The War of Wars (44 page)

Napoleon seemed to win no local supporters through his loudly proclaimed tilt to Islam. Instead he merely witnessed the decline of his own forces. The Egyptian resistance had been emboldened by the destruction of the French fleet. As Nicholas the Turk put it: ‘[the people] knew for certain that the French had lost all hope of receiving aid from their own country . . . All we have to do is to resist them, to hold out against them, and we’ll be rid of them in the end, for whatever does not grow must diminish.’

Meanwhile a plague broke out: thanks to Napoleon’s own insistence upon hygiene, only 2,000 or so French troops were affected. Napoleon’s methods were characteristically thorough for his men: ‘Have them strip as naked as they were born and take a good sea bath. Make them rub themselves from head to foot, and make them wash their clothes . . . In consequence of the advice of the medical officers I ordered that all the buboes which did not appear likely to suppurate should be opened.’ To encourage hospital staff, he decreed: ‘Every day you will have a superior officer make the rounds of the hospitals . . . visit all the patients, and have all attendants and employees who refuse to give the required care and food to the patients shot on the spot in the courtyard of the hospital.’

With plague, killings by the locals and suicides decimating his troops, Napoleon decided to try and recruit locally. He set up a Mameluke Corps in his army. He also tried to recruit ‘Black Mamelukes’ – ‘2,000 black slaves over sixteen years old’. These ideas suggested that Napoleon was trying to create his own Egyptian empire, manned by his supporters, virtually independent from France: his ideas of racial integration were, at least, reasonably advanced.

At this stage six of Napoleon’s generals – veterans who viewed him with some scepticism – wanted to return to France: they included Kléber, Menou, Berthier and Dumas. Kléber, Menou and Berthier were persuaded to stay, while Dumas left. Berthier, who was to serve as Napoleon’s loyal and unbelievably efficient chief of staff for sixteen years, was an extraordinary figure, devoted to Napoleon and passionately in love with the faraway Madame Visconti. Napoleon later observed wonderingly:

I never saw a passion like that of Berthier for Madame Visconti. In Egypt, he would watch the moon at the same time that she was supposed to look at it herself. In the middle of the desert, he put up a tent for her cult: he put Madame Visconti’s portrait inside it and burned incense there. Three mules were used to transport this tent and his baggage. Often I would enter and lie down on the sofa with my boots on. It made Berthier furious; he thought it was a profanation of the sanctuary. He loved her so much that he provoked me into talking about her, although I always spoke ill of her. He didn’t care; he was delighted if one talked about her at all. He even wanted to leave the army to go back to her. I had my despatches all ready, received his parting wishes, assigned him an
aviso
[a courier ship] – when he came back to me with tears in his eyes.

Talleyrand, in a despatch that did not reach Napoleon until much later, bluntly told him that he was on his own:

Since we cannot send you any help, the Executive Directory knows better than to give you any orders or even instructions. You will
determine your line of conduct according to your own position and to the means you dispose of in Egypt . . . Since it would be difficult, at the present moment, to make possible your (i.e. your army’s) return to France, there are three choices open to you: either to remain in Egypt and to establish yourself in such a manner as to be safe from a Turkish attack (but you are aware that for part of the year the country is extremely unhealthy for Europeans, especially if they receive no assistance from the homeland); or to march to India, where, if you get there, you will no doubt find men ready to join you to fight English domination; or, finally, to march on Constantinople and to meet the enemy who is threatening you. The choice is up to you and to the brave and distinguished men who surround you.

As early as the end of August, Napoleon had displayed his resilience in the face of adversity by sending General Desaix with just under 3,000 men to chase Murad Bey, the former ruler of Egypt and now its rebel leader. Desaix, a year older than Napoleon, hailed from a family of country squires in the Auvergne. He had risen to fame as one of General Moreau’s subordinates in the Army of the Rhine. Bright and ambitious, Desaix decided to link his fortunes to Napoleon when in Italy, but he had few illusions about his new master whom he considered ‘extremely addicted to intrigue. He is very rich, as well he might be, since he draws on a whole country’s revenues . . . He believes neither in probity nor in decency; he says all this is foolishness; he claims that it is useless and doesn’t exist in this world.’

