Napoleon in Egypt (19 page)

Napoleon now hastened to the rescue of Perrée’s flotilla and his savant friends, but arrived to find that the engagement was all but over. Captain Perrée’s heroism was rewarded with promotion to rear-admiral. The skirmish at Shubra Khit on July 13 had resulted in no French casualties on land, while according to Perrée’s report to his commander Vice-Admiral Brueys, “twenty of my men were wounded, and several were killed. I lost my sword and a piece of my left arm.”
⁴⁶
This was a considerable understatement, judging from the eyewitness descriptions and the fact that the engagement lasted from nine
A.M.
until twelve thirty
P.M.
, during which in all over 1,500 artillery shells were fired. More realistic estimates concur that there were more than 300 French casualties (killed and wounded), the majority of these being sailors. On the other hand, Napoleon’s unavoidably tardy move to rescue the flotilla seems to have resulted in something of an overstatement; his secretary Bourrienne records how Napoleon later reproached him: “In order to save you, Monge, Berthollet and the others on the flotilla, I had to move to the left towards the Nile, rather than to the right, around Shubra Khit, a move which would have cut off the Mamelukes and prevented any of them from escaping.”
⁴⁷
This was sheer wishful thinking, as only cavalry could have spearheaded this move with sufficient swiftness. Napoleon’s frustration at his lack of cavalry, at least in part due to his own haste, led him to seek scapegoats. In his mind he was doubtless already composing the official version of events he would be sending in his future report back to the Directory. Meanwhile, he had more pressing problems. This first large-scale encounter with the Mamelukes had been inconclusive, and the men soon reverted to their old disgruntled ways. They were far from home, and they were far from happy; and the farther they marched from home, the unhappier they became. Napoleon was convinced that what they needed to boost their morale was a glorious victory.

VII

The Battle of the Pyramids

T
HE
French army was still less than halfway to Cairo, which lay some eighty miles upstream on the Nile. Napoleon remained intent on reaching this destination as soon as possible, and the men were allowed just a few hours’ rest at Shubra Khit before setting forth once more in the late afternoon of July 13. In order to make up time, Napoleon decided that the army should not follow the curves of the Nile, but instead should head direct for Cairo across the hinterland. This was land that had been cultivated after the flooding of the Nile during the previous year but was now utterly dried up. Fields had become tracts of cracked earth, the banks of the irrigation channels had become baked mud ruts, and the larger irrigation canals were reduced to dry ditches. All these proved difficult obstacles for the artillery, each piece of which had to be dragged by six horses, with wheels frequently coming off and axles breaking.

The men now began suffering terribly from flies, and many appeared to have caught a mysterious eye disease, which had been noticeable amongst the Arab population in Alexandria, where there was an unusually high proportion of people who were blinded in one or both eyes. As the men continued marching dumbly through the wilderness, many found that their eyes became red, irritable and swollen, with discharges of pus. Some even complained that they were going blind. The senior medical officers decided that this was a particularly severe Egyptian strain of ophthalmia, but since they had no medical equipment to examine the men properly, or medicine with which to treat them, any effective prophylactic measures would have to wait until they reached Cairo.

Supplies were now running low, but Napoleon had calculated that the leading divisions of Desaix and Reynier would rejoin the Nile in three days, where they could replenish their supplies from Perrée’s flotilla. But on July 15 the flotilla became grounded on sandbanks. The river was too low for anything but boats of the shallowest draft to continue, which in practice meant only
djermes
(Nile sailing boats with large triangular lateen sails, similar to feluccas). These could do little other than transport important passengers (such as Monge, Berthollet and Bourrienne, who were reduced to living off watermelons), as well as pick up a few of the worst invalids. Officers and men all realized that there was no going back, and the leading divisions were forced to march on without supplies. As a result, discipline soon began to break down. The groups of Bedouin which had continued to shadow the outer columns began picking off stragglers, and on July 16 Napoleon reissued the order forbidding groups to separate from their main divisional force. Amongst the rear divisions, still camping at night on the banks of the Nile, the men were now plagued with mosquitoes, to such an extent that more than one senior officer began to suspect there was an outbreak of smallpox.

