There he was held up for only two days before Hassan Abu found for them another ship which was about to sail up the Red Sea for Suez; but, in this part of Roger’s journey, luck was against him. The vessel was not only dirty and uncomfortable, but proved much slower than the one in which he had spent fourteen days between Surat and Berbera. Worse still, four days north of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb she became becalmed for a whole week.
The heat was intolerable. It had been bad enough during the middle of the day when crossing central India but, hot as that had been, it was no more than a gentle warmth compared to this. The sails hung slack, the sun blazed down, thinning the stagnant air into a degree at which it lacked all reviving properties when breathed in and, instead, felt like a draught of molten copper. The deck was so hot that even the hardened feet of the Arab sailors would have blistered had they crossed it, and the only moving things in the vessel for hours on end were the hordes of flies, which enjoyed a happy immunity because their victims were too exhausted by the heat to drive them off.
At last a light breeze enabled the ship to make headway again, but their progress continued to be slow, and the heat so sweltering that Roger reckoned he must have lost a stone in weight during the best part of the month it took him to journey up the Red Sea.
After a night in Suez, Hassan Abu secured camels for them and they joined the daily caravan that was about to set out for Cairo. Again, it proved a slow and uncomfortable method of travelling, so, after an hour or so, Roger suggested to Hassan that they should let their ungainly beasts trot and press on alone. But the young Arab would not hear of it, insisting that, if they left the protection provided by the caravan, desert robbers would certainly capture and hold them to ransom if not kill them. In consequence, the journey took them three gruelling days and it was not until July 10th that they reached Cairo.
On arriving in that fabulous city, Roger was torn between the desire to remain there a while, so that he could see some of its marvels, and the urge to settle his account with Malderini. It was now over three months since Clarissa had died, so his mind was no longer numb with the ache of losing her; but he still wore the rope of her hair round his neck and had vowed not to take it off until he had killed the fiend who, by his abominable rites, had brought about her death.
The question was decided for him by a most unpleasant bout of stomach upset that laid him out entirely for twenty-four hours. After it he was so exhausted that he felt it would be foolish not to allow himself a few days to recover. During them, by carefully observing and following the behaviour of the Mohammedans, he was able to mingle unsuspected with the crowds of worshippers in several of the great mosques and so see their beautiful interiors. He also made an excursion out to the Pyramids and another down the Nile to Memphis, the ancient capital of the Pharaohs.
As the Delta was highly populated, there was little fear of two travellers being attacked by robbers while riding through it; and, having had more than enough of the discomfort of travelling by camel, Roger bought two horses on which, on the 16th, they set out for Alexandria. Two nights later they reached that splendid city by the sea, and next morning, having at last exhausted the gold that Rai-ul-daula had pressed upon him, he went to a Greek banker named Sarodopulous to change one of his bills on London.
A clerk took the bill into an inner office and the banker himself came out holding it. He was a handsome middle-aged man, with a greying beard. Giving Roger a suspicious glance he asked him how it had come into his possession.
‘It was issued to me by Messrs. Hoare’s bank in London against my own account,’ Roger replied. Then, knowing that most educated Greeks were multi-lingual, he added in English, ‘I may not look it at the moment, but I am an Englishman.’
‘Forgive me, Sir,’ Sarodopulous bowed, ‘but until you spoke I would not have known it. And it is unusual for Arabs to present bills drawn on London. I thought perhaps …’
‘No,’ Roger smiled, ‘it’s not stolen. I am wearing these clothes only because I have travelled up from Berbera. Now that I am once more in a cosmopolitan city, I must get myself something more in keeping with my nationality.’
‘Perhaps I can be of service to you?’ offered the Greek.
Roger thanked him, and went on to compliment the banker on the exceptionally fluent way in which he spoke English.
‘For that there is a simple explanation.’ Sarodopulous showed two rows of fine white teeth in a quick laugh. ‘My wife is English.’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he added, There is nothing she enjoys more than conversing with her countrymen, and I should be honoured if you would care to dine with us.’
