It was flat and featureless, not a tree in sight. Sand had impregnated every crevice of my body and clothes, and the wind pushed so hard that I staggered.
Other half-drowned men were lurching out of the waves. Our overturned longboat grounded and the sailors rallied us to flip it upright, emptying out the water. Once they found enough oars the seamen pushed out again, to get more troops. The moon had risen, and I saw a hundred similar scenes playing out along the beach. Some boats managed to glide in as intended, grounding neatly, while others foundered and tumbled like driftwood. It was chaotic, men tying themselves to each other with line to wade back out and rescue comrades. Several drowned bodies had washed to the sea’s edge, half buried in the sand. Small artillery pieces were sunk to their hubs. Equipment floated like flotsam. A French tricolour, raised as a rallying point, snapped and rattled in the wind.
‘Henri, remember the farms the general promised us?’ one sodden soldier said to another, gesturing at the barren dunes ahead. ‘There’s your six acres.’
Since I had no military unit, I began asking where General Bonaparte was. Officers shrugged and cursed. ‘Probably in his great cabin, watching us drown,’ growled one. There had been resentment at the spaciousness he had appropriated for himself.
And yet, far down the beach, a knot of order had begun to form. Men were assembling around a familiarly short and furiously gesticulating figure, and as if by gravity other troops were drawn to their mass. I could hear Bonaparte’s voice giving sharp commands, and ranks began to be drawn up. When I neared I found him bareheaded and soaked to the waist, his hat having cartwheeled away in the wind. His scabbard dragged on the beach, cutting a little line behind him. He acted as if nothing was amiss, and his confidence reinforced others.
‘I want a skirmish line in the dunes! Kleber, get some men up there if you don’t want to be picked off by Bedouin! Captain? Use your company to free that cannon, we’ll need it at dawn. General Menou, where are you? There! Get your standard planted to form up your men. You infantry there, stop standing like drowned rats and help those others right that boat! Has a little water knocked the sense out of you? You are soldiers of France!’
The expectation of obedience worked wonders, and I began to recognise Bonaparte’s talent for command. A mob gradually became an army, soldiers forming columns, organising equipment, and dragging away the drowned for quick, unceremonious burial. I heard the occasional pop of skirmish fire to keep roving tribesmen at bay. Boatload after boatload made it ashore and thousands of men assembled in moon and starlight, the trampled sand shining silver where water pooled in our boot prints. Equipment lost in the surf was retrieved and redistributed. Some men found themselves wearing hats too small that perched on their crowns like chimneys, and others with headgear that came down around their ears. Laughing, they traded back and forth. The night wind was warm, drying us rapidly.
General Jean-Baptiste Kleber, who I’d heard was another Freemason, came striding up. ‘They poisoned the well at Marabut and the men are getting thirsty. It was madness to sail from Toulon without canteens.’
Napoleon shrugged. ‘It was commissary incompetence we can’t correct now. We’ll find water when we carry the walls of Alexandria.’
Kleber scowled. He looked far more the general than Bonaparte: Six feet tall, thick, muscular, and boasting a mane of thick, curly hair that gave him the majestic gravity of a lion. ‘There’s no food, either.’
‘Which is also awaiting us in Alexandria. If you will look to the sea, Kleber, you will also see there is no British navy, which is the whole point of striking quickly.’
‘So quickly we come ashore in a gale and drown dozens of men?’
‘Speed is everything in war. I will always spend a few to save many.’ Bonaparte looked tempted to say more; he did not like to have his orders second-guessed. But instead he said to his general, ‘Have you found the man I told you about?’
‘The Arab? He may speak French, but he’s a viper.’
‘He’s a tool of Talleyrand and gets a livre for every ear and hand. He’ll keep the other Bedouin off your flank.’
We set off down the beach, the surf rumbling to our left, thousands of men tramping in the dark. The foam seemed to glow. Occasionally I could hear a pistol shot or the pop of a musket off in the desert to our right. A few lamps shone ahead, marking Alexandria. None of the generals were mounted yet, and walked like common soldiers. General Louis Caffarelli of the engineers stumped along on a wooden leg. Our gigantic mulatto cavalry commander, Alexandre Dumas, walked bowlegged, a head higher than any of his troopers. He had the strength of a giant, and to amuse himself at sea he’d hang from a beam in the horse stalls and grip a mount with his legs, lifting the terrified animal off the deck with sheer thigh strength. Detractors said he had muscles between his ears.
