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

184 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTits saint instead, since he kept the village tower from collapsing into the Nileand diverting its waters away from the port, with disastrous consequences. 7 Thetombs of saints would prove more of a challenge to the French than they initiallycould have imagined.As October began, General Andréossi initiated another campaign againstHasan Tubar and his men, according to Niello Sargy. The general departed forDamietta on the third and went down the Nile with a flotilla. At 7 A.M. they disembarked,and he began a march with about a hundred men, following the embankmentthat separated the lagoon from the Mediterranean. This tongue ofland entirely lacked any wells, and they suffered from thirst. Another hundredmen followed in skiffs. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the column and theflotilla arrived at Diba, a hamlet where the lake met the sea through an outlet.There, they at last found water to drink, after an eight-hour fast. The partypressed on toward Damietta, via Matariya. At the very moment when theycaught a glimpse of the minarets of the village of Manzala, a hundred hostileskiffs appeared, manned by the lake people, and they maneuvered into the samecanal that Andréossi’s flotilla was navigating. The boatmen issued cries of furyand beat tambourines and brass instruments. Andréossi had sails lowered andconsolidated his forces, ordering that a fusillade be fired. Six cannon blasts rangout. The boatmen, alarmed, fell back. Gerbaud said that the battle went on forfive hours, until 10 P.M., when the boatmen withdrew.They continued to harass the French force until they neared the Delta villageof Minya, to the west of Damietta. There they again shouted war cries, approachingthe shore and making as if to land. They appeared to be attemptingto stampede the French off their own vessels. But the European troops stoodfast, and Andréossi ordered another fusillade, both to repulse the lake peopleand to let General Vial know that his flotilla had arrived. At length, as the moonrose, one of Vial’s lake patrols arrived, forcing Tubar’s boatmen to withdraw.A few days later, General Dugua wrote Hasan Tubar seeking an accommodation.Niello Sargy recorded the chieftain’s reply as follows:I do not wish to see the French, either from far or from near. ... If they giveme assurances that I will be left in tranquility in my own home, at the town ofManzala, I will pay them the same tribute that I used to pay the Mamluks. But Iwant no communication with those infidels.Hostilities were not at an end. On 8 October, a number of enemy skiffs appearedoff the lakeside town of Minya, but fire from French ships, supported by