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

204 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTnear the Grand Mosque, even though he was accompanied by a cavalry unit.Everywhere they sounded the general alarm with cannon.” Detroye rememberedthe news as arriving at 10 A.M.Doguereau reported that mounted guides sought out Bonaparte and weregoing to take him back to his quarters in Azbakiya. The lieutenant wanted togo along. “I had the disagreeable experience, in such a critical circumstance, ofgetting left behind. My horse, which was very spooked, did not want to descendinto the boat. After many useless attempts, I abandoned it.” He borrowedanother mount, and went after Gen. Jean Lannes (a veteran of theSpanish and Italian campaigns), who had marched his troops off to the estate ofIbrahim Bey. “We were assailed by stones as we crossed into the Bab al-Luqquarter, then quite fortunately met up with some mounted guides who hadthemselves been attacked. We learned on arriving that a great number ofFrench had had their throats cut in the streets and that the insurrection was almostuniversal.” Bonaparte had reached his mansion in Azbakiya with difficulty,and established posts around Azbakiya Square with artillery pieces. Heappointed Gen. Louis-André Bon (the son of a merchant, who had fought atToulon, then in the Pyrenees against Spain, and in Italy) to replace the fallenDupuy. Bon attempted to use cannon in the main thoroughfares to keep therebels contained in al-Qahira and its environs. 2At some point the French gained active allies in the form of the expatriateGreek community, which had initially remained neutral but then, in the face ofmob attacks on them as collaborators, declared for the French. The scientistCharles Norry exulted, “Hitherto the Greeks had taken no part in our cause; onthe day of the insurrection they ranged themselves on our side and shook off theyoke of the slavery that they have long endured under the Turkish government.”The Greek Bartholomew al-Rumi, whom Bonaparte had earlier made policechief, now arose to take the fight to the insurgents. Bernoyer remarked, “Thosewho saw him fight proclaimed his prodigious feats and compared him to one ofHomer’s deities at Troy.” 3Jean-Gabriel de Niello Sargy recalled that Bonaparte was furious that theCairo crowds were challenging him. He heard him say, “Shall we be the playthingof some hordes of vagabonds, of these Arabs whom one barely countsamong the civilized peoples, and of the populace of Cairo, the most brutish andsavage rogues who exist in the world?” 4The Sunni clergymen whom Bonaparte had installed as the leadership of theFrench Republic of Egypt split into three factions. The first fled and went into hiding.Al-Jabarti reported, that as for the Sunni clergymen, “there were those who