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

172 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTnew Egypt for the contemporary world, the present-day vanguard of scienceand law. He saw the French possession of the antique land of Egypt as a validationof its civilizational greatness, for it now encompassed the font of ancientknowledge and administration, as well.These officers saw no contradiction between the demands of force and theenjoyment of liberty. After all, their political achievement had come aboutthrough revolution, which is to say through violence. Otherwise the OldRegime would never have been overthrown, or it would have managed to reassertitself. Clearly, “liberty” could not be an entirely voluntary affair in lateOttoman Egypt. It had to be imposed and bolstered by a free metropole. Theintertwining of reason, nation, liberty, and terror was an important discourse inthe period after the execution of the king, and despite the end of the Terror, thiscoupling of the Enlightenment to violence continued among some Directoryerathinkers in the context of the wars against Austria, in Italy and Germany,and the need to fight the external enemies of the Revolution. Therefore, thedevotees of liberty and reason in Egypt would not have disagreed substantiallywith Robespierre’s dictum, that terror is merely an aspect of justice, deliveredswiftly and inflexibly, so that it is actually a virtue, or with his instruction to“break the enemies of liberty with terror, and you will be justified as founders ofthe Republic.” 12 Thus, when Julien, an aide-de-camp of the general, and fifteenFrenchmen who navigated the Nile were killed in August by the inhabitants ofthe village of Alkam, Say remarked, “The General, severe as he was just, ordainedthat this village be burned. This order was executed with all possiblerigor. It was necessary to prevent such crimes by the bridle of terror.” 13Faced with continued Egyptian resistance to the occupation, Say acknowledgedthe necessity of accustoming “these fanatical inhabitants” to the “domination”of “those whom they call infidels.” He again admitted Frenchdomination, but he hoped that Egyptians could be taught to love it. He concluded,“We must believe that a Government that guarantees to each liberty andequality, as well as the well-being that naturally follows from it, will insensiblylead to this desirable revolution.” The revolution alluded to here is not a politicalevent but the spiritual overthrow of an Old Regime of Ottoman-Egyptiandominance and religious “fanaticism.” It is this revolution of ideals that so requiresthe arts as its propagandists, insofar as they are held to speak to the heartas well as the mind. 14Laus de Boisy bridled at criticisms of the Egypt project. Any man with aheart, he said, would want to rescue the Egyptians from their misery. Never-