Clase 2 Napoleon Grigsby

Rumor, Contagion, and Colonization in Gros's Plague-Stricken of Jaffa (1804)
Author(s): Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby

Source: Representations, No. 51 (Summer, 1995), pp. 1-46
Published by: University of California Press
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DARCY GRIMALDO GRIGSBY
Rumor,Contagion, and
Colonization in Gros's
Plague-StrickenofJaffa (1804)
IN H I S Memoires pourservira l'histoire

desexpeditionsenEgypteeten Syrie
of 1814, Jacques-FrancoisMiot describesthe French army'sbloody massacre of
surrendered prisonerssubsequent to the siege of Jaffain 1799 and concludes,
"This tableau is exact and true,and the recollectionmakes myhand, thathas not
rendered all of the horrorof it,tremble."'Miot at once offersa delineated field
of precisionand veracity,the tableau, and registersthe horrorthatexceeds rep-
resentationin his incapacityto control his authorial instrument.The hand is
capable of creatingan "exactand truetableau,"but ittremblesas memoryunder-
scores itsinadequacy to representthe inexpressible.
The firsthalf of Miot'ssentence neatly,if reductively,suggeststhe model of
colonial discourse described by Edward Said in 1978 in his seminal book, Orien-
talism.2In his analysisof the Napoleonic Egyptianexpedition,Said emphasizes
thatNapoleon's projectwas "to render [Egypt]completelyopen, to make ittotally
accessibleto European scrutiny."3 Relyingon a Foucauldian conceptualizationof
the relationship between knowledgeand power,Said stressesthe role of Orien-
talistdiscourse in the familiarization,even domestication,of the East. Said con-
sistentlyunderlinesthe West'sconfidencein itsauthorial(aestheticand political)
controlover the colonized object. Classification,rationality, and surveillanceare
considered efficaciousmeans to domination because the indigenous object is fun-
damentallyvisible.
Miot's concluding phrase, however,can serve to rehearse the now familiar
criticismsof Said's totalizingmodel of a monolithicand hegemonic discourse. In
itsawkwardconjunction,Miot'ssentencesuggeststhetensionsand contradictions
that characterizethe colonial encounter as well as the discrepancybetween dis-
cursive and materialistaccounts of colonialism'soperation. If the French inter-
ventionin Egyptcan be characterizedas a benevolentclassificatory expedition,
an Orientalist and Enlightenmentproject par excellence, it was also a coercive
and violentmilitaryaggression.Justas war's brutalityerupts as an admission of
inadequacy withinMiot'stext,so too did itcontinuallychallenge French precon-
REPRESENTATIONS 51 * Summer 1995 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ceptionsof superiorityand control.The Egyptiancampaign was, in fact,a humil-
iating failure. Unable to conquer the "damned tower"held by Pasha Djezzar at
Saint Jean d'Acre, the decimated French troops limped home defeated by the
Oriental enemy.4Failure then mustbe writteninto the account of colonial con-
frontation-the failureto exertnot onlymilitarybut also political,corporal, and
representationalcontrolover the resistantcolonized object.
This is not to say thatI deny the waysMiot'stextualfragmentaccommodates
failure(excess,limitsof control)withinhis Orientalistdiscourse. For Miot,horror
lies outside the tableau's frame,but he effectivelyevokes its power through the
trope of exteriority. Sublimitytoo is one of the materialsof Orientalism.I would
argue that far fromproducing itselfas monolithic,Orientalistdiscourse repre-
sents its own incompleteness.Nevertheless,the capacityof a discourse to repre-
sentitslimitsdoes not mean thatitsfailuresare fullyrecuperated; representation
may produce the inchoateas an effectwithoutentirelycontrollingit.
II
Although Said brieflydiscussesone significantvisual and textualrep-

resentationof the Egyptianexpedition,the massive encyclopediceffortDescrip-
tionde l'Egypte,his analyses focus almost exclusivelyon textualrepresentations.5
He does not, for instance,referto the most famous painting dedicated to the
subject of the ill-fatedEgyptiancampaign of 1798-1801, Antoine-JeanGros's
BonaparteVisitingthePlague-Stricken ofJaffa(fig. 1). Preceding the publicationof
the Description de l'Egypteby fiveyears, this immense paintingwas exhibited to
great acclaim in the public Salon of 1804. Measuring more than fiveby seven
meters,Gros'spaintingmustbe seen as a great,epic machine assigned the taskof
retrospectively representingthe Egyptianexpeditionto the Frenchpublic. While
the precise nature of itscommissionremainsuncertain,the workcan be consid-
ered an officiallysanctioned representation.6The paintingwas received enthu-
siasticallyby Gros's peers, particularlyhis fellowstudentswithinJacques-Louis
David's atelier,who crowneditat theopening of the Salon on 18 September 1804.
A banquet in Gros's honor was held on 24 September and Anne-Louis Girodet
read a gushing, laudatory poem celebratinghis comrade's achievement.7Most
criticsadmittedthatGros'spaintingrepresentedthe greatestsuccess of the Salon.
The enthusiasmexpressed by Gros's advocates withinthe press was apparently
shared bymuch of thewiderpublic,or so officials wisheditto be perceived.8After
the highlypoliticizedcontroversiessurroundingtheBattleofNazarethcompetition
in 1800, and particularlyGros'srole as competitorof choice, the governmentwas
delightedbythesuccessof a commissionthatrepresenteda significant divergence
fromthe Revolutionaryheritageof the Concours system.9Moreover,the paint-
ing's success outlived the moment of its initialreception. Six years later,at the
2 REPRESENTATIONS

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heightof the Napoleonic Empire, the officialjury for a retrospectivedecennial
competitiondeemed Gros'sPlague-Stricken ofJaffasecond only to David's Corona-
tionwithinthe categoryof "historypaintinghonorable to the national character,"
thus deeming it the most successfulmilitary
paintingcreated between 1799 and
1809.10
The painting'swell-knownsuccess can be misleading,however,engendering
reductiveaccounts of the work as blatantpropaganda in the serviceof a secure
authoritarianregime.Such readingsbelie not onlythe dissentexpressed bysome
criticsbut also the fundamentalinstabilityof the governmentitselfas well as the
idiosyncrasyof the image. In fact,Gros's painting was revealed to the French
public during the extremelytenseand controversialtransitionfromConsulate to
Empire. Napoleon's upcoming coronation had been announced since the pre-
vious spring,but the elaborate ceremonywould not take place until December.
Afterthe relativecalm achieved by peace treatieswithAustria (1801) and En-
gland (1802) and the Concordat (1802), the year 1803 witnessedthe ruptureof
the Treaty of Amiens with England and new concerted Royalistconspiracies
against Napoleon. Tensions culminated in the seizure and assassination on 21
March 1804 of the scapegoat Duc d'Enghien by the FirstConsul, the resulting
trialsof conspiratorsfromMay to June, and the hostilereactionto Napoleon by
Royalistsympathizersboth withinFrance and abroad." It was, therefore,in the
midst of a factionalizedpoliticsof conspiracythat Gros publiclyexhibited his
grandemachine.It is not surprisingthen that both the work and its coronation
encounteredsome initialresistancefromRepublicansand Royalistswho opposed
Bonaparte's upcoming coronationand the foreclosureof public debate. Charac-
art criticismpermittedroom foroppositional maneuver during a rel-
teristically,
atively censorious authoritarianregime. Gros's painting should not then be
considered a propagandisticimage inserted into the silence of a fullypoliced
public sphere. Rather,I would argue thatthe factionaldissentregisteredin the
criticismwas one of the materialsmanaged by Gros's epic tableau. I willempha-
size,in otherwords,the painting'scapacityto accommodate the instability of con-
flictinginterpretations.
Given the work'stremendouspopularityas an officially sanctionedrepresen-
tation of the Egyptian campaign, it is curious and even surprising that the
painting depicts neithera successfulmilitarybattle,nor an optimisticscene of
harmonious accord, nor even a scene of Oriental degeneracyrequiringWestern
intercession.Instead, the paintingdepictsthe Frencharmydecimated byplague.
Although Plague-Stricken ofJaffahas been loosely characterized as a seminal
example of early-nineteenth-century Orientalismby almost every art historian
addressing the phenomenon,'2no attentionhas been directedto the factthat,in
Gros's painting,Frenchmen,not Arabs, provide the "Orientalist"figurationsof
regression,chaos, heightened sexuality,and passivityconventionallyconstrued
3 While no otherscholar has emphasized the
as "feminine"as well as "primitive."'
4 REPRESENTATIONS

FIGURE 2. Antoine-JeanGros,Bonaparteharanguantl'armeeavantla
batailledespyramides,
1804. Oil on canvas. Musee de
Versailles.Photo: Agence photographiquede la reunion
des musees nationaux.
fact,I believe it is of fundamentalimportthat in Gros's painting,French men

ratherthan "Orientals"sprawl across the painting'ssurface in varyingstatesof
nudityand disarray,anguish and passivity,indifferenceand unconsciousness.
Gros's Plague-Stricken ofJaffamust thereforebe distinguishedfrom,ratherthan
assimilatedto,conventionalOrientalistimagesthatrepresentindigenouspeoples
as a primitive,sensual, and barbaric foil to Westerncivilization.The painting
stands in contradistinctionnot only to the many other representationsof the
Egyptiancampaign fromthe Napoleonic era, such as Gros'slaterBattleofthePyr-
amids( 1810, fig.2) or Pierre-NarcisseGuerin'sPardonoftheRevoltofCairo(1808,
fig.3), but also to later nineteenth-century
Orientalistimages, such as Lecomte
de Nuouy's Guard of theSeraglio(1876) or the obsessivelyrepeated images of
harem women that dominated the oeuvres of academic and avant-gardeartists
alike. Moreover,thatan image of dyingplague-strickenFrenchsoldierswas sin-
gled out in 1810 bytheprixdicennauxjury as the mostimportantmilitary painting
and Colonization
Rumor,Contagion, in Gros'sPlague-Stricken
ofJafa 5

FIGURE 3. Pierre-NarcisseGuerin,Bonapartepardonnant aux revoltes
du Caire,1808. Oil on canvas. Musee de Versailles.Photo:
Agence photographiquede la reunion des musees
nationaux.
of the Napoleonic empire warrantsfurtherconsideration,particularlyconsid-

ering a Revolutionaryheritagevalorizingthe citizen-soldier'sheroism. If Gros's
BattleofNazarethsketchof 1801 aligns itselfwithRepublican propaganda in his
egalitariancelebrationof the heroismand humanityof soldier as well as officer,
hisPlague-StrickenofJaffarepresentsnot onlya decided shiftto a more traditional
hierarchicalcompositionthatprivilegesan elitecorps of officersand doctors,but
also a shockingmetamorphosisof the Frenchsoldier fromactivehero to passive
victim.
Althoughtwentieth-century scholarshave notbeen startledbythis"Oriental-
ization" of French citizens in Gros's painting, one of Gros's contemporaries
expressed surpriseand disapproval in his Salon criticismin a dialogue between
viewers:"Sir,are these Egyptianswho have the plague? No, theyare Frenchmen.
Have theythen taken on the air and characterof the country[of Egypt]?"''4In
thishighlyidiosyncraticinversionof an Orientalistopposition between civilized
6 REPRESENTATIONS

man and barbarian,Gros's paintingclearlyunsettlesfacile assumptionsregard-
ing the operations of "Orientalist"painting,a paintingalways presumed to ag-
grandize the Westand disempowerthe East, at least implicitlyif not explicitly.'5
The reversalin Gros'spaintingmayalso partlyexplain whymodernart historians
have largelyfailed to discuss the paintingin termsof colonialistcontactbetween
cultures,preferringinstead to make general remarksregarding its exotic, Ori-
entalistor preromanticcharacterand, more specifically, to point out its propa-
gandisticvalorizationof the figureof Napoleon.'6 The latteremphasis is well
founded but inadequate. The scholarlypreoccupationwiththe figureof Napo-
leon has, I believe, neglected the broader semantic structurewithinwhich he
acquires significance.What, one must ask, are the terms to which Napoleon's
authorityis opposed?
It is my contentionthat Gros's Plague-Stricken ofJaffamakes visiblethe ten-
sions during the post-Revolutionary period between the residual formsof polit-
ical affiliation embodied in French Classicism and emergent nationalist
discourses. If Gros's revered master,David, had managed to harness and regen-
erate a heroic, academic, Classical paintingtraditionin order to representpre-
Revolutionaryand Revolutionaryideals in paintingslike The Oath of theHoratii
(fig.4) and TheLictorsBringingBrutustheBodiesofHis Sons,exemplarymodels of
virtuousself-sacrifice to the Republican state,his studentGros was compelled to
adapt this Classical traditionto the new exigencies of a Napoleonic militaristic
regime. This paper will consider Gros's metamorphosisof the French Classical
traditionin a paintingthatattemptsto bolstera specificallynationalistratherthan
universalmasculine identity.I willargue, moreover,thatGros's work represents
the tension between national and Classical conceptions of identitynot only in
termsof competingconstructionsof masculinity, but also in termsof an opposi-
tion between colonizer and colonized, between Self and Other. The painting
therebyattemptsto contain the post-Revolutionarytensions that attended the
shiftfromConsulate to Empire by proposing a semioticsystemof identityand
alteritycapable of overridingthe specificityof factionalpolitics.
III
Gros'sPlague-Stricken ofJaffa purportedlyrepresentsa historicalevent.