Desaix was described by Napoleon as ‘a little black-looking man’, ugly in appearance and ‘always badly dressed, sometimes even ragged’. But he was extraordinarily brave, driven by glory and duty, ‘intended by nature to be a great general’. Although he had a mistress in France, he was accompanied on his travels by, among others, ‘Sarah, a madcap Abyssinian, fifteen years old’.

Desaix’s expedition against Murad Bey was to prove an epic of adventure and endurance. They left on the night of 25 August on a flotilla of boats, some of them armed with cannon, travelling some
hundred miles up the Nile before marching inland to try and ambush the Mamelukes at Bahnasa, only to find they had left. They sailed a further 150 miles up to Asyut, where again they found the bird had flown, then turned back towards Cairo.

Desaix’s troops went back down the Nile, branching out to travel up Joseph’s Canal, an ancient waterway, reaching Bahnasa again, where they disembarked and finally caught up with Murad at El Lahun. There the old pattern of the French forming infantry squares to repel attacks by the Mameluke cavalry repeated itself. The fighting was brutal. An eyewitness reported: ‘One of our men, stretched out on the ground, crawled toward a dying Mameluke and slit his throat. An officer asked him, “How can you do such a thing in the state you’re in?” “It’s easy for you to talk,” the soldier answered, “but me, I’ve only a few more minutes to live, and I want to have fun while I may.” ‘Desaix had won with 150 casualties to the Mamelukes’ 400. Desaix attempted to pursue Murad and his horsemen, but they proved too fast.

After resting, Desaix returned up the Nile to Asyut, where he captured Murad’s boats, although he and his men had fled again. Desaix travelled further up the valley which narrows between two mountains to Girga, which Murad had once again just left. There Desaix halted, waiting for supplies to come upriver. Meanwhile Murad Bey was building up a huge array of 7,000 cavalry, 5,000 foot soldiers and his own 2,000 Mamelukes to take on Desaix’s 1,000-strong cavalry and 3,000 infantry. When the two met, the French formed into two infantry squares with the cavalry in the middle and the artillery on either side. This efficient formation repelled Murad’s attacks and once again he and his Mamelukes fled into the desert.

Desaix’s men resumed their chase, encountering their first crocodiles at Dandara. They were awestruck by the temples of Luxor and Karnak, on seeing which they broke out in applause and then presented arms while their bands struck up. The painter Denon, who was with them, sketched the scene before they proceeded up to Aswan, Murad again having left it forty-eight hours earlier. ‘Toward the west, the eye discovers a huge desert; to the south, the awesome sight of the steep rocks forming the cataract. They seem to signify that here are the limits of the civilized world. Here nature seems to bar our route and to say to
us, stop, go no further. To the east is Elephantine Island, its verdure and palm groves contrasting with the arid mountains that surround it.’

The French captured an island. There one of Desaix’s officers observed:

Men, women, and children, everybody threw themselves into the river. Faithful to their ferocious character, mothers could be seen drowning the children they could not take with them and mutilating their daughters in order to protect them from being raped by the victors . . . I found a girl seven to eight years old who had been sewn up . . . in a manner that prevented her from satisfying her most pressing needs and caused her horrible convulsions. Only after a counter-operation and a bath was I able to save the life of that unfortunate little creature, who was as pretty as could be.

General Belliard, the commander of the forces at Aswan, ruthlessly ordered the destruction of all the wheat in a nearby village, so that the Mamelukes could not live off the land. ‘The poor inhabitants could watch, within an hour, the destruction of the fruit of three months’ labour . . . I gave the peasants who had stayed behind a few coins and told them that, if they should starve, they ought to send for some durrah at Aswan.’ He also ordered his men to rape for their amusement and to terrorize the population.

The inhabitants soon had their revenge. The flotilla remained behind while the French departed downriver. In April the Arabs arrived and
L’Italie
, a French gunboat was boarded and the band aboard was captured and forced to play ashore while the rest of the prisoners were first raped and then chopped up; the band was then subjected to the same fate.

Some 7,000 Arabs now joined in the fight – mostly warriors from Mecca come to resist the infidels. Belliard’s 1,000 men retreated hastily into a firefight with another column of Arabs downstream, at the village of Abnod, where several hundred Meccans were killed. Desaix decided he had gone far enough. Crossing the Nile he returned to Asyut. The objective was to impress upon the locals the French control of the territory. At Asyut he nearly caught up with Murad Bey who,
however, had induced the local people to rebellion. The French mowed down some 1,000 of them.

