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

200 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTthe chief justice’s home, vastly outnumbered, attempted to retreat through thecity quarters of Bab al-Qasrayn and Bab al-Zuhuma, but found their passage obstructedby the dense crowds. Enraged at the sight of their occupiers, the Egyptiansrushed them and killed a number of them. A handful managed to gather upwounded colleagues and to retreat with them to headquarters, where severalmore died of their injuries. 35The Muslim insurgents (as the French called them) set up citizen guardsaround key quarters in the vicinity of the al-Husayn district, where the revoltwas centered, and out to the districts of Bab al-Zuwayla and Bab al-Sha’riya.Saint-Hilaire recalled that the crowd “occupied three enormous mosques thatwere rather distant from one another.” Armed with swords, stakes, and somefirearms, they turned the mosques into fortresses in which they sequesteredthemselves and from which they directed the attack or defense. The militantstried to keep the area they wanted to hold compact, al-Jabarti implies. “Theydid not, however, cross into any other area.” They did attack the Public Treasury,located in their region of the city.Other quarters of the city, such as the cosmopolitan riverine port of Bulaq,the posh Azbakiya district, and Old Cairo, declined to join the uprising, in partbecause they were better garrisoned by the French. Realistic clerical leaders alsoplayed a calming role in those parts of the city. Sayyid al-Bakri warned the inhabitantsof Azbakiya not to rise up. “Sheikh al-Fayyumi did the same in the‘Abdin and Qusun quarters.” A former official of the beylicate kept on by theFrench, the Kethüda Pasha, likewise ordered his retainers and neighbors toavoid the rebellion. The scientists and intellectuals at the Egyptian Institutewere holed up in their mansion but managed to lie low. Villiers du Terrage recalledwithdrawing inside to a pavilion on the far side of the garden at the Instituteand hearing “the cries and threats of the women of the neighborhood.” 36The urban women of Cairo clearly played a role in the revolt, though few militarymemoirists brought themselves to mention it, perhaps because it challengedtheir masculinity. As a civilian, Villiers du Terrage perhaps had lesscompunction on that score. No source tells us what the Ottoman-Egyptianladies were doing just before and during the uprising, but it is likely that at leastsome of them were involved behind the scenes.Since Bulaq was quiet, the French garrison there could spare troops for amission against the uprising. Desvernois recalled, “It was the thirtieth ofVendémiaire at 9 A.M. Our cavalrymen were quite tranquil in their quarter ofBulaq, when all of a sudden threatening howls interspersed with savage exclamationserupted. It was a horrific clamor.” Within ten minutes, he says, the reg-