The Sultan's Daughter (23 page)

Soon after Roger awoke next morning his mind turned again to Sarodopulous. He decided that it would be sound policy to go to see the banker and give an explanation to him in private, rather than leave their meeting to chance when the odds were that other people would be present.

Immediately they had broken their fast Bonaparte set to work with Bourrienne, and kept all his aides-de-camp hurrying
hither and thither on a score of errands; but during the morning Roger managed to get a word with Lannes and offered his help to the harassed Quartermaster-General in one of that functionary's most important responsibilities. Lannes gave the idea his blessing and passed him on to Andréossi, who readily accepted the proposal. That evening Roger got his master's permission to ride out to the ‘new town'.

Sarodopulous's handsome white villa had a terrace on the seaward side with a splendid view over the beautiful bay and as Roger trotted up the road he saw the banker sitting alone on the terrace; so, instead of riding round to the front door of the villa and having himself announced, he dismounted, hitched his horse to a stone pillar and walked up the steps.

As he approached the table at which Sarodopulous was sitting, the banker stood up, eyeing Roger's uniform with some apprehension. Then his dark eyes opened wide and he exclaimed in English:

‘Why! If it isn't Mr. Brook.'

‘Colonel Breuc, aide-de-camp to the General-in-Chief of the Army of Egypt,' replied Roger, keeping his face expressionless as he made a formal bow.

‘But … but …' stammered the Greek.

With a laugh, Roger held out his hand. ‘But the same person to whom you extended much kindness when last in Alexandria. You will recall that I came to your office to cash a draft on Hoare's bank. As it was drawn on London and I am bilingual, you naturally took me for an Englishman; then, your wife being English, you invited me to become your guest. I had travelled for many months and was positively starved for civilised society, so I gave way to the temptation to accept your hospitality under false pretences. I can only hope that you will not think too harshly of me.'

Sarodopulous stroked his greying, curly beard and smiled. ‘Why, no. Since you had come all the way from India, with only Asiatics for companions, I can understand how you must have felt. Personally, too, it would have made no difference to me had you declared yourself a Frenchman. As an international banker, my relations with French and British
merchants are equally good. But I fear my poor wife would not have agreed to receive you.'

‘Do you …' Roger's face suddenly became grave, ‘do you mean … ?'

The Greek nodded. ‘Alas, yes. Last January. You will recall her fondness for the pleasures of the table. Nothing could restrain her, and her weight became too much for her heart. Going upstairs one evening … I miss her greatly, but it is some consolation to me that it was all over very quickly.'

Roger well remembered the enormous bulk that the onetime Suffolk girl had acquired from her love of rich foods, and the gargantuan meals she had pressed upon him. Sorry as he was for Sarodopulous, he could not help feeling some relief at her demise, as she had remained fanatically patriotic and he had feared that she would prove an awkward stumbling block in his resuming good relations with the banker. Having expressed his sympathy with the bereaved husband he went on:

‘You will, no doubt, have been informed of General Bonaparte's proclamation, announcing that the French have come to Egypt only to drive out the Mameluke tyrants and that they wish to establish most cordial relations with the Egyptian people. He does not, therefore, come here as a robber, but intends to pay for the great quantity of supplies he will need for his Army. To do so we shall require large sums of local currency. Having in mind your past kindness to me, and knowing you to be an honest broker, I had a talk with General Andréossi this morning. As our Paymaster-General he will be responsible for obtaining Egyptian money in exchange for gold. On my recommendation he has agreed that you should be appointed our principal agent.'

Sarodopulous's dark eyes opened wide, and he exclaimed, ‘But Mr. … I mean Colonel Breuc, how can I ever thank you! I give you my word that General Andréossi shall have the best rate of exchange that can be procured in Alexandria. Yet, even so, to act as agent for the French Army will bring me a fortune. But come; we are still standing. Be pleased to sit down while I order wine. Then you must tell me about
yourself and this amazing General on whose Staff you are. And you will honour me, I hope, by staying to supper.'

