Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  General Jean-Baptiste Kleber, who I’d heard was another Freemason, came striding up. “They poisoned the well at Marabut and the men are getting thirsty. It was madness to sail from Toulon without canteens.”

  Napoleon shrugged. “It was commissary incompetence we can’t correct now. We’ll find water when we carry the walls of Alexandria.”

  Kleber scowled. He looked far more the general than Bonaparte: Six feet tall, thick, muscular, and boasting a mane of thick, curly hair that gave him the majestic gravity of a lion. “There’s no food, either.”

  “Which is also awaiting us in Alexandria. If you will look to the sea, Kleber, you will also see there is no British navy, which is the whole point of striking quickly.”

  “So quickly we come ashore in a gale and drown dozens of men?”

  “Speed is everything in war. I will always spend a few to save many.” Bonaparte looked tempted to say more; he did not like to have his orders second-guessed. But instead he said to his general, “Have you found the man I told you about?”

  “The Arab? He may speak French, but he’s a viper.”

  “He’s a tool of Talleyrand and gets a livre for every ear and hand. He’ll keep the other Bedouin off your flank.”

  We set off down the beach, the surf rumbling to our left, thousands of men tramping in the dark. The foam seemed to glow. Occasionally I could hear a pistol shot or the pop of a musket off in the desert to our right. A few lamps shone ahead, marking Alexandria. None of the generals were mounted yet, and walked like common soldiers. General Louis Caffarelli of the engineers stumped along on a wooden leg. Our gigantic mulatto cavalry commander, Alexandre Dumas, walked bowlegged, a head higher than any of his troopers. He had the strength of a giant, and to amuse himself at sea he’d hang from a beam in the horse stalls and grip a mount with his legs, lifting the terrified animal off the deck with sheer thigh strength. Detractors said he had muscles between his ears.

  Not being attached to any unit, I walked with Napoleon.

  “You enjoy my company, American?”

  “I just reason that the commanding general will be safer than most. Why not stand next to him?”

  He laughed. “I lost seven generals in a single battle in Italy, and led charges myself. Destiny alone knows why I was spared. Life is chance, is it not? Fate sent the British fleet away and a gale in its place. Some men drowned. Do you feel sorry for them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t. Death comes to all of us, unless the Egyptians indeed found immortality. And who’s to say one death is better than another? My own could come this dawn, and it would be a good one. Do you know why? Because while glory is fleeting, obscurity is forever. Those men who drowned will be remembered by their families for generations. ‘He died following Bonaparte to Egypt!’ Society unconsciously knows this, and accepts the sacrifice.”

  “That’s a European calculus, not an American one.”

  “No? We’ll see when your nation is older. We’re on a great mission, Ethan Gage, to unify east and west. Compared to that, individual souls mean little.”

  “Unify by conquest?”

  “By education and example. We will defeat the Mameluke tyrants that rule these people, yes, and by so doing we will liberate the Egyptians from Ottoman tyranny. But after that we will reform them, and the time will come when they bless this day that France stepped on their shore. We, in turn, will learn from their ancient culture.”

  “You’re a very confident man.”

  “I’m a visionary one. A dreamer, my generals accuse. Yet I measure my dreams with the calipers of reason. I’ve calculated how many dromedaries it would take to cross the deserts to India. I have printing presses with Arabic type to explain that I come on a mission of reform. Do you know that Egypt has never seen a press? I’ve ordered my officers to study the Koran, and ordered my troops not to loot or molest Arab women. When the Egyptians understand that we’re here to liberate, not oppress, they’ll join us in the fight against the Mamelukes.”

  “Yet you lead an army with no water.”

  “I lack a hundred things, but I’ll rely on Egypt to provide them. That’s what we did when invading Italy. That’s what Cortez did when he burned his ships after landing in Mexico. Our lack of canteens makes clear to our men that our assault must succeed.” It was as if he were addressing Kleber, not me.

  “How can you be so certain, General? I find it hard to be certain of anything.”

