Napoleon in Egypt (45 page)

The first consequence of opening up this gateway to the Orient was not long in coming. On December 17 Napoleon was able to write in his regular report to the Directory (in fact, the very one carried by Lieutenant Fourès): “A ship which has arrived at Suez had on board an Indian bringing a letter for the commander of the French forces in Egypt. On arrival it was found that he had lost this letter. It appears that our arrival in Egypt has produced a great impression of our power in India and has caused an unfavorable effect on the British. Fighting has broken out there.”
¹

Such was Napoleon’s first nonsensical contact with the distant Orient of his dreams. However, the Indian messenger may not have been quite so incompetent as he appeared: “losing” the letter could easily have been a precautionary measure. He was not to know that Suez had been captured by the French. If he had been apprehended by the Egyptian authorities, and been found to be carrying a letter to Napoleon, this could have resulted in death, or at least torture. He had also evidently taken the precaution of not reading the contents of the letter, so that he could not reveal them under torture and thus incriminate himself, though he was able to convey news of the “unfavorable effect” of the French invasion of Egypt on the British in India.

Indicatively, Napoleon in his report to the Directory does not mention who this lost letter was from, a fact that even the hapless messenger would surely have been able to convey. Presumably, this was in case Napoleon’s report was intercepted by the British blockade, which indeed it was. Subsequent evidence suggests that the letter must have come from Tippoo Sahib, who was still fighting against the British in India, and would have learned through his spies that the British had received news of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. As we shall see, Napoleon would later second-guess the contents of this lost letter as he prepared for his invasion of India: his journey to Suez was but the first step in these preparations.

When Napoleon set out for Suez on December 24, he left Kléber in charge—a chance for his second in command to put into practice some of the administrative skills he had picked up at Napoleon’s side. Napoleon was accompanied by several savants, including the ever-faithful Monge and Berthollet,
^*
his friend the wooden-legged General Caffarelli, and Bourrienne, as well as a suitably large armed escort to ward off any Bedouin attacks. He also brought along an old-fashioned horse-drawn four-wheeled covered carriage, but he chose not to ride in this. The trip to Suez was to be no grand procession, as El-Djabarti makes clear: “[Napoleon] took with him neither servants, nor a cook, nor a tent, nor a mattress. As their provisions, they carried just three roast chickens wrapped in paper. The soldiers had bread which they carried on the ends of their bayonets and water in flasks which they carried around their necks.”
²
Conditions were not easy, as Bourrienne remembered: “We had proof during the day of the great heat of the desert, but by 11 o’clock at night the cold made itself felt in equally fierce fashion.”
³

Napoleon and his party followed the ancient caravan route taken by pilgrims and merchants through the centuries, skirting to the north of the bare mountains and escarpments of the interior. The way through the vast wilderness was marked only by the bones and remains of previous caravans. Bourrienne paints a macabre picture of how they made fires at night in the desert: “In place of firewood, of which there was none, we gathered large quantities of human and animal debris of all sorts. Monge was made to sacrifice several of the extraordinary heads that he had noticed en route and placed in the commander-in-chief’s carriage for safe keeping. The carriage carried [Napoleon’s] papers and maps to Suez—as well as Monge, Berthollet, and I too, when fatigue caused us to clamber aboard.”
⁴

Napoleon arrived at Suez three days later on December 27, only to find that this once thriving port was now a shadow of its former self. Much of the harbor had been allowed to silt up, and at low tide a wide sandbank separated part of the quayside from the sea. The sleepy town and its customs house had a run-down air, and the shipbuilding yard was derelict. Suez now only came to life during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, when boats sailed down the gulf and across the Red Sea to Jeddah. A few boats brought coffee from Yemen and merchandise from Muscat, with the occasional dhow from the Persian Gulf. Suez’s decline had begun in the sixteenth century, after the Portuguese had opened up the route around the Cape of Good Hope, and since then the remnant trade across the isthmus to the Mediterranean had been further ruined by the greed of the Mamelukes, who had charged excessive customs levies, and the predations of the Bedouin tribes roaming the area. The port that had once flourished with trade from the Far East and East Africa being conducted by European merchants from Venice, Genoa and Portugal was now little more than an outpost.

