All trade in the Mediterranean must . . . pass into French hands. This is the secret wish of the Directory, and, moreover, it will be the inevitable result of our position in that sea . . . Egypt, a country France always has desired, belongs of necessity to the Republic. Fortunately the consistently insolent and atrocious attitude of the beys toward us and the Porte’s powerlessness to give us satisfaction have allowed us to introduce ourselves into Egypt and to fix ourselves there without exposing ourselves to the charges of lawlessness and ambition . . . The Directory is determined to maintain itself in Egypt by all possible means.
Following the news of the Battle of the Nile, the Turks steeled themselves to declare war on France, locking up the unfortunate envoy in a notorious dungeon, the Seven Towers. By thus swooping on Ottoman Egypt, the French had antagonized the Russians, who regarded themselves as the natural predators of the Ottoman empire, and set themselves up in rivalry for its carcass. The result was foreseeable: the Russians and the Turks, traditional enemies, now became allies against the French. The people of Malta also rose up against the French, who were confined to the towns there.
Napoleon blithely refused to believe the Turks had issued a firman that the Egyptians should rise up against the French. He seemed to believe that the Turks should welcome the French for seizing one of their provinces. Instead he issued detailed orders for purifying water and setting up windmills and water mills. He even on one occasion dressed up in a turban and kaftan – until his appalled staff officers talked him out of it.
Meanwhile he encouraged his scientists and scholars in the ‘Institute’ to pursue researches into Egypt. If there was to be one positive aspect of France’s Egyptian experience, it was the extraordinary work of the French Egyptologists, scientists, scholars and experts on that ill-fated expedition. A detailed map of Egypt was drawn up by his cartographers. Napoleon’s Egyptologists were transfixed when Captain Bouchard discovered the ‘Rosetta stone’, which proved much later to be the key to the ancient hieroglyphic Egyptian language. Napoleon meanwhile even offered to convert to Islam, provided he and his men were permitted to drink and were not subject to circumcision.
General Kléber, a more experienced general who was to succeed him in his command of Egypt, was bitterly critical of his methods:
Never a fixed plan. Everything goes by fits and starts. Each day’s business is transacted according to the needs of the day. He claims to believe in fate. He is incapable of organizing or administering anything; and yet, since he wants to do everything, he organizes and administers. Hence, chaos and waste everywhere. Hence our want of everything, and poverty in the midst of plenty. Is he loved? How could he be? He loves nobody. But he thinks he can make up for this by promotions and by gifts.
Many of Napoleon’s edicts were deeply unpopular – in particular the taxes to pay for his army. He also took measures to regulate, for sanitary reasons, the slaughter of lambs, which often took place in the streets of Cairo. This incensed many people, as did his removal of the gates separating the many parts of the city and the imposition of a tax on property. Ordinary Egyptians were shocked by the way Frenchwomen refused to wear veils and disported themselves in public: they were afraid that Egyptian women would be similarly corrupted.
Finally, on 21 October, the explosion occurred. Nicholas the Turk, the main Islamic chronicler of the French occupation, wrote:
One fine day some sheikh or other of El Azhar started to run through the streets, shouting, ‘Let all those who believe that there is but one God take themselves to the Mosque El Azhar! For today is the day to fight the Infidel.’ Now, although most of the population was informed [of what was about to happen], the French were living in utter unconcern. In an instant, the city was boiling over, and news of it came to General Dupuy [the commandant of Cairo]. He was a very hard man. He leapt to his feet. ‘What is going on?’ – ‘An uprising of the beggars of the city, who are gathered in the quarters of Khan Khalili and Nahhasin.’ He left instantly, followed by only five horsemen . . . He rode to Khan Khalili and saw the populace and some workingmen erecting barricades. A Janissary suddenly appeared from around a street corner and hit him over the back with a police stick. The general fell from his horse. His men carried him off . . . but he died on the way.
The mob ran wild, attacking the French quarter and sacking the house of General Cafarelli which contained many of the most cherished French scientific instruments.
