Napoleon in Egypt (22 page)

Meanwhile, on the other bank of the Nile, Ibrahim Bey—along with his Mamelukes,
fellahin
militia and crowd of spectators—had been watching the battle unfold. As the French lines closed in on the outskirts of Embaba, he began ordering his artillery to fire salvos at the far bank and beyond the village, in an attempt to halt the enemy advance. By now the crowd of spectators, which according to some sources consisted of the entire population of Cairo, had worked themselves up into a frenzy. El-Djabarti, who was amongst them, describes how they all “began to scream at the top of their voices, crying ‘Oh God, Oh God’ and other imprecations of this kind . . . howling and barking like dogs.”
²⁷
The clamor was so great that it soon became impossible for Ibrahim Bey to make his shouted orders heard by his men. Even so, according to El-Djabarti, at this point “a large number of emirs and soldiers from the forces on the Cairo bank of the river decided to cross the river to aid their fellows on the other shore. Amongst these was Ibrahim Bey himself. There was a great confusion amongst the men because there were only a few rowing boats.”
²⁸

At the same time, on the far bank the lines of the advancing French weathered a further chaotic Mameluke charge and soon began storming the defensive positions at the edge of Embaba. Initially, the Janissary infantry and artillerymen attempted to hold their positions, with various groups of Mameluke cavalry continuing to charge and cannons firing at the advancing French from across the Nile, but to little avail. According to Private Millet, one of the French soldiers who stormed the defenses of Embaba: “We cut off a group of the enemy so that they had to throw themselves in the Nile where many of them drowned and those that we reached were bayoneted. . . . This resulted in a frightful carnage. The corpses of men and horses presented a hideous spectacle, so bloody was the carnage.”
²⁹

As the French breaking into Embaba began bayoneting their way through the Janissaries and the garrison, the
fellahin
militia simply panicked and ran en masse for the Nile, where other soldiers were already piling into the few boats. Mameluke cavalry were plunging into the water, amidst the fleeing soldiers and
fellahin
, in a general chaos and confusion. In mid-stream, these boats became mixed up with the boats attempting to reach Embaba from the Cairo side, while the French soldiers began firing at them from the bank. According to El-Djabarti, things became even more chaotic when, “at that moment a violent wind blew up, so that the surface of the river became rough; the sand blown up by the wind beat against the faces of the Egyptians, and no one was able to open their eyes.” He then added, with more patriotism than conviction: “The wind came from the enemy shore and was also one of the causes of the defeat of the Egyptian army.”
³⁰

The spectators on the Cairo shore gazed in horror at what was happening. According to Nicolas Turc: “The population was in anguish, maddened by the infernal noise of incessant thunderous gunfire.” When they realized that the battle was lost, “the people sobbed and slapped their own faces, yelling: ‘What evil has befallen us! Now we will become prisoners of the French.’”
³¹
Amidst scenes of hollering terror, the spectators scrambled back towards Cairo.

The battle was now all but over. According to Turc: “The combat had lasted more than two hours—but two hours of indescribable horror.”
³²
Others claim it did not last even this long. As far as the vanquished were concerned, it was now every man for himself. Those of Murad Bey’s Mameluke cavalry who had escaped the carnage, possibly as many as seven or eight thousand, simply galloped back to their lines, and then continued on in flight towards their domains in Upper Egypt. Murad Bey himself rode back to his palace at Giza; here he ordered that Nikola’s entire flotilla and any other boats on the Nile should be set on fire, in an attempt to impede the French in their crossing of the river to take Cairo. As the sun set, he too galloped off with his squadron of loyal beys in the direction of Upper Egypt. From the distance, Napoleon could only watch; he had insufficient cavalry to give chase to any of the fleeing Mamelukes. In the dark, in countryside that he knew, Murad Bey would have been in his element. It would have taken more even than the likes of the dashing Murat, Desvernois or the formidable mulatto General Dumas to catch and destroy the large force of Mamelukes that had eluded Napoleon’s grasp, and would now live to fight another day.

