Beware of Heroes

by Peter Shankland

  Although Barras had delivered them from the Reign of Terror his despotic rule was resented by the majority of the people of France. He had only one thing to offer them as consolation for all their distresses — Glory! The victories of the Republican armies. Bonaparte needed victories also, but there was peace on the continent of Europe and it was necessary to look for an enemy farther afield.

  He wrote to General Bourrienne soon after his return from Italy:

  Were I to remain in Paris doing nothing I should be lost. In this great Babylon everything wears out; my glory has already disappeared.

  He had been given command of the army concentrated at Boulogne for the invasion of England, but he thought that the enterprise without the command of the sea would be unlikely to succeed. His letter to Bourrienne went on:

  This little Europe does not supply enough glory for me. I must seek it in the East. All great fame comes from that quarter...

  After long argument and discussion he persuaded the Directory to change its plans, and the Army of England became the Army of the East. His appearance with Barras at the Théâtre de la Nation was his last act before leaving Paris; at the end of the performance he stepped into his travelling coach with Josephine who was to accompany him as far as Toulon. A second coach contained their baggage and three staff-officers, Bourrienne, Duroc and Lavalette. Next morning, with cavalry escort, they passed through Fontainebleau while the prisoner of war camp there was being ransacked in the abortive hunt for Sidney Smith; the British prisoners heard the cheers as the coaches lumbered through the village.

  Bonaparte had not expected, while planning his great enterprise, that the British fleet, because of its lack of bases, would be able to intervene effectively; but while he was driving south through France, causing a flutter of excitement in each town on his route — Auxerre, Châlon, Lyon, Valence, Avignon — orders dated 29th April were on their way from Whitehall to Admiral Lord St. Vincent to sail into the Mediterranean with his whole fleet — it was then based on Lisbon and blockading Cadiz. Alternatively he might send a detached force of not less than thirteen ships of the line which should be commanded by Sir Horatio Nelson. Reinforcements would be sent out from England to make this move possible. The principal object would be to destroy the armament then preparing at Toulon; the secondary object, to encourage the other Continental powers to form a new coalition against France.

  Admiral St. Vincent had, in part, anticipated these orders; he had sent Nelson to make a reconnaissance in the Mediterranean with three ships of the line, two frigates and a sloop to obtain information regarding the objectives of the French expedition, either by picking up prizes or by speaking to neutral vessels. Nelson parted company with the fleet that was blockading Cadiz and sailed for Gibraltar on the same fateful day, 2nd May, upon which Bonaparte left Paris to attempt the conquest of the East, and upon which the escape of the prisoners from the Temple was discovered.

  On the day after Sir Sidney’s arrival in London, the travelling coach brought General Bonaparte to Toulon (9th May, 1798). The fleet and arsenal had been repaired and rebuilt, the harbour was crowded with his ships, and there was no enemy in sight. He had an army of 32,000 men with forty siege guns, sixty field guns, two companies of sappers and a bridging train. Every department of France had contributed to the cost of this armament, a huge contribution had been levied on subjugated Rome, and the treasuries of the Swiss cantons had been rifled.

  Bonaparte’s hero was Alexander the Great: he had made an intensive study of his campaigns and noted particularly the permanence of the Greek conquests in the East. Even 400 years later the diffusion of Greek civilisation and language had been an important factor in the spread of Christianity in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt. In emulation, therefore, of Alexander he had included a hundred savants in his expedition — experts in chemistry, astronomy, agriculture, mineralogy; and also poets, surveyors and skilled artificers. He intended Egypt to be a truly French colony, a France in miniature. For his personal use he took a library of 355 volumes, including the lives of great generals and conquerors, the voyages of Captain Cook, the letters of Oliver Cromwell, and forty volumes of English novels in translation. Among the books of poetry, his favourite was MacPherson’s Ossian: he read it constantly, his proclamations to his army echoed its declamatory style. He also had the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, all classified under ‘Politics’.

  His troops were veterans of the army of Italy, and of General Kléber’s Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, but many were dissatisfied, particularly those who had come back from Italy laden with plunder, because they had expected a longer spell of easy garrison duty in France. There was also a shortage of seamen: so many of the ships’ crews had deserted that detachments of soldiers had been sent far and wide to press longshoremen and fishermen into the service, and many Italian ships with Italian crews were forced to act as transports.

  On the afternoon of his arrival at Toulon, he addressed his troops as follows: ‘Soldiers! You are a wing of the Army of England. You have campaigned in the mountains and in the plains. You have now to fight at sea. Europe is watching you! You have a destiny to fulfil, battles to fight, dangers and privations to endure. The fortunes of France and the happiness of mankind are in your hands.’ He promised to every man sufficient prize money to buy six acres of land on his return home. On hearing this good news, the army cheerfully embarked.

