Indeed, the Mamelukes were at last taking steps to meet the invader. Pasha Abu Bakr, the nominal Turkish head of state, summoned a Divan or assembly of notables at Cairo, but Murad and Ibrahim were the real powers in the land, and their advice was adopted. To defend Cairo, they proposed to divide the available forces between them: Murad with 4,000 mounted Mamelukes and 12,000 fellahin militia was to advance down the Nile to intercept the French, while Ibrahim was to collect the remainder of the forces, perhaps as many as 100,000 men, at Bulaq near Cairo. For the inspiration and edification of his followers, Ibrahim issued an interesting if somewhat bizarre description of the French troops: “The infidels who come to fight you have fingernails one foot long, enormous mouths and ferocious eyes. They are savages possessed of the Devil, and they go into battle linked together with chains.”13
The first clash between the two forces took place on July 10, when Desaix’s division engaged in a successful skirmish with a detachment of Mameluke cavalry. Shortly thereafter the parched columns reached the Nile near the town of Rahmaniya. The joy of the troops knew no bounds when they beheld the river’s muddy waters; “The soldiers are throwing themselves into the river and drinking like cattle,”14 reported Colonel Savary of the chasseurs; indeed several died of over-indulgence and many more contracted dysentery from eating too many of the watermelons which abounded there. On the 11th, General Dugua’s troops arrived from Rosetta after a far easier march than their comrades, accompanied by the small flotilla of Admiral Perrée.
Bonaparte, meanwhile, was scheming to force a battle on Murad Bey. Learning that the Mamelukes were only eight miles away to the south, he held a review of the army on the 11th, and then ordered an advance toward the Moslem encampment. The 13th saw the brief battle of Shubra Khit, in reality little more than a protracted skirmish. The main action was fought on the bosom of the Nile between the rival flotillas, a struggle that started at 8:30 in the morning and lasted until noon. For a time the five small vessels of the French flotilla were dangerously outnumbered by the seven larger craft of the Mamelukes, and soldier, sailor and savant alike had to fight desperately hand to hand. However, the situation was retrieved when Bonaparte ordered up some field artillery in support of the flotilla and at twelve o’clock a lucky shot blew up the Moslem flagship. Meanwhile, on shore, the French had formed themselves into their prearranged battle order, devised by Bonaparte himself. Each division formed itself into a large square, six ranks deep, with the cavalry and transport in the center, and the vulnerable angles protected by artillery batteries placed outside the perimeter. On this occasion, however, the Mameluke cavalry refused to charge, but contented themselves with displaying their gorgeously arrayed persons and curveting Arab steeds from outside musketry range. Each warrior was a veritable arsenal, for in addition to his carbine, every Mameluke carried two or three pairs of pistols, several four-foot lances and a bejewelled scimitar. The explosion of their flagship, however, disconcerted these medieval warriors, and they precipitately disappeared up the Nile in a cloud of dust. For a loss of twenty men killed in the flotilla, the French could claim a victory if only a very incomplete one.
Not surprisingly, Bonaparte was furious that his quarry had thus escaped his clutches, and at once the advance was resumed. The temporary elation felt by the men in the hour of action soon wore off; black depression flooded back, and the troops vented their feelings on the unfortunate village of Nekleh as they hurried through. On and on Bonaparte drove them, and only on the 18th did he permit his exhausted men a two-day halt near Wardan. The numbers of sick grew daily, dysentery and ophthalmia claiming many victims. On the 20th the troops moved forward once more, and reached Omm-Dinar, eighteen miles north of Cairo, and scout reports soon revealed the presence of Murad’s army not far ahead in the vicinity of the village of Embabeh.
At two in the morning of July 21, the French army broke camp and marched on the village of Embabeh, and twelve hours later they were within sight of their objective. An hour’s rest was granted, and then the men took up their battle positions. A mile to the south stood the serried ranks of Murad’s 6,000 Mamelukes and 15,000 fellahin,* cavalry on the left and foot on the right, the latter ranged around the walls and houses of Embabeh, close by the Nile. Over the river stood Ibrahim’s horde, relegated to the role of spectators until a local dust storm blotted out their view. Fifteen miles away the dim but majestic outlines of the Pyramids shimmered in the haze.
