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

40 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTerate male villagers’ way of avenging their honor on a wayward female relative.Morand found the punishment horrible but clearly did not view the fact of thedeath sentence as surprising in the circumstances. After all, French law recognizedan affront to the husband’s honor in the form of a wife’s affair as a defenseunder the law for crimes of passion.As the French troops marched to the southeast, the Bedouin began shadowingthe columns, capturing anyone who fell behind. When they began followingtoo closely, the French unveiled cannons and fired on them. Sometimes this tacticcaused the Bedouin to disappear only for a short time, sometimes for an entireafternoon. But as the invaders continued to be dogged, both officers andsoldiers formed a profound dislike of the pastoralists who made their lives somiserable and killed their friends and comrades. Sometimes the settled populationwas equally hostile. Sergeant François recounted how, entering a village onthe way, the French faced concerted gunfire. “Since we never put down ourarms, we riposted; the fusillade became serious. Many inhabitants were takenand executed. This severity prevented the villagers from revolting.” 23 Havingput down this challenge, the French were then able to buy some provisions fromthe peasants.On 9 July Bernoyer marched along with the soldiers again during the day,the sun beating down on their heads, their knees trembling, thick phlegm ontheir lips and in their throats, their lungs barely able to draw a breath. CaptainVertray recalled, “When the sun was hot, a lake of dirty water would dry up.The deposited salt shone as though it were water. A good number of soldiersran ahead with pitchers to draw from it, but how deceived they were when theysaw that, the farther they advanced, the more the lake dried up.” 24 Despite mentionsof this phenomenon in classical texts the mirage had not been widelyknown or understood until the French invasion of Egypt. Gaspar Monge, aphysicist attached to the Egyptian Institute, was to write a paper on it, long afterthe troops had figured out that it was an optical illusion. Once they came to thisrealization, however, despair gripped them even more violently. Bernoyer hadto steel himself against the pitiful whimpers of those men who collapsed fromdehydration and pleaded for water as they lay dying. He was surprised, notbeing a professional soldier, at how he could see a man fall at his feet and stepover him, unmoved. But he was himself barely able to go forward and had noenergy to spend on caring for anyone else. Soon thereafter they sighted thetrees that signaled habitation and rejoiced “like sailors coming to shore” as theytrudged into the town of Damanhur in the gloaming. Desvernois thought that1,500 French soldiers died in the course of the four-day march from Alexandria.