Napoleon in Egypt (36 page)

My wife, of whom you speak so kindly, is large, strong and good enough in all respects. She has very beautiful eyes, the complexion of an Egyptian, with long and extremely black hair; she has a fine temperament, I find that she has much less repugnance than I expected for my French habits, and above all she has little or no superstition. Although she sticks very punctiliously to her religious observances, she believes that all other religions are also good.

I have not yet urged her to let herself be seen unveiled in the company of other men; that will come little by little. I told her that you have asked me to pass on a thousand felicitations to her, and she replied to me in Arabic: “
Salam kétir ou maroul fi sari Askir men Skenderie
.” Which means: “A great many salutations and greetings to the general in Alexandria.”
¹⁵

This would indicate that Menou had learned how to speak Arabic, at least enough to communicate with his wife, and probably more. The local dignitaries were certainly impressed with him, and appear to have been willing to overlook his habitually scruffy appearance, which so irritated Napoleon. Yet Menou was certainly the exception. Despite all Napoleon’s promises to the
ulema
with regard to Islam, and his claims to be a regular reader of the Koran, he learned little Arabic beyond the meaning of his grandiose title, Sultan El-Kebir. Even his regular reading of the Koran (in French translation), which he may well have developed as an instructive habit in order to try and comprehend the Egyptian way of thinking, would hardly have impressed the sheiks and
ulema
of Al-Azhar. For the true believer, the Koran existed in Arabic, and Arabic alone.

El-Djabarti’s disapproving observations confirm how much Menou was the odd man out: “Moslem women who married the French immediately adopted French habits and dressed in the European manner; they walked alongside the men and busied themselves in their affairs. Guards armed with canes walked in front of them, clearing a way for them through the crowd and treating them as if they were a governor.”
¹⁶
Although the ordinary soldiers wandered the streets freely, exchanging the usual badinage and more-or-less good-natured insults with the street-sellers, El-Djabarti makes clear that the French authorities did not endear themselves to the shop-owners: “They ordered them to clear the goods from in front of their shops, under the pretext of making it easier for the carts to pass along the street, but in reality to get rid of anything the people might use to make a barricade in case of a revolt . . . .The traders were seriously inconvenienced by all this, because it meant that they had to remain inside their shops, like mice in their holes.”
¹⁷
This quaint image, with its subtle overtones of oppression and humiliation, only emphasizes the deteriorating situation: both the French and the Egyptians were now aware that a revolt might take place.

As ever, it was the behavior of the women that continued to grate with the Egyptians: worse than the Muslim women who fraternized with the French were the French women themselves. As El-Djabarti observed: “The French women who arrived with the army went about the streets with their faces unveiled, wearing all kinds of colored clothes and silk scarves. They rode on horseback or on donkeys with cashmere wrapped around their shoulders; they galloped through the streets laughing and joking with the leaders of their mounts and the locals of the lowest class.”
¹⁸
Such behavior seems to have struck a chord with the local women, if not the men. Within weeks of the French arrival, they too were behaving in this outrageous fashion. El-Djabarti’s ever-watchful eye noted: “At the Nile ceremony, the women threw all shame to the winds, abandoning any restraint to their desires. They got into boats with the French, dressed seductively and covered with jewels, they devoted themselves day and night to dancing, to orgies and to singing. The local boatmen, heads filled with hashish, made all sorts of grimaces, imitating the French language and adding their befuddled cries to the singing of the women and the music.”
¹⁹
This paints a vivid picture—though how much of it is due to El-Djabarti’s inflamed imagination and how much to any actual bacchanalian revels is difficult to judge. The public “orgies” can definitely be discounted, and the confusion inspired in El-Djabarti’s mind by the sight of men and unveiled women mingling publicly at a shipboard party may well account for the rest. On the other hand, the mimicking behavior of the hash-doped boatmen rings all too true. Egyptians at various levels of society may have responded in their different ways, but there is no doubting the bewilderment, moral vertigo and shock which such libertine scenes provoked.

