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

36 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTstraits at Burj Mughayzil [a tower] from one bank of the river to the other toprevent French ships from passing into the Nile.” 18 Al-Jabarti reported thatduring Murad’s absence the Muslim clergy, or ulema, held daily prayer sessionsat the ancient seminary of al-Azhar and that others took up this practice, includingthe Sufis or mystics of the Ahmadiya and other orders. Children in theQur’an schools (the elementary schools of the time) prayed and chanted God’sname, the Kind (al-Latif ). The chronicler conceded that all this prayer andchanting had no effect on the course of events. It did, he said, produce an atmosphereof greater kindness in the jittery capital.As a precaution, the ruler Ibrahim Bey had all the Europeans in Cairorounded up and imprisoned. He at one point ordered those kept in his palace onthe island of Roda killed. Sometimes the spouses of powerful politicians havemore prudence than their partners, whose authority tends to make them arrogantover time. Ibrahim Bey’s chief wife, Züleyha Hanim, appears to havethought it unwise to dispatch European men of great property at a time when aforce of 32,000 Europeans had landed in the country and was preparing tomarch on the capital. She intervened with the executioners to save their lives,arguing that a saying of the Prophet predicted that the French would seizeEgypt. She then hid them in her side of the palace. 19Back in Alexandria, Bonaparte had two reasons to make haste. He wished todeny the beys in the capital the time to make defensive preparations or to emptythe storehouses of the city. But he also felt Nelson’s breath on his neck. He hadboots and biscuits distributed to the troops and immediately ordered the armyto form three columns and to set out in pursuit of the cavalrymen, heading towardthe capital, Cairo. He left 2,000 men in Alexandria with the Alsatian generalKléber, who had a head wound. During July in Egypt, a time of torrid sunand dry, hot air, the temperature often rises to 115 degrees Fahrenheit andmore. Bonaparte had neglected to research the exigencies of fighting a war insuch a place as the Nile Valley at such a time of the year, and appears not to haverealized that water canteens were an absolute necessity. His troops had none.Perhaps he thought water would be found in village wells along the way. If so,he was mistaken. It was the season of the low Nile, and the water tables hadfallen, and the Bedouin resistance to the French invasion delighted in hiding orspoiling what wells there were. Some historians have accused the general ofbeing willing simply to use up his men, and of asking of them the impossible.No doubt he frequently did so. But the mistake with regard to water resources is