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Voyage in Lower and Upper Egypt, during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte. Vivant Denon | | | | |
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Vol. 1, Chapters 6-8
Chapter 6: March of the Army, from Alexandria to Cairo.- Trait of Jealousy. -Mirage. - Combat of Chebrise. (p.36)
Most
of the divisions, when they got off the ship, had only crossed
Alexandria to camp in the desert. It was necessary to take care also to
abandon Alexandria, this important point in history, where the
monuments of all eras, where the debris of the arts of so many nations
are piled up pell-mell, and where the ravages of wars, of centuries,
(p.37) and of a humid and saline climate, have brought more of change
and destruction than in any other part of Egypt.
Bonaparte, who
had seized Alexandria with the same rapidity as St. Louis had taken
Damietta, did not commit the same mistake: without giving the enemy
time to recognize himself, and his troops time to see the shortage of
Alexandria and its harsh territory, he ordered to put the divisions
into action as they landed, and, without giving them time to gather
information on the places they were going to occupy. An officer, among
others, said to his troop at the time of departure: My friends, you are
going to sleep in Bédah; you hear: in Bédah; it is not more difficult
than that: let us march, my friends, and the soldiers marched. It is
undoubtedly difficult to cite a more striking trait of naivety on the
one hand and confidence on the other: it is with this carefree courage
that we undertake what others dare not project, and that we performs
what seems inconceivable.
More
curious than surprised, they arrived at Bédah, which they believed to be
a built village, populated like ours; They only found a well filled
with stones, through which a little brackish and muddy water distilled;
drawn with goblets, it was distributed to them, like brandy, in small
rations. This is the first stage of our troops in another part of the
world, separated from their homeland by seas covered with enemies, and
by deserts a thousand times more formidable; and yet this strange
position does not dampen their courage or their cheerfulness.
If
we want to have the measure of the domestic despotism of the Orientals,
if we do not fear shuddering at the atrocity of jealousy, when it is
supported by a received prejudice, and when religion absolves us of its
outbursts, let we read the following anecdote.
On the second day
of our troops' march from Alexandria, some soldiers encountered, near
Bedah, in the desert, a young woman with a bloody face (p.38); She held
a small child in one hand, and the other stray hand went to meet the
object that could strike or guide her. Their curiosity is excited; they
called their guide, who also served as their interpreter; they
approach, they hear the sighs of a being whose organ of tears has been
torn away; a young woman, a child in the middle of a desert!
Astonished, curious, they question: they learn that the horrible
spectacle before their eyes is the result and the effect of a jealous
fury: it is not murmurs that the victim dares to express, but prayers
for the innocent who shares his misfortune, and who will perish from
misery and hunger. Our soldiers, moved with pity, immediately gave him
a part of their ration, forgetting their need in the face of a more
pressing need; they deprive themselves of a rare water of which they
are going to run out completely, when they see a furious man arrive,
who from afar, feasting his eyes on the spectacle of his vengeance,
followed these victims with his eyes; he runs to snatch from the hands
of this woman this bread, this water, this last source of life that
compassion has just granted to misfortune: Stop! he exclaims; she
failed in her honor, she tarnished mine; this child is my shame, he is
the son of crime. Our soldiers want to oppose his depriving her of the
help they have just given her; his jealousy is irritated by the fact
that the object of his fury becomes once again that of tenderness; he
draws a dagger, strikes the woman with a fatal blow; seizes the child,
kidnaps him, and crushes him on the ground; then, stupidly fierce, he
remains motionless, stares fixedly at those around him, and braves
their vengeance.
I inquired if there were repressive laws
against such atrocious abuse of authority; I was told that he had done
wrong to stab her, because if God had not wanted her to die, at the end
of forty days they could have received the unfortunate woman in a house
and fed her out of charity.
The Kléber division, commanded by
Dugua, had taken the route to (p.39) Rosette to protect the flotilla
which had entered the Nile. The army completed its march on June 6 and
7, via Birket and Damanhour: the Arabs attacked the outposts and
harassed the rest; death becomes the punishment of the dragger. Desaix
is about to be taken for remaining fifty steps behind the column; Le
Mireur, a distinguished officer, who, due to a melancholy distraction,
had not responded to the invitation that had been made to him to come
closer, was assassinated a hundred steps from the outposts;
Adjutant-General Galois is killed carrying an order from the
general-in-chief; Adjutant Delanau is taken prisoner a few steps from
the army while crossing a ravine: a price is put on his ransom; the
Arabs argue over the division of it, and, to end the dispute, blow out
the brains of this interesting young man.
