Napoleon in Egypt (13 page)

Napoleon quickly set up his headquarters in the house of the French consul, on the seafront overlooking the new eastern harbor and Pharos Island, where El-Koraïm remained under siege. Negotiations continued throughout the early hours and into the morning, when El-Koraïm finally saw that his position was hopeless and surrendered. Given safe conduct to Napoleon’s headquarters, he prostrated himself before his conqueror, swearing that he was now his slave.

Napoleon knew that “anarchy is the greatest enemy that a conqueror has to dread, above all in a country so different in language, customs and religion.”
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After consulting with the French consul Magallon, he decided to stabilize the situation with a bold stroke: he entrusted to El-Koraïm the task of policing the city. El-Koraïm responded by “reestablishing order, ensuring that the citizenry were disarmed, and procuring for the army all it required.”
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The French had taken the city at a cost of “between thirty and forty men killed, and eighty to a hundred wounded.”
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Egyptian fatalities were reckoned at between 700 and 800, indicating that a sizable number of civilians must have been killed, and even more wounded. How many of these were armed, and thus technically combatants, remains unknown.

Napoleon had given strict instructions to his soldiers that the local people were to be treated with respect, and before landing, copies of a proclamation to this effect had been distributed to all personnel throughout the fleet. This document gives a deep insight into Napoleon’s state of mind at this juncture, and what he was doing, or thought he was doing:

Soldiers!

You are about to embark upon a conquest which will change the world. Its effect upon civilization and world trade will be incalculable. You are about to inflict upon England the most certain and telling blow she can suffer, until the day comes when you can deliver the blow that finishes her off.
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Although he was careful not to spell out the full extent of his ambitions, there can be no doubt that he had in mind here his campaign to India, and the effect upon Britain resulting from the loss of its Indian empire. During his vast reading as a young officer, he had absorbed the ideas of the physiocrats, who had been the prevailing economic theorists in France at the time. The physiocrats held that ultimate economic wealth lay in land, of which France had so much more than Britain, whose disproportionate wealth appeared to stem from the added land of its colonies. If the British were driven from India, this was liable to result in an economic collapse in Britain itself. In fact, the physiocrats had not yet fully accepted the ideas of Adam Smith, whose
Wealth of Nations
, with its deeper understanding of how economics actually worked, had only recently been translated into French. They had also misunderstood the significance of the Industrial Revolution, which was taking place in Britain at the time but was only just beginning in largely rural France. However, although Napoleon’s ambitions were certainly colored by physiocrat ideas, they were not reliant upon them. What he sought was empire and power, and economic might was merely a consequent factor. Rather than relying upon Adam Smith or the physiocrats, for theoretical guidance he turned to Alexander the Great and the manner in which he had conducted his campaign of conquest. Alexander’s intention had been absorption, rather than annihilation; he had believed in respecting the ways of the people he conquered, and Napoleon was determined that his army should behave in a similar fashion. In his proclamation to his soldiers he specifically informed them that:

The people amongst whom we are going are Mahommedans. Their first article of faith is: “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” Do not contradict them. Act towards them in the same way as we acted on the Italian campaign towards the Jews and the Italians. Show respect for their muftis and their imams, just as you have respected the rabbis and the bishops. Show the same respect for the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran for use in the mosques, as you have shown towards convents and synagogues, towards the religion of Moses and the religion of Jesus Christ. The Roman legions protected all religions.
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It is worth noting that Napoleon addressed his soldiers as fellow atheists, in the required post-Revolution manner. Like all French armies during this period, the Army of the Orient, as it now became known, had no chaplains and held no religious services; the only requirement was that all soldiers should adhere to republican principles. To this end the Directory had introduced a good number of spies into all ranks and all regiments to make sure that no politically suspect views were expressed, the main fear being that the army, which had many former aristocrats amongst its officers, might become a hotbed of Royalist sympathizers.

Napoleon went on to make clear how he expected his men to behave:

You will find amongst these people customs which are unlike any to be found in Europe. You will have to become accustomed to these. The people in the countries where we are going treat their women very differently from the way we do; however, in all countries any man who rapes a woman is a monster.

Looting enriches only a few. It dishonours us, destroys our resources, and makes enemies of the very people whom it is in our interest to have as friends.

The first city we shall see was built by Alexander the Great. At each step on our way we will find evidence of feats fit to inspire the emulation of Frenchmen.
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These encouraging words were backed by a number of forceful and explicit orders which made their commander’s intention more immediately plain to all ranks:

No individual soldier is authorized to make requisitions or raise contributions from the local populace without specific authorization from his commander-in-chief acting on direct orders from the general-in-chief himself. . . . All silver or gold which comes into the possession of the army must be deposited within twelve hours in the lock-up of the divisional cashier. . . . Those who contravene these orders will be stripped of all their possessions and clapped in irons for two years.
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Napoleon was quick to back up his words with deeds, when an opportunity presented itself whilst he was receiving a delegation of local Muslim dignitaries. According to an eyewitness: “A French soldier was brought before him, charged with stealing a dagger from an Arab who was going about his business in a peaceful fashion. The truth of the charge was quickly confirmed, and the soldier was shot on the spot.”
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The Arab delegation appear to have been suitably impressed by Napoleon’s evenhandedness. The message was clear: French and Egyptians alike would be expected to obey his orders. Napoleon was willing to go to great lengths to encourage the Egyptian authorities to adopt a friendly attitude towards the French; to this end, he also dispatched a message to Pasha Abu Bakr, the nominal Ottoman ruler in Cairo:

The Directory of the French Republic has already sent several messages to the Sublime Porte requesting them to punish the Mameluke beys of Egypt who continue to harass the French merchants operating here.

