The power of the five Directors was largely concentrated in the hands of the anti-Jacobin Director, Archclergyman Emmanuel Siècle.

This was the coup d'état of the 30th of the month, but it was far from complete. It was still a peaceful coup within the five-hundred-person council of the Governor's government, full of the style of a scholar's rebellion.

Although the Jacobins failed in the coup, they did not completely lose power; on the contrary, they still had some ability to resist.

Emmanuel Siècle, who was pushed to the forefront by the anti-Jacobins, did not fully grasp power and there was a possibility that the Jacobins could overturn his position.

In this situation, Napoleon, a general with great influence in the military and high prestige among the people, returned to the capital (Paris) and immediately became the target of both sides' efforts to win him over.

We dare not fail to win them over!

The Jacobins knew very well that if they completely lost power, it was obvious how those who had been persecuted by the Jacobins for the past ten years, to the point of losing their families and being torn apart, would treat them.

The anti-Jacobins, especially their leader Emmanuel Sièclez, were deeply disturbed. He was as panicked as the Jacobins had been in the past.

Although the Jacobins of today are not madmen like Marat or Robespierre, who can guarantee that they won't produce such a person after they regain power?

Even if it were a beggar's version of Robespierre, Naïves would still be torn to pieces!
Thus, instead of punishing Napoleon for such blatant treason and desertion, these two parties, as the highest governing bodies of the French Republic, allowed their newspapers, party members, and followers to continuously glorify and promote him.

Both sides went to great lengths to bring Napoleon Bonaparte to their side.

And so, Napoleon, who was originally a deserter, became a great hero in France and was known as the Conqueror of the East.

"Lucien, are we really going to cooperate with Sièclez?" Napoleon was still somewhat uneasy as he was about to meet Emmanuel Sièclez, who held great power.

The shame and guilt of being forced to flee Egypt had recently haunted Napoleon, making him feel constantly uneasy.

The Lucien mentioned by Napoleon was his brother, Lucien Bonaparte.

This is an exceptionally underestimated figure; later generations, when mentioning the Napoleonic dynasty, always revel in how powerful Napoleon Bonaparte was.

However, it overlooks the fact that a large part of the foundation for Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to historical prominence was laid by his brother, Lucien Bonaparte.

Lucien Bonaparte was at this time Napoleon Bonaparte's chief advisor and strategist, as well as his spokesperson in Paris.

While Napoleon was campaigning, the ladder to the top that he built through his wife, Josephine Beauharnais, who was also the mistress of the Director Paul Barras, was maintained by Lucien Bonaparte on his behalf.

Napoleon Bonaparte's decision to flee Egypt was strongly advised and repeatedly urged by Lucien.

It could even be said that Lucien played a crucial role in Napoleon's later rise to the highest position in France, becoming consul, ruler for life, and emperor of the French.

As Napoleon rose step by step to the pinnacle of power, some of his ambitions were actually shared by Lucien Bonaparte.

Upon hearing his brother's hesitant words, Lü Xi'an immediately stood up in the carriage.

“Brother, we are not going to cooperate with the West Asian Society, but to use them to seize the highest power in the Republic!”

"Furthermore, we can only cooperate with Siege, because the Jacobin era is over, and the Revolution is over."

Everyone in France was tired of this chaotic, disorderly life with no future in sight; the disappearance of the Jacobins was everyone's wish!

Napoleon nodded silently. He was merely somewhat unsettled, not regretful, because he knew he could no longer back down.

So many of his followers had risked their lives for him; if Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to go back on his word, he would have to pay with his own life.

"So how do we determine whether Sieyès is sincere in cooperating with us? After all, he has no army, and it's clear that we have the strength to abandon him after the Jacobins fall," Napoleon continued.

“It’s very simple. If Sieyès can put me in the position of chairman of the House of Five Hundred after we go there, then it will prove that he is sincere.”