The Mamluks had come
to meet the French army: the first time she saw them was near
Damanhour; they only recognized it, and this appearance, as well as the
insignificant combat of Chebrise, gave our soldiers their measure, and
took away from them that uncertain emotion which is reminiscent of
terror, and which always gives an unknown enemy. For their part, having
seen in our army only infantry, a sort of weapon for which they had
sovereign contempt, they took away the certainty of an easy victory,
and no longer tormented our march, already quite difficult by its
length, by the heat of the climate, and the sufferings of thirst and
hunger, to which we must also add the torments of a hope always
deceived and always reborn; in fact it was on piles of wheat that our
soldiers lacked bread, and with the image of a vast lake before their
eyes they were devoured by thirst. This torture of a new kind needs to
be explained, since it is the effect of an illusion which only takes
place in these regions: it is produced by the mirage of protruding
objects on the oblique rays of the sun refracted by the stiffness of
the burning earth (p.40); this phenomenon offers so much the image of
water that we are deceived the tenth time as well as the first; it
fuels a thirst that is all the more ardent because the moment when it
manifests itself is the hottest of the day. I thought that a drawing
would not give the idea, since it could only ever be the representation
of a resemblance; but, to supplement this, one must read a report made
at the Cairo institute, and inserted in the memoirs printed by Didot
the elder, in which citizen Monge described and analyzed this
phenomenon with sagacity and erudition which characterize this scholar.
The villages were deserted as the army approached, and the inhabitants took away everything that could have supplied them.
Watermelons
were the first relief that the soil of Egypt offered to our soldiers,
and this fruit was consecrated in their memory by gratitude. On
arriving at the Nile they threw themselves into it fully dressed to
quench their thirst from every pore.
When the army had passed
Rahmanieh, its marches on the banks of the river became less arduous.
We will not follow her to all her stations; we will only say that on
July 20 she came to sleep at Omm-el-Dinar; she left before daylight the
next day; after twelve hours of walking she found herself near Embabeh,
where the Mamluks were gathered; They had an entrenched camp there,
surrounded by a bad ditch, defended by thirty-eight pieces of cannon.
Chapter 7: Battle of the Pyramids.
As
soon as the enemies were discovered, the army was formed: when
Bonaparte had given his last orders, he said, pointing to the pyramids:
(p.41) Go, and think that from the top of these monuments forty
centuries are watching us . Desaix, who commanded the vanguard, had
passed the village; Reynier followed on his left; Dugua, Vial and Bon,
still on the left, formed a semi-circle approaching the Nile.
Mourat-bey, who came to recognize us, and who saw no cavalry, said that
he was going to cut us like pumpkins (this was his expression): as a
result the most considerable body of the Mamluks, which was in front of
Embabey, set off, and came to charge the Dugua division with a rapidity
which had barely given it time to form; she received them with
artillery fire which stopped them; and by one to the left they came
right up against the bayonets of the Desaix division; a heavy and
sustained file fire produced a second surprise: they were for a moment
without determination; then, suddenly wanting to turn the division,
they passed between that of Reynier and that of Desaix, and received
crossfire from both; which began their rout.
Having no longer any
plans, one part returned to Embabey, the other went to entrench itself
in a park planted with palm trees, which was to the west of the two
divisions, and from where they were sent to dislodge them by
skirmishers; they then took the road to the desert of the pyramids. It
was they who subsequently disputed with us for Upper Egypt. Meanwhile
the other divisions, approaching the village, found themselves in the
situation of being damaged by the artillery of the entrenched camp:
they resolved to attack it; two battalions were formed, drawn from the
Bon and Menou divisions, and commanded by generals Rampon and Marmont,
to march on the village, and turn it with the help of the ditch: the
Rampon battalion seemed easy to them to envelop and destroy ; he is
attacked by what remained of the Mamluks in the camp.
It was
there that the fire was the strongest and most deadly; they did not
understand our resistance (they have since said that they believed we
were linked together): in fact the best cavalry of the East, perhaps of
the whole world, came to break against a small body bristling with
bayonets; there were some who came to set their clothes on fire in the
fire of our musketry, and who, mortally wounded, burned in front of our
ranks. The rout became general: they wanted to return to their camp;
our soldiers followed them and entered pell-mell with them; their
cannons were taken; all the divisions which approached while
surrounding the village deprived them of all means of retreat; they
wanted to follow the Nile, a wall which reached it transversely stopped
them and pushed them back; then they threw themselves into the river to
join the corps of Ibrahim-bey, who had remained opposite to cover
Cairo: from then on it was no longer a fight, but a massacre; the enemy
seemed to march past to be shot, and only to escape the fire of our
battalions to fall prey to the waters.
