Napoleon in Egypt (33 page)

The Institute in Cairo was created by a decree issued as early as August 22—that is, just ten days after Napoleon had heard that his fleet had been destroyed and his army was stranded in Egypt. Its proclaimed objectives were:

1. Progress and the propagation of enlightenment in Egypt.

2. Research, study and the publication of natural, industrial and historical facts concerning Egypt.

3. To give advice on the different questions on which its members will be consulted by the government.
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Intellectuals were thus to play a central role in the creation of the new Egypt from the very outset. The Institute would consist of four sections: mathematics, physics, political economy, and culture (literature and the arts). Each of these was to have a maximum of twelve members, not all of whom would be drawn from amongst the ranks of the savants. This was partly because Napoleon did not wish the Institute to be seen as something separate from his military administration, yet also because some of his senior military officers were genuinely interested in learning, and had sufficient knowledge to contribute to the proceedings. Thus, the mathematics section contained Monge and Fourier, both major mathematicians of their time, as well as the astronomers Nouét and Quesnet, but also Napoleon himself, Horace Say, chief of staff of the engineers (and brother of the renowned economist after whom Say’s Law is named), General Andréossy, and the twenty-three-year-old Captain Malus of the engineers, who was in fact already a scientist in his own right through his original studies of light. The physics section included members of all but the most mathematical of sciences,
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such as the major chemist Berthollet, the renowned geologist Dolomieu, the pioneer biologist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the engineer and balloonist Conté, as well as the army’s chief medical officer General Desgenettes. The political economy section inevitably included Poussielgue (though pointedly not the unfortunate paymaster-general Estève, despite the fact that six positions in this section remained vacant: someone had to be scapegoat for the lack of wages being paid to the army). Also in this section was the one-legged engineer General Caffarelli, presumably on the strength of his “communist” speech on the voyage out.

Another place in the political economy section was filled by Citizen Jean-Lambert Tallien, one of the more desperate characters to emerge in the aftermath of the Revolution, whose life history provides an exemplar of unscrupulous survival at all costs during this turbulent period. As such, he was something of a rarity on the Egyptian expedition, whose members for the most part were decent men who had not been party to the excesses and corruptions of recent French political life. Tallien, on the other hand, had played a leading role in these proceedings: after sending many to the guillotine during the Terror, he had conspired with Barras to overthrow Robespierre and then accused many of his former colleagues of being Royalists, having them thrown into prison. Later, he married the aristocratic Madame Cabarrus, who like Napoleon’s Josephine had also been a mistress of the omnivorous Barras. In the end, he had fallen from grace simply because no one would trust him, and he only managed to inveigle himself a place on the Egyptian expedition after Napoleon and the fleet had sailed. He traveled across the Mediterranean on
Le Vif
, a courier ship that evaded the British naval blockade and reached Alexandria on August 13. Suprisingly, Tallien appears to have earned Napoleon’s respect, and thus his membership of the prestigious Institute, by being the only one bold enough to persuade the commander-in-chief not to repeat his foray into Oriental dress.

The literature and arts section of the Institute contained another mixed bag: this included the aging but ever-industrious painter Denon, the portraitist Dutertre (whose sketches would preserve for posterity the faces of so many savants, generals, emirs and even Mamelukes), as well as the poet Parseval-Grandmaison and the musician Rigel (the duo responsible for the interminable New Year cantata), and a member simply listed as “a Greek priest.”
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This was a certain Don Raphael de Monachis, a Greek Orthodox priest who was the only member of the Institute not to be part of the French expedition. A later addition to this section would be the muralist Rigo, appointed as a reward for privately completing a fashion plate of Napoleon in plumed turban and Oriental robes.

