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

THE FERMENT OF THE MIND59were gathered in Bulaq as defenders of the city, and only women and childrenremained huddled in the city’s buildings. The streets were deserted. “The marketswere yellow and the roads dusty from not being swept and sprinkled.”The country’s elite further advised Murad Bey to establish his fortificationsat Imbaba on the west bank, north of Giza. There he had barricades constructedstretching up to a place called Bashtil, undertaking it with officers ofthe rank of sanjak and amir, as well as other beys such as his associates Ali Pashaand Nasuh Pasha. Al-Jabarti described the scene: “They brought the big shipsand the galleons which had been constructed in Giza, anchored them at Imbaba,manned them, and equipped them with guns. The western and the easternriver banks filled with guns, soldiers, barricades, cavalry, and infantry.”Murad called to himself the Bedouin tribes of Egypt, al-Khabariya, al-Qi’an,Awlad ‘Ali, al-Hanadi and others to help expand his cavalry. The beys alsobegan secreting their treasures in small, nondescript safe houses, some of themin provincial towns. This transfer of gold, jewelry, and other valuables had tobe accomplished on the backs of animal trains, and could not be kept entirelysecret from the Cairo public, which was gripped with panic. “The rich andthose of means prepared for flight. If the amirs had not prevented them fromthis, rebuked them, and intimidated those who wanted to leave, not one wouldhave stayed in Cairo.”In provincial towns, the Egyptian chronicler recalled, order began breakingdown. Townspeople began killing and looting one another, and Bedouin beganraiding into once well-defended settlements. “The whole of Egypt plunged intoa state of murder, plunder, terror on the roads, rise of evil stealing, spoiling ofthe fields, and innumerable other kinds of corruption,” lamented al-Jabarti. Thedisorder broke out behind French lines as well, isolating the French-dominatedports of Alexandria and Rosetta on the coast from the bulk of the army. Villiersdu Terrage, in nearby Rosetta, recorded in his journal for 16 July, “We learnedfrom the troops who arrived yesterday that there had been a small uprising atAlexandria. The inhabitants fired from the windows; an artilleryman waswounded.” General Kléber, with 2,000 troops, was able to restore control in theport. But the interior was a no-man’s land for the French. Bonaparte had notgarrisoned the western entrepôt of Damanhur after the French passed throughit. He left it to Kléber in Alexandria to have it more permanently subdued, usingin part an Arabic-speaking Maltese legion that would be able to communicatewith local Egyptians. The Maltese proved difficult to organize or train, however,so that Kléber gave up on sending most of them, and he dispatched a GeneralDumuy to secure Damanhur with some infantry companies and twenty