Desaix spelt out the reality of the situation in a despatch to Napoleon:

If you leave this country without troops for just an instant, it will revert immediately to its former masters . . . I shall not bore you with a recital of our hardships. They would not interest you . . . I have addressed to you, General, several urgent requests for munitions. I knew how desperately they were needed; as a matter of fact, my situation is critical. People who ask for something always sound as if they felt sorry for themselves. Nevertheless, consider what we are up against. My soldiers have no cartridges except those they are carrying in their kits. The least you can do, General, is take notice of what is being asked of you. There are 1,800 Mamelukes in Upper Egypt. I shall go and fight them.

Desaix ordered Belliard to march to the Red Sea port of Kossier, some 150 miles of desert away, to stop the flow of Arab volunteers. Amazingly Belliard succeeded, crossing this desolate and mountainous expanse in just three days to capture Kossier. He returned just as quickly.

Now that the supply of Arab recruits had been choked off, Murad Bey and the Mamelukes kept away from the French force, Murad himself travelling down to bivouac near the Great Pyramids. Desaix had momentarily conquered Upper Egypt in an astonishing feat of endurance and bravery for the French. Nicholas the Turk wrote: ‘From that moment on General Desaix devoted himself to the pacification and organization of Upper Egypt, with an intelligence, an administrative knowledge, a tactfulness, a courage, a zeal, and a magnanimity that were admirable; so that Upper Egypt was better governed than was the Delta.’

Napoleon Bonaparte himself travelled to Suez to take formal possession of the Red Sea port, in a carriage accompanied by three servants. There he met dignitaries from the Hejaz, Yemen and Muscat and forded the Red Sea to visit the ‘Fountains of Moses’ – famous
springs. The party nearly perished in the fast-flowing tides as they returned. Napoleon also followed the bed of the ancient canal which linked the Red Sea to the Bitter Lakes and appointed surveyors to investigate the possibility of building a new canal – anticipating Ferdinand de Lesseps’s construction of the Suez Canal two generations later.

On his return Napoleon continued his proconsulship with a volley of peremptory orders and reforms, encouragement of his scholars and scientists and a rare – for him – plunge into debauchery. The latter was understandable. He had long been aware that Josephine, with whom he remained besottedly in love, had been cuckolding him. At the end of January, Androche Junot, one of his confidants, had brutally and abruptly informed Napoleon of Josephine’s unfaithfulness, providing letters and details, in the presence of two other officers. Napoleon was utterly humiliated by Junot’s crass exposition and declared: ‘Divorce, yes, divorce – I want a public and sensational divorce! I don’t want to be the laughing-stock of Paris. I shall write to Joseph and have the divorce pronounced . . . I love that woman so much I would give anything if only what Junot told was not true.’

He wrote despairingly to his brother Joseph: ‘The veil has been horribly torn asunder. You are the only person remaining to me; I treasure your friendship . . . Arrange for me to have a country house when I return, either near Paris or in Burgundy . . . I am weary of human nature. I need to be alone and isolated. Great deeds leave me cold. All feeling is dried up. Fame is insipid.’ It was one thing for Josephine to pursue her amours; quite another for Napoleon to be humiliated as a cuckold in public.

It was hardly the life-changing moment that some of his biographers have suggested. Napoleon’s ruthlessness and cynicism were in evidence long before this event and he behaved no differently afterwards. But he now felt utterly free to be unfaithful himself, after a surprisingly sexually continent life for so unscrupulous a man in other regards. Possibly he even felt he had an obligation to do so as a display of manhood and of revenge against Josephine: in sexual matters, as in
everything else, Napoleon was calculating and governed by the impression his behaviour would make upon the outside world.

His affections turned to Zevah, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a prominent sheikh. She became known as ‘the General’s Egyptian’. She suffered sadly afterwards: when the French departed, according to El-Djabarti: ‘The daughter of the sheikh El-Bekri was arrested. She had been debauched by the French. The pasha’s emissaries presented themselves after sundown at her mother’s house . . . and made her appear [before court] with her father. She was interrogated regarding her conduct, and made reply that she repented it. Her father’s opinion was solicited. He answered that he disavowed his daughter’s conduct. Then the unfortunate girl’s head was cut off.’