According to a proclamation issued by the French headquarters, the first meeting of the Institute of Egypt was held at seven
A.M.
(i.e., before the heat of the day) on 6 Fructidor Year VII (August 23, 1798) at the palace of the departed Mameluke Hassan-Kachef Bey, in his vacated harem. At this meeting, Monge was elected president, Napoleon became vice-president, and Fourier was made secretary. In the event, Fourier would become the leading organizer—though it quickly became clear during the proceedings who was the leading voice in the Institute. When Napoleon spoke, as he frequently did, often interrupting the individual speakers to seek clarification of some point he did not understand or agree with, most others fell silent. The only two who stood up to him were Berthollet, whose chemist’s materialism saw no place for Napoleon’s quasi-metaphysical worldview in a scientific institution, and Desgenettes, whose insistence upon medical priorities frequently grated with Napoleon’s more ambitious schemes. During a discussion of the Institute’s scientific program, Napoleon became so exasperated with both of them that he exclaimed: “Chemistry is just cookery for physicians, and medicine the science of murderers.” “In which case,” replied Desgenettes witheringly, “how would you define the science of generals?”
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Yet Napoleon’s contribution was far from always being intrusive or negative; he may have had a slightly overblown view of himself as a mathematician, but he was genuinely interested in science, and frequently sought to fill the gaps in his learning—to such an extent that he even asked Berthollet to give him chemistry lessons while he was in Cairo. All this in the midst of the grueling daily program he had imposed upon himself. Napoleon’s exceptional qualities, which even now continued to develop, appear to have been driven to evolve by the exceptional quantity of work he undertook during these early weeks in Cairo. Daily he would be at his desk before dawn, working in full uniform through the heat of the day, administering his army and Egypt’s internal affairs almost singlehandedly, at the same time putting together a full-scale reform program. Meanwhile he was also doing his best to maintain a foreign policy towards the outside world whilst deprived of almost any reliable information about what was happening there. Certainly he was now learning to delegate, yet all major policy decisions remained his, as can be seen from the relevant volumes of his
Correspondance
—which include orders of the day, civil and military decrees, as well as dispatches to his military governors and generals, communications with foreign potentates, and extensive regular progress reports to the Directory. And in the midst of all this he still found time for serious study of “chemical cookery.”

Napoleon may have gathered some of the finest French scientific minds in his Institute, and encouraged their theoretical discussions, but he was insistent that this collection of geniuses, generals and assorted oddballs should also address themselves to mundane practical matters. Illustrative of this are the six questions he personally posed at the end of the first meeting:

1. Can the ovens used for the baking of bread for the army be improved upon, and if so how?

2. Can we brew beer in Egypt with something other than hops [which were not available]?

3. What are the ways commonly used for clarifying and rendering potable water from the Nile?

4. Given the conditions in Cairo, which is the most practical—watermills or windmills?

5. Does Egypt have any resources for the manufacture of gunpowder, and if so what are they?

6. What is the situation in Egypt with regard to jurisprudence, civil and criminal law, and education? What possible improvements can be made in these fields which would be in accord with the wishes of the people?
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These questions were not raised merely with the aim of provoking intellectual debate. In each case a commission of Institute members was designated to come up with answers, to be produced at the next or subsequent meetings, which would take place every five days. For instance, regarding the all-important matter of the second question (hopless beer), the relevant commission included members from the mathematics section, the physics section and the political economy section, headed by none other than the foremost chemical genius in Egypt, Berthollet.

Besides such immediate matters, the Institute soon became involved in long-term investigations, drawing up feasibility studies in the manner of a modern think-tank. The subjects of these reports included agricultural improvements and the introduction of new crops (was it possible, for instance, to provide by selective breeding a new species of hops which could withstand the rigors of the Egyptian climate?), as well as a medical report on the prevention of contagious diseases. They would later include a survey for the construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Suez.

In keeping with its model, the Institute in Paris, the activities of the Institute in Cairo also included the pursuit of scientific and cultural knowledge, as well as technological know-how, with projects initiated to study the historical monuments and arts of Egypt, the region’s geological structure, and the flora and fauna of the country. Members even pursued theoretical learning purely for its own sake. At a subsequent meeting Fourier would deliver a talk, to the bemusement of all but Monge, on his latest work in linear partial differential equations. Similarly, Berthollet would propose a theory explaining the fundamental nature of the chemical reaction. In Cairo, lasting contributions would now be made to the advancement of human knowledge for the first time in over half a millennium. Amidst heat, poverty and primitive conditions which would have been recognizable to citizens of ancient Athens, a small patch of Cairo was being turned into something resembling Plato’s Academy.