During the Egyptianand Syriancampaigns in 1798 and 1799, the French army
was indeed strickenbythe bubonic plague, initiallyin Alexandria and Damietta,
but mostseverelyinJaffa,where,at the heightof the epidemic,about thirtymen
died each day.'7 Throughout the campaign, Napoleon and his medical officers
publiclyrefusedto call the disease "plague,"but referredto itinsteadas a "fever."
Their consistentassertionthatthe "fever"was not contagious,in fact,accurately
characterizedthe bubonic plague, whichis transmittedthroughflea bites rather
in Gros'sPlague-Stricken
and Colonization
Rumor,Contagion, ofJaffa 7

FIGURE 4. Jacques-LouisDavid, Le sermentdesHoraces,1785 Oil on
Mus.e canvas. du Louvre. Photo: Agence photographique
de la reunion des musees nationaux.
than throughexposure between people. Nevertheless,most medical attendants

contractedthe disease and died, a factsuggestedby Gros's prominentinclusion
of one dying doctor in the rightforeground.Medical attendantswere forcibly
recruitedfromdifferentindigenous groups and failureto serve was punishable
by death. Soldiers were so demoralized and frightenedbythe thoughtof plague
thata numbercommittedsuicide at itsfirstsigns.'8
Fear regardingcontactwiththe plague-strickenwas,therefore,both palpable
and pervasive.This is the contextwithinwhichthe subjectof Gros's painting,the
inherentdrama of Napoleon's visitto Jaffa'shospitalon 21 March 1799, can be
appreciated. The Salon livretthataccompanied the painting'sexhibitionin 1804
describesNapoleon's intentionsas well as his courage:
Bonaparte,generalin chiefofthearmyoftheOrient,at themomentwhenhe toucheda
pestilential thehospital
tumorwhilevisiting distancethefrightening
aJaffa..g. To further
idea of a suddenand incurablecontagion,he had opened beforehimsomepestilential
8 REPRESENTATIONS

thefirst
devotion,
tumorsand touchedseveral.He gave,bythismagnanimous exampleof
a genreofcourageunknownuntilthenand whichhassincehad imitators.'9
In this passage, we encounter the paradoxical nature of Napoleon's action and

the paintingthatwas commissionedto valorize it. Both the Salon brochure and
contemporaneouswitnessaccountstellus thatNapoleon touched plague-stricken
men in order to arrest terrifying rumors that the disease was contagious and
incurable.20The livret'sdescriptionof Napoleon's intentioncorresponds witha
numberof firsthandaccounts,includingthatof themedical chiefof staff,Nicolas-
Rene-DufricheDesgenettes,as well as Napoleon's own retrospectivediscussion
of the event, according to Emmanuel Comte de Las Cases:21 "Fear caused [the
disease's] spread more than anythingelse. The principalseat of the plague was
in the imagination.During the Egyptiancampaign all those whose imagination
was struckby fear died of it. The surestprotection,the mostefficaciousremedy,
was moral courage."22
Thus, ratherthantheroithaumaturge's (healing king's)sacred and miraculous
touch, Napoleon's physicalaction,his fingertouchinga bubo, was meant to dis-
prove an irrational convictionthatthe disease was contagious.An Enlightenment
model of rationalityhas been superimposed upon the sacred traditionof the
healing king. Unlike the monarchs who touched in order to heal as a form of
divine intercession,Napoleon, as a mortal man, touches the bubo in order to
prove thatthe disease cannotbe transmittedbetweenmen. If, however,we accept
the notion that both contagion and death resulted solely from fear and imagi-
nation,as Napoleon maintains,it is difficult to sustainthe idea thatthe touch was
also heroic. Physicalcontactwithan ill man would appear to be rationallyjustified
(if ineffectual),not courageous. But while the painting ostensiblydepicts the
triumphantdemonstrationof rationalknowledgein the face of superstition,or,
in Napoleon's own terms,"imagination,"it representsa rationalismall but over-
whelmed by the horrificanguish and disorder dominating the almost illegibly
dark foregroundand lefthalf of the composition.Napoleon's heroismdoes not
lie in his willingnessto touch an ill man, who is, afterall, not contagious. Rather
his heroismlies in his "moral courage" and his conviction-that is, his capacityto
maintainhis rationality-in the midstof horror.23
Gros relies on costume to make convictionvisible. Napoleon's integrityis
manifested by the discreteness,the very boundedness, of his body. Tightly
encased in his flamboyantbut closelyfittedFrenchuniform,he standsin startling
contrastto the naked and loosely covered plague victimsas well as the robed
Arabs. A centurylater,this Orientalisttrope is effectively deployed byJoseph
Conrad in his characterizationof the Company'schiefaccountantin TheHeartof
Darkness.The narratorspeaks: "Moreover,I respectedthe fellow.Yes; I respected
his collars,his vastcuffs,his brushed hair. His appearance was certainlythatof a
hairdresser'sdummy;but in the greatdemoralizationof the land, he kept up his
and Colonization
ofJaffa 9

FIGURE 5. Anonymous,"Eh bienmessieurs deuxmillions,"
1797.
Engraving.Cabinet des estampes,Bibliothequenationale,
Paris. Photo: Bibliothequenationale.
appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars, got-up shirt-frontswere

achievementsof character.... Everythingelse in the stationwas in a muddle."24
Starched cuffsassume the proportionsof heroism when juxtaposed to a great
and pervasive "muddle." The representationof civilizedman throughoutward
appearances courts certain risks, however. As Conrad makes quite explicit,
against the vast landscape of a demoralized land, the isolated,well-dressedman
risksbeing read as somethingless thanhuman and less thanmanly,a hairdresser's
dummy,an absurd and impotentremnantof Westernculture.
In Gros's painting,thisriskis only partlyaverted.As in a 1797 satiricalprint
of Napoleon displayingthe Apollo Belvedere to a group of deputies, here in
Gros's painting,in a land of looming,unclothedgiants,Napoleon's small figure
can seem alternatelyan emblemof authorityor a figurationof triviality and dan-
dified ostentation(fig.5). Partly,the instabilityof Napoleon's opposition to the
plague-strickengiants can be discussed in termsof the inherentincapacityof
10 REPRESENTATIONS

iconographyto controlmeaningin a post-Revolutionary cultureirrevocablysun-
dered fromthe continuityof itsmonarchicaland Christiantradition.Thus, while
Napoleon's juxtaposition to the standingplague-strickenman is capable of elic-
itinga narrativeof the sacred kinghealing the sickvictimof scrofula,25 or Christ
beforeLazarus, the gesturecan also generateanotherassociationthatinvertsthe
relative status of the two men: a fullydressed doubting Thomas touches the
wound of a partlyunclothedChrist.26The sickman can vie, in otherwords,with
Napoleon for the role of holyagent. Once imageryis divorced fromits original
mooringswithina stable culture,it is reduced to formalattributes,in this case
one man touching another. Formal citationscan no longer contain or delimit
interpretation.This is the dilemmaconfrontingthe post-Revolutionary artistand
regime attemptingto inventitsown iconography;theymustrelyon the conven-
tionsthatonce embodied authority, but theseconventions,necessarilychallenged
bynew circumstances,become highlyunstable,and cannot,in and of themselves,
produce the singular,limitedreadings conventionallydeemed the ultimategoal
of propaganda.
However,the inherentinstability of Gros'simage resides less in itsincapacity
to anchor specificformalconfigurationsto a stable iconographictradition,than
in itsbroader oppositionof twogenresof historypainting:contemporarymilitary
officersare juxtaposed to the titanicmuscular nude and partlydraped figures
that had long functionedas the heroic actors of the most authoritativeFrench
artistictradition,Classicism. In 1804, a staunch advocate like Quatremere de
Quincy could repeat the traditionaldefense of Classical nudity:only the Classi-
callynude or draped figurecould distinguishthegreatman fromordinarymen.27
Gros'sPlague-Stricken mustbe seen, therefore,as an idiosyncraticresponse
ofJaffa
to the exigenciesof Napoleonic militarycommissionsthatat once exiled the Clas-
sical heroic actor and marginalizedthe femalefigure.Faced withthe potentially
devastatingloss of halfof historypainting'sconventionallygendered syntax,Gros
replaces the male/femalebinaryso consummatelydeployed byDavid in paintings
like Oath of theHoratii(fig. 4) and Interventionof theSabineswith an opposition
betweentwotypesof men. Unlike othermilitarypaintingslikeGros'searlierBattle
ofNazareththat render that confrontationbetween a multiplicityof differently
uniformedmale figuresinchoateand illegible,Gros'sPlague-Stricken main-
ofJaffia
tainsthe formalclarityborn of gender differencebyopposing uniformedmen to
the male bodies, the academies,thatconstitutedthe verybasis of the French Aca-
demic tradition.28
However, while Gros's epic machine manages to display the male nude, his
languorous naked giants undergo a significanttransformation.Passive male
nudes are not unprecedented in French painting,but Gros's titansdo not con-
formto earliertraditional(ifpermutating)Classical typologies.They can neither
be fullyassimilatedto their"ephebic" nor their"phallic"antecedentsin the spec-
trumof masculineconstructions.They are neitherentirelyyouthfuland androg-
and Colonization
ofJaffa 11

2 *b<,; ' C~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FIGURE 6. Jacques-Louis David, La mortdeBara, 1794. Oil on canvas.

Musee Calvet,Avignon.Photo: Agence photographique
de la reunion des musees nationaux.
ynous,as in corporal soliloquieslikeTheDeathofBara (fig.6), nor tautand upright

as in binarycompositionslikeDavid's OathoftheHoratii.Instead,in Plague-Stricken
ofJaffa,the nude and partlyclad male figuresare at once muscular,large, hairy
and virile,and passive, swooning and limp, sometimesunconscious, sometimes
supine. Their closest termsare perhaps other images of plague-strickenmen,
particularlythe diseased giant at the feet of David's youthfulwork,Saint Roch
Interceding withtheVirginon BehalfofthePlague-Stricken, of 1781 (fig. 7). David's
image, however,offersSaint Roch as an idealized heroic counterpointand con-
ventionallyembeds his giantin a worldinhabited-indeed presided over- bythe
femalefigure,therebyrenderingthe horizontalman a thirdtermas embodiment
of disease. By contrast,Gros'simage eliminateswomen,introducescontemporary
uniformedmen as a counterterm,and multipliesthe male academiesacross the
painting'sbreadth.
The differences exclusivemasculinity, opposition to standingmilitaryoffi-
cers, and repetition are salient.In the end, the isolationof somatictypologiesis
12 REPRESENTATIONS

FIGURE 7. Jacques-LouisDavid, StRochintercede
la Viergepourla guerisondespestifirrs,
1780. Oil on canvas. Musee des
beaux-arts,Marseilles.Photo: Agence
photographiquede la reunion des
musees nationaux.
and Colonization
ofJaffa 13

of limitedusefulness.Replicationtransformsthe significanceof the academic:no
longer the isolated hero, Hector or Patroclus,these male bodies are rendered
equivalent ratherthan exceptional,anonymous ratherthan exemplary.Several
of Gros's contemporarycriticsrecognized the plague-strickenmen as academies
and blamed the artistfor the denigrationof theirformalinterest:"The subject
of thispainting. .. furnisheshim also withthe means to include nuditieswithout
affectation.... The author has not sufficiently profitedfromthe advantage he
had to make his knowledgeof nudes shine; because his academiesare all of the
same character,the same form,the same age and the same color."29While a sub-
ject's capacityto include academiesis recognized as a great opportunityfor the
artistattemptingto displayhis skilland talent,itclearlyhas attendantrisks.Rep-
etitionin and of itselfundermines the authorityof the form,and the criticis
discomfitedbythe resultingmonotonyand lack of individuation.Alwaysunder-
stood in antitheticalrelationshipto portraiture,the academie,in serial formand
juxtaposed to portraitsof particularmilitaryofficers,seems startlingly deprived
of individuation. Moreover, if passivityevokes purity and timelessnessin a
Republican image of the isolated male body like David's Bara (fig. 6), withina
paintingthathighlightsthe binaryoppositionbetween erect contemporaryuni-
formed men and horizontal academies,then passivity,like nudity,becomes a
marker of differencethat syntactically conflatesdisease and femininity(unlike
David's SaintRoch).
During the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon had similarlyrelied upon the
mixingof gender codes to conveydeviancyfromprescribedmilitarysociety.Spe-
cifically,he exploited markersof femininity to describe the limitsof the mascu-
linityhe deemed essentialto the effectivefunctioningof his militaryunitand the
victoryof his armyover the plague. Two monthsbeforehis visitto the hospitalat
Jaffa,the young general issued the followingOrder of the Day:
CitizenBoyer,surgeonofthehospitalofAlexandria, hasbeencowardly enoughto refuse
to treatthosewoundedsoldierswhohad beenincontactwithpatientsallegedlysuffering
froma contagiousdisease.He is unworthy of beinga Frenchcitizen.He willbedressed
in
women's and led,on a donkey,
clothes throughthestreetsofAlexandria, witha signon his
back,reading,"Unworthy ofbeinga French Whereuponhe will
heisafraidofdying."
citizen;
be imprisoned and sentbackto Francewiththefirstoutgoingship.30
In order to valorizethe masculinityof physicalcontactwithdiseased men, Napo-

leon resortedto travesty.It comes as littlesurprisethatthe wifeof a Frenchnavy
captain "was highlyincensed over the factthat the wearing of women's clothes
has been ordered to symbolizecowardice. [She declared] that she was ready to
fightBonaparte in a duel and thatshe would show him, pistolin hand, thatnot
all women were afraid,not even of him."3' If a man dressed as a woman could
convey a masculinityinadequate to citizenship,so a woman could appropriate
masculine accoutrements(pistol and duel) in order to demonstrate courage.
Clearly,however,code-mixingin and of itselfwas not subversive.In eithercase,
14 REPRESENTATIONS

the "feminized"male or "masculinized"woman,masculinityhas been naturalized
as the gender of courage and the prerequisiteof full citizenship.But it is one
thingto reifythe abstraction"masculinity"bydenigratingthe signifiersof "fem-
ininity,"another to mark it visiblyupon the representedmale body,particularly
withoutrecourse to an opposing femaleterm.Which formwithinGros'stableau
is, afterall, securely"masculine"?
IV
Withinthe new,solelymasculine economyof Gros'sPlague-Stricken of

