the revolution, Dolomieu accepted the position of professor of natural sciences at the École Centrale Paris and started to write the mineralogical section of the Encyclopédie Méthodique. The following year he was appointed inspector of mines and professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, where his portrait still hangs in the library. His extensive mineral collection is today housed at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris. Bonaparte era By 1798 De Dolomieu had developed an international reputation as one of the leading geologists in the world and was invited to join the scientific expedition accompanying Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt, as part of the natural history and physics section of the Institut d'Égypte. In March 1799 Dolomieu became ill and was forced to leave Alexandria, Egypt for France. His ship, caught in a storm, sought refuge at the port of Taranto, Italy where Dolomieu was made a prisoner of war. General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of Alexandre Dumas, the author, was also captured and held. The city was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was then at war with France. Dolomieu had previously made a powerful enemy of the grand master of the Maltese order when he helped negotiate the surrender of the island of Malta to Napoleon. The grand master denounced Dolomieu and he was transferred to Messina, Sicily, and imprisoned under horrible conditions, in solitary confinement, for the next 21 months. The imprisonment of a world-famous scientist, under such conditions, was abhorrent to the intellectual community of Europe. Even the scientific community of England (which was at war with France) protested the confinement. Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, attempted to negotiate Dolomieu’s release through the pope. Napoleon, who was first consul of France at the time, felt that asking for such an intervention by the pope would be dishonorable. The future emperor's approach to the problem was more direct. In the spring of 1800 Napoleon led the French army into Italy, delivering a crushing blow to the Austrians and their Italian allies on 14 June at the Battle of Marengo. All of Italy then came within Napoleon's sphere. One of the terms dictated by Napoleon in the peace treaty of Florence (March 1801) was the immediate release of Dolomieu. Upon his liberation Dolomieu resumed his scientific studies and field excursions. But his health, broken by the long imprisonment in Sicily, gave way