by Alan Schom
Having reached Waraq and Bashtil, in the middle of the broad plain divided by a dry canal running from Imbabah almost straight to Bashil and several hundred yards beyond, Desaix’s division, now in square formation, advanced slowly, anchoring the French right flank. Immediately to the left and connected only by a few pieces of light field artillery, was General Reynier’s division and just beyond, Dugua — where Bonaparte directed operations — while far to their left, Bon’s and Vial’s troops hugged the banks of the Nile, with orders to cut off the Egyptians’ retreat, silence their artillery, seize the village of Imbabah, and prevent Ibrahim’s and Murad’s forces from joining. Together the five French divisions formed “an impenetrable rampart of bayonets” totaling perhaps twenty-four thousand men.
Shrill, spine-chilling Muslim war cries and the sound of thundering hoofs announced the sudden unleashing of several thousand Mameluke cavalry, about half their force. They came, hurling themselves at Reynier’s and Desaix’s squares to the right, while to the extreme left Vial and Bon advanced in the same protective square formations toward Imbabah, even as a deadly artillery duel and small-arms fire broke out between the French flotilla and the much more powerful Arab gunboats and their land artillery emplacements.
As the full brunt of Mameluke cavalry charged Reynier’s wall of steel and fire, it met with a well-ordered lethal blast of musketry and artillery, decimating the Arab ranks — but not stopping them — and “despite the liveliness of the [French] fusillade, they passed between our two divisions [Reynier’s and Dugua’s]”[197] and then swung off sharply to the right of the entire French position before turning back to Imbabah. At the same time the remainder of the Mameluke cavalry advanced far to Desaix’s right, striking him unexpectedly hard from the rear. The French “square” was designed to repel an attack from any direction, and the Mameluke cavalry was also soon forced to continue back to Imbabah, leaving behind some three hundred or so dead and wounded. Meanwhile Vial and Bon successfully overran the Arab entrenchments around Imbabah, seizing sixty pieces of artillery and the village itself, causing part of Murad’s force to panic and flee for the safety of the river, losing perhaps another fifteen hundred men in the process, chiefly by drowning. It was, said Berthier, “a frightful slaughter.”
Although Ibrahim Bey and many hundreds of his separate army on the opposite shore had boarded boats to cross over to Murad Bey’s aid, they were too late and sent fleeing by Perrée’s naval artillery. At the same time a strong wind churned up the muddy waters of the river, sweeping it in turn with curtains of reddish sand, blinding Ibrahim’s troops and forcing them back to their side of the river, both sides’ artillery firing nonstop all the while. “We were deafened by the noise,” al-Rahman reported. “The very earth trembled, and the sky seemed to be falling upon us,” as the blinding sand “brought night to the world.”
Within less than an hour the worst of the fighting was over, Murad Bey at the head of his now thoroughly broken cavalry galloping away to the south toward Giza and the Pyramids, and Ibrahim Bey fleeing east into the desert, disappearing almost magically from sight. The small number of French cavalry actually mounted, a few hundred at best, pursued Murad as far as Giza until about nine o’clock that evening before stopping.
Meanwhile, in nearby Cairo, tens of thousands of panic-stricken refugees, fleeing with whatever belongings they could carry, converged on the eastern gates of the city. But once beyond and in the countryside, they found themselves facing the poor Egyptians living in the outlying villages: “The unfortunate refugees were attacked by these Arabs, stripped of all their possessions...and their women dishonored,” lamented Abd al-Rahman. While on the other side of the city and the Nile the victorious French were scavenging the battlefield for loot. Many of the Egyptians remaining in Cairo pillaged the palaces of Ibrahim and Murad Bey as well as those of other princes, later setting several on fire. Whipped up by the strong desert winds, dozens of fires soon raged out of control across the city, spreading to Bulaq and to a large number of boats. “Never has there been such a night as this in the entire history of Cairo,” a stunned al-Rahman commented, “no one can remember having seen anything like it.”
So ended the Battle of the Pyramids, on July 21, 1798. General Belliard put Egyptian losses at about 1,000 men killed or wounded, and the French at a mere 30. General Bon’s more realistic numbers, however, put Egyptian casualties at 2,500 men killed or drowned, and the French total at well above one hundred.
During the night Bonaparte ordered the building of a pontoon bridge over the remaining boats, linking Giza with Cairo. At about three o’clock in the morning, as flames licked the sky above the capital, Muslim religious officials arrived at Bonaparte’s headquarters at Giza, accompanied by some of the more prominent European businessmen who had survived the slaughter, and a daunted Turkish ambassador.
