by Alan Schom
Chapter Ten – Tivoli and Beyond
‘Calm has been completely restored in Cairo...Every night we have another thirty or so heads lopped off.’
To General Reynier, October 27, 1798
News of General Bonaparte’s activities aroused alarm throughout the Muslim community. He wished to convene the first assembly of all the notables of the sixteen Egyptian provinces, with the aim of reorganizing the land’s civil and criminal judicial systems, as well as the land and property registration of the country to facilitate systematized fresh real estate taxation Alarm quickly gave way to open discontent in every quarter of the Egyptian capital, as it was learned that for the first time since the introduction of Islam into Egypt in the seventh century, all lands belonging to mosques, religious foundations, and Islamic brotherhoods would be taxed (although not the actual masjid, or mosque buildings).
The Egyptians made no effort to conceal their anger and hostility. Rumors grew nastier and more persistent after the news on October 16 of the inclusion of the hitherto traditionally exempt sacrosanct religious properties. Further inflaming the population, the French, on Bonaparte’s personal orders, had razed dozens of houses around the old Citadel, including at least two mosques, to provide a better field of fire over the Arab quarter for the new French cannon and mortars being installed in the fortress. Napoleon had made the near-fatal blunder of treating the Muslims of Egypt as he had treated the Catholics of Italy, thinking nothing of destroying or desecrating their houses of worship and expecting the Arabs to acquiesce.
The sheikhs and ulama (doctors of Koranic law) responded by reading various Ottoman firmans (decrees) from Constantinople, proclaiming a jihad, or holy war, against the infidels. Religious leaders called for the “assembling of the troops of all the provinces of the [Ottoman] Empire” who under the “powerful protection of the Prophet” would “exterminate” these heathens, “and if it please God, reserve for Him to preside over their total destruction.” Napoleon, the master formulator of French public opinion, apparently paid little heed to these warnings. He controlled the only army in the capital. What could the unarmed, untrained masses possibly do? Clearly he had already forgotten the bloody days of the French Revolution, which he himself had helped quash more than once.
At dawn on October 21 crowds began circulating in the various Arab quarters of Cairo, crying out, “It’s tyranny! Let God give victory to the true believers!” and attacking the homes of Muslim judicial officers who had been cooperating with the French. At 8:00 A.M. Brigadier General Dupuy, commandant of the Cairo garrison, went with a small cavalry detachment to investigate. Almost immediately run through with a spear, he died on the spot, and his escort was cut down. Through the narrow, twisting streets, a firm nucleus of at least a thousand “Turks, armed with sticks and muskets,” started rampaging, looting, and attacking anything French. The great insurrection had begun.
Meanwhile Bonaparte, attended by Generals Caffarelli and Dommartin, was making a routine inspection of new artillery installations and arsenals in the Old City and on the island of Rudah, when he was finally informed at 10:00 A.M. that the disturbances in the city were not mere isolated incidents and that General Dupuy had been murdered. Dropping everything and returning to Cairo, “we were greeted by a hail of stones,” Major Detroye reported, as they passed through the Bulaq Gate. “Musketry could be heard in every part of the city and we began to come across more and more corpses as we advanced,” finally reaching Esbekiya Square and the safety of a battery of fifteen pieces of artillery before Bonaparte’s GHQ.
Not far away Caffarelli’s headquarters, also serving as a warehouse for his sappers as well as the expedition’s scientific instruments, was broken into, pillaged, and men and officers murdered. Although the Egyptian Institute and the Elfi palace were also coming under fire, the center of fighting was around al-Azhar Mosque, which some five thousand armed Muslims were using as a fortress. Additional artillery was being rushed up to the Citadel, situated on the high ground overlooking that mosque — the largest in Cairo — its enormous courtyard protected by high massive walls, but due to previous French indiscipline and slackness, it took many hours to get everything into a state of readiness. It was a grave decision, of course, for once Napoleon gave the order to begin the bombardment of al-Azhar, it would end any goodwill remaining between Muslims and the French.
