Bedouin cavalry at the rear functioned to catch Egyptian deserters
Evidence
Given the traditional role that bedouins played in Mehmed Ali’s army, however, it seems equally plausible to argue that they were placed there to catch any deserters from the Egyptian side. When the actual battle started a large number of soldiers felt trapped not only between their ever watchful sentries behind them and the enemy ahead, but also between the strong urge to flee and desert the army altogether, on the one hand, an urge that was never really effectively quenched, and, on the other hand, the obligation to obey orders and “engage with the enemy” in a courageous, “manly” way. And unless one uncritically believes accounts of nationalist historians arguing that Mehmed Ali’s troops were willing to give up their lives for the sake of “Egypt,” these men had still not lost their instinct of self-preservation that kept them human in spite of years of training and indoctrination. “Placed in intolerable and unprecedented circumstances of fear and stress, deprived of their sense of control, and expected to react with … unnatural ‘courage’” a lot of these men could not continue fighting, broke down, and reacted in a manner that recalls the behavior of many British soldiers in the Great War of 1914–18. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1095
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: The desertion/coercion interpretation parallels accounts of the British Expeditionary Force in WWI battles.
Related
- Egyptian soldiers obeyed orders because desertion and retreat both meant court martial (similarity 0.82)
- Bedouins and sapper regiments proved unreliable as camp guards due to desertion (similarity 0.80)
- Desertion and rebellion fundamentally undermined the performance of Ali’s army (similarity 0.79)
- Conscript soldiers fought chiefly because desertion was impossible and retreat risked court martial (similarity 0.79)
- Brutal force failed to deter desertion, driving the shift to psychological control (similarity 0.79)
- Mehmed Ali’s conscript army was held together only by coercion (similarity 0.79)