Jaffa,Napoleon's physical contact with the naked man's opened wound, his
vulnerableunderside,is fraughtwitha latenteroticism.32 Philippe-AugusteHen-
nequin's allegorical depictionof Bonaparte wedged between Minerva and Her-
cules and crownedbyVictory(circa 1798, fig.8) not onlyunderlinesthe tenuous
authorityof the diminutivefigureof Napoleon relativeto the monumentalClas-
sical male nude but also caricaturesthe homoeroticthreatcatalyzedby intimate
contact between a dressed man and his naked counterpart.33In Hennequin's
image, Napoleon's attentionis riveted upon the naked man who aggressively
lunges his massive leg and prominentlydisplayed genitals toward the petite
officerwho demurelycrosseshis legs and turnshis body towardthe equally mon-
umental but more decorously draped and armor-encased female figure.Hen-
nequin's attemptto secure Napoleon's heterosexualityby depicting a panicked
retreatinto the curvaceous woman's arms almost parodicallydemonstratesthe
functionof womenin therepressionof homosocialdesire.34Gros'sPlague-Stricken
ofJaffa,however,offersNapoleon no woman's refuge: there is no monumental
femalecounterpointto thenaked male titanswho surroundhim.Withoutwomen
withinthe frame,representationis hard pressed to channel sexualityinto con-
ventional heterosexual oppositions. If sexual differenceis eliminated in Gros's
painting,however,differenceis not. Unlike some representationsof exclusively
masculinecircuitsof desire thatrepresentone typeof idealized male body either
isolated or multiplymirrored,Gros's painting sustains the binary structureof
heterosexualrelationsbut changes the termsof difference.
If, in Gros'sgrandemachine,the male nudes do not press themselvesagainst
Napoleon as aggressivelyas the giantin Hennequin's print,theyare nonetheless
quite intimatelylinked to the diminutivemilitaryofficer.Napoleon's trimfigure
is literallyenclosed at rightby the naked fleshof the two monumentalplague-
strickenmen.35The body of the General-in-Chiefis entirelycovered; the only
exposed partsof his body are his face and his singleoutstretchedhand, the latter,
as one criticpointsout, made "nude" bythe removalof a glove.36It is his exposed
flesh,his undressed hand, that touches the naked torso of the plague-stricken
man and therebycloses a circlecreated by the three men's bodies. Napoleon is,
moreover,the only person touchinga diseased man withexposed fleshrather
and Colonization
Rumor,Contagion, ofJaffa 15

FIGURE 8. Philippe-AugusteHennequin, La
libertide l'Italiedidie'eaux hommes
libres,
c. 1798. Etchingand mezzotint.
Engraved by Monsaldy.Cabinet des
estampes,Bibliothequenationale.
Photo: Biblioth4quenationale.
1t6 REPRESENTATIONS

than with an intercedingmaterial (cloth or medical instrument).The contact
between Napoleon's hand and the skin of the diseased man initiatesa highly
charged circuitof abuttingflesh;hair; clothand leather; naked chests;and limp
but muscular,oversized,and elongated limbs.There, in a pool of light,Napoleon
touches the vulnerableand passive plague-strickengiant; a dressed man touches
a half-nakedman; a hand touches the opened underside of one of man's most
recessivecavities; a fingertiptouches the transitionbetween attenuated biceps
and nipple.
That the touch occurs withinthe contextof the Orient only heightensan
eroticismborn of transgressionand taboo. Not onlywere Arabs consistently asso-
ciated witha proclivityfor sodomy in eighteenth-century French literaturelike
C.-F. Volney'sTravelsThroughSyriaand Egypt,but throughoutthe Egyptiancam-
paign, Frenchmenexpressed horrorregardingthe enemy'ssodomiticalaggres-
sions.37Here, for example, is one soldier's letter: "The Arabs and Mamelukes
have treatedsome of our prisonerslikeSocratesis said to have treatedAlcibiades.
There was no alternativebut death or submission:one of our grenadierschose
the former.They only beat the women that theytook fromus."38The Classical
referencespeaks the unspeakable and even offersthe possibilityof a positive
constructionof sodomy,but when the author describesthe actual circumstances
in Egypt,interpretability shuts down. Sodomy can only produce two formulaic
responses,both representativeof defeat to an enemy: death or submission.And
perversely,the enemy takes no advantage of the appropriate (hetero)sexual
object; these Oriental sodomites "only beat" the women. Withinthe contextof
war against the barbarian, submissiveness,passivity,and fear are therefore
signs not only of "femininity" per se but also of the man subjected to the ulti-
mate defeat: penetration "like a woman" by a savage enemy.39Thus Napoleon's
extended forefingertouchinga man's cavitymay representrationalitytouching
irrationality or moralcourage touchingfear,but,in itsalignmentwithpower and
actionin contradistinction to passivityand defeat,italso evokesa resonantsubtext
of illicitsexuality:whatone contemporarycalled "thedreadfulpassion verymuch
in vogue in thiscountry. "40
At one level,then,we can argue thatthe male nude is the emasculated term
in Gros's painting.As a counterpointto the uniformedofficers,Gros's "femini-
zation"of themale nude can be understoodas an attemptto stabilizetheauthority
and masculinityof Napoleon and a national militaryidentity.Withinthe context
of war in the Orient, sodomiticaldiscourse redefinesthe threatof homoerotic
contact suggested by Hennequin's image in a way that aligns Napoleon with
power. The discrepantpower relationsof a particularconstructionof same-sex
intercourseunderscoresthe inequitablerelationbetweenNapoleon and the half-
naked man. And crucially,to representtheArabs outside the Frenchmen'scircuit
of domination and submission defuses the potentiallyoverwhelmingmenace
posed by theirsexuality.Thus, the opposition between Frenchmenis electrified
and Colonization
ofJaffa 17

by an "unspeakable" subtext (Arab sodomy), but the painting simultaneously
manages to marginalizethe Arabs as a relativelydesexualized thirdterm.I would
argue, furthermore,that the heightened homoerotic sexual tension resulting
fromthe intimatejuxtapositionof two typesof Frenchmenultimatelyenhances
rather than diminishesthe highlycharged power of Napoleon's action. Trans-
gressiveeroticismand itsattendantanxietiesintensify thescene'sinherentdrama,
but theydo so at a price. The opposition of Frenchmenundermines the notion
of a singular,coherent,and dominantmasculineidentity.Moreover,sodomy,as
the soldier's letterreveals,is subject to multiple,contradictory,and historically
contingentconstructions.Homoerotic strategiesare fartoo volatileto secure the
authority-or should I say dominance?-of the dandifiedmilitaryofficer.4'
Withinthe contextof the French Classical tradition,Napoleon's figurewas,
therefore,an extremelyvulnerablenew termcompetingforpreeminence.A new
heroic male-the specific,contemporary,uniformed leader-is introduced in
relation to figureswho formerlyoccupied that role. It is importantto consider
whyartistand patron would risksuch a juxtaposition. If the weightof tradition
imbued nude male figureswithnotonlyheroismand nobilityof purpose but also
timeless authority,why place Napoleon's dandyism and temporal specificity
againstsuch a backdrop? What does the paintingachieve byincludingthe oppo-
sition between militaryman and giant, muscular,unclothed, Classical figure?
Withina propagandisticcommissionfora militaristic regimethatvalorized mas-
culinity,whyflirtwitha homoeroticoppositionthatonlyrendersmasculineiden-
tityless stable? Why representplague at all? And, if the goal was to aggrandize
Napoleon, whynot depict Napoleon solelyamong otheruniformedmen or con-
trastedto exoticallycostumedArabs as in Jean-Leon Gerome's paintingof 1868
(fig.9)?
That such a juxtapositionof militaryand Classical actorsposed a riskcan be
discerned not only fromthe Napoleonic regime'songoing indecision regarding
the wayto representNapoleon-clothed or naked? officeror antique hero?-but
also fromprintslike Hennequin's as well as those hostileto the regime.42At the
end of the Empire, one anti-NapoleoniccaricatureentitledT . .. GivingLessons
demonstratesthat although Napoleon attemptedto usurp the authorityof the
heroic Classical male body, his juxtaposition to an elegant titanicClassical fig-
ure, in thiscase the actorTalma, could stillridiculethe grotesque and ineffectual
mimicryof the petitegrimacinggeneral (fig.10).43 In 1814, both masculineiden-
tities-militaryand Classical-approached travestyin their exaggerated swag-
gering postures, each made alternatively"monstrous"or "feminine"by their
opposition and the concomitantdepletion of theirauthority.But in 1804 Gros
was stillgamblingwitha formidableaesthetictradition,albeitone alreadyin crisis.
If the risks of such a strategyhave become clear, its rewards warrant further
consideration.
18 REPRESENTATIONS

v~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~k
in~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
..
FIGURE Gerome Le generalBonaparteau Came 1867~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9 Jean-Leon
68AiW nwoe ae TeAtMsu rneo

University.
Museum purchase John Maclean
Magic..and
GertrudeMag.e
Fnd.Phot.The.Ar.Museum
Princeton..
University.
Ruor
Cntgin.ndCloiztin
n.ro.slgu.Srike
ofaf.1

V
It mightbe helpfulhere to returnto Conrad's novel and to mentiona

salientdifferencebetweenthe contextprovidedby his hairdresser'sdummyand
the one offeredby Gros. In Conrad's story,thejungle itselfseems to generate a
malaise and degeneracy to whichboth Africansand Europeans are subject. In
thePlague-Stricken theEuropean colonizer's"vastdemoralization"is unde-
ofJaffa,
niablytied to the Orientalsetting,but it is representedless as an attributeof the
native population than as the diseaseand the fear inspiredby disease. Moreover,
Gros's paintingimpliesthatthe plague devastatesthe Frencharmyalone, not the
native peoples." Those figuresspecificallyidentifiedas Arabs are presented as
caretakers:severalofferbread, one liftsup a dyingman, anotheris shownin the
role of doctor (in fact,the kneelingArab doctor was a well-knownfigurewho,
like Desgenettes,nevercontractedthe disease).45
A number of contemporaryart criticsadmired the calm demeanor with
whichthe Arabs executed these tasksand pointedout the "beautifulopposition"
between their"impassive"countenancesand the convulsiveagony of the French
soldiers who surround them: "The calm of these Arabs offersa beautifuloppo-
sition to the horror which surrounds them. They have this resignation,this
impassivitywhichinspiresa firmbeliefin thedogma of fatalityand perhaps even
more the habit of obeying."46We recognizehere a formof colonialistdiscourse
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
.......
t~~~~~~
FIGURE 10. Anonymous,T...

donnantune lefonde GraceetdeDigniti
1814. Engraving.Cabinet
Impe'riale,
des estampes,Bibliothequenationale.
Photo: Bibliothe'quenationale.
20 REPRESENTATIONS

- h- - v - - ---.- .......
........................................
A.-
..|
.t;... ... ........ ....... ......
F~ =
Xlr
..
1....wll
_. ~ * owC_ A . ....
.......
14
w-e.
<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i
^
Paris.;;^? A
de d d.
Photo author w . "a ...
n t
FIGURE . Anonymous, Le disespoirdutournes enjambede bois,
c. 1814. Engraving.Bibliothe'quehistoriquede la ville
de Paris. Photo: author.
that closelyresemblesSaid's analysis.Here, Orientalistassumptionsabout East-

ern fatalismand passivitypermita constructionof the Arab as a benign and
cooperative partnerintheFrenchcolonialcampaign.4'Ratherthandepicting the
hospitalattendantsas brutallycoerced victimsor scurrilouslyopportunisticcrim-
inals seeking to rob theircharges (as differentwitnesseshave described them),
Gros's paintingrepresentsthe Arabs as consenting,dignifiedhelpmatesto Euro-
peans because of theirfatalismin relationto the plague and theiracquiescence
in relation to Napoleon. He eliminates,for example, the single fleeing Arab
figureat the far rightedge of the painted sketchin Chantilly:no indigenous
dissidence is permittedwithinthe tableau's frame(fig. 11). Moreover,the Arabs
are representedas remainingunaffectedbythe particularevent:not onlydo they
not succumb to the disease, but theirbehavioris understood as a manifestation
of their unchanging character,a characterpermanentlyavailable to European
analysisand classification.
Indeed, the painting,likeVivantDenon's firsthanddrawings,suggestsa rudi-
mentaryconcern withethnographicclassificationand offersan implicitlyhier-
archicalorganizationof ethnicgroups. BracketingtheArab men who offerbread
and Colonization
ofJaffa 21

