What the French urgently needed now was cash. Monge's management committee accepted this stressful task. They seized all government warehouses and sold the goods for cash. If they were useful items such as food or clothing, they would be confiscated and distributed to the French army. In addition, Napoleon increased the collection of taxes and vigorously minted new coins.
However, since Abraham Beyy and Murad Beyy had fled with most of the city's property on July 31, Napoleon issued a series of orders to collect 3 million French Francs in cash from the richest man in the country. This money did not include the money confiscated from the Mamluks and the large sums of money extorted from the wealthy merchants in Cairo (the monopolies of the soap, sugar, and clothing markets in Cairo), as well as the income from daily taxes.
Napoleon did not forget to build new barracks for the French garrison. More importantly, four new hospitals were built in the Cairo area, with a total of 600 beds. The army engineers designed and built a large bread oven to solve the urgent needs of the army. Napoleon insisted on baking high-quality bread for the army. He believed that as long as the army could eat well, they would not complain so much, nor would they cheat and steal outside. Theft was rampant in the army. The most troublesome thing was that they even stole horses. The French cavalry still needed a large number of horses. Some of the high-ranking generals 'mounts had also been stolen and were nowhere to be found.
Napoleon deployed Desai's division to camp in the upper reaches of the Nile River south of Giza, preparing to attack Murad Beyi's army. General Bon's division guarded Cairo, while Menu and Digai's divisions guarded the old Cairo and the port of the Nile River, Bulak. Rainier's division crossed the desert and headed east towards Suez. The other legions were scattered in all directions. Bertier was building a huge central military camp in Giza, which included a hospital, an artillery battalion, a transport battalion, an engineering department, and an ammunition depot.
Bertier kept hearing all kinds of complaints, such as the French soldiers and even the officers did not abide by the rules, including secret reports of people inciting the morale of the army and the officers privately dividing military supplies. Now, even the daily management of the army had become difficult. Duguet, Rainier, and Dessey kept sending sad and disheartening reports, leaving Bertier deeply confused and unpredictable about the state of the army.
Quartermaster Sossi was responsible for providing military supplies to the army that was spread out over tens of thousands of square miles. General Headquarters had received reports of complaints that supplies and food had not reached their posts, especially along the coast of Tamia and Alexandria. A few months later, the fact that Sossi illegally embezzled military supplies and sold them on the black market was completely exposed.
At the same time, after the reorganization of the army in Cairo, Napoleon had to further conquer all of Egypt. Although he reported to the Directorate-General that Egypt was safe, in fact, even Rosetta and Tamia were not safe. The French armed transport forces from Alexandria to Cairo were attacked everywhere, and even several military envoys who came and went to the General Command were killed. One of them was Napoleon's favorite adjutant, Julian. For this reason, Napoleon had to use heavy troops to escort the military envoys. At the same time, General Menou had to deal with the Egyptian enemies around Rosetta and from Rosetta to Ramonia. Villard was sent to Tamiya to guard the port and the extremely important food storage warehouse. Zayoonsek was sent to Menouf and the Nile Delta to expand the influence of the French army and prepare to expand eastward.
In other words, although Napoleon had won the battle of the pyramids, the country continued to fight against the French except for Alexandria and Cairo. No region was immune to small-scale attacks. In addition, the remnants of the Mamluk army still had a certain amount of power. The army of Abraham Beyi was northeast of Cairo, while the army of Murad Beyi was distributed along the Nile River south of Fayoum.
Only about 20,000 of the 32,000-strong expeditionary force brought by Napoleon were available for deployment (another 6,000 were in hospitals or stationed elsewhere). On August 18th, Bertier reported this shocking number to Napoleon. Napoleon lost 7,000 men in less than two months. Needless to say, there was no mention of this in the report to Paris.
Although the cruel reality of invading and occupying foreign countries was unquestionable, Napoleon set a precedent for future generations for the French to carry out a civilized mission in the backward Pharaoh's territory. Napoleon brought modern machines to study the human geography of Egypt. In 1799, Colonel Bouchard discovered the Rosetta Stone, and the artist Denon discovered the ruins of many ancient temples at Thebes, Luksuel, and Kanaka (including the obelisk that the French army later brought back to France and placed in the Tuileries Palace garden). However, perhaps Napoleon's greatest creation was the creation of the Egyptian Academy of Sciences, which he regarded as the most powerful means of spreading civilization.
The Egyptian Academy of Sciences was established on August 22, 1798. In the eyes of the Directorate-General and the French people, it was considered a good thing in history and in the impression of the Egyptians. But its significance was far more than that, thanks to the active participation of Monge, Bertolet, and their colleagues. Monge, in particular, met with Napoleon every day in Cairo, and gradually influenced Napoleon to realize the importance of using intelligentsia rather than politicians as a guiding force in the formation of a government and the direction of the government. Napoleon had always liked to see himself as a public servant-a learned public servant, of course (he even often signed the Academy of Sciences when issuing military orders). In his spare time, he was usually with archaeologists, historians, and scientists, not with boorish soldiers. The extraordinary creativity of these scientists allowed the French army to survive in Egypt without relying on the rear of Europe.
Strictly speaking, the Academy of Science had three main goals: One was to spread knowledge and technology in Egypt; The second is to study Egypt's natural history, industrial and human history; The third was to provide advice to the government--the last was actually its main function. It was Egypt's first fully organized scientific think tank.
The Academy of Sciences was divided into four departments: the Department of Mathematics (including Monge and Napoleon), the Department of Physics and Political Economics (including the former Governor Tarrion who rescued Joseph), and the Department of Literature and Arts (including Denon, the future director of the Louvre Museum). Napoleon also personally selected qualified members of the Academy of Sciences from his officers and soldiers in Egypt, which lacked talent.
The Academy of Sciences was located in the confiscated Mamluk Palace, only a few miles away from the Erfah Palace. Monge, Bertolet, and the other academicians lived in these two palaces. At the same time, there were botany, physics, and chemistry laboratories, scientific materials, and Egyptian antiques, as well as a library of Latino, Greek, and Arabic.
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