After accepting the surrender of Cairo in the early hours of the morning, a triumphant if weary Napoleon issued a “Proclamation to the People of Cairo,” informing them that he had come as their “savior, to destroy the Mameluke race” and to protect the rest of the Egyptians and their commerce from them. “There is nothing to fear for your families, your houses, your property, and especially for the religion of the Prophet, which I esteem.” The French had come to save the Egyptians, he insisted, not to destroy them. At the same time he ordered General Bon’s division to enter Cairo and seize the Citadel. By nightfall Cairo was securely in French hands. Despite every possible obstacle, and their own logistical incompetence, the French had reached their objective, much to the amazement of just about everyone — except Napoleon Bonaparte.
Chapter Eight – Deep Water
‘In this world one must appear friendly and make many promises, but keep none.’
“August 1, 1798: “Really beautiful weather,” Lieutenant Charrier aboard the eighty-gun Franklin off Alexandria noted in his journal. “The wind out of the north-northwest; a nice breeze, some swells. The second division sent on a work detail ashore to dig wells.”[198] Nothing to distinguish this from the preceding days, that is, until that afternoon. “At 2:00 P.M. the Heureux signaled the sighting of 12 sail to the west-northwest...They can be easily seen.” It did not take long to confirm that they were warships. The flagship immediately hoisted the signal to recall all boats and men. The artillery captain in charge of the two mortars on the tiny island opposite Fort Abukir, at the entrance of the bay, was ordered there immediately. At three o’clock Admiral Brueys ordered his men to their action stations to prepare for combat, while dispatching two brigs to reconnoiter.
The enemy force continued to come straight at the French. At four o’clock two more vessels joined them: It was indeed the English navy. The brig Alerte approached them at maximum cannon range in an attempt to draw them into the unseen reefs of the bay, an old trick, but the English paid no heed: “At 5 o’clock they [the English] continued on a direct starboard tack,” Lt. Charrier recorded:
The maneuver left little doubt in my mind that they intended to attack this very evening. Our Admiral Brueys ordered the men up into the main yard to break out the sail, but shortly thereafter, apparently convinced that we were too shorthanded to put to sea, he belayed that order. In fact we were at least two hundred men short of our best sailors aboard each vessel. He instead signaled his intention to fight at anchor.[199]
The fact that Brueys and the entire French battle fleet were still there in Egypt, in this most vulnerable position, was a bizarre tale in its own right. Bourrienne and Berthier succeeded in working with Bonaparte because they could to a certain degree anticipate and interpret his constant juggling of possibilities. Brueys, on the other hand, scarcely knew his commander in chief, and in any event his was not the kind of mind that coped easily with complex, fluid situations such as he now found in Abukir Bay. Both unimaginative and a worrier, as a career officer, he liked precise orders with a specific objective. He was an honest, diligent, thorough man who had seen his aristocratic class first removed from th
e nation’s leadership and then decimated by the Reign of Terror throughout 1793 and 1794, leaving the once splendid Royal Navy, built up so painstakingly by Louis XVI, now an undisciplined, officerless shambles, with just a few minor younger officers along with one or two older men left to deal with the resultant chaos. Those few senior officers who had survived the republican bloodletting — compromisers and for the most part hardly brilliant — were willing to work with republican France, despite having seen their families and friends executed because of their aristocratic lineage. These survivors of their national shame were now in command of the navy. All of them — even the fleet’s commander in chief, Brueys — were nervous, fearful of the constant threats and denunciations. Brueys could hardly forget the day in 1793 when he had been stripped of his rank because he was a “suspect,” a noble. He had not been reintegrated until 1795, and then promoted to the rank of rear admiral only in November of the following year, when he was appointed commander of the squadron that captured the Ionian Isles and Corfu. It was all so bewildering, this topsy-turvy world created by the nation’s revolutionary classes. And now to confuse matters all the more, he was in Egypt, of all places, and under the orders of a young man whom he genuinely respected as a military commander but hardly knew and never understood. Napoleon had a knack for quickly sizing up those about him, and he had cast Brueys as a lackey, a sycophant, a man broken by the Revolution, whom he could manipulate as he wished, unlike the difficult naval minister, Adm. Eustache de Bruix, whose fiery tongue and sense of personal honor kowtowed to no man’s.
From the moment they had reached Egyptian waters and the fleet had dropped anchor in Abukir Bay, nothing had gone right for the unfortunate Brueys, first the disorganized landing in the wrong place, followed on July 3 by Berthier informing him that Bonaparte had been “very upset that during his attack on Alexandria you did not block the new port, to have prevented four large merchant vessels from having escaped and put to sea.” Brueys had never received orders to leave Abukir Bay to do that, and in any case he had had his hands full keeping his fleet together during the raging storm while overseeing the landing of men and equipment. Then, Napoleon personally had ordered Brueys to bring his fleet into the old port of Alexandria the following day, July 4, “if the winds slacken and the channel is deep enough.”[200]
Only at that point did it occur to Napoleon that there was another item he had failed to consider due to his lack of precampaign intelligence reports: whether or not his warships could even pass into this key port. But “if the water is not deep enough to permit the warships to enter, the following day they will take the appropriate measures” to otherwise land the artillery and other material, as well as the rest of the army.” In any event, he would “notify the commander in chief...if the fleet [could] enter the port after all, or if instead he can at least defend it against a superior enemy fleet while at anchor in Abukir Bay...Under those circumstances, he went on, “if the enemy appears with a very superior force...the fleet will then withdraw to Corfu.”[201] (As Nelson’s fleet reportedly was about the same strength as his own, the Corfu contingency would not appear to apply here, Brueys’s 1,287 guns far superior in number and fire-power to the British 1,012.)
