Sultan of France

by Sudhir Hazareesingh
review of CORRESPONDANCE GENERALE, II. La campagne d'Egypte et l'avenement 1798-1799. Napoleon Bonaparte. Edited by Thierry Lentz, Gabriel Madec, Emilie Barthet and Francois Houdecek. 1,266pp. Fayard. E48. - 2 213 62139 X.
The second volume of Napoleon's Correspondance generale covers the period between early 1798 and late 1799 (Volume One was reviewed in the TLS of February 18, 2005). The letters mostly deal with the Egyptian campaign which Bonaparte led as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armee d'Orient. It is easy to understand why this expedition has fascinated historians. Immediately preceding the successful coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire, the campagne d'Egypte was a critical moment in Napoleon's march to supreme power in France. But the enduring appeal of the Egyptian expedition has broader origins. Napoleon took a contingent of some 160 scientists with him, helping, among other things, to pioneer the science of Egyptology. The year 1798 also witnessed the beginnings of France's colonial presence in North Africa and the Middle East, with Napoleon's attempts to introduce European forms of civil and political administration to a land which had hitherto been dominated by the feudal Mamelukes. Above all, we have here an intriguing early encounter between Western values and the culture of Islam, rendered all the more absorbing by Napoleon's evident (albeit always self-serving) fascination with the "Mahometan" religion.
In the six months that followed the French occupation of Cairo, Napoleon revolutionized the colony. He created new political institutions (whose elites and functional powers were rigorously subordinated to French rule), organized health services, established a postal system, rationalized the procedures for tax collection, and much else. Through the Institut d'Egypte, the latest discoveries of Western science were brought to the country; the geographical contours of its hinterland were mapped out; and Napoleon himself accompanied the expedition which found the vestiges of the canal built by Ramses II to link the Nile to the Red Sea. The Egyptians were impressed and somewhat bemused by all this frantic activity, while careful to keep the French on their toes. The historian Al-Jabarti, who wrote extensive first-hand accounts of the French occupation, reported that after Claude Berthollet put on a grand display of chemical wizardry at the Institut, a sheikh asked through an interpreter: "This is all well and good, but can he make it so that I would be in Morocco and here at the same time?". The French scientist replied with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Ah, well", said the sheikh, "he isn't such a sorcerer after all."
The chief sorcerer was Bonaparte, and he went to great lengths to portray himself as both omnipotent and benevolent, even trying to blend French Revolutionary discourse about justice, equality and reason with effusive praise for the central tenets of Islam.
The "Sultan El Kebir", as he became known, surrounded himself in Cairo with religious and spiritual leaders, who were sufficiently impressed by his credentials to declare his arrival in Egypt as a portent of Allah; he celebrated the festival of the Prophet with as much zeal as the anniversary of the Republic, and even wrote that "l'instant est arrive ou tous les francais regeneres deviendront aussi de vrais croyants".
However, Napoleon refrained from following one of his leading generals, who converted to Islam and became known as Jacques Abdallah Menou.
Yet all these pleasantries were overshadowed by the one overriding imperative which dominated Napoleon's thinking: the conduct of war. Although it ended in the failed siege of Saint Jean d'Acre, which helped to precipitate Napoleon's return to France, the Egyptian campaign was not without its successes, which (in duly embellished form) were reported back and helped to consolidate Bonaparte's legend as an invincible military leader. The letters underline the importance of a number of commanders who would play a key role in Napoleon's later campaigns: the ubiquitous Berthier, his dependable chief of staff; the humane Desaix, the "just Sultan", who would gloriously save the day (and die) at Marengo a few years later; and the future Marshals Murat, Marmont, Lannes and Bessieres, all destined to greater things in the years to come. Some of the most remarkable figures of the Napoleonic legend also rose through the ranks during the Egyptian campaign; in August 1798, Bonaparte ordered the promotion of a young captain named Bertrand, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of the Pyramids. As the Emperor's Marechal du Palais, Bertrand would not only remain with him throughout his later campaigns and his exile in St Helena after
1815, but also return to the island in 1840 to bring back Napoleon's remains to France.
But if Egypt contributed anything to the legend, it was mostly to its darker side. Conditions on the ground were atrocious, with extremes of heat and cold, and a host of diseases (notably the plague and opthalmia) decimating French forces. Even though they despised the Mamelukes, the populations of parts of Egypt and Palestine joined battle against the French occupiers, showing a courage and resilience which provoked the exasperation of Napoleon. French forces were constantly harassed, and -an anticipation of later disasters in Spain and Russia -any soldier straying from his lines risked capture and death (and not a pleasant one). Conventional battles did not always go well, either; set ablaze by rolling bales of hay, the troops of General Damas suffered a humiliating defeat on the mountains of Nablus (hence the proud epithet of the city to this day: Mountain of Fire). Caught in the vortex of escalating violence which overwhelms all military occupiers, the Egyptian campaign rapidly descended into savagery, with the French abandoning every principle of ius gentium. After a popular revolt in Cairo in October 1798, the French killed
2,500 people and fired fifteen shells into the Al-Azhar mosque, which was then overrun and desecrated (putting something of a dampener on French claims to be the protectors of Islam).
Following the pillage of Jaffa, Bonaparte himself was moved to write that he had just witnessed "toutes les horreurs de la guerre, qui jamais ne m'a paru aussi hideuse".
Earlier, after hearing of the killing in France of old men and pregnant women suspected of royalism, Napoleon had written an angry letter to the Revolutionary authorities in Toulon: "le militaire qui signe une sentence contre une personne incapable de porter les armes est un lache". Now, Bonaparte himself was ordering the execution of prisoners (most notoriously, around 3,000 men massacred at Jaffa), the drowning of women, the burning of entire rebel villages; Jenin was thus one of many areas which were torched ("il ne faut pas qu'il reste une maison").
What does all of this reveal about Napoleon on the eve of Brumaire? It is not easy to tell.
He subsequently claimed that he dreamed of pushing on to Constantinople, and returning to Europe crowned as the "Empereur d'Orient", but this (as with most of his later utterances) was probably a preparation for his legend. At the time, he was so far removed from any orientalist fantasies that his observation on reaching Gaza was that "les citronniers, les forets d'oliviers, les inegalites de terrain representent parfaitement le paysage du Languedoc; l'on croit etre du cote de Beziers". Nor should too much be read into a rare letter to his brother Joseph, in which Bonaparte complains of the "barbarie" of Egypt and confesses his emotional hollowness: "je suis ennuye de la nature humaine".
This was probably less a response to the deviousness of "ces coquins d'Arabes" than a reaction to the news that Josephine had been seen frolicking in Paris with yet another young stud. In truth, the violence he unleashed during the Egyptian campaign -"je serai terrible comme le feu du ciel" -was akin to his relationship with Egypt itself: he used it when it suited his immediate interests, and abandoned it completely when it no longer did. In this sense, the Sultan El Kebir was ready to become Napoleon.