GENERL YA’QUB THE COPT’S ELEGIAC POEM ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL DESAIX AT MARENGO IN 1800

Plaster cast of Desaix’s bust by the Italian sculptor Angelo Pizzi (1775 – 1819) after his death mask

​General Desaix (Louis Charles Antoine Desaix [1768 – 1800]) was a Coptphile and appreciator of their great past and heritage which goes back to ancient Egypt. He accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte in his expedition in Egypt in 1798. There, he gallantly fought, and during his stay in Egypt he came to know the great Coptic patriot, General Ya’qub the Copt (1745 – 1801), twenty-three years his senior. In Upper Egypt (Campaign in Upper Egypt [August 1798 – 29 May 1799]), where the Murad Bey escaped, they both fought the combined forces of the Mamelukes and Arabs and beat them at Behnesa and Sadment. Desaix came to like the company of Ya’qub, and came to appreciate the Copt’s mind, generosity and above all his courage at war, particularly for his bravery at the Battle of Ain al-Qusiyyah, for which he honoured him with a sword. And Ya’qub too was fascinated by the gallantry of Desaix. While in Upper Egypt, they each entertained the other, and troops, Desaix at his headquarters and Ya’qub at his home in Asyut, and discussed different topics, including Egypt’s great past, the poor and unjust governance of the Ottomans and Mamelukes, the reduction of the Copts to slavery since the Arab Conquest, and the hopes of freedom and justice that lied ahead.

Having pacified Upper Egypt, Desaix became its ruler with the assistance of Ya’qub, commencing a just and advanced governance like it had never seen under Muslim control, and improved the lives of both Arab Fellahin and Copts. The Fellahin called him, the Just Sultan”; and Bonaparte honoured his accomplishments in war and administration with a sabre of honour on which was engraved “Conquest of Upper Egypt”.

After Bonaparte’s return to France, the French negotiated with the English evacuation of Egypt, a negotiation headed by Desaix from the French side and Sir Sidney Smith from the English, and ended with Al-Arish Convention in January of 1800. The French stay in Egypt continued until next year, despite the agreement, but Desaix left Egypt in March and arrived, after some delay due to an arrest by the English, in Toulon, France, on the 5th of May. At that time Bonaparte was fighting in Italy, and Desaix joined him there on 11 June.

Desaix died in action on 14 June 1800, the same day Kléber’s was assassinated in Egypt. Desaix had been dispatched to survey Austrian positions somewhere else when war broke out at Marengo in Piedmont, Italy, between the main Austrian forces and the French under Bonaparte. The Austrians outnumbered and outgunned the French, and won the beginning of the battle, but on recalling Desaix and his troops, the defeat was overturned, thanks mainly to Desaix’s encouragement to Bonaparte to continue the fight. When Bonaparte saw him coming, he asked him: ‘What do you think?’ Desaix, covered in mud, pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. ‘This battle is lost,’ he told Napoleon, ‘But there is still time to win another.’ Desaix led his men in the main counterattack against the Austrians, and he was shot through the heart with a musket ball and instantly killed.

The death of Desaix, at thirty-two, was met with universal sadness from those who knew him, not least Bonaparte who appreciated his service and his role in the important Battle of Marengo which consolidated his political position in Paris as First Consul of France.

The body of Desaix was initially buried in Milan, but Bonaparte decided to immortalise him by erecting two monuments to him in Paris at the Place Dauphine and thePlace des Victoires. The first remained but the second was later destroyed. Desaix’s name was also written on a face of the Arc de Triomphe. Five years later, on 14 June 1805, the body was removed to the chapel of the Hospice of Saint Bernard Monastery, in Valais, Switzerland, in the Great Saint Bernard Pass at the summit of the Alps.

[W]hen Bonaparte asked for Desaix, to embrace his saviour, Desaix could not be found. Only an aid-de-camp and a sergeant had noticed him sliding from his horse at the beginning of the charge.

