Napoleon in Egypt (14 page)

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

Commander-in-chief of the French Armies General Bonaparte to the people of Egypt:

For too long this bunch of slaves bought in Georgia and the Caucasus has tyrannized the most beautiful country in the world. In the eyes of God all men are equal, so what entitles the Mamelukes to all that makes life comfortable and pleasant? Who own all the great estates? The Mamelukes. Who have all the loveliest slaves, the most splendid horses and the finest houses? If Egypt truly and rightfully belongs to them, let them produce the deeds by which God gave it to them. Once you had great cities, large canals and prosperous trade. What has destroyed all this if not the greed, iniquity and tyranny of the Mamelukes?
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He promised them that once the Mamelukes had been defeated, “Egyptians will be able to occupy all public offices, so that the country will be governed by virtuous and educated rulers, and the people will be happy. Let the Kadis, Sheiks, Imams, and Tchorbadjis [i.e. the religious and civil leaders and men of eminence in the community] inform the people of Egypt that the French are true Moslems; they come as the enemy of the Christian enemies of Islam. Happy, thrice happy, will be those Egyptians who side with us. They will prosper in fortune and rank.” But lest there be any misunderstanding, he warned: “Let those who take up arms on behalf of the Mamelukes beware, and thrice beware, for them there shall be no salvation. They are beyond hope; they will perish.”

This point was reinforced by a number of practical edicts concerning the future campaign:

1. All villages within ten miles of the route taken by the French army will send delegations submitting to the commanding general, informing him that they are flying the flag of the French army, which is blue, white and red.

2. Any villages that take up arms against the French army will be burnt to the ground.

3. All villages that have submitted will, beside the flag of the French army, fly the flag of our friend the Ottoman Sultan (may God grant him a long reign!).

4. The local sheiks will ensure that all houses, goods, and properties belonging to the Mamelukes are sealed, and will make it their business to ensure that nothing is removed from them.

5. The sheiks, kadis and imams shall remain in their posts and continue to exercise their functions in the community. All inhabitants shall remain in their homes and prayers continue as usual. All Egyptians shall render thanks unto God for the destruction of the Mamelukes, proclaiming in a loud voice: “Glory to the Ottoman Sultan! Glory to his friend the French Army! May God curse the Mamelukes and bestow happiness upon the Egyptian nation.”
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Napoleon ordered his chief of staff Berthier to have copies of this proclamation in French, Arabic and Turkish put up on the streets of Alexandria. It was also read out by town criers so that it could be understood by the largely illiterate general population. At the same time he ordered the release of the 700 galley slaves who had been brought from Malta. Many of these were Egyptians, who were encouraged to return home, taking with them copies of the proclamation. In this way, word of Napoleon’s intentions spread ahead of him through the villages of the delta, to the people of Cairo, and even into Upper Egypt. These galley slaves had originally been sailors on ships captured by the Knights of Malta, and by the time of their release they had been reduced to half-starved, dehumanized wretches clad only in filthy rags. During their period with the French fleet they had been properly fed and given decent clothes. Many of them came from other parts of the Arab world, some from as far afield as “Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, Damascus and Syria, Smyrna [Izmir] and even Constantinople”
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and these were given sufficient funds to enable them to reach their homes. Besides being a humanitarian gesture, this was good propaganda for Napoleon and his expedition. As in the Italian campaign, it was intended to show the indigenous people at large that the French came as benefactors, inspired by their revolutionary beliefs in the liberty, equality and fraternity of mankind.

