Beware of Heroes: Admiral Sir Sidney Smith's War against Napoleon

by Peter Shankland

  The French continued their slow advance without further opposition. At dawn on 21st July they saw on their left the minarets of Cairo standing out against the Mokkatam Hills. The great pyramids were on their right, seven miles away. Right ahead, covering the small village of Embabeh, the Mamelukes were drawn up ready to oppose them. They had their backs to the Nile, and they had an open plain suitable for cavalry manoeuvre before them. Their leader, Murad Bey, had with him 3,000 Bedouins of uncertain allegiance, and he had rounded up 15,000 peasants to act unwillingly as foot soldiers, supported by a few Turks and Dalmatians.

  His real fighting force consisted of 6,000 Mameluke horsemen. Each one was a magnificent individual warrior, but they had no idea of how to support each other or how to move and fight in squadrons. They simply charged furiously in scattered groups against the French army which outnumbered them by more than four to one. Some of their leaders broke into one of the squares, but they were not supported. The infantrymen faced about and shot them all down before the next wave of Mamelukes came on and flung themselves in vain against the wall of fire. Some tried to leap over the French line; some wheeled their horses and backed them against it to kick their way through; some who were wounded crawled forward and swiped with their scimitars against the Frenchmen’s legs.

  When Murad, beaten at last, sounded the retreat, several hundred Mamelukes, retiring unskilfully, were trapped between the French lines and the river. They were shot or drowned to the last man. The wretched peasant soldiers, stationed with some guns in the stockaded village, stampeded as soon as they were attacked and ran down to the river trying vainly to escape. This was what the Egyptians called ‘The Battle of Embabeh’; Bonaparte called it ‘The Battle of the Pyramids’. The French lost thirty men: the Mamelukes 2,000. It was the first time that East and West had met in a pitched battle since the time of the crusades. The troops spent the night stripping the bodies of their magnificent robes and arms: they found many jewels and pieces of gold as well, for it was the custom of the Mamelukes to carry their wealth with them. Their stirrups of pure copper each weighed thirteen pounds. They were, Bonaparte wrote, ‘the finest cavalry in the world’.

  This battle led to the fall of Cairo. Murad Bey had been so confident of victory that he had crossed the Nile to meet the invaders on open ground instead of giving them the difficulty of crossing it. Now the city was in an uproar, and no further resistance could be organised. Messengers were sent to treat for peace. Bonaparte ordered them to provide boats to transport his men across the river, sent an advance party to restore order, and made his triumphal entry into the city on 24th July.

  Murad Bey, defeated but by no means conquered, withdrew to Upper Egypt. His colleague Ibrahim Bey, the ruling Mameluke in Cairo, withdrew with the Sultan’s Viceroy to Syria.

  General Kléber in Alexandria received the news of Bonaparte’s victory and the French occupation of Cairo on 31st July. He fired salvoes of artillery, proclaimed a public holiday, and received the leading citizens who came to offer their congratulations. While French and Turkish bands played he distributed coffee and sherbets, and largesse for the inhabitants. In the evening the streets and bazaars were illuminated, and he gave a grand ball for officers, savants and local Europeans at the Hotel de France, his headquarters, one of the few palatial houses in the city.

  At 2.30 p.m. on the following day, the Captain of the Port informed him that fourteen English sail had been sighted. Because the soundings that had been taken showed that the harbour was not deep enough for his large ships to enter, the French admiral, Brueys, waiting for Bonaparte’s orders to depart, had taken up what he considered to be a secure position in the Bay of Abukir, between Alexandria and Rosetta. His ships were anchored in a long line protected by shoals at one end and by a fortified island at the other. Many of the seamen were ashore, digging for water in the sand.