in the leftmiddlegroundare two black men bearing a stretcherto a (now barely
visible)camel seated in the centralbackground (therebyrepresentingDr. Domi-
nique Jean Larrey's formidablemedical innovation,the "flyingambulance").48
While the Arabs are carefullydifferentiatedas portraitsof specificmen, their
faces cast in a glowinglight,theircostumesattentively delineated, the black men
are only partlyvisible.Cast in shadow,hidden bythe Arabs' monumentalforms,
these men turntheirbacks to us and are reduced to mirror-imagesof each other,
revealing the characteristicprofilesof visual ethnographictypologies.In terms
of lighting,scale, and relativeprominence,we witnessa differentiation between
the relativelymute and brutelabor of the black men and the statureand relative
autonomyof the Arab caretakers.The painting'shierarchicalethnographicclas-
sificationof men and theirfunctionis summarizedby a criticwho addresses the
figureswitha series of imperatives:"Sheiks,distributefoods; venerable experi-
enced Egyptian,bandage; dark slave,supportthisFrenchman."49
This writeromitsone even furthersubordinatedfigurefromhis list,however.
Among theindigenouspeoples representedin Gros'spainting,thereis one figure
occupyingthe deepest shadows of the scene. All but entirelyobfuscated,a veiled
Arab woman crouches over the seated camel in the veryshadowyrecesses at the
center of the painting,in the space between the black slave and the decidedly
liminal,awkwardlyprofiledFrenchofficerwho apparentlyretreatsfromthewell-
litrealm of the scene's privilegedheroic actors.50While the subordinatedfemale
figurecan provide a legitimatingfoilto masculine homoeroticencounters,here
in Gros's tableau, she has been effacedto the extent that she functionsas little
more than a shadow,an afterthought or lastresidue. No longer an essentialcom-
ponent of historypainting'ssyntax,the female figurefunctionsinstead as the
mostsubordinatedtermin a classificatory hierarchyof Orientalalterity.If noticed
at all (and neitherGros's contemporaryaudience nor subsequent scholars have
mentionedher), thissubalternfigureregistersonlythe all-inclusivenessof Gros's
ethnographicachievement.
Generally,however,criticswere farless concerned withthe well-litrepresen-
tationof the Arabs than theywere withthe dark and shadowyrealm occupied by
the sick and dyingFrenchsoldiers. It is strikingto discoverthatmore lines were
expended describingthe "horror" of the plague-strickenmen than any other
aspect of the picture, including Napoleon's touch. On the one hand, critics
admired the artist'scarefuldescriptionof thestagesof thedisease. Pathology,like
ethnology,requires classificatory categories; thus,while one criticspeaks of the
stages of "stupor,despondency,fury,desire,' others discern symptomsfrom
gestures(forexample, the man pullingout his hair is understoodto have a raging
headache, an earlysymptomof bubonic plague).52
On the otherhand, criticsalso referto the diseased in termsless classificatory
and more evocativeof the poetics of sublimity.53 Here we are introduced to the
termsof terrorand horror (the inexpressibleexcess appended to Miot's "exact
22 REPRESENTATIONS

and true tableau"). Repeatedlythecriticsdescribethe painting'sdivisioninto two
realms,one well lit,the othercast in darkness.54If terroris constructedas always
surpassing the limitsof representation,here in Gros's paintingthose limitsare
thematizedin formalaesthetictermsof lightand dark, centerand periphery.As
one criticstates,halfof the paintingis in the shadows and it is there"thatthe able
artisthas rendered the principaleffectsof thecontagion,frighteningeffects,that
he could not expose to day withoutsurpassingthe bounds of the terrible."55 In
the dark, it is permissibleto render those frighteningeffectsthatwould violate
the decorous daylightof civilizedsociety.The barelyvisiblecan evoke the horror
of the "contagion"whichshould not-or cannot-be representedin the brilliant
and informativeglare of the public French Salon. Gros is quite consciously
manipulatingand metamorphosinga strategyhe learned fromhis masterDavid,
who, in Brutus,places the sublimelyresignedhero in the shadowyperipheriesof
a compositionthatseverspublicand privateobligationsin two.56Moreover,in the
dark and obscure figurewho occupies the same positionas David's Brutus, Gros
looks back to his earlyItalian sketchesof tragicliterarythemeslike Ugolino and
directlyquotes one of the nudes in Michelangelo'sLastJudgment.He is thenquite
consciously exploiting images that in early-nineteenth-century France were
explicitlylinked withan aestheticdiscourseof sublimityopposed to Classical aca-
demic doctrine.57
In theirresponse to theplague-strickenmen,thecriticsreveal a simultaneous
appreciation of legibility:the capacity to read symptoms,and illegibility:the
horror relegated to the shadows. There is a great contradictionbetween the
demand to knowand thedemand to conceal. Aesthetically, decorum dictateswhat
can and cannot be made visible;and at the peripheriesof visibility lies the extent
of the horrific.This opposition is paralleled bythe discourse of medical science:
symptomsprovide visible manifestationsof the disease but fail to describe its
originsand causes, its"internal"physiologicallogic. One could argue thatitis the
limitsof scientificknowledge-the incapacityto know beyond the symptoms-
thatproduces a sense of terror.Actingas an invisibleagent withoutorigins,dis-
ease transformsheroic male bodies into specimens.But to privilegethe scientific
model alone may not only be too great a projection of late nineteenth-and
twentieth-century preoccupations,but may also be an effacementof the impor-
tant and highly overdeterminedways disease can be interpolated with fears
regardingmanyother (oftenintersecting)formsof alterity.
Rather, I would argue that the horror can be discussed more generallyin
termsof a fearof powersthatremaininvisible:thecapacityforthe self,the heroic
body, to be possessed by a force that cannot be seen and cannot thereforebe
fought.A paintingof plague is the antithesisof a paintingof militarybattle,as
one of Gros's criticsrecognized: the dyingsoldier looks into Napoleon's eyes to
draw new "forcesagainst an enemy thatthe Frenchbayonetcannot overtake."58
Plague is not battle,and the destructionit wreaks on the human body is not a
and Colonization
ofJaffa 23

visibleamputation.If, afterthe fallof the Empire,an anti-Napoleoniccaricature
(fig. 12) refersto thistaboo by depictinga merchantof wooden legs angered by
the prospectof the end of war,the fragmentationof the human body is not the
corporal violence depicted by Gros, in contrast,forinstance,to Theodore Geri-
cault's lithographof 1819 (fig. 13). Instead, in the Plague-StrickenofJaffa,the
heroic body registersthe disease's symptomsthroughgesture,but nonetheless
remainsfullyintact.59 Plague remainsan opponent withoutorigin,withoutman-
ifestviolence upon the body'sintegrity, and herein lies the horror.
VI
To discuss the terror,the fear,evoked by Gros's paintingof plague at

Jaffais to describea highlyoverdeterminedset of intersectingissues. Firstly,it is
the disease thatprovidesthe organizingstructureforan extremelycomplex but
nonethelessdyadicoppositionof healthand illness.But plague in turnis farfrom
the simple medical phenomenon heretofore discussed in relation to Gros's
painting.Rather,plague offersa metaphorsaturatedwitha multiplicity of con-
notationsin early-nineteenth-century France.
Most simply,plague was explicitlylinked by Frenchmen to the searingly
brutalland and people thatleftthemwitha sense of dismay,anger,and betrayal:
governmentofficials, travelwriters,and militaryleaders had led the French"con-
querors" to expect a fertileand acquiescent exotic paradise, a lucrativecolony.
Instead, accordingto theirlettersand memoirs,theyencountereda hostiledesert
and a violentlyresistantpopulation, voracious insects,a climate of harsh ex-
tremes,ugly women, filth,and, worse yet,no wine and no respectablebread.60
Plague was,fortheseangrysoldiers,an obviouscorollaryto the horrificotherness
of the Egyptianpeople. Here, forexample, are excerptsfromtwodifferentmen's
letters:"The plague is verycommon here; the people here are barbaric; their
God is Mohammed; they know no others"; and "This cityis abominable; the
streetsexhale the plague by theirfilth,the people are dreadful and stupified.'
These sequences, fromplague to barbaricpeople to Islam, fromabominable city
to plague to filthto dreadful people, may specificallysuggest a Revolutionary
medical model of social causation,but theyalso conveythe inevitability as well as
the immediacyof the colonizers'fearfulconflationof the disease theyperceived
as "native"to foreignlands and the"barbarism"theyassociatedwiththecolonized
people. Clearly, within the context of the Egyptian campaign, plague (like
sodomy) was understood to represent the threat of the Orient itself.62Thus,
disease offersGros the means to "Orientalize"Frenchmenin the mostpejorative
and horrifictermswhile simultaneouslyidentifyingactual Arabs as benevolent
recipientsof an altruisticcolonial enterprise.The paintingis particularlypower-
ful because disease enables both Orientaliststrategiesevoked by Miot's text-
24 REPRESENTATIONS

FIGURE 12 (left).Theodore
Ge~ricault,
Lefactionnairesuisse
du Louvre,1819. Lithograph.
Cabinet des estampes,
Bibliothequenationale. Photo:
Bibliotheque nationale.
FIGURE 13 (below). Antoine-
Jean Gros,Les pestiferes
dejaffa,
1804. Oil on canvas. Muse~e
Conde, Chantilly.
Photo: Giraudon Paris.
Rumor,Contagion,
and Colonization
in.GrossPlague-St.icken
Lf ff: 25
Ruor Cntginan Cloiztin n ro'sPagu-tick ofaf 25

accuracyand terror,the "exact and truetableau" and the tremblinghand-to be
placed side byside; the naked Frenchmanis debilitatedbyan invisibleand omni-
potentenemywhilethe Arab standsbyas his preeminentlyvisible,benign,desex-
ualized (and immune) exotichelpmate.63
However,if plague could be identifiedwiththe horrorsof the Orient and its
peoples, it could also be seen, more subtly,as the birthchildof the atrocitiesof
colonial war,the emblem of its difficulty,its violence,and its horror.While eth-
nographicdescriptionrepresentstheWest'sabilityto encompassthe East as object
not onlyof analysisbut also of politicaland economic domination,it is necessary
to stressthat the means to that dominationdo not so neatlyfall withinthe tidy
and superficiallybenign paradigm of rationalclassificationofferedby represen-
tationslike the Descriptionde l'Egypteand eloquentlydescribed by Said. Indeed,
as the excerpt from Miot's Memoiresindicates,the Egyptian campaign was not
merelya "classificatory expedition"but a horrendousand bloody seriesof battles
and massacres.Thousands and thousandswere killed.Jaffaitselfwas the site of
a particularlybrutal,and formanycontemporaries,shockingFrenchmassacre of
Arab and Turkish civiliansand soldiers.64According to one dismayed French
witness,all night and day afterthe French siege of that city,"anybodywith a
human face fellvictimto theirfury."65 Miot'shand trembledas he remembered
the murder,upon Napoleon's orders,of over threethousand men who had sur-
rendered.66To save bullets,the prisonerswere bayoneted on the beach; those
who triedto swimawaywere shot,quicklycoloringthe sea blood-red.These were
the well-knownstoriesof Jaffa,and there were many more.67The horror for
many Frenchwitnessesarose fromthe transformation of French behavior: how
could civilized Frenchmen commit such atrocities?Significantly, a number of
contemporariesexplicitlylinked the French army'sbrutalityto the outbreak of
plague among Frenchtroops.For criticsof Napoleon's colonial campaign,plague
could be interpretedas a retributionfor horrorsenacted: thousands of slaugh-
tered and mutilatedTurkishbodies were leftunburied at the edge ofJaffa,ren-
dering "the air unhealthyand dangerous," and greedy French soldiers clothed
themselvesin the garmentsstrippedoffrottingcorpses. For these Frenchwriters,
itwas no surprisethatplague erupted inJaffa.68 Plague thencould catalyzeasso-
ciations that potentiallysubvertedthe mandate of Gros's painting. Even if the
French colonizers had been transformedby the Orient, theirbarbaric behavior
remained subjectto criticismbypoliticalopponents.69
Whetherborn of the barbarismof the Orient or the savage regressionof the
Frenchman,plague was a highlycharged emblem of the horror produced by
colonial war and aggression.But Gros's depictionof Napoleon's encounterwith
dyingplague-strickenmen mustalso be considered in relationto a more specific
contemporary referent: rumors, specifically,the rumor that Napoleon had
ordered the poisoning of the remainingplague-strickenmen at Jaffaupon his
retreatfromSyria.70Numerous memoirsincludingthe second edition of Desge-
26 REPRESENTATIONS

nettes'sSouvenirspublished afterthe fall of the Empire, corroboratethe story.
Nonetheless,the question of Napoleon's role in the poisoning long remained a
violentpointof contention,even betweenthetwochiefarmydoctors,Desgenettes
and Larrey.The latter,apparentlyunaware of the event at the time,adamantly
denied the veracityof the rumoruntilhis death.7'
While the accounts vary regarding the number of victims(25-580), nu-
merous witnessesboth hostileand sympatheticto Napoleon agree thatwhen the
young general hastilyretreatedin defeat fromSyriawithhis decimated army,he
lacked the transportand provisionsto evacuate the plague-strickenmen still
remainingat the hospital in Jaffa.Bonaparte lefthis chief medical officer,Des-
genettes,poison to administerto the men, but the doctor refused. Instead, a
pharmacistnamed Royerexecuted Napoleon's orders.72The act was justifiedby
some as a humane gestureto save the dyingFrenchmenfromtortureand brutal
death at the hands of theirsavage enemies (sodomymay provideone of the sub-
textshere), but the clandestinenature of the decision reveals an awareness of its
volatilityin ethicalas well as politicalterms.73In his Carnetintime, General Jean-
BaptisteKleber wrote:"On propose aux o. d. s. d. d. d. 1.aux f. et b. d.," to which
General Damas later added a note decipheringthe code thathad seemed neces-
sary even withina privatejournal: "It was proposed to the officersof health to
give opium to the feverishand dangerouslywounded."74Kleber'scrypticcitation
and passive sentence constructioncorroborate that the decision was indeed
"wrapped in mystery."75
There are indicationsthatan insufficient dose was administeredto some of
the plague-strickensoldiers and a number of men lived to tell their stories.76
Despite the guarded secrecyof an elite group of army personnel, the narrative
of the poisoningquicklygained currencyin the Britishpress and remained pop-
ular in England throughoutthe Empire (fig. 14).77In 1803, Sir Robert Thomas
Wilson published his particularlysensationalistaccount of Napoleon's murder of
580 of his fellowcountrymenin his two-volumeworkHistory oftheBritishExpedi-
tiontoEgypt,whichwas translatedinto Frenchthe same year.In 1804, an English
artistsatirizedNapoleon's coronationwithan image of a crown bearing a bottle
labeled "poison fromEgypt"(fig.15).
When rumors enter the archive,theynecessarilyleave discrepantand frag-
mentary traces. Characteristically,there is contradictorytextual evidence
regarding the extent to which the rumor was known in France. The fact that
at the fall of the Empire in 1814 one witnessesan explosion of French anti-
Napoleonic textsand images accusingNapoleon of poisoninghis troopsindicates
that,at the veryleast, the rumor was known among a French elite (figs. 16, 17,
and 18). One 1814 anti-Napoleoniccaricature,in a predictableinversion,repre-
sents Napoleon as a sultan-cannibalsurmountinga pile of dead soldiers'bodies;
the inscriptionemergingfromhis leftpocket statesthat he poisoned his troops
in Syria (fig. 16).
and Colonization
ofJaffa 27

