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

122 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTthat Bonaparte instructed that they fly the French tricolor from their minaretsthere and throughout the Delta, and any town or village that refused was to beput to the flames.The printer A. Galland confirmed in his journal that Bonaparte orderedNile ships large enough to have sails to fly the tricolor. “In addition, it was enjoinedupon them that they hang the same flag from the highest minarets in theprovincial capitals; this latter provision caused some sorrow among Muslims.” 29Nothing could have been calculated better to humiliate and outrage Muslimsthan to force them to fly a European, infidel flag from the minarets of theirmosques.Despite the victory at arms of the French soldiers, they faced considerablechallenges to their health in the swampy, densely populated Delta. Millet wassent to Mansura briefly some time after its reconquest. “It was there that onesaw a terrible disease of the eyes that was spreading among almost the entirearmy, and as a result of which a large number were left blind or with sight inonly one eye.” 30 Trachoma, which the French called “opthalmia,” is a bacterialdisease endemic in the Nile Valley. It causes scarring on the eyelids that turnsthe eyelashes inward and transforms them into lacerating weapons against thevictim’s own corneas, sometimes destroying them.In al-Minufiya, generals Fugière and Zajonchek fought against “hordes ofinsurgent Bedouin,” and they delivered many villages to the flames “in order toimprint terror on that unruly population,” wrote the frank Niello Sargy. In thelatter’s view, the conquest of the Delta depended on subduing two majorprovinces, Mansura and Sharqiya. Niello Sargy wrote, “In those provinces itwas impossible to seize the possessions of the Mamluks because of the resistanceof those villages and the way they received our troops.” 31 The cash-starvedFrench, desperate to appropriate the treasures of the former ruling class, werestymied by local opposition. In decapitating the Ottoman-Egyptian state, theFrench had unwittingly unleashed a revolution from below, which they werethen forced to suppress if they were to survive in the wake of the disaster atAbuqir. Had Nelson not sunk their fleet, had they been more militarily and economicallysecure, Bonaparte’s officers might have been less rapacious, and mightmore easily have come to an accommodation with these provincial leaders. As itwas, the signs of rebellion in the Delta were multiplying.