  “Because I learned in Italy that history is on my side.” He paused, considering whether to confide more, whether he could add me to his political seductions. “For years I felt doomed to an ordinary life, Gage. I, too, was uncertain. I was a penniless Corsican from the shabbiest kind of backwater royalty, a colonial islander with a thick accent who had spent my childhood enduring snobs and taunts at French military school. I had no friend but mathematics. Then the Revolution came, opportunities arose, and I made the best of them. I prevailed at the siege of Toulon. I drew notice in Paris. I was given command of a losing, threadbare army in northern Italy. A future at least seemed possible, even if everything could be lost again in a single defeat. But it was at the battle of Arcola, fighting the Austrians to liberate Italy, when the world truly opened up to me. We had to carry a bridge down a murderous causeway, and charge after charge had failed, carpeting the approaches with bodies. Finally I knew that the only way to win the day was to lead a last charge myself. I’ve heard you’re a gambler, but there is no gamble like that, bullets like hornets, all the dice cast in a smoky rush for glory, men cheering, banners snapping in the wind, soldiers falling. We carried the bridge and carried the day, nothing scratching me, and there is no orgasm like the exultation of watching an enemy army run. Whole French regiments crowded around me afterward, cheering the boy who had once been a rube Corsican, and it was at that moment that I saw that anything was possible—anything!—if I merely dared. Don’t ask me why I think fate is my angel, I just know that she is. Now she has led me to Egypt, and here, perhaps, I can emulate Alexander as you savants emulate Aristotle.” He clasped my shoulder, his gray eyes burning into me in the pale, predawn light. “Believe in me, American.”

  But first he had to fight his way into the city.

  Napoleon had hoped that the mere presence of his advancing column on the beach might persuade the Alexandrians to surrender, but they hadn’t experienced European firepower yet. The Mameluke cavalry was cocky and bold. This caste of slave warriors, whose name meant “bought men,” had been organized by the famed Saladin as a personal bodyguard in the time of the Crusades. So powerful were these warriors from the Caucasus that they conquered Egypt for the Ottoman Turks. It was the Egyptian Mamelukes who had first defeated the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, gaining undying renown as soldiers, and they had held Egypt in the ensuing centuries, neither marrying into its population nor even deigning to learn the Egyptian language. They were a warrior elite, treating their own citizens as vassals in the ruthless way that only an ex-slave, exposed to cruelty himself, can exhibit. They galloped into battle on Arabian steeds superior to any horses the French had, hurling themselves at enemies with musket, lance, scimitar, and a sash crammed with pistols. By reputation, their courage was matched only by their arrogance.

  Slavery was different in the East than the hopeless tyranny I’d seen in New Orleans and the Caribbean. To the Ottomans, slaves were the most reliable allies, given that they were stripped from their past and not part of Turkish feuding families. Some became princes, meaning the most oppressed could rise the highest. And indeed, the Mameluke slaves had become masters of Egypt. Unfortunately, their greatest enemy was their own treachery—no Mameluke sultan ever died in bed because of their endless conspiracies for power—and their weaponry was as primitive as their steeds were beautiful, for they wielded antiques. Moreover, while slaves could become masters, free men were often treated like serfs. The Egyptian population had little love for their leaders. The French saw themselves as liberators, not conquer
ors.

  While the invasion had taken the enemy by surprise, by morning the few hundred Mamelukes of Alexandria had assembled a ragged force of their own cavalry, Bedouin raiders, and Egyptian peasants coerced into forming a human shield. Behind, on the walls of the city’s old Arab quarter, garrison musketeers and artillerymen had anxiously assembled on the ramparts. As the first French ranks approached, the enemy cannon were inexpertly fired, the shot pattering the sand well short of the European columns. The French stopped while Napoleon prepared to offer surrender terms.

  No such opportunity presented itself, however, because the Mamelukes apparently took this pause as hesitation and started to drive a mass of crudely armed peasants toward us. Bonaparte, realizing the Arabs meant battle, signaled with flags for naval support. Shallow-draft corvettes and luggers began working in toward shore to bring their cannon to bear. The few light guns brought ashore in the longboats were also run forward on the sand.

  I was thirsty, tired, sticky from salt and sand, and finally comprehending that I’d put myself in the middle of a war, thanks to the clumsy necklace. I was now bound to this French army for survival. Still, I felt oddly safe near Bonaparte. As he had implied, he carried an aura, not so much of invincibility as luck. Fortunately, our march had accumulated a skirt of curious Egyptian opportunists and beggars. Battles attract spectators like boys to a schoolyard fight. Shortly before dawn I’d spied a youth selling oranges, bought a bag for a silver franc, and earned favor with the general by sharing it. We stood on the beach sucking the sweet pulp, watching the moblike Egyptian army shamble toward us. Behind the peasants the Mameluke knights galloped back and forth, bright as birds in their silk robes. They waved shiny swords and shouted defiance.

