Napoleon's Pyramids

by William Dietrich

  ‘Hooray for mathematics!’

  A moment passed, and then the entire enemy boat blew up.

  Apparently the scientists had made a direct hit on the magazine. There was a concussive roar that radiated out a cloud of shattered wood, broken cannon, and human body parts, arcing outward and then sluicing into the opaque surface of the Nile. The clap of air sent us sprawling, and smoke roiled into the blue Egyptian sky in a vast mushroom. And then there was just disturbed water where the enemy flagship had been, as if it had vanished by magic. The Muslim fire immediately went silent in stunned consternation, and then a wail went up from the enemy flotilla as its smaller boats tacked to flee upriver. At the same moment the Mameluke cavalry, forming for a second charge after their first failed, suddenly broke and retreated southward at this seeming sign of French omnipotence. In minutes, what had been a swirling land-and-sea battle turned into a rout. With that single well-placed shot, the battle of Shubra Khit was won, and the wounded Perree was promoted to rear admiral.

  And I, by association, was a hero.

  When Perree went ashore to receive Bonaparte’s congratulations he generously invited the two scientists, Talma, and me, giving us full credit for the decisive shot. Monge’s precision was something of a marvel. Despite the Greek expertise, the new admiral later calculated that the two fleets had exchanged fifteen hundred cannon shots in half an hour and his flotilla had come away with just six dead and twenty wounded. Such was the state of Egyptian artillery, or ordnance in general, at the close of the eighteenth century. Cannon and musket fire was so inaccurate that a brave man could put himself at the forefront of a charge and actually have a decent chance of survival and glory. Men fired too soon. They fired blind in the smoke. They loaded in panic and forgot to discharge, ramming one bullet atop another without shooting at all, until their musket burst. They shot off the ears and hands of their comrades in the rank ahead of them, broke eardrums, and jabbed each other when fitting bayonets. Bonaparte told me that at least one out of ten battle casualties came from one’s own comrades, which is why uniforms are so bright, to prevent friends from killing each other.

  Expensive rifles like mine will someday change all this, I suppose, and warfare shall devolve into men groping in the mud for cover. What glory in murder? Indeed, I wondered what war would be like if savants did all the aiming and every bomb and bullet hit. But this, of course, is a fanciful notion that will forever be impossible.

  While Monge and Berthollet were the ones who had laid the key gun, I was applauded for having fought with fervour for the French side. ‘You have the spirit of Yorktown!’ Napoleon congratulated, clapping me on the back. Again, the presence of Astiza enhanced my reputation. Like any good French soldier I’d attached myself to an attractive woman, and a woman moreover with the spirit to haul on cannon tackle. I’d become one of them, while she used her skill or magic – in Egypt, the two seemed to be the same – to help bind the wounded. We males joined Napoleon for dinner in his tent.

  Our general was in a good mood from the outcome of the brisk fight, which had settled both him and his army. Egypt might be alien, but France could become its master. Now Bonaparte’s mind was full of plans for the future, even though we were still more than a hundred river miles from Cairo.

  ‘My campaign is not one of conquest but of marriage,’ he proclaimed as we dined on poultry that his aides had liberated from Shubra Khit, roasting them on the ramrods of their muskets. ‘France has a destiny in the East, just as your young nation, Gage, has a destiny in the West. While your United States civilises the red savage, we’ll reform the Muslim with Western ideas. We’ll bring windmills, canals, factories, dams, roads, and carriages to somnolent Egypt. You and I are revolutionaries, yes, but I’m a builder as well. I want to create, not destroy.’

  I think he truly believed this, just as he believed a thousand other things about himself, many of them contradictory. He had the intellect and ambition of a dozen men, and was a chameleon who tried to fit them all.

  ‘These people are Muslim,’ I pointed out. ‘They won’t change. They’ve been fighting Christians for centuries.’

  ‘I’m Muslim too, Gage, if there is only one God and every religion is just an aspect of central truth. That’s what we must explain to these people, that we are all brothers under Allah or Jehovah or Yahweh or whomever. France and Egypt will unite once the mullahs see we are their brothers. Religion? It’s a tool, like medals or bonus pay. Nothing inspires like unproven faith.’