Having gladly accepted, that afternoon Roger presented himself at a large white villa, set among palm trees and having a fine view over the lovely bay. Mrs. Emily Sarodopulous proved to be a woman of about forty who evidently had been very good-looking, but she was now enormously fat. Judging by the richness of the dinner she provided, and the way she tucked into it herself, the reason for her bulk was not far to seek; but she had retained an active mind and a passionate attachment to the country of her birth.
Roger soon learned that she was a Suffolk woman, and the daughter of a sea-captain. Some twenty years earlier her father had taken her with him on a voyage and their ship had been wrecked off the coast of Libya. Sarodopulous’s firm had been the agents for the ship’s owners and, while taking care of her survivors, the young Alexandrian Greek had fallen in love with the pretty English castaway. Their attitude to one another showed that neither had ever regretted it.
As Roger was ten months behind with events in Europe, he naturally plied his host and hostess with many eager questions; and, owing to Sarodopulous’s banking connections all over the Mediterranean, he could not have found a better man in Alexandria to bring him up to date.
In October the Archduke Charles had severely defeated the French armies on the Rhine, and this had enabled him to send strong reinforcements down to Italy in the hope of relieving General Würmser, who was besieged in. Mantua by General Buonaparte. But the new Austrian Commander-in-Chief, General Alvintzy, had not proved equal to the task.
Early in November Buonaparte, by a series of swift unexpected moves, had tempted Alvintzy into giving battle in an unfavourable position. Würmser, in a sortie from Mantua, and General Davidovich, with a third Austrian army, had both attempted to come to the assistance of their Commander-in-Chief, but the youthful Corsican had outgeneralled all three old men. There had been three days of desperate fighting at the bridge and across the dykes at Arcola, resulting in a great French victory.
In the depths of winter, Alvintzy had made another bid to relieve Mantua by a strong feint across the lower Adige and attacking with his main force farther north-west at Rivoli. This led to complete disaster for the Austrians. Having utterly shattered their main army on January 13th, Buonaparte did a lightning swing which compelled the surrender of the lesser. On February 2nd, Würmser surrendered Mantau with a further 18,000 men, 315 cannon and an immense quantity of munitions.
Meanwhile, stung into open hostility by the outrageous demands of France’s atheist Government, the Pope had sent his army marching northwards. Having dealt with the Austrians, Buonaparte turned upon it. At the sight of the French bayonets, the Papal forces fled. On February 19th, His Holiness had been forced to buy peace by the payment of a heavy indemnity and the giving up of many of his finest art treasures.
During these months, too, the French agents had been looting all the great cities of Italy of pictures, statues, manuscripts and plate, and sending hundreds of wagonloads of them back to Paris; so that after the surrender of the Pope, Buonaparte had been able to write to the Directory that his victories would yield to France ‘almost every fine thing in Italy, except a few objects at Turin and Naples’.
After Alvintzy’s defeat at Rivoli, the Archduke Charles had taken over from him, but even his ability and prestige could not restore Austria’s fortunes. Hoche’s final pacification of La Vendée the prec
eding autumn had enabled large reinforcements to be sent to Buonaparte, so he now commanded an army of 70,000 men, led by many of the brilliant soldiers who were to be his future Marshals—among them Berthier, Masséna, Augereau, Sérurier, Lannes, Marmont and Bernadotte. With the confidence imbued by the many victories in which they had participated under their young commander, they swept irresistibly forward, driving the Austrians before them out of the Venetian lands and right round the head of the Adriatic.
By the end of March, they had penetrated both the Tyrol and Carinthia. On the 30th of that month, Buonaparte drove the Archduke out of Klagenfurt and established his headquarters there, while his spearheads were advancing through Austria. By April 7th he had pushed on to Judenburg, barely a hundred miles from Vienna.
