Lords of the Nile by Jonathan Spencer

Author:Jonathan Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

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At al-Ramaniyah, Bonaparte’s divisions staggered in from the waterless desert for rendezvous, the officers mutinous, the gloss of liberation long worn off. Whitewashed adobe hovels glowed in the heat, the army scattered in battalion camps, the men lying in the shade, propped against walls, many flat by the riverside, some gorged on the watermelons, some still eating them while up to their waists in the Nile, some drank greedily, some drowned in their eagerness.

Further down the embankment three adapted gunboats waited at their moorings. The flagship of the small flotilla, the Cerf, stood bright against the brilliant waters and dazzle of the blue sky – it was a chebek, a large, oared Levantine coastal trader, with two masts rigged with long, sloping lateen yards, now become an armed riverboat with an Egyptian crew, fellahin labourers hauling army field-guns aboard.

The two other improvised gunboats rode low and long in the river, cannons mounted awkwardly on the midship rails round a central shaded superstructure, a mortar since replaced with baggage and equipment. The flotilla was to follow the advance southward, cool on the Nile while the army sweated on the long march to Cairo.

Bonaparte stalked into his command tent. Monge and Berthollet rose from their chairs. Desgenettes, the surgeon-general, set down his glass of water, preparing for a confrontation. The death-march through the desert had raised his grave concerns.

‘Is there a problem, General?’ asked Monge.

‘Problem? Mutiny again,’ Bonaparte snapped. ‘His grand five foot ten inches will not save Damas if I have anything to do with it! Damn the man!’

‘I did warn you, General,’ said Desgenettes.

‘You did,’ said Bonaparte, cooling, looking absently at the maps on his desk. ‘What with my senior officers spouting seditious bile before their men, my junior officers being captured and buggered by amorous Bedouins, and everyone struck down with this, this idle, slack-jawed lassitude, this…what do they call it?’

‘Cafard, General,’ said Desgenettes. ‘It is the lack of salt and water.’

Bonaparte threw down a divider onto the map before him. ‘It is not, Surgeon-General. It is a lack of gumption, born of lying about on silken pillows in Italian villas. I should never have used the Army of Italy…’ Bonaparte sighed. ‘Are the boats ready?’

The naval commander, Perrée, stepped forward. ‘Yes, General. With the savants and, well, the civil concessionaires, and their ladies of course, we are very cramped but the Cerf should be big enough to act as a viewing platform—’

‘I am not staging a spectacle for an audience, Captain. All non-combatants, including those in the cavalry who have no damned horses—’ one of Bonaparte’s junior aides, Lt Desvernois, handed him a glass of water and he drank ‘—will go aboard the Cerf or the gunboats to support the army from the river. No excuses.’ He waved a hand irritably.

Perrée inclined his head. ‘General, your pardon. General Andréossy awaits your pleasure aboard the Cerf should you wish to inspect.’

‘Should think he’s glad to get his feet out of the sand and onto a boat… And the transport barges?’

‘Yes, General, all arranged.

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