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

THE FERMENT OF THE MIND63Shum, 1,800 armed men had assembled to prevent the entry of the 9th and the85th demi-brigades of the division of Reynier. François served as a scout for thatexpedition. He said that all the inhabitants of the village had assembled and hadrefused to provide supplies to the French. Then they began firing on the foreigners.General Cambise, their commander, ordered his men to charge. “Wescaled the walls and entered it, all the while firing into those crowds. We killedabout 900 men, not counting the women and children, who remained in theirhabitations, to which we set fire with our musketry and artillery. Once the villagewas taken, we gathered up everything we found—camels, donkeys, horses,eggs, cows, mutton. . . .” He added, “Before leaving that village, we finishedburning the rest of the houses, or rather the huts, so as to provide a terrible objectlesson to these half-savage and barbarous people.” He maintained that thatevening many village headmen came to submit to the French generals and tooffer their services, “which were accepted.” He said, “Our generals distributedto them the proclamation of Bonaparte to the people of Egypt.” The account ofFrançois assumes a linear progression, from invasion to resistance to terror tosubmission and acceptance. In fact, what had begun was a cycle in which invasion,insurgency, terror, and peaceful exchange would alternate with one another.The cycle had to do with occupation and resistance rather than with a“clash of civilizations.” When Egypt later occupied the Sudan or Syria, it oftenmet resistance, as well.After one or two days of rest, depending on when they arrived, the Frenchcolumns set out from Wardan, initially refreshed, but soon they were breathing“flaming air” again and losing more men to dehydration, consequent renal failure,and suicide. “Most of the villages through which the army passed,” Françoisrecounted, “had been abandoned by their inhabitants.” On 21 July the Frenchfirst caught sight of the awesome pyramids, then still half-buried in mounds ofsand and of unknown significance, though some suspected their function astombs of the pharaohs. The Egyptian Muslims called the nearby Sphinx Abu al-Hul, the “father of fear,” regarding it as an ancient monument to some unspeakablehorror. The soldiers had not gone far when they encountered the advancescouts of Murad Bey. The Europeans drove the Ottoman Egyptians beforethem, from village to village. Around 10 A.M., they began to discover the mainbody of the beylicate’s army. Bonaparte addressed his troops: “Soldiers! Fromthe heights of these pyramids, forty centuries are looking down on you.”