Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

‘She gave you everything – everything you damn well needed,’ cursed Hazzard. ‘The entire damned Armée d’Orient and what did you do! What did you do!’

  Nothing.

  The words echoed in Hazzard’s mind and after a moment he realised he was not addressing Smith, or Nelson, or the Admiralty at all – but himself.

  Smith watched him, weighing his words carefully. ‘Shall we then let him get away with it?’

  Everything Sarah had worked for.

  Never stop.

  He found himself shaking, facing Cook, Wayland and the marines. He looked back at Smith. ‘Is this a briefing? I want maps, contacts, reports, everything you have.’

  Smith opened the sabre-tache slung at his side and drew out several folded charts. ‘You’ll have to be quick about it.’ He laid them on the ground by the light of the fireside and knelt, pointing out the key sites. ‘Cairo here, the Delta, Rosetta, Damietta, Al-Arish on the Sinai border, Ibrahim Bey’s progress to Syria here, very rough, progress of Bonaparte’s cavalry half-brigade, and last sighting of your man here. As of two days ago.’

  ‘Accurate?’

  ‘Oh very. From a Huwaytat scout.’

  Hazzard turned. ‘Mr Wayland.’

  Wayland stepped forward. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Are you fit to ride yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Mr Wayland, Master Handley, plot a course,’ said Hazzard, ‘for the road to Sinai.’

  Handley squatted down by the map, looking it over. ‘I’ll get us right onto ’is ruddy ’ead, sir…’

  ‘Amigo, we must go,’ said De la Vega, moving past them to the horses. ‘The tide will turn soon.’ He glanced at Smith. ‘I shall take him to the lines, and he can get us through with his so perfect French.’ He jumped into the saddle and delved into a bag, bringing out a heavy bundle. ‘Here,’ he said, and tossed it down to Hazzard.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘You will need it more than I, amigo.’

  Hazzard unwrapped it. It was the Lorenzoni repeating pistol.

  ‘Remember, seven shots only, even for this demon you seek, loco Inglés, who fights the winds.’

  Hazzard nodded and grasped his hand ‘Vaya con Dios.’ Go with God.

  ‘And you, compadre. Volpone will come when you call.’ De la Vega looked at the marines, then at Smith. ‘Will you do as this one says, with your little hands-full of soldiers again?’

  Hazzard looked at Cook. ‘Sar’nt – what says the boat?’

  Cook turned to them. ‘Well? Answer yer officer.’

  Underhill looked round at them all, their sunburnt, smoke-blackened faces: Kite with a raw, livid scar across his cheek, Hesse in white galabeyyah smock and jerkin, twin daggers in his belt, Porter clutching his medical bag, broken-nosed Napier, Cochrane, De Lisle, the big Cornishman Pettifer hefting a Turkish blunderbuss, and Warnock with his tomahawk and a newly sawn-off French musket, one side of his face red with burns. After a moment Underhill turned back and grinned. ‘Sah – beg to report, boat says bloody aye.’

  Smith climbed into his saddle. ‘I shall be in support out at sea on HMS Tigre, never fear.’ He pulled his mount round to join De la Vega. ‘Any intentions I should relay…?’

  Hazzard looked at the Beni Qassim in the glow of the driftwood fire, at the broken temple pediments, the fallen columns rolled in the desiccated scrub – and out to sea, where Valiant had carried away all he had cherished. ‘Yes,’ said Hazzard, ‘Tell them…’

  Thief of hopes, defender of dust.

  All she had worked for.

  ‘Tell them I shall hunt down Derrien. That is my price. I shall then drive Bonaparte into the ground, and make him wish he’d never left France.’ He pulled his leather sling-holster over his head and jammed in the Lorenzoni. It fitted. ‘And when I am done, I shall return to London,’ he said, ‘and find Sir Rafe Lewis.’

  ‘My dear fellow—’

  Hazzard cut him short. ‘I am not their man in Egypt. Tell them that much.’

  Smith watched as Hazzard buckled on the scimitar of Ali Qarim and headed for his horse, Cook close behind, the marines and the Bedu following, as the smoke drifted across the moon from the smouldering remains in Aboukir Bay.