  Monge laughed. ‘Unproven? I’m a scientist, general, and yet God seemed quite proven once those cannon balls began whizzing by.’

  ‘Proven or wished, like a child wishes for his mother? Who knows? Life is brief, and none of our deepest questions are ever answered. So I live for posterity: death is nothing, but to live without glory is to die every day. I’m reminded of the story of an Italian duelist who fought fourteen times to defend his claim that the poet Aristo was finer than the poet Tasio. On his deathbed, the man confessed he’d read neither one.’ Bonaparte laughed. ‘Now that is living!’

  ‘No, General,’ the balloonist Conte replied, tapping his wine cup. ‘This is living.’

  ‘Ah, I appreciate a good cup, or a fine horse, or a beautiful woman. Look at our American friend here, who rescues this pretty Macedonian, finds himself in the commander’s tent, and is about to share in the riches of Cairo. He’s an opportunist like me. Don’t think I don’t miss my own wife, who is a greedy little witch with one of the prettiest pussies I’ve ever seen, a woman so seductive that I went at her one time without even noticing that her little dog was biting me on the ass!’ He roared at the memory. ‘Pleasure is exquisite! But it is history that is lasting, and no place has more history than Egypt. You’ll record it for me, eh, Talma?’

  ‘Writers thrive with their subjects, General.’

  ‘I will give authors a subject worthy of their talents.’

  Talma lifted his cup. ‘Heroes sell books.’

  ‘And books make heroes.’

  We all drank, to what, exactly, I cannot say.

  ‘You have great ambition, General,’ I remarked.

  ‘Success is a matter of will. The first step to greatness is to decide to be great. Then men will follow.’

  ‘Follow you where, General?’ Kleber asked genially.

  ‘All the way.’ He looked to each of us in turn, his gaze intense. ‘All the way.’

  After dinner I paused to say a good-bye to Monge and Berthollet. I’d had quite enough of river boats, having seen one of them explode, and Talma and Astiza wanted to be ashore as well. So we gave temporary farewells to the two scientists, under a desert sky ablaze with countless stars.

  ‘Bonaparte is cynical but seductive,’ I remarked. ‘You can’t listen to his dreams without being infected by them.’

  Monge nodded. ‘He’s a comet, that one. If he’s not killed, he’ll leave his mark on the world. And on us.’

  ‘Always admire but never trust him,’ Berthollet cautioned. ‘We’re all hanging onto the tiger’s tail, Monsieur Gage, hoping we won’t be eaten.’

  ‘Surely he won’t eat his own kind, my chemist friend.’

  ‘But what are his own kind? If he doesn’t quite believe in God, neither does he quite believe in us: that we are real. No one is real to Napoleon but Napoleon.’

  ‘That seems too cynical.’

  ‘No? In Italy he ordered a group of his soldiers to a sharp skirmish with the Austrians that left several men dead.’

  ‘That’s war, is it not?’ I remembered Bonaparte’s comments on the beach.

  ‘Not when there was no military need for the skirmish, or the deaths. A pretty Mademoiselle Thurreau was visiting from Paris and Bonaparte was anxious to bed her by demonstrating his power. He ordered the fight solely to impress her.’ Berthollet put his hand on my arm. ‘I’m glad you’ve joined us, Gage, you are proving brave and congenial. March with our young general and you’ll march far, as he promised. But never forget th
at Napoleon’s interests are Napoleon’s, not your own.’

  I’d hoped that the remainder of our journey to Cairo would be a stroll down avenues of date palms and through the irrigated greenery of melon fields. Instead, to avoid the bends in the river and the narrow lanes of frequent villages, the French army left the Nile a few miles to the east and hiked through desert and dry farmland once more, crossing sun-baked mud and empty, axle-breaking irrigation canals. The alluvial valley, which the Nile flooded each wet season, sent up a cloud of dry, clinging powder that turned us into a horde of dust men, marching south on blistered feet. The heat in the middle of July routinely exceeded one hundred degrees, and when a hot wind blew the brilliantly azure sky turned milk on the horizon. Sand hissed over the top of sculpted dunes like an undulating sheet. Men began to suffer ophthalmia, temporary blindness from the ceaseless glare. So fierce was the sun that we needed to wrap our hands to pick up a rock or touch a cannon barrel.

