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

240 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTconducted a fighting retreat up the Nile. Desaix had initially only commandedabout 1,500 fighting troops, and had lacked cavalry. The emirs and their Mamluks,the Bedouin, and the peasants he faced therefore tended to melt awaywhen he won an engagement. Bonaparte’s relentless requisition of horses fromthe Delta had allowed him to assemble a cavalry unit of three hundred men,which he sent south with more infantry under General Davout in December.Murad Bey himself and the sharif caste or putative descendants of theProphet Muhammad in Upper Egypt are said by the memoirists to have been intouch with the Meccans and to have called for volunteers. Al-Jabarti wrote thatsome six hundred mujahidin, or holy warriors, gathered in Arabia and took aship across the Red Sea to the Egyptian port of Qusayr, which the French hadnot yet proved able to capture. They were joined by further volunteers from thenorth Arabian port of Yanbu, above Jidda, so that the number of volunteersswelled to 2,000. These mujahidin caught up with Murad Bey’s Mamluks, whichwere also joined by Hasan Bey Cuddavi and his Mamluks from Esna, and by reinforcementsfrom Nubia. Their arrival much improved the morale of the Muslimsin Upper Egypt. After his early January victory at Tahta, Desaix waited atGirga for the supply-laden French flotilla to catch up with him, since he had leftit far behind as it struggled against northerly winds.Belliard in his journal expressed the severest skepticism about rumors of thecoming of an Arabian volunteer force. He wrote on 10 January, “The inhabitantscontinue to believe in the reinforcement that Murad Bey has receivedfrom Qusayr. It is no doubt a rumor that he surely spreads so as to encouragethem to insurrection. For it is not at all credible that troops should arrive fromMecca. What interest would they have in making such a long voyage? And whowould they be coming to aid? Men who are enemies of the Turks, and withwhom they are almost always at war.” 40 Belliard and other French officers, whoexpressed similar doubts, had so imbibed Bonaparte’s propaganda about thebeys as rebels against the sultan that they could not even imagine that Muslimsolidarity and fury at infidel depredations might create an anti-French jihadimovement in the Hejaz. With the advantage of hindsight, Captain Desvernoisrecalled, “Murad profited from the French delay to engage in negotiations withthe Arabs of Jidda and Yanbu, encouraging them to cross the sea to Qusayr andjoin up with him to exterminate the infidels come to destroy the religion ofMuhammad.”A battle brewed at the small Upper Egyptian town of Samhud. 41 Murad Beystill had 1,500 emirs and Mamluks, and Hasan Bey had brought him another 400troops. Another Hasan, of Yanbu, commanded between 1,000 and 2,000 jihadis