The defeat in the Council of State, as minor as it was, had been a profound shock to Louis's system. It was a single, sharp crack in the edifice of his authority, a sign that the foundations were not as secure as he had believed. He had successfully recalled his rogue general from Italy, only to find that he had brought the war home with him. Napoleon in Paris was proving to be a more insidious and dangerous threat than Napoleon at the head of an army. In Italy, he was a military problem. Here, he was a political one, a rival sun whose gravity was beginning to pull the very satellites of Louis's own government out of their orbits.
Louis understood that a slow-burn political war against a figure like Bonaparte was a war he was destined to lose. He could not compete with the General's raw charisma, his military glory, or his seemingly bottomless supply of Italian gold. To engage in a battle of salon politics and committee-room maneuvering would be to cede the advantage to his opponent. He, the King, was a creature of structure, of law, of the state. Bonaparte was a creature of personality, of glory, of a movement.
He could not allow the General to remain in Paris. The man's ambition was a political black hole, and it was beginning to warp the very fabric of the state around him. He had to be sent away. But how? He could not simply order him to a provincial garrison or a minor command; after the Triumph, such a move would be seen as a petty, jealous insult. It would be a public humiliation that would likely trigger the very coup d'état he was trying to avoid.
No, he had to find a mission. A new war. A new objective so grand, so glorious, so impossibly ambitious that Napoleon, a man who saw himself as the heir to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, would not be able to resist its siren song. He needed to present his rival with a challenge so magnificent that it would make the political squabbles of Paris seem small and unworthy of his genius.
For two days, Louis locked himself away in his private library, not with his ministers, but with his maps. He met only with Talleyrand, the one man in his government whose mind was cynical and audacious enough to appreciate the sheer, breathtaking scale of the gambit he was about to propose.
He did not unroll the map of Europe. That theater was, for the moment, quiet. He unrolled a different, more ancient and exotic map, a map of the Eastern Mediterranean, of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and the sea routes to the Orient.
"Bonaparte is a romantic," Louis said, his voice a low, intense whisper. He traced a finger over the boot of Italy, across the sea to the mouth of the Nile. "His true heroes are not the kings of France. They are Alexander and Caesar. He does not dream of conquering Vienna. He dreams of conquering the East. We will not give him a war. We will give him a legend. We will give him Egypt."
Talleyrand, who had been expecting a discussion about a new command on the Rhine, stared at the King, his usual mask of bored cynicism momentarily falling away to reveal a look of stunned disbelief, which quickly morphed into one of dawning, predatory admiration. This was a move of a scale and complexity that even he had not anticipated.
Louis laid out the strategic logic of his proposal. It was a plan of such beautiful, multi-layered deception that it was almost a work of art.
First, there was the public, strategic justification. "The war with Austria is over, for now," Louis explained. "But our true enemy, our eternal rival, remains. Great Britain. We cannot invade them directly. Their navy is a wall we cannot breach. But the source of Britain's power is not its island; it is its empire. And the heart of that empire is India. Egypt," he said, his finger tapping the thin strip of land connecting Africa and Asia, "is the neck of the bottle. It is the land bridge to the East. To seize Egypt would be a historic masterstroke. It would allow us to sever Britain's lifeline to its richest colony, to threaten their entire imperial project. It is an indirect assault on the very heart of their power."
Second, there was the appeal to glory, the bait for Napoleon's ego. "The campaign," Louis continued, a rare, theatrical gleam in his eye, "would be one dripping with historical resonance. The land of the Pharaohs, of Antony and Cleopatra, of the Crusades of Saint Louis. It is a land of ancient glory, waiting to be conquered by a new Alexander. How could a man like Bonaparte resist such a prospect?"
Finally, he revealed to Talleyrand the true, hidden, and ruthless objective of the entire enterprise. The poison pill. "The campaign," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "is also almost impossibly dangerous. It requires our entire southern fleet to cross the Mediterranean, evading the blockade of the British Admiral Nelson, who is a formidable hunter. It requires an army of forty thousand men to survive and fight in a hostile, alien desert, against a fanatical Mamluk cavalry, with no hope of easy reinforcement. It is a massive, spectacular gamble."
He looked Talleyrand straight in the eye. "If it succeeds, the glory for France will be immense, but Bonaparte will be thousands of miles away, cut off from Paris, bogged down in the complexities of ruling a vast and unruly new colony for years to come. If, as is frankly more likely, it fails… he will either be killed in battle, or his army will be cut off and forced to surrender to the British. Either way, the 'Napoleon problem' is elegantly and permanently solved."
It was the ultimate gambit. He was offering his greatest rival the chance to achieve immortal, legendary glory, knowing full well that the most probable outcome was his death or humiliation. It was a poisoned chalice, overflowing with the wine of ambition.
The next day, Louis summoned Napoleon for a private meeting. He received him not in the formal study or the council chamber, but in his private library, the room where the plan was born. He did not present it as an order or an assignment. He presented it as a shared dream, a secret conspiracy between the two greatest men in France.
"General," he began, gesturing not to a chair, but to the great map of the East that lay spread across the table. "Paris is too small for a man like you. Your destiny does not lie in the petty squabbles of the Assembly or the endless chatter of the salons. It lies on a grander stage."
He tapped the map. "I have a new vision for France. A vision beyond Europe. Alexander marched east. Caesar marched east. They understood that the future of the world would be decided there. I am offering you the chance to walk in their footsteps. To carve out a new French empire in the Orient. I am offering you Egypt."
Napoleon stared at the map. At the word "Egypt." At the pyramids, at the Nile, at the thin red line a cartographer had drawn to show the sea route to India. His eyes, which for months had been filled with the cold, calculating light of a politician, were suddenly lit with a different kind of fire. It was the fire of a romantic, of an adventurer, of a man obsessed not just with power, but with his own legend.
Louis knew he had found his rival's one true weakness. It was not money; he had plenty. It was not political power; he was already acquiring it. It was his deep, almost mystical obsession with his own place in history. He did not just want to be a great general; he wanted his name to be spoken in the same breath as Alexander and Caesar. And Louis had just offered him the one, unique stage upon which such a legend could be forged.
The King had offered him a poisoned chalice filled to the brim with glory, and Napoleon, his eyes blazing, looked ready to drink it down to the last, deadly dreg.