Napoleon in Egypt (30 page)

In the eyes of the British, the Battle of the Nile was the turning point for Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Nelson reported: “The French army is in a scrape. They are up the Nile without supplies. The inhabitants will allow nothing to pass by land, nor [the British blockade] by water. Their army is wasting with the flux [dysentery], and not a thousand men will ever return to Europe.”
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Many still see the Battle of the Nile as the beginning of the end for Napoleon; however, this was not how Napoleon saw it, and there is much to support his view. The British claimed to control the sea, but they only had Nelson’s squadron in the entire Mediterranean, and the blockade imposed by Nelson on Alexandria and the Nile ports would be very difficult to maintain with so few ships under such treacherous local weather conditions. Even if the British did control the sea, Napoleon’s aim was to build an empire on land, and the news from Aboukir only served to reinforce this aim. Napoleon recalled how he addressed his downcast officers and men:

So, we are now obliged to accomplish great things, and accomplish them we will. We are obliged to found a great empire, and found it we will. The sea, of which we are not masters, separates us from our homeland; but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia. There are plenty of us here: we will not be lacking in men who can be recruited to run the place, and we will not be lacking in munitions which if necessary can be manufactured by [the savants and the engineers].
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These are the words that Napoleon puts into his own mouth in his memoirs, which often rewrite reality in his favor. However, both their tone and their content is confirmed by several of the memoirs of those present. Marmont has him saying: “We are perhaps destined to change the face of the Orient, and place our names beside those that are recalled with most brilliance from ancient history.”
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Desvernois recalls him declaring: “We must remain in these lands or leave them having become as great as the men of ancient times.”
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These were to be the most revealing words that Napoleon uttered during his entire stay in Egypt—psychologically it is no accident that such truths should surface at his time of greatest stress. This speech hinted at grandiose ideas which he had certainly thought out in considerable detail, the full extent of which he had not even revealed to his closest confidants. His primary aim in coming to Egypt was to found an empire—one that would extend to encompass Asia, but would also include Africa. Egypt stood at the crossroads of three continents. These ideas had originated with Leibniz’s suggestion to Louis XIV, but their multicontinental implications of world domination had since been disregarded, or glossed over as too fantastic. The ruler of Europe, Asia and Africa would have become the ruler of the world—the undeveloped Americas would soon have fallen to such a power.

According to Napoleon, his officers and men were inspired by his speech: “Their spirits were electrified. They ceased complaining. . . .They encouraged one another to be worthy of the destiny that lay before them.”
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This was in fact pure wishful thinking, saying more about his own reaction than that of his troops. According to Bourrienne, who had eyes for the world beyond staff headquarters: “Any illusions about the expedition had disappeared from the outset. There remained nothing more than the reality, which was sad indeed. The bitter complaints that I heard from Murat, Lannes, Berthier . . . and so many others . . . endless unrestrained complaining which often bordered on sedition, affected Napoleon deeply.” Indeed, he insists that “from the moment the army set foot in Egypt, almost everyone was overcome with disgust, disquiet, discontent, and homesickness.”
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Many speak of this depression, which gradually took hold amongst all ranks; in short, the expeditionary army became afflicted with that peculiarly French malaise that came to be known as
cafard
—a blend of nostalgia, melancholy, blues and general fed-upness, which is said by etymologists to have first acquired its name some years later amongst the homesick French colonial army in North Africa. In fact, it almost certainly originated amongst Napoleon’s army in Egypt: the word
cafard
derives from the Arab word
kafr
, which means infidel. At the heart of this malaise was the understanding that they were alien to these people.

