Napoleon in Egypt (48 page)

On the very same day, Napoleon replied to Desaix’s desperate plea by dispatching General Belliard from Cairo with reinforcements in the shape of an infantry battalion “forming in all 340 men,”
¹²
according to Belliard, while Napoleon recorded: “I have ordered General Belliard to leave with five or six hundred men.”
¹³
Belliard’s figure is more likely to represent the true number: Napoleon’s order, as recorded in his
Correspondance
, was probably intended to put him in a more generous and obliging light. On the other hand, he may actually have given such an order, but by the time it filtered down the figure could have been reduced by commanders unwilling to give up the required number of men. Such instances illustrate the constant difficulty of arriving at the historical truth, even when relying upon firsthand accounts.

On his journey south along the Nile, Belliard recorded in his journal: “En route I learned that the French had chased the Mamelukes out of Fayoum province. I believed this had the support of the peasants, owing to the goodwill shown to us in the villages through which we passed.”
¹⁴
Despite the initial difficulties encountered in Upper Egypt, the French remained optimistic: if they could only drive out the Mamelukes altogether, it might be possible to establish a stable administration. This would then have a knock-on effect in Cairo, the delta and the whole of Lower Egypt. Napoleon certainly believed this, and Desaix would do his best to implement his commander’s wishes, though how far this belief extended throughout the Army of the Orient is difficult to tell. Curiously, despite all the suffering and discontent, the evidence suggests that it did indeed remain widespread—and not just amongst senior generals (with the notable exception of Kléber). Judging from the tone of the journals and letters they wrote, the majority of the officers amongst the Army of the Orient still appeared to believe that the Egyptian expedition would have a successful outcome. They remained loyal to their undefeated leader, and were willing to follow wherever he led.

In early November, Desaix’s expedition was joined by the fifty-one-year-old artist-savant Vivant Denon, who had already lived through many adventures since his time as a young painter at the court of Louis XV at Versailles, not least of which had been his night-time arrival in Alexandria just four months previously. Even so, he was now embarking upon what would turn out to be the adventure of his life, the one for which he would achieve lasting fame. He was fascinated by the history of ancient Egypt, and had already sketched the pyramids: “The great distance from which they can be seen makes them appear diaphanous, of the same bluish tone as the sky, giving back to them the fineness and purity that has been worn away by the centuries.”
¹⁵
He had also produced a memorable sketch of the savants using a ladder, plumb line and theodolite to measure the face of the Sphinx: “Although its proportions are colossal, those of its contours which have been preserved are as supple as they are pure. The expression on its face is gentle, gracious and tranquil, its character African—but the mouth, whose lips are thick, has a truly admirable harmony of execution and finesse of artistry. It is as if it is living flesh.”
¹⁶
Like many others, he had heard rumors of the fabulous ruins that lay further up the Nile. Such was his desire to see for himself if these rumors were true, he had managed to persuade Napoleon to allow him to join Desaix’s expedition, despite the seriousness of its military purpose.

Denon sailed from Cairo early in November on a
chebek
carrying ammunition and supplies for Desaix. He was immediately enchanted by what he saw. On the banks of the Nile the buffaloes circled beneath the blinding sun, pumping water into the irrigation ditches; laden donkeys and strings of camels passed along the pathways between the mud-hutted villages; and beyond the palm trees, across the flooded rice fields, were views of further pyramids, some dilapidated, others in ruins. Meanwhile, in the swollen river itself he could see “little islands covered with ducks, herons and pelicans.”
¹⁷
But his view of life by the Nile was not entirely rose-tinted. When he went ashore, he found that the villages were invariably

surrounded by piles of filth and rubble, which in the flat landscape were as good as mountains from which one could view the surrounding countryside. In the evenings the tops of these mounds were covered with groups of squatting villagers, taking the air, smoking their pipes, and watching to see that everything in the surrounding plain was peaceful. The disadvantage of these heaps of refuse is that they make the villages offensive, rendering them unhealthy by depriving them of fresh air, and the eyes of the inhabitants are made puffy by the mud-dust mixed with imperceptible bits of straw, which is one of the numerous causes of the eye infections with which Egypt is afflicted.
¹⁸