  On 19th May the French fleet sailed from Toulon — thirteen ships of the line, nine frigates and 232 transports. Nelson’s three ships had been sighted in the offing; but during the night of the 20th these were struck by a gale and driven far from their cruising ground, Nelson’s ship, the Vanguard, being dismasted. With great difficulty she was brought to a safe anchorage at the Island of San Pietro, south of Sardinia, where the crews refitted her in record time. On the 24th she was at sea again, looking for the French fleet. On 7th June, off Toulon, Nelson was reinforced by Troubridge with ten ships of the line — so St. Vincent’s initial mistake of sending him into the Mediterranean with a force too weak to attempt anything against the French armada, and too cumbersome for reconnaissance, was rectified; except that Nelson was deprived of his scouting vessels because the frigates, having parted company during the gale, had mistaken their orders and returned to Gibraltar.

  Thus the French fleet moved on undisturbed and unreported along the coasts of France and Italy, picking up more convoys laden with troops and military supplies, until it reached Malta, Bonaparte’s first objective. The fortifications were almost impregnable, but as everything had been arranged beforehand the Grand Master, de Hompssch surrendered the island on 11th June for the promise of a large pension after the merest pretence of resistance. When the Chief Engineer of the expedition, General Gaffarelli, saw the strength of the great walls and defensive works he remarked, ‘It was lucky there was someone inside to open the gates for us!’

  Nelson learnt of the surrender of Malta on 22nd June, off Cape Passaro, Sicily, and also that the French fleet had been sighted farther east. He concluded, therefore, that it was bound for Egypt and made all sail for Alexandria, sending on ahead his solitary scouting vessel, the brig, La Mutine, commanded by Hardy. The fleets were so close to each other next day that the French heard the British signal guns. With even one frigate to scout for him, Nelson would most probably have found them.

  He arrived at Alexandria on the 29th: his enemies were not there. Hardy in La Mutine was waiting for him off Pharos. He reported that the governor, Said Mahommed Kerim, had refused to give permission for the British to wait in Alexandria or to purchase supplies. He had not believed the story of the threatened invasion.

  ‘Go back to your ship,’ he had said, ‘and tell your commander that we are subjects of the Sultan of Turkey. Egypt has no concern with you or the French.’

  Although the governor, in spite of his rash words, had no power to prevent him from waiting there, or from taking what supplies he wanted, Nelson ignored the unfriendly m
essage and sailed away to look for the invasion fleet along the coasts of Syria, and Asia Minor, and Crete, and Sicily. The governor watched his ships vanish below the horizon to the northeast, and then the sails of the French came up to the north-west.

  Regretting too late that he had sent the English away, he tried to organise a defence. He had a garrison of only 500 militia who had little military experience or training. He issued muskets and ammunition to all citizens of military age, and he formed working parties of women and the older men to construct an earthwork. He found some ancient cannons in the arsenal and had them placed on the walls; they had no undercarriages, and there was nothing to fire from them but stones. Egypt had not been invaded for nearly 300 years. Time and the weather had made breaches in the walls, and no one had thought of repairing them. He despatched messengers to Cairo, the capital and seat of government, begging for help, and describing the French fleet as being ‘without beginning and without end’.

  Bonaparte had had an address to his troops printed on board the flagship L’Orient to explain to them the purpose and the significance of the expedition:

  Soldiers! You are going to undertake a conquest the effects of which upon commerce and civilisation will be incalculable. You will give the English a most grievous blow which will be followed up by their destruction. We shall have some fatiguing marches — we shall fight several battles — we shall succeed in all our enterprises. The destinies are in our favour...The first city we shall arrive at was built by Alexander, and at every step we take we shall find objects to excite our emulation.

  On learning from the French Consul, who came out to meet him, that the British fleet had been there, Bonaparte would not delay his landing even by a few hours in case it should return. Although the weather was deteriorating and there was a heavy sea running, he got his men ashore during the night of 1st July at Marabout Beach, eight miles west of the city. As soon as he had 4,000 men with him, he ordered the advance to begin. For the French soldiers their first sight of Alexandria was sufficiently discouraging: they saw a low desolate shore, a single tall column of stone and a vast empty desert beyond it. As they approached, some mouldering towers appeared, and long ruined walls with broken granite pillars sticking out of them like the guns of a man-o’-war. The great city had long ago fallen from its ancient glory. The main gates were not closed, and the slopes of the unfinished earthworks scarcely hindered their advance.

  The Egyptians defended their homes and mosques fiercely, but the invaders were being continually reinforced, and when many thousands of his people had been shot or bayonetted, the governor saw that there was no hope of saving the city, and he surrendered. The French had lost 200 killed. Among the wounded were General Kléber, the second-in-command, struck in the face by a bullet, and General Menou who was hit by a well-aimed stone.

  The transports were taken into the harbour and discharged as quickly as possible. Only the men-o’-war remained outside, waiting until soundings had been taken to find out if there was sufficient depth of water for them to enter.

  The authority of the Sultan, both as spiritual and temporal head of the Moslem world, was unquestioned in Egypt. The peasants, oppressed and tyrannised, did not blame him for their hard lot, they blamed their local rulers or the tax collectors whose severity varied greatly from place to place. The Sultan was represented in Cairo by a viceroy, called the Dewan. The country was divided into twenty-four districts, each ruled by a Mameluk bey, or baron. Seven of the principal beys formed a Council of State which had the right to veto the Dewan’s decisions.

