Napoleon in Egypt (43 page)

Menou and Kléber were not the only generals who had had enough. The cavalry general Alexandre Dumas had from the outset made no secret of his disapproval of Napoleon and his methods in Egypt. Despite playing a heroic role in the suppression of the Cairo insurrection, Dumas now decided that he too could no longer stomach the way the expedition was being run. He approached the chief medical officer, General Desgenettes, asking for a certificate of ill health, on the grounds that he could not tolerate the Egyptian climate. Desgenettes consequently approached Napoleon on this delicate matter: there could be no question of cowardice where Dumas was concerned, yet it was also difficult to believe that a man of his gargantuan prowess was less able to bear the climate than men not so physically endowed. To Desgenettes’ surprise, Napoleon consented to Dumas’ request, and at the same time issued the following general order: “It is not my intention . . . to keep men in the army who are insensitive to the honor of being my companions-in-arms. Let them go. I shall ease their departure. But I do not want them to conceal their real motives for refusing to share our labors and our danger under the pretext of feigned maladies.”
⁴

Although there is no doubt that many felt inclined to take up this offer, few in fact did so, realizing that they would be returning to France in disgrace, their military careers at an end. However, the forty-eight-year-old savant Dolomieu felt no such qualms; he was still outraged at how he had been used to negotiate with the Knights of Malta, and decided to accept Napoleon’s offer.

The first ship bound for France carrying men from the Army of the Orient was a Genoese merchantman which left Alexandria on December 15. This contained only soldiers who had received severe wounds in action, or had been rendered permanently blind by ophthalmia. After eluding the British blockade, the ship made landfall three weeks later in Sicily, which was territory ruled by the King of Naples. What the captain had not known was that the King of Naples had now declared war on France, and as a result the sick and wounded passengers were carted off to prison. Such was the local fervor against the French that some days later the prison was stormed by the populace and the prisoners were stoned to death.

Unaware of what had happened, Dolomieu and General Dumas embarked upon the next ship to leave Alexandria. This also succeeded in eluding the British blockade, but was forced by a fierce storm to take refuge at Taranto on the heel of Italy, which was also part of the kingdom of Naples. Here Dolomieu’s betrayal of the Knights of Malta finally caught up with him, for several former Knights now held influential posts in the Neapolitan court. As a result, Dolomieu was kept in solitary confinement in a dungeon for twenty-one months. Despite suffering from increasing ill health, he made use of pieces of burnt coal to write in the margins of a Bible a treatise entitled
The Philosophy of Mineralogy
. In time, this would come to be regarded as one of the major scientific works of its age, responsible for “raising mineralogy to the degree of precision that had previously been achieved . . . by chemistry.”
⁵
Dolomieu eventually returned to France with his annotated Bible intact, but he was by now a broken man. He died in 1801, shortly after the publication of his masterpiece.

The physically more robust General Dumas suffered much the same treatment, but it was two years before he was released. On his return to France, his illustrious military career in ruins, he was unable to bear the disgrace of having abandoned his comrades in Egypt, and sank into a deep depression. In 1802 he fathered a son who would become the celebrated author of
The Three Musketeers
, and died four years later.

By the end of 1798, seismic political transformations were taking place throughout Europe, with old alliances being broken and new ones being formed—but no news of this was reaching Napoleon in Egypt. On November 20 he wrote to Desaix in Upper Egypt: “We have got French and English gazettes to the 10 August, up till then there was no development in Europe.”
⁶
The newspapers had arrived on one of the few neutral merchantmen which had managed to elude the blockade. A day later, in his report to the Directory, Napoleon would claim a little disingenuously: “We have had no news of Europe . . . since 18 Messidor [July 7]. We are becoming a little curious about what is going on.” He had nothing other than scraps of out-of-date news, and what he took to be misleading propaganda that the blockading British were trying to make him believe about an alliance between themselves and the Ottoman Empire. On the home front, Napoleon did his best to maintain the fiction that he was in regular contact with France and abreast of affairs taking place beyond the confines of Egypt. As this situation became more difficult to maintain, the “news” in
Le Courier
now passed from propaganda and whimsical omniscience (“revolution in Batavia,” etc.) to wishful thinking and sheer fantasy: “The General-in-Chief has received news from France. The legislative body has declared that our victorious army has served the Fatherland with honor. . . . The news of the conquest of Egypt has caused great excitement and pride . . . a large number of ships sent by the General-in-Chief have arrived in France carrying letters from our army.”
⁷

