Napoleon in Egypt (25 page)

Napoleon knew that these enforced levies could only be a temporary measure. At the same time, he realized that he could expect little in the way of regular financial support from the Directory back in France. They would be the first to point out that a colony was expected to send goods back to the mother country, rather than be a drain on its resources. With this in mind he planned to send to France regular convoys containing large amounts of expensive coffee, sugar and cotton, as well as other Egyptian products such as rice and dried beans. He also had high hopes of creating a lucrative trade in spices and other luxury goods from the Far East. However, as he explained in one of his regular reports to the Directory, before such trade could be inaugurated he first had to establish a French colony, and this would require further military support, especially cavalry. But it is his list of other items he wished to be sent from France that is most revealing:

1. A troupe of comedians.

2. A troupe of ballerinas.

3. At least two or three puppeteers.

4. 100 French women.

5. The wives of all those who are stationed out here.

6. 20 surgeons; 30 pharmacists; 10 physicians.

7. Some iron foundrymen.

8. Some liqueur makers and distillers.

9. 50 gardeners with their families, and seeds of all types of vegetables.

10. Each convoy must bring 200,000 pints of eau-de-vie [alcoholic spirits] and a million pints of wine.

11. To be sent with these, 300,000 lengths of blue and red flag cloth.

12. To be sent with these, soap and oil.
²⁵

Such were deemed the necessities of a French colony, without which it would be impossible to lay down the foundations of civilization. Indicatively, Napoleon had chosen to bring with him intellectuals for the pursuance of his own grandiose vision, rather than entertainers for his soldiers.

However, despite the lack of comedians and ballerinas, Napoleon still found opportunity for diversion, and one day not long after his arrival in Cairo he set out with his entourage on a trip to the pyramids. These huge 4,000-year-old monuments (to this day the most massive stone buildings in the world) had been a source of awe and mystery to visiting Europeans since classical times, when they had been seen as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Later, medieval visitors had speculated that they might be Joseph’s granaries, as mentioned in the Bible. Despite the erosion inflicted by the desert winds and sandstorms, the summit of the Great Pyramid was still almost five hundred feet above ground level, and proved so impressive that Napoleon suggested his companions should take part in a race to the top. He is said to have been highly amused at the sight of his staff officers and savants scrambling up the crumbling slabs of the steep stone slope beneath the stupefying heat of the Egyptian sun. Berthier, who was lovesick for his Italian
contessa
, soon lost the will to continue, and gave up halfway. Surprisingly, it was the fifty-three-year-old mathematician Monge, with a gourd of reviving eau de vie attached to his buttonhole, who was first to the summit. Lieutenant Desvernois, who climbed to the top some weeks later, described the view:

At the top you look down to see a vast sweep of countryside, a spectacle more imposing than you could possibly dream. To the west, the view stretches into the immensity of the bare arid desert, while to the east the fertile valley of the Nile, all green with vegetation, rolls away into the far distance. Compared with the enormous mass of this mountain of stones, the people far below at its feet appear like crawling insects. . . . Around rise other pyramids, one of them . . .still covered to around 150 feet from the summit with slabs of red granite which are smooth and polished like a mirror, making it impossible to climb.
²⁶

As the other members of Napoleon’s staff reached the summit, Monge offered each of them a reviving slug of eau de vie. Far below they could see Napoleon, standing alone, lost in thought. When they descended, it became clear that he had not been preoccupied with the timeless wonder of the Great Pyramid, but with the more mundane facts of its construction. He informed Monge that the stone blocks used to erect it would be sufficient to build a wall three meters high and one meter wide around France; the great mathematician thought for a moment, and then confirmed that he was correct.
^*

Other members of the Egyptian expedition would later attempt to explore the inside of the Great Pyramid, which had only been opened up again a few years previously. The French traveler Savary was one of the first to penetrate the interior, and most vividly evokes the atmosphere inside the pyramid at this time:

We left our coats at the entrance to the passage which led into the interior, and began to descend, each holding a burning torch. Towards the bottom, we had to wriggle on our bellies like snakes in order to gain access to the inner passageway. . . . We scrambled up this on our knees, at the same time pressing our hands against the sides. Had we not done this, we risked slipping backwards, and the slight grooves on its surface would not have been able to stop us from sliding all the way down to the bottom. About halfway up we fired a pistol shot whose deafening noise echoed away forever through all the distant recesses of the immense edifice. This awakened thousands of bats, which hurtled down, striking us on our hands and face and extinguishing several of our torches.
²⁷

As night fell, Napoleon’s officers had their tents erected at the foot of the Great Pyramid. It was noticed that Berthier had two tents, and Napoleon discovered that inside one of these he had erected a little shrine to the Contessa Visconti. As they sat around their campfire in the desert, Napoleon could not resist poking fun at Berthier over this.
²⁸
However, events which have since come to light indicate that Napoleon’s attitude towards Berthier and his pining for his great love were more complex than his outer badinage would suggest. Similarly, it seems likely that Napoleon’s preoccupation at the foot of the Great Pyramid was concerned with more than just mental arithmetic. We now know that prior to this he had received some personal news that had left him an emotionally broken man.

IX

“Josephine! . . . And I am 600 leagues away!”

N
APOLEON’S
tactical brilliance at the Battle of the Pyramids, together with his whirlwind of activity during the first weeks in Cairo, is rendered all the more remarkable by the single-mindedness with which he put aside a revelation that had devastated him. A couple of days before the battle, he was walking on the edge of an oasis with his loyal aide Junot at his side, his secretary Bourrienne and his staff entourage following a few paces behind.
¹
Some time prior to this he must have been boasting to his officers, as was his habit, about how lucky he was to have the love of a good woman—namely his wife, Josephine. By this stage, her infidelities had become common knowledge amongst his senior officers. Junot must have noticed their exchange of scoffing looks when Napoleon spoke of his feelings for his wife, and must have wished to put his master straight on this matter to avoid Napoleon humiliating himself any further. This is of course conjecture, but something must surely have taken place along these lines—for there is no doubting Junot’s loyalty, and it is difficult to imagine why else he might have chosen to bring up such a painful subject at this particular, highly inopportune moment.

At any rate, as Napoleon and Junot were walking on the edge of the desert, Junot revealed that Josephine had persisted in her affair with Hippolyte Charles, giving precise details of their liaison and even showing Napoleon a letter that confirmed these details, which according to Junot were the talking point of all Paris. On hearing this news, Napoleon went into a state of shock: his limbs began moving in an involuntary spasmodic fashion, all the blood drained from his already pale face, turning it quite white, and he slapped his hand to his forehead several times. Then he turned to Bourrienne and Berthier behind him, demanding to know if this was all true, and if so, why they had not told him. When Berthier confirmed the truth of what Junot had said, Napoleon flew into a rage. “Josephine! . . . And I am 600 leagues away! . . . I have no wish to be the laughingstock of all those useless Parisians. I will publicly divorce her.” According to Bourrienne, in his rage he kept repeating the word “divorce” again and again.
²

Inevitably, Josephine’s son Eugene Beauharnais soon got to hear of what had happened. Five days later he wrote to his mother, informing her of what Napoleon had been told, and adding hopefully that he was sure all this gossip had been invented by her enemies. The following day Napoleon wrote a letter to his elder brother and confidant Joseph in Paris, in which his extreme rage and despair are all too evident. “I am weary of human nature. I need solitude and isolation. Greatness no longer interests me. All feeling in me is dried up. My thirst for glory has faded at the age of twenty-nine. I am completely worn out.”
³
This was July 25: in the intervening period he had fought the Battle of the Pyramids, made his triumphal entry into Cairo, and begun his “revolution” of the affairs of Egypt. The supreme effort of will involved in putting such emotional turmoil out of his mind can only be marveled at. In his letter to his brother he also wrote: “I can be in France in two months. Have a country house ready for me when I return, either close to Paris or in Burgundy. I count on locking myself up and spending the winter there.” In the midst of his triumph he wished to give it all up; yet paradoxically, at the same time he continued laying the foundations of his “Oriental empire.”