For the next hour Roger said little of his own doings, but talked freely about other matters, and gave a graphic description of the hazardous landing of the Army. He was then introduced to the banker's widowed sister-in-law and her son Achilles, who had been living with him since his wife's death. This Greek lady must have been a beauty when young, in spite of her face being somewhat marred by smallpox, and her son—a tall, well-built young man of about twenty-five, who had recently been made a partner in the family firm—was strikingly handsome. After a most excellent meal with these charming and intelligent Greeks, Roger rode back to the old city, well content with the outcome of his visit.

The following day proved another of feverish activity at Bonaparte's headquarters. Having sent for Sheik Koraim and other principal officials of the city, he spoke at great length of the benefits the French Republic was bringing to the world through its systematic destruction of all tyrants, and particularly the religious tyranny long wielded by Rome and her Christian priests. He even went so far as to say that he personally thought more highly of the Mohammedan faith, and quoted at them extracts from the Koran that he had learned by heart during the voyage.

Roger, who was present at this performance, thought it unlikely that the Sheiks and Imams would believe in the sincerity of these statements; but they were at least favourably impressed and willingly agreed to form a new Council to maintain order in the city and to co-operate with the French military authorities.

To have gained their goodwill was an important asset, as Bonaparte intended to push on as soon as possible to Cairo and he could afford to leave only a limited garrison in Alexandria. He would, however, have probably secured it without great difficulty in any case, owing to the very exceptional conditions maintaining in Egypt.

The country had for long been a part of the Turkish Empire and, in theory, was ruled by a Pasha appointed by the Sultan. But as Egypt was so far from Constantinople the
Sultans had feared that one day an ambitious Viceroy might repudiate their authority and make himself Sultan of Egypt. To guard against such an eventuality they had appointed twenty-four Mameluke Beys, each with a following of several hundred men, to act as Governors of the provinces, independently of the Viceroy. In this they had been too clever, as it was the Beys who had repudiated the authority of Constantinople and had for centuries treated Egypt as a flight of vultures would have treated the carcass of a dead horse.

These Marmelukes formed a caste apart, dating from the time of Saladin. They were fair-skinned, often blue-eyed, Circassians, hand-picked as the handsomest and fittest small boys in the Caucasus, bought as slaves and shipped to Egypt. There they were brought up under the strictest discipline, and in ignorance of their origin, to the profession of arms. Each Bey owned five or six hundred of them, and each Mameluke had two native Copts to groom his horses and care for his weapons. They lived in camps and had no relations with the population, other than to plunder it at the order of their masters. They were magnificently equipped, the finest horsemen in the world and lived only for fighting. The Beys were far stronger than the Turkish garrison; so they treated the Sultan's officials with contempt, while terrorising the Arabs and the wretched Copts who formed the greater part of the population. Often they fought among themselves for the control of greater areas of territory, and at this time two of them wielded authority over all the others. The elder, Ibrahim Bey, was crafty and powerful; his rival, Murad Bey, was valiant and ambitious.

So eager was Bonaparte to continue his conquest of the country that the remainder of his men, with the guns and horses he had brought, having been landed at Marabout on 2nd July, on the night of the 3rd he despatched Desaix's Division to Rahmaniyeh, about thirty miles up the Rosetta mouth of the Nile to act as advance guard of the Army. Any other General would have sent them up the coast to Rosetta, then along the inhabited banks of the river, but that would have meant their marching nearly double the distance. So impatient was he that he ordered Desaix to head straight
across the desert and Reynier's Division to follow the next day. On that day, too, he ordered Menou to march up the coast, capture Rosetta, form a flotilla there and proceed up the Nile to rendezvous with Desaix at Rahmaniyeh. On the 6th, having completed his arrangements in Alexandria, he left the wounded Kléber in command of three thousand men to garrison the city and himself led the rest of the Army along the desert trail that the gallant Desaix had blazed.

