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

234 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTone. The technique of Alexander and of Nadir had been to take territory inlightning campaigns, to overtax the newly conquered to pay for their own conquestand to stake the commander to launch the next one. In each new territory,new recruits signed up, eager to seek booty in the next fallen metropolis. Thesuccessive triumphs and looting left behind wastelands rather than a flourishingempire, and the conqueror’s domain fragmented immediately on his death.Bonaparte contemplated it not as a fixed plan but as one option among many.Any such campaign in West and South Asia would in any case require that hefirst break out of his Egyptian cage and bring Syria under his control.In late January, Bonaparte wrote to Tipu Sultan, “You are of course alreadyinformed of my arrival on the banks of the Red Sea, with a numerous and invinciblearmy. Eager to deliver you from the iron yoke of England, I hasten to requestthat you will send me, by the way of Muscat or Mocha, an account of thepolitical situation in which you find yourself.” 25Lavalette thought Bonaparte’s best chance for improving on his catastrophicisolation was rather to regain the confidence of Selim III and break upthe Ottoman alliance with the British and the Russians. The commander inchief now chose for a special mission the astronomer and Orientalist JosephBeauchamp. The latter had spent a decade in Ottoman Baghdad, where hisuncle was French consul, and had been commissioned by the French Academyto fix the latitude and longitude of the Caspian Sea, a task prevented by the politicalturbulence of Iran at that time. 26 He had happened to be in Egypt whenthe French troops landed. He had the linguistic abilities and experience in theregion to conduct delicate diplomacy. Venture de Paradis, Bonaparte’s Arabicinterpreter, deeply distrusted local translators or dragomans and wanted Frenchdiplomats to be able to negotiate in the local language. 27An Ottoman caravel rode at anchor off Alexandria, its captain taken prisonerby the French. The man, a notable in Istanbul, had his two children withhim. Bonaparte insisted that he leave them in Alexandria as hostages and thenproposed to him that he secretly transport Beauchamp to the Ottoman capital.The captain, eager to be released and apparently confident that the Britishwould let him through, agreed to the plan. Beauchamp was to go first to Cyprusand gather information about the military and political situation in the easternMediterranean and to send back an espionage report. He was then to go on toIstanbul and negotiate the release of French merchants and military personnelwho had been taken prisoner in Syria and to see to it that they were allowed toreturn to France or to come to Egypt. He was also to conduct negotiations withthe grand vizier, intimating that the French would abandon Egypt under two