The War of Wars (47 page)

With singular efficiency, Napoleon marched a force of some 10,000 men and 1,000 cavalry under Kléber to Alexandria. On 24 July the French attacked the three Turkish lines of defence which put up fierce resistance. Then Murat’s cavalry arrived at noon and with extraordinary ferocity broke through all three lines towards the fort itself. The Turks panicked and 1,000 escaped to the fort, while another 2,000 were massacred when the infantry followed up the attack. Some 4,000 fled into the sea, where most drowned and many others were shot from the shore.

Khedive Mehemet Ali was one of the swimmers to survive: he was later to create the dynasty of Egyptian kings that ended in Farouk in the
1950s. Murat himself captured the Turkish commander, Mustafa Pasha, an old man with a white beard who fired at the French commander, wounding him in the jaw, before the latter’s sword took off two of his fingers. Some 2,500 Turks were still barricaded in the fort. They refused their pasha’s pleas to surrender and 1,000 of them died of thirst and hunger – they even drank salt water – before they gave up. Instead of being executed as they expected, they were given food and water, but some 400 more died.

About 1,000 Frenchmen had been killed or wounded in the battle, compared with 6,000 Turks. It was sweet revenge for Acre, albeit not a particularly glorious French triumph; still it permitted Napoleon to rehabilitate himself somewhat, not that he had ever admitted defeat at Acre. ‘This beautiful battle’, as Napoleon described it, allowed the master of propaganda to portray the whole appalling Middle Eastern adventure as culminating in a glorious victory and defeat for the Turks.

In fact, with the exception of the occupation of Cairo against primitive if colourful troops and the spectacular nature of Desaix’s expedition up the Nile, it had been disaster. Napoleon had lost one third of his men against an inferior and primitive enemy. Egypt remained seething with opposition to French rule; and his expedition to take Constantinople had ended in defeat before a crumbling crusader fortress commanded by a brigand and an English adventurer, while his advance and retreat had taken place in horrific circumstances for his own forces as well as the enemy.

The effect of the enterprise upon Napoleon himself was considerable, removing any inhibitions he previously felt about risking his men or destroying the enemy. He had also acquired a colonialist’s contempt for old laws and customs, as well as the belief that if he acted boldly enough, he could conquer and rule almost anything, including his own country. Now he planned to return to Paris to do exactly that.

After the fall of Aboukir, Napoleon returned to Cairo for only a week and, ignoring reports that a large combined Franco-Spanish fleet was in the Mediterranean to evacuate or reinforce his men, secretly fled as soon as he believed the departure of the Anglo-Turkish fleet would allow him safe passage. He left instructions to ‘strike hard at the first sign of trouble . . . chop off six heads per day but always keep smiling’.
He took with him a nineteen-year-old Armenian Mameluke as bodyguard; Roustam Raza was not to leave his side until almost the end of his career. His faithful Berthier came too, as did the superb cavalry commander Murat and Eugène de Beauharnais, his young stepson, who had more than proved himself.

Only when he was already on the road to Alexandria did he tell General Menou that he was going. He left instructions to the capable Kléber, who was to be his successor and had come utterly to despise Napoleon. Then, after waiting all night for a favourable wind, he left aboard ship at around 8 am. The journey back was long and hazardous: Napoleon’s ship,
Le Muidon
, twice caught sight of British ships off the North African coast but was not spotted. In appalling weather they reached Corsica on 30 September and Napoleon spent a few nights at his old home with his mother Letizia. Sailing from Corsica, the ship ran into a severe gale and again spied British ships in the distance. On 9 October he was back in France at last.

Kléber’s fury at being abandoned by Napoleon knew no bounds: the preening, vain incompetent, bumptious young man who had got France into this mess – for Kléber himself had opposed the whole invasion of Egypt – had now fled as the situation deteriorated, and had been so embarrassed that he had not even informed Kléber he was doing so. Perhaps he feared being arrested if Kléber had learnt of his desertion.

Kléber was the polar opposite of the small bundle of manic energy he replaced: six foot tall, of stern and striking appearance, with flowing curly hair and a stentorian voice, Kléber was a soldier’s soldier. He did not believe the French occupation of Egypt would last long, and saw no need to colonize the country or win over the people by pretending he was a Moslem. He poured scorn on Napoleon to his brother officers as ‘the hero’ or ‘the Almighty’ and accused him of stealing some 2 million francs from the treasury and leaving a deficit of 10 million francs, 4 million of which was in soldiers’ pay.