Napoleon, in a towering rage, ordered artillery to be directed at the El Azhar mosque, the centre of the insurrection, and then sent three infantry battalions and 300 horse to attack it, under General Dumas. They forced their way through the narrow, chaotic streets. An Egyptian chronicler, El-Djabarti, wrote: ‘They entered the Mosque El Azhar with their horses and they tied them to the kiblah. They broke the lamps, the candles, and the desks of the students; they looted everything they could find in the closets; they threw on the ground the books and the Koran and trampled upon them with their boots. They urinated and spat in the mosque; they drank wine in it, and they broke the bottles and scattered the pieces in all the corners. They stripped everybody inside the mosque and took their clothes away.’
By the end of the following day, the insurrection was over, leaving some 3,000 Egyptians killed and 300 French dead. All those found carrying arms were executed, as were the members of the council of rebel leaders. ‘Every night,’ Napoleon boasted, ‘we have about thirty heads chopped off.’ It was a crowning display of ruthlessness, although he took no reprisals against ordinary people. Napoleon issued another megalomaniac pro-Islamic proclamation:
Sherifs, ulemas, preachers in the mosques, be sure to tell the people that those who, with a light heart, take sides against us shall find no refuge in either this world or the next. Is there a man so blind as not to see that destiny itself guides all my operations? . . . Let the people know that, from the creation of the world, it is written that after destroying the enemies of Islam and beating down the cross, I was to come from the confines of the Occident to accomplish my appointed task. Show the people that in more than twenty passages of the holy Koran what has happened has been foretold and what shall happen has been explained . . . If I chose, I could call each of you to account for the most hidden feelings of his heart, for I know everything, even what you have told to no one. But the day will come when all men shall see beyond all doubt that I am guided by orders from above and that all human efforts avail nought against me. Blessed are they who, in good faith, are the first to choose my side!
Napoleon seemed to win no local supporters through his loudly proclaimed tilt to Islam. Instead he merely witnessed the decline of his own forces. The Egyptian resistance had been emboldened by the destruction of the French fleet. As Nicholas the Turk put it: ‘[the people] knew for certain that the French had lost all hope of receiving aid from their own country . . . All we have to do is to resist them, to hold out against them, and we’ll be rid of them in the end, for whatever does not grow must diminish.’
Meanwhile a plague broke out: thanks to Napoleon’s own insistence upon hygiene, only 2,000 or so French troops were affected. Napoleon’s methods were characteristically thorough for his men: ‘Have them strip as naked as they were born and take a good sea bath. Make them rub themselves from head to foot, and make them wash their clothes . . . In consequence of the advice of the medical officers I ordered that all the buboes which did not appear likely to suppurate should be opened.’ To encourage hospital staff, he decreed: ‘Every day you will have a superior officer make the rounds of the hospitals . . . visit all the patients, and have all attendants and employees who refuse to give the required care and food to the patients shot on the spot in the courtyard of the hospital.’
With plague, killings by the locals and suicides decimating his troops, Napoleon decided to try and recruit locally. He set up a Mameluke Corps in his army. He also tried to recruit ‘Black Mamelukes’ – ‘2,000 black slaves over sixteen years old’. These ideas suggested that Napol
eon was trying to create his own Egyptian empire, manned by his supporters, virtually independent from France: his ideas of racial integration were, at least, reasonably advanced.
At this stage six of Napoleon’s generals – veterans who viewed him with some scepticism – wanted to return to France: they included Kléber, Menou, Berthier and Dumas. Kléber, Menou and Berthier were persuaded to stay, while Dumas left. Berthier, who was to serve as Napoleon’s loyal and unbelievably efficient chief of staff for sixteen years, was an extraordinary figure, devoted to Napoleon and passionately in love with the faraway Madame Visconti. Napoleon later observed wonderingly:
I never saw a passion like that of Berthier for Madame Visconti. In Egypt, he would watch the moon at the same time that she was supposed to look at it herself. In the middle of the desert, he put up a tent for her cult: he put Madame Visconti’s portrait inside it and burned incense there. Three mules were used to transport this tent and his baggage. Often I would enter and lie down on the sofa with my boots on. It made Berthier furious; he thought it was a profanation of the sanctuary. He loved her so much that he provoked me into talking about her, although I always spoke ill of her. He didn’t care; he was delighted if one talked about her at all. He even wanted to leave the army to go back to her. I had my despatches all ready, received his parting wishes, assigned him an aviso [a courier ship] – when he came back to me with tears in his eyes.