  The real power, therefore, was vested in the Mameluks. They might have thrown off the yoke of the Sultan — if they could have agreed among themselves — but they preferred to acknowledge his suzerainty and to pay a heavy annual tribute in case they should be faced with a revolt and need him as an ally. They were a military order of renegades from many nations, and it was their custom to buy handsome boys in the slavemarkets, Armenians, Circassians, etc., and train them from their youth up as professional soldiers. They did not associate with the Egyptians, whom they despised. Their rule was first established in the year 1250.

  Like many other invaders Bonaparte wanted to persuade the conquered people that he came as a liberator. He distributed a proclamation, printed in Arabic on L’Orient’s printing press, in which he posed as the defender of the Egyptians against the Mameluks. He claimed that the French were true Moslems, and he boasted that he had destroyed the power of the Pope and expelled from Malta the order of Christian knights against whom the Moslems had waged war in vain for centuries. ‘In the name of Allah, the clement and merciful,’ he wrote, ‘there is no god but Allah. He has no son and he shares his power with no one.’ He proclaimed that all men are equal before Allah, and he ended in biblical style:

  Woe, woe, to those who side with the Mameluks and help them to make war on us. There shall be no salvation for them, and their memory shall be wiped out.

  It was a piece of charlatanry, he admitted to Comte de Las Cases, ‘but charlatanry of the highest sort’. To the Egyptians the statement that all men are equal was blasphemous: the Koran, the living word of God, admits of no equality between Moslem and non-Moslem, though all Moslems are equal in the sight of God.

  He said that he had come to punish the Mamelukes because they had insulted the French nation and oppressed the French merchants; and he claimed that the French were ‘the particular friends of His Majesty the Ottoman Sultan (may God perpetuate his rule!)’ It was a claim that, however improbable, could not be entirely disproved until news of the attack on Alexandria had reached Constantinople and messengers had returned with policy directives. This would take many days. The Alexandrians submitted, perforce, and bided their time. They were disarmed, except for the leaders: these were confirmed in the appointments they had held before the invasion and allowed to retain their weapons. Kerim was re-appointed governor, and the whole district was put under the command of General Kléber who was being left in Alexandria to recover from his wound.

  Bonaparte stayed in the city for only five days while his men camped in the filthy streets and squares in the jumble of squalid white houses. He sent a column under General Dugua along the coast to Rosetta which was occupied without resistance: it was four miles from the sea on the west bank of the Nile, and forty-five from Alexandria. He sent a flotilla of his smaller vessels there to serve as transports to carry his troops and stores up the Nile.

  On 7th July, having raised a forced loan and ordered all the Alexandrians to wear tricolour cockades in token of their submission — and their leaders tricolour sashes — he started with his main army on the most direct route to Cairo. This entailed marching for twenty-nine miles across an arid waste to Damanhur, and then for thirteen miles across partially cultivated ground to the Nile at Rahmaniya to rendezvous with the river column.

  The troops were inadequately supplied with food and water. They were expected, as usual, to live off the conquered territory; but the villages of miserable reed huts had been evacuated, the herds driven off and the infrequent wells blocked up or defiled. Each soldier carried his water bottle, and biscuits for four days; many of them, unused to the desert, drank the water on the first day and then threw away the biscuits which they couldn’t eat, because of their parched throats. At the halts they fought each other desperately to get at the dirty pools; about a hundred of them died of thirst or shot themselves in despair. Marauding Bedouins killed the stragglers and fired on the bivouacs at night, stampeding the horses. There was not even an ambulance wagon with the first two divisions. Two trusted generals, Lannes and Murat, threw down their tricolour cockades in fury and trampled them into the dust.

  In a state of exhaustion and near mutiny the troops reached Damanhur where they found some wheat. It was issued to them and they were told to grind it as best they could and bake it into cakes. They also found a store of lentils and a few head of cattle. On the evening of the 10th the first columns reached Rahmaniya and saw what appeared
to them to be a marvellous sight — water melons growing in profusion along the banks of the Nile.

  The river column with a strong breeze behind it got too far ahead: it ran into an ambush at the village of Shubrukit where it was attacked by a hostile flotilla. For some time it was in great danger, but an accidental explosion in an enemy vessel saved it. On the 13th it delivered supplies to the main army.

  On the 14th, Bonaparte, expecting to be attacked, formed his five infantry divisions into squares, each side three ranks deep, guns at the corners, staff and baggage in the centre. The savants, mounted on donkeys, were also in the centre. They advanced in this formation, an army of about 24,000 men. Their approach to Shubrukit was opposed by a troop of Mameluke cavalry about 800 strong — a spectacular array: the men were tall and handsome, and each carried a carbine, pistols, a lance or javelin and a scimitar or battle-axe. It was soon apparent that they knew nothing of modern battle tactics; they seemed capable of only one manoeuvre, that of galloping round and round their enemies, looking for a weak point to attack; but wherever they rode up to the French lines they were met by a steady fire of musketry and artillery. For three hours they thundered round the French squares on their magnificent Arab horses, their arms and coats of mail glittering in the sun, their silken robes of many colours floating behind them. Then they suddenly withdrew.