FIGURE 14 (above). George
Cruikshank,Napoleonpoisoningthe
fromTheLifeofNapoleon,London,
1815. Beinecke Rare Book and
ManuscriptLibrary,Yale University,
New Haven, Conn. Photo: Beinecke
Library. CA
FIGURE 15 (right).
J.B., Designforan
ImperialCrowntobe ,
usedat theCoronation . t i"$@\i qOa? 2
oftheNewEmperor, 20
1804. Engraving. X
Reproduced from
John Ashton,English 0 \ 't' W >+ 'i
Caricatureand Satire
/
(New York, 1884),
23. Photo: Steve ,u2 \,. f1
\REPRESENTATI UNJLttwl o(
28 REPRESENTATIONS

FIGURE 16 (left).Anonymous,Le Nec
plusultradu Cannibalisme, c. 1814.
Engraving.Bibliothequehistorique
de la villede Paris. Photo: author.
!r
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ofjafa 29

By contrast,in 1814 a staunchanti-BonapartiststatesthatNapoleon had been
successfulin concealing his brutalityfromthe armydespite the fact that "all of
Europe reverberatedwiththe rumorsof such an extraordinaryatrocity."78 How-
was
ever,otherwitnessessuggestthatknowledgeof the atrocity not limitedto the
coded memoirsof the highestechelons of the militarybut in factpervaded the
troops.79For instance,one colonel declares "thatthe general opinion in the army
was thattheyhad been poisoned" and anotherofficeradmits: "I have no obvious
proofs of the poisoning of our wounded other than the innumerable remarks
thatI heard . .. in the army."80 Even Napoleon's loyalsupporter,Las Cases, who
renounced the truthof the accusation, describes a rumor in wide circulation.
He lamentsthata Frenchofficerhad retaineda beliefthatsixtyplague-stricken
men had been poisoned until his residence at St. Helena after Napoleon's
fall. According to Las Cases, "the report [of the poisoning] was circulated,and
believed, even in our army;therefore,whatanswer could be given to those who
triumphantly asserted,'It is a fact,I assure you, I have it fromofficerswho served
in the Frencharmyat the time.'Nevertheless,the whole storyis false."'8'
Napoleon's terminationof three-quartersof the newspapers and police sur-
veillance of the remainingjournals upon his returnfrom Egypt can partlybe
understoodas an attemptto preventthe disseminationof such damningstories.82
However, as in the ancien regime,censorshipis never complete. English publi-
cations remained accessible as a clandestineliteratureto a portion of the popu-
lation, however limited.Indeed, many London-based publications,like Robert
Wilson'sbook, were translatedor writtenin French explicitlyfor a French audi-
ence. An English publication of confiscatedcorrespondence from the French
Army of the Orient was replete with annotationshostile to Napoleon and the
Egyptiancampaign.83Available in France, it was even reviewed by the press in
Paris.
Knowledge of the atrocitywas not,however,limitedto smuggled books. The
peace betweenEngland and Francein theyearsprecedingtheexhibitionof Gros's
Plague-StrickenofJaffapermitteda great interchangebetween the two countries.
Significantly,the cessation of militaryconflictfrom 25 March 1802 to 23 May
1803 duringthePeace of Amiensdid not mean the end of the media war. Indeed,
the First Consul was furious about the anti-Napoleonic allegations pervading
both the English press and English prints,some of which were published by
Frenchemigres.84
Given the currencyof therumoramong some membersof the army,the anti-
BonapartistRoyalistnetworksin constantcontactwithEngland and the emigres
there,and the circulationof travelersand artifactsduring the Peace of Amiens,
itseems likelythatat least a portionof the Frenchpublic was aware of the alleged
poisoning of plague victimsat Jaffa.If it is difficultto determine the extent to
which this specificrumor determinedthe predispositionof members of Gros's
30 REPRESENTATIONS

audience or the artist'sintention,I would stressthatthe paintingwas made and
received in a societygenerallypermeated by the threatof rumor,and thatboth
plague and poison offeredmetaphorsfor thatinvisibleand fatalcontamination
thatspread like fear,like terror,and like resistance-withinthe army,and within
the body politic.
Indeed, ifrumorwas endemic to home duringtheseyearsof volatilepolitical
transition,it had also permeated the Frontfrom1798 to 1800. During the Egyp-
tian campaign, generalscontinuallyreportedthreatening"murmures"among the
disgruntledtroops.The soldierswere hungry,theywere naked, theywere ill,they
were withouttransport,oftenwithoutpay or compensatingbooty.Even the occa-
sional battle victoryled, as one officerpointed out, to death from disease in a
harshand alienatingclimate.85Anothergeneralcomplained thatNapoleon's pro-
pagandistic Orders of the Day had falselyreported that the soldiers had been
paid, catalyzingrumors that the commanding officerswere withholdingtheir
troops' rightfulsalaries.86Of course, the outbreak of bubonic plague only exac-
erbated the fear and discontent.If officersand doctors refused to refer to the
illnessas plague in order to check the risingpanic, theirsecrecycould also inten-
sifythe soldiers'alarm: forsuspicious and powerlessmen in search of truth,any
sign could signify.87 Desgenettes wrylydescribes the way plague produced mis-
readings and rumor,or in Napoleon's words,an "imagination"made "feverish":
A momentbefore[Napoleon's]departurefromcamp,rumorsspreadup to histentthat
severalsoldiershad fallendead whilewalkingalongthequai: thefactis simplythatsome
Turkishmedicalattendants, orderedto throwintothesea menwhohad died at thehos-
pitalduringthenight,had contentedthemselves to disposeof thembeforethedoor of
thisestablishment.88
Neithersudden death duringa promenade nor disposal as a nocturnalvictim

provided frightenedsoldiers with very comfortingprospects. The authorities
mightverywellinterpretplague as fearrun amok,as a loss of morale and courage
among the troops,but plague also providedtheirsubordinateswithanotherkind
of metaphor.The soldiers easily conflatedfear of plague witha distrustof the
militaryand governmentcommanders who rendered them powerless,who, in
theirhushed decisions,could conspireagainstthem.Conspiracyand rumor rep-
resent,in other words,a double-edged sword; the fear moves both ways.89This
is whythe storyof an officer'spoisoning of plague-strickensoldiers gained such
powerfullymythicstatus: plague and poisoning offeredhighlyoverdetermined
termsforthatwhichexceeds control.Both were systemiccontaminations,without
known origins,withoutvisibility as agents. And both were capable of spreading
rapidlythroughoutthe social body,like rumor.90
"Hardly had the word poison been enunciated,than [the soldier] wanted to
see it everywhere;healed and in good health, he maintained that he had been
and Colonization
ofJaffa 31

poisoned."9' So writeFrenchhistorianscompilingthe memoirsand lettersof the
Egyptiancampaign in 1832, the yearof the greatcholera epidemic in France,the
year when the workingclasses were so certaintheywere being poisoned by the
governmentthat theylynched the doctors theybelieved to be officialagents.92
Epidemic catastropheengenders conspiratorialtheories.Recourse to the idea of
poison representsa search fororigins,a quest forcausality.93 In fact,in medical
treatisesinspired by the Egyptiancampaign like Paolo Assalini's tractof 1801,
plague was oftenreferredto as a "poison" and was thus reassuringlygrantedan
originaryagent,albeita still-unknown and mysteriousone.94
Paranoia and rumor characterize the 1798-1801 Egyptiancampaign repre-
sented by Gros; the later period of his painting'sconception and exhibitionwas
similarlyimperiledbyconspiratorialpolitics,divisiveness,and repression.I have
mentionedthe counter-Revolutionary activitiesrenewed afterthe ruptureof the
Peace of Amiens, the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, the trialsof conspirators,
and resultinganger and dissent.The end of peace withEngland also catalyzed
renewed circulationof anti-Napoleonicliterature;1803 was the year of Robert
Wilson'scondemnationof the poisoning. It was also the year of publicationof a
short-lived journal named Ring theAlarumBell! thatincluded an articlebya Gen-
eral Danican recountinghis 1801 encounterin Sicilywitha Frenchgrenadierwho
had succumbed to plague in Egypt;the soldierhad lived to describehis fortunate
"discharge"of the "Corsicanphysic"administeredupon the orders of the "Poisoner
in Chief."95For strategicdeploymentas propaganda against Napoleon's regime,
the storydid not need to be true,and even more significant, the newspaper itself
did not need to exist.Rumors of an account in a journal could suffice,as Napo-
leon's bureaucraticsurveillancemachine was all too aware. In December 1803, a
police reportstatedthatitwas impossibleto locate a specificanti-Napoleoniccar-
icature; the phantom image neverthelessdisseminatedquite effectively as a pre-
cise verbal descriptioncompletewithcaption.96On 18 September 1804, the very
day of the opening of the Salon, the head of police,Joseph Fouche, reported: "It
is in vain that I ordered the search for the libel entitledManifestoofRussia. It is
not the firsttimethatone spoke of libelsand caricaturesthatnever existed."97
Thus, while the Napoleonic governmenthas been aptly characterizedas a
repressive,highlycensored regime dominated by its officialself-representation,
its acts of surveillance served, in fact, to heightenan awareness of that which
exceeded its containment:the rumors that could not be materiallylocated, the
activityjustoutside the peripheriesof governmentalvision,the fearof thatwhich
could not be registered,the opacity of an interference,"le bruit"(noise and
rumor),thatprecluded dissectionand analysis.Wordsreduced to sound (lesmur-
muresand le bruit),and images reduced to words,only heard, not seen (the irre-
trievablecaricature): these were the effectsof the limitsof governmentalpower.
Moreover,the regime that attemptsto controlthe body politicthroughsurveil-
32 REPRESENTATIONS

981
lance actuallyproducesexcess. Not only did the Napoleonic governmentquite
acutelyand self-consciously attemptto circulatestrategicrumors,but the expec-
tationthatconspiracylurkedbehind each wall led to a pressureto reportsubver-
sive activitieseven if theydid not exist.99Police agents fictionalizedrumors and
dissentin order to be credited withtheirdiscovery;scapegoats could always be
found.
VII
Gros's paintingof Napoleon's heroic solicitudeto his plague-stricken

men can be described,therefore,simplyas a despicable lie and an audacious piece
of effrontery, an image, in otherwords,attemptingto discredittruthfulrumors
regarding the poisoning. This is how Chateaubriand saw it in his bilious anti-
Napoleonic pamphlet published at the fallof the emperor in 1814: "In the arts,
the same servitude:Bonaparte poisons the plague-strickenofJaffa:a paintingis
made that presentshim touching,by an excess of courage and humanity,these
same plague-strickenmen. It was not like thisthatSaint-Louishealed the ill pre-
sented to his royalhands bya touchingand religiousconfidence."'00Fullyaware
of Gros'scitationof theiconographictraditionof theroithaumaturge, theapologist
for the Bourbons is carefulto point out the horrifichypocrisyof its appropria-
tion. Emphasizing the great discrepancybetween Napoleon's murderous action
and the sacred healing of the mostChristianof kings,Chateaubriand focuseson
the touch, the hands thatmake contact.Napoleon abused his capacityto touch
his trustingsubordinates; his contact with their intimate persons murdered
ratherthan healed.
In 1814, the anti-BonapartistLouis-Gabriel Michaud de Villette also de-
scribedGros'spaintingas a lie,and he proposed another"hideous" but "truthful"
paintingthatwould effacethe shame of Gros'sfalse tableau: Napoleon, on a dis-
tant hill,watchessmoke rise up at the sea's edge as his soldiers obedientlymas-
sacre the Turkishprisonersat Jaffa;afraid his men would not obey his orders,
Napoleon releases a cryofjoy when he sees the sign of death fromafar.'0' The
truthabout Napoleon is thathe distancedhimselffromdeath throughmediating
agents: his soldiers'bayonets,poison administeredby a pharmacist.He was not
in the midst of events,nor in intimatecontact with the bodies over which he
wielded absolute power.And the horrorof thatpower,the slaughterand death,
occursoutsidetheimage'sframe:smokeis itssole vestigialsignwithinthetableau.
Both of these anti-Bonapartistcriticsof Gros's paintingsaw it as a falsehood
and both were acutelyaware of the power of itsemphasis on Napoleon's physical
intimacywiththe plague-strickenmen. The twowritersemphasize the lie of that
touch, as did other criticslike Louis-AntoineFauvelet de Bourrienne who con-
and Colonization
Rumor,Contagion, ofJaffia 33

