The voyage--The landing--The taking of Alexandria--The _Chant du
Départ_ and the Arabian concert--The respited prisoners--The march
on Cairo--Rum and biscuit--My father's melons--The Scientific
Institute--Battle of the Pyramids--Scene of the victory--My father's
letter establishing the truth.
Bonaparte sailed in the _Orient_, a fine boat of 120 guns.
As she left the harbour, being very heavily laden, she drew too much
water and touched the bottom, causing a short time of confusion among
the fleet. The boatswain's mate, Boyer, of the _Guillaume Tell_, in
which my father was sailing, shook his head gloomily.
"What is the matter, Boyer?" my father asked.
"Some disaster will happen to the fleet, General."
"Why should it?"
"Because the admiral's flag-ship touched ground. Don't you know it is
an infallible omen?"
My father shrugged his shoulders.
Two months afterwards the fleet was destroyed at Aboukir.
The details of the crossing are well known: they took Malta as they
passed--Malta the impregnable!
Caffarelli, who visited the fortifications with Bonaparte, could not
help saying to him: "Upon my word, General, lucky for you to have
someone inside the citadel to open the gates for you! If it had not
been for that, I don't think you would ever have got in."
Bonaparte set the Turkish prisoners free--a move to propitiate the
Sultan.
The fleet left Malta on the 19th June and set sail for Candia.
Nelson was at Messina with the English fleet when he heard of the
taking of Malta. He was convinced Bonaparte intended sailing for Egypt,
and immediately set sail for Alexandria.
During the night of the 22nd to 23rd of June, the English and French
fleets passed within six leagues of one another. The English fleet
did not see ours, and whilst we were bearing north it sailed south,
reaching Alexandria three days before us.
As Nelson had not discovered any trace of our passage, and learnt that
our fleet had not been signalled by any ship, he thought our expedition
was meant to conquer Asia, and rapidly moved off to Alexandretta, in
Syria.
This miscalculation saved the expedition, which reached Candia, took
advantage of the northerly winds, and immediately sailed due south.
Land was sighted at break of day on July 1st, and high above the ruins
and the white houses towered the column of Septimus Severus. Bonaparte
realised the danger he had escaped; it was nothing short of a miracle
that the English fleet did not catch sight of ours. He gave orders for
immediate disembarkation.
The whole day was taken up by this important operation, and it was
accomplished without serious accident, although the sea was rough.
But, on landing, about a score of men, thinking they could see a
fountain of water, ran off into the interior of the country, were
surrounded by a tribe of Bedouins and had their captain killed.
This was a bad beginning! Bonaparte issued very strict orders
concerning stragglers, and promised a reward of a hundred piastres to
every Arab who should bring back a prisoner.
A hundred Turkish piastres is only equivalent to about twenty-five
francs; but Bonaparte did not wish to spoil the Bedouins.
And he was wise, as we shall see presently.
The cavalry were unable, to land on account of the foul weather;
Bonaparte decided not to wait for them, and, towards three in the
morning, he began to march towards Alexandria, with the three divisions
of Kléber, Bon, and Moreau. My father, hunting-rifle in hand, headed
the carabineers of the 4th light demi-brigade.
No difficulties were encountered upon the journey until they came up to
the walls of Alexandria, which were defended by the Turks.
Kléber received the first blow: a ball struck his head just as he took
command of the attack.
The resistance made by the Alexandrians was not serious, and the town
was captured at the end of an hour's fighting.
My father was one of the first to enter the town, and his great height,
his bronzed complexion almost as dark as those of the Arabs, made a
vivid impression upon the native inhabitants. This fact was reported to
Bonaparte, who turned everything to account; and accordingly he sent
for my father.
"General," he said, "take about a score of my guides and conduct them
to the Arab tribe which is to bring me in prisoners. I wish you to be
the first general they cast eyes on--the first chief with whom they
shall treat."
Off my father set at a gallop, and a quarter of a league from the town
he found the people he wanted. Through the agency of his dragoman he
quickly gave them to understand that they must present themselves
before the general-in-chief, who would be pleased to welcome them and
give them the promised reward.
Bonaparte was not mistaken in his calculations: my father at once
became a subject of study, curiosity, and admiration on the part of
these children of nature, and, as he made no attempt to drive them
away, he entered Alexandria with them pell-mell.