General Desaix’s body was discovered, by lantern light, among a heap of others; it was recognised by his long, black hair, still tied with a ribbon. A large bullet had literally torn his heart to pieces. ‘Why have I not the right to cry?’ Bonaparte is reported to have remarked when he viewed the corpse, Baqil, Desaix’s black boy, and Ismail, his young Mamelike, felt no such inhibitions as they wailed over their dead master.

Napoleon never forgot his debt toward Desaix, and since Desaix was dead, he acknowledged it generously. The general whose death, at the age of thirty-two, was the pedestal of Napoleon’s glory deserved a very special tomb. ‘To so much virtue and heroism, I wish to pay such homage as no other man has received’, Napoleon proclaimed. ‘Desaix’s tomb shall have the Alps for its pedestal and the monks of the Saint Bernard for its guardians.’ On June 14, 1805, Desaix was solemnly buried in the chapel of the Hospice of Saint Bernard. The military Requiem was celebrated by the abbot; musketry punctuated the chant of the friars. Denon[1] and Berthier[2] pronounced Desaix’s eulogy. ‘Here is the man’, said Berthier, ‘whom the Orient called “the Just”, his fatherland “the Brave”, his century “the Wise”, and whom Napoleon has honoured with a monument.” A more fatuous climax it would be difficult to imagine.[3]

The news of Desaix’s heroic death soon reached Egypt. And there it was also met with great sadness by those who knew him, not least from the Copt, General Ya’qub, his friend. The intention of Bonaparte to erect memorials for him in Paris was made known. Ya’qub volunteered to pay one-third of the expenses. And in keeping with customs in Egypt, he sent an elegiac poem to Paris in which he laments the death of General Desaix, whom he describes as “sahib al-amir ya’qub sari askar al-quibt al-gadid” (friend of Prince Ya’qub, the newly appointed General of the Copts). Ya’qub had been appointed Finance Intendant by Napoleon Bonaparte for Desaix’s Upper Egypt Campaign in 1798 in chase of Murad Bey. In March/April 1800, during the Cairo Revolt II, he defended the Copts against attacks by Turkish troops, Mamelukes, and other anti-Coptic fanatics. Following that, he formed the Légion copte (Coptic Legion), and was appointed Colonel and then General in the Armée française de l’Orient (French Army of the Orient), becoming the first non-French General in the history of France. The date on which Ya’qub sent the elegy to Paris must have been sometime in July or August 1800 when he was in Cairo, acting as General.

The poem has been published by the Arab Egyptian journalist Ahmad Hussain al- Ṣawi (d. 1995), which he found in Ministry of War in Paris, in his book, المعلم يعقوب بين الأسطورة والحقيقة (Mu’allim Ya’qub between Myth and Truth) – a book which maligns Ya’qub and describes him as a traitor.[4] By publishing the poem, al- Ṣawi tries to portray the relationship between Ya’qub and Desaix as sexual, which is appalling and without evidence. He fails to see the attraction between the two based on common thinking and character.

Ya’qub was neither an Arab nor a poet, so he asked the Fr. Rofail, a Syrian who lived in Egypt and worked as a translator for the French, to write the poem for him, including his sentiments and ideas. Rofail did that in 35 verses. I publish photos of the poem below:[5]

The poem is written in poor Arabic and, in the tradition of Arabic poetry, contains lots of flowery language, but I include here the last 14 verses (with corrections), with tentative English translation, which I believe show thinking at the time.