As usual Napoleon issued his orders without considering how they would be carried out, or even if they could be. Surveying harbors by taking soundings by hand, even by well-qualified teams, to establish whether a deep-enough channel existed to accommodate the large, heavy warships, was a laborious, time-consuming task. It would actually take several weeks, not one or two days, as Napoleon now insisted. But essentially his expectations of Brueys were reduced to his remaining in Egypt for the time being, unless greatly outnumbered and outgunned by “a very superior force,” as Bourrienne privately confirmed later.[202]
In any event, Brueys, though badly shaken by the chaotic landings that had begun on July 1, sent a dispatch to Cairo later on July 3: “Kindly accept my congratulations, my General, on your arrival in Egypt and its conquest, announced by the taking of Alexandria, which is the happiest omen for your continued success.” He informed him that the soundings of the harbor channels would be undertaken immediately, although preliminary indications “are not satisfactory” (nor indeed were those to follow). But, he added, his position off Abukir could not be maintained, acknowledging that if any enemy navy “of equal strength” arrived at this time, they “would destroy our entire fleet...if I had the misfortune to receive them while still at anchor there.” Then, contradicting himself, he informed Bonaparte that “at the present time I can find nowhere else, no alternative anchorage...I would feel truly uneasy if failure to find the proper anchorage here forced me to leave you, I having no other desire than to be able to support you in some manner at least.”[203] Napoleon did not correct, modify, or alter the admiral’s conclusions.
Brueys had made his position reasonably clear: as no suitable channel had yet been found to permit the battle fleet to enter the safety of Alexandria harbor, he would remain in the partially protected anchorage of Abukir Bay until the ships were unloaded. Although fearful of meeting an English attack there, he did not want to leave Bonaparte and the entire army unprotected by sea and stranded in the event they met with military reverses ashore. Loyalty to Bonaparte and the army was paramount.
Other factors came into play as well, of course, determining the length of Brueys’s sojourn — the time required to land and unload men, munitions, horses, artillery, and hundreds of vehicles, as well as the additional time necessary to obtain fresh naval supplies — rope, canvas, timber, and an entirely fresh food and water supply, enough at least to see the fleet through a two-month voyage, the bare minimum required for any major fleet putting to sea under any circumstances.
In a disturbing secret report of July 9, Naval Ordonnateur Jaubert informed Naval Minister Bruix that the port of Alexandria held “no naval provisions whatsoever, not even the basic facilities” such as drydocks, warehouses, and workshops. Moreover, it would take “at least a year” before these resources would be available. To further dash Bruix’s hopes, he confided that in his opinion it was still uncertain whether smaller vessels would be able to enter the port and therefore certain that the larger ones could never do so. Under the circumstances it was “generally felt that we must leave for Corfu immediately upon completing our landings,” because the English were nearby and expected to arrive at any moment. He added that “Brueys had decided otherwise...In consequence, there is a certain fatalisrh in the air, which is even beginning to undermine my own principles a little.”
As early as July 6 the first official report from Admiral Brueys’s survey team stated that entry into Alexandria was “impracticable, or at best, dangerous.” Brueys in turn broke the news to Bonaparte, adding, “Believe me, General, my greatest wish is to support your operations.” Napoleon personally related to the Directory that same day: “This news completely upsets all my plans.”[204] But in his report to the Directory the following month, he stated that he had categorically ordered Brueys “to enter Alexandria harbor within twenty-four hours”, a complete fabrication, of course, to cover his tracks.
After spending some days in Alexandria with Ordonnateur Jaubert, on July 7 Brueys returned to Abukir Bay. Because of shallow waters and reefs, he continued to anchor his fleet in a battle line nearly four miles offshore, and therefore beyond the range of protective land batteries, including the eight cannon at Fort Abukir at the tip of the peninsula and the mortars on Abukir Island. Brueys’s principal preoccupation throughout the month of July was simply attempting to obtain fresh stores of food and water, both of which proved nearly impossible. The local wells along Abukir Bay were constantly under attack by marauding Arabs, and the principal source of food was still out of reach in the warehouses of Rosetta and Damietta. Even Jaubert, who strongly disliked Brueys and wanted to see the fleet sail immediately for Corfu before the English arrived, agreed that the situation was desperate and that Brueys could not possibly put to sea.[205]
