Napoleon in Egypt (47 page)

Murad Bey, on the other hand, remained a figure of some magnificence—despite his resounding defeat at the Battle of the Pyramids and the fact that he had been forced to flee in disarray from Cairo. Although he was by now probably in his fifties, well past his prime by the hard standards of the Mamelukes, his scarred Caucasian face, large staring eyes and bushy blond beard were still enough to instill fear in all who encountered him. These warrior’s scars were one of the few things he had in common with Desaix. Both had fought in the thick of battle; both had survived as others were cut down at their side; both in their very different ways were soldiers through and through. But where Desaix’s intellect sought to combine greatness and usefulness, Murad Bey was an explosive mix of great contradictions: his immense bravery could be undercut by sudden cowardice; fierce loyalty could give way to unexpected betrayal; he ruled as a tyrant, yet the power behind him was his wife Setty-Nefissa, the former wife of his ruler Ali Bey.
²

When Desaix set out down the Nile undercover of darkness on the night of August 25, 1798, he had just 2,861 infantrymen, and two field guns. He had no cavalry with which to oppose or give chase to Murad Bey’s numerically superior mounted force. Between seven and eight thousand Mamelukes had fled the Battle of the Pyramids, and though Murad Bey had been unable to keep this entire force united, its main rump remained loyal to him in his time of need, and he knew he could call on further Bedouin support. On top of this, he had every tactical advantage. In Upper Egypt he was passing through the fiefdoms of local beys who were loyal to him, whereas Desaix was moving ever deeper into unknown territory. Desaix’s local guides were often unreliable, as they had never guided such a force before, their previous experience being limited to river craft and camel trains. Yet fortunately he could also draw on assistance from the maps Napoleon had brought to Egypt amongst his library. The most authoritative and trustworthy of these were in the geographer D’Anville’s atlas of Africa, published in 1749. This had been compiled from all manner of firsthand sources, mainly European travelers over recent centuries, but also some dating back to classical times. D’Anville’s great strength as a cartographer had been his expert knowledge of disparate scales of measurement, including those used in classical times. When it came to distances, Desaix knew he could rely upon his maps, but the terrain was another matter. Worse still was his meager knowledge of the Nile itself, a distinct setback with much of his force traveling on a flotilla of craft ranging from
djermes
and
chebeks
(local sailing craft) to flat-bottomed gunboats adapted for carrying troops. When they started out, the Nile was in flood, with all manner of sandbanks, shoals and hidden hazards lurking beneath the swirls of its distinctive muddy waters.
^*
At the same time, part of Desaix’s division marched along the bank, accompanied by equipment and provisions carried on hired camel trains, which meant that liaison was a constant problem for their commander.

Desaix’s aim was to head south as quickly as possible to try and catch Murad Bey unawares. After traveling 125 miles up the Nile, he was informed by his spies that Murad Bey was encamped less than twenty miles to the west at El Bahnasa, on an ancient arm of the Nile known as Joseph’s Canal (Bahr-el-Yusuf). The terrain between the Nile and the canal was flooded, and for the most part all that was visible above the water were the villages on their raised ground. Desaix’s troops set out at once on foot, following in Indian file along the top of the little raised dykes that surrounded the fields, at times wading waist deep through the water holding their rifles above their heads. It took them just over three hours to reach within sight of El Bahnasa, but by then Murad Bey had got wind of what was happening, and the French arrived to see in the distance the last of his camel train fording the canal and heading off into the Libyan desert.

And so it went on, for days, then weeks. Desaix would receive intelligence about detachments of Mamelukes, or Murad’s Nile flotilla, and travel post-haste down the Nile, or into the hinterland, only to discover that they had eluded him, often by less than twenty-four hours. Then, on September 24, he learned that Murad Bey had slipped behind him and was camped at Fayoum, close to the head of Joseph’s Canal. Here Murad was less than sixty miles southwest of Cairo, in contact by courier with rebellious elements in the city. Moreover, his very proximity inhibited many citizens from cooperating with the French, for fear of his return, which now seemed a very real prospect for the first time since the Battle of the Nile.