But by then his army was almost as exhausted as that of the Archduke’s; so they agreed to a week’s truce. Had the French armies on the Rhine been able to play their part in Buonaparte’s great plan, and join him in the Tyrol, there could be no doubt that he would have dictated peace in the Austrian capital; but they had failed him lamentably. Rather than risk defeat at the very end of his brilliant campaign, without deigning to consult his nominal masters in Paris, he had on April 18th signed peace preliminaries with Austria at Leoben.
When the Greek had concluded his account of Buonaparte’s victories, Roger asked if negotiations were in progress for a general peace; and on learning that they were not, he said glumly, ‘Hard pressed as Austria was, one would have expected the Emperor to make some effort towards that end before abandoning the alliance. We could long since have made peace had we not stuck out for the return to him of his Belgian lands; and now we’re left to fight the French on our own.’
‘The Austrians excuse themselves by maintaining that the British abandoned them. No doubt you will not have heard it; but the Fleet was withdrawn from the Mediterranean last November.’
‘Hell’s bells!’ Roger exclaimed in dismay. ‘Then things are come to a pretty pass. What caused this pusillanimous decision?’
‘We count Admiral Hotham mainly to blame,’ Mrs. Sarodopulous told him. ‘He had numerous chances to smash the French while they were still weak, but failed to take them. Then the entry of Spain into the war gave our enemies a big superiority in ships, if not in their fighting power. Admiral Jervis superseded Hotham, and might have retrieved the situation, but Admiral Mann, who commanded the supporting squadron, and was to join him off Corsica, arrived there without stores, so had to return to Gibraltar. There he lost his nerve, and was chased home by the Spaniards. Jervis was by then so heavily outnumbered that he had no option but to take his fleet out into the Atlantic’
‘At least, my dear,’ put in her husband, ‘we can cheer Mr. Brook a little by telling him of Admiral Jervis’s splendid victory over the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent, last February. With fifteen ships, he defeated twenty-five Spaniards so severely that the Spanish fleet will not dare another encounter for a long time yet. I’m told he’s been made Earl St. Vincent for it, though half the glory should go to his second in command, little Commodore Nelson, for having boldly left station at a critical moment of the battle and broken right through the Spanish line.’
‘Thank God for that’. Roger sighed. ‘Such a crippling blow to the Spanish Fleet makes the invasion of England somewhat less likely.’
‘I’d not be sure of that.’ the Greek replied soberly. ‘There is great discontent in Ireland, and last December the French attempted an invasion of that country, counting upon being well received there, and hoping to make it a base for an attack on England. A fleet of forty-five vessels was despatched from Brest under Admiral Morad de Galles, with General Hoche in command of the troops they carried. They dodged Lord Bridport’s fleet and got clear away into the Atlantic. But God intervened. Only some half of the French ships reached Bantry Bay; the rest, and among them that carrying Hoche, the Irish leader Wolf Tone, the money and the plans, were dispersed by a great storm. Many were wrecked; the rest crept back into Brest during January.’
Roger nodded. ‘That was truly a merciful deliverance. What a pity though that, with so many troops on board, our Channel Fleet failed to catch them.’
Mrs. Sarodopulous gave him a troubled glance. ‘All has been far from well with the Channel Fleet. In April, on returning to Spithead, it mutinied.’
‘At that I am not altogether surprised,’ Roger said after a moment; ‘an outbreak of the kind has long threatened. My father is a Rear Admiral, and he has often told me of the inhumanity with which the common seamen are treated. When the pay of the troops was raised, theirs was not; should they become incapacitated from wounds, they are frequently turned off to starve; the food given them is often scarcely fit for animals; many Captains treat their men with great brutality; and such major punishments as a flogging round the fleet are little less than murder. Their grievances are many and well founded. Yet, with Britain’s fortunes at so low an ebb, this could hardly have happened at a worse time.’
‘On both counts you are right,’ agreed the Greek. ‘And, alas, from my latest intelligence, things have become worse instead of better. In May, the mutiny spread to the Nore and some crews there, having put their officers ashore, even went to the length of running up the red flag. Yet more alarming still is Britain’s financial state. Her shipments of gold in recent years to her allies on the Continent have so impoverished her that last February there were fears for the solvency of the Bank of England. For some days, Mr. Pitt was faced with the worst financial crisis London has known for many years. He has temporarily restored the situation by the issue of a Patriotic Loan, to which there was a fine response; but all over Europe the confidence of bankers in Britain’s stability has been badly shaken.’