In the midst of this carnage,
looking up, one could be struck by this sublime contrast offered by the
pure sky of this happy climate: a small number of French, under the
leadership of a hero, had just conquered part of the world ; an empire
had just changed masters; the pride of the Mamluks was finally
shattered against the bayonets of our infantry. In this great and
terrible scene, which was to have such important results, the dust and
smoke scarcely disturbed the lowest part of the atmosphere; the star of
the day rolling over a vast horizon peacefully ends its career: sublime
testimony to this immutable order of nature which obeys eternal decrees
in this silent calm which makes it even more imposing. This is what I
tried to depict in the drawing I made of this moment.
The official account of General Berthier, where the military movements
are
detailed in the most lucid and learned manner, will still serve as an
explanation of the plan of this battle, a plan which must acquire a
particular value by the corrections that Bonaparte himself was willing
to make in the disposition of the corps, and the determination of their
movements.
Chapter 8: Author's tour in the Delta.—Le Bogaze.—Rosette. (p.43)
General
Menou remained injured in Alexandria: he had to go and organize the
government in Rosetta (fig.4), and make a tour in the Delta. Before going to
Cairo, he had invited me to accompany him on this walk: I decided all
the more willingly to make this trip, as I thought in advance that it
could only be very interesting if that we would do it before that of
Upper Egypt; I was also accompanying a kind, educated man, and my
friend for a long time.
We embarked on an advice boat in the new
port of Alexandria; we maneuvered all day: but our captains, knowing
neither the currents, nor the breakers, nor the shallows of this port,
after having avoided the Pointe du Diamant, thought of stranding us at
the rock of Petit Pharillon, and brought us back to anchor at the
entrance to the port to leave the next day. I made the drawing of the
castle (plate 2, no.3), built on the island of Pharus, on the site of this famous
monument so useful and so magnificent, this wonder of the world, which,
after having taken the name of the island on which it had been raised ,
transmitted it to all monuments of this kind.
Plate 2, No. 3 (from Plate 2 by Vivant Denon, in vol.3) "The
great Pharillon, built at the end of a pier; a Turkish castle of some
appearance, more useful, in the state it is in, to house a garrison
than to defend the city. The rock in front is called the Diamond. It is
believed that it was there that the famous Lighthouse was built, one of
the wonders of the world: we can see no vestige of it; it is now
nothing more than a battered reef covered with the waves of all the
winds." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
We reappeared the
next day under as bad auspices as the day before. We were barely a few
leagues out to sea when the wind became very strong, General Menou was
seized by a convulsive vomiting which seemed to cost him his life,
causing him to fall from his height, hitting his head on a cannon in the breech of his
ship. None of us could judge the danger of the large wound
he had sustained: he had lost consciousness; we deliberated whether we
should take it to the Orient, which was anchored with the fleet at
Aboukir, and opposite which we found ourselves at the moment.
(p.44)
Our sailors believed that a few hours would be enough for us to reach
the Nile: we chose this course, which would put an end to the general's
anxieties. Despite the torment of our situation and the rolling of the
vessel, I managed to draw a small view which gives an idea of the
anchorage of our fleet in front of Aboukir, of this promontory formerly
famous for the city of Canope and all its pleasures, today so famous
for all the horrors of war.
A few hours later we found ourselves,
without knowing it, at one of the mouths of the Nile, which we
recognized from the most disastrous scene I have seen in my life. The
waters of the Nile pushed back by the wind raised waves to an immense
height which were perpetually driven back and broken by the current of
the river with a terrible noise; one of our vessels which had just been
shipwrecked, and which the wave had just broken up, was the only clue
we had of the coast; several other opinions in the same situation as
us, that is to say in the same confusion, came closer to consult each
other, avoided each other so as not to break up, and could only hear
each other through even more terrible cries. There was no coastal
pilot; we no longer knew what to say; the general continued to get
worse: we thought of going to reconnoitre the bogaze or the bar of the
river; the boat was launched into the sea, and battalion commander
Bonnecarrere and I threw ourselves into it as best we could.