tended that Napoleon never,in fact,touched any men at the hospital at Jaffa.
After the fall of the Empire, criticsargued that Gros's subject was a patent
fabrication.Significantly, the charge of falsityreturnsany purported certainty
embodied by Gros's image to the statusof rumor. Some say Napoleon touched
the plague-strickenmen; some say he did not. Instead, according to Bourrienne,
Napoleon brisklywalked throughthe hospitalstrikingthe yellowtop of his boot
witha whip.'02The details of Bourrienne's alternativeversion of events synec-
dochicallypropose a narrativewithan equally vividsense of certainty.
Visual representationscan also offerthis illusoryveracity.In 1804, Gros's
tableau could effectively undercut the convictionthat Napoleon had poisoned
the plague-strickenFrench soldiers at Jaffaby simplyprovidingan alternative,
equally vivid,narrative.But the Napoleonic governmentmust have been aware
of the volatilityof the painting'ssubject. Certainly,Napoleon and the members
of his government,censors and the like, were well aware of everyallegation in
the English press and caricatures.They were also, of course, fullycognizant of
the rumors and dissent that had periodicallyerupted mutinouslyamong the
troops in Egypt as well as the Royalistconspiracies against Napoleon's person
afterthe rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803. But the regime nonetheless
chose to sanctionan image thatcould easilyinvitecontroversyratherthan fore-
stallit.
Despite some adverse Salon criticism,the government'sgamble appears to
have paid off.The success of itsdecision can partlybe ascertainedbythe invalu-
able testimonyof a hostileSalon viewerwho was well acquainted withthe report
that Napoleon had poisoned his dying plague-strickenmen at Jaffa.While the
Salon of 1802 had been inundatedbyEnglishvisitorsduringthe Peace of Amiens,
the EnglishmanJohn Pinkertonrepresentsa rarityat the Salon of 1804. His dis-
mayed descriptionof Gros'sPlague-StrickenofJaffawarrantsa fullquotation,par-
ticularlygiven thathe thoughtfully addresses the question of the French public's
familiaritywiththe rumorof the poisoning:
As thesubjectof thispicturemayseemnota littlesingular, afterthereportsthathave
been circulatedin England,an accountof it shallbe translated fromthecatalogue...
[full-lengthquote of thelivret]. .. Such was theaccountgivenin France,and received
without doubtor hesitation,at thetimethatitwasreportedhere[inEngland]thatBona-
partehad orderedthesickatJaffato be poisoned,in orderto avoidtheincumbrance. It
wasalsosaidthatDesgenets, a physician, whoappearsinthispicturewithBonaparte,(and
the strictresemblancewas acknowledgedby all Paris),was the verypersonwho had
reportedthatthegeneralof theEasthad beenguiltyofthiscruelty. Itseems,
however,little
probablethatinsucha casethesubject should tobethusexposed
havebeenpermitted topublicobser-
vationandinquiry:and thisrespectable physician notbeen rewardedforhis
has certainly
silence,havingno officenoremolumentthatcan bespeaktheconsciousness of suchan
action.I havealso conversedwithmanyliterary menwhowentwiththearmyoftheEast,
and whospokewithgreatfreedomand dislikeof theSyriancampaign,as an enterprise
equallyrashand useless,butneverheardanychargeupon thisaccount.It maybe said
34 REPRESENTATIONS

thatthe honourof the Frenchname inducedthemto thissilence;but no Frenchman
judgeforhimself;
forgetsthatBonaparte is an Italian and a Corsican. Thereaderwill,however,
butthosewhohavethebestheartswillbethelasttobepersuadedofthetruthoftheaccusation.103
Pinkertondoes not see an image thatconvinceshim that it is truthful.Instead,

his assumptionsregardingthe poisoningare underminedbecause of the govern-
ment'schoice to exhibit such a subjectpublicly.The Englishman'sfascinatingtext
significantly qualifiesa simplisticnotionof an authoritarianregime'srecourse to
censorshipand the productionof a propaganda that foreclosesinterpretability.
Rather than exiling the subject of Napoleon's conduct at Jaffafromthe public
arena, excising it from the frame of visibility, or producing a propagandistic
image that only permitsa singular delimitedreading, Gros's paintingis instru-
mentalto the governmentpreciselybecause it introducesa controversialsubject
to an officiallysanctioned public "inquiry":the biannual Salon exhibition.Pin-
kerton'saccount reveals the astutenessof the politicalmaneuver of presentinga
volatileissue withina public forum.Because the author recognizesthe Salon as a
space of discussionand potentialdissent,the veryaudacityof the government's
choice to exhibita paintingof Napoleon atJaffamakes him question whetherthe
reportsof the poisoningare true. He seeks out otherevidence: Gros's prominent
inclusion of the doctor who purportedlyaccused Napoleon of the "crime,"the
lack of signs that his silence had been bought,the ignorance of French military
men hostileto the Egyptiancampaign,theassumptionthatnationalismcould not
play its part because Napoleon was not a Frenchman.In the end, the factof the
painting'spublic exhibitioncombinedwiththeothercircumstantialevidence con-
vinceshimthatNapoleon maynot have poisoned thesicksoldiers.Pinkertondoes
not conclude that the reader will have to judge for himselfwhetherthe French
public actuallyknowsabout the poisoning; instead he argues thatthe reader will
have tojudge forhimselfwhetherthe accusationof murder is, in fact,true after
all. There is no certainty,but for the Napoleonic regime, the unsettlingof an
Englishman'sconvictionthatNapoleon poisoned his men at Jaffarepresentsno
small achievement.
The power of Gros's Plague-Stricken ofJaffaderives not from its audacious
itsstatusas a counterproposalto truth,but fromitspublic representation
falsity,
of Napoleon and his accompanyingFrench militaryofficersin the midst of all
that exceeds the state'scontrol.The painting,in other words,brilliantlyaccom-
modates alterity,ambiguity,rumor,terror,transgression,and dissent withinits
veryframe.The artsadministrator, VivantDenon, in a letterto Napoleon at the
timeof the Salon, implicitlypraisesGros forthisachievement:"[Gros] has placed
such a depth in the organization of his subject (a magic too neglected in our
modern school) that by this means he attractedthe spectatorfirstof all to the
middleground,and lefthim nothingmoreoutsideof hisframe."'104 Denon is praising
and Colonization
ofJaffa 35

the all-inclusivenessof Gros's painting,but it is revealingthathe stressesits cor-
ollary,the eliminationof exteriority.
VIII
ofJaffahas conventionallybeen described as

Gros's Plague-Stricken
a simple, theatrical,and unabashedly propagandistic image. My account has
attempted to convey the painting'scomplexityand instability,partlyin order
betterto appreciate itsachievementsas a Napoleonic Orientalistconstructionin
serviceof the regime,partlyto underscorethevolatility and provisionalityof such
tenuous achievementsduringthistransitionalpost-Revolutionary period. Plague,
I have argued, could offera metaphorfora brutalOrient,theaggressionsof colo-
nial war,poisoning,and rumor,in short,all thatexceeded the State'scontrol.But
it also had another importantvalence withinrecentFrench history.Throughout
the French Revolution, metaphors of illness were used by Revolutionariesto
describe a sick politicalbody in need of regeneration.'05Gros'sPlague-Stricken of
Jaffamustbe understood,therefore,to include a ravaged and fragmented(mas-
culine) body politic withinits frame. However, in its resonant evocation of a
societydivided and threatenedin the Orient,the tableau attemptsto prop up the
uniformedFrenchofficeras an answer to civilwar and domesticdisintegration.
Nationalistallegiance to Napoleon as the leader of the French state,the image
suggests,is the only alternativeto society'sdecimation by internal dissent and
factionalism. 106
If in 1804 theClassicistQuatremerede Quincystillattemptedto defend Clas-

sical nudityas a sign of transcendenceof particularitiesof "age, town,and coun-
try,"Gros pejorativelymetamorphosesthenude intoa signof theloss ratherthan
transcendenceof such specificity. 107 Withinthe fearfulcontextof colonialistdis-
placement, and the peril of barbaric alterityrepresented by Gros, the French

militaryuniform,although an unstable and contested marker,accrues signifi-
cance against its lack (nuditydefined as a state of undress). As even a cursory
examinationof the period's art criticismmakes clear,thisis no small accomplish-
ment. Repeatedly,criticsbemoan the Frenchuniform'slack of authority,its un-
appealing visual incoherencyand illegibility.'08 In its dramaticjuxtaposition of
two kinds of men, the compositionof Plague-Stricken ofJaffaresolvesone of the
period's mostpressingaestheticdilemmasbyrenderingthe emergentnationalist
formlegible.
But it would be wrong to argue thatthe national identitythe paintingpro-
poses restsupon a fixedsignifier,in thiscase, the Frenchmilitaryman in fulldress
uniform.As I have pointedout, authoritydid not and could not reside in a single
coherenttermsuch as the hairdresser'sdummywithoutrevealingits provisional
and vulnerablecharacter.Rather,like Orientalism,the operation of nationalism
36 REPRESENTATIONS

relies not on the productionof fixedtermsbut on the capacityto sustaina con-
tinualnegotiationbetweenthreatand resolution,betweenperilousdisintegration
and order,betweentransgressionand authority, betweenliminalityand center.
Gros's representationof the failureof the Egyptiancampaign produced the
West for itself,but the French post-Revolutionary nation-statewas not resolved
into a static,totalizingimage. Instead, the volatile,fragile,and fissileOrientalist
constructionof the Napoleonic French state required a jostling of rumor and
contagion,as well as transgressive,ambivalentsexualitywithinthe representa-
tionalfield.Because rumor,contagion,and eroticismare inherentlyunstablepro-
cesses, they provide ways of understandingthe fragilityand contingency-the
diachronicity-too often excised from synchronic,often monumentalizing,
models of Orientalismand nationalism.If thecoherencyof a tableau is produced
bythe tremblinghand at itsouter edges, the particularefficacyof Gros'spainting
arises fromthe artist'scapacity,like Miot,to representthatloss of controlwithin
his image's frame.
Notes
I publish thisessay in memoryof myradiant mother,Nora Esmeria Grimaldo Wal-

ters. It stems from a paper writtenin 1990 for an anthropologyseminar entitled
"Colonialismand Culture"conducted byNicolas Dirks at the Universityof Michigan
and submittedas well to Thomas Crow. I thank them both for their support and
comments.It also representsan abbreviatedversionof a chapter frommydisserta-
tionentitled"Classicism,Nationalism,and History:The PrixDe'cennauxof 1810 and
the Politicsof ArtUnder Post-Revolutionary Empire,"Universityof Michigan, 1995.
I would also like to thankJoel Isaacson and Todd Olson as well as Michael Fahy,
Mark Gerstein,Daniel Monk, Francesca Rose, and Pat Simons fortheircriticismand
assistance. Research was funded by Samuel H. Kress, Social Science Research
Council, Lurcy,and Fulbrightfellowships.
1. Jean-FrancoisMiot,Memoires desexpeditions
pourservira l'histoire en Egypteeten Syrie,
2d ed. (Paris, 1814), 148. Unless otherwiseindicated,all translationsare mine.
2. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York,1978). Among criticaldiscussionsof Said's inter-
pretationof Michel Foucault,see JamesClifford,"On Orientalism," in ThePredicament
ofCulture:Twentieth-Century Ethnography, and Art(Cambridge, Mass., 1988),
Literature,
255-76; Homi Bhabha, "The Other Question: Stereotype,Discrimination,and the
Discourse of Colonialism," in The Locationof Culture(London, 1994), 66-84; Ali
Behdad, BelatedTravelers: Orientalismin theAge ofColonialDissolution(Durham, N.C.,
1994).
3. Said, Orientalism,83.
4. ChristopherJ. Herold, Bonapartein Egypt(London, 1963), 296-99. Also invaluable
regarding the campaign generally,see C. de La Jonquiere, L'expedition en Egypte,
1798-1801, 5 vols. (Paris, 1899-1907).
5. Said, Orientalism,84-87. Also see Edward Said's comparisonof Description de l'Egypte
and Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti'sAja'ibal-atharas textsrevealingthe discrepantper-
Rumor,Contagion,and Colonization in Gros'sPlague-Stricken