The following day intense fighting resumed, in the midst of which one of Napoleon’s favorite aides-de-camp, Colonel Sulkowski, at the head of a column of thirty-three soldiers he was escorting from a hospital in Belbeis, was attacked and killed, and the entire column massacred. By now the maze of passageways and streets round al-Azhar Mosque was completely barricaded, and the French found it impossible to enter “with cavalry or even infantry.” But for some reason that is not clear, the full bombardment of al-Azhar did not begin until noon of that day, the pounding of heavy artillery then continuing until nightfall. According to Arab historian Abd al-Rahman, this roaring cannonade put the fear of hell into the Egyptians living in the vicinity of the mosque, while thousands more manning the barricades round the mosque were caught up in an intensive fire. “Cannonballs rained down on them from the heights,” he noted, “shaking the very foundations of the houses, the sound deafening their ears.” After hours of bombardment, the French succeded in hacking their way through the massive doors of the mosque, followed by the furious saber-wielding cavalry and then the infantry, who destroyed everyone and everything in sight, including books, lamps, Korans, and religious artifacts, all thrown to the ground and trampled underfoot along with the dead defenders. Throughout that night and the following day, French troops “ran through the streets like devils,” as al-Rahman put it, while a still irate Bonaparte ordered General Bon — who had succeeded the unfortunate Dupuy as commandant of Cairo — “to have the great mosque razed to the ground.”
Then came the mopping-up operations and the question of public relations. The guilty had to be severely punished, but as General Bon put it, Napoleon “wanted to show himself to be as clement as he was terrible.” Berthier instructed Dugua: “I wish to impress upon you, Citizen General, that some ringleaders who have worked up the riffraff of the country are responsible for this uprising,” and “we carried out a real massacre of those scum” while “restoring order” to Cairo. In fact Bonaparte deliberately let his troops go completely amok, slaughtering men, women, and children, even terrorizing women giving birth in the streets as they attempted to flee. And at 4:00 P.M. troops arrived in Esbekia Square with a donkey laden with bulging sacks. When they were opened, bleeding Arab heads rolled across the ground.[248] This was just the beginning.
Bonaparte did indeed set a terrible example while smoke was still rising from the ruins of al-Azhar Mosque. He ordered Berthier “to behead all prisoners taken with arms in their hands” and to throw “their headless corpses...into the river.”[249] By October 27 Bonaparte could assure General Reynier that “calm has been completely restored in Cairo...every night we have another thirty or so heads lopped off,” including fifteen of the most influential religious leaders of the city and members of the divan, who had urged this uprising.[250]
But hundreds of executions alone did not suffice. Napoleon beefed up the Citadel’s garrisons and fortifications, laying in large stores of munitions and food. He also created three new smaller forts in Cairo to overlook the trouble spots, all three named after recently slain French officers: Fort Camin, Fort Dupuy, and Fort Sulkowski (the last built in a large mosque, complete with artillery placed in its minarets and a garrison of several hundred men and stabling for their horses within the mosque walls).[251] If the Egyptians had mistaken Napoleon’s initial goodwill in attempting to win over the Muslim population for weakness, he was savagely disabusing them now.
As for the casualties resulting from the fighting alone, in a report to the Directory, Napoleon put French figures at 57 dead, and only 8 when writing to Reynier, whereas Major Detroye, attached to the Elfi palace, es
timated at least 250 French dead and many hundreds wounded. Napoleon never submitted a corrected or revised report. As for Egyptian losses, Bonaparte thought initially about 2,500, although Belliard and Berthier suggested between 4,000 and 5,000 dead and many thousands more wounded.[252] “I cannot find the words to express [the horror] I felt,” Bourrienne wrote, “but I must admit that this butchery at least assured public tranquillity for a long time thereafter.”[253]
The fighting in some places throughout the country was heavy. Anxieties about the British blockade and their enforced geographical isolation were a grim reality, and the bitter aftermath of the bloody Cairene uprising of October 21-23 was still vividly in everyone’s mind as they witnessed the new fortifications going up throughout the capital. But even so — nay, especially so, given such tumultuous uncertainties and unrelenting daily pressure — French troops and officers needed relaxation and amusement. (So far Napoleon’s only personal attempt at diversion appears to have been a day’s outing at the Pyramids, where, from the base of one massive structure, he watched Monge happily clamber to the top, despite the great heat.)