The army’s morale was hardly improved by the news that now reached Cairo from El-Mansura, a small town on the eastern navigational channel of the Nile, some eighty miles downstream from Cairo. General Vial had occupied El-Mansura, and had left behind a garrison of 120 men, before moving on to secure the port of Damietta forty miles downstream. But the inhabitants of El-Mansura were incensed by this occupation, and on the very next day they stoned to death the sentry standing on duty outside the local barracks, which the French had taken over. A few hours later two other soldiers were assassinated. A couple of days after this, the barracks was surrounded by an angry crowd bearing various weapons, who attempted unsuccessfully to set fire to the building. Fighting continued throughout the day, during the course of which eight French soldiers were killed. After the angry crowd dispersed, the officer in charge decided to abandon the post, but as the French column retreated through the streets they came under fire from nearby houses. By the time the soldiers made it into open countryside they were being pursued by a mob firing at them, whilst other men were seen running off to nearby villages to get reinforcements. As darkness fell, the French soldiers headed south along the Nile, with the aim of making it to Cairo. Throughout the night they were pursued, suffering heavy losses. At daybreak there were only twenty to thirty of them left, with the enemy closing in on all sides. Private Mourchon, who had received a bullet through his thigh during the night, had an astonishing tale to tell:

By now we had run out of ammunition, and were forced to defend ourselves with our weapons as best we could. In the end, the ten of us who were wounded preferred to drown ourselves rather than fall into the hands of the enemy. We were now down to just fifteen soldiers in all, and a mass of enraged peasants threw themselves upon us, tearing our clothes from our bodies, massacring us, bludgeoning my comrades and me with clubs. I threw myself naked into the Nile with the intention of drowning myelf, but because I knew how to swim sheer instinct prevented me from drowning and I swam to the far bank of the river.
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Here he struggled towards a village, hardly aware of what he was doing, when:

I saw coming towards me seven armed Egyptians on horseback, and threw myself into the Nile again. Having noticed that two of them were signaling for me to come to them, I returned to the shore. One of the two fired his rifle at me point blank, but it jammed. The other gestured to me that he did not wish me any harm and placed me in the hands of two peasants, each armed with a double-barreled rifle, who tied me up and led me to the village by a path through thorns where I suffered greatly being barefoot and wounded. When we arrived at the village the inhabitants untied me, took care of me, fed me, and showed me great kindness. . . . I must mention that the person who took most care of me was an eight-year-old boy who secretly brought me boiled eggs and bread.

After several days, the villagers told him that a barge carrying French soldiers was passing along the river. On board was Lieutenant Thurman, who takes up the tale:

As we reached the village, we heard a voice calling out in our own language: “Come and save me, I am French.” We saw appear a poor unfortunate, dragging himself along, bareskinned, with just some ragged shorts to cover his nakedness. After his first rapturous delight at seeing his fellow countrymen again, he begged Colonel Laugier to give him some money to pay back the peasants of the village for the care they had given him, assuring the colonel that he was the only person who had escaped the massacre of the entire garrison at El-Mansura.
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Outside the garrisoned towns, the delta region was to remain a dangerous place for the French, to such an extent that they were still barely able to maintain a courier route between Cairo and Alexandria.

Despite the widespread low morale amongst the French army, Napoleon would write in his report to the Directory: “Everything is perfectly fine here. The country is under control and the people are becoming accustomed to our presence. . . . I am awaiting news from Constantinople. I will not be able to return to Paris in October, as I promised you, but this will only be delayed a few months.”
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It is difficult to know what Napoleon really meant by this last remark about his return; presumably he made it without any regard for truth, but merely to pursue his customary policy of keeping all his options open.

Regardless of what was taking place in the rest of the country, Napoleon was determined that things should remain as normal as possible in Cairo. One of the main events of the Cairo year was the Nile ceremony, which was celebrated when the waters of the Nile rose to a certain level, signaling the beginning of the agricultural cycle when crops could be planted once more. The waters were measured by the famous Nilometer, a large permanent stone structure which stood at the upstream end of Rodah Island. There had been a Nilometer here since pharaonic times, though the current one dated from
AD
861, some two centuries after the Arab-Muslim conquest. The signal for the Nile ceremony was when the water at the Nilometer rose to 16 cubits (just over 81/2 meters). If the river rose significantly above this level there would be widespread flooding, reminiscent of the scene Herodotus had witnessed, whereas if it remained below this level it signaled a drought, crop failures and even famine. The chaotic circumstances of Mameluke rule meant there was no widespread provision for lean years, so a low Nile often led to much suffering and even starvation. In consequence, the Wafa el-Nil (Abundance of the Nile) was greeted with universal and heartfelt rejoicing, along with a time-honored ceremony which was attended by joyous crowds.