Desaix made his way as best he could up the treacherous Joseph’s Canal, whose waters were now beginning to silt up as the floods receded. After a week he disembarked, deciding to march the last half of the journey, and a week later, as he approached the village of Sediman at the edge of the desert beside the canal, he saw Murad Bey and his Mamelukes encamped on the heights above the valley some way ahead. Desaix focused his field glass on the Mameluke camp, and found that Murad Bey was “recognizable beside his tent, where we could see him sitting surrounded by his sheiks.”
³
They were waiting for him: just as Desaix had calculated, in the end Murad Bey’s pride had got the better of him—he would not flee forever.

Unlike at the Battle of the Pyramids, this time Murad Bey had numerical superiority. Desaix estimated that his adversary now had around 5,000 cavalry at his disposal, along with support troops, which meant that they outnumbered the French by about two to one. And to make matters worse, many of Desaix’s troops were beginning to suffer from an outbreak of ophthalmia, their eyes smarting, their vision reduced in some cases to near blindness.

Following Napoleon’s example at the Battle of the Pyramids, Desaix chose to fight in battle squares. But instead of a square made up of an entire division, he decided to form his men into two much smaller forward squares of just under 200 soldiers each, with the rest of his infantry, and his two artillery pieces, drawn up behind them in a larger square. That night, the men slept in their squares, their rifles between their legs. On the morning of October 8, the young officer Savary noticed that “the soldiers did everything that was necessary without being told. At daybreak, between two and three in the morning,
^*
everyone was on their feet well before the sounding of the drums for reveille.”
⁴

The division moved forward in its squares towards Sediman, and an hour later, again in Savary’s words: “In battle order we advanced up a hill in the desert with the aim of taking up a position at the top. . . .Suddenly we heard the sound of drums and saw a cloud of dust ahead, out of which emerged a swarm of Mameluke cavalry above us, their hooves pounding the sand as they swooped down on our squares.”

The battle-hardened veterans of the Army of Italy and the Army of the Rhine stood their ground. Desaix had ordered his men not to fire until the Mameluke line was within twenty paces, but the overzealous officer in command of the leading small square on the left flank, one Captain Valette, was so convinced of the steadfast bravery of his men that he ordered them to withhold their fire until the enemy charge was within just ten paces. This proved a mistake, given the depth and size of his square. Many of the Mamelukes were mown down, but “their horses, although shot through with bullets, just continued their charge, passing through the square and out the other side before they finally fell to the ground a hundred feet away. In this way they made gaps in our ranks through which the Mamelukes followed them.” This could have been fatal, but such experienced soldiers knew not to panic. They immediately threw themselves to the ground; meanwhile, in the words of Desaix, who was in the main square to the rear: “Our volleys and the fire of the division soon saved them from danger.”
⁵
These hardy veterans knew their priorities, and as Desaix admiringly observed, “After having stripped their enemy of their valuables, they then made their way back to the division.”

By this time the main body of Mamelukes had wheeled to attack the other leading square, but this managed to hold without being penetrated. The massed French infantry of the large divisional square, with its triple rank of firing men—one kneeling, one crouching, one standing—subjected the passing Mameluke warriors to heavy fire as they charged past.

Then Murad Bey sprang his surprise, producing four cannons which had been hidden behind a hillock, and now began to fire at the French squares. Desaix’s battle plan had been thwarted, and he needed to make a quick decision. According to his aide General Friant, despite the battle raging around him Desaix was at all times “ten degrees colder than ice.”
⁶
He ordered a charge of the Mameluke guns by his infantry with fixed bayonets. Such a move required extreme bravery from his men; and they would also be leaving behind their own wounded to face the savage vengeance of the Mameluke cavalry. One eyewitness image suffices to indicate the resolve that this involved: “A mortally wounded soldier, seeing the rest of the division departing, grabbed a comrade by his coattail and would not let him go. The other, realizing that he would be killed without any hope of saving his comrade, took out his knife, cut the coat-tail from his uniform, and left the unfortunate wounded man, who was finished off by the Mameluke sabers.”
⁷

