The War of Wars (40 page)

On nearly parallel eastward courses, the two fleets, one immense, the other compact, came within a few tantalizing miles of each other on
the night of 22–23 June, which was shrouded in dense fog. The smaller British fleet, under as much sail as it could, simply cruised past the cumbersome slow-moving French armada with its vulnerable troop transports.

Nelson sent the
Mutine
, commanded by Captain Harvey, as his advance ship to Alexandria. There Harvey was dismayed to discover nothing except a few local craft at anchor. Once again the speed of the British was to blame: he had arrived ahead of Napoleon. The highly-strung Nelson was disconsolate. It seemed he had been in error after all: the French must have sailed west.

The following day, in a state of nervous exhaustion, he at last gave the order to sail west, back to Sicily. As he told Troubridge later: ‘My return to Syracuse in 1798 broke my heart . . . On the 18th I had near died with the swelling of some of the vessels of the heart.’ He wrote to Fanny: ‘I have not been able to find the French fleet, to my great mortification . . . I yet live in hopes of meeting these fellows, but it would have been my delight to have tried Bonaparte on a wind; for he commands the fleet as well as the army . . . We have gone a round of 600 leagues, with an expedition incredible, and I am as yet as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as I was twenty-seven days ago.’

The very same evening that he had set sail away from the direction of Alexandria the French arrived off the port. Napoleon, well aware of the danger to his expedition every day his army stayed aboard ship with a hostile British fleet cruising around the area, ordered its disembarkation with characteristic speed on 1 July.

Only two days earlier Napoleon had at last revealed his destination to his cramped, surly troops in a declaration that was as eloquent as it was avowedly humane:

Soldiers!

You are about to undertake a conquest whose effects on the world’s civilization and trade are incalculable.

You will inflict upon England a blow which is certain to wound her in her most sensitive spot, while waiting for the day when you can deal her the death blow.

We shall make some wearisome marches; we shall fight a few battles; we shall succeed in all our enterprises; destiny is for us.

The Mameluke beys, who exclusively favour English trade, who have oppressed our merchants with vexations, and who are tyrannising over the unhappy people of the Nile valley, will cease to exist a few days after our landing.

The people with whom we shall live are Mohammedans. Their chief creed is this: ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet.’

Do not contradict them. Act toward them as in the past you have acted toward the Jews and the Italians. Respect their muftis and imams, as you have respected the rabbis and the bishops.

Show the same tolerance toward the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran and toward the mosques as you have shown toward convents and synagogues, toward the religions of Moses and of Jesus Christ.

The Roman legions used to protect all religions. You will find here customs quite different from those of Europe; you must become used to them.

The people of the countries where we are going treat their women differently from the way we do: but, in all countries, the man who rapes a woman is a monster.

Looting enriches but a few. It dishonours us, it destroys our resources, and it turns the people whom we want to befriend into our enemies.

The first city we shall see was built by Alexander. At every step we shall find tales of deeds worthy of being emulated by the French.

Napoleon ordered the disembarkation to proceed at once at Marabur Beach, some eight miles west of Alexandria, overruling the protestations of Admiral Brueys that the area was unsafe and that the gale was increasing in vehemence. The landing was a nightmare, with many boats filled with troops capsizing as darkness enveloped them.

Napoleon had little concern for casualties among his own men. He was certain of the lightness of his decision to get the majority ashore immediately. He had landed earlier and reviewed soaked troops under the full moon, ordering them to proceed onwards immediately to take Alexandria. The men, many of whom had taken eight hours to land across the three miles of rough sea and shoals that separated the shore from the ships, had no supplies, no artillery, no appropriate clothes, no food and no drinking water.

Napoleon led the way on foot. Lieutenant Thurman described the army’s ordeal: ‘I can assure you that it was thirst which inspired our soldiers in the capture of Alexandria. At the point the army had reached, we had no choice between finding water and perishing.’ This was bad enough at night; but when the sun rose the exhausted men found themselves parched. Meanwhile Bedouin horsemen gathered in increasing numbers, rounding up stragglers, including many women.

