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

THE OBJECT OF HIS DESIRES195barking at a port in the kingdom of Naples or at Ancona. You will avoid Alexandriaand come with your ship into Damietta. Before leaving, take care to see oneof my brothers, a member of the legislative corps. He will give you some papersand newspapers that have appeared since Messidor.” 26 The commander in chiefprovided him 3,000 francs to defray the cost of the mission.Bonaparte’s diction and his request that Fourès see his brother Joseph, aswell as the command to return with messages from the Directory, suggest astrange bond of trust between interloper and cuckold. Other memoirists maintainthat the lieutenant was captured by the British and proved unable to carryout his mission, though they also say that Commodore Sir Sydney Smith firstinformed Fourès of his wife’s infidelity and that he came back and remonstratedwith his commander in chief. It makes a good story, but Bernoyer’s insider accountand Bonaparte’s long-published letters explode it as melodrama. If Fourèsreturned, he most likely simply went back to his barracks at Rosetta.Pauline remained Bonaparte’s mistress for as long as he was in Egypt. Onesaw her “covered with jewels and sumptuous clothing.” She carried around hisportrait in a locket, and he kept a lock of her hair with him. She often woreBonaparte’s clothing, and rode an Arabian horse outfitted for her, followed bythe aides-de-camp. Josephine’s son, Eugène de Beauharnais, one of the aidesde-camp,was forced to follow their coach when they went out for an eveningride. “Not able any longer to bear the humiliation, I went to General Berthierto ask that I be transferred to a regiment. A rather lively scene passed betweenmy stepfather and me as a result of that action; but he ceased at that moment hisrides in the coach with that lady.” Eugène stayed with his stepfather, who “didnot mistreat me.” 27 Although Bonaparte became more circumspect, behind thescenes he remained inseparable from Pauline. Had she borne him a son, somethingfor which they tried, he might well have divorced Josephine for her. Thesoldiers called her the general’s Cleopatra.This anecdote is of more than personal interest. It tells us about the systemof status in the French Republic of Egypt. Bonaparte, as the Great Sultan, wasstepping into the shoes of Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey as the most powerfulman in the country. Any mistress he took would have to be from the upper socialechelons if he was not to lose face with both the Egyptians and the otherFrenchmen. Just as the beys announced their own social standing by maintainingopulent harems, and just as the wives of high social rank were from the Caucasus,so Bonaparte in an Ottoman-Egyptian context would also be expected tohave a high-status consort. I have suggested that the abandoned women of thebeys’ harems singled him out for the cold shoulder treatment, otherwise such a