Napoleon's Pyramids (16 page)

At Wardan the army was finally allowed to rest for two days. The men washed, slept, foraged, and bartered for food. Once again Astiza proved her value in being able to converse with the villagers and trade for sustenance. So successful was she that I was able to supply some of the officers at Napoleon’s headquarters with bread and fruit.

“You’re sustaining the invaders like the Hebrews were sustained by manna from heaven,” I tried to joke with her.

“I’m not going to starve ordinary soldiers because of the delusions of their commander,” she retorted. “Besides, fed or starving, you’ll all be gone shortly.”

“You don’t think the French can beat the Mamelukes?”

“I don’t think they can beat the desert. Look at all of you, with your heavy uniforms and hot boots and pink skin. Is there anyone but your mad general who doesn’t regret coming here? These soldiers will leave on their own soon enough.”

Her predictions were beginning to annoy me. She was a captive, after all, spoiled by my kindness, and it was high time I reprimanded her. “Astiza, we could have killed you as an assassin in Alexandria. Instead, I saved you. Can’t we become not master and servant, or invader and Egyptian, but friends?”

“A friend of whom? A man foreign to his own army? In alliance with a military opportunist? An American who seems neither true scientist nor soldier?”

“You saw my medallion. It’s a key to something I’m to figure out.”

“But you want this key without understanding. You want knowledge without study. Coins without work.”

“I view this as damned hard work.”

“You’re a parasite looting another culture. I want a friend who believes in something. Himself, first. And things greater than himself.”

Well, that was presumptuous! “I’m an American who believes in all kinds of things! You should read our Declaration of Independence! And I don’t control the world. I just try to make my way in it.”

“No. What individuals do
does
control the world. War has put us together, Monsieur Ethan Gage, and you are not an entirely unlikable man. But companionship is not true friendship. First you have to decide why you are in Egypt, what you mean to do with this medallion of yours, what you really stand for, and
then
we will be friends.”

Well. Quite insolent for a merchant’s slave, I thought! “And we will be
friends
when you acknowledge me as master and accept your new fate!”

“What task haven’t I done for you? Where haven’t I accompanied you?”

Women! I had no answer. This time we slept an arm’s length away and my mind kept me from sleep until well past midnight. Which was just as well, because I narrowly escaped having a wandering donkey step on my head.

O
ne day after the Egyptian new year, on July 20 at the village of Omm-Dinar, Napoleon finally received word of the Mameluke disposition for the defense of Cairo, now just eighteen miles ahead. The defenders had foolishly split their forces. Murad Bey led the bulk of the Mameluke army on our own western side of the river, but a jealous Ibrahim Bey had kept a sizable share on the east. It was the opportunity our general had been waiting for. The order to march came two hours after midnight, the shouts and kicks of officers and sergeants brooking no delay. Like a great beast rousing itself in its cave, the French expeditionary force stirred, rose, and marched south in the dark with a sudden anticipation that called to mind that prickly feeling I get from demonstrating Franklin’s electricity. This would be the great battle, and the coming day would see either the destruction of the main Mameluke army or the rout of our own. Despite Astiza’s lofty lecture about controlling the world, I felt no more in charge of my fate than a leaf on a current.

Dawn came red, with mist on the reeds of the Nile. Bonaparte urged us on, anxious to crush the Mamelukes before they joined forces or, worse, dispersed into the desert. I caught sight of him exhibiting a scowling intensity greater than any I’d yet observed, not just keen on a fight but obsessed with it. A captain made some mild objection and Napoleon snapped back with the bark of a cannon. His mood made the soldiers apprehensive. Was our commander worried about the coming battle? If so, all of us would worry too. None had gotten enough sleep. We could see another great pall of dust on the horizon where the Mamelukes and their foot soldiers were massing.

It was during a brief stop at a muddy village well that I learned the reason for the general’s darkness. It was by chance that one of the general’s aides, a recklessly brave young soldier named Jean-Andoche Junot, got down from his horse to drink while I did.

“The general seems awfully impatient for battle,” I remarked. “I knew this fight must come, and that speed in war is paramount, but to rise in the middle of the night seems uncivilized, somehow.”

“Stay away from him,” the lieutenant warned quietly. “He’s dangerous after last night.”

“You were drinking? Gambling? What?”

“He’d asked me weeks before to make some discreet inquiries because of persistent rumors. Recently, I received some pilfered letters that prove Josephine is having an affair, a secret to none but our general. Last evening, shortly after word came of the Mameluke dispositions, he abruptly demanded what I’d learned.”

“She’s betrayed him?”