After listening to all this news of defeat and disaster, Roger felt that, short of collapse, he could not have returned to find his country in a worse mess. Shying away from this depressing thought, when they had left the dining-room and settled themselves on a terrace to enjoy the sea-breeze after the long hot day he asked:
‘What part, if any, has the Serene Republic played in these events?’
Sarodopulous shrugged. ‘None. Who could have expected otherwise? The Venetians of old were a great and proud people, but for a century past they have been unworthy of their ancestors. Too much money from great estates on the mainland which they have long neglected, gambling, women, music, the playhouse, dabbling with the occult; all these have drained away their courage, patriotism and pride. At General Buonaparte’s bidding the Serenissima handed over all its strong, places and disbanded its famous Slavonian levies. But they have since paid the price for their poltroonery.’
The fools might have known from Buonaparte’s treatment of the people of Milan that licking his boots would not save them.’ Roger gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Can one imagine that Corsican brigand refraining from despoiling so fabulously rich a city once it had opened its gates to him? I’ll wager there is hardly a Titian, Tintoretto or Bellini left in it by now.’
‘His hand fell on them far more heavily than that,’ remarked Mrs. Sarodopulous quickly. ‘He abolished the Serenissima!’
‘What say you, Madame?’ Roger stared at her in amazement. ‘I’d not have thought that even he would go to such lengths. The Serene Republic has lasted a thousand years. It was as much a permanent feature of Europe as Portugal, the Netherlands or Sweden. Surely you cannot mean that, even subject to his will, it no longer has a government?’
‘There is no longer a Doge; the Senate is no more. Instead, General Buonaparte has given the city a Municipality on the French lines, made up of criminals and atheists.’
‘On what excuse did he do this terrible thing?’
‘The people on the mainland were driven to desperation by pillaging and raping by his troops. On Easter Monday the men of Verona rose and massacred the French garrison. The rising was, of course, swiftly put down; but General Buonaparte charged the Senate with having inspired it. Rather than take up arms while th
ey still had them, they agreed to his demand that the ancient State should commit suicide by voting themselves out of existence.’
‘When was this?’
‘In mid-May. Since then the city has been ruled by its Municipals, dancing to the tune of their French masters; and all the Venetian lands west of the Adriatic have been split up into Communes on the French model.’
‘This suits me ill,’ Roger said thoughtfully. ‘I am on my way to Venice, and now the French control the place for me to enter it as an Englishman would be to invite arrest.’
‘Why, then, not go there as an Arab?’ Sarodopulous suggested.
Roger passed his hand over the beard that he had not yet had an opportunity to shave off. ‘Perhaps; but no! I wish to avoid notice as much as possible. As an Arab, in a European city, I should be much too conspicuous.’
‘Not in Venice,’ countered the Greek. The Queen of the Adriatic has for so many centuries been the gateway into Europe from the East that its population is more mixed than that of any other city. As slaves, seamen, or traders, as many coloured men have found their way there as there are Europeans in Alexandria. If you took a cargo of some sort with you, and arrived as an Arab merchant, the port officials would not give you a second glance.’
‘I am no merchant,’ Roger smiled, ‘and I would, at least, have to make a pretence of disposing of the goods I had brought. I fear my fumbling efforts to do so would soon arouse the suspicions of the Venetian merchants to whom I tried to sell them.’
Sarodopulous remained silent for a moment; then he said, ‘I have it. You could go as a perfume seller. Such a cargo would take little space and Eastern perfumes always find a ready sale in Europe, so you might even make a handsome profit on your investment. You would stand no risk of dickering with Venetian merchants, either; for you could dispose of your wares by making a round of the palaces and selling them direct to ladies of fashion.’
The Rape of Venice Page 38