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

170 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTmillion citizens are thinking of you!” He assured them that all were saying thattheir blood and sacrifice would bring “general peace, repose, prosperity, commerce,and the benefits of civil liberty.” Jollois remembered that the generalthen called out, “Vive la République!” (Long live the Republic!), “which was notat all repeated by the troops, so great in general was their discontent.” Headded, “Bonaparte, usually disposed to gaiety, all of a sudden took on a seriousair. That no doubt provoked many reflections in him.”After the commander in chief emphasized to his troops that they werespreading the benefits of civil liberty and by their deeds ushering in the era of“representative governments” in Egypt and elsewhere, the music began. “Theorchestra thereafter played a hymn composed by Citizen Parseval and the musicof Citizen Rigel, as well as the Marseillaise” and other patriotic tunes. Bonaparteafterward retired with his retinue to his headquarters. Pelleporte recalled, “Thearmy displayed only indifference toward that festival. It was the victim of melancholythat day, from which it had suffered a number of times since the loss of thefleet.” Malus, worried about the news that the Ottomans were not after allgrateful to the French for rescuing their province from the wayward beys, wasmore explicit: “It was a feeble distraction for the sorrow that had afflicted me forsome time. At that epoch, that epidemic of low morale was making greatprogress in the army. One began to lose any illusions about the intentions of theOttoman sultan regarding the expedition, and one could not see in the futureany hope for tranquility.”Moiret described the subsequent banquet for hundreds of guests in standardlanguage drawn from the official press report: “The divan, the principal officialsof each province, and the first magistrates of each village were invited tothe celebration and attended a dinner given by Bonaparte. This was the firsttime one saw the French colors united with Ottoman ones, the turban associatedwith the bonnet of liberty, the Declaration of the Rights of Man with theKoran, the circumcised and uncircumcised at the same banquet, with the differencethat the former took sherbets and other beverages, while the other took[wines].” Bernoyer said that Mustafa Bey, the deputy Ottoman viceroy, was surprisedto see that his portrait had been hung before him, showing him in thevery clothes he had worn to the banquet. Villiers du Terrage recorded in hisjournal entry about the Muslim-French harmony at the banquet that the mathematicianand geometer Gaspar Monge “attributed it to the improvement ofhumanity and the progress of Enlightenment.”Captain Say thought that the Egyptians were “astonished by the number ofour troops and how well dressed they were. The precision with which the firing