  “I’ve heard that you Americans boast of your accuracy with your hunting rifles,” Napoleon suddenly said, as if an idea for amusement had just occurred to him. “Do you care to demonstrate?”

  Officers turned to look, even as the suggestion took me by surprise. My rifle was my pride, the maple oiled, my powder horn scraped thin to the point of translucence so I could see the fine black grains of French powder inside, and my brass polished, an affectation I’d never dare in the forests of North America where a gleam could give you away to animal or enemy. The voyageurs had rubbed theirs with green hazelnut to obscure any shine. As beautiful as my rifle was, however, some of these soldiers considered its long barrel an affectation. “I don’t feel those men are my enemy,” I said.

  “They became your enemy when you stepped on this beach, monsieur.”

  True enough. I began to load my gun. I should have done it some time before, given the impending battle, but I’d been striding down the beach as if on holiday, all military bands, martial camaraderie, and distant gunshots. Now I’d have to earn my place by contributing to the fight. So are we seduced and then enlisted. I measured extra powder for long range and used the ramrod to push down the linen-wrapped ball.

  As the Alexandrians came on and I primed the pan, attention suddenly swung from me to a dashing Bedouin who was riding up from the ranks behind us, his black horse spraying sand, black robes rippling in the wind. Clinging behind was a French cavalry lieutenant, weaponless and looking sick. Reining up near Bonaparte’s cluster of staff, the Arab waved in salute and hurled a cloth at our feet. It opened as it fell, scattering a harvest of bloody hands and ears.

  “These are men who will harass you no more, effendi,” the Bedouin said in French, his face masked by the cowl of his turban. His eyes waited for approval.

  Bonaparte made a quick mental tally of the butchered appendages. “You have done well, my friend. Your master was right to recommend you.”

  “I am a servant of France, effendi.” Then his eyes fastened on me and widened, as if in recognition. I was disturbed. I knew no nomads. And why did this one speak our language?

  Meanwhile the lieutenant slid off the Arab’s horse and stood stricken and awkward to one side, as if not sure what to do next.

  “This one I rescued from some bandits whom he chased too far in the dark,” the Arab said. This was a trophy too, we sensed, and a lesson.

  “I applaud your help.” Bonaparte turned to the freed captive. “Find a weapon and rejoin your unit, soldier. You’re luckier than you deserve.”

  The man’s eyes were wild. “Please, sir, I need rest. I am bleeding…”

  “He’s not as lucky as you think,” the Arab said.

  “No? He looks alive to me.”

  “The Bedouin habit is to beat captive women…and rape captive men. Repeatedly.” There was crude laughter among the officers and a slap to the back of the unfortunate soldier, who staggered. Some of the jocularity was sympathetic, some cruel.

  The general pursed his lips. “I am to pity you?”

  The young man began to sob. “Please, I am so ashamed…”

  “The shame was in your surrender, not your torture. Take your place in the ranks to destroy the enemy who humiliated you. That’s the way to erase embarrassment. As for the rest of you, tell this story to the rest of the army. There is no sympathy for this man! His lesson is simple: Don’t be captured at all.” He turned back to the battle.

  “My pay, effendi?” The Arab waited.

  “When I take the city.”

  Still the Arab didn’t move.

  “Don’t worry, your purse is growing heavier, Black Prince. There will be even bigger rewards when we reach Cairo.”

  “If we reach it, effendi. I and my men have done all the fighting so far.”

  Our general was unperturbed by this observation, accepting insolence from this desert bandit he never would from his officers. “My American ally was just about to correct that by demonstrating the accuracy of the Pennsylvania longrifle. Weren’t you, Monsieur Gage? Tell us its advantages.”

