The Bonaparte Secret
Gregg Loomis
PROLOGUE
Syria, near Damascus
October, 322 BC
All one hundred or so inhabitants of the small oasis gathered to watch a sight never before seen and unlikely to be seen again: sixty-four mules pulled what Diodorus, a Sicilian Greek historian of the first century, would subsequently describe as an Ionic tomb made entirely of gold, twenty feet long and fourteen wide. Inside, the king’s mummified body, preserved in honey, rested in a golden sarcophagus. The weight of the hearse had required specially designed wheels and suspension. Even so, six miles a day was the greatest speed it could attain.
The honor guard of one hundred Macedonian cavalry made no secret of the fact that the king was being taken home to Macedonia. He had died the year before in Babylon. The sheer size of his empire, stretching from Greece to India, had required over twelve months to divide among his generals before they could turn to the disposition of their former ruler’s remains. Chief among them, Perdiccas, had decreed the body was to be entombed next to the king’s father, Philip. The order was not entirely popular, for Macedonian tradition held the first duty of the new king was to bury his predecessor, but the king’s only son was a half-wit and Perdiccas was an ambitious man.
But no more so than Ptolemy, known as Soter, the savior, because he had been chief among the king’s generals who had saved Egypt from the tyrannical rule of the Persians. Ptolemy had his eyes on Egypt, now part of the empire. More importantly, he had his army of several thousand blocking the funeral cortege’s path northwest to Macedonia.
The villagers watched in eager anticipation of bloody entertainment as Sertice, commander of the honor guard, wheeled his horse to climb the slight rise where a single figure sat on horseback in front of a line of a dozen or so war elephants. Behind them, men armed with spears had already formed phalanxes, the Greek battle formation of close ranks and files.
Reaching the crest, Sertice removed his helmet so the other man might more clearly see his face.
He dismounted and knelt before the other’s horse. “Sir, you do me honor to join my small force in escorting the king home.”
A smile creased the weathered face of the man on horseback. Despite Sertice’s flowery words, he knew the cavalry commander was fully aware of what was happening.
“Honor is due you, Sertice. But I come to join you not in taking the king back to Macedonia but to Egypt as he wished.”
“But my orders…”
“Your orders are countermanded. Do not force me to slay my fellow comrades in arms.”
It didn’t take Sertice more than a second to make up his mind. A little over a year ago he would not have given the superior strength of an adversary a second thought. Had not the king’s thirty thousand Macedonians routed ten times as many Persians? Had the king not consistently defeated armies far larger than his own? But the king was dead, there was no clear chain of command and it had been over ten years since he had seen his wife back in Macedonia, ten years of forced marches, combat and privation until the army had finally mutinied, refusing to go farther than the Hindu Kush. They all wanted to go home. What purpose would be served by losing a hundred brave men now?
He stood, head bowed. “My life will be forfeit when Perdiccas hears of this.”
Ptolemy barked a harsh laugh. “Then come with me to Egypt. It is a rich country and I have need of men like you.” He noted the man’s hesitation. “Have no fear for your family. I will send swift riders to bring them from Macedonia to Egypt.”
With no small disappointment there would be no fight, the villagers watched the two groups merge, shift the marching route from northwest to southwest and slowly disappear over the ridge.
From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis, secretary to Napoleon Bonaparte, commanding general, Army of the Nile; edited and translated to the English by Henri D’Tasse of the University of Paris Alexandria
19:01, August 23, 1799 ^ 1 We left at night so the troops would not be disheartened. Fortune had frowned upon us. After Nelson the Englishman destroyed our fleet at Aboukir Bay ^ 2 a year ago, he sailed away to Sicily, leaving Captain Sidney Smith in command of the British fleet. If anything, Smith was worse than Nelson. He defeated us at Acre and challenged the general to a duel, a madman. Control of the sea by the enemy has stalled our campaign here, so there is little choice but to leave General Kleber to make terms with the English and the Turks who joined them. The revolution at home is in chaos and the commanding presence of the general is needed there. ^ 3 With us in the longboat that ferried us out to the ship in which we will make our voyage are only a few savants ^ 4 and confidants. Three more such craft follow as a nautical baggage train. One of these the general himself loaded with only his manservant to help. In addition to a number of small antiquities, there is a parcel wrapped in sheep’s skin. From its size, I would have supposed it to be a small statue of one of the pharaohs of whom the general has become quite fond. But such an object would be carved in stone and far too heavy to be carried under the general’s arm. I asked the general what such a parcel might contain but he was understandably in no mood for trivial matters and turned my query aside with the rudest of grunts. Then, his mood swinging as abruptly as the wind, he unbuttoned his uniform tunic to show me a small gold cross he wore about his neck. Knowing his attitude toward the Church, I was obviously surprised. ^ 5 “It was given me by my mother on the occasion of my first communion,” the general said, another surprise, since he rarely spoke of his humble beginnings on the island of Corsica. “The people,” I noted, “might adversely view such an adornment.” By the flickering light of the boat’s sole torch, I saw him smile. “Such is the reason I wear it under rather than outside of my tunic. It is dear to me, not as a object of religion, but as a reminder of my origins. On Corsica I was also given life and with that life I was also given a fierce love for my ill-starred homeland.” ^ 6 He held the cross up for a moment to catch the shifting light of the torch before returning it inside his tunic. “It is but an ordinary object but one I shall always treasure greatly, along with a few others from the past. I wore it that day when, as a mere general, my epaulets still new, I defended the Convention.” ^ 7 It was a rare moment when the general actually spoke tenderly about his life before some star of destiny called him to lead his nation’s army and one I would have enjoyed, had we been attacking rather than fleeing the British.
1 The French Revolution worshipped “logic” over religion. Consequently, the Gregorian calendar was scrapped and the Jacobin system adopted. The year was proclaimed to begin on September 22, with twelve months of thirty days each. Leap year included a five- or six-day holiday. Even the names of the months were changed to words more “natural,” such as Vendemiaire, or “vintage,” for late September-October, followed by the words for mist, frost, snow, rain, wind, seed, blossom, meadow, harvest, heat and fruits. Napoleon abandoned the system in year XII, 1804. In this translation I have used the actual dates rather than the Jacobin.
2 The battle, August 1, 1798, was close enough to Alexandria that the explosion of the French gunship L’Orient lit up the night sky of the city.
3 Whether Napoleon was needed or not was made moot by his coup d’etat on November 9. In 1804 he crowned himself emperor.
4 Not only did Napoleon take an army and navy to Egypt. He included 160 “savants,” scholars in fields as diverse as botany, languages and art. One of them was the father of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. Another preserved the Rosetta Stone for the future translation by Champollion, a feat that unlocked the secret of hieroglyphics. The studies of the savants were published in the monumental, multivolume Description de l’Egypte in 1809. The ancient glories of Egypt were generally unknown in Europe before then. Each volume caused a sensation.