Talleyrand, in a despatch that did not reach Napoleon until much later, bluntly told him that he was on his own:
Since we cannot send you any help, the Executive Directory knows better than to give you any orders or even instructions. You will determine your line of conduct according to your own position and to the means you dispose of in Egypt . . . Since it would be difficult, at the present moment, to make possible your (i.e. your army’s) return to France, there are three choices open to you: either to remain in Egypt and to establish yourself in such a manner as to be safe from a Turkish attack (but you are aware that for part of the year the country is extremely unhealthy for Europeans, especially if they receive no assistance from the homeland); or to march to India, where, if you get there, you will no doubt find men ready to join you to fight English domination; or, finally, to march on Constantinople and to meet the enemy who is threatening you. The choice is up to you and to the brave and distinguished men who surround you.
As early as the end of August, Napoleon had displayed his resilience in the face of adversity by sending General Desaix with just under 3,000 men to chase Murad Bey, the former ruler of Egypt and now its rebel leader. Desaix, a year older than Napoleon, hailed from a family of country squires in the Auvergne. He had risen to fame as one of General Moreau’s subordinates in the Army of the Rhine. Bright and ambitious, Desaix decided to link his fortunes to Napoleon when in Italy, but he had few illusions about his new master whom he considered ‘extremely addicted to intrigue. He is very rich, as well he might be, since he draws on a whole country’s revenues . . . He believes neither in probity nor in decency; he says all this is foolishness; he claims that it is useless and doesn’t exist in this world.’
Desaix was described by Napoleon as ‘a little black-looking man’, ugly in appearance and ‘always badly dressed, sometimes even ragged’. But he was extraordinarily brave, driven by glory and duty, ‘intended by nature to be a great general’. Although he had a mistress in France, he was accompanied on his travels by, among others, ‘Sarah, a madcap Abyssinian, fifteen years old’.
Desaix’s expedition against Murad Bey was to prove an epic of adventure and endurance. They left on the night of 25 August on a flotilla of boats, some of them armed with cannon, travelling some hundred miles up the Nile before marching inland to try and ambush the Mamelukes at Bahnasa, only to find they had left. They sailed a further 150 miles up to Asyut, where again they found the bird had flown, then turned back towards Cairo.
Desaix’s troops went back down the Nile, branching out to travel up Joseph’s Canal, an ancient waterway, reaching Bahnasa again, where they disembarked and finally caught up with Murad at El Lahun. There the old pattern of the French forming infantry squares to repel attacks by the Mameluke cavalry repeated itself. The fighting was brutal. An eyewitness reported: ‘One of our men, stretched out on the ground, crawled toward a dying Mameluke and slit his throat. An officer asked him, “How can you do such a thing in the state you’re in?” “It’s easy for you to talk,” the soldier answered, “but me, I’ve only a few more minutes to live, and I want to have fun while I may.” ‘Desaix had won with 150 casualties to the Mamelukes’ 400. Desaix attempted to pursue Murad and his horsemen, but they proved too fast.
After resting, Desaix returned up the Nile to Asyut, where he captured Murad’s boats, although he and his men had fled again. Desaix travelled further up the valley which narrows between two mountains to Girga, which Murad had once again just left. There Desaix halted, waiting for supplies to come upriver. Meanwhile Murad Bey was building up a huge array of 7,000 cavalry, 5,000 foot soldiers and his own 2,000 Mamelukes to take on Desaix’s 1,000-strong cavalry and 3,000 infantry. When the two met, the French formed into two infantry squares with the cavalry in the middle and the artillery on either side. This efficient formation repelled Murad’s attacks and once again he and his Mamelukes fled into the desert.
