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

60 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTcavalrymen from the 3rd Demi-Brigade. 22 When Dumuy approached Damanhuron the seventeenth, the people of the city launched an armed insurrection.With the aid of allied mounted Bedouin of the area, they beat off the smallFrench force and killed twenty French soldiers. Dumuy and his men straggledback to Alexandria, having grossly underestimated the size of the force that itwould take to vanquish and hold Damanhur permanently. Egyptians had alreadymounted a rebellion against French rule even before the latter reached Cairo.Kléber, faced with increased encroachments, clearly felt under siege. He wroteto General Menou in Rosetta, “I have heard nothing of the army. ... I am surroundedby Bedouin Arabs. The experience of Dumuy at Damanhur has madethem audacious. Yesterday we ran through 43 of them with our sabers only halfa league from the city.” Behind the main French lines advancing on Cairo, thegarrisons left behind were not so much victorious as beleaguered.Meanwhile, the French army advancing up the Nile to the capital continued tomeet opposition from villagers and Bedouin. Even some peasant women offeredviolence to the conquering French. Bernoyer observed, as the army nearedCairo on 16 July, that “at the approaches to a village, an aide-de-camp was killedwhen he got a bit too far ahead. A woman, her child in her arms, had the savagecruelty to put out his eyes with her scissors. Maj. Gen. Berthier had her shot onthe spot, and returned the infant to the hands of a peasant.” 23 Here the weaponused in the assault is appropriate to the gender of the assailant, a pair of scissorssuch as women used for domestic tailoring, and the baby is even still in her armsas she strikes. Bernoyer presented a horrific image of rebellious peasant motherhood,monstrous and mutilating in its resistance to colonial subjugation.The unit of Sergeant François bivouacked at the village of al-Kanqa on July18. On the way there, he said, some officers had fallen behind to relieve themselvesand were captured by Bedouin. This tribe already had one French captive,and they took their new acquisitions to the camp where they were holdinghim. Busy with their new charges, however, they neglected to keep their firstprisoner properly guarded, and he escaped, making his way to Bonaparte andrevealing the location of the camp. Bonaparte, François wrote, sent Venture deParadis with a ransom of “500 Spanish piasters” (silver coinage) and a nativeguide to the sheikh of the tribe. On their arrival, Venture held a parlay with thechieftain and ultimately passed the money to him in full view of the other tribesmen.“The rest of the tribe came and began quarrelling.” The sheikh, so as tohalt the fracas, took out his pistol and shot the officer in whom Bonaparte had