Although the European population of Cairo was not very large, a few enterprising souls were quick to see the need to fill this void in their daily lives with cafes, regimental concerts, French baths, tobacconists, and even a theatrical group. Women of course had to be found, and although for the most part the French disliked Arab women, they had to do for the rank and file. But what really enthralled just about everyone, bringing even the usually grim and unsociable Bonaparte himself to its long-deferred opening at the end of November 1798, was the inauguration of the Tivoli Gardens.
The mastermind of this enterprise, a former French bodyguard by the name of Dargeval, had wanted to create “the greatest and most beautiful” public gardens and house of amusement in Cairo. Located close to Esbekia Square, this sprawling oasis of several acres was “covered with orange, lemon, and other fragrant trees,” amid fountains, tables and chairs, music and women, the focal point being an old mansion where one could find “all forms of entertainment, everything the heart could desire and that the limitations of Cairo could provide,” not to mention “a reading room filled with reasonably current periodicals and books” to which were added “all that could contribute to the pleasure of the society frequenting this place.” For a mere thirty-franc monthly subscription, one had full use of the entire facilities, this sum naturally exclusive of amounts spent sur place, during the daily hours of 4:00 to 10:00 P.M., after which, for security reasons, all officers were required to return to their quarters.
One evening, as General Bon’s division went on parade in nearby Esbekia Square and a thirty-six-foot paper “montgolfière” (hot-air balloon) was successfully launched to a height of 250 feet above the city, Bonaparte himself made a grand appearance at the Tivoli Gardens, with his aides-de-camp, Berthier, and some staff officers in dress uniform. The few European women who greeted them were soon in great demand for dancing and quiet promenades among the orange blossoms, while in the mansion, gambling — assisted by more ladies — was the chief attraction, not to mention a restaurant with a few discreet private rooms and a separate café. But the main attraction for Frenchmen deprived of female society for six months were the fifteen to twenty women decked out in their finery. Also popular was a fireworks display, including two Turks dressed up as devils and covered with sparklers.
It was apparently on this occasion that Bonaparte met the ravishing Pauline Fourès, the twenty-year-old wife of a lieutenant of the Twenty-second Chasseurs. Although he was offered several young Arab women, Napoleon had found them unsympathetic, rejecting all but one young girl for a while, until encountering la belle Pauline, with whom he became quite taken during the ensuing weeks. And angry as he was, because of Josephine’s outrageous and embarrassing infidelity with her own young lieutenant in France, he deliberately took Pauline Fourès as his mistress, quartering her in a little house next to the Elfi palace.
“Scandal has it that the young and pretty wife of a French officer has pleased the commander in chief,” the staid Detroye recorded in his diary, “and that the husband was removed by sending him on a mission to France while arrangements have been taken most advantageously to please all parties. Details of his taking possession of her are openly talked about by everyone. It is said that the young woman rides in the general’s carriage daily now.” Soon “the entire army” came to know about her, dubbing her the commander in chief’s “Cleopatra.” “This liaison was soon the talk of GHQ and the subject of nearly every conversation,” Bourrienne relates, and it finally resulted in rendering Bonaparte a little less formidable, an occasional smile on his lips after weeks of bearing down on his staff and commanders. He added that Bonaparte badly wanted to have a child by Pauline. “But what could I do,” Bonaparte remarked. “The silly little thing could not have any.” Pauline later told Bourrienne, “Heavens! It isn’t my fault!” When Pauline’s husband unexpectedly reappeared in Egypt — having been captured at sea and returned by the English — Bonaparte was furious. Pauline resolved the problem by asking for a quick divorce, which Napoleon gladly expedited, although it was later queried in France.