Desaix’s men resumed their chase, encountering their first crocodiles at Dandara. They were awestruck by the temples of Luxor and Karnak, on seeing which they broke out in applause and then presented arms while their bands struck up. The painter Denon, who was with them, sketched the scene before they proceeded up to Aswan, Murad again having left it forty-eight hours earlier. ‘Toward the west, the eye discovers a huge desert; to the south, the awesome sight of the steep rocks forming the cataract. They seem to signify that here are the limits of the civilized world. Here nature seems to bar our route and to say to us, stop, go no further. To the east is Elephantine Island, its verdure and palm groves contrasting with the arid mountains that surround it.’
The French captured an island. There one of Desaix’s officers observed:
Men, women, and children, everybody threw themselves into the river. Faithful to their ferocious character, mothers could be seen drowning the children they could not take with them and mutilating their daughters in order to protect them from being raped by the victors . . . I found a girl seven to eight years old who had been sewn up . . . in a manner that prevented her from satisfying her most pressing needs and caused her horrible convulsions. Only after a counter-operation and a bath was I able to save the life of that unfortunate little creature, who was as pretty as could be.
General Belliard, the commander of the forces at Aswan, ruthlessly ordered the destruction of all the wheat in a nearby village, so that the Mamelukes could not live off the land. ‘The poor inhabitants could watch, within an hour, the destruction of the fruit of three months’ labour . . . I gave the peasants who had stayed behind a few coins and told them that, if they should starve, they ought to send for some durrah at Aswan.’ He also ordered his men to rape for their amusement and to terrorize the population.
The inhabitants soon had their revenge. The flotilla remained behind while the French departed downriver. In April the Arabs arrived and L’Italie, a French gunboat was boarded and the band aboard was captured and forced to play ashore while the rest of the prisoners were first raped and then chopped up; the band was then subjected to the same fate.
Some 7,000 Arabs now joined in the fight – mostly warriors from Mecca come to resist the infidels. Belliard’s 1,000 men retreated hastily into a firefight with another column of Arabs downstream, at the village of Abnod, where several hundred Meccans were killed. Desaix decided he had gone far enough. Crossing the Nile he returned to Asyut. The objective was to impress upon the locals the French control of the territory. At Asyut he nearly caught up with Murad Bey who, however, had induced the local people to rebellion. The French mowed down some 1,000 of them.
&n
bsp; Desaix spelt out the reality of the situation in a despatch to Napoleon:
If you leave this country without troops for just an instant, it will revert immediately to its former masters . . . I shall not bore you with a recital of our hardships. They would not interest you . . . I have addressed to you, General, several urgent requests for munitions. I knew how desperately they were needed; as a matter of fact, my situation is critical. People who ask for something always sound as if they felt sorry for themselves. Nevertheless, consider what we are up against. My soldiers have no cartridges except those they are carrying in their kits. The least you can do, General, is take notice of what is being asked of you. There are 1,800 Mamelukes in Upper Egypt. I shall go and fight them.
Desaix ordered Belliard to march to the Red Sea port of Kossier, some 150 miles of desert away, to stop the flow of Arab volunteers. Amazingly Belliard succeeded, crossing this desolate and mountainous expanse in just three days to capture Kossier. He returned just as quickly.
Now that the supply of Arab recruits had been choked off, Murad Bey and the Mamelukes kept away from the French force, Murad himself travelling down to bivouac near the Great Pyramids. Desaix had momentarily conquered Upper Egypt in an astonishing feat of endurance and bravery for the French. Nicholas the Turk wrote: ‘From that moment on General Desaix devoted himself to the pacification and organization of Upper Egypt, with an intelligence, an administrative knowledge, a tactfulness, a courage, a zeal, and a magnanimity that were admirable; so that Upper Egypt was better governed than was the Delta.’
Napoleon Bonaparte himself travelled to Suez to take formal possession of the Red Sea port, in a carriage accompanied by three servants. There he met dignitaries from the Hejaz, Yemen and Muscat and forded the Red Sea to visit the ‘Fountains of Moses’ – famous springs. The party nearly perished in the fast-flowing tides as they returned. Napoleon also followed the bed of the ancient canal which linked the Red Sea to the Bitter Lakes and appointed surveyors to investigate the possibility of building a new canal – anticipating Ferdinand de Lesseps’s construction of the Suez Canal two generations later.
The War of Wars Page 33