"DUPUIS, Brigadier-General in command of the fortress, to his friend CARLO.
"GRAND CAIRO,
"11th Thermidor, Year VI.
"I have been in the thick of it both on land and sea, in Europe and in Africa. Yes, my dear friend, on our arrival at Malta I was ordered to disband the military knighthood there and take possession of their effects. Then, after we had taken Alexandria by storm, I was made commander of the fortress. To-day, after a most painful march of twenty-two days across the desert, we reached Grand Cairo, beating the Mamelukes, or rather putting them to flight, for they aren't worth our powder and shot.
"Behold me then, my friend, invested with fresh honours, which I could not refuse, for they have now added the commandership of Cairo. This position, offered me by Bonaparte, was too fine a one to be lightly refused.
"The conduct of the brigade in the skirmish of the Pyramids was unique: it alone destroyed 4000 Mameluke cavalry, took 40 pieces of cannon in position, all their trenches, their flags, their magnificent horses and their richly laden baggage; for there is not a single soldier who hasn't a hundred louis on him, and, without exaggeration, several of them have five hundred.
"Finally, dear boy, I occupy to-day the finest palace in Cairo, belonging to the favourite sultana of Ibrahim Bey, Sultan of Egypt. I live in his enchanted palace in the midst of the nymphs of the Nile, but I am keeping the promise I made to my little European sweetheart.
"This town is atrocious; the very streets reek with the plagues caused by their filthiness: the people are degraded and disgusting.
"Although I work like a horse I have not yet succeeded in finding my way about this vast city; it is much larger than Paris, and so different.
'Ah! qu'il me tarde de revoir la Ligurie!'
"But, my friend, although I am wonderfully well off here, and in the lap of luxury, I often think of my friends. Where is the worthy Manita? I weep at our separation ... but I hope to rejoin you all soon, yes, soon; I am terribly sick of being so far away from you all.
"Our crossing of the desert and our various fights resulted in very few losses. The army is in good trim, and is now busy preparing for a start. I don't know whether we are bound for Syria: we are ready for any move. I had the ill-luck to lose my ...[1] at the storming of Alexandria.
"Do pray send me all your news.
"You may judge of the cowardliness of this great and vastly overrated people when I tell you that I took this immense city, on the 5th of the month, with only two companies of grenadiers.
"It has a population of 600,000 souls.
"Good-bye, my dear friend! A thousand messages to
Marcellin, his mother, his father, his daddy Carlo, and to all our friends.
"Believe me, ever yours devotedly,
DUPUIS.
"I write by this courier to Pépin and Spinola.
"Tell Pépin he was very lucky to be exiled: would to God I had been too! My kind regards to him and his family, also to poor Pietto; and to Honoria, your brother and your uncle."
We can judge from this letter that the general's enthusiasm did not run high! Here was a man who was governor of Cairo, who acknowledged that the position was far above his deserts, and yet he declares that he would rather have been exiled than enjoy the honours thrust upon him!
"Doubtless, a governor is a very great personage," quoth Sancho; "but I would rather stay in my own village and tend my goats than be governor of Barataria."
To complete our account of the state of affairs, I will place before my readers some extracts from a letter of Adjutant-General Boyer:—
"To return to Alexandria. The town has nothing of antiquity about it beyond its name. Picture to yourself ruins inhabited by an impassive people, who take everything as it comes, whom nothing astonishes; who, pipe in mouth, squat on their haunches all day long before their doors on a bench, taking very little notice of their families or children; the mothers wander about, their faces covered with black rags, offering their children for sale to the passers-by; the men, half naked, with bodies the colour of bronze, and loathsome skins, stirring up the muddy streams, devouring and grubbing up all they find, like pigs; houses hardly twenty feet high, with flat roofs, the insides like stables, the outsides just four bare walls. Such are the houses of Alexandria!
"Then remember that around this sink of squalor and misery are the foundations of the most celebrated city of ancient times, and the most precious monuments of art.
"When we left this town to ascend the Nile we found a desert as bare as your hand, where, every five or ten leagues, we came upon a wretched well of brackish water. Imagine an army compelled to cross those arid plains, which do not afford the soldier the faintest fleck of shade against the intolerable heat. Dressed in woollen, carrying his five days' rations and his knapsack, a soldier is so overcome by the heat and the weight of the things he is carrying that at the end of an hour's march he lightens his burden by throwing away his rations, thinking only of his present sufferings, and regardless of the morrow's hunger.