For just about everyone else in the Army of the Orient, however, this campaign was proving unbearable: men without women, without hope, without either a present or a future. Tivoli or no, morale naturally continued to plummet. Senior officers openly cursed Napoleon, even before the troops, leading to a nasty but fortunately not fatal duel between one of Napoleon’s most devoted young aides, Junot, and an embittered detractor, Brig. Gen. Pierre Lanusse.
The lovesick Berthier continued to pine after his Italian mistress, going into a schoolboy decline that at first amused Bonaparte but soon got on his nerves. Meanwhile General Manscourt proved to be as utterly incompetent a governor of Alexandria as everyone had predicted. Napoleon finally was forced to fire him and replace him with Menou. (Manscourt proved to be not quite so hapless as he appeared, however, for then, pleading illness and with a disability certificate in hand from his doctor, he was ordered back to France, the envy of his critics.) General Dumas, too, criticized the folly of the Egyptian campaign and the incompetence of its direction, only to be rebuked angrily by Napoleon himself. “You have been talking sedition,” he said to the cavalry general towering over him. “But your five feet ten inches could not save you from being shot by a firing squad now if I ordered it!” Dumas had then been allowed to return to France, never again to serve in the French army.[254] Napoleon never forgot nor forgave what he considered to be “a deserter.” Napoleon’s own aide-de-camp, his brother Louis, a most promising career soldier, was now morose, chronically depressed, and useless to everyone. To the relief of all those around him, he too was granted permission to leave when a boat could safely get through the British blockade.
The number of officers requesting permission to be repatriated soon became staggering, as Bourrienne points out:
All the letters that fell into the hands of the commander in chief [who had no compunction about intercepting his officers’ private correspondence with their families] were unanimous in their complaints and their regrets...No one who was in Egypt could deny the sad state of affairs...the awful misery there...and that is the undeniable truth of the matter.[255]
There had probably never been a situation like it in the entire history of the French army — just about every officer lamented his role there and wished for or actually did request a transfer to the homeland. This proved another turning point in Napoleon’s military career, causing him to put less and less trust in his own men (and they in him), subtly shaping future relationships, decisions, and actions in France even years later. Realizing he had to put a halt to this panic and defection, he denied the vast majority of requests of his officers to return home. Had he permitted the popular Kléber to resign and return, for instance, it would have been the end. His entire army no doubt would have mutinied or simply disintegrated.
To get aroun
d Napoleon’s objections to any transfer whatsoever, most officers flocked to the sympathetic head of the medical corps, Dr. Desgenettes, who by now despised Napoleon as much as they did themselves, and who no doubt would have left Egypt himself had not duty required his presence. The chief surgeon, Dr. Larrey, fully concurred, and after a noisy row with Napoleon over hospital conditions and the continued to-do about the issuing of medical certificates for men to be invalided home, relations between GHQ and the medical corps swiftly declined. (Napoleon retaliated by leaving Desgenettes and Larrey behind when he abandoned the army the following year.)
When, despite his orders, Colonel Grobert, a valuable artillery officer, did finally succeed in obtaining permission to return to France based on medical grounds, Bonaparte denounced the “cowards, disloyal men, and those with little sense of duty” who were thus escaping his clutches. He made it harder to be granted a health certificate to return home. On the other hand he did not want an officer corps riddled with malcontents and deadbeats or, as he put it, men “who were not appreciative of the honor of being our companions-in-arms. Let them leave. I shall even facilitate their departure, but I do not want them to conceal their real motives of not wishing to share our exhausting work and dangers, by trumped-up illnesses.” It was in this mood that Napoleon had also authorized the departure of Quartermaster General Sucy, after having found him guilty of embezzlement and fraud, when Sucy obligingly complained of “my wound and problems with morale.” Had Napoleon publicized Sucy’s grand theft, he felt it would have been one shock too many for an already demoralized army. As for Colonel Grobert, who was already dispatching his trunks to Alexandria, he was in for a jolt when he learned that Napoleon had personally torn up his disability certificate and had instead reassigned him to General Dommartin’s bleak outpost at Salheyeh.