  It didn’t help that Bonaparte, still fearing a British strike in his rear or more organised resistance to his front, scolded his officers for every pause and delay. While they focused on the march of the moment his mind was always on the greater picture, ticking off the calendar and strategically roaming from the mysterious whereabouts of the British fleet to ally Tippoo, in distant India. He tried to hold all of Egypt in his eye. The genial host we’d seen after the river fight had once more reverted to anxious tyrant, galloping from point to point to urge more speed. ‘The faster the pace, the less the blood!’ he lectured. As a result, all the generals were sweating, dirty, and frequently cursing each other. The soldiers were depressed by the bickering and by the bleakness of the land they’d come to conquer. Many cast off equipment rather than carry it. Several more committed suicide. Astiza and I passed two of their bodies, left by our path because everyone was too hurried to bury them. Only the trailing Bedouin discouraged more men from desertion.

  Our torrent of men, horses, donkeys, guns, wagons, camels, camp followers, and beggars flowed toward Cairo in an arrow of dust. When we halted to rest in the farmlands, muddy from sweat, our only amusement was to throw rocks at the innumerable rats. In the desert fringe the men shot at snakes and played with the scorpions, tormenting them into contests against each other. They learnt that the scorpion bite was not as deadly as initially feared, and that crushing the insect against the sting released a goo that worked as a salve to help soothe the pain and hasten the healing.

  There was no rain, ever, and rarely a cloud. At night we did not so much camp as sprawl, everyone collapsing in the sequence with which we’d marched, the lot of us immediately assaulted by fleas and midges. We ate cold food as often as hot because there was little wood for fuel. The night would cool toward dawn and we’d wake wet with dew, only half recovered. Then the cloudless sun would rise, remorseless as a clock, and soon we’d all be baking. Astiza, I noticed, lay steadily closer to me as the march went on, but we were both so swaddled, filthy, and exposed in this horde that there was nothing romantic in her decision. We simply sought each other’s warmth at night, and then bemoaned the sun and flies by noon.

  At Wardan the army was finally allowed to rest for two days. The men washed, slept, foraged, and bartered for food. Once again Astiza proved her value in being able to converse with the villagers and trade for sustenance. So successful was she that I was able to supply some of the officers at Napoleon’s headquarters with bread and fruit.

  ‘You’re sustaining the invaders like the Hebrews were sustained by manna from heaven,’ I tried to joke with her.

  ‘I’m not going to starve ordinary soldiers because of the delusions of their commander,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, fed or starving, you’ll all be gone shortly.’

  ‘You don’t think the French can beat the Mamelukes?’

  ‘I don’t think they can beat the desert. Look at all of you, with your heavy uniforms and hot boots and pink skin. Is there anyone but your mad general who doesn’t regret coming here? These soldiers will leave on their own soon enough.’

  Her predictions were beginning to annoy me. She was a captive, after all, spoilt by my kindness, and it was high time I reprimanded her. ‘Astiza, we could have killed you as an assassin in Alexandria. Instead, I saved you. Can’t we become not master and servant, or invader and Egyptian, but friends?’

  ‘A friend of whom? A man foreign to his own army? In alliance with a military opportunist? An American who seems neither true scientist nor soldier?’

  ‘You saw my medallion. It’s a key to something I’m to figure out.’

  ‘But you want this key without understanding. You want knowledge without study. Coins without work.’

  ‘I view this as damned hard work.’

  ‘You’re a parasite looting another culture. I want a friend who believes in something. Himself, first. And things greater than himself.’

  Well, that was presumptuous! ‘I’m an American who believes in all kinds of things! You should read our Declaration of Independence! And I don’t control the world. I just try to make my way in it.’

  ‘No. What individuals do does control the world. War has put us together, Monsieur Ethan Gage, and you are not an entirely unlikable man. But companionship is not true friendship. First you have to decide why you are in Egypt, what you mean to do with this medallion of yours, what you really stand for, and then we will be friends.’

