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

238 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTMarmont acted quickly, moving the French troops away from the interiorof Alexandria, establishing an observation hospital in a large mosque, opening aspecial hospital for those already showing obvious symptoms, such as buboes,and establishing an active surveillance of the city, the two ports, and the hospital.34 Even the commander in chief’s fabled severity terrified his men less thandid the fevers and buboes of the plague. When he could not prevail by strictness,he resorted, as usual, to propaganda, going so far into unreality as to denythe outbreak altogether. He wrote Dugua on 2 February, “The malady of whichI informed you still exists, but its progress is less disquieting. . . . I gathered acommission of two physicians of this country, with one from the hospital; theyexamined all those fallen ill with fever and buboes. They declared that these hadnothing in common with plague, and the cold, poor nourishment, and above alltoo much date juice were the principal causes.” 35 It is difficult to believe thatDugua or anyone else paid much attention to these “findings,” and they arecontradicted by his own refusal to let the stricken troops at Mansura minglewith his other demi-brigades. Only the assertion that the outbreak had for themoment been contained was true. The significance of the outbreak lay in how itpointed toward a health threat that would dog the French military in succeedingmonths and years.The clerics in the Arabian Peninsula viewed Egypt as a near neighbor and asthe strategic key to controlling the Red Sea littoral and the Islamic holy citiesof Mecca and Medina. Although merchants and notables dependent on commercewith Egypt often cooperated with the new order, risking the wrath ofthe weak Ottoman government and that of the British navy, some of the morereligiously committed in this region viewed the French conquest with outrage.The Yemeni historian Lutf Allah Jahhaf recounted the story of the Arabian responseto the French invasion and the exploits of the volunteers who went offto fight a jihad against it in Upper Egypt. 36 He described Bonaparte’s arrival,saying that “the hand of unbelief stretched out” to Egypt and conquered itsMuslims, causing great corruption. In Yemen, a garbled account of the invasionhad reached observers through the gossip network among Red Sea sailors andpilgrims. Jahhaf ascribed the expedition to the machinations of a great Frenchmerchant whom the Ottoman-Egyptian beys mistreated, a reference toCharles Magallon. But he made the consul the “son of their king.” Magallon issaid to have been imprisoned, then released, so that he returned to France andcomplained to “the sultan of their realm, Bonaparte.” On hearing of the wealth