Bonaparte exhorted his troops to remain steady and keep their ranks closed up before the inevitable onslaught of the Mameluke cavalry: “Forward! Remember that from those monuments yonder forty centuries look down upon you!”15 He quickly formed his divisions into an oblique line of squares and launched them forward. On this occasion the “squares” would be better described as rectangles, for to increase the firepower of the exposed sides, each division placed a complete dem-brigade in its front and rear and used the third regiment to form the shorter flanks. (Reynier’s and Vial’s divisions were not fully up to strength, however, and were compelled to adopt a somewhat smaller formation.) In all, the French numbered 25,000 men and probably enjoyed a considerable numerical advantage over their opponents, but Bonaparte had learned earlier in the month how elusive his enemy could be, and a real victory was essential.
On the French right, toward the desert, was the square of Desaix closely supported to the left rear by Reynier. Desaix had also sent a detachment of cavalry and grenadiers to occupy a large village forming the extreme right of the French line. Vial and Bon were placed on the Nile flank, opposite Embabeh, and in central reserve stood the division of Dugua, Bonaparte and his staff taking shelter within his square. At 3:30
P.M. the Mamelukes charged with a ferocious yell against the French right and almost took Desaix and Reynier unawares. But the divisional squares closed up just in time, and the torrent of horsemen divided into three columns which poured around and between the fire-fringed rectangles before plunging on to the rear. Here they came under the fire of a howitzer sited inside Dugua’s square, and in a very short time the cloud of horsemen swung round and swept back toward the village on Desaix’s flank. The small garrison climbed onto the flat roofs of the houses and held the Mameluke horde at bay until Desaix could afford to send help from his square. As Bonaparte had hoped, the enemy’s formidable mounted arm had thus been distracted from the critical river flank, where, in the meantime, Vial and Bon, covered by the guns of the French flotilla firing from the Nile, were preparing to storm the fortifications of Embabeh. The troops unexpectedly came under heavy fire from large Egyptian cannon hidden in the village, but fortunately for the French these pieces were mounted on fixed carriages and could not be traversed. Bon’s division soon recovered its élan, and opened out into a number of columns of assault supported by three small squares commanded by General Rampon. Within minutes, Bon’s men stormed their way into the village, and as the garrison of 2,000 Mamelukes tried to swarm away up the Nile, Marmont rushed a demi-brigade forward to seize a defile in rear of the village. Their retreat cut off, the Mamelukes turned in desperation for the Nile and attempted to swim over to join Ibrahim’s watching multitude. At least 1,000 were drowned and 600 more shot down. By 4:30
P.M. the battle was over, Murad Bey and his 3,000 surviving cavalry fleeing away toward Gizeh and Middle Egypt.
The Conquest of Lower Egypt; the Battle of the Pyramids, July 21, 1798
Bonaparte had at last gained his decisive victory; for a nominal loss of 29 killed and perhaps 260 wounded, his army had accounted for 2,000 Mamelukes and several thousand more fellahin. Bonaparte was greatly assisted by the medieval tactics of his opponents; the Mamelukes, for all their great individual courage, only understood three evolutions, to form, to charge and (if fortune did not favor their attack), to flee. Such elementary tactics had little chance of success against the firepower and discipline of the French squares. The troops reaped a rich reward, pillaging the corpses of the Mamelukes who invariably carried all their worldly wealth
with them into battle, and for several weeks the most popular sport in the army was fishing for corpses with bent bayonets: a profitable pastime invented by a private soldier of the 32nd.
During the night following the battle, Ibrahim Bey abandoned Cairo and retreated to the east, burning the shipping in the port. The next morning the Sheikhs and Imams of Cairo offered to surrender the city. General Duphot was charged with the task of negotiating the terms, and two days later, on July 24, Bonaparte entered the capital of Egypt.