Meanwhile, those crossing the dried-up fields, which soon gave way to desert, had their own problems. During the day, the heat became all but unbearable, and the men grew desperate. According to young Corporal François, “As we crossed dunes of burning sand, some were dying of suffocation. All the time it felt as if we were passing in front of the mouth of a raging furnace. Several soldiers committed suicide.”
¹
The men became increasingly uncontrollable. When they arrived at a village they would simply fall upon it, ransacking all they could, their officers turning a blind eye to what was going on. Corporal François recorded: “The inhabitants of one village ganged together and refused even to let us buy any food, firing at us. . . . We scaled the walls and set fire to the place . . . we grabbed all we could find, goats, donkeys, horses, eggs, cows, sheep.” François claimed that they killed “around 900 men, as well as women and children.”
²
Other firsthand sources indicate that this was a wild exaggeration, but there is no doubting that serious atrocities occurred. Colonel Laugier described coming upon a village being looted by French soldiers: “There was a frightful noise from the men wailing and the women weeping. The women climbed onto the rooftops, and when they saw an officer riding by called out to him in distress, flapping their shawls in their hands and breaking into a hideous howling lamentation.” Though Laugier noticed that as soon as senior officers managed to control the situation “the inhabitants became transformed, turning from fear and despair to trust and even happiness, so that the troops received unleavened bread, rice and meat.”
³
Again, this too would seem to contain its element of exaggeration, while conveying something of what must have occurred.

Later, things deteriorated still further, judging by Laugier’s outraged military sensibilities: “One could not conceive of such an undisciplined army. Our division was only able to complete the ruin of the villages through which we passed, because the preceding divisions had left nothing to carry off or destroy. Sometimes even the harvest in the fields was on fire, so that when we arrived we couldn’t even find straw or barley for the horses.”
⁴
It is difficult to assess precisely how widespread such incidents were. Several sources appeared to find nothing remarkable about this stage of the march. The observant artist Denon, for instance, simply commented that “our march along the Nile became less difficult, though we did not follow the river all the time.”
⁵
Yet there is no doubt that conditions were in general hard, and that the men were not happy. Even Napoleon comments laconically in his memoirs: “The army was overcome by a vague collective melancholy that nothing could overcome; it was an attack of spleen; several soldiers threw themselves in the Nile in order to have a quick death.” He mentions how whenever possible the men would bathe in the Nile at the beginning of the day: “On leaving the Nile the soldiers would begin their barrack-room politics, exasperating themselves and lamenting their unfortunate lot, exclaiming, ‘What have we come to do here? The Directory has deported us!’” Napoleon insisted that the men did not blame him for their predicament, because they saw that he was living just as they did, and that “the dinner for the generals consisted often of just a plate of lentils.”
⁶

When, on July 18, the leading divisions reached Wardan, some sixty-five miles up the Nile from Shubra Khit, Napoleon decided that the men needed a rest for forty-eight hours. By now the scavenging troops had built up their supplies, and for the next day or so the wilderness around Wardan began filling up with troops. Their hundreds upon hundreds of campfires burned into the night, roasting whole sheep and goats, as well as haunches of cow, on spits the soldiers had improvised from their rifle ramrods. The entire army was exhausted, and all made do as best they could, through the damp chill of the night and the burning heat of the day, with the men and officers stretched out together amongst the tethered donkeys, transport camels, pack and cavalry horses. Such an encampment of over 20,000 men—with the soldiers washing themselves in the Nile, hanging out their scrubbed uniforms to dry, cleaning their equipment, checking their rifles and sharpening their bayonets, some muttering, some singing, others prostrate with fatigue—must have made quite a sight. Yet in no time it was gone. Orders came to march, and the leading divisions set off, arriving on the evening of July 20 at Omm-Dinar, the village at the head of the delta where the Nile divides into its two main navigational channels, just eighteen miles downstream from Cairo.

