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

ALI BONAPARTE137her as often as possible, continuing the tutoring, until he was posted elsewhereon 19 July 1799. In the event, when the French did withdraw in 1801, Zulaymawas not able to meet him in Alexandria, falling into the hands of the beys whoreturned with the Ottoman army. 21Despite the romantic touches, the veiled approach, the tears that enhancedher beauty, the pledges of eternal love, this exchange reveals a bargainingprocess. Moiret was offering Zulayma refuge from the Ottoman-Egyptianrulers should the French leave, and she was pledging him the riches she had obtainedfrom her dead husband. (She specifically mentioned bringing her jewelryand wealth with her to France.) In essence, she was offering to bring her owntrousseau to the marriage. Initially, he must have been attracted by the prospectof having a mate in Egypt. Finding a mate in France on his return would nothave been so difficult. But the possibility of simply marrying her in Damiettawas foreclosed by his unwillingness to convert to Islam and by her inability toconvert to Christianity without losing her local patronage. He expressed himselfunwilling to be a laughingstock or to accept alien ways, but it surely had somethingto do with his own religious convictions.Unlike many of the Republican officers, he was a believing Catholic andhad once gone to seminary in Lyons with the intention of becoming a Dominicanpriest. Moiret depicted both of them as too concerned about social conventionsand personal image to accept the compromises necessary for marriage inEgypt. He was gallant enough not to even hint at what went on during her visitsto him for the ostensible purpose of tutoring her.The same barriers that stood in the way of a formal marriage alliance betweenthe Catholic Moiret and his Zulayma also bedeviled the Jacobin unbelieverFrançois Bernoyer. 22 Bonaparte knew that his men had arrived in torridEgypt wearing heavy European clothing, and he ordered Bernoyer to designnew uniforms better suited to local conditions and to arrange for them to bemass-produced. The quartermaster, however, faced a shortage of the necessarythick linen. He asked his Egyptian agent, Achem (presumably Ahmad), whoknew a little French, to help him, and through him he contacted the local ownerof a small textile manufactory that employed about three hundred workers, bothmale and female. The owner agreed to provide Bernoyer with four hundredyards of cloth each day. 23The next day he and his Egyptian agent went out to the workshop to see ifproduction had begun on the required cloth. They found the outer gate closed,so Bernoyer dismounted and entered the premises on foot, leaving his agent tosee to the horses. On crossing the threshold, he saw a beautiful young woman