Meanwhile life returned to normal in Cairo: the Institute resumed its regular meetings, the French distillers and hatmakers reopened, and
Le Courier
continued to come out with its fascinating tidbits about the behavior of Egyptian women in the bathhouses. Even Napoleon seems to have relaxed a little, if one believes his secretary Bourrienne: “During this time of repose and almost inactivity, though it was less so for him, Napoleon would go to bed early. There I would read to him every evening. When I read him poetry, he fell asleep. When he asked me to read to him from the life of Cromwell, I knew I would not be going to sleep early.”
⁸
It is revealing that Napoleon should now be interested in the life of the military leader who became ruler of the first large-scale revolutionary republic in Europe, and it prompts the question of why he had chosen to bring a life of Cromwell to Egypt in the first place. Cromwell had been much more than a military governor of England: he had been ruler of a country in transition. Was this what Napoleon saw himself becoming in Egypt, or in the great Oriental empire of his dreams? But Cromwell was no real exemplar for the running of an Oriental empire—the lessons to be learned from the Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth would best be applied to the running of a European republic, such as France had now become. Napoleon was not only anxious to hear the news from Europe, he also wanted to know what was happening to the corrupt and ramshackle rule of the Directory in France. One of his options, admittedly a lesser one under the present circumstances, remained returning to France and taking over from the Directory. The presence of Cromwell in his library would seem to indicate that he had continued to bear in mind this option before setting out for Egypt, despite his disavowal of it to Bourrienne (“tiny Europe has not enough to offer,” etc.).

A further indication that Napoleon still retained the option of focusing his ambitions on France can be seen in the fact that in early November he sent his favorite brother Louis back home, on one of the few ships that did manage to elude the British blockade. Louis’ health had begun to deteriorate in Egypt, but this gesture was not out of consideration for his well-being. Louis was almost certainly sent to make contact with Talleyrand and Barras, to find out which way the wind was blowing in France, and how Napoleon was now regarded.

Amidst the general effort to improve the morale of the increasingly homesick Army of the Orient in Egypt, one particular innovation stands out—namely Le Tivoli. Modeled on a popular entertainment spot in Paris, this was opened in early December by ex-Guards officer Dargevel, who had been a fellow pupil of the young Napoleon at the Brienne military college. Le Tivoli was housed in a former Mameluke bey’s palace close to Ezbekiyah Square, and operated much like an officers’ club. A large room was set aside for gaming, another for a library, with the latest copies of
Le Courier
and
La Décade
, and there was even a room with a makeshift billiards table. In the evenings, coffee and light refreshments were served in the garden beneath the orange and lemon trees hung with Chinese lanterns, to the gentle strains of a military band. The opening night was attended by Napoleon and his staff, and was marked by a full-dress ball in the ballroom, complete with an orchestra and uniformed batmen acting as footmen. The event was described in glowing terms in
Le Courier
, whose correspondent noted that the thing which “produced the most agreeable sensation . . .was the presence of fifteen or twenty women dressed with some splendor—an absolutely novel sight in Egypt.”
⁹
However, this novelty seems to have soon worn off, for subsequent balls were not quite so entertaining. According to young Captain Vertray: “The big difficulty was in organizing a ball. The local women would not show up, while so many of the wives and lovers of our men had been left behind at Toulon [and] only a few had managed to make it to Egypt. They did come to Le Tivoli, but there were not enough of them, and thus these occasions were hardly brilliant.”
¹⁰