Arriving outside Alexandria at about 8 a.m., Napoleon sat exhausted beneath Pompey’s Pillar outside the city, while its governor frantically sought reinforcements from Cairo. He had just one barrel of gunpowder and a few horsemen to defend ancient walls riddled with
breaches. Then the French marched forward in disciplined lines to attack while the defenders loosed off a volley of gunshots, stones and screams. Both Generals Kleber and Menou were injured, but the assault was quickly accomplished. The defenders retired to the inner citadel, where occasional snipers fired on the French. Private Millet described what happened next:

We already thought that the city had surrendered and were quite surprised when a volley of musketry was fired at us as we were passing by a mosque . . . A general who happened to be there ordered us to force the gate and to spare no one we found inside. Men, women, and children . . . perished under our bayonets. However, since human feelings are stronger than vengeance, the massacre ceased when they cried for mercy: about one third of them were spared.

A large delegation of inhabitants surrendered to the French and Napoleon soon made his entrance. A sniper opened fire upon him, narrowly missing his foot. Napoleon issued a remarkable proclamation promising Egyptians their liberty:

In the name of God, the clement and the merciful. There is no divinity save Allah; He has no son and shares His power with no one.

In the name of the French Republic, founded on liberty and equality, the commander-in-chief of the French armies, Bonaparte [lets it be known that] the beys who govern Egypt have insulted the French nation and oppressed French merchants long enough: the hour of their punishment has come.

For too many years that gang of slaves, purchased in Georgia and the Caucasus, has tyrannized over the most beautiful region of the world. But Almighty God, who rules the universe, has decreed that their reign shall come to an end.

Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. This is an obvious lie. Do not believe it! Answer back to those impostors that I have come to restore to you your rights and to punish the usurpers; that I worship God more than the Mamelukes
do; and that I respect His prophet Mohammed and the admirable Koran.

Tell them that all men are equal before God. Intelligence, virtue, and knowledge alone differentiate them from one another.

Now tell us, by what intelligence, virtues, or knowledge have the Mamelukes distinguished themselves to possess an exclusive right to everything that makes life agreeable and sweet?

Is there a beautiful estate? It belongs to the Mamelukes. Is there a beautiful slave, horse, or house? All this belongs to the Mamelukes.

If Egypt be their farm, then let them produce the deed by which God gave it to them in fee. But God is righteous and merciful to the people. Henceforth, with His help, no Egyptian shall be excluded from high office, and all shall be able to reach the highest positions; those who are the most intelligent, educated, and virtuous shall govern, and thus the people shall be happy.

Once you had great cities, large canals, a prosperous trade. What has destroyed all this, if not the greed, the iniquity, and the tyranny of the Mamelukes?

Kadis, sheiks, imams, tchorbadjis and notables of the country, tell the people that the French also are true Moslems. The proof is that they have been to Rome the great and have destroyed the throne of the Pope, who always incited the Christians to make war on the Moslems, and that they went to the island of Malta and expelled the Knights, who fancied that God wanted them to make war on the Moslems. Besides, the French have shown at all times that they are the particular friends of His Majesty the Ottoman Sultan (may God perpetuate his rule!) and the enemies of his enemies. The Mamelukes, on the contrary, always have refused to obey him; they never comply with his orders and follow only their whims.

Happy, thrice happy are those Egyptians who side with us. They shall prosper in fortune and rank. Happy are those who stay in their dwellings without taking sides with either of the parties now at war. When they know us better, they will hasten to join us in all sincerity.

But woe, woe to those who side with the Mamelukes and help them to make war on us. There shall be no salvation for them, and their memory shall be wiped out.

Napoleon saw himself not as a colonial conquistador but as a civilising force seeking to free the oppressed of Egypt from their existing colonial masters, but this was a spectacular misreading of the history of Egypt. Egypt was indeed something of a suppliant nation under the yoke of foreign oppressors; but it did not follow that the French were any more welcome.