  All eyes were again on me. I could hear the tramp of the Egyptian army coming closer. Feeling the reputation of my country was at stake, I held up my gun. “We all know that the problem with any firearm is that you only get one shot and then must take anywhere from twenty seconds to a full minute to reload,” I lectured. “In the forests of America, a miss means your quarry will be long gone, or an Indian will be on you with his tomahawk. So to us, the time it takes to load a longrifle is more than compensated by a fighting chance to hit something with that first shot, unlike a musket where the path of the bullet can’t be predicted.” I put the weapon to my shoulder. “Now, the long barrel is of soft iron, and that and the gun’s weight helps to dampen a discharge’s whip when the bullet leaves the muzzle. Also, unlike a musket, the inside of a rifle’s barrel is grooved, putting a spin on the bullet to improve its accuracy. The length of the barrel adds velocity, and it allows the rear sight to be set well forward, so that you can keep both it and its target in focus with the human eye.” I squinted. One Mameluke was riding ahead of his fellows, just to the rear of the peasant mob shambling in front of him. Allowing for the wind off the ocean and the bullet’s drop, I aimed high at his right shoulder. No firearm is perfect—even a rifle gripped in a vise won’t put each bullet atop each other—but my gun’s “triangle of error” was only two inches at a hundred paces. I squeezed the set trigger, its click releasing the first trigger so that the second was at hair touch, minimizing any jerk. Then I kept squeezing and fired, figuring the bullet would hit the man square in the torso. The rifle kicked, there was a haze of smoke, and then I watched the devil buck backward off his stallion. There was a murmur of appreciation, and if you don’t think there’s satisfaction in such a shot, then you don’t understand what drives men to war. Well, I was in it now. I put the stock down butt first on the sand, ripped open a paper cartridge, and began to reload.

  “A good shot,” Bonaparte complimented. Musket fire was so inaccurate that if soldiers didn’t aim for the enemy’s feet, the kick of the gun could send a volley over their heads. The only way for armies to hit each other was to line up tightly and blast away from close distances.

  “American?” the Arab q
ueried. “So far from home?” The Bedouin wheeled his horse, preparing to leave. “To study our mysteries, perhaps?”

  Now I remembered where I’d heard his voice! It was the same as the lantern bearer in Paris, the man who had led the gendarmes to me when I had discovered the body of Minette! “Wait! I know you!”

  “I am Achmed bin Sadr, American, and you know nothing.”

  And before I could say anything more, he galloped off.

  Under shouted orders the French troops rapidly assembled into what would be their favorite formation against Mameluke cavalry, a hollow square of men. The squares were several ranks thick, each of the four sides of men facing outward so that there was no flank to turn, their bayonets forming a four-sided hedge of steel. To crisp the ranks, some officers drew lines in the sand with their sabers. Meanwhile the Egyptian army, or more accurately, its rabble, began to stream toward us with ululating cries under a hammer of drums and blare of horns.

  “Menou, form another square next to the dunes,” Napoleon ordered. “Kleber, tell the rest of them to hurry.” Many of the French troops were still coming up the beach.

  Now the Egyptians were running straight at us, a tide of peasants armed with staves and sickles, pushed by a line of brilliantly dressed horsemen. The commoners looked terrified. When they got within fifty meters, the first French rank fired.

  The crash of gunfire made me jump, and the result was as if a giant scythe had swept a rank of wheat. The front line of peasants was shredded, scores falling dead and wounded, the rest simply collapsing in fright from a disciplined volley unlike any they’d seen before. A huge sheet of white smoke lashed out, obscuring the French square. The Mameluke cavalry stopped in confusion, the horses wary of stepping on the carpet of cowering bodies before them, and their masters cursed the underlings they’d been driving to slaughter. As the overlords slowly forced their mounts forward over their cringing subjects, the second French rank fired, and this time some of the Mameluke warriors toppled from their horses. Then a third French rank let loose, even as the first was finishing reloading, and horses screamed, plunging and writhing. After this hurricane of bullets the surviving peasantry rose as if on command and fled, pushing the horsemen back with them and making a fiasco of the first Egyptian attack. The warriors slashed at their subjects with the flat of their swords but it did nothing to stem the flight. Some peasants pounded on the gates of the city, demanding refuge, and others ran inland, disappearing into the dunes. Meanwhile the French coastal ships started firing at Alexandria, the shots exploding against the city walls like a hammering fist. The ancient ramparts began crumbling like sand.