shape of a four-day crossing of the Sinai desert. This had been an ordeal
even during winter on the outward march, but now, sweltering in
temperatures that rose as high as 54 ° C, with food and water low, a long
train of wounded and a mounting casualty list, and Turkish horsemen
harassing their rear, the French experienced exquisite torment and came
close to outright mutiny. Finally, on 3 June, the exhausted survivors
traipsed into Katia, with its ample supplies of food and water. The Syrian
campaign, in some ways a miniature forerunner of r8r2, had achieved
nothing, except possibly to delay the Turkish landing at Alexandria while
reinforcements were sent to Acre. Casualties had been terrific, and even
Bonaparte's formidable propaganda machine was hard put to it to talk up
the doomed campaign as a glittering success.
Defiantly Napoleon staged a triumph in Cairo on I4 June as he re
entered the city. The one thing he did have to celebrate was the quite
extraordinary military achievement of Desaix in Upper Egypt. Although
seemingly engaged in a Sisyphean task of pacification - in that each
conquered area rose in revolt as soon as Desaix moved on and Murad Bey
continued to receive reinforcements from Arabia - Desaix never relaxed
his grip in a remorseless war of attrition. He won three great battles: at El
Lahkun on 7 October 1798, Sa mhud on 22 January 1799 and at Abnud
on 8 March. In the end Murad and the Mamelukes cracked under the
strain of continuous campaigning. Desaix's campaign concluded trium
phantly just when Napoleon was emerging from Syria: the French
General Belliard captured the Red Sea port of Kosjeir on 29 May, thus
driving a wedge between the two hostile armies and preventing Murad
from linking up with his allies in Syria.
Yet the impossibility of holding Egypt in subjection, marooned as he
was and without hope of reinforcement from France, must have struck
Napoleon forcibly when he heard that in addition to Desaix's ceaseless
endeavours there had been two large-scale revolts in the Nile delta during
his absence, one led by the emir El-Hadj-Mustafa and the other, a more
serious outbreak headed by a fanatic claiming to be the angel B Modi of
the Koran or, in some versions, the Mahdi or promised one. General
Desaix proceeded to Lanusse, defeated El Modi and his army, then
executed r ,500 'ringleaders' including the Mahdi himself. Yet all these
successful French campaigns entailed losses in manpower Napoleon
could ill afford, and there continued to be isolated massacres and
ambushes of his troops.
It was therefore immediately on his return to Cairo that Napoleon
began to think seriously about how to return to France. The usual
version is that it was only after Sidney Smith, in an obvious bout of
marcin
(Marcin)
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