The Linguist and the Emperor (6 page)

Coats of chain mail under their robes, gilded helmets on their heads, armed to the teeth with battle axes and daggers, spears, sabers, lances, and three sets of pistols, carrying all their worldly wealth in saddle bags beneath them—another reason not to let themselves be taken alive—they charge with the speed of lightning on Arabian mounts as they shout blood-curdling cries. These were the warriors—called Mamelukes, “owned men”—that Napoleon had come to conquer with his newly impressed recruits.

He begins his assault while still far away at sea, devising one edict after another to win the people over to him from their rulers, making good use of the Arabic printing presses he has brought along. The Mamelukes have been selfish and tyrannical rulers. Twenty-three Mameluke “beys” or warlords continually fight among themselves for power, causing devastation and ruin in the land. And though the ethereal beauty of the tombs and mosques they create will be lasting tributes to their glory, truly poetry in stone, the people hate them for their cruelty and greed.

Too long have the Mamelukes ruled Egypt! The hour of their destruction has arrived!

Napoleon announces in the first of his pamphlets,

Too long has this horde of slaves tyrannized over you, oh people of the Nile! You will be told that I come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it. I come to restore your rights and punish the usurpers! For I venerate God and his prophet and the holy Koran!

All men are equal before God; but it is wisdom, talents and virtues that make differences between men. Now what wisdom, what talents, what virtues distinguish the Mamelukes that they should possess all that is sweet in life? Is there a beautiful estate? It belongs to the Mamelukes. Is there a beautiful horse, a beautiful house? They belong to the Mamelukes. There formerly existed in Egypt great cities, great canals, great commerce; by what means have they been destroyed if not by the Mamelukes?

There is much truth in what he says, though it is also skillful propaganda. Egypt is sunk in centuries of lethargy and oppression. The French will encounter a world that is still medieval, its population poor and diseased and superstitious, their lives barely rising above those of their beasts.

It is not only the French fleet but the modern world approaching Egypt while the bejeweled slaves ride furiously to and fro in the desert, their shouts echoing in their schools of war.

Question: How to bring the ideals of the revolution to Egypt? How to bring energy and activity to this stagnating land?

Question: What is the best manner to construct ovens? How can justice and education be improved in accordance with the wishes of the people? Question: How is it possible to purify the waters of the Nile?

Chapter Four

Two Beginnings

Cairo. 1824, a quarter of a century after Napoleon invades—and then abandons—Egypt.

A YOUNG MAN
walks with his father in a walled garden behind their house. They talk of many things: politics, religion, history. The father has seen much and his observations are illuminating.

But as the old man reminisces, assassins appear beneath the dusty palms and towering cypresses. They are so swift that the young man does not even have time to cry out before they slit his throat. He falls to the ground, dying amid lush foliage while the murderers turn back to search the house, pushing the old man aside.

The house is pillaged—not of its gold and silver but of manuscripts. These writings have caused the tragedy, the works of the old man—the “most learned Jabarti”—who for the last fifty years has been recording the history of his native land. But while his
Chronicle of the French in Egypt
has won him fame, when he brings his history up to the year 1821, he makes the mistake of criticizing the current ruler, Mohammed Ali. He pays for it with the life of his son.

His life is spared, however, since Mohammed Ali admires his learning and the beauty of his prose. But it is a broken life. Withdrawing into his gloomy, medieval house, the historian gives up writing and spends his last years in grief and mourning.

In place of a son, Jabarti leaves behind his chronicle: an account that views Napoleon and his army not only on the battlefield, but from a thousand unthought-of angles—in whorehouses and barbershops, in cafés and in the bazaars. Jabarti records the endless Egyptian whisperings about the infidels. Even the immodest manner in which the foreign soldiers relieve themselves is not overlooked.

Jabarti is also scathing on the subject of the Mamelukes, scorning their cruelty, arrogance, and blindness to the approaching danger. If the Mamelukes think of the Europeans at all, they imagine a soft, pleasure-loving people, easily crushed “donkey boys.” Against such weak enemies they have not bothered to take the most elementary precautions, leaving their harbors and coastline virtually undefended.

Ignorant not only of the psychology of the Europeans but of all modern developments in warfare, the Mamelukes put their complete trust in a whirlwind cavalry charge. This fearless charge depends, above all, on a collective indifference to death acquired through a lifetime of rigorous training. Their strength has nothing to do with individual acts of courage, with exceptional bravery or heroism rewarded with bits of ribbon and medals. No, if the Mameluke charge is undefeated, it is because thousands of phenomenally skilled swordsmen ride together as one man, a mystical doctrine of
fana,
or self-annihilation, imparting a wild joy to their savage cries.