  Well. Quite insolent for a merchant’s slave, I thought! ‘And we will be friends when you acknowledge me as master and accept your new fate!’

  ‘What task haven’t I done for you? Where haven’t I accompanied you?’

  Women! I had no answer. This time we slept an arm’s length away and my mind kept me from sleep until well past midnight. Which was just as well, because I narrowly escaped having a wandering donkey step on my head.

  One day after the Egyptian New Year, on July 20th at the village of Omm-Dinar, Napoleon finally received word of the Mameluke disposition for the defence of Cairo, now just eighteen miles ahead. The defenders had foolishly split their forces. Murad Bey led the bulk of the Mameluke army on our own western side of the river, but a jealous Ibrahim Bey had kept a sizable share on the east. It was the opportunity our general had been waiting for. The order to march came two hours after midnight, the shouts and kicks of officers and sergeants brooking no delay. Like a great beast rousing itself in its cave, the French expeditionary force stirred, rose, and marched south in the dark with a sudden anticipation that called to mind that prickly feeling I get from demonstrating Franklin’s electricity. This would be the great battle, and the coming day would see either the destruction of the main Mameluke army or the rout of our own. Despite Astiza’s lofty lecture about controlling the world, I felt no more in charge of my fate than a leaf on a current.

  Dawn came red, with mist on the reeds of the Nile. Bonaparte urged us on, anxious to crush the Mamelukes before they joined forces or, worse, dispersed into the desert. I caught sight of him exhibiting a scowling intensity greater than any I’d yet observed, not just keen on a fight but obsessed with it. A captain made some mild objection and Napoleon snapped back with the bark of a cannon. His mood made the soldiers apprehensive. Was our commander worried about the coming battle? If so, all of us would worry too. None had got enough sleep. We could see another great pall of dust on the horizon where the Mamelukes and their foot soldiers were massing.

  It was during a brief stop at a muddy village well that I learnt the reason for the general’s darkness. It was by chance that one of the general’s aides, a recklessly brave young soldier named Jean-Andoche Junot, got down from his horse to drink while I did.

  ‘The general seems awfully impatient for battle,’ I remarked. ‘I knew this fight must come, and that speed in war is paramount, but to rise in the middle of the night seems uncivilised, somehow.’

  ‘Stay away from him,’ the lieutenant warned quietly. ‘He’s dangerous after last night.’

  ‘You were drinking? Gambling? What?’ />
  ‘He’d asked me weeks before to make some discreet enquiries because of persistent rumours. Recently, I received some pilfered letters that prove Josephine is having an affair, a secret to none but our general. Last evening, shortly after word came of the Mameluke dispositions, he abruptly demanded what I’d learnt.’

  ‘She’s betrayed him?’

  ‘She’s in love with a fop named Hippolyte Charles, an aide to General Leclerc back in France. The woman has been cheating on Bonaparte since they were married, but he’s been blind to her infidelities since he loves her like a madman. His jealousy is unbelievable, and his fury last night was volcanic. I was afraid he was going to shoot me. He looked insane, striking his head with his fists. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed by the one you love most hopelessly? He told me his emotions were spent, his idealism over, and that nothing remained for him but ambition.’

  ‘All that over an affair? A Frenchman?’

  ‘He loves her desperately, and hates himself for that love. He’s the most independent and friendless of men, meaning he’s captive to that trollop he married. He ordered this march immediately, and swore repeatedly that his own happiness was over and that before the sun sets, he would destroy the Egyptian armies to the last man. I tell you, Monsieur Gage, we’re being led into battle by a general who is insane with rage.’

  This didn’t sound good at all. If there’s one thing a person hopes for in a commander, it’s a cool head. I swallowed. ‘Your timing wasn’t the best, Junot.’

  The lieutenant swung up onto his horse. ‘I had no choice, and my report should have come as no surprise. I know his mind, and he’ll put the distraction aside when battle comes. You’ll see.’ He nodded, as if to reassure himself. ‘I’m just glad I’m not on the other side.’