On the Cairo side of the river, Ibrahim Bey galloped back towards Cairo, scattering the stream of wailing citizens in his path. Once in the city, he sought out Pasha Abu Bakr, and then fled eastwards towards Sinai, taking his remnant Mameluke cavalry and the pasha with him. Whether or not Abu Bakr went willingly is disputed; Nicolas Turc even claims that he was with Ibrahim Bey and his forces at Boulac. Either way, the pasha’s absence represented a serious setback to Napoleon’s plans; he had intended to make his peace with the Ottoman viceroy, and use his considerable charm to win him over as his friend. Napoleon had intended that Abu Bakr should retain his position as the titular ruler of Egypt, giving him a much more public role than he had occupied under the Mamelukes. He believed that this would lend a considerable air of legitimacy to the French presence in Egypt, and would help smooth over any difficulties between the French government and the Porte when Talleyrand’s promised diplomatic mission arrived in Constantinople (if it had not already done so).

That night, Napoleon and his staff took up residence in Murad Bey’s magnificent palace on the banks of the Nile at Giza. As Napoleon remembered it:

None of his slaves or servants had remained behind. Nothing of its interior decor remotely resembled a European palace. However, the staff officers were delighted to move into a house so well furnished with divans upholstered with Lyons silk and golden tassels, and other such dizzying luxuries of European craftsmanship. The garden was full of beautiful trees; there was a great trellis covered with vines from which hung bunches of excellent grapes, which proved a precious discovery. Word of this spread through the camp, attracting crowds of soldiers, and the harvest was soon over.
³³

But not all the French were so interested in grapes. Many soldiers left the camp on the pretext of seeking out any remaining French wounded. Moving through the darkness of the battlefield with lanterns, they began poring over the bodies of the Mameluke fallen, looting them of the gold coins secreted amongst their charred satin jerkins, sewn into their silk cloaks and hidden in money belts. Napoleon himself described the scene in his memoirs:

The divisions camped at Embaba had a field day. They found the luggage left behind by the beys and their warriors, containers of jam and sweets, carpets, porcelain, silverware in great abundance. All through the night, the minarets of Cairo were lit up by the swirling flames from the burning flotilla on the Nile, their glimmer reflected on the walls of the pyramids. During the days following the battle, the soldiers busied themselves fishing in the Nile for bodies, many of which had two or three hundred gold pieces on them.
³⁴

According to Marmont, who also mentions this looting: “Soon many bayonets were plunging into the Nile, and there was fine fishing. Some soldiers deposited as much as thirty thousand francs with their regimental cashier.”
³⁵
At last the morale of the troops was restored.

Across from the battlefield, amidst the darkened streets and alleyways of Cairo, chaos reigned as the terrified population loaded up their possessions and attempted to flee. They could see the flames and the glow in the sky from Nikola’s burning ships on the Nile; many even thought that the French had entered the city itself and were burning it down. In a delirium of tribulation, men threw dust upon their heads and beat their breasts, while women howled, raising their arms to the flickering sky. Others began breaking into the deserted palaces of the beys, looting them and setting them on fire. Ibrahim Bey’s palace was one of the first to be set alight. At the same time the mass of the population streamed towards the eastern gates of the city, driving overladen donkeys, camels and mules before them through the clamorous streets and alleyways. Once outside, in the darkness beyond the city walls, the Bedouin were waiting for them; with hideous cries they began setting on the screaming refugee columns, ransacking them of anything valuable, tearing necklaces and bracelets from the women, cutting through the clothes of the men to discover hidden pouches of valuables, stripping others naked in their frenzied greed. As El-Djabarti put it, summing up the day’s experience: “Never before had Egypt seen such horrors. Never have we seen such things in the history of humanity; you may hear my words, but you can never imagine what they described.”
³⁶