The government of Egypt when Napoleon arrived was one of the most unusual in the world. The country was technically a province of the Ottoman empire, France’s traditional ally, which had been captured by Suleiman the Magnificent’s father in 1517, who accepted the title of Caliph, or spiritual ruler. But he left in place a state of twenty-four provinces ruled by Mameluke beys, or governors, who together formed a ruling council, the diwan, presided over by the Turkish proconsul, the Pasha. In practice the only real power exercised by the Caliph and the Pasha was that of raising tribute from the Egyptians, which was all indeed that the Ottomans were really interested in.

Real power lay in the hands of the Mamelukes, a warrior caste dating back to 1230 who, astonishingly, hailed from the Caucasus, being mostly Georgians and Circassians. There were some 12,000 of these, brought in as a private army by the early sultans. They married only among their own race, although they kept Egyptian harems; they did not have children by their wives or concubines, because the women preferred to abort themselves rather than lose their looks. Instead boys of between eight and ten years old were brought from the Caucasus and trained as warriors.

This caste was entirely parasitic, living off the Egyptians, oppressing the local population and fighting among themselves. They were reputed to be the best horsemen in the world, superb fighters and savagely cruel towards those they oppressed. As a near contemporary account states: ‘The youthful slave, purchased with a heedful reference to his strength and personal appearance, was carefully trained to arms in the family of his master. When created a Mameluke, he was received into the troop of the Bey, and rendered capable of succeeding to him at his death; for these chiefs despised the ordinary connections of blood, and their authority was, upon military principles, transferred at their death to him amongst the band who was accounted the best soldier.’

The French calculated that the Bedouin tribes who roamed the desert with their nomadic flocks and sheep and herds of cattle, and the fellahs, the farmers of the fertile land around the Nile, would welcome the enlightened French in freeing them from the savage yoke of this alien white caste. This proved a sadly mistaken assumption. But Napoleon’s second belief, that a disciplined French army equipped with modern arms and tactics could overcome more traditional warriors, however fearless, proved correct.

Napoleon’s initial tactics were brutally simple and probably justified: to press forward as fast as possible and overawe and overwhelm the enemy before it had a chance to gather its forces. This, however, required a characteristic indifference towards the suffering of his own men. Having captured Alexandria, Napoleon secured the release of the prisoners taken on the night’s march from the beach. It turned out that the men, whose pale skins were attractive to the tribesmen, had been repeatedly raped while the women were merely beaten. This proved a powerful deterrent to stragglers from the main force and frequently French soldiers who fell behind in the heat or had fallen ill preferred to shoot themselves rather than fall into enemy hands.

Napoleon ordered his army forward to Damanhur and Rosetta, at the Nile delta, and then forward to join up at El Rahmaniyah further up the river – altogether a march of sixty miles. The routes were across semi-desert, and the troops had only dried husks to eat and nothing with which to carry water. At the first stop, there were only two nearly empty wells to provide water for 4,600 men. Lieutenant Vertray described the scene: ‘It was a pity to see men stretched on their bellies around that fetid hole, dying of thirst, panting and unable to satisfy their craving. I have seen, with my own eyes, dying men beg and implore their comrades for pity, while those comrades were fighting among themselves over a little dirty water. I saw some of them die in torture.’

When they reached Damanhur, an impoverished town, a cavalry commander, General Mireur, berated Napoleon for leading the army into a hopeless and irresponsible war, and then walked out into the desert, where he may have been robbed and killed, or may have shot himself.

At El Rahmaniyah the troops went delirious with joy to see the Nile. As Lieutenant Desvernois reported: ‘The soldiers broke ranks to throw themselves into it. Some kept their clothes, even their weapons. Others took the time to undress, then ran to the water, dived into it, and stayed in it for several hours. Many found their death by drinking too greedily.’ There were large fields covered with water-melons (about the only thing that grew at that season); the soldiers gorged themselves on them, and they continued to eat water-melons, and practically nothing but water-melons, all the way to the site of the Battle of the Pyramids, which itself was a water-melon field.