ofJaffia 37

spectivesof colonizer and colonized, in Edward Said, Cultureand Imperialism (New
York, 1993), 33-35.
6. The artsadministratorVivantDenon functionedas an adviserduringitspreliminary
stages,and the Chantillypainted sketch(fig.11) was apparentlyapproved by Napo-
leon himself.Nonetheless,thereis ambiguityregardingthe initialcommission,par-
ticularlyregardingJosephine Bonaparte's role. See, for example, H. Mollaret and
J. Brossollet, "A propos des 'Pestiferes,"'in Jaerboek1968: Koninklijkmuseumvoor
schonekunsten (Antwerp,1968), 267; and P. Lelievre,VivantDenon (Paris, 1942), 112.
David O'Brien clarifiesthisconfusionin his "Antoine-JeanGros and the Art of War:
French MilitaryPaintingfrom 1795 to 1804" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Michigan,
1994).
7. Anne-Louis Girodet quoted inJournaldesdebats,6 Octobre 1804; see G. Duplessis,
Collection despiecessurlesbeaux-artsimprimeesetmanuscrits recueillies Ma-
par Pierre-Jean
riette,Charles-Nicolas Cochin,etM. Deloynes(hereafterabbreviatedDeloynes),Cabinet
des estampes,Bibliothequenationale (Paris, 1881): XXXII, no. 881.
8. A police bulletinof 29 September 1804 reported that members of all classes were
moved bythe painting;see Mollaretand Brossollet,"A propos des 'Pestiferes,`"273.
9. Indeed, the Salon of 1804 can be seen as a culminationof the Nazareth competition.
Gros was ordered to stop the Nazareth projectin order to paintJaffa;Todd Porter-
field,"Artin the Service of French Imperialismin the Near East, 1798-1848: Four
Case Studies" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University,1991), 29; Mollaretand Brossollet,"A
propos des 'Pestiferes,"'266-67. Also see Susan Siegfried,"Naked History: The
Rhetoricof MilitaryPaintingin Postrevolutionary France,"TheArtBulletin75, no. 2
(June 1993). Regarding the competing fortunesof Philippe-Auguste Hennequin
and Gros at the 1804 Salon, see O'Brien, "Antoine-JeanGros," as well as my "Clas-
sicism,Nationalism,and History."
10. See Francois Boyer,"Napoleon et l'attributiondes grands prix decennaux," Bulletin
de l'artfranpais,
d'histoire
de la socie'te 1947-48, as well as my"Classicism,Nationalism,
and History."
11. Jacques Godechot, TheCounter-Revolution: DoctrineandAction,1789-1804 (Princeton,
1971), 356-83.
12. Among others, see Lynne Thornton, The Orientalists: PainterTravellers1828-1908
(Paris, 1983), 14; Mary Anne Stevens,ed., TheOrientalists: DelacroixtoMatisse:Euro-
peanPaintersinNorthAfricaand theNearEast (London, 1984), 17; Philippe Cruysmans,
PeintureOrientaliste: Painting(Brussels, 1982), 16.
Orientalist
13. I have decided to use the termArab throughoutthe textbecause Frenchartcriticism
of the period generallyrefersto the numerous peoples of this region as "Arabes,"
occasionallyand ofteninterchangeablycallingthem Muslimsor Egyptians,but gen-
erallydistinguishingthem fromthe (enemy) Mamelukes. Nevertheless,at this his-
torical moment, the term Arab could also be associated, more precisely,with
Bedouins and non-citydwellers. I am aware of the ways an overarchinggeneral
nomenclatureforthe complex and highlydiversegroups inhabitingthisregion rep-
resentsa typicallyOrientalistmaneuver,but, to a greatextent,the use of more pre-
cise terms, even if possible, would be misleading in this discussion of French
Orientalistconstructions.While French travelwriterslike C.-F. Volney and artists
like Vivant Denon (and to some extentGros) revealed an attentivenessto the diver-
sityof peoples in the region,most referencesby French contemporarieswere gen-
eralized in character.The factthatGros's paintingrepresentsa scene occurringin
Syria,thatthe defeated soldiersofJaffawere primarilyTurks,thatthe coerced hos-
38 REPRESENTATIONS

pital attendantswere indigenous Christians,and thatthe paintingwas nonetheless
generallyconsidered a depictionof the "Egyptian"campaign is indicativeof the dif-
ficulties.Moreover,while Volney distinguishedbetween the regions of Syria and
Egypt,our ethno-nationalisttaxonomies are largelythe result of a later historical
process. In addition,to complicatethingsfurther,Dale Eickelman has argued that,
in the area now called the Middle East, therewere multiplecategoriesof identifica-
tion (regional,religious,ethnic)duringthisperiod, and thattheywere also relatively
fluid. "Egyptian"(masrly),for instance,could have referredto someone from the
general area encompassed in the contemporarystatebearing the same name, or it
mightsimplymean someone fromCairo. See Dale F. Eickelman,TheMiddleEast: An
Anthropological Approach(NewJersey,1981), esp. chap. 7, esp. 136-41; and Lawrence
Rosen, BargainingforReality:TheConstruction ofSocialRelationsin a MuslimCommunity
(Chicago, 1984), esp. chap. 2. I would liketo thankMichael Fahyforthesereferences
as well as for prolonged discussionsand advice regardingthe problemsand politics
of "naming."
14. "Un Amateur,"Lettresimpartiales sur lesexpositionsde l'an XIII; an 13 (1804), 23-24,
DeloynesXXXI, no. 873:567-68.
15. For an application of Said's model of Orientalismto nineteenth-century Orientalist
art,see Linda Nochlin,"The ImaginaryOrient,"ArtinAmerica71, no. 5 (May 1983);
Lisa Tickner poses a number of questions regardingthe relationshipbetween Ori-
entalismand gender in "Feminism,Art History,and Sexual Difference,"Genders3
(Fall 1988): 104-5. Regarding Orientalismduring the Napoleonic era, see Porter-
field,"Artin the Service."
16. Porterfield'swork, "Artin the Service,"stands as an exception in this regard; his
analysis is explicitlybased on the "knowledge as power" thesis offeredby Said's
Orientalism.
17. Herold, Bonapartein Egypt,280.
18. Ibid., 278. Auguste Marmont,Me'moires deDuc de Raguse (Paris, 1857), 1:412.
19. Explicationdesouvrages... expose's dansle Salon du Muse'eNapoleon,le ler complementaire
de l'anXII de la rnpublique(Paris, 1804), 39-40.
20. Nicolas-Rene-DufricheDesgenettes, Souvenirsdun medecinde l'expedition d'Egypte
(Paris, 1893), 3:22 1, cited in La Jonquiere,L'expedition en Egypte,4:284; and Herold,
Bonapartein Egypt,279. This is the way Gros initiallyconceived the subject in a pre-
liminarypainted sketch(Isaac Delgado Museum, New Orleans).
21. See, for example, Desgenettes, Souvenirs,3:221; Paul Assalini, Observations on the
Plague, on theDysentery, theOphthalamy ofEgypt. . . , trans. Adam Neale (New York,
1806), 22 (French ed. 1801); GeoffroySaint-Hilaire,Lettresecritesd'Egypte(Paris,
1901), 121.
22. E. A. D. Comte de Las Cases, Memorialde Sainte-He'lne(Paris, 1823); cited in Herold,
Bonapartein Egypt,208.
23. A number of contemporariessimilarlyargued that the fearfulor morallycorrupt
were more susceptibleto plague; see, forexample, Marmont,Memoires,1:415; Saint-
Hilaire, Lettres,173, 177. Gros's valorizationof Napoleon's rationalauthorityin the
face of panicked imaginationsaccords withJan Goldstein'sdescriptionof the politics
of contemporarymedical models of "moral" contagion; the inflammationof the
imaginationrequired a displayof moral authority.Two yearsafterthe exhibitionof
Gros'spainting,administratorEusebe Salverte'sRapportsde la medecine avecla politique
(Paris, 1806) ascribed to the doctor the taskof combating"moral contagion no less
than physicalcontagion."According to Goldstein,"Salvertewas thinkinghere par-

ofJaffia 39

ticularlyof panics, of the spread of 'deadly terrors'and 'dangerous frights,'often
caused by the spectreof death during epidemics of physicaldisease;" See Jan Gold-
stein, "'Moral Contagion': A ProfessionalIdeology of Medicine and Psychiatryin
Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century France,"in Gerald L. Gerson, ed., Professions
and theFrenchState,1700-1900 (Philadelphia, 1984), 181-222.
24. Joseph Conrad, TheHeartofDarkness(New York, 1981), 28.
25. Walter Friedlaender,"Napoleon as Roi Thaumaturge,"Journalof theWarburgand
CourtauldInstitute4 (1941).
26. For the evocation of Lazarus, see Lee Johnson,"A Copy AfterVan Dyck by Geri-
cault,"Burlington Magazine63, no. 813 (December 1970): 794 n. 10; Paul Joannides,
"Some English Themes in the Early Workof Gros,"Burlington Magazine67, no. 873
(December 1975): 783; Alexander Fygis-Walker,"Some Uses of Iconography
Around 1804" (M. Phil. thesis, Courtauld Institute,1984), 87-90, discusses the
painting'smultiplicity of iconographicassociations.
27. Quatremere de Quincy,"Dissertationsur la diversitedu genie,"Journaldes arts(20
Frimairean 13 [1804]): 363-64.
28. Theodore Gericault'smale-dominatedoeuvre mustbe seen to followthisimportant
shiftfromthe gendered syntaxof the Classical repertoireto the predominantlymas-
culine iconographyof contemporarymilitarysubjectsduring the Revolutionaryand
Napoleonic periods; femalefigureswere increasinglyaligned withlesser genres like
portraiture.See Linda Nochlin, "Gericault,or the Absence of Women," October68
(Spring 1994). Exceptional in this regard were rare allegorical images of contem-
poraryhistorysuch as Joseph Franque's 1810 Allegoriesur l'9tatde la Franceavant le
retourd'Egypte(Musee du Louvre) in which partlyclad women bear the burden of
representingthe disorderof a supine and distraughtFrance.
29. Critiqueraisoneedestableauxdu Salon.DialogueentrePasquino,voyageur Romain,etScapin,
1804, DeloynesXXXI, no. 878:32; and Gros's harshestanonymous critic,"Beaux-
Arts. Peinturesdu Salon de 1804,"Journaldesmonumens etdes arts(16 Brumaire an
13 [1804]).
30. Napoleon, Order of the Day, 8 January1799 (myemphasis); cited in Herold, Bona-
partein Egypt,209.
31. Ibid.
32. This eroticismhas also been recognized by Meyer Schapiro in his discussion of the
Santo Domingo Doubting Thomas; "From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos,"
Romanesque Art(New York, 1976): 88.
33. That thejuxtapositionof naked and clothedfigureshad become an electricone can
also be assessed by the earlier controversyregarding the interminglingof (male)
nudes and (female)clothedfiguresinJacques-LouisDavid's Intervention oftheSabines,
althoughthe indignationregardingDavid's vulnerablynaked warriorswas certainly
mitigatedbyGros'ssubject,theverydegradationbydisease of men-at-arms.See Ewa
Lajer-Burcharth,"David's Sabine Women:Body, Gender, and Republican Culture
Under the Directory,"ArtHistory24, no. 3 (September 1991): 397-430; Dorothy
Johnson,Jacques-Louis David: Artin Metamorphosis(Princeton,1993). My dissertation,
"Classicism,Nationalism,and History,"discussesthe heated debate regardingnudity
and contemporarycostumefrom1799 to 1814.
34. See Eve KosofskySedgwick,Between Men: EnglishLiteratureand Male HomosocialDesire
(New York, 1985); and the applicationof Sedgwick'smodel in Carol Ockman, "Pro-
filingHomoeroticism: Ingres'sAchillesReceivingtheAmbassadors ofAgamemnon," The
ArtBulletin(June 1993), and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Male Trouble: A Crisis in
40 REPRESENTATIONS

Representation,"ArtHistory16, no. 2 (June 1993). See also Alex Potts,"Beautiful
Bodies and Dying Heroes: Images of Ideal Manhood in the French Revolution,"
HistoryWorkshop Journal30 (Autumn 1990).
35. By contrast,Napoleon standsdetached fromthe kneelinggiantin Gros'searlysketch
of the same titleat the Musee Conde, Chantilly(fig. 11).
36. "Reflexionsparticulieressur quelques tableaux de cetteexposition,"Journalde Paris,
1804, DeloynesXXXVI, no. 983:168.
37. C.-F. Volney,TravelsThroughSyriaand Egypt(London, 1787), 1:184.
38. Pierre-Amedee-EmilienJaubertin a letterdated 9 July1798 to General Bruix, Min-
isterof Marine and the Colonies, in CopiesofOriginalLetters fromtheArmyofGeneral
Bonaparte(London, 1798), 1:26.
39. It is importantto differentiate thisformof feminizationof the sodomized man from
the eventual "effeminization" of both termswithina same-sexcoupling as described
by WhitneyDavis. Davis describes the historicaltransitionfrom a masculine to a
feminineconstructionof sodomy preciselyat thismomentin France, but he failsto
make a distinctionbetweenthe activeand passiveroles of sodomizerand sodomized,
a distinctionthatwas clearlycrucial and highlyoverdeterminedwithinthiscontext
of war against the Oriental sodomite. See WhitneyDavis, "The Renunciation of
Reaction in Girodet's Sleep ofEndymion," in Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly,
Keith Moxey,eds., Visual Culture:Imagesand Interpretations (Hanover, N.H., 1994),
168-201, esp. 189. Regarding the association of effeminacywith the sodomized
man rather than the sodomite, see Gert Hekma, "Homosexual Behavior in the
Nineteenth-Century Dutch Army,"in John C. Fout, ed., Forbidden History:TheState,
Society,and theRegulationofSexuality in ModernEurope(Chicago, 1992), 235-58, esp.
250. Accordingto Hekma, thefirstbiologicaltheoryof homosexualitythatprivileged
the notion of (the sodomite's) effeminacywas developed in France in 1849 by the
psychiatristC. F. Michea, ibid., 238 n. 11. There is littlescholarshipregarding sex-
ualitywithintheFrencharmy.ConcerningEnglishmilitarypolicies,see, forexample,
ArthurN. Gilbert,"Buggeryand the BritishNavy,1700-1861," in Wayne R. Dynes
and Stephen Donaldson, eds., HistoryofHomosexuality in Europe and America(New
York,1992), 132-58. Note thatalthoughtheArab can be constructedas an eroticized
Other,sensual and depraved, and therebyaligned witha parallel constructionof the
"feminine,"rape by an aggressive Oriental sodomite nonetheless threatens the
Frenchmanwiththe spectreof his own feminization.Regarding the contradictions
of stereotypes,see Bhabha, "The Other Question,"66-84.
40. The editors indicate that the letterwas writtenby the Firstclerk to Poussielgue, 9
Thermidor an 6, "Comptrollerof the expences [sic]of the Army";Copies,1: 105.
41. While "femininity" is, of course, alwaysa constructionproduced by representation,
when no longer anchored to the depiction of women the signifier"femininity"
becomes a free-floating term that can be attached, potentiallyas an accusation, to
any of the competing constructionsof masculinity.Of course, an image devoted
solelyto therepresentationof male figurescan attemptto positfemininity as exterior
to the frame,but the categoryof "femininity" can neverbe securelyexiled.
42. See, for example, the controversyin 1811 surroundingAntonio Canova's colossal
nude statue of Napoleon; Francois Boyer, "Histoire du Napoleon colossal de
Canova," Revue des etudesnapoleoniennes (June 1940); Alain Bonnet, "Le 'Napoleon'
de Canova" (Memoire de maitrise,Universitede Paris I, June 1985).
43. Napoleon's imitationof Talma is described by F. A. R. de Chateaubriand, De Buona-

