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

120 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTAt length the garrison fell to the French, but the stealthy villagers kept uptheir attacks, hidden by the darkness, and they were able to kill or wound twentyof the soldiers. Menou had his horse shot out from under him, and one of theintellectuals, Joly, took a fatal bullet to the head. Marmont’s party headed backto Rosetta. Marmont had earlier in his account contrasted the intelligence andcuriosity displayed by Bedouin toward the French with what he perceived to bea lack of astonishment or perceptiveness in the peasant farmers, who passed bythe French regiments “without looking at them.”It was an unfortunate piece of condescension. Marmont had not realizedthat in the hierarchical societies of Asia and North Africa of that time, for a socialinferior to hold his head up high and look a social superior in the eye was tocourt death. The peasants had not been stupid or incurious, only beaten downby the old warlords and unwilling to risk casual execution at the hands of thenew ones for any inadvertent impudence. But Marmont’s ill-fated first foray intothe Delta revealed that where they felt they had a chance, a well-armed, fortifiedpeasant population was willing to offer determined resistance to the invaders.Jollois, at Rosetta, entered in his journal for 13 August, “Some detachments ofthe column sent to burn a village on the Nile have returned.” 26General Honoré Vial was sent to the port of Damietta, east of Alexandriaon the Mediterranean coast, with only about five hundred men. On his waythere, on 4 August, he stationed 120 men at the regional capital of Mansura, atown of 8,000 persons some seventy-eight miles north of Cairo. 27 He organizedat Mansura a local divan of notables who said they were willing to support theFrench. He requisitioned a hundred saddle horses and laid a large tax claim onthe region’s cotton when it came in, then he departed. The Syrian-Egyptianchronicler Niqula Turk observed that every Thursday in Mansura was marketday, when large numbers of peasants and Bedouin came in from the countryside.The people took advantage of this gathering to launch an insurrection.On 9 August at 8:00 A.M. an armed crowd gathered to attack the Frenchpost. The insurgents were said to number 4,000 men. The soldiers retreated totheir barracks, but the crowd pursued them there. They tried to set fire to thebarracks, but were driven off by French musket fire. Then the troops beganrunning low on cartridges. They decided they would eventually be overrun ifthey remained in the barracks, and so they charged out, losing several men tothe townsmen’s musket balls. They attempted to board some boats on the Nile,but villagers on the other bank began firing at them, killing some and drivingaway the rest. They therefore headed south, toward Cairo, facing attrition asthey weathered further sniping on the way. Reduced to a band of thirty, they