Bonaparte Pardoning the Rebels of Cairo (1808)

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin: Bonaparte Pardoning the Rebels of Cairo 

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833) was a Neoclassic French painter. The incident depicted in this painting followed an abortive rebellion by native Egyptians against French rule.

On the morrow of the rebellion, the sheiks and imams of El-Azhar presented themselves at Bonaparte's palace. 'Their countenances,' Napoleon recalled at St. Helena, 'were those of guilty men consumed by anxiety.' Still, no specific accusations could be levelled against them; besides, Bonaparte had made up his mind not to investigate their conduct. 'I know that many of you have been weak,' he told them, 'but I like to believe that none of you is guilty.' The blood that had been shed was sufficient; the sacred books of El Azhar would be returned to them; let them purify the desecrated mosque, bury their dead, and proclaim his magnanimous amnesty to the people.

The old men, says Napoleon, fell on their knees and kissed the holy books which he had returned to them. Bonaparte's clemency surprised not only them but especially the French, soldiers and civilians alike, who grumbled that it would be interpreted as mere weakness. Despite their criticisms and dire prognostications, Bonaparte stubbornly persisted in his forgiveness.

 'Bonaparte Forgiving the Rebels of Cairo' became a favorite subject of painters and engravers during the Napoleonic era. Their representations do not give the faintest idea of what actually happened.

One day, not long after his return from Egypt, Bonaparte made some interesting comments on the clemency scene in the last act of Corneille's Cinna. Cinna has plotted against the life of Augustus; Augustus, instead of punishing him, holds out his hand in friendship: 'Soyons amis, Cinna.' Corneille, remarked Bonaparte, was a poet who understood politics. 'For instance, not long ago I found the explanation of the denouement in Cinna. At first, all I saw in it was a device for a touching fifth act. Moreover, clemency in itself is such a miserable petty virtue, unless it rests on political motives....But one day Monvel, playing that part in my presence, revealed to me the secret of that grand conception. He said the line, "Let us be friends, Cinna," with such a cunning and wily expression that I understood that his action was merely a tyrant's feint, and what had seemed to me a puerile sentiment I now approved as a calculated ruse.

Since the sheiks were the only reliable tools he had in Egypt; since, at any rate, it would have been difficult to prove anything against them; and since he counted on their help to pacify the people, Bonaparte's clemcy toward them was untainted by any humanitarian sentimentality. In fact, while he allowed them to kiss his hands in gratitude, certain orders he had given to General Berthier were being carried out at the Citadel: 'You will have the goodness, Citizen General, to order the commandant of Cairo to have the heads of all prisoners taken arms-in-hand cut off. They will be taken to the bank of the Nile ... after dark; their headless corpses will be thrown into the river.' Aside from these prisoners, eighty members of the 'Divan of Defence' (the rebellious junta) were executed at the Citadel. 'They were people of a violent and irreconcilable turn of mind,' Napoleon commented twenty years later. A public show of clemency to the blameless; executions of the recalcitrant in secret and at night - the formula would have won Machiavelli's approval. [Bonaparte in Egypt, J. Christopher Herold, p. 214-215]