“She’s in love with a fop named Hippolyte Charles, an aide to General Leclerc back in France. The woman has been cheating on Bonaparte since they were married, but he’s been blind to her infidelities since he loves her like a madman. His jealousy is unbelievable, and his fury last night was volcanic. I was afraid he was going to shoot
me.
He looked insane, striking his head with his fists. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed by the one you love most hopelessly? He told me his emotions were spent, his idealism over, and that nothing remained for him but ambition.”

“All that over an affair? A Frenchman?”

“He loves her desperately, and hates himself for that love. He’s the most independent and friendless of men, meaning he’s captive to that trollop he married. He ordered this march immediately, and swore repeatedly that his own happiness was over and that before the sun sets, he would destroy the Egyptian armies to the last man. I tell you, Monsieur Gage, we’re being led into battle by a general who is insane with rage.”

This didn’t sound good at all. If there’s one thing a person hopes for in a commander, it’s a cool head. I swallowed. “Your timing wasn’t the best, Junot.”

The lieutenant swung up onto his horse. “I had no choice, and my report should have come as no surprise. I know his mind, and he’ll put the distraction aside when battle comes. You’ll see.” He nodded, as if to reassure himself. “I’m just glad I’m not on the other side.”

I
t was 2 P.M., the hottest time of the day, when the French army began forming squares for the Battle of the Pyramids. It was more correctly the Battle of Imbaba, the closest town, but the pyramids on the horizon gave it a more romantic name in Talma’s dispatches. Imbaba’s melon fields were quickly overrun by soldiers seeking to quench their thirst before the coming combat. One of my memories is the bib of juice stain on their uniforms as the regiments and brigades formed ranks.

The pyramids were still a hazy fifteen miles away, but arresting in their perfect geometry. From that distance, they looked like the caps of colossal prisms, buried to their neck in the sands. We stirred at the sight of them, so fabled and so towering, the tallest structures that had ever been built. Vivant Denon was sketching furiously, trying to fit a panorama on a notepad and to catch the shimmer of the vault of air.

Imagine the magnificent panoply of the scene. On our left flank ran the Nile, shrunken before the floods that would soon start but nonetheless a majestic blue that reflected the brilliant sky. Beside was the lush green of the irrigated fields and date palms that bordered it, a ribbon of Eden. To our right were the rolling dunes, like the frozen waves of an ocean. And finally in the distance were the pyramids, those mystical structures that seemed to belong to a different world, assembled by a civilization we could scarcely imagine, rising to their perfect peaks. The pyramids! I’d seen Masonic pictures of them, angular and steep, topped with a glowing, all-seeing eye. Now they were real, squatter than I had imagined, wavering like a mirage.

Add to this the tens of thousands of uniformed men in crisp formations, the milling Mameluke cavalry, the lumbering camels, the braying donkeys, and the galloping French officers—already hoarse from shouting orders—and I was trapped in an environment so exotic that it seemed like I’d been transported to a dream. Talma was flying through sheets of paper as he wrote furiously, trying to record it all. Denon was muttering to himself that we all must pose before battle could be joined. “Wait. Wait!”

Arrayed against Bonaparte’s army was a glittering host that seemed two to three times our twenty-five thousand men, topped by a thunderhead of dust. Were the Mamelukes better generals, it is possible we’d have been overwhelmed. But the Arab army was foolishly divided by the mighty river. Their infantry, this time Ottoman foot soldiers from Albania, was placed too far back to be of immediate use. A fatal weakness of the Mamelukes was not only that they did not trust each other; they trusted no Ottoman branch but their own. Their artillery was ill situated on our far left flank. Because of such incompetence, the French soldiers were confident of the outcome. “Look how foolish they are!” the veterans reassured their comrades. “They don’t understand war!”

On the far bank, shimmering on the horizon, was Cairo itself, a city of a quarter-million people, spiked by its impossibly slim minarets. Would we all find fortune there? My mouth was dry, my mind dazed by sensation.

Once again the Arab army’s heart was the Mamelukes, mounted cavalry now ten thousand strong. Their horses were superb Arabians and richly harnessed, their riders a kaleidoscope of robes and silks, their turbans topped with egret and peacock feathers, and their helmets gilded with gold. They were armed with a museum’s worth of beautiful and dated weapons. Old muskets were inlaid with jewels and mother-of-pearl. Scimitars, lances, spears, battle axes, maces, and daggers all glinted in the sun. More muskets and pistols were holstered on their saddles or thrust in their sashes, and each Mameluke was trailed by two or three servants on foot carrying additional firearms and ammunition. These slaves would sprint forward to relay weapons so the Mamelukes wouldn’t have to pause to reload. The warriors’ horses pranced and snorted like circus steeds, heads rearing in impatience for the coming charge. No army had withstood them for five hundred years.