Thus matters stand on the eve of the invasion when, Jabarti tells us, a fleet suddenly appears off the shore of Alexandria. First, ten heavily armed men of war, and then fifteen more linger on the horizon, just discernible to those in the city. An excited crowd gathers at the docks and watches. Finally, toward the end of the day, a skiff is lowered from one of the warships and heads toward the harbor.

Sitting regally among the rowing sailors is a young, one-armed officer in a uniform covered with gold braid and medals. He neither gives nor returns salutations as the skiff makes its way among the fishing boats and barges and the graceful
feluccas,
the light Egyptian craft that swiftly ply back and forth in the crowded harbor.

Even when the skiff reaches shore, the officer maintains his self-contained stance, calmly stepping onto the dock as if the sudden appearance of a European war fleet is an everyday affair. Through an interpreter, he states that he is the British commander, Admiral Nelson. He asks to speak to the governor. And then in his matter-of-fact manner, without menace or swagger, he settles down to wait amid the bales of unloaded goods and the drying fish and the murmuring crowd.

Such calm is a British ideal:
nil admirari,
to be astonished at nothing. And certainly Nelson is a perfect representative of his class and nation. A clever, bold officer—implacable. The loss of an arm during fighting off the Spanish coast cost him a mere two weeks of active service, no more. Nelson is given command of this crucial mission despite his youth, the Admiralty choosing him for his total war philosophy. His goal in battle is not booty or ransom or even a formal victory according to the accepted rules of naval engagement. He is satisfied with nothing less than complete destruction of the enemy.

But Nelson has been overly eager in pursuit of “the Devil’s child,” as he calls Napoleon. Though he is quite correct in putting Egypt at the top of his list of Napoleon’s possible destinations, he has made a mistake in timing. The British warships travel faster than the heavily laden French transports, with their thousands of men. Thus, without realizing it, Nelson overtook Napoleon’s fleet in the middle of the Mediterranean, and arrived in Egypt three days ahead of him.

The governor comes to meet Nelson, with him a large retinue of officials and guards. It is a brilliant spectacle, the governor advancing down the wharf under a red silk canopy surrounded by turbaned courtiers and Nubian soldiers, armor glittering in the sun. And at the edge of the crowd, there is a sharp-eyed observer who records the exchange: the historian Jabarti whose writings later doom him.

The English told us that the French had set out from their country with a great fleet. They further said: “We are their enemies and do not know in which direction they intend to sail. Perhaps they will attack you suddenly and you will not be able to repel them.”

However, al-Sayyid Kurayyim thought their words to be trickery.

The English leader requested: “Sell us water and provisions and we shall stay in our ships lying in wait for them.”

Kurayyim replied: “We do not accept what you say nor will we give you anything.”

Then he expelled the foreigners that God’s will might be fulfilled.

One can read between the lines: Nelson, no diplomat, plays his hand badly. Unused to eastern circumlocution and stratagems, he states his business brusquely, tersely, like a soldier, and he is not believed.

The moment is decisive: If Nelson had stayed, Napoleon would never have been able to land. He and his army would have been destroyed on sight. “But God’s will was otherwise,” as Jabarti puts it. The setting sun shimmers over the Mediterranean, its deep blue waters streaked with green and turquoise swells. The muezzin’s long, wailing calls to prayer echo from hundreds of mosques as the one-armed admiral is rowed back to his ships.

Nelson heads north, continuing his search off the coasts of Italy and Greece. Egypt is left to its fate.

ALL OF FRANCE
follows the Egyptian campaign with bated breath, wildly celebrating Napoleon’s victories with the enthusiasm of a people who have had their fill of revolution and terror and are eager now for glory.

Terrible disasters, one after another, quickly follow these victories, but it does not matter for Napoleon turns them into “immortal triumphs” in the dispatches he sends home. Perhaps extravagances, lies, or boasts are better descriptions of the news Napoleon sends back of the Egyptian debacle.

Then suddenly he is back. One day, stirring military bulletins are everywhere: “The epoch-making French army has this month,” etc., etc. The next day “The Sultan El-Kebir,”—the Great Sultan as the Egyptians call him—is seen at the Paris opera, barely acknowledging ecstatic applause before withdrawing to the back of his box with a mysterious, preoccupied air, indifferent to such displays or feigning indifference. As a careful reader of Machiavelli, Napoleon knows that the prince must make his presence rare. And it is a prince that he now wants to be, his new republican title “First Consul” notwithstanding.

Napoleon returns alone, a fact unremarked upon at the time. He had slipped out of Egypt secretly, at night, leaving the pitiable remnant of his army to await the final defeat by themselves.