El-Djabarti describes how such behavior spread: “This indecent liberty encouraged the badly brought-up women of Cairo, and as the French pride themselves on their submission to women, as well as lavishing on them gifts and presents, the women began to enter into relationships with them.” The Egyptians were frankly baffled by the French behavior towards women. “This licentiousness spread rapidly throughout the entire city; many women attracted through a love of luxury or the gallantry of the French, imitated the example of the French women. In fact, the French had all the money of their country to hand and always gave way to women, even when these women beat them with their slippers.” The effect of such gallantry on the women of Cairo soon reached epidemic proportions: “The black women, seeing the love of the French for women, climbed the walls of the houses where they were servants and went out looking for them in groups. They introduced the French soldiers into the houses of their masters and showed the riches that were hidden there.”
²⁰
This seems to be a reference to the black slaves and servants left behind in the Mameluke palaces. The officers who were billeted in many of these palaces often found that concubines as well as servants had been abandoned, and Admiral Perrée wrote home to a naval colleague: “The beys have left us several pretty Armenian and Georgian women, whom we have requisitioned for the good of the nation.”
²¹
As the historian Christopher Herold remarked: “One wonders what Madame Perrée thought of this when she read it in the collection of intercepted letters published by the English.”
²²

However, what most baffled the Egyptians was the French predilection for women in the first place. Most Egyptians preferred to indulge their extra-marital appetites with young boys, a custom which had been widespread throughout the Levant since earliest times. (It has been claimed that this practice—amongst otherwise heterosexual men—accompanied the spread of Oriental learning and mathematics to ancient Greece, resulting in the foundation of Western philosophy as well as the behavior described in some of Plato’s philosophical dialogues.)

In fact, many French soldiers did make use of locally available young men and boys, but not for sexual purposes. When the French soldiery discovered the slave market at the bazaar, they were at first drawn by curiosity. Black Nubian slaves and other tribal captives, as well as children sold into slavery, were imported on the trade caravans from the south, as well as being shipped up the Red Sea. Later, some soldiers took advantage of this market. Small groups—men rather than officers—would pool their resources and buy a slave, whom they employed to perform the more menial tasks in their barracks. As a result of French military cameraderie, as well as the revolutionary outlook amongst the soldiers, most of these slaves were treated far better than they would have been in Egyptian houses; though there was undeniably a certain amount of racist bullying, and the inevitable sadism which comes with absolute power. Such a slave may not have been paid, but the men would share their food with him, and generally looked after their new possession, often regarding him as a kind of human mascot.

The buying of slaves by soldiers was of course forbidden by the French military authorities, but in practice officers tended to turn a blind eye. In mitigation, it is worth remembering that many labor practices in western Europe during this period still remained little better than slavery: in England, women and children in rags were paid a pittance for crawling on all fours dragging carts along cramped coalmine galleries, and the French navy still made use of wretched prisoners condemned to the unimaginable misery and degradation of the galleys. Outside Europe, the Atlantic slave trade continued to ship slaves by the hundreds, literally packed like sardines, to work the plantations of the Americas, a practice that would not be banned for another thirty-five years. By comparison, the ancient Arab routes shipping slaves up to Egypt by sea from Zanzibar and overland from the Sudan were almost humane.

The French soldiery did of course also resort to local prostitutes, and these too were frequently smuggled into barracks, where they were supported by the men to whom they had become attached. There were in fact many more of these kept women than there were slaves, but not all such covert occupants of the French barracks were prostitutes—many were escaped servants, especially the black women mentioned by El-Djabarti. These women all thought they would be better treated by the French soldiers than they had been by their Egyptian masters, and judging by El-Djabarti’s disapproving observations on the French behavior towards women, this was probably the case. However, in general the French soldiers found the local Egyptian women unattractive. The prevailing French and Egyptian notions of female beauty differed widely, the Egyptians tending to favor squat, broad-hipped, heavily proportioned women—hence their popular expression of esteem: “She was so beautiful she could not fit through the door.”
^*

Inevitably, many French soldiers also went looking for prostitutes outside their barracks, but such forays into the crowded maze of back alleyways could prove hazardous. According to Nicolas Turc: “In Cairo and around, the soldiers were attracted to the local prostitutes in great numbers; without mercy their throats were cut and their bodies thrown into pits in order to erase all traces of the crime. This is how so many disappeared. Many amongst them also suffered the pernicious effects of venereal disease, an illness which was very widespread in Egypt.”
²³
It is difficult to distinguish between Nicolas Turc’s disapproval and the actual occurrence of these murders. It would seem that such disposal of French soldiers was very far from being as widespread as he suggests; on the other hand, French medical records indicate that venereal disease became increasingly prevalent amongst the soldiers.

