Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL NILE THAT HAS EVER BEEN119been moved to Rosetta for safekeeping before the British attack. They hoped toget 185,000 francs for it, about equal to two months of customs income atAlexandria in the old days. Kléber instructed Menou in Rosetta to cease eventrying to send mail by water as long as the British blockade was on. The Frenchwere confined to the dry land of the Delta.When the young officer with the wig-making father, Jean-PierreDoguereau, came to Alexandria in August he saw the beach littered with the debrisfrom the late French fleet. He witnessed an event that attested the insecurityfaced by the French in the Delta. 25 A ship coming from France and arrivingat Alexandria was spotted by the British navy between Marabout and the Towerof the Arabs, and they gave chase. The captain, feeling the enemy breathingdown his neck, appeared to decide that the better part of valor was to escape bygoing to ground and then following the coast on foot. His sailors leapt off thevessel onto the beach with the ship’s most precious cargo, but “did not take theprecaution of carrying their arms off the vessel.” No sooner had their feet hitthe sand than a Bedouin tribe assailed them. The tribesmen “stripped themnaked as a glass” and beat them, killing a few. Then the Bedouin rode off withtheir loot.The French tried to depart that place, but then more Bedouin appeared andcut most of them to pieces with their sabers. Some they took captive in hopes ofholding them for ransom. Of seventy men, whether passengers or sailors, onlyfifteen were spared. A general was among the dead. The Bedouin offered thesurvivors to Kléber for the right sum of money, and he ransomed them. “Theyarrived virtually nude, burned by the sun, and half dead.”The French hold on the Delta remained insecure. A handful of cities werelightly garrisoned, but danger lurked in the countryside. Marmont wrote that atthe port of Rosetta Menou proposed an excursion into the interior, about whichthe French still knew little. Menou and Marmont brought with them some ofthe scientists, such as Alix Delile, Déodat Dolomieu, Dominique-VivantDenon, and a landscape painter named Joly, along with an escort of sixty infantrymenarmed with muskets. The officers and intellectuals, on horseback, inadvertentlygot slightly ahead of their escort. Outside the walls of a substantialvillage built atop a manmade flat hill, perhaps Kafr Shabbas Amir, they abruptlyencountered two hundred angry, armed peasants shouting “‘Irga’!’ ‘Irga’!’” (Goback! Go back!) and firing some shots above the foreigners’ heads. After a difficultmoment, the infantry arrived and, taking in the situation, went on the attack.They scaled the crenellated walls of the village and later set fire to itswooden doors, surrounding the barricades of the village fighters within.