Lucien shrugged as he spoke, “Brother, you’ve been away from the highest levels of Paris for too long, you’ve forgotten who these people are.”

They're just a bunch of bookworms and lawyers; they have no idea how to use the army. They still think it's like before, where a pen can label someone a counter-revolutionary, a big-character poster can ruin a general's reputation, and soldiers can lay down their weapons!

As he spoke, Lucien burst into laughter. Compared to Napoleon, who had to leave the center of power to lead troops for a long time, this guy, who had quickly risen to the top of the House of Five Hundred by taking advantage of his brother's power, knew better what kind of people the current Directory officials were.

And what followed was exactly as Lucien had predicted.

Siegfried received Napoleon with a somewhat obsequious air, still regarding Napoleon as a general whom the anti-Jacobins could control and use as an ally, completely unaware that Napoleon's power was already enough to destroy them all.

The two sides secretly reached an agreement at Sidney's home to overthrow the new Jacobins, dismiss all the Directory officials, and establish a new government headed by Sidney.

In October, at the urging of Siècles, Lucien Bonaparte was exceptionally elected as President of the House of Five Hundred, equivalent to the Speaker of the House of Lords in England.

Meanwhile, Napoleon began to operate within the army, inciting and bribing lower-ranking officers, and secretly sidelining two important generals, Jean-Baptiste Juldant and Jean-Baptiste Bernardo Théâtre.

He also persuaded General Lefebvre, commander of the 17th Division in charge of the defense of Paris, who had been seriously wounded in the arm and lost two fingers in the Battle of Austerach by a bayonet thrown by Di Feihu, a fierce general of the Lu Fan Army, to take control of almost all the armed forces around Paris.

At this point, all the conditions for launching a coup had been met.

On the morning of the 11th of the month (November 9th).

Lucien Bonaparte, the newly appointed president of the Council of Five Hundred, used the pretext of the Jacobin coup in Paris to intimidate the members of the Council of Five Hundred.

They were escorted to the Palace of Saint-Clue in the suburbs of Paris under the protection of the army, with all the soldiers guarding them along the way under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte.

As soon as the members of the Council of Five Hundred left, Sidney and Roger Dick, two of the five Directors of the Directory, immediately announced their resignations.

Paul Barras, Josephine's most prominent lover, also agreed to resign after being persuaded.

The other two, Louis Jérôme Goyer and Jean-François Auguste Moulin, resolutely refused to resign, but they had no soldiers, and their resistance was futile. They were quickly arrested by General Jean Victor Moreau, an ally of Napoleon.

The following morning, under the threat of their entire family being wiped out, they yielded and resigned from their positions as governors.

At this point, Napoleon's political ally, Joseph Fouché, suggested that they strike while the iron was hot and directly arrest the new Jacobins in the House of Five Hundred. However, Napoleon rejected this suggestion, not wanting to make things too ugly, and also somewhat fearing that fierce resistance from the Jacobins would lead to a reversal of his plans.

By evening, Napoleon had completely taken control of Paris, and he left the city to confront the new Jacobins in the Court of Five Hundred at Saint-Clue.

As the carriage passed the Place de la Révolution, where Louis XVI and his wife, along with tens of thousands of others, were executed—later known as the Place de la Concorde—Napoleon said to his secretary, Brennère, "If we don't sleep in the Luxembourg Palace tomorrow, we'll be beheaded here."

Brennard, however, was full of confidence. He looked at Napoleon and said, "We will not fail. Those lawyers are no match for us!"

The following day, after Napoleon arrived, the members of the House of Five Hundred in Saint-Clue realized they had been tricked, and they were outraged and unwilling to submit.

Napoleon entered the Saint-Clue Palace to prepare to persuade the members of the House of Five Hundred.

Members of parliament angrily denounced him for undermining liberty, fraternity, and revolution. Some even pointed their fingers at him and shouted, "Where is the Napoleonic Constitution?"