The moment of triumph soon turned to ashes in his mouth. On the 25th his trusted aide-de-camp, Junot, let slip a few indiscreet words which revealed that Madame Bonaparte had been unfaithful to her husband, taking a dandified young officer named Hippolyte Charles as her lover. Parisian society had long been enjoying the scandal, and this knowledge did nothing to comfort the cuckolded husband. The news came to him like a thunderbolt, and his grief was terrible and genuine, for he adored the wayward Josephine. For a time it seemed as if the very bottom had been knocked out of his life; he talked of giving up his military career and of going into secluded retirement in France. “Glory is stale,” he wrote to his elder brother Joseph, “when one is 29; I have exhausted everything; there is nothing left for me but to become really and completely selfish.”16 From this moment much idealism disappeared from his life, and in the years that followed his selfishness, suspicion and egocentric ambitions became ever more pronounced. The whole of Europe was to be affected by this destruction of Bonaparte’s personal happiness. July 25, 1798, was indeed an unfortunate turning point in the life of Bonaparte; from that day the tyrant began to emerge ever more clearly.
In a vain attempt to escape from his misery Bonaparte immersed himself in the thousand tasks that awaited his urgent attention. Success continued to reward his arms, and on August 11 his forces caught up with Ibrahim Bey and inflicted a crushing defeat on him at Salalieh, scattering the survivors far into Syria. But at the same time came news of the Battle of the Nile, an event that vastly complicated Bonaparte’s task of developing Egypt into a worthwhile and secure colony. Deprived of life-giving trade with France and cut off from news of European affairs, the long-term prospects of the expedition took a decided turn for the worse. Nevertheless, Bonaparte’s limitless fount of energy found plenty of scope for expression, although his eagerness occasionally led him to ludicrous efforts. To win over the Sheikhs, he once confronted them arrayed in Oriental costume, an experiment he never repeated; he tried to dazzle them with elaborate ceremonial and fetes, and they only laughed at the dismal flop of Conté’s much-advertised demonstration of a balloon flight. Less amusing was the general’s insistence that the tricolor should float from the minarets of all the mosques, a senseless edict that offended Moslem susceptibilities, and his attempts to bestow tricolor sashes and cockades on the local dignitaries were not very well received by the followers of the Prophet. His religious policy of full toleration and his tentative hints that he and his army might adopt the Moslem faith failed to impress the Imams, and soon foundered over the crucial issues of liquor and circumcision. To the Faithful, for all their revolutionary freedom of thought the French remained Infidels to the end.
In spite of themselves, however, the Sheikhs were very impressed with other aspects of French rule, and in particular with the work of the Institute of Egypt which came into existence on August 22. The savants at last came into their own in the Institute’s four sections—Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, and Literature and Arts—presided over by the genius of Monge. Hitherto their sojourn had not been comfortable; the derision of the soldiery who always laughed when the order “Les ânes et Us savants au centre” was issued at the prospect of action, and the snubs of their patron Bonaparte during the early days of the expedition, had caused not a few of them to regret their presence in the Orient. Now, however, they placed their wealth of knowledge and talent at the disposal of the new governor of Egypt. In the realm of health, Larrey and Desgenettes set up hospitals at Alexandria, Rosetta, Damietta and Cairo, besides undertaking a detailed study of endemic diseases. Sensible sanitary regulations and the enforcement of quarantine procedures on newly arrived shipping did something to check the incidence of epidemics. Law and order were progressively improved; orders were issued for the erection of streetlanterns every thirty yards through the main thoroughares of Cairo; the interior wooden gates that separated the different quarters of the city were torn down and the local population was disarmed. To improve the lot of the fellahin the French built mills, improved irrigation projects and closely controlled the markets. The financial chaos of the country was tackled, and the whole economy geared to a state of siege. Under the guidance of Berthollet and Manuel the ancient land tax was reorganized, Mameluke property sequestrated and improved tax-collection methods introduced. Although the French continued to farm out the taxes to the Copts, an improved form of local administration was introduced to reduce corruption; Départements were set up, each under a French intendant assisted by a divan of seven local notables, responsible to the General Divan periodically summoned to Cairo. In this way Bonaparte strove to rule through the established leaders of society, calling upon the brains of the savants to suggest improvements, and their joint achievement was to make the Army of Egypt virtually self-sufficient. However, finance always remained a problem, and when Bonaparte quitted Egypt he left his successor with a debt of seven million francs. Inevitably the army’s pay was months in arrears, and this led to considerable discontent, but in the meantime, the scholars and engineers were changing the face of Egyptian life—at least temporarily.