Prowling the outskirts of the Egyptian formations were the white-robed Bedouin on their camels, masked like bandits and circling like wolves. These waited to descend on our ranks to kill and plunder when we broke under the penultimate Mameluke charge. Our own wolf, Bin Sadr, was hunting them even as they hunted us. Dressed in black, his cutthroats lurked on the lip of the dunes and hoped not only to ambush Bedouin, but to strip dead Mamelukes of booty before French soldiers could get to them.

The Egyptians had strapped small cannon on the backs of camels. The animals brayed and snorted and trotted this way and that under the shouted commands of their anxious trainers, so unsteady that the aim would prove worthless. The river was once more thronged with the lateen-rigged feluccas of the Muslim fleet, crammed with hooting sailors. Again we heard the clamor of drums, horns, bugles, and tambourines, and a forest of flags, banners, and pennants fluttered above their assembly like a vast carnival. The French bands struck up as well, as the European infantry filed into position with stolid efficiency from long-practiced drill, priming their weapons and fixing bayonets. The sun sparkled on every deadly point. Regimental banners bore streamers of past victories. Drums thundered to communicate commands.

The air was an oven, heating our lungs. Water seemed to evaporate before it could travel from lips to throat. A hot wind was coming up out of the desert to the west, and the sky was an ominous brown in that direction.

By this time most of the scientists and engineers had caught up with the army—even Monge and Berthollet had come ashore—but our role in the coming showdown had not been specified. Now General Dumas, looking even more gigantic on a huge brown charger, came galloping by to roar a fresh command.

“Donkeys, scholars, and women to the squares! Take your place inside, you useless asses!”

I have seldom heard more comforting words.

Astiza, Talma, and I followed a herd of scientists, French women, and livestock into an infantry square commanded by General Louis-Antoine Desaix. He was perhaps the army’s ablest soldier, the same age as Napoleon at twenty-nine, and one inch shorter, even, than our little corporal. Unlike the other generals, he was as devoted to his commander as a loyal hound. Homely, disfigured by a saber cut, and shy of women, he seemed happiest when sleeping between the wheels of a field piece. Now he formed his troops in such a robust square, ten soldiers deep facing in four directions, that entering was like taking refuge in a small fort made up entirely of human beings. I loaded my rifle again and looked out at Egypt from behind this formidable barrier of broad shoulders, high cockaded hats, and ready muskets. Mounted officers, dismounted scientists, and chattering women milled in the interior space, all of us nervous and hot. Field cannon were placed at each of the square’s outside corners, the artillerymen relying on infantry support to keep from being overrun.

“By Moses and Jupiter, I’ve never seen such splendor,” I muttered. “No wonder Bonaparte likes war.”

“Imagine if Egypt was
your
home and you were looking at these French divisions,” Astiza replied quietly. “Imagine facing invasion.”

“It will bring better times, I hope.” Impulsively, I took and squeezed her hand. “Egypt is desperately poor, Astiza.”

Surprisingly, she did not pull away. “Yes, it is.”

Once more the army musicians struck up the “Marseillaise,” the music helping steady everyone’s nerves. Then Napoleon rode by our square with his immediate staff, his steed black, his hat plumed, and his gray eyes like chips of ice. I climbed on a caisson—a two-wheeled ammunition wagon—to hear him. Word of his wife’s infidelities had left no obvious mark, save furious concentration. Now he pointed dramatically at the pyramids, their geometric purity wavering in the heat as if seen through water. “Soldiers of France!” he cried. “Forty centuries look down upon you!”

The cheer was eruptive. As much as the common foot soldier complained about Bonaparte between battles, they welded to him like lovers in a fight. He knew them, knew how they thought and bellyached and breathed, and knew how to ask them the impossible for a bit of ribbon, a mention in a dispatch, or a promotion to an elite unit.

Then the general leaned closer to Desaix with quieter words that some of us could hear but which were not meant as an address to the army. “No mercy.”

I felt a sudden chill.

Murad Bey, once more the commander of the Arab army in our front, saw that Napoleon intended to march his squares forward to bludgeon through the Arab center, splitting the Mameluke forces so they could be destroyed piecemeal. While the Egyptian ruler had no grasp of European tactics, he had the common sense to try to forestall whatever the French intended by attacking first. He raised his lance, and with their eerie, ululating cry, the Mameluke cavalry once again charged. These slave warriors had been invincible for centuries, and the ruling caste simply could not believe that technology was bringing its reign to an end. This was a much larger attack than any we had yet faced, and so many horses thundered forward that I literally could feel the quaking of the ground beneath the caisson I had mounted.