"He is parched with thirst, and there is no water to drink. Then, to add to the horror of the picture, the men begin to die of thirst, of exhaustion and of heat; others, seeing their comrades' sufferings, blow their own brains out; others, again, throw themselves with all their arms and baggage into the Nile, and perish in its waters.
"Each day our march saw the same sights, with even more unbelievable and unheard-of hardships still! The whole army went without bread for seventeen days. The soldiers lived on pumpkins and prooils and what vegetables they could pick up by the way. And that was all the food either general or common soldier had. The generals often fasted for eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four hours, as the soldiers, being the first to reach a village, would pillage everywhere, and the officers had often to satisfy themselves with what the soldiers had refused, or with their wasteful leavings.
"It is useless to tell you of our drinks, as here we have to live under Mahomedan law, which forbids wine, but gives us abundance of Nile water as a substitute.[2]
"If you wish to hear about the country along the banks of the Nile and to form an exact and correct idea of it, you should follow the topographical winding of that river.
"Two leagues below Cairo, it divides into two branches: one flows out at Rosetta, the other at Damietta; the Delta lies between these two tributaries, an extraordinarily fertile tract of land watered by the Nile. At the land end of these two branches is a border of cultivated country sometimes over a league in width, and sometimes less. When you have traversed this, you enter the desert, on the one side stretching away into Lybia, and on the other leading to the plains adjoining the Red Sea. The country round Rosetta and Cairo is densely populated; and quantities of rice, maize, and lentils are cultivated.
"The villages are one and all detestable; they are made of mud worked up by the feet and heaped up with holes scooped out from above.
"To give yourself a better idea, call to mind the snow-heaps children make at home. Their ovens are an exact reproduction of the ancient ones used in the Egyptian palaces. The cultivators, commonly called Fellahs, are extremely industrious; they live on very little, and in a state of indescribable filthiness. I have seen them drink the dregs left by my camels and horses in the water-troughs.
"And this is the Egypt so cried up by historians and travellers!
"Nevertheless, in spite of all these abominations and evils, I will admit that the country is quite capable of becoming to France a colony of almost incalculable value; but it will need time, and men. I can see that soldiers are not a suitable class of men to found colonies, and certainly not our soldiers. Ours are terrible in battle, terrible perhaps after a victory, unquestionably the bravest fighters in the world; but they are very little good for distant expeditions, for they are easily discouraged; idle and inconsequent, they are sufficient unto themselves. They have even been heard to say as their generals were passing: 'Look at those killers of French folk!'
"The cup is empty, I have drained it to the dregs: only my resolutions of perseverance are left me, my health, a courage which I trust will never desert me; and, with these, I will struggle to the last.
"Yesterday I saw the Council of Justice Bonaparte has formed: it is composed of nine persons. I saw nine automatons dressed in Turkish garb; their turbans were superb, their beards magnificent, and their robes reminded me of the images of the twelve apostles which my father kept in a cupboard. But, concerning their talent, attainments, genius, and knowledge, I cannot tell you anything: the proceedings are always kept secret, Turkish fashion. Nowhere is there so much ignorance, nowhere so much display of wealth, nowhere such bad and sordid use of temporal power.
"Enough of this chapter: I wished to give you my version, and I do not deny that I have omitted a great deal: but General Bonaparte's report will supply my deficiencies.
"Do not worry over me; I suffer, but so does the whole army. My personal effects have come to hand, so I have every compensation in my troubles. Do not be anxious about me, I am enjoying good health.
"Mind and look after your own. I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you in a year's time: I shall know how to appreciate you by that time, I can tell you! My warm love to my sisters.
"I am, your obedient and affectionate son,
BOYER."
So we see opinion concerning the Egyptian expedition was unanimous: everyone suffered, everyone complained, everyone longed to get back to France.
The recollection of these complainings and the remembrance of the smouldering mutiny followed Bonaparte even to St. Helena.
"Once, when the mood possessed me," he related, "I suddenly appeared in the midst of a group of discontented generals, and, addressing my remarks to the tallest of them, I said to him angrily, 'You are suggesting seditious proposals, take care I do not enforce my prerogative. Your five feet ten inches could not save you from being shot within two hours.'"
The tall general whom he addressed was my father; only Bonaparte was no more exact in relating stories than in the writing of his bulletins.