Bonaparte received them all in a large hall overlooking the sea,
distributed his proclamations among them, which he had had translated
into Arabic and offered them a repast which he had taken care should
wound none of the customs of their country.
They accepted the repast with evident satisfaction, squatted themselves
down, and each man began to snatch his fill.
In the midst of the feast the united bands of the three infantry
regiments struck up instantly the _Chant du Départ._
Although the explosion was both dreadful and unexpected, not a single
Arab jumped up; they all continued eating in spite of the deafening din
made by the hundred and twenty musicians.
Bonaparte asked them at the conclusion of the air if they liked the
music.
"Yes!" they replied, "but our own is better."
Bonaparte desired to hear their music, since it was so superior to
that of the French performance. Three Arabs thereupon left off eating,
and two took up a kind of drum; the one looked like the pack of a
wafer-seller, the other like a pumpkin cut in half. The third took up a
kind of three-stringed guitar, and the Arabian concert began solemnly
entering into competition with the French one.
Bonaparte complimented them highly upon their music, distributed the
promised reward, and vows of friendship were exchanged on both sides.
A dozen or so of men were missing at roll-call. The Bedouins were
in full swing of decapitating their prisoners, and had already
accomplished a third of their work before they learned that the reward
of a hundred piastres was offered for each prisoner brought back alive.
Like men who place business in the front rank before everything else,
they immediately stopped killing their prisoners, and contented
themselves with a less cruel method of sport, but a more unusual, in
the eyes of the captives, than the punishment they had at first feared.
The upshot was, that when Bonaparte had the prisoners up before him to
question them, he was amazed to see them all blush, turn their heads
away, and stammer like bashful maidens. Finally, when urged by the
general-in-chief, who, hearing so much talk of the indignities that had
been put upon the captives, was really determined to find out what they
had suffered, an old soldier told him, crying with rage, that he and
his companions had been treated as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah
would have treated the angels if they had not had the advantage over
our grenadiers of possessing wings, with which they ascended to heaven
without loss of time.
"Idiot," said Bonaparte, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, "tears
ill become you. Come, come, be thankful you got off so cheaply, and
stop your blubbering."
This treatment of the prisoners made a great sensation throughout the
army, and contributed in a large measure to keep discipline, which
would have been more difficult to enforce had the soldiers only been in
fear of having their heads chopped off.
Bonaparte stayed a week at Alexandria.
He spent the first day in reviewing his forces.
The second day he gave orders to Admiral Brueys to take the fleet into
the old port of Alexandria or to lead it to Corfu.
On the third day he made his proclamation to the inhabitants, and
ordered Desaix to march upon Cairo.
The fourth, he had the names of the men who had been killed outside
Alexandria carved on Pompey's pillar, and had their bodies buried at
the foot of that monument.
On the fifth day General Dugua seized Aboukir.
On the sixth, Rosetta was taken, and whilst the flotilla was being
mobilised, the army prepared to march on Cairo.
On the seventh day he made Kléber commandant of Alexandria, assuring
the Porte that he desired to keep on good terms with it, and then he
left for Cairo himself.
Desaix was the first to set out, and the first to be seized with
despondency.
I will quote from Desaix's own words (for his devotion to Bonaparte was
beyond dispute).
On the 15th July, Desaix wrote thus to Bonaparte from Bakahireh:--
"For pity's sake don't leave us in this place! The troops are dejected
and grumbling; let us either advance or retire as soon as possible. The
villages are mere huts, and utterly devoid of provisions."
The army received four days' rations on starting; unluckily, and most
unwisely, they had also been allowed four days' supply of rum. The
consequence of this addition of liquid to solid provisions was that,
during the first hours of the march through the desert that separates
Alexandria from Damanhour, the soldiers, parched with thirst, but not
yet hungry, attacked the rum, and went so frequently to the canteen
where it was kept, that, before half the march was over, the canteen
was empty and the men were drunk.
Then the soldiers, imagining with the happy optimism of drunkenness
that they would never feel the pangs of hunger, began to lighten their
knapsacks by scattering abroad their rice and throwing away their
biscuits.
When their commanding officers found out what was going on, they gave
orders for a halt.
