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

206 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTto see Bonaparte. The commander in chief demanded to know what was happening.They assured him that “these are the deeds of the foolish among thesubjects and those who do not consider the consequences of their actions.”Bonaparte wanted to know from al-Bakri why he was not accompanied bythe sheikhs of the divan, “whom we have raised, chosen, and distinguished fromthe others.”Sheikh al-Bakri and the others replied evasively that the streets were closedand their way blocked.Bonaparte insisted, “They must be present with the rising of the sun. If theyhave not arrived by that time and if they oppose us or act stubbornly, we will fireupon them with cannons and bombs, for no excuse shall save them, so you ridenow and announce a safe-conduct for them in all streets and places.”The delegation of three leading sheikhs left him after sunset and wrote aletter to the clerics in the rebellious quarters. Their messenger was unable toget through the barricades, though, so it remained undelivered.Bonaparte’s own account of all this focuses on the clerics in the al-Husaynquarter and agrees remarkably closely with that of al-Jabarti. “I summoned thegreat clerics,” he says, “but already all the routes had been cut off by insurgentguards positioned at the street corners.” The militants were building defensivebarricades and the city bristled with armed men. Bonaparte maintained that theprominent Muslim men of the cloth had attempted to warn the common peopleof the inevitable consequences of their actions, but without success. They wereforced to fall silent and to go along with the irresistible course of the rebellion.Niello Sargy offered a different view. Bonaparte, he said, “ordered immediatelythat the principal men of the city must come to him. They replied that theywere seeking a way of leading the people to submission, and their presence wasnecessary at the divan.” On this refusal, he had weapons distributed to thetroops that he had assembled and had them surround the district containing theGrand Mosque. Artillery pieces were set up during the night. 7Bonaparte remembered worrying. “Matters took on a most serious appearance;the reconquest of Cairo could prove extremely difficult.” He could hearfrom four hundred minarets “the bitter voices of the muezzins” pronouncingcurses on the enemies of God, infidels, and idolaters. But, he said—and this is entirelyplausible—he was already attempting to think of ways of making the citysubmit to his authority without making permanent, fierce enemies of its residents.Bonaparte ordered Dommartin to march at midnight on Sunday with artilleryand troops to assault the gate near the al-Azhar Seminary. Doguereau and the othersunder Dommartin spent all night dragging the big guns through unfamiliar