The Institute was housed two kilometers from Ezbekiyah Square, on the outskirts of Cairo in the palaces of Hassan-Kachef Bey and Kassim Bey, both of whom were with Murad Bey in Upper Egypt. The palaces themselves were surrounded by an extensive garden complex, which was enclosed by walls, providing the members and their savant colleagues with one of the most pleasant spots in the city. The Institute would soon include all manner of facilities, including an extensive library consisting largely of the books Napoleon himself had selected to bring with him on the expedition: a core compendium of Western literature and knowledge. At the other end of the scale was the foundry and workshop established by Conté, where he set about reconstructing as far as possible all the scientific instruments and equipment that had been lost in Alexandria harbor, as well as the further losses in one of the ships sunk in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the Nile. A meridian line was marked out along the floor of the main corridor of the Institute building, recording the precise number of degrees by which Cairo lay east of the Paris meridian, which was at the time used by the French as the marker for 0º when measuring longitude.

Halls and loggias in the two Mameluke palaces were adapted for use as chemistry laboratories and study rooms, and cellars were soon being used to house the scientific collections that were already being made by the savants. As soon as the printing presses arrived by camel from Alexandria, they were set up at the Institute (the only other printing presses in the entire Levant were at Constantinople and a Maronite Christian convent in Lebanon). These printing presses would become a source of some concern to the
ulema
and sheiks of the Al-Azhar mosque, who insisted that the only font of true knowledge was the Koran, of which they alone were the rightful interpreters. Without such authority any book could only be the devil’s work. However, it seems the wise men of the Al-Azhar mosque were being somewhat disingenuous here, for one of the French savants who befriended a sheik discovered that his library did in fact contain a number of non-religious works—including a treatise on love, an anthology of sayings and poems, a book of historical curiosities, instructions for the drawing up of marriage and divorce contracts, and a manual of sexual techniques.

Outside the palaces, the extensive gardens of the Institute would gradually be transformed into botanical gardens for the study of indigenous plants, and a small menagerie of birds, monkeys and snakes would be assembled. The savants would regularly meet in these gardens in informal assembly, as one of them remembered:

We had at the side of the palace of Hassan-Kachef Bey the vast garden of Kassim Bey where we would gather for our evening promenade. The conversation of Fourier contributed great charm to these meetings; sometimes Monge would expand on his views of the future of Egypt, sometimes on his skeptical ideas, sometimes on his latest ideas regarding his beloved descriptive geometry. He spoke with such enthusiasm that it colored his entire imagination. The beauty of the night sky, the scent of the orange trees, the sweet and pleasant airs, all added to the ambience of our meetings, which went on into much of the night.
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But Cairo was not the only center of intellectual activity: a number of savants remained at Rosetta under the charge of the governor, General Menou. According to one of them: “All twenty of us live together in a house, where we share everything in common, including rations and fresh water. We are looked after by three Maltese former slaves and a local Frenchman, whom several of us ganged together to take on.”
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The most industrious of these savants was the precocious twenty-seven-year-old biologist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who at twenty-one had delivered the first lectures on zoology at the university in Paris, a year later being appointed to the first chair in this subject. In his own words: “It is my good fortune to have the encouragement and protection of General Menou . . . who has given me an armed escort so that I can go deep into the delta and hunt there safely. I have found a number of interesting birds; I have observed their habits, described them zoologically and anatomically, stuffed them and mounted their skeletons.”
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Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire would also initiate a project for the study and classification of the fish in the Nile, whose different species would be expertly drawn and colored by the flower-painter Redouté, whom Monge and Berthollet had had the foresight to recruit as a savant. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s work in assembling these collections, and the insights that they enabled him to gain into different species, would allow him to correct certain mistakes made by Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist and founder of biological classification. He would also undertake a study of ibises, comparing his modern specimens with those which had been mummified by the ancient Egyptians; his findings here would assist the great French biologist Lamarck in his pioneering theory of evolution.