History drily records the fact that on July 21, 1798, the French army won what came to be called the Battle of the Pyramids. These “monuments of destiny,” as Napoleon liked to call them, were in reality almost ten miles from the main battlefield. Cairo was of course closer, as well as being the ultimate object of the battle, but Napoleon rightly understood that this name did not have quite the same ring to it, and to call such a conflict the Battle of Embaba, which was where it actually took place, would have been an act of military diffidence quite alien to its victor. In his report back to his nominal masters the Directory, written three days later on 6 Thermidor Year VI (July 24, 1798), Napoleon estimated “the loss of 2,000 elite Mameluke cavalry, with a large part of the beys wounded or killed. Mourad [
sic
] Bey has been wounded in the face. Our losses amount to 20 or 30 killed and 120 wounded.”
³⁷
Later, in his memoirs of the campaign, he estimated “enemy losses, killed, wounded, drowned or taken prisoner, as many as 10,000 Mamelukes, Arabs, Janissaries, Azabs,
^*
etc.”
³⁸
Compared with the estimates in some contemporary memoirs, these figures appear high. Yet the nature of the fighting, and its scale, would suggest that casualties must have approached such figures. However, even though the Battle of the Pyramids may have been a rout, it had not been the comprehensive victory Napoleon had been hoping for: too many Mamelukes had escaped.

VIII

Cairo

N
APOLEON
was up at dawn on July 22, ready to embark upon yet another whirlwind of administrative activity. Desaix had been dispatched five miles up the Nile to construct defenses in case Murad Bey’s Mamelukes returned to threaten the French forces as they attempted to cross the Nile; but Napoleon’s main problem was to find sufficient river transport to enable him to accomplish this. Perrée’s flotilla was still stuck at a low-water point further down the Nile, and Nikola’s flotilla was now destroyed beyond repair. Fortunately a scouting party from Vial’s division discovered several craft further up the Nile, but by the end of the day these had only managed to transport 300 men across the river.

Early on the same day, Napoleon had dispatched a message to the
ulema
and sheiks
^*
of Cairo, who he learned had gathered at the Al-Azhar mosque. He assured them that he came in peace: “There is no need to worry, for no one desires to contribute more to your happiness than myself.”
¹
Despite this somewhat unconvincing message from the commander of the 25,000-man invading army camped across the river, a delegation of two
ulema
was sent to negotiate with the infidel conqueror. Napoleon was not impressed, and demanded to know why all the others had not come. The two
ulema
duly returned with the reassuring message that Napoleon wished to set up a
divan
of local dignitaries to rule the city. Deciding to take him at his word, most of the
ulema
and sheiks crossed the river to meet with him. Bardeuf, the leading French resident in Cairo, was by now at Giza with Napoleon, acting as his interpreter and go-between; together with the consul Magallon, he had drawn up a list of all the most powerful notables of Cairo, so that when the larger delegation arrived Napoleon could check who was missing. When Napoleon demanded of the delegation why the
cadi
, the high judge, and Sheik Said Omar were not present, the delegates were suitably impressed and disconcerted at his knowledge; they replied that both men had fled. Napoleon informed the delegation that there was no need for anyone to flee, for he came as a liberator of Egyptians and a friend of Islam. The delegation duly promised to supply provisions for Napoleon and his men, as well as transport to enable his army to cross the river; there were still a large number of local boats drawn up in the creeks on the Cairo shore which had escaped the conflagration of Nikola’s flotilla.

That day, even before the major crossing of the Nile was under way, Napoleon appointed General Dupuy as governor of Cairo, along with a temporary ruling commission of five officers, and ordered him to proceed into the city accompanied by 200 of the soldiers who had crossed the river. As night fell, this small force marched in through the Boulac Gate to take possession of the city, which at that time probably still contained over a quarter of a million inhabitants. In the words of Captain Malus, one of the young officers who accompanied Dupuy: “We departed for Cairo at night. . . . Hardly had we penetrated the cramped and torturous alleyways than the flicker and glimmer of flames above the rooftops made us realize that parts of the city were on fire . . . . We met not a single person on our way. Only the frightened ululuing of the women locked inside their harems made us realize that the city was inhabited.”
²
As the columns of Frenchmen wound their way through the streets in the dark, they were preceded by soldiers beating drums. According to one soldier, “this unusual noise inspired terror in the inhabitants,”
³
although another claimed that the sole purpose of the drummers was in fact to prevent the soldiers at the back of the column from losing their way in the maze of darkened, deserted streets. In the end, even their Egyptian guide got lost, and Dupuy was unable to lead his men to their intended destination in the European quarter. After wandering about aimlessly, they eventually found themselves outside the gates of what appeared to be an abandoned Mameluke mansion. Dupuy ordered his men to break in, the mansion proved to be deserted, and the troop camped out in the large empty courtyard.