Determined not to be disheartened, Napoleon harked back to history. The early Mamelukes, as well as the sixteenth-century Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, had launched large fleets from here to sail on India. He would do the same. “It is my intention to have as many armed ships as possible on the Red Sea,”
⁵
he had written from Cairo to Bon, as soon as Suez had been taken. Standing on the empty quayside, he elaborated his plans to his assembled entourage. He intended to reopen the shipbuilding yards, and at the same time light transport craft would be carried in prefabricated sections from the shipbuilders on the Nile at Boulac. There would be insufficient time to build an invasion fleet, but there might be time to assemble some frigates, which would be able to open a communications link with any army marching overland to India. His listeners are said to have remained in awkward silence as Napoleon stood looking out to sea, his eloquence soaring into the realms of fantasy. Bourrienne mentions how he “gave orders for the rebuilding of several fortifications and improvements to the marine facilities” in preparation for “the arrival of several divisions coming from [
sic
] India, which he planned to invade.”
⁶

Napoleon then went about the town meeting various merchants from Muscat and the Yemen, in the ever-optimistic belief that he could establish friendly contact with their rulers. Meanwhile Monge, Berthollet and their fellow savants set out along the shore towards the head of the gulf in search of remnants of ancient civilizations. The pharaohs, the ancient Greeks and the Romans had all at some point had settlements here, but the savants were unable to discover any ruins amidst the sands.

Yet there was at least one known ancient site several miles away, and with this in mind Napoleon and the savants set off for a day trip on horseback down the coast, crossing the gulf to the eastern Sinai shore by means of a sandbank which was exposed when the tide went out. The purpose of this trip was to visit the Wells of Moses (known locally as Ayoun Moussa). At the time these consisted of eight warm fresh-water springs at an oasis some six miles or so inland, where according to the Bible Moses had led the Israelites to slake their thirst on their flight from Egypt.
⁷
Bourrienne described how when Napoleon’s group eventually reached the springs, they “used the water to make coffee, though its brackish taste rendered the coffee barely drinkable.”
⁸
Nothing had changed since Moses’ visit over 3,000 years previously: in the biblical story, the Israelites had also found the water undrinkable, until Moses threw a certain tree into the pool, which had the effect of miraculously sweetening the water.

The Israelites had arrived at the oasis just after Moses had parted the waters of the Red Sea, allowing them to escape from Egypt. The waters had then closed, carrying off the pursuing pharaoh and his army. Although there is some doubt that these events took place on this arm of the Red Sea, what now happened to Napoleon and his savants would seem to confirm this location for the biblical story. By the time the group had ridden back from the Wells of Moses to the seashore, the light was beginning to fade and the rising tide was covering the sandbank which led to the other shore. Rashly they decided to ride on into the sea; but as the tide swept in, their local guide lost his way in the dark. (Some sources claim that to amuse themselves the accompanying soldiers had encouraged him to drink alcohol, which had befuddled him.)
⁹
The entire party was soon in danger of being swept away like Pharaoh and his chariots, and at one stage the water became so deep that some of the horses were forced to swim with their riders clinging to their necks. In the commotion Caffarelli’s horse was swept from under him, he lost his wooden leg, and had to be rescued. But eventually all made it safely to the African shore. Bourrienne plays down this incident: “We were not lost in quicksands, as has been said, there weren’t any of those. We couldn’t see, but we cried out, calling to each other.”
¹⁰
Subsequent evidence suggests that they had indeed been in danger: Napoleon was so grateful to the soldier who saved his friend Caffarelli’s life that he was promoted to corporal and awarded with a ceremonial saber inscribed: “General Bonaparte to the mounted guide Louis,” and on the other side: “Crossing of the Red Sea.”
¹¹

Such gestures were not rare, as Kléber had noted in his pocketbook, and despite his sneer they did much to establish Napoleon’s popularity amongst his men. Napoleon was a young, charismatic and brilliant general who had led his men to victory in every battle he had ever fought, and whose aim was to lead France to ever greater glory—such was the image taking shape in the minds of many who served under him. He was already beginning to take on legendary status—he was well aware of this and did everything to encourage it.

After spending just over a fortnight in Suez, Napoleon started back for Cairo, bringing with him his aide Eugene Beauharnais, whom he had allowed to join General Bon’s expeditionary force. The seventeen-year-old Eugene had acquitted himself well, riding in the vanguard of the force entering Suez. He was not to have known that their entry would be unopposed, with not a shot fired. Napoleon had been impressed with his bravery, but he wanted to make sure he did not lose this young man, whom he was more and more coming to regard as a son.

At the start of the return journey, Napoleon left the main party, taking with him just the surveyor Jacques-Marie Le Père, Monge and a few senior staff officers. They rode off in search of remnants of the ancient Ptolemaic canal which was said to have linked the Red Sea to the Nile, by way of the Bitter Lakes, over 2,000 years previously. Historical evidence certainly supported the existence of such a canal: Cleopatra and her fleet had attempted to flee to the Red Sea down this waterway after their defeat by the Romans at the Battle of Actium in 31
BC
, but the Nile had not yet flooded and the water had been too low to allow her ships through.

Napoleon had read about the Ptolemaic canal in Volney’s
Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie
, but Volney had been unable to find any remnant of this historic waterway: “From the tops of the terraces at Suez we could not make out, with our telescopes, a single object on the naked and barren plain . . . the canals which conveyed [the waters of the Nile to Suez] are destroyed, for in this shifting sand they are quickly covered over, by the action of the winds and the passing Bedouins.”
¹²
But Napoleon was not to be discouraged, and he recalled in his memoirs how after a thorough search he “discovered, around half a mile from the town [east along the coast], the remains of several pieces of masonry.”
¹³
This was evidently where the ancient canal had met the sea. Together with Le Père and the others, Napoleon now set about tracing the path of the ancient canal north for around fifteen miles, to the point where it entered the declivity towards the Bitter Lakes, which at the time consisted of a basin below sea level surrounded by salt flats. Napoleon would always be particularly proud of his discovery of the ancient canal, another achievement in his insatiable quest for immortal glory, and he would later insist that this feat was ascribed to him personally in the official history of the expedition to Egypt.

Napoleon instructed Le Père to carry out a survey of the entire area, and the feasibility of excavating a canal which would follow the course of the Ptolemaic canal as far as the lakes, and then progress directly north to the Mediterranean. If anything, this suggestion was even more worthy of note than his “discovery.” Others, including Leibniz, had suggested such a route, but only as a result of looking at the map. Volney, who had actually visited Suez, had specifically ruled it out, reckoning it an engineering impossibility on account of the shifting desert sands and the lack of navigable channels along either coast. Napoleon was the first to take steps that might implement this route (the one which the present Suez canal follows). But he was to be thwarted. Le Père would undertake no fewer than four surveying expeditions, all of them carried out under the most difficult conditions. Apart from the extreme heat, and extreme cold at night, and the vicious dust storms which could blow up without warning, Le Père also had to contend with the fact this this stretch of the desert was very much Bedouin country, and anyone wandering into it was liable to attack. His survey of the route as far as the lakes would be accurate, but when he ventured further north into increasingly dangerous territory, his findings became compounded with errors. He eventually came to the conclusion that the Red Sea was almost thirty-three feet higher than the Mediterranean, and that any attempt to dig a canal north from the lakes was liable to flood the northern plain with seawater, extending its low-lying marshy areas so as to render the entire region impassable, by land or canal.