Napoleon retorted loudly: "The Constitution! You yourselves destroyed it, violated it in the coup of 18 Fruits, infringed upon it in the decree of 22 Flower Month, and desecrated it in the coup of 30 Pastoral Month. It no longer enjoys the respect of the people!"

As he spoke, Napoleon deliberately stepped forward, walking into the crowd so that these people could reach him.

The members of the House of Five Hundred were indeed fooled. They rushed over and shoved Napoleon, and eventually it even escalated to a group beating of him.

Napoleon was beaten until his mouth bled, and he only managed to escape the meeting thanks to the desperate protection of a small number of soldiers under Lefèvre's command.

At this point, the members of the House of Five Hundred immediately began to propose a motion, in the name of the highest authority, to strip Napoleon of all his powers.

Lucien was shocked and was about to suggest to Napoleon that soldiers be used to arrest the members of the House of Five Hundred when he saw his brother Napoleon looking at him with a strange expression.

Lucien immediately understood, and he and Lefèvre escorted Napoleon out the door.

Outside the door, Jean-Jacques Murat, a close confidant of Napoleon, was waiting with Napoleon's trusted personal guards, who later became the soldiers of the Old Guard.

When they saw their commander beaten pale and bleeding from his mouth and nose, they were immediately enraged.

Taking advantage of the moment, Lucien drew his long dagger and roared at the soldiers, "Napoleon Bonaparte has already shed blood for the freedom and rights of the French people, now it's our turn."

Soldiers of the Republic, defend your rights and freedoms! Defend the hard-won right to freedom that all of France has obtained!

The soldiers were completely swayed. They put aside their fear of the House of Five Hundred and, led by Joachim Murat, stormed into the Orangery, the meeting place. They used clubs and guns to beat down anyone who dared to resist, and almost all the members of the House of Five Hundred were arrested.

Under the threat of bayonets, the House of Five Hundred passed a motion to suspend the council for three months that same day, thus sealing the fate of the coup.

Shortly afterward, the Directory collapsed, and Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmanuel Siècle, and Roger Deco were elected consuls, thus establishing the Consulate General of France.

Despite the dramatic coup, it went largely unnoticed in Paris and throughout France, causing little stir and giving the impression that nothing had happened that night.

As Lucien Bonaparte said, the French were utterly weary of the French Revolution and desperately needed a government that, even if unstable, was stable.

The revolution is over!

. . . .

Almost simultaneously, in the Upper Netherlands.

No one knows a son better than his father. No wonder King George III of England was so frightened that he suffered a mental breakdown, because his son, Frederick, Duke of York, was indeed a complete waste.

Just as the Kingdom of England paid a heavy price to allow Moggonze to lead his army across the sea to the Netherlands to rescue the Duke of York, the Anglo-Russian allied forces in the Netherlands suffered another defeat at the Battle of Castrickram.

That battle was truly an eyesore, unbearable to watch.

The Duke of York had lost the trust of the Russians due to his defeat in the last Battle of Bergen and was no longer able to command the Russian army.

The British and Russian armies then split up, with the Russians on the left flank and the British on the right. Their enemy, the French army under Brune's command, hid in a sand dune next to a large swamp.

The terrain here is complex, with marshes and small lakes interspersed, making it one of the few relatively undulating areas in the lowlands of the Netherlands.

Before the war, the French army hid in the sand dunes, making it impossible for the British and Russian allied forces to find their exact location. They could only make a rough judgment based on the flags raised by the French army.

Although Lieutenant General John Hermann von Felsen, the commander of the Russian army, was a Germanic Saxon, he was a traditional, unthinking old-fashioned Russian.

His favorite fighting style is to fire a shot on the spot, then charge in and go all out. If he wins, he achieves a great victory; if he loses, he flees in defeat. He likes to make a quick buck.