Last of all to be disembarked were the savants, who had been largely forgotten during the rapid unloading of soldiers and essential equipment. They had simply been left to fend for themselves on their ships, sleeping on deck, begging moldy ship’s biscuit and putrid water from the grudging sailors. Eventually the frigate
Montenotte
had been dispatched to make a round of the anchored fleet, picking up groups of savants from the various ships. Around sundown they were unceremoniously dumped ashore with their luggage, beyond the city walls at the dilapidated end of the eastern harbor whose quays “consisted only of a rubble of granite and marble columns.”
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From here they made their way into the city as best they could. According to one of them, “We arrived in riotous disorder, after blundering through the frightful ruins of the Arab quarter, a huge wasteland of tombs, and some stretches of arid sand with a few palm trees, fig trees and salt wort.”
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The fifty-one-year-old Vivant Denon fared even worse:

Braving the spirits of the dead, I crossed the cemetery. When I arrived at the first habitation of the living I was assailed by packs of wild dogs, which came at me from the doorways, the streets, the rooftops, their cries reverberating from house to house, from family to family . . . in order to escape the clamor of the dogs and follow a route where I wouldn’t get lost, I left the streets and tried to cling to the shoreline, but the battlements and the rubble which went down to the sea barred my way. I jumped into the sea to get free of the dogs, and when the water became too deep I scaled the walls themselves. Finally, soaked to the skin, covered in sweat, overcome with fatigue and frightened out of my wits, I reached the soldiers on guard at midnight, convinced that the dogs were the sixth and most terrible of the Biblical plagues of Egypt.
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This must have been quite an ordeal for the aging artist, especially after weeks of seasickness.

Eventually a number of the savants made their way to the headquarters of General Caffarelli, who was meant to be in charge of them. But Caffarelli was in the throes of trying to set up the engineering corps and organize the unloading of their equipment; he simply had neither the time nor the space for the savants. His soldiers were preparing for the march on Cairo, and were having to make do as best they could amongst the ruins. He suggested that the savants do the same. By now the soldiers had occupied all the habitable spots and commandeered the wells for themselves. The savants were reduced to begging moldy rejected rations, and occasional gulps of water from the canteens of their compatriots. The lucky ones were able to hire local lodgings at inflated prices, where they slept on the floor a dozen or so to a room. The others simply lay on the ground beside their trunks and bundles, where they spent sleepless nights being devoured by mosquitoes. In order to earn some food they took to acting as messenger boys and scribes for the various army units, and volunteering as orderlies at the makeshift hospitals. This was hardly what the scientists, writers, artists and Orientalists had been led to expect.

Only the distinguished senior savants found themselves properly accommodated. Monge and Berthollet, Napoleon’s favorites, were lodged in his headquarters; others, such as Dolomieu and Conté, became involved in unloading the scientific equipment that came ashore with the printing presses, to which Napoleon had given priority, along with the artillery and essential engineering gear. When Dolomieu belatedly learned of the plight of his colleagues, he set off to the French consulate to protest to Napoleon. As a result, the savants were accorded the temporary rank of private soldiers, which entitled them to rations and such shelter as could be provided. This may not have protected them from the mosquitoes, but with guards standing on duty at least their possessions were safe from the nimble-fingered local sneak-thieves who operated undercover of darkness.

Despite Denon’s ordeal, he was determined to fulfill his purpose as one of the expedition’s artists. Having made it into the city, next day he presented himself at Napoleon’s headquarters, where he was permitted to make sketches of his commander-in-chief at work. Here he was able to sit in on a meeting between Napoleon and El-Koraïm, observing with the eye of an artist that the Egyptian

had the physiognomy of a man of intelligence, but there was something about his face which spoke of dissimulation. He had been shaken by the turn of events, but was not overwhelmed by Napoleon’s loyalty and generosity towards him. He appeared to be unsure as to whether or not his defeat had been brought about by some kind of trick. Only when he saw that the French had landed 30,000 troops and columns of artillery did he definitely commit himself to Napoleon and remain loyally beside him in his headquarters.
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Later Denon set out on a sketching tour of the city itself, visiting the sights such as Pompey’s Pillar and Cleopatra’s Needle, the fresh water reservoir and a ruined Christian church. He noticed that soldiers had taken over the public baths to do their laundry, and that the main mosque was in a sad state of disrepair. As he wandered amongst the remnant stones which had once been ancient buildings, he speculated on their age. Finally he came to the quarter by the Rosetta Gate:

Here I had an encounter which provided the most striking of contrasts. I came across a young French woman, dressed in white with her skin as pink as a rose, seated on a block of stone still covered with blood from the fighting, around her the debris of battle and dead bodies still lying about unburied. She was like the angel of the resurrection. Moved by compassion, I expressed my surprise at finding her here all alone. She replied with a touching naïveté that she was waiting for her husband so that they could go and sleep in the desert. She spoke as if she was simply going to a new home to sleep. From this you can see the quality of the women to whom love had given the courage to follow their husbands on the expedition.
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In fact, her husband would have been taking her “to sleep in the desert” amongst the French forces camped outside the Rosetta Gate. Had they slept alone in the desert they would certainly have fallen victim to the marauding Bedouin.

Dolomieu also found time to undertake some exploration. He sought out the ancient church of St. Athanasius, which had been converted into a mosque, and here discovered a seven-ton stone sarcophagus covered in hieroglyphs which he took to be the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great. This find was indicative of the architectural riches which had yet to be discovered in Egypt, but it also hinted at the contemporary state of knowledge concerning Egyptian history: it was highly unlikely that Alexander the Great would have been buried in a tomb covered with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Several decades later this sarcophagus would be identified as that of Nectanebo I, king of Egypt during the fourth century
BC
, who died some thirty years before Alexander conquered Egypt.

The citizens of Alexandria had been ordered to hand in their weapons, but otherwise were free to go about their business much as usual. In order to demonstrate their loyalty to the French, they were ordered to wear on their headdress a tricolor cockade such as the French revolutionaries had worn in their caps. As a mark of their rank, sheiks, kadis, imams and other dignitaries were allowed to keep their weapons, and were ordered to wear a tricolor sash across their chest, such as those worn by French mayors. Soldiers on guard duty outside the French headquarters were ordered to salute these dignitaries when they came for meetings with Napoleon. At the same time the city merchants were required to deposit varying sums of money with the French exchequer, a forced loan to raise local currency to pay for immediate requirements; this was to be repaid out of customs revenue from goods passing through the port. To raise larger amounts of cash, Napoleon exchanged quantities of the gold bullion seized from Malta.

In a repeat of his frenetic activity in Malta, Napoleon now began issuing a whirlwind of orders, decrees and directives. For the artillery: setting up of a barracks, construction of an arsenal and a powder magazine. For the engineers: setting up of a barracks, construction of machine shops and tool depots. For the administration: offices for the different sections, hospitals (one for the wounded, one for diseases), prisons (civil, military, and for prisoners of war). For the navy: barracks, arsenal, quarantine station. The mapping of the city; the excavation and opening up of the freshwater canal to the Nile; “the names of men of the French army who were killed in the taking of Alexandria to be engraved on Pompey’s Pillar” . . . And so the constant stream of orders and decrees continued to flow from headquarters, morning, noon and night.
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Initially, Napoleon was unwilling to delegate. He appeared to be able to attend to the smallest details, yet at the same time keep in mind the larger picture. He knew precisely what he wanted. Only when the foundations of this were laid, and he was on the point of leaving, did he appoint Kléber as governor of Alexandria. Kléber was very much a campaigning general, and expressed his disappointment at being given what he considered to be a desk job. However, taking into account the seriousness of Kléber’s head wound, Napoleon insisted that his decision was final. Kléber’s role as governor was to oversee the implementation of all Napoleon’s projects; as far as the local population was concerned, he was merely to supervise the rule of El-Koraïm. Napoleon’s instructions were clear: “To maintain as far as possible good relations with the Arabs; and to show the greatest consideration for the muftis and the principal sheiks of the country.” He characterized his intentions: “We must gradually accustom these people to our outlook and way of life, and meanwhile we must allow them plenty of latitude between themselves in their internal affairs; above all, we must not interfere with their judicial system, which is founded on the divine law and keeps entirely to the Koran.”
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