Desaix’s men charged the enemy guns with their bayonets, capturing two of them, which quickly caused those manning the other guns to flee. The Mameluke cavalry soon followed—but having no cavalry himself, Desaix was unable to pursue them. Even so, the Battle of Sediman had proved a resounding victory for the French: amongst their 3,000 troops there were just forty-four fatalities and 100 or so wounded, while the Mamelukes were estimated to have suffered some 400 casualties.

Desaix and his men now continued their advance. An officer recalled: “We ended up climbing the hill, from the summit of which we could see the green and rich province of Fayoum.”
⁸
When they entered the nearby regional capital, which Murad Bey had simply deserted, Desaix set about establishing a new administration, at the same time requisitioning food and horses for his increasingly exhausted troops. But after a few days’ rest, the main body of troops moved on once more as best they could. By now the soldiers, in their thick serge uniforms, were beginning to suffer from the growing heat. On top of this, the spread of ophthalmia and other diseases, as well as the wear and tear of marching, which was destroying their boots, were all beginning to take a heavy toll.

Napoleon was anxious to eliminate Murad Bey and secure Upper Egypt as quickly as possible. “I am impatient for news,”
⁹
he wrote to Desaix on October 4. In fact, by the time this message reached Desaix, the situation amongst his division had deteriorated drastically, to the point where he realized that his troops were no longer in any fit state to pursue the enemy. Although he was not one to complain, he felt it his duty to inform Napoleon of the true state of affairs, and writing on October 29 he told his commander-in-chief:

Sickness has reduced us to an embarrassing state. This eye disease is a terrible scourge. It has deprived me of more than 1,400 men. When I march I have to drag behind me a hundred of these poor unfortunates who have been rendered completely blind. And if you saw the men I’ve got left you’d be surprised. . . . We’re stripped of even the basic necessities, without boots, without anything; to tell you the truth, the troops need a rest. Give us the provisions and the means to go on, and we’ll go on. . . . What do you want me to do?
¹⁰

This left Napoleon in a considerable dilemma: he had only just succeeded in putting down the Cairo uprising—should he risk sending Desaix further troops, or simply call off the entire Upper Egypt expedition until things improved?

Meanwhile, Desaix could only bide his time and continue as he saw best. By way of setting up his new administration, he now also set about collecting taxes from the local
fellahin.
But the trouble was, Murad Bey had already got there first, extracting for himself as much as he could. The
fellahin
found these new demands intolerable, and on November 8 they were encouraged into open revolt by the deposed local Mamelukes. By now most of Desaix’s division had crossed back to the main course of the Nile, leaving a garrison inside the walls at Fayoum of just 500 men, almost a third of whom were suffering from ophthalmia.

Word of conditions amongst the French garrison at Fayoum soon reached the local Mamelukes, who roused the surrounding countryside with the intention of inflicting a savage revenge for the defeat of Murad Bey. According to a French officer who was present: “At eleven-thirty in the morning, a large crowd of Arabs, stamping their feet on the ground and beating tambourines, with some Mameluke chiefs at their head, began scaling the walls at the edge of the town.”
¹¹
In his subsequent report, Desaix would accept his officers’ estimate that this crowd was around 3,000 men; these now began advancing on the French barracks in the Mameluke palace formerly occupied by the local chieftain Ali-Kachef. The French eyewitness continued: “The doors, passageways and terraces were defended entirely by our sick men; around the square and the courtyard were our reserve of 350 men.” During the ensuing battle on the rooftops and in the surrounding streets, the French managed to hold off their attackers, before finally driving them from the town in disarray. During the course of this skirmish the French lost four dead and ten wounded, while losses amongst the
fellahin
, the Mamelukes and their supporting slaves were estimated at around 200. Upper Egypt was proving difficult to conquer, and even more difficult to govern.