In November, when the weather became cooler, a detachment of fifteen hundred men was sent to occupy Suez, and toward the end of December Bonaparte himself made a visit of inspection to the isthmus, by which he must advance to the prosecution of his larger schemes. While thus absent he learned, through an intercepted courier, that Djezzar, the Pasha of Syria, had on the 2d of January, 1799, occupied the important oasis of El Arish in the desert of Suez, and was putting its fort in a state of defence.[228] He at once realized that the time had come when he must carry out his project of advance into Syria, and accept the hostility of Turkey, which he had wished to avoid.
The singular position of isolation in which the French in Egypt were placed, by the loss of the control of the sea, must be realized, in order to understand the difficulties under which Bonaparte labored in shaping his course of action, from time to time, with reference to the general current of events. Separated from Palestine by two hundred miles of desert, and by a yet wider stretch of barren sand from any habitable land to the west, Egypt is aptly described by Napoleon himself as a great oasis, surrounded on all sides by the desert and the sea. The intrinsic weakness of the French navy, its powerlessness to command security for its unarmed vessels in the Mediterranean, had been manifested by the tremor of apprehension and uncertainty which ran through the officials at Toulon and in Paris, when, after the sailing of Bonaparte, they learned of Nelson's appearance. The restless activity of the British admiral, and the frequent sight of his ships in different places, multiplied, in the imagination of the French authorities, the numbers of hostile cruisers actually on the sea.[229] A convoy of twenty-six large ships, for the completion of whose lading the expedition could not wait, lay in Toulon during the summer months, ready to sail; but no one dared to despatch them. From time to time during the outward voyage Bonaparte sent urgent messages for their speedy departure; but they never came.
If this fear existed and exercised such sway before the day of the Nile, it may be imagined how great was the influence of that disastrous tidings. Not only, however, did a moral effect follow, but the annihilation of the French fleet permitted the British cruisers to scatter, and so indefinitely increased the real danger of capture to French ships. Surrounded by deserts and the sea, the commander-in-chief in Egypt saw, on and beyond both, nothing but actual or possible enemies. Not only so, but being in utter ignorance of the attitude of most of the powers as well as of European events, he could not know what bad effect might result from action taken by him upon imperfect information. His embarrassment is vividly depicted in a letter dated December 17, 1798: "We are still without news from France, not a courier has arrived since July 6; this is unexampled even in the colonies."[230] The courier mentioned, leaving France in July, had reached Bonaparte on the 9th of September; but the vessel which brought him had been obliged to run ashore to escape the British cruisers, and only one letter from the Directory was saved.[231] The next tidings came on the 5th of February, when a Ragusan ship, chartered by two French citizens, succeeded in entering Alexandria. "The news," he said, "is sufficiently contradictory; but it is the first I have had since July 6." He then first learned definitely that Turkey had declared war against France.[232] His troops were at that moment in the desert, marching upon Syria, and he himself on the point of following them.