Nonetheless Dargevel remained optimistic about the opportunities provided by Le Tivoli: “This will perhaps be a way of attracting into our society the inhabitants of the country and their wives, and encouraging them imperceptibly to acquire French habits, tastes and fashions.”
¹¹
Such expectations might might have appeared reasonable with regard to the inhabitants of a French-occupied European country—the Italians had certainly attended the social functions put on by Napoleon and Josephine at their residence in Milan—but with regard to Egyptians such optimism was simply ludicrous. Egyptian society of the period had no place whatsoever for such social gatherings, which would have been anathema. The fact that Dargevel harbored such hopes only goes to demonstrate how little the French had even begun to understand the country they had now been occupying for almost half a year.

No Egyptians, and certainly no Egyptian wives, attended the officers’ balls at Le Tivoli, and there were simply not enough French women to go around—on any social occasion, let alone at the balls. The lack of available European women seems to have been a particular problem for many French officers, and those who had managed to smuggle their wives onto the expedition had to take good care to look after them. On the other hand, some gave every indication of being able to look after themselves, such as the spirited Mme. Tempié, who would reply to any suggestive proposal with her own riposte: “My husband, naval lieutenant Tempié, is in command of
l’Amour
, which is defended by 36 guns and copper-bottomed.”

As part of the ongoing campaign to improve morale, a public festival was announced for 10 Frimaire (November 30). The fact that this took place just six weeks after the insurrection is indicative of how quickly Cairo had returned to normal. As ever, there was much playing of military bands, and this time there was a march-past of crack troops from General Bon’s division.
Le Courier
commented on how the men were wearing “their new uniforms, all looking extremely well nourished and fighting fit, their weapons spick and span and in tip-top condition.”
¹²
Although such words were intended to fill French hearts with pride, they are also open to other inferences: the French soldiers had evidently been short of rations and many of them had been sick, but now at least their finest fighting men were back to their formidable best. There is no doubt that elements of Napoleon’s army in Egypt—from generals to private soldiers—became disaffected, but evidence such as this article, as well as many comments in firsthand memoirs, suggests that despite all the hardships this expedition remained for many soldiers an adventure in which they enthusiastically participated, inspired by their charismatic leader. Captain Vertray, in his journal, echoed many in his contentment: “Experiencing a great tranquility, feeding myself well, I was without a care. I was as happy as one can be on campaign. One is happy when material needs are satisfied and one enjoys good health.”
¹³

The centerpiece of the November 30 celebrations was to be the long-awaited balloon ascent by the intrepid aeronaut Conté, who along with Monge had played such a leading role in the development of the balloon for military purposes. The French were the acknowledged leaders in this latest technology, and as early as 1785 had made the first balloon crossing of the English Channel—a feat that would later inspire British fears of a balloon-led invasion.

With all the balloon equipment brought on the Egyptian expedition sunk, Conté had been unable to construct a hydrogen balloon and was forced to assemble a much lighter hot-air balloon. The finished result was a magnificent sight, reported
Le Courier
: “The machine was made of paper and had a spherical form, the tapering panels which formed its surface were patriotically colored red, white and blue, its diameter was 12 meters . . . the sight of all this made the greatest impression on the local Egyptians, who refused to believe it would fly, a disbelief which lasted throughout the preparations for the flight. Yet when they saw the great globe rise of its own accord, those who were in its path ran away in fright.”
¹⁴

Reports differ as to precisely what happened next, but it seems that the balloon caught fire, and its basket fell from the sky, causing a panic amongst the great crowd that had gathered to watch in Ezbekiyah Square. El-Djabarti was less than impressed: “When the balloon fell to the ground, the French went red with shame, because this was not a ship in which one could travel through the air and go from one country to another, as they had pretended, it was just a kite like our little boys fly at weddings or festivals.”
¹⁵