Even General Kléber, the next in command, is informed of his departure after the fact. A letter from Napoleon is given to him beginning (in true princely style) “By the time you receive this, I will have left Egypt” and going on to instruct Kléber to “hold out for as long as possible.”

And Kléber, scatologically cursing the day he ever set eyes on Napoleon, does hold out. For almost a year, he attempts to salvage what he can. Finally, he dies on a Cairo street, cut down by a religious fanatic who leaps out from amid a crowd of beggars and raises the cry which has echoed in Egypt from the moment the French arrive: “Death to the infidel dogs!” Josephine will name a pale, hundred-petaled rose in poor Kléber’s honor.

Command is left to a lovestruck, struggling general called Menou. While the demoralized army Napoleon had abandoned, decimated by disease, disintegrates before Menou’s eyes, and while Napoleon, in Paris, is fêted and applauded, the middle-aged Menou, swathed in white robes, publicly converts to Islam in the vast courtyard of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, where the French conquerors had stabled their horses when they first arrived.

“There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet!” the general declares in the presence of his broken, sorrowful officers, and before those of the savants who choose to attend. Perhaps this is a genuine profession of faith. Or perhaps it is a desperate political gesture, a last, futile attempt to gain popular support. Or perhaps it is neither of these but a case of violent, romantic passion overtaking a middle-aged man. Menou had fallen head-over-heels in love with a virtuous sixteen-year-old beauty who would not marry a Christian. In any case, this conversion does not save the situation: The French are forced to surrender.

The surrender is a long, drawn-out task, entailing much emotional back-and-forth and much senseless delay. By the time the surviving soldiers straggle back to France, by the time the appalling stories of what happened in Egypt become public knowledge, it no longer matters. Napoleon has, by then, seized power and, at the head of a new army, has gone on to achieve one victory after another.

With dazzling speed, Napoleon regains his Italian conquests, lost by the incompetent Directors while he was in Egypt, and achieves a decisive victory at Marengo that will lead the Austrians, the Prussians, and the Russians to sue for peace. The first coalition against France is vanquished.

Peace. Finally, there is a brief interval, a breathing space that lasts long enough for Napoleon to declare himself emperor before returning to his art. For he is an artist by nature, a temperamental, moody, passionate artist whose medium is war.

He is intractable. He is stubborn and provocative. Soon a second coalition against France must be defeated. But now it is as emperor that Napoleon leads the French armies to triumph—through Italy, Belgium, the German Kingdoms, the Austrian Empire, and finally the battle of Austerlitz, his masterpiece.

It is fought under a clear winter sky which becomes a catchphrase:
the cold sun of Austerlitz.
Indeed it can be taken as a metaphor for the stage in his career at which Napoleon has arrived. For unlike the Egyptian campaign—all furious heat, all willfulness and passion—by the time Napoleon fights at Austerlitz, he has achieved a balance between instinct and reason, boldness and prudence, passion and dispassion. He tempts the tsar to pursue the supposedly “retreating” French troops, drawing him into an untena-ble position. Then he surrounds the combined Russian-Prussian-Austrian force and cuts it to bits.

It is a brilliant piece of strategy conceived the night before when, sleepless and brooding, Napoleon makes the rounds of his troops, stalking back and forth on next-day’s battlefield, giving his imagination, his intellect, his instincts free play.

Half-abstracted, distant, he stops every so often to scrutinize some insignificant detail: the slope of a small hillock, the buttons on a soldier’s jacket. He mutters to himself or stares into the distance. Then he jokes with his soldiers—coarse jokes, talking obscenely of the “impatiently waiting” women of the enemy. He becomes eloquent about glory, practicing the genius he had for “getting others to die for him.” Finally, he falls silent. Looking over the dark field, he comes up with the inspired plan which brings Russia to its knees a second time, along with Prussia and the haughty Austrian Empire. The second coalition against France is vanquished.

Thus Napoleon dazzles the world. On a raft in the middle of the Nieman River, at a point equidistant from both army camps, Tsar Alexander publicly embraces the “usurper, the Corsican upstart,” calling him “brother.” The young and beautiful queen of Prussia—décolleté and shameless—outrageously flirts with him, trying to win favors for her defeated land. Princes and kings hang anxiously on his every word.

He has fulfilled his boast: the challenge he threw to the world at his coronation. At the height of the ceremony, Napoleon seizes the crown from the pope’s hands and, in an act of self-creation, places it on his own head.

The moment is captured by the great artist of the revolution, Jacques-Louis David—a man who had been so devoted to Robespierre that he had vowed to “drink hemlock with him” rather than let him die alone. Still alive and sketching furiously, David stands in a recess of Notre Dame. Now it is with Napoleon that he vows to “drink hemlock” if the need should arise.