Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  “We must renounce any further communication by sea, mon cher Général,” he informed Menou at Rosetta on August 15, “until the English fleet disappears...Therefore, keep your port closed until more favorable circumstances permit...Here we are expecting to be bombarded any time.”[221] Rosetta was one of the two outlets of the Nile and principal victualling point for both the navy and army. There was no longer a French navy to protect it, and with its garrison of only six hundred men and “neither artillery, munitions, nor money,” it obviously couldn’t protect itself. It was almost too much for General Menou, now at his wits’ end, who requested that he be returned “to the head of my division rather than being left to go crazy in this place.” But for all his anxieties, Jacques (later Abdullah, when he converted to Islam) Menou still had enough consideration to think about the much more seriously ailing Kléber and his even more unenviable situation at Alexandria directly facing the English. “You must keep your spirits up and not let the problems depress you,” he wrote on August 4.

  But the epidemic of insubordination in the navy before and during the Battle of Abukir was prevalent in the army as well, and when on August 18 Berthier ordered Menou to hand over the gunboats and armed vessels under his command to newly promoted Rear Admiral Perrée (to be dispatched up the Nile), he blasted the chief of staff: “I have...nothing at all here and now you want to take away my gunboats and vessels, my sole means of defense...I formally refuse.”

  From his headquarters in Cairo, Napoleon did his best to conceal the gravity of the situation and the extent of the catastrophe. Writing to the French governor of Corfu, General Chabot, shortly after receiving news of Brueys’s defeat and ordering him to assist Rear Admiral Villeneuve (who he erroneously thought had sailed to Corfu) “to begin to reorganize a new fleet” with which to relieve Egypt, he nevertheless assured him that “all goes perfectly well here.”[222]

  Following his victorious entry into Cairo on July 22, Napoleon had immediately begun setting up an entirely new government and administration for the country, including the naming of military governors as each new province was conquered. All operations were run from his luxurious new GHQ in the former palace of one Elfi Bey, which included Bonaparte’s own residential wing, a sprawling structure built around a large courtyard, in reality a vast park of mosaic-lined fountains and tropical gardens complete with nightingales, surrounded and enclosed by elaborate Turkish galleries. Its massive walls were as strong as a fortress, with open spaces and gardens on either side of the main complex, while behind the palace long gardens extended down to the Nile. The palace faced the enormous, vaguely triangular Esbekiya Square, which, as events soon proved, provided an ideal field of fire in the event of an emergency, as well as an excellent area for reviewing and staging troops and mounting artillery batteries. Given the confines of the capital, it was probably the best strategically situated mansion in the Cairo area, with the added attraction of having larger buildings nearby that could be taken over by Berthier’s large staff and Napoleon’s elite personal guard, his Guides.

  As head of the army of occupation, Napoleon decided to run the country on three different levels: the military, to “pacify” unconquered areas, followed by their consolidation by a military governor; through Muslim institutions and their officials (primarily over local, municipal, or provincial, and religious affairs); and ultimately by means of a purely French civil administration that reported, and was directly responsible to, Napoleon alone.

  The military phase of operations was more or less self-explanatory, but the Muslim-Egyptian level required some consideration. Napoleon created a new puppet nine-man Egyptian divan, or municipal council, to cope with the daily administration of the capital and its population of three hundred thousand. This council was responsible for assuring the city’s food supplies, policing, local tax collection, and public sanitation, while at the same time giving the Cairene residents the appearance of maintaining their own traditional institutions independent of the French.

  First convened at five o’clock on the afternoon of July 25, only three days after the victorious French had swept into Cairo, the new divan was ordered to take the “Oath of Allegiance” to the French, promising “to do nothing to harm the army’s interests.” Time and again Napoleon insisted on the necessity of respecting local institutions and of establishing good public relations. The divan was to begin functioning at once, meeting daily at noon thereafter.[223] The new commandant of Cairo, General Dupuy, in addition to thousands of French troops, was given five Turkish companies with which to police the city’s streets and markets. Similar divans and Egyptian police companies were gradually established in each newly secured province of the country, but with the difference that an intendant — in fact an Egyptian Copt (Christian) — was named to second the military governor in Egyptian administration and the collection of taxes, he in turn seconded by a French understudy who would one day replace him.[224] Ultimately there would be sixteen such provincial intendants under the orders of an intendant-general in Cairo, who was directly under French orders.