As a result of this, the presence of women in the barracks became a recurrent problem for the military authorities, who took to rounding them up and simply expelling them. Such action was not quite so humane (or ineffective) as it sounds; according to Egyptian law, Muslim women who had sexual relations with Christians were sentenced to be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Nile. Many of the women expelled from the French barracks were soon subjected to this local practice. It seems that the French military authorities became aware of this, but made little attempt to intervene; indeed, as venereal disease became more prevalent, and the evictions of soldiers’ women more thorough, there is evidence that this murderous practice was condoned, and even encouraged, though perhaps not at the highest level. As General Dugua wrote to Napoleon: “The men’s quarters are infested with these women of the streets. To get rid of them it would be necessary to drown those who are found in the barracks.”
²⁴
Napoleon summoned the
agha
, the local Egyptian official charged with enforcing Islamic law, and

insisted that he put an end to this disordered state of affairs, which was responsible for the spread of venereal disease. The
agha
bowed respectfully before the general and promised that his orders would be carried out. And so they were. Within no time four hundred unfortunate women suspected of liaisons with French soldiers were arrested by the henchmen of the Cairo police. When the high command later asked the
agha
what had happened to these prisoners he replied, in the manner of a man who believed he had faithfully accomplished his task, that on that very night they had all been decapitated, stuffed into large sacks and thrown into the Nile. He felt sure that he had understood his orders correctly, but Napoleon did not see it this way at all. He was furious at this news, believing that one could hardly achieve solidarity with the Egyptians by means of such cruelties.
²⁵

Napoleon again summoned the
agha
and began angrily berating him. According to the same eyewitness, the conversation went as follows:

“What has happened to the women I entrusted to your supervision?” Napoleon demanded.

“They are in the Nile,” replied the
agha.

“In the Nile!” cried the general, rousing himself into a fury and banging his hand on the table in front of him. “You’re nothing but a wretch, a brigand! Is this how you go about the art of reconciliation? I should shoot you like an assassin.”

The
agha
remained silent.

“Answer me! Answer me!” repeated Napoleon. “What on earth made you commit this act of insane cruelty?”

“It is the custom,” replied the
agha
calmly. “I simply carried out the law of the Prophet.”

Once again, the chasm of mutual incomprehension seemed insurmountable.

Napoleon ensured that all soldiers with venereal disease were treated in the military hospitals which he had set up in Cairo and the main provincial cities of Lower Egypt under French rule, such as Alexandria, Rosetta and Damietta. The running of these hospitals was contracted out to French civilians, mostly drawn from members of the administrative personnel brought to Egypt on the expedition, although the medical staff were all military doctors under the command of physician-in-chief Desgenettes and surgeon-in-chief Larrey. The British blockade and the lack of cash meant that supplies were short; only seriously ill and wounded men were guaranteed beds, but the wards had soon become badly overcrowded. Those whose health had succumbed during the march from Alexandria to Cairo, as well as the wounded from the Battle of the Pyramids, Shubra Khit and the various recurrent skirmishes in the delta, quickly occupied the field hospitals established on the outskirts of Cairo. But as these were released, victims of disease—particularly ophthalmia—quickly took their place; this was the case in Cairo, as well as in the provincial hospitals. Figures for all French military personnel in Egypt indicate that on August 18, 1798, 10 percent of them were in hospital—in other words, well over 3,000 men. But things soon began to deteriorate: in two months this figure had swollen, mostly through disease, to 15 percent—i.e., possibly as many as 5,000 men. The overworked military doctors did their best under difficult conditions. The entire French army remained afflicted by periodic bouts of
cafard
, but morale in the hospitals was even lower: many of the men thought they were dying and would never see their homeland again. Desgenettes protested constantly to Napoleon that more resources should be diverted to his hospitals, but the commander-in-chief refused to be sidetracked from his ambitious schemes for his colony, which were already hard pressed. The fact remained that there was simply not enough in the budget to go round. Instead, Napoleon ordered all military bands to put on regular daily concerts at the field hospitals and in the courtyards of the buildings requisitioned for inner-city hospitals. Uplifting marches, along with popular tunes such as “Marlborough,” were all that could be offered to the flyblown patients languishing amidst the unbearable heat in their beds.