The Duke of York, however, believed that his British army was the elite of England and that he dared not be as reckless as the Russian army, so he decided to take a cautious approach on the right wing.

This disagreement, coupled with the fact that the Duke of York, as commander, was completely unable to direct the Russian army, resulted in a complete lack of coordination between the two armies. Although they were only two or three kilometers apart, it felt like they were fighting in two different worlds.

As a result, Brune, the French commander who was scouting from the high dunes, discovered this weakness and took the initiative to defeat the Russian army on the left wing first, and then attack the British army on the right wing.

At 10 a.m., the Russian army launched an offensive on the left flank, but was immediately caught and soundly beaten by the French army that had been lying in ambush on the sand dunes.

The Russian army was being slaughtered, while the British line infantry on the right flank were still slowly advancing in formation, attempting to attack the sparsely populated French positions under the cover of field artillery.

Within an hour, the left-wing Russian troops were routed by the French army and fled in disarray.

Bruner immediately dispatched light cavalry to flank the British army and cut off their retreat, while simultaneously leading his entire army on a forced march to intercept them from the flank.

Upon seeing the entire French army arrive, the Duke of York realized that there were hardly any people in the sand dunes in front of him, and he also knew that the Russian army had certainly suffered a crushing defeat.

They hastily formed ranks again, preparing to first rely on the terrain and firepower advantage to repel the French army, and then retreat to a British stronghold not far away.

Just then, a heavy rain began to fall. Although the French army had not had many artillery pieces after their forced march, the British artillery had also become completely ineffective, and the firepower of both sides suddenly came to a standstill.

In the heavy rain, the British army suffered a major blow and its morale plummeted. The French army broke through their lines, and the Duke of York had no choice but to order a breakout immediately.

However, the heavy rain was not entirely disadvantageous to the British army. The land around Castrickham was mostly converted from swamps, and the heavy rain turned the ground into mud. French light cavalrymen fell one after another in the mud, and their movement speed was even slower than that of the British infantry.

So the British army of more than 10,000 abandoned all their mules, cannons, gunpowder, rations and even their guns, and fled in panic. Most of them managed to shake off the French army.

Two days later, only 6,000 of the 10,000 Russian troops remained, while the remaining 12,000 of the 15,000 British troops met at a small outpost, which was also a small castle, originally built by the Anglo-Russian allied forces.

Before the Allied forces could catch their breath or even have a hot meal, the French troops, covered in mud, caught up with them.

Now things were really bad. The small town where the remnants of the British and Russian troops gathered only had a week's worth of food, and they didn't even have a single gun for two men. All their cannons and mules were lost, and they were still dozens of kilometers away from the sea.

If nothing unexpected happens, they'll all be lost here.

"Your Highness, the Rus' are finished! General John Herman has been captured, and they have lost at least three thousand men!"

"The French are mobilizing a militia, and if they add another 10,000 militiamen, we will never be able to leave."

The people in the small castle were filled with fear. If the French army launched a full-scale attack, the Anglo-Russian allied forces would surely collapse.

The Duke of York was also at a loss, not knowing what to say. At this moment, Major General John Moore, who was groaning on a wooden plank bed due to serious injuries, suddenly said, "Your Highness, we should hold on, because someone will come to rescue us."

"Who, who will come to our rescue?" the Duke of York asked, but quickly realized, "John, you mean Prince Ferdinand?"

“Yes.” Major General John Moore nodded with difficulty. He had fought alongside Mo Gongze in Ireland early last year and had great confidence in him.

"The Belgian army is brave and skilled in battle and has the support of the local people. As long as Prince Ferdinand appears, he will surely be able to defeat the French."

His Majesty the King certainly won't stand by and watch His Highness the Duke be captured by the French, so Prince Ferdinand will definitely return!

"Excellent!" The Duke of York's spirits lifted upon hearing this. "Spread this good news! Let everyone know that we can hold out until Prince Ferdinand arrives!"

(End of this chapter)