  Historical Note

  As in Book One, Napoleon’s Run, the historical events of Lords of the Nile actually happened much as described here and, with a few exceptions, most of the characters are real figures drawn from history.

  Napoleon’s Run details how Bonaparte and his chiefs managed to gather an army of some 38,000 men and a fleet of roughly 400 ships at Toulon in almost total secrecy. There were a few security slips, such as the letter by Dolomieu, the aged and eminent geologist, who had written to a friend that he was considering ‘the trip to Egypt’ because he’d been promised he would find ‘many interesting rocks there’ – but otherwise, the Admiralty in London had no idea where the fleet might be headed. After watching invasion preparations at Brest and Boulogne across the Channel, they assumed the fleet was bound for Ireland or England, and consequently acted with lightning speed.

  Nelson had been wounded badly in a disastrous attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, losing his right arm, the injury forcing him to recuperate in England – but he was recalled and despatched in May 1798 to Admiral John Jervis, now Lord St Vincent, blockading the Spanish fleet now trapped in Cadiz. It was from here in Napoleon’s Run that Hazzard set out with his company of Oddfellows, comprising marines from various ships in the blockade fleet, and set off in the captured Spanish brig Esperanza. After his battle with two French corvettes he encountered privateer Cesár Domingo de la Vega, who decided he didn’t much care for treaties with Revolutionary France, and became a firm ally.

  The traditional British enmity for France at this point might seem no different to British enmity for France over much of the previous 700 years, but with the Revolution there seems to have been a difference. It is difficult for us to conceive of the impact the Revolution would have had on the minds of Europeans. When Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793, the carriage of King George was mobbed in the London streets, the common people banging on the doors and roof, demanding war and revenge. The successive unstable governments of the Revolution were perceived not as mere enemies, but sources of evil, criminals who had usurped power over the people of France. This is not without basis: in a ten-month period in 1794, Revolutionary justice accounted for the murder of some 40,000 French citizens. When the guillotine was working so tirelessly, the gutters of Paris ran with streams of blood. Caron’s memory is well-founded: there is a tale of a gentleman and two lady companions en route to the theatre one evening, having to step over this blood, laughing, the man dipping his finger into it and remarking ‘Ah, is it not beautiful’. France had become a slaughterhouse. This was the war machine threatening to bring revolt to Ireland and invade England – or Egypt. The only force in Europe left to stand in its path in mid-1798 was the British Navy – more specifically, Horatio Nelson.

  Nelson sailed back and forth across the Mediterranean from mid-May to August 1798, hunting for the French fleet. Although it covered some four square miles, he simply couldn’t find it, and had no idea of its course or target. After the storm of the 19th May and his repairs in Sardinia, he put in to Naples to seek naval reinforcements; deprived of HMS Emerald and Terpsichore, which had been blown back across the sea and later gathered off Barcelona, Nelson needed light frigates to scout ahead of his heavy 74-gunners (74s) Vanguard, Alexander and Orion. Lieutenant Thomas Hardy, captain of the Mutine brig, went ashore to make the request but was refused by Sir John Acton, the Prime Minister of Naples, just as Hazzard had been, on the grounds that French forces were in Rome and could attack Naples in reprisal.

  Receiving still further reports of Bonaparte’s fleet, Admiral St Vincent sent in heavy reinforcements, possibly the most dangerous collection of warships in the world, commanded by aggressive, experienced captains. They were led by Sir Thomas Troubridge, Captain of HMS Culloden
, and one of Nelson’s most respected officers. They moved south from Naples to Sicily, through the Straits of Messina to Syracuse, thereby missing Bonaparte’s route to Malta. They revictualled, wondering whether the French intended to attack the Greek islands and Constantinople. It was here that Hazzard and Cook made contact, thanks to the quick-witted fishermen of Ragusa.

  Once the French fleet departed Valletta, Bonaparte had word that Nelson was close – though they had no idea how close. There is a report of a British ship detecting what they considered to be a French frigate but which was dismissed as a local trader. In that moment, the two fleets had passed within a thousand metres of each other, neither being aware of the other.

  It’s extraordinary that Nelson didn’t check Malta. One reason might be that he had heard from a passing merchantman that the French were heading to Alexandria (and of course Vanguard’s log makes no mention of Hazzard and Cook or their report). Nelson turned his squadron from Sicily and streaked towards Alexandria so fast he completely outstripped the slower French fleet. Meanwhile, the French had diverted northeast, not southeast, and headed towards southern Italy and Crete on a more indirect route to Egypt.