With a Turkish army on the way from Gaza and opposition increasing to French rule, Kléber talked directly to the Turks, offering to restore Egypt to them and return to the old Franco-Turkish alliance.
Sidney Smith interceded on his behalf to the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman empire, who at first proved reluctant to forgive.

Meanwhile the French suffered another humiliation. The Turkish army of 40,000, after taking Gaza, moved on El Arish and massacred some hundred Frenchmen who had already surrendered. Even so, Kléber and the Grand Vizier reached an agreement there, under which the Turks would provide transports to evacuate the French army, and the Ottomans would withdraw from their alliance with Russia and Britain, in exchange for a French withdrawal from Egypt. Kléber’s reasoning was brutally realistic:

an exact mathematical calculation: we must not fight but we must compromise with those barbarians while we are still strong enough to enforce the faithful execution of the terms agreed upon . . . Since Bonaparte’s return to France, there has been time enough to send us not one but ten courier ships. None was sent, because the government had nothing to promise me . . . If I win a victory, all I gain is a three-month respite . . . If I am beaten, I am responsible toward the Republic for 20,000 citizens, who will be unable to escape being massacred by a lawless and infuriated soldiery . . . since, in this respect, we have set a fatal example for them to follow.

However Smith now learned that the British government, believing the French in Egypt to be on the brink of total defeat, had disavowed the agreement at El Arish. (In fact the British government had changed its mind, but neglected to inform Smith in time.) By then the Turks, under the terms of the agreement, had arrived in Cairo. Kléber, appalled by the British disavowal, promptly ordered his men into the field and in a spectacular battle near the ancient Heliopolis routed a Turkish army four times as large and within a week had chased them out of Egypt altogether. Napoleon had never won such a victory.

Even so, Kléber sought desperately to reach agreement with the Turks: he told General Menou, who had congratulated him:

My stupidity is so enormous that even today I do not believe that the Convention of El Arish was a political mistake or that there is
any reason to lose one’s head over the victory I have won with my army. Even today, I am profoundly convinced that, by means of that treaty, I had succeeded in putting a reasonable end to an insane enterprise. Even today I remain convinced that we shall receive no help from France and that we shall never . . . found any colonies in Egypt unless the cotton plants and palm trees should soon produce soldiers and bullets . . .

One Turkish contingent bypassed the French after Heliopolis and reached Cairo, which had been left unprotected. Thus encouraged, mobs took to the streets, causing a few weeks of looting, rape and anarchy. Kléber was forced to bombard the city, eventually regaining control and expelling the Turks. Soon afterwards Kléber was assassinated by an Arab fanatic, who had his hand cut off and was then impaled alive in a French reprisal more akin to the methods of their ‘barbarian’ enemies. It was long alleged, possibly rightly, that the assassination was a British plot: certainly France thus lost one of its best, most far-seeing and humane generals.

Menou took over. His zest for turning Egypt into a French colony had been second only to Napoleon’s. Menou, a capable but small-minded administrator, immediately repudiated the treaty of El Arish. The British, giving up all hope of peace after this catalogue of misunderstandings, sent Sir Ralph Abercromby of West Indies fame at the head of an army which landed in Aboukir Bay early in 1801 under heavy fire, which cost them 600 men. At the Battle of Canopus a fortnight later, Menou lost around 4,000 men to British losses of around 1,500, but Abercromby himself was mortally wounded.

The British succeeded in cutting off Menou in Alexandria from the garrison in Cairo and secured the support of Murad Bey, who had long been harassing the French, although that old rogue died soon afterwards. The Turks also re-entered Egypt from the east. General Balliard, in charge of Cairo, decided to capitulate rather than fight for a lost cause. Some 13,000 French troops were permitted to evacuate Cairo bearing arms, under the supervision of Sir John Moore, and embarked at Rosetta, arriving in France in October. Menou’s forces held out for some weeks at Alexandria but sought terms at the end of August. The
British insisted on keeping the Rosetta Stone which provided the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Of more than 50,000 French soldiers and civilians who had come over with Napoleon on that surreal adventure into Egypt, fewer than half – some 23,000 – returned. Napoleon’s objectives in conquering Egypt were almost entirely frustrated except in two regards: he had broken the power of the Mamelukes who were soon to be seen off by Mehemet Ali, the founder of modern Egypt. French archaeological and scientific interest in Egypt was also to continue for several decades, resulting eventually in the building of the Suez Canal by de Lesseps. But the Saharan sands swallowed up Napoleon’s imperial foray there as surely as they had for centuries the great temples of ancient Egypt. All that was left was the loss of a large army and a huge fleet.