  In addition to the military administration of the country, Napoleon created a powerful three-man Administrative Commission to sit in Cairo, composed of Monge, Berthollet, and Charles Magallon.[225] They were in charge of sequestering all Mameluke property and funds in the country, of collecting the nation’s taxes, “direct and indirect,” and of all national property and warehouses in general. At the same time Napoleon gave them the authority to appoint the various officials and subcommissions required to execute this vast undertaking, which included the naming of the intendants. These three men were to receive a special, separate civil salary for this time-consuming work (although Monge would soon also be appointed to a separate scientific task — as director of the Egyptian Institute). The commission carried out its tasks efficiently, seizing, organizing, and administering vast amounts of property, while appointing the new intendant-general and the first six intendants (chiefly tax collectors) in August.

  While ordering the seizure of all Mameluke property, including tens of thousands of their slaves, as “national property,” Napoleon tried to assure the Egyptian population that as a part of his national policy, he would respect and maintain their historical institutions, including the traditional sharia civil courts. He also assured them that their title to personal real estate would be respected; however, innovations would be introduced.

  What the French needed most desperately at this stage was hard cash. Thus the pressing work given Monge’s Administrative Commission to seize all the government warehouses, whose contents would be sold and converted to cash or else — if in the form of useful commodities, such as food and clothing — distributed among the French army.[226] Taxes and customs duties would have to be collected, of course, and new money minted.

  But as both Ibrahim and Murad Bey had managed to escape with most of the city’s treasury holdings, beginning July 31 Napoleon issued a series of orders demanding immediate payment of more than three million French francs, chiefly from the wealthiest merchants of the country. All this was exclusive of large amounts seized from Mamelukes or extorted from important merchants of Cairo (those who monopolized the soap, sugar, and cloth markets), and of course exclusive of the regular tax collections, which were to follow.[227]

  Nor could the army, with its own special needs, be forgotten. Napoleon ordered the creation of new barracks and more important, four new military hospitals for the Cairo area, totaling six hundred beds, to be operational within one week.[228] The construction of more large ovens by the engineers, to help feed the hungry troops, was also given top priority. What is more, Napoleon insisted on bread of “the highest quality.” If the troops were well fed, he argued, they would not complain. And the men thus were not to be shortchanged by thieving civilian commissioners. The problem of theft in and by the army was rampant, but of particular immediate concern were Egyptian horses stolen or seized by French troops in or after battle, which were badly needed by the s
till largely unmounted French cavalry. Once in a while the Order of the Day contained lighter elements, though certainly not intended as such by the humorless Berthier: “Brigadier General Belliard has lost his greyhound. He asks anyone knowing anything of its whereabouts to notify him.”[229]

  Initial troop dispositions included Desaix’s division camped upriver, south of Giza (preparatory to launching the attack against Murad Bey and his army); while General Bon’s division occupied Cairo proper, supported by Menou’s old division in nearby “Old Cairo” and Dugua’s Division at the capital’s river port of Bulaq; while on the eastern side of Cairo, Reynier’s division straddled the desert route to Suez. Many units of these divisions would soon be dispersed in all directions in the expanding pacification effort. Meanwhile, in addition to everything else, Chief of Staff Berthier was given the complex and time-consuming task of organizing a mammoth central army camp at Giza, on the other side of the Nile, where hospitals, artillery and transport parks, and engineering and munitions depots were being built and fortified.