  The British fleet, commanded by Nelson, came steadily on with a fair wind. It was 6.30 in the evening when the leading ships got within range. With only one hour of daylight remaining, any ordinary commander would have hesitated, reconnoitred the position, and made plans for a battle on the following day. Nelson went straight for his enemies. As darkness closed over the scene, and the combatants could be distinguished only by gun flashes, Kléber, from his observation post in Alexandria, couldn’t tell friend from foe. For three hours the cannonade continued with unabated fury. At nine o’clock he saw a ship catch fire: at half past ten she blew up with a tremendous explosion — a bright flame shot up into the air followed by a column of black smoke full of burning wreckage. Then there was complete silence, ‘as if both fleets had been engulfed by the sea’. Ten minutes later the cannonade broke out again with renewed violence.

  At dawn he saw that the bay was strewn with damaged ships — French? English? He didn’t know. But soon he was inundated with messages telling of complete disaster. All the French ships of the line had been captured or destroyed except two, which had escaped to sea, and Admiral Brueys was dead. He immediately cancelled all leave, and had the defences manned in case the English should make an attempt upon the city. Then he sent an aide-de-camp, Loyer, to Bonaparte with the melancholy news.

  His communications by sea with Rosetta had been cut by the British Fleet, and by land by bands of marauding Arabs who lit huge fires of driftwood night after night and sought for plunder in the wreckage. He had to send a mobile force of 230 men to hold the village of Abukir and established a boat service through inland lakes. The long crescent beach was strewn with the bodies of French seamen, sometimes six or seven in a heap; sometimes there was a single arm or a leg sticking out of the sand.

  When Kléber’s despatch was delivered to Bonaparte he was at Saliyah on his way back from an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the withdrawal of the Sultan’s Viceroy and leading Mamelukes across the frontier to Syria. For some hours he kept the news to himself and was only heard to murmur, ‘Can it be that I am fated to die in Egypt?’

  At the next halt, when his staff joined him for dinner in his tent, he read aloud the account of the battle. Then he gravely commented: ‘The sea, of which we are no longer master, separates us from our homeland, but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia. Now we are obliged to accomplish great things; we shall accomplish them. We must found a great empire, and we shall found it. We shall leave our bones here, or come out of it as great as the ancients!’

  With an army of about the same size, Alexander had conquered the whole of the East from Egypt to the Ganges.

  Chapter Five – Kléber, the Proud Alsatian

  General Bonaparte, as befitted the Conqueror of Egypt, was surrounded by the adulation of his generals and by the flattery of those he had conquered; but he had one outstanding critic, General Kléber, who was an old campaigner, sixteen years older than himself. This proud Alsatian had begun his military career in the Austrian army, in which he had served for seven years. Finding promotion too slow, owing to the peaceful times and to his lack of private means and family influence, he had resigned and set up as an architect in his native Strasburg. When he was overtaken by the Revolution, his sympathies were whole-heartedly republican. His hero was George Washington, whose life and campaigns he studied eagerly.

  In 1792, when France was at war with most of Europe, he enlisted as a grenadier. He was quickly promoted, and soon distinguished himself as an intrepid leader of men. In 1793 he was fighting for the Republicans in the civil wars of La Vendée; he advocated the stern repression and disarmament of the insurgents, to be followed by pity for the defeated and a free amnesty for all. When the government decreed the extermination of the insurgents and their wives and families, he threw up his command.

  Fighting against the external enemies of the Republic was more to his liking. He was given command of the demoralised and almost destitute Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse which he transformed into a first-class fighting force; but he was for some time in danger of the guillotine because of his outspoken criticism of the Jacobins, and becau
se he was denounced, by General Hoche, as an Austrian sympathiser. He was tall and well-proportioned, a tremendously impressive figure, the very image of a man of war. He smoked a great pipe that consumed half a pound of tobacco at a time, and he spoke with a curious accent that amused his brother officers, always saying ‘dessert’ for desert. ‘Tiable! Ces prigands ce patte pien!” he is said to have exclaimed during a skirmish with the insurgents of La Vendée, turning all the ‘b’s into ‘p’s, the ‘d’s into ‘t’s, etc.

