6

she was waiting for her husband, with whom she was going to pass the night in the desert. This insensibility M. Denon admired as a charming ingenuousness, and, in the sentimental mind of a Frenchman, fancied she was a picture of the Angel of the Resurrection! It made him, however, reflect upon the lot of those poor women who had followed their husbands upon the expedition; for the invaders, as soon as they left the walls of Alexandria, began to perceive the difference between this and the former wars in which they had been engaged. Buonaparte's declaration, that he and his troops were good Mussulmen, was lost upon the Arabs. Mussulman or infidel the booty was the same to them; they hung upon the skirt of the troops within a hundred paces, and cut down or carried off every straggler. When they spared a prisoner it was not from humanity: they reserved him for outrages which, in English, are not to be uttered, but at which Voltaire has taught the French to jest. My friends,' said an officer to his detachment, we are to sleep at Beda to-night, at Beda you understand. This is all the difficulty you will have to encounter. Allons mes amis!' On they went, expecting to find a village; but Beda was only a well choked with stones, from the interstices of which a little water, muddy and brackish, was collected in goblets and distributed among them as if it had been brandy. This was their first halt! They had undertaken, without provisions, and without water, a march of 45 miles to Damanhour, the first place where any resources could be expected! The Arabs had filled up all the wells; and a few puddles of water, so muddy that it was scarcely liquid, were all that could be found upon the way. Travelling under a burning sun, and over sands that reflected back an intenser heat, their eyes were mocked with that appearance of water in the desert, which deludes and aggravates the sufferings of the traveller in the deserts. Many men died of heat; Larrey saved many by a few drops of sweetened spirits of wine in a little water, or of alcoholized sulphuric ether, or Hoffman's mineral drops, in sugar. He observed, that those to whom he was called too late, died, as if of extinction, without a struggle; one, even with his last breath, said, that his feelings at that moment were inexpressibly delightful. It was like sinking to sleep after extreme fatigue and pain.

Already had the French perceived some horrible instances of Mahommedan manners. They found a woman, whose eyes had been thrust out by her jealous husband, and she, still bleeding and with an infant in her arms, was wandering in the desert, while the wretch who had blinded her, and who was perfectly frantic with revenge, followed her in the hope of seeing mother and child perish! When some of the soldiers gave her their own scanty portion of water, he ran up, snatched it from her hands, and, in a fresh access of

jealousy,

jealousy, plunged a dagger into her heart, and, whirling the infant in the air, dashed it lifeless upon the ground. Some commissaries searched the Sheik's house at Damanhour for grain, and broke all the jars to satisfy themselves that they contained none. In the course of their search they found three black women, the wives of the Sheik, who had crept into a loft to hide themselves: the Frenchmeu addressed themselves immediately to these women, with as little ceremony as the Arabs would towards their prisoners, but they discovered that the Sheik thought the honour of his wives was safest under the defence of iron girdles.

The Mamelukes were first seen near this village; they came to reconnoitre, and each party at first sight formed an erroneous opinion of the other;-the French despising men who had so little discipline, and were so grotesquely equipped; the Mamelukes expecting an easy victory over an enemy on foot. When the soldiers reached Rahmanieh, upon the banks of the Nile, they rushed by thousands into the river: it was not enough to drink of its water; they did not stop to take off their clothes, but ran in as fast as they arrived, that every limb might partake of the refreshment, and that they might drink at every pore. No sound of drums, no command of their officers could restrain them.

At Rahmanieh a junction was formed with the division under General Dugua; the flotilla arrived the next day, and the collected force had not proceeded far before they perceived a body of Mamelukes by the village of Chebrisse. Buonaparte quickly formed his army, which consisted of four divisions, in as many squares, presenting a front of six deep; the artillery was placed at the angles, the cavalry and baggage in the centre. The grenadiers of each division formed platoons which flanked the squares, and were intended to reinforce the points of attack. The Mamelukes made à disorderly attack; but a few shells which fell among them put them to flight; this was a kind of artillery which they did not understand, and they had also resolved upon making their great stand near Cairo. Upon the river they were more fortunate; General Perrée consoled himself for the defeat which he actually sustained by saying, that he should have destroyed the whole of this flotilla, if he had not unluckily lost half his own. The troops rescued him, but not till he had suffered considerably. They had still a week's march before them, and during the whole of the way the Arabs hung upon the army, and cut off every straggler. All the villages were deserted, and the soldiers had not bread to eat, though some of them actually lay upon heaps of corn. They were also without animal food, but there were fruits in abundance, and the water melons were devoured with a greediness which, in some instances, proved fatal. M. Miot says, that in these melon grounds, on the

banks

banks of the river, and at a little distance only from the bivouacs of the army, he saw many Frenchmen, naked and headless, and stretched out with the breast toward the ground, a sight that increased the fear and horror with which the soldiers regarded the depraved and cruel enemies whom they had provoked. This is one of the passages that M. Miot has added to his history. The slaughter and the sufferings to which Buonaparte exposed his armies were always carefully concealed. Already had several officers of rank perished in this inglorious warfare. Desaix narrowly escaped. General Mireur galloped a little way from the camp, merely to try a horse which he had purchased; he was killed and stripped before the troops could succour him. Denano, one of Buonaparte's staff, a young officer of high promise, was taken and spared from immediate death, because the Arabs imagined, from his epaulettes and his embroidery, that he was a person of much greater importance. They carried him to their Sheik, and Buonaparte sent a sum of money to ransom him: a dispute arose in sharing it, and the Sheik, to terminate it, blew out the prisoner's brains, and then honourably sent back the ransom. The sufferings and the horrors of this march were so great, that many men killed themselves in despair, and some, going up to the general, who had tempted them to embark in this expedition, blew out their brains in his presence, exclaiming Voilà ton ouvrage!