  A constant flow of complaints about unruly French troops and even officers continued to reach Berthier, including confidential reports about seditious acts and materials encouraged and distributed by officers — all critical of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Even the daily routine ol administering the army proved difficult; Dugua, Reynier, and Desaix regularly sending in sloppy reports or none at all, leaving Berthier frustrated and ignorant of troop levels and movements.[230]

  Furthermore, the hitherto-much-praiscd Ordonnateur en Chef Sucy was in charge of supplying an army spread over thousands of square miles. Soon complaints started reaching GHQ that materiel and food shipments frequently were not reaching their destinations, particularly along the coast between Damietta and Alexandria. It would take several months before the full extent of Sucy’s illegal seizure and sale of army property to the black market was fully disclosed and documented.

  Meanwhile, with the regrouping of the army at the Egyptian capital, Napoleon now had to arrange for the complete subjugation of the country, for despite his letters to the Directory not even Rosetta and Damietta were secured. In fact the route the army had just taken, from Alexandria to Cairo, was under daily attack, involving French convoys. Even several army couriers dispatched to and from headquarters were killed — including one of Napoleon’s favorite aides-de-camp, Julien — requiring beefed-up military escorts. While General Menou was still trying to cope with Egyptian dissi-dence around Rosetta, including the Nile passage up to Rahmaniya, General Vial was being dispatched to Damietta to secure that port and its valuable food depots. Zayoncheck was ordered to Menouf and the Delta to establish a French presence there, preparatory to securing the entire Damietta branch of the river and the interior, and expanding eastward.

  In other words, despite his great victory at the Battle of the Pyramids, apart from a few strategic positions, including Alexandria and Cairo, the country was openly at war with the French army. No area was safe from uncoordinated small attacks. In addition there remained the two organized Mameluke armies still at large, those of Ibrahim Bey to the northeast of Cairo and of Murad Bey, following the Nile and network of canals south to al-Fayyum, Asyut, and even Aswan.

  As for troops, of the thirty-three thousand or so men with whom Napoleon had set out fom Abukir Bay at the beginning of July, only about twenty thousand were actually available (with perhaps another six thousand in hospitals, on garrison duty, or otherwise detached). Berthier presented these shocking figures to Bonaparte on August 18. The results and implications were inescapable. He had lost seven thousand men in less than two months. Needless to say, the report was not passed on to Paris.

  Despite the crude reality of having invaded and seized a foreign country, or perhaps because of this blatant aggression, Napoleon in later years emphasized what another generation would refer to as the French “mission civilisatrice” in the backward land of the pharaohs. He brought modern medicine, he boasted, not to mention a focus of attention on Egyptological studies, through the French discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799, by Captain Bouchard, and artist Vivant Denon’s discoveries at numerous splendid temple ruins at Thebes, Luxor, and Karnak (including the famous obelisks brought back to France and placed in the Tuileries Gardens and the Place de la Concorde). But perhaps Napoleon’s greatest and most persistent personal claim concerned the founding of the Institut d’Egypte, in his eyes his finest civilizing accomplishment.[231]

  Outwardly the creation of the Egyptian Institute on August 22, 1798, appeared a public relations contrivance, something to look good in the eyes of the Directory, the French people, and history, as well as to impress the Egyptians. It was in fact much more, directly and indirectly, thanks to the participation and work of Monge, Berthollet, and their colleagues. Monge in particular, who now saw Bonaparte almost daily in Cairo, had gradually influenced him as to the practical importance of having intellectuals (as opposed to politicians) serving as a guiding force in the formulation of a government and its direction and implementation. Bonaparte, who always preferred to think of himself as a savant, if somewhat manqué (he even signed most of his military orders with his title as member of the French Institute), likewise chose to associate with these intellectuals and scientists in his spare hours, rather than with rough soldiers. After witnessing all the work done by the scientific committee on behalf of war materiel production during the Revolution, both Bonaparte and Monge felt that these same scientists could be of similar use in this campaign.

  Officially the institute had three general purposes: to propagate modern knowledge and technology throughout Egypt; to carry out research on natural history, industry, and the history of Egypt; and “to advise the government on the various problems put to it.”[232] The last was in fact its principal task, serving as Egypt’s first fully organized think tank on scientific matters.