يا من قطن ببلدة الأحياء والقبط
ونفسك هناك تحظى داخل الخدر

جد على بلحظ العين والرأفة
وانظر لبأسنا برقة البصر

انظر الى شعبنا وشقاء حالته
إذ غدت حياتنا لا تخلو من الكدر

لاحظ المصريين وكيف كانوا قديما
وعبيدا غدوا الآن للرق والأسر

فكم كنت تعجب أنت من مفاخرهم
وثيبس القديمة يعلق ذكرها الخبر

فمنك نرجو الشفاعة يا معضد الأول
فلا تدع مصرنا لسابق القهر

ومن بعد حكم الفرنسة أعواما
فلا تدعها لحاكم يسوس بالقسر

وإذا أخليت مصر بصلح عام منتقلة
من يد ليد حاكم متعجرف مفتر

فمنكم نطلب العون يا دوسي بأجمعنا
وإسمك في باريس يحمينا يا شائع الذكر

فبنا أعتني كي نبقى بناحية القبلي
ولننجوا بحياتنا من الموت والحسر

فتنقذ بنيك من كل نائبة
فإنهم بأعدائهم في أعظم الخطر

وقد تفاقم الآن غضبهم ضد أمتنا
ولحبنا للفرنسة قصدوا أن نسكن القبر

إن محبتنا للفرنسة لا بد منها
فهم أعتقونا من الأضرار والشر

ثم أنهي مقالي اليك يا ربي
تجزي دوسي أعماله بالخير والأجر

Ya’qub’s elegy can be seen as a message to Bonaparte himself. He laments the death of his friend Desaix and enumerates his virtues, but although he addresses Desaix in his poem, there is a political message and an S.O.S. that Desaix can’t respond to. Only Bonaparte who survived Desaix could.  At the time, both Desaix and Kléber were dead, and the useless and unpopular Jacques-François de Menou (1750 – 1810) took over as general in chief. He married an Arab or Turkish woman from a rich background, converted to Islam and renamed himself Abdallah. He put the plans to evacuate Egypt and hand power to the Mamelukes. This obviously worried Ya’qub quite considerably in view of the hatred the Mamelukes held for the Copts, particularly after the collaboration between the Copts, represented in Ya’qub and the Coptic Legion, with the French. Revenge was expected, which surely came quick after the French withdrawal in 1801. Ya’qub left Egypt with the French but the poem shows clearly he was concerned about all the Copts, whom he calls “our people” and “our nation”. He was worried that the Copts might be eradicated from Upper Egypt. And in his poem, Ya’qub was asking the French to protect his nation.

The poem makes it clear how Ya’qub was aware of the greatness of ancient Egypt and how he felt about the nexus between the ancient Egyptians and the Copts. This may answer to writers who claim that the Copts were not aware of their Pharaonic roots until the second half of the nineteenth century. Ya’qub did not join the French without a reason: he was a rebel with a reason. The Mamelukes and Arabs destroyed and oppressed Egypt, and the Copts particularly suffered under them. The French, though themselves foreigners, had liberated Egypt from the clutch of a worse foreign rule; and while the Mamelukes and Arabs were oppressive and unjust, the French were mild and just, and worked to modernise Egypt. It was the Arab Fellahin who called Desaix the Just Sultan. Ya’qub defends the Copts for loving the French, and describe it as natural, “inevitable”, since the French had freed them from the harm and evil of the Mamelukes, Turks and Arabs.

Ya’qub’s apology for the support of the Copts of the French rule in Egypt remains good today as it was yesterday. When Muslim Arabs of Egypt, such as we see in al- Ṣawi book, criticise the Coptic collaboration with the French, one can repeat to them Ya’qub’s elegy for Desaix: the French were better rulers than the Turks’ Mamelukes and Arabs, and the latter were anyway not natives but foreigners as much as the French were. The Copts sought to end an oppressive, tyrannical, foreign regime.

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[1] Vivant Denon (1747 – 1825), the famous French artist and archaeologist.

[2] Louis Alexandre Berthier (1753 – 1815) was Chief of Staff under Bonaparte.

[3] Christopher Herold, Bonaparte in Egypt (London, 1962), p. 365.

[4] أحمد حسين الصاوي: المعلم يعقوب بين الأسطورة والحقيقة (القاهرة، ١٩٨٦)٠

[5] Ibid, pp. 101-104.