Napoleon glared at him for a long time, wanting more than anything to have this man immediately taken outside and shot for his insubordination, but he knew that the army would not stand for that. Desgenettes, like most doctors, enjoyed the respect, gratitude and open affection of the common soldiers. It would be dangerous to harm the man, Napoleon realised. He forced himself to smile.
‘Very well, doctor, there are now over two thousand men on the sick list. How do you propose to move them?’
‘A good number of them are walking wounded. The rest can be carried on horses, camels and stretchers. At least as far as Jaffa, where we can put them on ships.’
Napoleon considered the proposal. The siege would be lifted in three days. Time enough to move the sick and wounded to Jaffa. He looked at Desgenettes and nodded. ‘Very well, doctor, you have convinced me. Make the arrangements immediately. You can draw on men from Lannes’s division to act as stretcher-bearers. Now, leave me.’
The rearguard had spiked the siege guns during the night, and as dawn broke on 20 May huge columns of smoke billowed into the sky as General Reynier’s men set fire to the supplies and equipment that were being abandoned by the French army. As soon as the rearguard pulled back, the Turks in Acre swarmed out of the gates to pursue them, forcing Reynier to skirmish all the way to Jaffa. Napoleon had arrived in the port a day earlier and was shocked to discover that only a handful of small ships remained. The houses and merchants’ storerooms along the quay were packed with sick and wounded men.
‘Where is Admiral Peree?’ he demanded.
‘The admiral sailed for Alexandria yesterday, sir,’ Berthier replied.
‘Why? I gave him orders to take Desgenette’s patients on board.’
‘The admiral said he could not risk having any plague victims on his ships. He also said that he must leave before the Royal Navy blockaded the port.’
‘Damn the admiral to hell,’ Napoleon muttered in fury as he gazed at the men slumped in the shade along the quay. The transfer of the sick and injured from Acre had exhausted the patients, and those assigned to help them. Only a small number of them could be found berths in the vessels that remained in the harbour.
‘Tell Desgenettes to have the worst cases loaded on to these ships as soon as possible. Those who are too sick to move, and those who are least likely to recover, are to remain in Jaffa. Tell him that they must be dealt with humanely after all.’
Berthier looked at him curiously but Napoleon just shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll understand the order well enough.’
As the last ships put to sea Napoleon and the rest of the army began the march south along the coast.The wounded who were forced to walk did their best to keep up, and for the first few days their comrades did all that they could to help them along. Then, as exhaustion, hunger and thirst began to take their toll on the men, the weakest were left to fend for themselves, and the tormented cries of stragglers taken and tortured by the enemy haunted the men gathered round the campfires each night. The army trudged into Gaza on the last day of May and filled their canteens and haversacks with the remainder of the rations as they steeled themselves for the crossing of the Sinai desert.
By day the Sinai was smothered by blistering heat that sapped the very last dregs of energy from the men as they limped forward with cracked lips and parched throats. Those of the injured who died were unceremoniously pitched into the sand and left to feed the carrion that swirled in lazy circles as they followed the army across the wasteland. Discipline became as fragile as the bodies that depended on it, and the hostility of the men was evident in their glares and the bitter tone of their muttering whenever Napoleon and his staff rode by. So Napoleon gave up his horse to help carry the wounded, and ordered his staff to do the same, and they walked the rest of the way, alongside the straggling columns of their men.
At last, four days later, the first soldiers arrived at Katia, under the horrified gaze of those watching from the walls of the fortified village. The men of the army that had invaded Syria were barely comprehensible as they croaked their requests for food and water, and when these were brought to them they tore at the food and drank like wild animals.
As Napoleon watched them emerge from the desert and sink down in the shade of Katia’s buildings he had little doubt that the army bore the brand of defeat. Nearly two and a half thousand had died in battle or of the plague. A similar number were sick or wounded, and would not be fit to serve again for some weeks, if at all. Over a third of the army that had set out in high spirits to carve a swath through the Turkish empire had been lost, and would not be replaced.
That much was clear now. There would be no fleet sent from France with reinforcements. Napoleon and his army had been abandoned by the Directory, something the men would realise soon enough. And when they did his authority over them would be tenuous at best. Napoleon had no desire to let Egypt be the end of his career. The future, his future, lay back in Europe. The question was, how could he justify leaving his army and returning to France?
As he pondered this question, Napoleon let his shattered army rest for several days. Uniforms were cleaned and patched.
Weapons were issued to those who had lost theirs and the men set to polishing their buttons and whitening their cross belts in preparation for the triumphal entry into Cairo that Napoleon announced to his men shortly before the understrength battalions began their march from Katia across the Nile delta to the capital. The celebrations, speeches, awards of decorations and presentations of swords and prizes lasted the whole day, and then the men were issued with the very last of the wine and spirits that had been landed with the army nearly a year ago. As the streets of Cairo echoed with the shouts and laughter of drunken revellers Napoleon retired to his bechamber with Pauline Foures.
‘Can’t you have someone tell them to be quiet?’ Pauline nodded to the shutters as she unlaced her bodice, and flung it across the back of a chair. ‘Thank God I’m out of that. I thought those ceremonies would never end.’
‘Pauline, right now I need to give them anything I can to help bolster their spirits. After the Syrian experience, and the revolts Desaix had to deal with in my absence, their morale has never been lower.They’ve not seen France for over a year, and as things stand they don’t know when they will again. So you do as I say and humour them.’
‘Very well.’ Her lips opened in a seductive smile. ‘Now, can I humour you, my general?’
Napoleon crossed over to her and enclosed her bare body in his embrace, relishing the smooth skin of her back as he ran a hand down towards her hip.
‘You’ve no idea how much I have missed this.’
‘This?’ She laughed playfully and reached a hand behind to pat her bottom. ‘Just this?’
‘Just that.’ He laughed, and she playfully swatted his shoulder. ‘And all that is attached to it.’
A sudden outburst of singing rose up from the street outside Napoleon’s garden and Pauline turned towards the shutters again. ‘I can’t be passionate with that racket going on.’
‘Then don’t be passionate.’ Napoleon led her towards the bed and started pulling off his clothes. ‘Get on the bed.’
Pauline raised her eyebrows in amusement, but did as she was told. As she lay bathed in the moonlight that pierced the shutters, Napoleon tore off his boots, then stockings, trousers and underwear in one, and climbed on top of her, pushing her thighs apart and penetrating her with a gasp of pleasure, and then making love to her as vigorously as he had ever done to any woman before.
‘I think you really needed that,’ Pauline smiled shortly afterwards. ‘I take it there weren’t too many available women on campaign?’
‘Not enough to go round. In any case, I was busy fighting a war.’
Pauline was silent for a moment, before she continued softly, ‘Was it as bad as they say? I’ve heard some terrible stories in the last few days.’
‘They’re all true.’ Napoleon rolled off her, made himself comfortable on his side and then rested his head on her soft stomach.‘The Army of the Orient is all but finished.We can hold on for a few more months, maybe a year. But disease and the fighting will see to us all in the end. Unless we quit Egypt.’
‘Quit Egypt? How? We have no ships and the Directory will not send us any more.’ Pauline stroked his head.