  The institute included four general divisions: mathematics (which included Bonaparte and Monge), physics, political economy (including former Executive Director Tallien, who had saved Josephine’s life), and literature and the arts (including Vivant Denon, the future director of the Louvre). Short of qualified members, Bonaparte enlisted members of his staff and of the army.

  The full-time civilian members were given quarters in the sequestered Mameluke palaces of Qassim Bey and Hassan Kashaf, a couple of miles south of the Elfi palace.[233] These two palaces served as living quarters for Berthollet and Monge, among others. They also housed botanical, physical, and chemistry laboratories, all the scientific collections made in the field, not to mention halls for the study and collection of Egyptian antiquities, as well as an already impressive research library in Latin, Greek, and Arabic.

  The institute convened on August 23, with Monge, its first president, introducing the opening ceremonies, though it was clearly dominated by Bonaparte. He immediately set about assigning his advisory board its initial prosaic tasks — to improve army bread ovens for greater efficiency and productivity, study possible substitutes for hops in the preparation of beer for the troops, find the best means of purifying drinking water taken from the Nile, study the most practical choice of mills to be used in Egypt (water- or wind-powered), prepare for the production of gunpowder using Egyptian saltpeter deposits, along with the nonscientific but much more important question of what sort of judicial (civil and criminal) and educational systems to adopt in Egypt.[234] Bonaparte himself appeared at the institute several times a week, a pleasant diversion and civilized break from GHQ.

  The institute proved of considerable practical help to Napoleon in coping with the technical problems facing him and the army, at the same time confirming the irrefutable establishment of Gaspard Monge as his second-in-command, on the civilian scene at least. As already noted, Monge, as a senior member of the separate political Administrative Commission, controlled most of the “native” administrative apparatus of Egypt. He now coordinated all scientific research in the country as well.

  To go back a bit
, after the Abukir naval disaster, the celebrations of Napoleon’s twenty-ninth birthday on August 15 were hardly festive. Not even his nine aides-de-camp, including his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, or his ever-ailing and morose younger brother Louis Bonaparte, were able to offer more than perfunctory best wishes. The shadow of the naval defeat seemed to hang over everything. The drastically altered situation of Napoleon’s army and position in the Middle East, with Egypt now literally isolated by a powerful British naval presence on the loose and unchallenged in the Mediterranean, forced Napoleon to scrap all his plans, including those for a campaign against India.

  Napoleon had hoped to return to France with the conquest of Malta and the seizure of Egypt to his credit — and, as the conquering hero of the hour, seize the government. That was now impossible, the destruction of his fleet offsetting all previous victories. He needed fresh conquests, something really startling, before returning to Paris. What could be more dramatic than the seizure of the Holy Land, Damascus, and Constantinople itself?

  The fact of the matter is that the publicly victorious Bonaparte had entered his newly captured capital of Cairo privately an unhappy, indeed disgruntled man, as no conquering hero should have been. Bourrienne and Monge were among the few who knew the reason for Napoleon’s funk. To be sure, he found an Egypt with far greater and more complex problems than he had anticipated, including the total miscalculation of the resistance of the Egyptian people. But just as the lovesick Berthier was officially asking permission to return to Europe and the arms of his lovely Italian mistress, Countess Visconti, so too Napoleon now wanted to return to France because of — but not to — Josephine.

  It all stemmed from a remark by one of his young aides-de-camp, Junot, regarding Josephine and the flagrant affair she was still having with Hippolyte Charles. To Napoleon, who had thought that nightmare was over, it came as a severe blow. A much-embarrassed Julien and General Berthier, when confronted by an irate Napoleon, had admitted that everyone was talking about it and that they had personally seen Josephine and Charles together often during the Italian campaign.[235] “All has been revealed,” Napoleon wrote to his brother. “It’s a sad situation to have so many conflicting sentiments about a single person in one’s heart.”[236] The situation was eating away at Napoleon, giving him no moment of rest, and — combined with the disastrous naval news from Alexandria — proved a double shock with which he found it hard to come to grips. He had to revise his thinking yet again.