The infantry waited with nervous confidence, knowing by now that the Mamelukes had neither the artillery nor the musket discipline to prevail against the French formations. Still, the enemy’s approach was furious as an avalanche. All of us tensed. The ground shook, sand and dust erupted at the breast of their line like oncoming surf, and lances, spears, and rifle muzzles were brandished like fields of shaking wheat. I felt a little reckless and giddy up on my perch, looking over the heads of the ranks before me, Astiza and Talma looking up at me as if I were crazy, but I hadn’t seen a Mameluke weapon yet that I felt had much chance of hitting me at any range. I raised my own rifle and waited, watching the enemy banners ripple.

Nearer and nearer they came, the rumbling growing in volume, the Mamelukes sounding their high, wavering cry, the French whispering not a word. The open ground between us was being swallowed. Were we ever going to fire? I swear I could pick out the bright colors of the enemy’s unexpected Caucasian eyes, the grimace of their teeth, the veins of their hands, and I became impatient. Finally, without conscious decision, I squeezed my trigger, my gun kicked, and one of the enemy warriors pitched backward, disappearing in the stampede.

It was as if my shot were the signal to commence. Desaix cried out and the front of the French erupted in the familiar sheet of flame. In an instant I was deaf and the attacking cavalry went down in a crashing wave of torn bodies, screaming horses, and thrashing hooves. Smoke and dust rolled over us. Then another volley from the rank behind, and another, and then another. Somewhere the field guns boomed and scythes of grapeshot whickered out. It was a storm of lead and iron. Even those Mamelukes not hit were colliding and catapulting over the mounts of their comrades. A furious charge had been churned into havoc in an instant, just yards from the first French bayonets. So close were the fallen enemy that some were hit by the burning wadding from the European muzzles. Tiny fires started on the clothes of the dead and wounded. I loaded and fired again too, to what effect I couldn’t tell. We were wreathed in smoke.

The survivors wheeled away to regroup while Napoleon’s soldiers swiftly and mechanically reloaded, every motion practiced hundreds of times. A few of the French had fallen from Mameluke fire and these were dragged backward into the middle of our square as the rank awkwardly reformed, sergeants beating at slackers to force them to duty. It was like a sea creature growing another arm, impervious to fatal damage.

The Mamelukes charged again, this time trying to penetrate the side and rear ranks of our infantry square.

The result was the same as before. The horses came in at an angle and a few got closer, but even those steeds not hit pulled up at the hedge of bayonets, sometimes throwing their yelling riders. Fine silks and linens bloomed with red blossoms as the Arabs were hit with the thick lead balls, this time from two squares firing into each flank as the Mamelukes galloped between them. Once again the assault was thrown into confusion. The attackers were beginning to seem increasingly desperate. Some stood off and fired at us with musket and pistol, but the shots were too sporadic and inaccurate to seriously dent the French ranks. A few of our infantry grunted or cried and went down. Then another European volley would boom out, and these assailants too would be knocked from their horses. We were soon surrounded by a ring of the dead and dying, a heap of the military aristocracy of Egypt. It dwarfed the slaughter of the earlier battles.

Even though Arab bullets regularly whined overhead, I felt curiously immune to the havoc. There was a sense of unreality to the entire scene: the colossal pyramids in the far distance, the glassy air, the oppressive heat, the palms waving in the desert wind even as random shot clipped fronds from their tops. The fragments of green floated down like feathers. There were great rolling clouds of dust against the white sky as the enemy galloped this way and that to no apparent purpose, looking for a weakness in Bonaparte’s squares and not finding it. The Egyptian infantry seemed rooted irresolutely in the rear, as if fatalistically awaiting their doom. The Mamelukes, fearing revolt, had let the lesser arms of their nation atrophy into paralyzed incompetence.

I looked to the west. The entire sky there was growing dark, the sun becoming an orange orb. Rain? No, I realized, these were other kinds of clouds—clouds of sand. The horizon had been blotted out with an approaching tempest.

No one else seemed to take notice of the weather. With undeniable courage, the Mamelukes reformed, took fresh rifles and pistols from their servants, and charged yet again. This time they seemed determined to concentrate all their fury on our own square alone. We fired, their front ranks went down as before, but their column was so thick that those to the rear survived to ride over their fallen comrades before we could reload. With desperate energy they drove their horses onto the French bayonets.