  The British arrived at Alexandria some three days in advance of the French invasion fleet. Once again Hardy was sent as ambassador with the Mutine, though according to Al-Jabarti, ‘a caique’ arrived bearing ‘Europeans’, who later identified themselves as English, looking for the French fleet. Hardy did explain the matter to Kurayyim, the Governor of Alexandria, much as described here, but Kurayyim ‘dismissed his speech as mere trickery’. He then expelled the English, telling them to depart ‘that God’s will might be fulfilled’.

  It certainly was. On the 1st of July 1798, nearly four hundred ships of the Republic of France appeared off the coast of Alexandria, the argument still whether to disembark in Aboukir Bay or somewhere safer further along the coast. Bonaparte, ever the tactician, recognised Aboukir Bay as a death-trap, though Brueys insisted it would be easier and faster to disembark troops and supplies (and he was quite right).

  As they debated this, they landed men in the port who distributed his Arabic proclamation, which Al-Jabarti criticised so heavily in the diwan meeting with Murad, Ibrahim and the other beys. His comments in this scene come verbatim from Al-Jabarti’s pen of 1798.

  Back at Alexandria, a cry did indeed go up from the Orient’s lookout and for a few perilous minutes Bonaparte clutched at Bourrienne, believing Nelson had caught up with them, his words reproduced accurately here. But instead of Nelson, it was one of their own frigates lagging behind from Valletta, the Justice, the second sail behind an unknown trader which turned and headed into the distance. With such a near disaster, Brueys concurred that Marabout would be the safest place to land the men.

  The landings at Marabout were an utter fiasco. A storm blew up out of nowhere, the ships standing so far offshore in the heavy swell that the men in their jolly-boats were blown back out to sea over and over again, taking nearly eight hours to reach the beaches, weak, seasick, weighed down by their long waterlogged woollen coats. When the first groups landed they were attacked almost at once by Bedouin horsemen, who surrounded some twenty officers and women passengers and rode off with them. One of them was the wife of a Sgt François of the cavalry, who was in Sarah’s boat (more of her later). Only five thousand men of the army reached the shore before the landings were cut short.

  No artillery made it ashore, nor any horses for the cavalry. Bonaparte had come with Junot and a number of the senior staff, including the one-legged Caffarelli, and forced a night-march on the exhausted soldiers: the only food and water they had was waiting for them in Alexandria. It was very much a matter of ‘march or die’.

  They arrived at the gates of Alexandria at nine a.m. The inhabitants ran out of ammunition by ten and began pelting the French with stones. By noon, Alexandria had fallen. But not without cost: the great General Kléber had been wounded as was the somewhat less great General Menou. This deprived Menou of the command of a division, but made him Governor of Rosetta instead, a task better suited to his administrative talents. While Kléber recovered, the First Division was handed to the experienced ‘Papa’ Dugua. The rest of the army was landed, and marched to gather at al-Ramaniyah, Reynier’s division suffering the most: they took the desert route along Hammer’s dry wells. The men went mad with thirst, some shooting themselves, the Bedouin riding through their lines in sporadic, unpredictable attacks. When the French found Damanhur, many ran straight into the river, some drowning.

  The French clashed for the first time with the Mamluks at Shubra Khit, also known as ‘Chebreiss’, where the medieval tactics of the Mamluk cavalry were met by the disciplined gunnery of the French. Before the battle, a lone Mamluk horseman did approach one of the French squares, and rode back and forth displaying his mount, before riding off – the French cavalry were entranced by his skill.

  Moiret, an officer of the 75th ‘Invincibles’, said in his memoirs that they were instructed repeatedly not to break formation for their own safety. The five divisional squares marched into open battle with devastating results. As Hazzard had forewarned, five thousand men per division formed ranks six-deep bristling with bayonets, and moved across the flat land by the Nile, the Mamluk cavalry charging again and again, unable to penetrate the formations, horsemen falling by the hundred to the massed volley fire of the disciplined French. Although historians blithely estimate casualties to be ‘comparatively light’, it was an outright slaughter. However, the battle upon the river was even worse.