Denon was evidently a sympathetic character, and General Belliard, who became Desaix’s second-in-command, soon took the aging artist-savant under his wing. According to Denon, “General Belliard obligingly offered to divide up his living quarters with me. This involved a division of the infinitely small: our beds occupied the entire room. These had to be cleared out if we wanted to put in a table, and this in turn had to be cleared out when we wanted to wash or dress ourselves.”
¹⁹
Unusually, the men also took to Denon, and soon became proud of their artist-in-residence, who despite his graying hair and unathletic figure sought no favors when they struck camp and set out on their daily march. Savary described the intrepid artist in his memoirs: “He carried on his shoulders a portfolio filled with papers and pencils, and had a little sack suspended from his neck, in which he put his writing case and some food.”
²⁰
If Denon stepped out of line to squat down and sketch some passing scene where there was no shelter, the soldiers would take turns to follow him and stand at his side, their shadows protecting him from the sun, while at the same time wondering at his artistic facility as the sketch took shape before their eyes.

In the last week of November, Desaix left Belliard in charge while he returned north, arriving in Cairo on December 1, to confront Napoleon in person. Their face-to-face encounter seems to have been grim, but Napoleon eventually agreed to provide suitable reinforcements to keep Desaix’s infantry strength at over 3,000 men, as well as sending an additional 1,000 cavalry under General Davout. Finally, as a gesture of goodwill, he loaned Desaix his personal
djerme
,
L’Italie
, which had been outfitted in considerable luxury, to use as his shipboard headquarters during the campaign.

Despite this gesture, Desaix arrived back at his base at Beni Suef, seventy miles south of Cairo, in a foul temper. In the end he had fallen out with Napoleon over the use of a howitzer on his campaign. An argument between these two supreme tacticians had been inevitable: it was lucky that it had been over such a trivial matter. By now Desaix’s men had been able to rest and recuperate, some for as long as four weeks. His staff had reorganized the division so as to make it better adapted to the task at hand, and a flotilla had arrived from Cairo bringing further provisions and vital supplies of marching boots, returning upstream with all those rendered
hors de combat
by disease.

Suitably refreshed, Desaix’s division started south once more in pursuit of Murad Bey on December 16. Mornings began early, with reveille often at two
A.M.
(French time), and the entire division would be on the move within the hour, with its main body marching down the west bank of the Nile, while the flotilla, along with
L’Italie
, attempted to keep pace on the river. Desaix himself abandoned the luxury of life on
L’Italie
during the daytime, and only slept aboard when the flotilla managed to keep up with the marching columns. There were frequent skirmishes with small detachments of Mameluke cavalry, and Desaix would direct these operations in person. In the course of these, the French invariably inflicted heavy punishment, whilst suffering few casualties themselves.

In this way, Desaix’s division made good progress down the Nile, passing through Minya and Mellawi before reaching Asyut. By now he knew he had Murad Bey on the run: all the indications were that his main group was just thirty miles ahead. During the last days of December Desaix reached Girga, the chief city of Upper Egypt, 250 miles up the Nile from Cairo. The green valley of the Nile had by now begun to narrow, with the river passing through the occasional gorge, and the fertile strip of land sometimes extending only five miles on either side before giving way to the desert. However, the land was more intensively cultivated here than in Lower Egypt, with well-irrigated fields amidst the citrus orchards and groves of date-palms, and the markets were plentifully supplied with local produce. In Asyut, the arrival of 3,000 French soldiers barely altered the price of pigeons, eggs and fruit, the most popular purchases amongst the men; yet after their diet of dried army biscuits, this rich cuisine soon resulted in a bad outbreak of dysentery. They were now approaching the tropics, and although it was midwinter the climate proved difficult for even the more hardened soldiers. Temperatures could rise above 30ºC (into the nineties Fahrenheit) during the daytime, plunging to almost freezing at night. Many believed that it was this chill, more than the heat and dust of the daytime marches, that was responsible for the ophthalmia that continued to spread through the division. All took their own precautions against this disease, the most popular being to cover one’s eyes at night. But still it spread through all ranks, and even the most senior officers were not immune: General Belliard himself succumbed at one stage.

