There was no conversation amongst the men. Their lips were too dry and their throats too parched to bear the weight of any words as they shuffled across the sand into the twilight. A short distance further on, in the gathering gloom, Napoleon spotted a shape lying across the track and he ordered the column to halt while he went forward with Berthier and ten of the guides. A naked man lay sprawled on his back, his eyes staring blankly into the heavens. His jaw gaped open, and as Napoleon leaned over the corpse he could see that something bloody had been stuffed into the man’s mouth. As he glanced down the torso he saw a raw, dark gash where the man’s genitalia had been cut off, and a wave of revulsion and nausea swelled up from the pit of his stomach.

‘What kind of man would do that?’

‘It’s probably the work of the Bedouin,’ Berthier replied quietly. ‘According to the reports they’ve been shadowing our forces. Now they’ve started picking off our stragglers, like this poor fellow.’

‘Savages,’ Napoleon hissed through clenched teeth as he stared at the body.

‘It’s another world here in the east, sir.They fight by different standards, different values.’ Berthier gazed down at the corpse with a sad expression.‘Shall I have the men take the body to one side and bury it?’

Napoleon was silent for a moment before he replied in a harsh tone. ‘No. Let them see it. Let them know what happens to stragglers, and maybe it’ll put some fire into their bellies. God knows, they’ll need it over the next few days.’ He straightened up and walked back to his horse. ‘We’re wasting time here. We need to get moving.’

The column shuffled forward again, and rippled warily round the body as the men stared at their dead comrade in fear and anger. He was only the first that they encountered that night. By the time the sky began to lighten, with promise of yet another day of unbearable heat, they had passed several more corpses. Some had been beheaded and all of them showed signs of torture and mutilation. The way ahead was strewn with abandoned equipment and Napoleon and his men began to nurse dreadful fears about the fate of the men who had marched before them.

Again, the searing heat and dazzling glare pinned them to the wasteland as they followed the tracks of Desaix and his divisions. Late in the morning there was a shout from the company of guides, as Napoleon’s bodyguard had come to be called, who were screening their advance. Napoleon rose up in his saddle to squint in the direction indicated. A mile away, on the crest of a dune, a small party of dark-robed figures mounted on camels was shadowing the column.

‘Looks like some of those Bedouin you mentioned.’

Berthier nodded as he stared at the distant riders. ‘I’ll pass the word back down the column. I don’t imagine there’ll be many stragglers today, sir.’

‘No . . .’

Despite Napoleon’s orders the men could not resist the thirst that tormented them and nearly every canteen was empty long before they stopped under the midday sun and rested until it had inched down towards the western horizon. Then they rose up and continued again, their shadows stretching before them thin and gaunt and obscured by the dusty haze kicked up by their heavy boots. The men were exhausted and marched at a monotonous pace, dazed expressions on their faces. Here and there a man passed a dry, tacky tongue over cracked lips and winced at the pain it produced. Napoleon and the other officers had spare canteens hanging from their saddles and drank from them as discreetly as possible. Even so, the eyes of the nearest men flickered towards them with an intensity born of desperation as their parched throats burned in agony.

They rested again shortly after midnight and sat huddled together against the cold night air. Away to the west a sand dune was dimly highlighted by the glow of a campfire and a dark silhouette kept watch over the intervening desert. Napoleon stared at the Bedouin for a long time, wondering at the hardiness of a people who could endure such a hostile environment.What kind of man would choose such a life? But if this wasteland was the kind of terrain over which the Egyptian campaign would be fought, then he would do well to recruit these desert warriors to his side.

At length, Napoleon stood up and gave the order for the column to prepare to march. ‘Tell them, one more day and then we’ll camp on the bank of the Nile.Then they can drink as much water as they want.’

As the men rose up stiffly and took their places in the marching column a rider suddenly crested the dune a short distance along the track and galloped towards Napoleon and his staff officers. He slewed his foaming horse to a halt and stretched out an arm towards Napoleon as he offered him a folded dispatch.

‘From General Desaix, sir. He begs you to read it at once.’

Napoleon hurriedly broke the seal, opened the sheet of paper out and scanned the hurriedly composed message, then looked up at the messenger. ‘Tell General Desaix we will reach him tomorrow night. Until then he is to do nothing but rest his troops. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

As the messenger turned his horse back down the track and spurred it into a trot Napoleon gestured to Berthier. ‘Ride ahead with me.’

The two officers urged their mounts forward until they were well out of earshot of the others.Then Napoleon slowed the pace to a walk and spoke quietly.‘Desaix says his men are on the verge of mutiny.’

‘Mutiny?’

‘Quiet, you fool!’ Napoleon glanced round anxiously and then continued. ‘The men refuse to go on. Their representatives have demanded that the army retreats to Alexandria and abandons the campaign. Even worse, some of the senior officers are backing their demands.’

‘Who, sir?’

‘General Mireur, and two colonels.’

‘What will you do, sir?’

Napoleon shrugged.‘I’m not sure, yet. By rights I should have them shot. Them and all the other ringleaders. I must restore discipline at any cost. But I’ll need to handle the situation very carefully.’ He thought a moment longer and then nodded to himself as he made a decision. ‘Berthier, I’m going to ride on ahead. I’ll take a small escort and find Desaix. I’m leaving you in command. Make sure the column does not stop until it reaches the Nile. Clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

They exchanged a salute and then Napoleon pointed back to the squadron of mounted scouts. ‘You . . . and you. Follow me!’

He urged his horse into a trot and headed along the track towards Desaix. For the rest of the night and into the first pale light of dawn Napoleon’s anger at the situation Desaix had allowed to flare up smouldered in his breast. Mutiny? So early in the campaign? It was unthinkable, Napoleon fumed. If only these men had one fraction of the endurance and courage of the Army of Italy this would never have happened. He spurred his horse on. As the three men rode across the sands they encountered ever more abandoned equipment and bodies, and finally, to Napoleon’s rage, a gun and limber, with two horses still attached to their traces. Each had been shot through the head. All the while, Napoleon was aware of a small band of Bedouin trailing them some distance off to their right. They made no attempt to close in on the French riders; they were just waiting patiently for a horse to go lame or for one of the men to fall far enough behind to be easily picked off.

As on previous days they stopped at noon to rest and water the horses as sparingly as possible. Then they moved on again. It was not until mid-afternoon that Napoleon finally sighted the main body of the army, camped outside the village of Damanhur, little more than a clutch of squalid hovels gathered around a handful of small wells. Desaix was still a day’s march from the Nile and Napoleon felt his dusty face flush with rage that the army had halted short of its goal. He galloped through the pickets surrounding Damanhur and headed into the centre of the village, noting the soldiers staring listlessly as they leaned against the walls of the mud-brick houses that lined the dirty streets. There was hardly any sign of the local people, just occasional faces peering out from windows and doorways with fearful expressions. In the heart of the village Napoleon found a small market area shaded by several palm trees. He reined in and jumped down from his horse, and strode towards a group of soldiers sitting round a small cooking fire as they fed the remains of a market stall into the flames.