  The Mamluk riverboats and gunships were manned mostly by Greek mercenaries, and it was these who stormed the first French ship, beheading their captives, waving the heads of the fallen at their comrades. Besides their marine and footsoldier escorts, the only threat upon these boats was the group of ‘savant’ academics headed for Cairo – crucial to Bonaparte’s plan for Egypt.

  Bonaparte had brought with him a special Commission of 167 artists and scientists, mostly young men, whose average age was 26, the youngest Réné-Edouard de Villiers du Terrage at only 17, who agreed to take his exams under the tutelage of Gaspard Monge himself once in Cairo. It was these untrained, unarmed scholars who watched the bloodthirsty mercenaries swimming across the Nile towards them, knives in their teeth.

  Berthollet really did fill his pockets with stones and weights, ready to throw himself into the Nile rather than be butchered by the Mamluks; Fourier too did beg them to join him and evacuate to the rear boats, and Monge laid some of the guns and fired them himself. The savants acquitted themselves as well as any soldiers: in their top hats and coat-tails they beat out fires, manned the guns, helping their fellows to retreat to the gunboats behind, which came up in rescue, and covered the escape of the women among their number.

  Although women were ‘banned’ from the expedition, there were over a hundred among the numbers. As if taking cue from a play by Shakespeare, some had disguised themselves as young men and junior officers, one famously not revealing herself until reaching Cairo. General Verdier’s Italian wife was in a league of her own, and was renowned throughout the staff for accompanying her husband into battle. That Sarah and Jeanne were aboard one of the boats would not have been out of the question.

  The river battle looked lost until the Cerf, commanded by Perrée, made a direct hit on the Mamluk flagship. The explosion was so great, according to eyewitnesses, the sky became filled with the mutilated limbs and bodies of the dead, cartwheeling through the air to fall into the Nile – marked by a great cheer by the desperate French. The battle of Shubra Khit ended. From there, the French advanced on Cairo.

  The Battle of the Pyramids (also called the Battle of Embabeh by some) is often depicted in 19th century oils in full fire at the foot of the great monuments, cavalry riding in and out, artillery blasting nearby – and this gave rise to the British propaganda assertion that French cannon were responsible for destroying the nose of the Sphinx. Not so. The pyramids were in fact some 16 ki
lometres away from the battle on the horizon, but it was so great a victory we can excuse artistic licence; (and research has revealed that a 10th century activist defaced the Sphinx).

  Bonaparte claimed in his memoirs that he made the historic comment ‘Soldiers, forty centuries of history look down upon you!’ But historians such as Herold have often wondered when he could have said this, or to whom, as there wouldn’t have been much chance, not having the opportunity to address his troops first: they marched in echelon, advancing toward the city, and found Murad’s cavalry once again.

  The individual horrors witnessed by Hazzard did indeed happen, Mamluk riders bursting into flame, Lt Vertray fighting the old Mamluk in single combat, and the brave old warrior’s brutal death; General Marmont led a column across the field, foolishly unprotected at the rear, but here it was Hazzard who slashed his way through the looting stragglers as he rode, madly looking for Bonaparte. The rage of the division breaking into columns and charging the Embabeh guns is also documented, as was their butchery of the Albanians and Turks, who displayed extraordinary bravery. It seems a suitable place for the heroic end of the devoted Izzam of the al-Kalbi, in his attempt to follow and defend Hazzard, his new lord.

  The Mamluk who seized the forelegs of a charging horse is not specifically recorded, but this was a key defensive tactic of the original Varangian Guard of the late Greco-Roman Emperors of Byzantium/Constantinople. Varangians, or Vikings, were one of the several ancestors of the Mamluks, who settled in the region, particularly in the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A particular feat of these giant Norsemen bodyguards was to dive for the forelegs of a charging horse and stop it dead, unseating the rider. It is from men such as these that the Mamluks, and many Egyptians of today, are descended. They later became the deadliest army in the East, fathering famous sons such as Salah ad-din, the nemesis of the English crusader king, Richard the Lionheart. Murad Bey himself was not born in Egypt but in Georgia, though there is some debate whether he was Circassian, but he was sold as a slave himself until he seized power.