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

210 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTHe was hit by a hail of musket balls. Undaunted, he crawled out of the waterand sat up. “Despite his wounds, he lived another quarter of an hour.” 14The first battalion of the 18th Demi-Brigade attacked and routed the hundredsof rebels gathered at the City of the Dead, who were in close communicationwith the Bedouin. 15 With the inexorable French advance of Mondaymorning, which was facilitated by the use of artillery against the crowds, therewas soon only one place where the insurgents remained in control: the al-Husayn quarter around its Grand Mosque near al-Azhar. To Bernoyer, theyseemed determined to defend it to the last man. All entrances to this formidableposition were heavily barricaded and guarded. A frontal infantry assault onit would have been extremely costly in French lives. Initial French assaults onthe area did indeed go awry. The grenadiers of the 18th, commanded by CaptainBart, Pelleport recalled, went with an artillery piece toward the “mostpopulous” quarter of Cairo. The narrowness of the streets, however, forcedthis small column to backtrack. When the crowd saw this retrograde motion,they moved in to attack. The French soldiers, he said, “as firm as granite, didnot allow themselves to be intimidated. They killed many men and returned toheadquarters.” 16Bonaparte had the al-Azhar quarter surrounded by columns of grenadiersto ensure that none of the insurgents escaped. What with the Bedouins andpeasants now flooding into the city and rallying to the revolt, there was an increasingdanger of it spreading outside the capital. Vigo-Roussillon recalled that“at two P.M., General Bonaparte ordered that the quarter where the revolt wascentered be shelled from the Citadel.” 17The batteries in the Muqattam Hills began firing. Cannonballs and explodingshells struck the buildings, setting many on fire. Bernoyer wrote home,“The bombardment produced great ravages and was about to crush the mosquewhen the Turks, fearing that they would be entombed beneath its rubble, wereobliged to implore the generosity of Bonaparte.” 18 The commander in chief, hesaid, responded that they had refused his clemency when he offered it. “Thehour of vengeance has sounded. You began it, it is for me to finish it!” Thecrowd, in despair, took up arms, but the grenadiers ran them through with bayonetsrelentlessly. “Then the principal leaders devoutly advanced unarmed towardour grenadiers, from whom they asked pity, strongly reinforcing theirrequest with gestures and cries.” He said that Bonaparte then ordered a halt tothe shooting, and (temporarily) pardoned the supplicants.A cavalryman, summoned with his unit from Bilbeis, approached the capital.“The spectacle that the unfortunate city presented caused me to tremble