"Bonaparte Before the Sphinx" by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1886
"Such Great Heights"
by Joel Bowman
“From the heights of the Pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.”
~ Napoleon Bonaparte, in a speech to the
Army of Egypt before the Battle of the Pyramids, 1798
Cairo, Egypt - "You reckon you’ve got problems? In terms of global power and influence, Egypt has been in a 2,500-year bear market. It was the year 525 BC when Cyrus the Great’s son and successor, Cambyses II, did what the Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians before him were unable to accomplish and conquered the “black land,” bringing it firmly under Persian control.
No doubt there were plenty of undulations and false dawns for the native Egyptians along the way... like when Petubastis III briefly retook the throne after revolting against the occupying Persians in 522-520 BC... but from the heights of the New Kingdom, ruled by iconic pharaohs like Hatshepsut, Akhenaten (and his slender-necked wife, Nefertiti), Tutankhamun and Ramesses II, through to the modern era, the once mighty Egyptian empire has been in relative decline.
That’s a long time wandering in the proverbial desert, watching as the conquering Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottoman Turks and even Napoleon’s Grande Armée fought for control over these ancestral lands, including this very city, the “Gift of the Nile.”
These thoughts occurred to us this morning, while wandering the labyrinthine alleyways of the 14th century Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Seventeen years have passed since we were last in this strange land; an imperceptible blink in history’s eternal gaze. Much has changed in our own life over that period... and plenty, too, in the lives (and deaths) of the 22 million souls who call this city home. But what of the grander cycles, those beyond our control, about which we have lately been ruminating? When we left you on Tuesday, we were musing on Leo Tolstoy’s theory of history...
Historical Anarchy: Tolstoy, author of the momentous "War and Peace" and a self-described “spiritual anarchist,” explained the arc of history as similar to the course of a giant ship, stretching out across an enormous ocean of time. Whereas most historians favored placing human actors – take Napoleon, for example – in the mighty tugboat up front, pulling the hulking vessel through the swells, Tolstoy had the Little Corsican in the lifeboat abaft, tossed about by forces both beyond his control and indifferent to his plight.
Replacing the ship with the Grande Armée itself, the genius of Tolstoy's observation starts to take shape. When Napoleon first crossed the Niémen on his eastward march, he did so with 422,000 troops under his command. By the time he returned, lurching homeward from the opposite direction, his number had dwindled to barely 12,000...
Click Image for larger size.
Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. The graphic is notable for its representation in two dimensions of six types of data: the number of Napoleon's troops; distance; temperature; the latitude and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates.
Everything that could go wrong, seemed to do just that. But how? Tolstoy understood that no army this size could possibly fall under the direction of one man. Even if every last troop wanted to obey his general’s orders (doubtful, given the practice of "levée en masse" – mass conscription – popular at the time), the sheer logistical undertaking of command from on high rendered uniform obedience next to impossible. The problem with top-down organization, Tolstoy realized, was not only behavioral... but also informational.
Let us imagine for a moment that Napoleon has issued a directive for his cavalry to move into a position he considered, for whatever reason, advantageous. (This is a wildly oversimplified order, a fiction conscripted in service of a point that should soon become obvious.) At first blush, this might appear a reasonably basic request, especially given Napoleon's famed brilliance for military strategy and the Grande Armeé's (shall we posit?) unwavering discipline and dedication to its fearless leader.
Spontaneous Disorder: Alas, even this small order proves to be no easy task. To begin with, the cavalry is composed of both heavy and light divisions. In turn, each division may be further split into three subunits - the Carabiniers-à-Cheval (Horse Carabiniers), Dragoons (Mounted Infantry) and Cuirassiers in the former and the Hussars (Hussards), Chasseurs-à-Cheval (Mounted Hunters) and Lanciers (Lancers) in the latter.
That's a lot of moving parts, both human and equine, allowing plenty of room for error. Moreover, each of these divisions consists of numerous individual regiments... often made up of soldiers from different national and cultural backgrounds, including those from conquered lands who don't always share a common language. The Chasseurs-à-Cheval, for example, had 32 different regiments in 1811, six of which were composed of non-French-speaking Belgians, Swiss, Italians and Germans. Further complicating matters, each has its own chain of command... internal squabbles... politicking... alliances and petty jealousies.
Dispatches, such as our rudimentary "Cavalry proceed from A to B" hypothetical, were conveyed via horseback, usually by one of the brave Hussars. Provided our young individual is not wounded or captured en route... assuming he does not lose his nerve along the way... supposing his message is not in some other way compromised or corrupted... allowing that the intended recipient is still in one piece when he arrives... imagining a million other possible – perhaps even probable? – outcomes do not eventuate, the young fellow might be able to deliver his message... Just in time for the spontaneous order of events already in motion to have materially changed... along with his capricious general's all-too-human frame of mind...
If Napoleon, arguably one of history's greatest generals, cannot even get a timely message to his own front line... what then do we make of his supposedly pivotal role in the wars that bear his name? And yet, believing their research accurate, their knowledge beyond doubt or question and their understanding of events long since transpired unassailable, historians assign lynchpin importance to the directives of one mere mortal or another. A supposition stacked on an assumption built on a guess tied up in an imaginary fantasy... thus is history, as we “know” it, authored.
Imperfect Knowledge: The Grande Armeé also made use of homing pigeons and observation balloons. The reader is invited to imagine the manifold and unknowable variables that must have arisen using such crude communication technologies... Suffice to say, society is complex. Information - both its dissemination and reception - is often nonlinear. Perfect knowledge, and therefore central planning, is untenable.
Why is it important to understand these points? And what does it have to do with the theory at hand? For one thing, it helps disabuse us of the misapprehension that any one man or woman or governing committee is truly capable of directing the grand cycles of history. It relieves us of the strange but common urge to over-accredit historical agency to a Trump or a Biden or an Obama or, worse still, some mysterious man behind the curtain, pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.
For another, it hints at the flailing impotence inherent in all top-down command systems... as “leaders” of many a nation state have been at pains to demonstrate through a seemingly unending relay of consequences both unknowable and unintended.
And finally, it reminds us to consider what precious little we can control during this brief moment called life - our small, daily actions toward others - amidst the vanishing footsteps in the sand, which we all leave behind."
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