Now a halt of two hours gave time enough for the first effects of the
alcohol to pass off, and they resumed the march, already regretting
their indiscreet conduct. Towards five in the morning, the hunger they
fancied they had staved off began to attack them cruelly. They could
scarcely manage to drag themselves as far as Damanhour, which was
reached on the 9th at eight in the morning.
They had some hopes of finding food in that town, but it had been
completely evacuated. They ransacked every house, and, as the
harvest was just over, they found a morsel of threshed wheat; but
the hand-mills wherewith the Arabs ground their corn were broken,
having been purposely put out of gear. They managed to put several in
order, and succeeded in procuring a small quantity of flour, but if
distributed it would not have amounted to above half an ounce per man.
Discontent now began to spread through the troops, and hunger, that
evil counsellor, whispered suggestions of rebellion among the men, and
even among the officers.
So, amidst dejection and complaints, they began to march towards
Rhamanieh.
It was no good the soldiers being impatient, since they had themselves
alone to blame for their lack of provisions. Almost dying with hunger,
they at last reached Rhamanieh, where they learnt they must halt for
the 11th and 12th, to wait for provisions, which had been ordered in
the Delta. These duly arrived, and the fresh food and the nearness to
the Nile, into which the soldiers plunged the moment they reached it,
somewhat restored courage to the army.
My father managed to procure two or three water-melons, and invited
several generals of his acquaintance to eat them in his tent. They were
not slow to respond to his invitation.
We have seen how badly the campaign had opened and how much the troops
had already undergone since they left Alexandria. The Egypt that they
had seen from afar, as a large emerald green riband unrolled in the
midst of the desert, no longer appeared in its ancient fertility, as
the granary of the world, but in its modern poverty, its shifting
populations, its ruined and deserted villages.
Desaix's complaints were re-echoed by the whole army.
The gathering under my father's tent, which had met for the purpose of
consuming the melons, very soon took a political turn, as each general
gave vent to the ill-humour all shared alike.
What had they come to that accursed land for?--a land which had
successively devoured all who tried to conquer it, since the days
of Cambyses until the time of St. Louis. Had they come to found a
colony? What was the good of leaving France, where the sun warmed a man
without scorching him up,--France with its lovely forests, its fertile
plains,--for this heaven of brass, this shadeless desert, these burning
plains? Did Bonaparte want to shape a kingdom for himself in the East,
after the fashion of the old Roman proconsuls? He might at least have
asked his generals if they were willing to be the heads of this new
satrapy. Such schemes might have succeeded with ancient armies composed
of freed men and slaves, but not with the patriots of 1792, who were
not the satellites of one man but soldiers belonging to a nation.
Were these recriminations simply murmurs wrung from them by their
present hardships? Or were they already the undercurrent of rebellion
against the ambitious spirit of the hero of the 18th Brumaire? Maybe
those who took part in that gathering could not themselves have
answered these queries. But they were repeated to Bonaparte as grave
attacks upon his authority by a general who had been the loudest in his
reproaches against the motives of the general-in-chief and the first to
appreciate the good flavour of my father's melons.
Be that as it may, it was at Rhamanieh, beneath my father's tent, that
there began that opposition to which Kléber gave so much strength and
countenance.
On the 12th the flotilla reached Rosetta, under command of Perrée,
chief of the division.
He was on board the _Cerf._
Bonaparte put on board Perrée's ship a regular Institute of scientific
men: Monge, Fourrier, Costa, Berthollet, Dolomieu, Tallien, etc.
They were to ascend the Nile parallel with the French army; their
horses would help to complete a small body of cavalry.
We know how that flotilla was driven by the wind faster than the army
could march, that it was attacked by the Turkish fleet and fired at
from both banks of the Nile by the fellahs. Sussy, who later became
comte de Sussy, took a leading part in the conduct of operations, and
had his arm broken by a ball during the battle.
Bonaparte, hearing the firing of cannon, intervened just in time to
save the fleet from utter destruction, reaching the scene of battle
over the bodies of 4000 Mamelukes at Chebreis.
Eight days later, Bonaparte fought the battle of the Pyramids. Four
days after the battle of the Pyramids--that is to say, on the 25th
July, at four in the afternoon--Bonaparte made his entrance into Cairo.