The Sublime Porte has decided that the willful and avaricious beys have ignored the principles of justice. The Sublime Porte has not authorized these outrages perpetrated upon their good and ancient allies the French, and in consequence it has withdrawn its protection from the beys.

The French Republic has thus decided to send a powerful army to put an end to this piracy by the beys. You, who ought to be master of the beys, yet are held by them in Cairo deprived of power and authority, must surely welcome my arrival. You are no doubt already informed that I have no intention of doing anything against the Koran or against the Sultan. Therefore I invite you to come and meet me, so that together we can curse these ungodly beys.
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Napoleon was being devious here. Although he hinted that the sultan and the Porte were in favor of this action by their French allies, he knew they had not yet authorized such action. This part of the message was doubtless intended to persuade the pasha to support him. He knew that his message would be passed on to Constantinople, where its favorable attitude towards the sultan, and its assumption of his blessing, might aid Talleyrand in his mission to persuade the Porte that the French had no aggressive intentions towards their ancient ally the Ottoman Empire, or indeed towards any Muslims. It is difficult to see how the Porte, even at its most lackadaisical, could have regarded the French action in Egypt as anything other than an invasion of their territory, but it appears that Napoleon believed his flimsy excuse regarding the overthrow of the Mamelukes, and hoped his letter would reinforce it. In fact, it mainly served to reinforce this myth in his own mind.

He also knew that this letter would be intercepted by the beys, and wished them to understand that they faced the combined might of the Ottoman Empire and the French Republic, whose armies had been victorious in Europe. As he knew all too well, one of the first principles of the art of war is to convince your opponent that he cannot win.

Alexandria was now little more than a backwater of Mameluke Egypt. Its importance as a port had long since been eclipsed by Rosetta and Damietta, the ports at the end of the western and eastern navigable channels of the Nile delta, which linked them directly to Cairo. The canal linking Alexandria to the Nile delta had silted up, was no longer navigable, and was barely producing sufficient fresh water to supply the city’s wells. The educated French officers may have been disappointed to find Alexandria a shadow of its former glorious self, but others found it exotic enough. According to Citizen Joubert in a letter home:

You can see for sale in the bazaar sheep, pigeons, tobacco, and above all there are the barbers, who put the head of their customer between their knees, and look more as if they are about to decapitate them than shave them. They are however very dexterous. I also saw several women, dressed up in long robes which completely mask their bodies and reveal only their eyes, almost like the outfit worn by religious penitents in our southern provinces.
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The women darkened their eyes with kohl, and the children ran around the unpaved streets completely naked. Private Millet described the Egyptian men:

They shave their head, wearing on it a small red hat, known in Arabic as a
tarboush
, with a turban wound around it five or six times. They wear several large robes, made of silk or cloth, one on top of the other, all very long, falling to their heels, like a cassock. Their legs are bare, and often their feet are too; they have long beards which gives the old men a majestic look and makes them respected by the young.
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Joubert goes on to describe how amongst “the heap of ruins one sees houses built of mud and straw leaning up against the sections of fallen granite columns,” and later mentions “the obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle.”
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The only sign of vegetation was “several date palms, sad trees, which from afar resemble pine trees whose stem has been stripped almost as far as the top.” On the edges of the city he found “an atmosphere, a way of life which has been unknown to us for ages.” Others came across more bizarre sights. Captain Vertray described how “there were cases of the plague in one of the quarters of this unhappy city, and during our stay we witnessed a terrible sight. A plague-stricken woman, holding in her arms a child similarly stricken with this horrific disease, was carried to a cemetery, and under the eyes of more than forty of us French onlookers was buried alive.”
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Meanwhile the French fleet had now occupied the port and was rapidly unloading in the eastern and western harbors. First men and horses, then rations and supplies, and next artillery: the majority of this was off the ships as early as July 3. Food was soon in short supply in the overcrowded city. Unfortunately Vice-Admiral Brueys had not taken the precaution of blockading the western harbor as his ships entered, thus allowing a large number of boats bringing fish, tomatoes, melons and other fresh local produce from along the coast to flee. Napoleon was furious and reprimanded Brueys, but he remained even more concerned with defending the fleet against Nelson’s squadron, which could still have appeared at any moment. The eastern harbor was large enough to shelter a fleet, no matter how large, but parts of the entrance channel appeared to be no more than five fathoms deep, too shallow to allow in the larger seventy-four-gunners. On July 3 Napoleon sent word to Vice-Admiral Brueys: “The admiral will send a report tomorrow informing the general-in-chief whether the fleet can enter the port of Alexandria, or if not whether it would be able defend itself against a superior enemy fleet whilst anchored in Aboukir Bay.” This wide bay provided a good anchorage along the coast fifteen miles east of Alexandria. Napoleon went on: “In case neither of these possibilities is feasible, the admiral should, having disembarked all artillery, set sail for Corfu.” He was to leave behind in Alexandria only sufficient ships for its defense.
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Amongst the equipment unloaded was the Arabic printing press, which was immediately put into action printing copies of Napoleon’s proclamation to the people of Egypt. An indication of the undeveloped state of Egypt at the time is the fact that this was the first printing press in the country. Napoleon’s proclamation went out of its way to reassure the people of Egypt that he came as a friend of Islam, intent upon freeing them from the dictatorship of the Mamelukes: