He
taught history to France after his famous battle of Aboukir, where,
without losing more than three hundred men, and with a single division,
he vanquished the grand army of the Turk, seventy-five thousand strong,
and hustled more than half of it into the sea, r-r-rah!
"That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing the
way things were going in Paris, 'I am the saviour of France; I know it,
and I must go.' But, understand me, the army didn't know he was going,
or they'd have kept him by force and made him Emperor of the East. So
now we were sad; for He was gone who was all our joy. He left the
command to Kleber, a big mastiff, who came off duty at Cairo,
assassinated by an Egyptian, whom they put to death by empaling him on a
bayonet; that's the way they guillotine people down there. But it makes
'em suffer so much that a soldier had pity on the criminal and gave him
his canteen; and then, as soon as the Egyptian had drunk his fill, he
gave up the ghost with all the pleasure in life. But that's a trifle we
couldn't laugh at then. Napoleon embarked in a cockleshell, a little
skiff that was nothing at all, though 'twas called 'Fortune;' and in a
twinkling, under the nose of England, who was blockading him with ships
of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed
over, and there he was in France.
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