No one knew better than Bonaparte the value of the dramatic effect of
this victory. The sound of a victory increases in volume as it spreads
on its way, echoing and re-echoing throughout the world. And none knew
better than the coolheaded Bonaparte the value of those sublime sayings
he is reported to have uttered before, during, or after his battles,
the most celebrated of them being perhaps his--"Soldiers! Forty
centuries gaze down upon you from the tops of those great monuments!"
If the reader should wish to learn the extent of exaggeration used
by Bonaparte in his despatches, and would form a correct idea of the
impression produced by that battle upon those who took part in it, a by
no means secondary part, he may permit me to transcribe the following
letter from my father. It was addressed to Kléber, who was settled at
Alexandria as governor, waiting to recover from his wounds.
"BOULAK, NEAR CAIRO,
"_9th Thermidor, Year VI._
"At last, my friend, we have reached this long-wished-for
country. My God! how different it is from what even a
most temperate imagination pictured it! The horrible
_villasse_ of Cairo is peopled by an idle rabble, squatting
cross-legged all day long in front of the vilest of huts,
smoking and sipping coffee, or else eating water-melons and
drinking water.
"One could easily lose oneself for a whole day in the
narrow, stinking streets of this famous capital. Only
the quarter where the Mamelukes dwell is at all fit for
habitation, and here the commander-in-chief lives in a
fairly good house belonging to a bey. I have written to
Brigadier Dupuis, who is the actual general and commander in
Cairo, to reserve a house for you, but have not yet received
his reply.
"The division is stationed at a sort of township called
Boulak, close to the Nile, about half a league from Cairo.
We are all lodged in filthy houses that had been deserted on
our approach; Dugua's is the only passably decent one in the
lot.
"General Lannes has just received orders to take up the
command of Menou's division, instead of Vial, who goes to
Damietta with a battalion. He assures me he shall refuse.
The 2nd light battalion, with General Verdier, is in
position near the Pyramids, on the left bank of the Nile,
waiting until the place is fortified ready for occupation by
a guard of a hundred men.
"They ought to build a bridge opposite Gizeh; the place
is at present occupied by the reserve of artillery and
engineers. Régnier's division is two or three leagues off
Cairo; Desaix's is just starting for Old Cairo; Bon's is at
the Citadel, and Menou's in the town itself.
"You have no idea of the fatiguing marches we made to get to
Cairo--stopping generally three or four hours after noon,
after having endured the burden and heat of the day; most of
the time without food, obliged to glean what the preceding
divisions had left behind in the horrible villages which
they had ransacked; harassed the whole march by a thieving
horde called Bedouins, who killed our men or officers if
they lagged twenty-five steps behind the column. General
Dugua's aide-de-camp, Geroret, was assassinated the day
before yesterday in that way, when carrying a despatch to a
party of grenadiers, within gun-shot of the camp. It is a far
nastier war, my friend, than la Vendée.
"We had a battle the very day we reached the Nile, near
Cairo. The Mamelukes, who are very cunning, tried to cross
the Nile from the right to its left bank. I need hardly say
that they were well thrashed, and that we washed their dirty
linen in the stream. I believe they called it the battle of
the Pyramids. They certainly lost 700 or 800 men without
exaggeration; but a great many of that number were drowned
in trying to swim across the Nile.
"I am very anxious to hear how you are and when you will
be fit to take command of this division, which is in the
weakest hands possible. Everybody is longing for you, and
discipline throughout is becoming extraordinarily lax. I do
all I can to keep each section to itself, but it is rather a
hopeless task. The troops are neither paid nor properly fed,
and you can readily guess what grumbling this occasions. The
officers complain even more bitterly than the men. They hold
out hopes to us that in eight days the commissariat will be
sufficiently in order to make proper distributions, but that
seems a long way off.
"If you come soon--which is my most earnest desire--have an
escort even on board ship, say a couple of carabineers, who
can reply to the attacks which the Bedouins are certain to
make along the banks, to dispute your passage.
"Commissioner Sussy had his arm broken on the flotilla by a
shot as he was pointing out Cairo. Perhaps you will be able
to return with the gun-boats and djermes which have gone to
Alexandria to fetch goods belonging to the troops.
"Come--come--come!--Ever yours, DUMAS.
"_P.S._--Kind regards to Auguste and our colleagues."