  He had never served under Bonaparte before. He soon incurred his displeasure by adapting his orders to suit local conditions, and in resisting the policy of wholesale levies which, he considered, would lead to disaster. It was particularly difficult to raise money in Alexandria because the occupation had brought to a standstill the import-export trade by which the city lived. He wanted all the money available to be spent on improving his men’s accommodation and the medical services, and he disapproved of all kinds of vain show. When he was ordered to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the founding of the French Republic by a parade in Alexandria, and to have engraved on Pompey’s Pillar the names of the French soldiers who had fallen during the assault on the city, he replied that he had not been furnished with a list of the heroes, and in any case there wouldn’t be time to do it before the anniversary because one can’t engrave on granite as if it were butter.

  On 1st September Bonaparte wrote severely criticising his administration and reproaching him for having used 100,000 francs for the general needs of the army although it had been allotted to the navy. He insinuated that the money had been squandered.

  Kléber was very angry indeed. He replied, ‘You forgot, General, that what you write is engraved in history, and that you were writing to Kléber.’ He demanded an order to give up his duties at Alexandria and also in the army ‘until you are a little better informed, General, about what is happening here, and what has happened. I didn’t come to Egypt to make my fortune — that I have always scorned to do — but neither will I permit the slightest suspicion to be insinuated against me.’

  Bonaparte, unaccustomed to being addressed in this fashion, climbed down at once:

  I see with grief that you have given to my letter a meaning which I never intended. If what I write is engraved in history, no one could have less reason to complain of it than you.

  He commissioned General Caffarelli, who was friendly with both of them, to tell Kléber that he would be wanted for a distant expedition. Even this did not tempt him. ‘My health,’ he wrote on 22nd September, ‘and the pain caused by my wound, no longer permit me to follow you on your brilliant career’; and he asked permission to return to France.

  Because his presence in Egypt was important, not only for the contemplated expedition, but because he was greatly loved by the divisions that had served under him in the armies of the Rhine and of the Sambre-et-Meuse — divisions that were inclined to be resentful of the men who had served in the Army of Italy — Bonaparte wrote him another conciliatory letter:

  I’m afraid we’ve rather fallen out with each other: you would be unjust if you doubted the pain this has caused me. Clouds in Egypt, when there are any, pass in six hours; as far as I’m concerned, if there were any, they would have passed in three. My esteem for you is at least equal to that which you have sometimes shown for me. I hope to see you shortly in Cairo.

  The city to which Kléber had thus been summoned contained about 200,000 inhabitants, one-fifth of the population of Egypt; they were all Moslems except the Copts, who had retained their Christianity after the Caliphate Conquest in the tenth century. They were supposed to be the direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, but they had become an underprivileged class of clerks and accountants. Bonaparte raised them to positions of authority as administrators and tax collectors because the French were not yet sufficiently familiar with the usages and language of the country to carry out these duties themselves. He also employed Christians as security guards. A Greek adventurer, Barthelmy, was appointed Lieutenant of Police for Cairo. He was a huge man and he wore a gigantic white turban, a gold-embroidered tunic and baggy trousers when he paraded the streets with his gang of ruffians and his executioner. ‘Every day I have five or six people beheaded in the streets of Cairo,’ Bonaparte wrote on 31st July to General Menou.

  A victim of another sort was Kerim, once Governor of Alexandria, accused of corresponding with the English and the Mamelukes. He was a descendant of the prophet. His execution stirred the people profoundly. But with most of the Sheiks he tried to cultivate good relations, leaving them in the posts they had occupied before the invasion, still maintaining that he was at war only with the Mamelukes.

  The savants, at first hated and ridiculed by the soldiers, but now grudgingly accepted, were formed into The Institute of Egypt, and installed in a magnificent palace that had belonged to the Mameluke Quassim Bey. It was under the presidency of Professor Monge, an eminent physicist, who had been one of Bonaparte’s instructors at the Royal Military School at Brienne. Bonaparte himself took a great interest in the proceedings, and headed the section devoted to mathematics. They were all under military orders; the army had first call on those who were qualified as sappers or engineers. General Caffarelli, a well-known scientist and astronomer, commanded the artillery and the engineers. He had lost a leg while serving under General Kléber on the Rhine.