In addition to assisting in the formulation of practical measures, the savants accompanied the army to every corner of the country, studying the great monuments of Ancient Egypt and founding the science of Egyptology. Their greatest achievement was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799, which later provided the key to the hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs. A gigantic survey of the country was also carried out, and the findings eventually published between 1809 and 1828 in ten volumes of text supplemented by fourteen more of plates. The French military conquest of Egypt was only transitory, but the work of the savants proved of permanent value.
General Bonaparte was nevertheless disappointed by the generally apathetic response of the General Divan summoned in October 1798 to approve these measures. In sober fact, he was less master of the country than he liked to pretend. His report to the Directory that “All goes perfectly well here; the country is under our control and the people are becoming used to us”17 was overoptimistic, for isolated French detachments continued to be massacred and many military expeditions had to be mounted in the months that followed the Battle of the Pyramids. Some of these were as much scientific as military. Bonaparte in person led a small expedition to Suez during the month of December and claimed to have discovered the course of the ancient canal through the Isthmus; Lannes, in command of Vial’s division since that officer’s appointment as governor of Rosetta, undertook several punitive raids, but the main task of hunting down the elusive Murad Bey was entrusted to Desaix.
The military career of Louis Desaix had been almost as meteoric as that of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his conduct of the protracted campaign in Upper Egypt was to enhance his reputation still further. Unlike his commander in chief, however, he was a true idealist forever in search of “glory” for its own sake, heedless of the advantages it might confer. Born in 1768, the son of a lesser aristocrat, he survived the purges of the officer corps and reached the rank of brigadier general by 1793. He made his reputation while serving as second in command to General Moreau on the German front in 1796-97, but at the end of that campaign he transferred his services to the conqueror of Italy. For all his success as a commander he was remarkably self-effacing, but as a soldier his talents were not obviously inferior to those of Bonaparte and he was certainly more humane; the Arabs came to respect his abilities and dubbed him Sultan El-Adel, the “Just Ruler.” From August 25, 1798, until the following M
arch he conducted a tireless campaign against the elusive Murad up and down the Nile. Often outnumbered, for much of the time with fewer than 3,000 men and only two guns under his command, he gave the Mamelukes no rest, but defeated them in a series of actions which included the battles of El Lahun (October 7), Samhud (January 22, 1799) and Abnud (March 8). Desaix’s task appeared impossible; not only did each “pacified” area rise in revolt the moment his back was turned, but Murad frequently received considerable reinforcements from Arabia and rarely disposed of less than 10,000 men. Nevertheless, Desaix, aided by young Davout and his second in command, General Belliard, kept the situation under control by dint of selfless exertion and hard marching until the cohesion of Murad’s Mamelukes broke under the strain of continuous campaigning. It was left to Belliard to put the finishing touches to the pacification of Upper Egypt by capturing the port of Kosseir on the Red Sea on May 29, thus severing Murad’s last link with his co-religionaries in Arabia.
The numbers engaged are variously stated; this estimate is based on Kircheisen. Some authorities assert that Murad’s strength surpassed 40,000, but it seems probable that the French in fact enjoyed a fair overall superiority of numbers.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 31