This time Napoleon himself presided, and later recorded how just before sunrise on August 18 “the Sultan El-Kebir left his palace, leading the procession, with El-Bekri, descendant of the Prophet on his right, and El-Sadat, descendant of Hassan
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on his left. They were accompanied by the general staff, four muftis,
ulema
, grand sheiks,
sherifs
and members of the Cairo
divan
.” The general staff were all in full dress uniform, while the Egyptian dignitaries with their beards and turbans wore their ceremonial robes. This colorful procession made its way to the river where “200,000 spectators covered both banks of the Nile,” while on the water were “several thousand rafts and other crafts covered with flags and banners.”
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Once the dignitaries had assembled themselves on the balcony above the Nile, the bands began to play, the thudding drums and blaring brass of the French military bands clashing discordantly with the high-pitched wailing quarter-tones of the Egyptian wind instruments. Below them the soldiers began digging at the earthen dyke that kept the waters of the Nile from spilling into the Khalidj canal, which ran around the city. A contemporary print depicts the French soldiers wearing aprons to protect their uniforms, and carrying away the earth in wheelbarrows, one of the first public appearances of this novel technical device in Egypt.

When the waters finally burst in a torrent through the breached dyke, a cheer arose from the watching populace, and the French batteries on the shore and aboard the Nile flotilla began firing a barrage of celebration. As the waters filled the canal, there took place a ceremony that had been observed since time immemorial: an effigy of a young virgin was cast into the stream—in pharaonic times this had been an actual virgin, chosen for her exceptional beauty, sacrificed to the Nile god as his annual bride. This ritual, at least in its token version, had continued through the Greek era, where it had no significance amongst the gods of Mount Olympus; the Christian era, when it was one of the few pagan ceremonies to survive the fanatical anti-heresy persecutions; and finally through to the Muslim era, when its timeless aptness continued to be recognized by all the people of Cairo: the Muslims, the Jews, the Coptic, Syrian, and Greek Christians, and now the French post-Revolution atheists.

After Napoleon had delivered a speech praising Allah for his bountifulness, coins were thrown into the canal, and the men on the first boats through the dyke began diving into the water to retrieve them. The French contingent then marched back to Napoleon’s palace in Ezbekiyah Square, whose open space would normally have been flooded by the waters spilling from the Khalidj canal, but was now protected by a low embankment. (The French had turned the wide expanse of Ezbekiyah Square into an artillery park and a parade ground where Napoleon would inspect his troops.) All French firsthand sources agree that the Nile ceremony was a huge success, especially the fireworks afterwards. Napoleon placed great faith in the propaganda value of firework displays, and had even included a treatise on fireworks by the great French
pyrotechnicien
Frézier amongst the library he brought with him to Egypt. However, the spectacular display in the night sky above the minarets and domes of Cairo on Wafa el-Nil on August 18, 1798, does not seem to have achieved quite the effect that he had hoped. It may have been a success for the French, but El-Djabarti in the privacy of his journal was scornful of these celebrations, declaring: “That night the Christians, Syrians, Copts and long-term European residents of Cairo came out, but there was not a single Muslim amongst them.”
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This may well be an exaggeration attributable to anti-French spleen, but there can be no doubt that many Muslim Egyptians felt resentful at the French taking over their local ceremony and using it for propaganda purposes, in an attempt to demonstrate that all was well between the Egyptians and the French.