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

214 NAPOLEON’S EGYPThad been dragged into the revolt. Others, as we have seen, managed to blamethe Bedouin even for this very urban display of popular resistance.A French soldier revealed in his journal that parts of the city remained unsubduedfor eight days and that there were for days afterward neighborhoodswhere it was dangerous for French soldiers to venture. 23 He unwisely went outfrom Old Cairo almost to Muski, a major commercial thoroughfare. He begannoticing that “the windows were loaded with stones and earthen crocks withwhich to crush the French who had the misfortune to pass below.” They saw noteven a cat in the street, and their way was still littered with bodies drowned intheir own blood. The inhabitants were standing in their doorways. “Theylooked out with an air of inquietude and with a doleful silence a thousand timesmore frightening than the tumultuous cries of a frantic population.” He thoughtthe eerie hush a harbinger of a new massacre.Bernoyer remarked that Bonaparte employed the revolt as a pretext to furthertax the population. He assessed a fine of “12 million” on the city of Cairoalone (he did not specify the currency). This sum, the quartermaster said, didnot reckon all the losses suffered by the inhabitants at the hands of pillagingFrench military men. “In the French quarter [the quarter of Christians], severaldays ago a market was established among the soldiers. One can see there all theloot that they appropriated during the revolt. There one easily exchanges awatch costing three louis for a diamond, gold, or silver worth twenty.” He complainedthat local “Greeks and Jews” followed them closely and profited by theirignorance of the real value of Egyptian goods. Meanwhile, Bonaparte was establishinga police force in each quarter that would closely watch the Muslims so asto forestall any further plots or conspiracies among them. Niello Sargy said thatimmediately after the revolt, all Cairenes were required to wear the tricolorcockade, and the French national flag was raised above all public establishments.Al-Jabarti hinted, in contrast, that as a result of the revolt the French authoritiesgradually dropped their demand that Egyptians wear the cockade.Bonaparte ordered that extensive new fortifications be built in Cairo andenvirons, even if they involved tearing down mosques (al-Jabarti lamented thedemise of the al-Maqs Mosque, another at Imbaba, and the al-Kazaruni Mosqueat Roda Island, among others). The military engineers widened streets andchopped down date palms. Bonaparte also hunted down the suspected ringleaders.24 His troops sought and searched the homes of the master of the blindmen’s guild, the secretary of the spice traders’ guild, and a number of clerics.The blind, as street beggars and Qur’an reciters, were well placed to hear andshare intelligence on the enemy surreptitiously. The spice traders were wealthy,