This letter in which Napoleon poured out his soul (“The veil is torn . . . the same heart is torn by such conflicting feelings”), and the letter from Eugene Beauharnais revealing the precise details of why Napoleon was in such a state, were dispatched from Cairo to Alexandria, and thence by sea for France. Unfortunately, before they could reach their destination they were intercepted on the high seas by the British navy, and transmitted to London. The British seized on this opportunity to inflict a propaganda victory on the French, and the letters were published amidst much merriment in the
Morning Chronicle
of London on November 24, 1798; French spies soon relayed this information back to Paris, where Napoleon truly became a laughingstock.

But why had Napoleon reacted in such an extreme fashion to what Junot had told him? This was hardly the first time he had heard about Josephine being unfaithful to him; Junot had merely given voice to what he must surely have suspected, as he had on previous occasions. Many explanations have been put forward for Napoleon’s violent outburst this time. Junot had confirmed—in the presence of others—what had previously only been a suspicion: a private fear had been made public. This had caused Napoleon to look a fool in the eyes of others, something he could not abide. It had also forced him to act against Josephine, something he was only willing to do when things reached an unavoidable crisis point. Previously he had been able to confront Josphine, to humiliate her sadistically, and then effect an emotional reconciliation: the sadomasochistic element that bound their relationship had thus been reinforced. But this time she simply was not there, and was not likely to be in the near future—hence his cry of anguish: “Josephine! . . . And I am 600 leagues away!” This unbridgeable absence, amongst the nexus of contributory circumstances, may well have been what tipped the balance. Yet in the end, one can only speculate.

It has been claimed that this crisis marked both a physical and an emotional turning point in Napoleon’s life, and there is some evidence to support this view. From now on the thin, rakish figure with long, unkempt hair would gradually become transformed into the suave, plump man of legend. Whether this was through compensation for emotional deprivation or due to purely glandular effects is unclear, but there is no doubting that Napoleon underwent a physical transformation, and that this certainly showed its first manifestations around the time of his Egyptian expedition. The mental transformation is equally difficult to pinpoint. In his youth, Napoleon cut a dashing, heroic figure, driven by dreams of glory, but at some pivotal stage in his career these more positive qualities were gradually transmogrified into the cold, ruthless and often blind ambition which led him to his greatest honors and his greatest disasters. There had always been a cruel, heartless element in Napoleon’s character, but it was only in Egypt that this would begin to appear as a ruling characteristic. As he concluded in his letter to his brother Joseph: “There is nothing left for me but to think only of myself.”
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Whatever the effects of this crisis upon Napoleon, one thing is certain: from this time onwards Junot fell from grace. The fearless sergeant who had stood by the youthful Napoleon at the siege of Toulon would continue to prosper, but he would no longer remain Napoleon’s faithful confidant—someone had to take the blame. As for Napoleon himself: once he had given vent to his extreme emotions, he seemed miraculously capable of putting them from his mind, consciously committing himself to the task at hand with ever-renewed vigor and single-mindedness. At the same time, these ignored elements would continue to play their own souring role, independent of conscious control.

Meanwhile the situation in Egypt as a whole remained unresolved. Napoleon had taken Alexandria, driven his troops down through the delta, defeated the Mamelukes in a set-piece battle and marched into Cairo. He had expected that the taking of Cairo would secure Egypt under French rule, but it had not. As long as Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey remained at large, even with depleted Mameluke forces, French rule remained a temporary measure in the eyes of the Egyptian population. It was evident that they feared a return of the Mamelukes far more than they feared even the most severe measures imposed by the French.