  Some studied purely scientific problems, others studied irrigation, built bridges, windmills and gunpowder factories while the agriculturalists worked on projects to increase the production of food. General Desaix had been sent with a force to occupy Upper Egypt because the Mameluke Commander, Murad Bey was in control there and defying the French. A group of savants went with him. They surveyed the ancient temples on both banks of the Nile as far as the first cataract, the utmost limit of the Roman Empire in Egypt.

  To meet the costs of administration, to feed and pay the army of occupation, and to transform the country into an efficient base for further operations, the Controller General, Poussielgue, the chief financial officer, had to find an enormous sum of money. Large contributions were levied from the merchants of Alexandria, of Rosetta, of Damietta, from the Khan Khalil Bazaar in Cairo, from the coffee sellers, from the corporation of water carriers, the sugar sellers, the dealers in India fabrics, and so on. The French Consul, Magallon, indicated how much each trade could pay without being ruined. Taxes were imposed on the inheritance of property, on letting and hiring, on the registration (which was made compulsory) of births, deaths and marriages. Every citizen had to have a good conduct certificate, for which he had to pay a fee. To enter or leave the city a passport was required, which also had to be paid for.

  On 21st October, the day on which Kléber arrived at Boulac on the outskirts of Cairo, a violent insurrection broke out: the garrison was taken completely by surprise, and soon nearly the whole of the city was in the hands of the insurgents. Two hundred Frenchmen were massacred, including General Dugua, the Military Governor. On the following morning the troops counter-attacked supported by a devastating artillery barrage: the crowds were mown down, the barricades swept clear, and only the defenders of the great El Azhar University continued to resist, refusing terms. But no insurrection could succeed without possession of the citadel because its guns commanded every quarter of the city. When they were turned on to the El Azhar the defenders surrendered, after a last desperate sortie. French troops occupied and looted the mosque and university. Bonaparte ordered that all Egyptians taken with arms in their hands were to be decapitated and their bodies thrown into the Nile. Six leading sheikhs were arrested and executed in the Citadel Square. Then he proclaimed a general amnesty, but the street patrols and summary executions by Lieutenant Barthelmy were continued.

  When Kléber presented himself at headquarters in the Elfi Bey Palace he met with a friendly welcome. On their way in to dinner a trembling old Sheikh came forward and kissed Bonaparte’s hand.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Kl�
�ber.

  ‘Sheikh el Sadat,’ he was informed, ‘one of the leaders of the revolt.’

  ‘And you haven’t shot him?’

  ‘No,’ Bonaparte replied, ‘these people must have leaders. I’d rather they had one like this, who can neither mount a horse nor wield a sword, than one like Murad Bey.’

  General Caffarelli, primed by Bonaparte to encourage Kléber to talk so that he might judge how far he could count upon his devotion, asked him: ‘What modern reputation would you envy most, General, if in the matter of reputation you still had anything to wish for?’

  Kléber waved the compliment aside, but replied to his question: ‘George Washington’s’. Caffarelli was disappointed. He had hoped that Kléber would say that he envied General Bonaparte’s reputation most, and then the reconciliation would have been complete. He gave him another chance.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kléber continued. ‘Washington brought his glorious campaign to a successful conclusion because he planned and calculated it according to the means at his disposal: and when he had done so, he didn’t let it go to his head. His enterprise was worthy of praise both politically and philosophically because it had for its object not conquest, not pillage, not devastation, but the welfare and happiness of mankind.’

  This eulogy of George Washington and his campaign was interpreted by the staff at headquarters as a criticism of Bonaparte and the Egyptian Expedition. Kléber wasn’t much liked by Junot and the other devoted generals who resented any criticism of their leader. ‘If Bonaparte ordered me to poignard 6,000 men,’ Junot boasted, ‘I’d do it without asking a question; and if I saw a dagger aimed at his breast, I would oppose my own.’ Junot was only twenty-seven and already General of a Division.