We
had barely left our shore when we found ourselves in the middle of the
abysses, without seeing anything other than the curved tops of the
waves which from all sides threatened to engulf us; a thousand toises
from the viso we could no longer reach him: seasickness began to
torment me; it was a question of waiting indefinitely, and thus passing
the night. I wrapped myself in my cloak to no longer see anything of
our deplorable situation, when we passed under the waters of a felucca,
where I saw an unfortunate man who, while getting into a (p.45) boat,
had remained suspended to a rope; tired of the efforts he made to
support himself in this perilous position, his arms stretched out and
let him go into those of death, which I saw open to receive him. I
experienced such a revolution at this spectacle that my fainting spells
stopped: I did not cry out, I howled; the sailors mixed their cries
with mine: they were finally heard by those in the ship; at first we
didn't know what we wanted; We sought on all sides beforehand to come
to the aid of the unfortunate man whose last strength was expiring; we
discover him at the end.... we still had time to save him.
The
moment that this event had caused us to lose, and the efforts that we
had made to keep ourselves under cover in case this man fell into the
sea, had made us gain enough height to regain our view; we climbed it
quite happily, and found ourselves at the same point from which we had
started without knowing more than to try. The wind calmed down a
little, but the sea remained rough: night came; it was less stormy.
The
general was too ill to make a resolution himself: we held another
council, and we resolved to put him in the boat as best we could,
thinking that the wrecked vessel and the breakers would serve as a
guide for us, and that in also avoiding we would enter the Nile: this
succeeds for us; after an hour of navigation we found ourselves at the
corner of the coast, and suddenly turning to the right, we sailed in
the most peaceful bed of the gentlest of all rivers, and half an hour
later in the middle of the freshest and greenest of all countries: it
was exactly leaving Ténare to enter via Lethe into the Champs-Elysées.
This was even more true for the general, who was already sitting up,
and only left us worried about the depth of his wound, which none of us
had dared to fathom.
(p.46) We soon found on our right a fort,
and on our left a battery, which, formerly built to defend the mouth of
the Nile, is now a league away; which could give the measure of the
progression of Falluvion of the river. Indeed, the construction of
these forts does not go back beyond the invention of gunpowder, and
they are therefore not more than three hundred years old. I quickly
made two drawings of these two points.
The first, to the west of
the river, presents a square castle, flanked by large towers at the
corners, with batteries in which were cannons twenty-five feet long;
the second is nothing more than a mosque, in front of which was a
ruined battery, of which a cannon, of twenty-eight inches caliber,
served no more than to provide happy childbirths to women when they
came to step over it. during their pregnancy.
An hour later, we
discovered, in the middle of the forests of date palms, banana trees,
and sycamores, Rosette, located on the banks of the Nile, which without
damaging them, bathes the walls of its houses every year. I took a look
at it before approaching it.
Rascid, which the Franks called
Rosette, or Rosser, was built on the branch and near the Bolbitine
mouth, not far from the ruins of a town of that name, which must have
been located at a bend in the river, where is present the convent of
Abou-Mandour, half a league from Rosetta: what could support this
opinion are the heights which dominate this convent, and which must
have been formed by lands; These are still some columns and other
antiquities found while carrying out repairs to this convent around
twenty years ago.
Leo of Africa says that Rascid was built by a
governor of Egypt, under the reign of the caliphs; but it says neither
the name of the caliph nor the time of the foundation.
Rosette
offers no curious monuments. Its ancient (p.47) circumvallation
announces that it was larger than it is now; we recognize its first
enclosure by the sand mounds which cover it from west to south, and
which were only formed by the walls and towers which today serve as the
cores of these lands. As in Alexandria, the population of this city is
still decreasing. Little is built there, and what is built there is
nothing more than old bricks from buildings which are falling into ruin
due to lack of inhabitants and repairs. The houses, generally better
built than those of Alexandria, are however still so frail that, if
they were not spared by the climate which destroys nothing, there would
soon no longer be a house in Rosette; the floors, which always advance
one on the other, end up almost touching each other; which makes the
streets very dark and very sad. Dwellings along the Nile do not have
this disadvantage; they mostly belong to. foreign traders. This part of
the city would be easy to improve; it would only be necessary to build
on the bank of the river a quay alternately sloped and covered: the
houses, apart from the advantage of having a view of the navigation,
still have the pleasant aspect of the banks of the Delta, an island
which It is only a garden of a league in size.
This island first became our property, our promenade, and finally the
park
where we gave ourselves the pleasure of hunting, which was doubled by
that of curiosity, since each bird that we killed was a new
acquaintance.
I was able to notice that the inhabitants of the
left bank of the Nile, that is to say the inhabitants of the Delta,
were gentler and more sociable: I believe that the cause must be
attributed to greater abundance, and to absence of the Bedouin Arabs,
who, never crossing the river, leave them in a state of peace that the
others do not experience at any moment of their lives.
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