During the next few days Roger's worst forebodings were nearly realised. The reports already sent back by Desaix were harrowing. Scorched and blistered, his weary men were staggering across miles of shifting sands. They had met with no serious opposition, so it was evident that the Mameluke strategy was to draw them as far as possible into the desert before attacking; but during the march they were constantly pestered by Bedouin, who skirted the flanks and rear of the column, occasionally firing at it and falling upon and butchering all stragglers.

Fear of these Arabs was the main factor that kept the column together, for the suffering of the men from thirst was terrible and, as discipline had gone to pieces, small parties of them would have blundered off in all directions in a desperate search for water. Every well they came to had been filled in with sand by the Arabs, and even when they had frantically cleared away the sand there was not enough water in the holes to quench the thirst of more than a few dozen of them. Reynier's Division, following a day's march behind, suffered even worse, for on arriving at well after well they found them completely dry.

On the 7th both Divisions reached Damanhûr. They had been told that it was one of the largest towns in Lower Egypt, but found it to be only a huddle of tumble-down houses and mud huts, enclosed with walls that were falling to pieces. There was not sufficient food in the place to be worth commandeering, and they had nearly exhausted the hard biscuit they had brought with them from Alexandria. Almost at the end of their tether, they took such consolation as they could from the small ration of water that was available and the palm and pomegranate groves outside the town, which provided
the first blissful shade they had encountered since starting on their terrible march.

The General-in-Chief caught up with them there on the following day, and the march of the other Divisions which accompanied him had been no less gruelling. Their route had lain along a canal dating from the Roman occupation. Having been abandoned for fifteen hundred years it was now no more than a series of elongated depressions, which filled with water each year only when the Nile flooded. As that took place in August or September, and this was July, the very little water left in it lay in small, stagnant pools, overgrown with moss and alive with horrible insects. In spite of that, every time the men sighted one of these greenish patches they rushed down to it and fought among themselves for the temporary relief afforded to those who succeeded in getting their mouths into the brackish filth and sucking it up.

There were water and cooks' carts with the Headquarters Staff, but after the first day there was nothing to cook; so the Staff also had to make do on hard biscuit. Bonaparte, ever a father to his men, kept his officers on an absolute minimum of water, so that all that could be spared should be given to wounded or ailing soldiers.

Roger survived this nightmare trek in better shape than the others. Knowing what he might be in for, he had abandoned all his belongings except his weapons, so that he could take a, dozen water-bottles with him. Yet even so he suffered grievously, as from dawn to dusk there was no protection from the blazing sun, and he drank only sparingly so that he might share his wealth in water with the worst stricken among his companions.

At Damanhûr they learned that Desaix had met with another form of misfortune. In the desert at night there had been nothing to which to tether the horses. A sentry had panicked and had fired at what he believed to be Arabs, with the result that most of the horses had bolted and in the pitch darkness it had proved impossible to recapture them.

By this time the troops, who had been told that Egypt was ‘more fertile than the plain of Lombardy', and had been promised six acres per man, were verging on mutiny. The officers, too, who had become accustomed to rich living,
openly showed sympathy with them. Bonaparte was accused, even within his hearing, of having wilfully deceived them and led them to their destruction. Lannes and Murat, of all people, actually threw their Generals' hats on the ground and stamped upon them in their fury of disillusion and despair.

Yet the little Corsican rode out the storm. He was the only man in his Army who appeared unaffected by the terrible heat. Wearing the green uniform of his Guides, buttoned up to the chin, he walked as often as he rode. To every complaint, whether from officers or men, he made a swift, tart rejoinder, abusing them roundly for lack of faith, lack of stamina, lack of courage. His thin, bony frame rigid with indignation at their grumbling, his enormously broad jaw thrust out in unshakable determination, he forced them, by sheer willpower, to continue onward across the burning sands.

There followed two more appalling days, during which the main Army, now about thirty thousand strong, continued to stagger across the desert. Their only food now a few handfuls of corn per man, acquired in Damanhûr, and water was absolutely unobtainable, except for the few who carried a small hoarded supply. It had become literally worth its weight in gold, and the richer of the sufferers were offering those who had it a
louis d'or
for a small tin cupful.