Not being attached to any unit, I walked with Napoleon.
‘You enjoy my company, American?’
‘I just reason that the commanding general will be safer than most. Why not stand next to him?’
He laughed. ‘I lost seven generals in a single battle in Italy, and led charges myself. Destiny alone knows why I was spared. Life is chance, is it not? Fate sent the British fleet away and a gale in its place. Some men drowned. Do you feel sorry for them?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t. Death comes to all of us, unless the Egyptians indeed found immortality. And who’s to say one death is better than another? My own could come this dawn, and it would be a good one. Do you know why? Because while glory is fleeting, obscurity is forever. Those men who drowned will be remembered by their families for generations. “He died following Bonaparte to Egypt!” Society unconsciously knows this, and accepts the sacrifice.’
‘That’s a European calculus, not an American one.’
‘No? We’ll see when your nation is older. We’re on a great mission, Ethan Gage, to unify East and West. Compared to that, individual souls mean little.’
‘Unify by conquest?’
‘By education and example. We will defeat the Mameluke tyrants that rule these people, yes, and by so doing we will liberate the Egyptians from Ottoman tyranny. But after that we will reform them, and the time will come when they bless this day that France stepped on their shore. We, in turn, will learn from their ancient culture.’
‘You’re a very confident man.’
‘I’m a visionary one. A dreamer, my generals accuse. Yet I measure my dreams with the calipers of reason. I’ve calculated how many dromedaries it would take to cross the deserts to India. I have printing presses with Arabic type to explain that I come on a mission of reform. Do you know that Egypt has never seen a press? I’ve ordered my officers to study the Koran, and ordered my troops not to loot or molest Arab women. When the Egyptians understand that we’re here to liberate, not oppress, they’ll join us in the fight against the Mamelukes.’
‘Yet you lead an army with no water.’
‘I lack a hundred things, but I’ll rely on Egypt to provide them. That’s what we did when invading Italy. That’s what Cortez did when he burnt his ships after landing in Mexico. Our lack of canteens makes clear to our men that our assault must succeed.’ It was as if he were addressing Kleber, not me.
‘How can you be so certain, General? I find it hard to be certain of anything.’
‘Because I learnt in Italy that history is on my side.’ He paused, considering whether to confide more, whether he could add me to his political seductions. ‘For years I felt doomed to an ordinary life, Gage. I, too, was uncertain. I was a penniless Corsican from the shabbiest kind of backwater royalty, a colonial islander with a thick accent who had spent my childhood enduring snobs and taunts at French military school. I had no friend but mathematics. Then the Revolution came, opportunities arose, and I made the best of them. I prevailed at the siege of Toulon. I drew notice in Paris. I was given command of a losing, threadbare army in northern Italy. A future at least seemed possible, even if everything could be lost again in a single defeat. But it was at the battle of Arcola, fighting the Austrians to liberate Italy, when the world truly opened up to me. We had to carry a bridge down a murderous causeway, and charge after charge had failed, carpeting the approaches with bodies. Finally I knew that the only way to win the day was to lead a last charge myself. I’ve heard you’re a gambler, but there is no gamble like that, bullets like hornets, all the dice cast in a smoky rush for glory, men cheering, banners snapping in the wind, soldiers falling. We carried the bridge and carried the day, nothing scratching me, and there is no orgasm like the exultation of watching an enemy army run. Whole French regiments crowded around me afterward, cheering the boy who had once been a rube Corsican, and it was at that moment that I saw that anything was possible – anything! – if I merely dared. Don’t ask me why I think fate is my angel, I just know that she is. Now she has led me to Egypt, and here, perhaps, I can emulate Alexander as you savants emulate Aristotle.’ He clasped my shoulder, his grey eyes burning into me in the pale, predawn light. ‘Believe in me, American.’