Meanwhile Napoleon was making plans for the great victory with which he intended to “revive the spirits” of his army—and gain glory for himself. His scouts reported that the Mamelukes were entrenched before Cairo, with Murad Bey commanding an army on the western bank of the Nile directly in front of him, and Ibrahim Bey commanding one across on the eastern bank, before the walls of the city itself.

Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey were the joint Mameluke rulers of Egypt, with Murad Bey as Emir el-Hadj (leader of the pilgrimage to Mecca) and Ibrahim Bey as Sheik el-Beled (chief of the country). Technically Ibrahim Bey ruled the whole of Egypt, under the puppet Turkish pasha Abu Bakr, but in fact his rule was centered on Cairo, with only certain beys in the delta and the hinterland remaining strictly loyal to his rule. Murad Bey also had his loyal beys, mainly in Upper Egypt. All the local beys collected taxes from their peasants, the
fellahin,
over whom they ruled like feudal lords, with Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey being paid their dues by their loyal beys. A small fraction of this would then be passed on, in the name of the puppet pasha, to Constantinople.

Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey ruled in uneasy partnership. Murad Bey was loath to set foot in Cairo, which was very much Ibrahim Bey’s domain, but he had built himself a palace on the west bank of the Nile at Giza, near the Pyramids. Although Murad Bey was now probably in his fifties (his precise age was unknown, even to himself), he remained a powerful figure, in both mind and body. Legend had it that with one mighty swing of his scimitar he could decapitate an ox. He retained a thick-set, powerful build, whilst his pale-skinned face had fierce eyes and a large, bushy blond beard. His arrogance and cruelty were legendary, and it was said that his anger was sufficient to make even the bravest of his Mameluke deputies tremble in his presence. Murad had been born in a poor mountain village in the Caucasus and sold into slavery, merchants bringing him to Egypt around the age of eight. Here he received strict military training, learning horsemanship and leadership, being instilled with a ferocious pride in his Mameluke status. Yet at the same time he remained the property of his Mameluke master, who was in the habit of venting his lust on the better-looking boys in his possession. Only when a young Mameluke was appointed a military leader, often at puberty, did he become free to grow a beard and take on slaves of his own. He often had children by the time he was fourteen. From this time on he owed feudal allegiance to his former master. In this way the Mamelukes established a network of loyalties amongst the constantly squabbling beys. Murad was in the service of Ali Bey, who ruled Egypt from 1763. During the power struggle after Ali Bey’s death in 1773, he quickly rose to power, even marrying the rich and formidable Setty-Nefissa, widow of his former master. It was at this time that he emerged as Emir el-Hadj.

An interesting light is shed on Murad Bey by the evenhanded and perceptive obituary of him written a few years later by the contemporary Egyptian historian El-Djabarti, who spoke of his “fearsome loud voice and face criss-crossed with scars from saber slashes. He was cruel and unjust, enterprising and conceited, but he respected the
ulema
[the religious scholars responsible for interpreting Islamic law], listened to their advice and gave way to their pleas. . . . He liked to play chess and music. His finest qualities were his energy and his generosity. He left no children.”
⁷
Between his bouts of furious energy, Murad Bey delighted in a life of luxurious idleness, in one of the several palaces which he had built in his fiefdoms throughout the country with the fortune he had accumulated from taxes. However, according to El-Djabarti, “He liked to have about him men who were hard, brave and cruel.” In his clashes with unruly beys it was said that “his rash bravery sometimes bordered on madness, yet at other times he showed cowardice.”
⁸
His only real contribution to the country as a whole was his establishment of a fleet on the Nile, which he entrusted to his Christian henchman, the Greek known as Nikola.
^*
The ships for this fleet were constructed by artisans and craftsmen conscripted from Turkey, and the gunboats were exact copies of those in the Turkish navy.