Desaix’s division was now entering unknown territory: no European army had penetrated this far south into Africa since the ancient Romans. Supply lines were becoming increasingly stretched and vulnerable to opportunist Bedouin raids; at the same time the continuous daily marching, often over sandstone, began taking its toll on the soldiers’ boots, which now seldom lasted more than a month. When Desaix arrived at Girga, he discovered that Murad Bey had only left the city the previous night. According to Belliard: “The Mamelukes had their gunboats at Girga and we might have found them and taken possession of them if half an hour before our arrival there hadn’t been a strong North wind, which carried them off [upstream].”
²¹

The French had almost caught up with Murad Bey, but to Desaix’s extreme frustration he was now forced to call a halt. He had lost contact with his flotilla, and when last heard of it was several days’ sail downstream. Amongst other things it was carrying the division’s supply of army biscuits and boots, without which it could go no further. Despite his annoyance, Desaix also knew that his men were in no fit state to continue: they needed a rest after their rapid march south.

Surprisingly, in spite of the skirmishes, the heat and the disease, Desaix’s expedition seems to have been a fairly enjoyable experience for many of the French soldiers. The men were pleased to discover that prostitutes were readily available in all towns, and cost almost nothing, while the officers appear to have been more interested in the food. In Girga, Belliard noted: “I have never found a place where the food is so cheap: a duck sells for less than half a franc, one can buy six or seven eggs for three centimes, chickens sell at thirty-five centimes a pair, and a pair of pigeons for around fourteen centimes
^*
. . . . When you arrive in a place where food costs so little, you’d think they live in misery. But when four or five thousand soldiers arrive for ten days and the prices don’t go up, then you can be sure there’s enough for everybody.”
²²
Girga was a town of around 10–12,000 inhabitants, and even though Belliard seems to have slightly exaggerated the number of soldiers, his point was real enough: this was indeed a land of plenty.

Girga was to prove a pleasant interlude. Belliard records how “every evening we met up at the general’s house [Desaix’s headquarters], and passed an agreeable couple of hours of our day discussing and debating topics great and small.”
²³
One evening they discussed the origins of ancient Egypt, and on December 31 they had a particularly memorable dinner: the great annual caravan from Darfur had just arrived in Girga, and Desaix invited the brother of its leader to be their guest. This black Nubian prince proved an exotic novelty to his European dining companions. Denon described him as “lively, happy, enthusiastic and intelligent,”
²⁴
and he certainly seems to have played his part to the full, regaling his spellbound listeners with his travelers’ tales about crossing the Sahara desert, “during which they only found water every eight days in underground wells.” The prince “had just come back from a two-year voyage to Mecca and India. He claimed to have eighty brothers, who are like him all sons of the King of Darfur.”
²⁵
He explained to his French listeners that Darfur was “larger than Cairo, but not so well built.” He also confirmed for them the existence of the legendary city of Timbuktu, which he said was a huge city on the banks of a great river, six months’ journey from Darfur in the direction of the setting sun: “Its inhabitants are very small. They trade with Darfur, bringing gold and the teeth of elephantines [presumably ivory], which they exchange for camels and Egyptian cloth.” His own convoy was even more colorful: this consisted of 2,000 camels, bringing with it “800 Nubians [slaves] from Senaar, and as many women, also elephantines’ teeth and powdered gold . . . all merchandise bound for Cairo.”
²⁶
To the officers’ questions, he replied that “when these female slaves were not captive, and they were bought, they cost one bad rifle each, the men two.” Savary, who was present at this dinner, mentions that the caravan also carried “gum, ostrich plumes and tiger skins . . . also many children who were destined to be sold, the offspring of parents who had been too poor to feed them.”
²⁷
He adds that “we discussed this treatment of the blacks, and afterwards almost all of us were of the opinion that it was more philanthropic to permit it than to defend it.” This enigmatic conclusion would seem to indicate that at least among the officers there were distinct qualms about the slave trade—which would be outlawed in the West Indies eight years later, and abolished by the French in 1848. The officers seem to have been unaware of Napoleon’s plan to import slaves to swell the ranks of the Army of the Orient, and although Desaix certainly knew of this by now, it seems he chose not to mention it.