Napoleon returned to Europe gratifyingly preceded by news of his victory at Alexandria. In spite of the appalling disaster of the Egyptian campaign as a whole, he behaved from the first like a conquering hero, presenting the campaign as his greatest military triumph to date. Arriving on 9 October, he ignored the requirements of quarantine and set out immediately on the week-long journey to Paris. On the way, he was greeted by fair-sized crowds, especially in Avignon, and arrived in the capital on 11 October.

There he discovered that, although he was regarded as a victorious general, he was only one of many. Moreover, the tide in the fast-moving war in Europe had turned again. The Russians, who had entered the war on Austria’s side partly out of anger at France’s intervention in Ottoman Egypt – Russia regarded Turkey as its own rightful prey – had succeeded in reversing the Napoleonic conquests in northern Italy, taken Turin, and forced the French out of Rome. Generals Moreau, Schérer and MacDonald had all been defeated. By the end of June only Genoa and part of Liguria remained in French hands. The Austrian commander, Archduke Charles, had defeated Jourdan on the central front and even the hapless Duke of York in alliance with the Russians had managed to capture most of Holland. All of this had earlier encouraged Napoleon to pose, bogusly, as France’s only successful military commander, the man who could yet save his country.

By October, however, things looked rather different: Masséna had defeated the Archduke Charles at Zurich two months before and the
Russians and the Austrians were beginning to quarrel bitterly. Ney meanwhile defeated the Austrians on the Rhine. In the same month as Napoleon arrived, General Bruce had soundly beaten the wretched Duke of York in Holland and forced the British to evacuate once again. All of these men were skilful generals at least on a par with Napoleon. The difference was that they lacked his overweening ambition and scheming political mind.

On his arrival in Paris, he decided to have it out with the errant Josephine who had so embarrassed him. Both his welcoming brothers, Joseph and Lucien, confirmed that Hippolyte Charles had lived with her for months at a time, and that the two of them were enjoying huge kickbacks from military contracts secured in his name. When Napoleon arrived at her house, he found her away – in fact she had travelled to Lyon to meet him, but he had taken a different route. When she returned exhausted from the futile journey at eleven o’clock at night, she found that Napoleon had locked her out of the house.

She spent the night on the doorstep begging to be let in – until she was joined by her daughter Hortense and the brave young Eugène, who eventually persuaded their stepfather to yield. After a further burst of anger he calmed down and soon they were making love with all the passion of newlyweds. Josephine remarked of Napoleon: ‘He is a man who has never loved anyone but himself; he is the most ingrained and ferocious egotist the Earth has ever seen. He has never known anything but his own interest and ambition.’ But Napoleon must have been besottedly in love with her, or he would never have forgiven her for her liaison with Charles and her holding him up to ridicule.

She, for her part, was now increasingly committed to him, not just for his successes but to maintain her ever more expensive tastes. Moreover Josephine was an intriguer herself, and a valuable political ally for him. She told Napoleon that his old flame, Désirée, Joseph’s sister-in-law, had married Jean Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s most dangerous political rivals who had briefly served as minister of war before antagonizing the most powerful man in the Directory, the Abbé Emmanuel Sieyès. Bernadotte was of humble Gascon origin, but was tall, with thick, curly black hair, an imposing nose and the adopted manner of a grand aristocrat. He has received a bad press, partly because
of his arrogance and largely because of Napoleon’s intense dislike. But he was particularly dangerous as the most powerful leader in the army of the then Jacobin faction, the left-wing descendants of Robespierre (which did not prevent him accepting a royal crown when offered it, as so often is this way with revolutionaries). Bernadotte was one of the senior generals not afraid of standing up to Napoleon. He refused to call upon Napoleon on his return and suggested that he be court-martialled for abandoning his army in Egypt and refusing to be quarantined. He also refused to attend an official dinner in Napoleon’s honour, on the grounds that the latter might be carrying the plague. Napoleon, however, was the more cunning: instead of rising to his provocations he sought to neutralize him by dragging him into his orbit. Désirée would report on her husband to Napoleon’s family circle.