The Mamelukes under Murad, the ablest, as well as the most powerful of the Beys, collected upon high ground near Cairo, and there waited for the enemy. They had not suffered materially in the former action, Buonaparte having rather desired to accustom his roops to their manner of fighting on that occasion, than to pursue to the utmost the advantages which were offered. This proved a wise policy; they continued to believe that cavalry must have a decided advantage over troops who fought on foot, and in the full confidence of victory, neglected to provide against the immediate consequences of defeat. Instead, therefore, of remaining on the Cairo side of the Nile, where they might have disputed the passage, harassed the enemy, and retreated in case of need towards Syria, they entrenched themselves on the left bank at a village called Embaba; and so impatient were they for the victory and the vengeance which they expected, that, as soon as the French army appeared, they advanced from their position into the open plain for the purpose of forcing them to action. The novelty and splendour of their appearance excited the admiration of the Europeans: the gaudiest foppery of a modern army fades before the glittering helmets and burnished armour of old times; and the cries and rapid movements of the Mamelukes were not less remarkable than the richness and strangeness of their costume. Never was displayed

a more

a more impressive scene!

On the right was the Nile, Cairo beyond it, with all its hundred minarets and domes; on the left were the Pyramids, the highest, the oldest, the most durable of the works of men. Buonaparte pointed to them when he

gave the

word, and exclaimed-Remember that from the summit of yonder monuments forty ages are beholding us!

Murad had threatened that he would cut up the infidels like gourds. The Mamelukes, at the moment when the French were on the point of moving, rushed forward as if they meant to attack the centre, but suddenly sweeping round they fell upon Desaix and Regnier's division which formed the right. The attack was impetuous beyond any thing that the French had ever before beheld; they, however, with admirable discipline, stood firm, and reserved their fire till the enemy were within half musket-shot; and the effect, seconded as it was by some discharges of artillery, was tremendous. For a moment it confounded them, and they had nearly fallen upon the bayonets of Desaix's division. A fire by files was now well kept up against them; thinking to turn the enemy they now passed between the two divisions, and in so doing received the fire of both. Part of them returned to the entrenchment at Embaba, the rest got into a grove of palms, and being dislodged from thence by the riflemen, fled towards the Pyramids and the desert. The divisions of Bon and Menou meantime advanced against Embaba, and, while they attacked the position in front, two battalions under Rampon and Marmont were detached on the flank to turn the valley. Here the Mamelukes had thirty or forty pieces of cannon, which they knew so little how to use that they had not time to load them for a second discharge. They were routed at the point of the bayonet; some of them had their clothes set on fire by the French muskets, and were in this dreadful manner burnt as they lay mortally wounded. The guns and the position were soon in possession of the French. There remained a body of 1,500, with about as many of the armed inhabitants; their retreat was cut off by Marmont and Rampon, they defended themselves bravely, but perceiving that all resistance was vain, and receiving as little mercy as they would have shewn, they rushed into the Nile, and they who escaped the sword perished in the river. Ibraham Bey, who was on the right bank to cover Cairo, having witnessed this total defeat, retreated with his troops towards Syria, while Murad took the road of Upper Egypt. Their loss was undoubtedly very great in proportion to their numbers, which was from four to six thousand Mamelukes, with a considerable body of Arabs and Fellaps; that of the French seems to have been more than might have been expected from the nature of the action. Larrey says that about 260 were severely wounded.

Denon

Denon admired, upon this occasion, what he calls the sublime contrast between the massacre, for such he says the latter part of the action was, and the clear sky of that fine climate.

'A handful of French, led by a hero,' he exclaims, had just subdued a quarter of the globe; an empire had just changed its ruler. During this great and terrible scene, of which the result was to be so important, the dust and smoke scarcely obscured the lower part of the atmosphere; and the star of day revolving over the spacious horizon, peaceably terminated its career, a sublime testimony of that immutable order of nature which obeys the decree of the Eternal in the calm stillness that renders it still more awful.'

Miot, for he also was present, gives us the living picture.

The field of battle presently was converted into a place of sale: horses, arms, apparel, camels, were bought and sold! The most boisterous joy was displayed among the dying and the dead! Some were eating and drinking; others putting on turbans which were still wet with blood, or dressing themselves in the pelisses which they stripped from the slain.'

M.Miot too, in a letter which was never intended to meet the public eye, has told us what his reflections were upon the field of battle; he was a man to whom the sight, and even the thought of an execution had been intolerably painful, but he had now learnt to look without any failing at heart upon mangled bodies and mutilated limbs.

́ ́I rode,' says he, through the midst of three thousand slaughtered Mamelukes. Milord (his horse) trembled under me, while Ï fixed my eyes on those poor victims of ambition and vanity, and said to myself, We cross the sea, we brave the English fleet, we disembark in a country which never thought of us, we plunder their villages, ruin their inhabitants, and violate their wives; we wantonly run the hazard of dying with hunger and thirst; we are every one of us on the point of being assassinated: and all this for what?"

Such,' says Berthier,' was the memorable battle of the Pyramids: thus, in the short space of about fourteen days, was conquered and overthrown the most extraordinary empire which the world has seen, that of a nation of soldiers from their birth. The immediate result of the battle of the Pyramids was the conquest and quiet submission of Egypt.'-Hitherto indeed Egypt had never opposed a formidable resistance to its conquerors. Wealth and effeminating vices made it an easy prey to the Persians, and the people successively received the Greeks, perhaps the Romans, certainly the Saracens, and the Turks after them as deliverers. No conquerors ever came with more power to improve the country, than the new invaders, and never had the people endured a more oppressive government than that which appeared now to be de

stroyed;