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

244 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTnearly 6,000 fighting men since the campaign began. In France that summer,however, the victory at Abuqir played as another token of military glory.Bonaparte knew a dead end when he saw one. He secretly slipped out of thecountry in August, leaving behind a note for the surprised General Kléber informinghim that he was henceforth in charge of Egypt. Equally surprised to beleft behind was Pauline Fourès, his paramour. The Corsican arrived in Franceon October 9 and went straight to Paris, where he began to intrigue. In Novemberof 1799 he came to power as First Consul through a coup. He reconciledwith Josephine.Back in Egypt, Kléber finally convinced Murad Bey to ally with the French,but soon thereafter the old Georgian died of plague. Kléber was assassinated bya disgruntled Egyptian in the summer of 1800, and succeeded by the inept andbrutal Abdullah Menou.The Ottoman and British military alliance forced theArmy of the Orient out of Egypt in 1801, and the remaining French troopswere given safe passage back to France on British vessels. Many of our memoiristscame back home in that humiliating way, including Captain Moiret (whothereby lost his Zulayma), Captain Desvernois, and the Jacobin designer of uniforms,François Bernoyer. Pauline Fourès had slipped out of Egypt in 1800 afteran earlier attempt failed, and after an alleged dalliance with General Kléber. Sheremarried, divorced again in 1816, and then went off to Brazil to start a lumberbusiness. Returning to France in 1837, she lived to an advanced age.Ibrahim Bey lived to see the old beylicate in Egypt replaced by the rule ofan Albanian Ottoman officer and later the sultan’s viceroy, Mehmet Ali Pasha.Mehmet Ali wiped out most of the remaining Mamluks in an 1811 massacre atthe Citadel and embarked on new policies of modern authoritarian rule, some ofwhich imitated Bonaparte’s. Ibrahim died in irrelevancy in 1818.Bonaparte’s Egyptian experience shaped his own subsequent policies morethan European historians generally admit. In 1804, he crowned himself emperor,an office more customary in the Middle East than in revolutionaryFrance. The habits of sexual prerogative for the great Sultan, which he first acquiredin Egypt, continued to roil his marriage with Josephine, though she becamehis empress (until he divorced her in 1810). Through the Concordat,Napoleon sought the same sort of accord with the Catholic Church as he hadhad with the Muslim clerics of al-Azhar, for the sake of social peace. In creatingBonaparte as the Great Sultan, the grand emperor, over the Nile Valley, the Directoryhad accustomed him to a station in life that he proved unwilling to relinquish.France itself, and much of Europe, met the fate that the Directors andTalleyrand had intended for Egypt.