ofJaffia 41

parte,desBourbons,etde la necessite pourle bonheur
de se ralliera nosprinceslegitimes de la
Franceetde celuide l'Europe(Paris, 1814), 22.
44. Of course, this was not true. See, for example, Marmont,Me'moires1:412; Miot,
Mgmoires, 214.
45. Fygis-Walker, "Some Uses of Iconography,"81. European colonizers'reliance upon
indigenous doctorscharacterizedcolonialismonly before the early nineteenthcen-
tury; this "medical pluralism" was later radically disavowed, according to David
Arnold in his introductionto ImperialMedicineand IndigenousSocieties(Manchester,
Eng., 1988), 11.
46. "Ambulator,""Melanges ... sur le Salon de peinture,"La revueou decadephilosophique,
etpolitique,1804, DeloynesXXXII, no. 889:471.
litte'raire
47. Numerous contemporaryaccounts attestto French people's belief in the inherent
fatalismof Arabs. See, for example, Jaubert in Copies,1:27; Louis Bonaparte, in
Copies,1:4.
48. Mollaret and Brossollet,"A propos des 'Pestiferes,"'303; Porterfield,"Art in the
Service,"33.
49. Lettres impartiales.
50. The female figurewas added to the compositionduring a final stage; she is not
apparent in thepaintedsketchat Chantilly,nor are thestretcher-bearers represented
as black men. Bonaparte had ordered the purchase of black slavesto serveas auxilia-
riesto the army;Mollaretand Brossollet,"A propos des 'Pestiferes,"'300. Regarding
the French reinstatementof slaveryin 1802, see Yves Benot, La demencede coloniale
sousNapoleon(Paris, 1992), esp. chap. 2.
51. "Peinture.Expositionpublique des ouvrages des peintresvivans,"Journaldesartsdes
1804, DeloynesXXXII, no. 897:689.
sciencesetde litterature,
52. "M. B .," "Salon de l'an 12,"Journaldesdebats,25 September 1804. Gros's accuracyis
emphasized byboth Arsene Alexandre,Histoirede la peinture enFrance(Paris,
militaire
1880), 140-47, and Porterfield,Artin theService,36-37; the lattercloselyreads the
gesturesof thevariousplague-strickenfiguresin relationto DominiqueJean Larrey's
own retrospectivereport.
53. See, forexample, "Reflexionsparticulieres."
54. See, for example, "D. D.," "Salon de l'an 13," Nouvellesdes artsde peinture, sculpture,
architecture et gravure.Journal redige par Landon, 1804, DeloynesXXXII, no.
892:541.
55. "Ambulator,""Melanges ... sur le Salon de peinture,"470.
56. This is Thomas Crow's observationin Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art
(London, 1994), 53.
57. RegardingGros'searlywork,see Joannides,"Some EnglishThemes"; regardingthe
reputation of Michelangelo in early-nineteenth-century France see James Henry
Rubin, "An Early RomanticPolemic: Girodetand Milton,"ArtQuarterly (1972); and
also Fygis-Walker, "Some Uses of Iconography,"87-90.
58. "Ambulator,""Melanges . . . sur le Salon de peinture,"468.
59. Norman Schlenoffhas pointed out Gros's accordance withthe Academic proscrip-
tionof corporal mutilation,but I believe he wronglyconflatesthe bloody carnage of
battleand plague. Gros did not effacebloodiness simplyto conformto Classicism;
rather,plague provided the vehicle fora drama of differentpathos because it does
not manifestitselfas a wound, puncture,or dismemberingof the body. Norman
Schlenoff,"Baron Gros and Napoleon's EgyptianCampaigns,"in Marsyas,ed. Essays
in HonorofWalter Friedlaender(New York, 1965), 161-62.
42 REPRESENTATIONS

60. See, forinstance,the letterbyAdjutant-GeneralLacuee, CopiesofOriginalLetters from
theArmyofGeneralBonaparte,vol. 2 (London, 1799), 124.
61. C. Dupuis, General de Brigade to his friend Carlo, le Thermidor an 6, Copiesof
OriginalLettersfromtheArmyof GeneralBonaparte,vol. 3 (London, 1800), 164; and
Dumas, Brigadier de la compagnie to his wife,29 Thermidor an 6, Copies,2:153.
62. David Vess describesthe waysthatthe FrenchRevolutionushered in a "social theory
of disease" that undermined lingeringHippocratic emphases on climaticcauses;
MedicalRevolutionin France,1789-1796 (Gainesville,Fla., 1975), 145-46. Recently,
twobooks have focused on the relationshipbetweencolonialismand disease, partic-
ularlyon medicine'srole as a tool of imperialpoliticaland economic domination. I
am concerned, instead,withthe waysdisease permitsthe colonizers'articulationof
theirworstfears regarding the "barbaric"colonized peoples. See Arnold, Imperial
Medicine,and Roy MacLeod and Milton Lewis, eds., Disease,Medicine,and Empire:
Perspectiveson Western Medicineand theExperienceof European Expansion(London,
1988).
63. Indeed, the fashionforthingsEgyptianin Paris during the Napoleonic period indi-
cates the prevalence of a domesticatingOrientalismthat rendered North Africans
exotic pets; but even withinthiscontext,Egyptwas also associated withhorror,ifof
a piquant and titillatingkind. In a more prolonged studyof representationsof the
Egyptiancampaign, I intend to address the ways Gros's paintingof plague can be
seen at once as an exploitationof this dual fascinationand as a recuperationof a
specificallymasculine realm of horrificcolonial war in the face of its domestication
and feminizationat the Parisianhome front.
64. See ChristopherLloyd, TheNile Campaign:Nelsonand Napoleonin Egypt(New York,
1973), 79.
65. Etienne-LouisMalus, cited in Herold, Bonapartein Egypt,273.
66. Miot,in fact,attemptsto rationalizeNapoleon's decision to murderthe surrendered
men; Memoires,144-48.
67. Louis-GabrielMichaud de Villette,Tableauhistorique etraisonnedespremiers guerresde
Napolon Bonaparte,de leurscausesetde leurseffets (Paris, 1814), 108, claims the mas-
sacre was knownall over Europe. See also Sir Robert Thomas Wilson,Historyofthe
BritishExpedition toEgypt(London, 1803), 2:118-19.
68. Miot,Memoires,149; Michaud de Villette,Tableauhistorique, 106, 131, 111.
69. Plague also providedanothermeans of criticizingNapoleon; he was accused ofjeop-
ardizing the health of the French nation by failingto submitto the required quar-
antineupon his returnfromEgypt.See, forexample, "Bernard,"Le Turcetle militaire,
dialoguesur1expe'rienced'Egypte ... (1801), 10.
70. A number of scholars have brieflyreferredto Gros's paintingas a propagandistic
rebuttalof accusations that Napoleon poisoned his troops; see Mollaret and Bros-
sollet,"A propos des 'Pestiferes,"'298; Porterfield,Artin theService,30-31; and Fygis-
Walker,"Some Uses of Iconography,"72.
71. La Jonquiere,L'expedition en Egypte,4:577. In 1802, Desgenettes only admitted that
the army had not been able to remove thirtyplague-strickenmen, but during the
Restoration,he providedinformationregardingthe poisoningin Victoires, conquetes,
reversetguerrescivilesdesFranpaisde 1792 a 1815 (Paris, 1818-19), 10: 309-
desastres,
14. The poisoning was also corroboratedby,among others, Miot, Me'moires, 206;
L.-A. F. de Bourrienne, Memoirsof NapoleonBonaparte,trans. R. W. Phipps (New
York, 1906), 1:215-18; Marmont,Memoires,2:12 (who tries to justifythe action);
P.D. Martin,Histoirede l'exp'dition franpaiseen Egypte(Paris, 1815), 1:315; Charles

ofJaffa 43

Richardot,Nouveauxmemoires surlarmeefranpaise enEgypteeten Syrie(Paris, 1848), 53;
C. Francois,Journal du CapitaineFranpois,ditle Dromedaire d'Egypte,1792-1830 (Paris,
1903), 1:335; pharmacistCadet de Gassicourt,Voyageen Autriche, en Moravieet en
Baviere(Paris, 1818), 386-96; see also LaJonquiere, L'expedition enEgypte,4:574-80,
and Jean Thiry,Bonaparteen Egypte:De'cembre 1797-24 aout 1799 (Paris, 1973), 379
n. 5.
72. Royer's role was well known; stigmatized,he was forced to remain in Cairo; see
Nicolas Turc, Chronique d'Egypte,1798-1804 (Cairo, 1950), 286-87 n. 1; and also La
Jonquiere,L'expedition en Egypte,4:575, 579, 581; and Michaud de Villette,Tableau
historique,129.
73. This, for instance,is thejustificationofferedby Stendhal,A LifeofNapoleon,trans.
Roland Gant (London, 1956), 12-15; see also Antoine Marie, Comte de Lavallette,
Me'moires etsouvenirsdu ComteLavallette(Paris, 1831), 1:326.
74. "On propose aux officiersde sante de donner de l'opium aux fievreuxet blesses
dangereusement."Cited in LaJonquiere, L'exphdition enEgypte,4:579.
75. Ibid., 578.
76. Herold, BonaparteinEgypt,308. Also see Nicolas-Rene-DufricheDesgenettes,Histoire
medicalede l'armeed'Orient,2d ed. (Paris, 1830); cited in La Jonquiere,L'expedition en
Egypte,4:577; as well as Michaud de Villette, Tableau historique,130; Lavallette,
Me'moires, 1:327.
77. A footnoteto Michaud de Villette'stextstates that "all" London papers published
the storyof the poisoning,and thatNapoleon was veryimpatientwiththese insults
in the Britishpress during the Peace of Amiens; Michaud de Villette,Tableauhisto-
rique,127. Afterthe fallof the Empire,see, forexample, WilliamCombe, TheLifeof
Napoleon,a Hudibrastic Poemin Fifteen CantosbyDoctorSyntax(London, 1815).
78. Michaud de Villette,Tableauhistorique, 126-27.
79. 10:313; also Herold, Bonapartein Egypt,317.
Victoires,
80. Miot,Memoires, 579 n. 3; Colonel Vigo Roussillon,Revue des deuxmondes(1 August
1890): 608.
81. Las Cases cited in John Ashton,EnglishCaricatureand Satireon NapoleonI (London,
1888), 80-81.
82. See Andre Cabanis, La pressesousle consulatetlempire,1799-1814 (Paris, 1975), esp.
12-24.
83. Bourrienne,Memoirs,1:185.
84. Even the English ambassador, Lord Whitworth,eventuallyconceded thatlibertyof
the press should not be left "so uncontrolled" that any "obscure writer"could
"involve in war countrieswhich otherwisemightbe disposed to conciliate"; Oscar
Browning,ed., England and Napoleonin 1803: BeingtheDespatchesofLord Whitworth
and Others(London, 1887), 92, 95; see also ibid.,9, 52-53, 91, 96, 147-48.
85. Copies,2:146 and Copies,1:75; and Marmont,Me'moires, 1:372, 442.
86. Auguste Marmontto Napoleon, Alexandria,22 January 1799; Marmont,Me'moires,
1:443.
87. Describing the demoralized plague-strickenmen in Alexandria, Herold lists the
rumors born of theirmisery:"Patientssufferingfromordinaryailmentshad been
put into hospital beds fromwhich the corpses of plague victimshad barely been
removed; instead of burning the clothes of the dead, hospital attendantshad sold
them; corpses had remained unburied fortwenty-four hours,or buried in gravesso
shallowthatdogs were diggingthemup to devour them."Herold, BonaparteinEgypt,
210. Regarding plague and paranoia, see also FrancoisDelaporte, Diseaseand Civili-
44 REPRESENTATIONS

zation:TheCholerain Paris,1832 (Paris, 1986), esp. 48-50. Regarding the prevalence
of rumorsduring war,see Paul Fussell, TheGreatWarand ModernMemory(London,
1975), 115-35.
88. Nicolas-Rene-DufricheDesgenettes,Histoiremedicalede l'armeed'Orient(Paris, 1802);
cited in LaJonquiere, L'expedition enEgypte, 4:284.
89. Regarding the power of rumor in colonial politics,see Homi Bhabha, "By Bread
Alone: Signs of Violence in the Mid-NineteenthCentury,"in TheLocationofCulture,
198-211, esp. 204; and Michael Taussig, "Culture of Terror,Space of Death," Com-
parativeStudiesin SocietyandHistory 26 (July1984). For anothercase-studyof the ways
a catastrophecan produce acutelydifferentreadings by various sectorsof a popu-
lation,see Terence Ranger,"The InfluenzaPandemicin SouthernRhodesia: A Crisis
of Comprehension,"in Arnold,ImperialMedicine,172-88.
90. Afterthe disasterof Aboukir,Napoleon describesthe discouragementof his troops
as the germof itsdestruction;lettercited in Marmont,Memoires,1:390.
91. X. B. Saintine,J.-J.Marcel and L. Reybaud,Histoire etmilitaire
scientifique de l'expedition
francaiseenEgypted'apreslesmemoires, mate'riaux, documents inedits... (Paris, 1832).
92. Delaporte, Diseaseand Civilization, esp. 8, 48-50, 55-58, 65-72.
93. Ibid., esp. 8, 47-54; see also Arnold,ImperialMedicine,esp. 7.
94. Assalini,Observations on thePlague, 15, 73, 75, 83.
95. Cited in Ashton,EnglishCaricature, 79.
96. Cited in Andre Blum, "La caricaturepolitiqueen France sous le consulatet l'empire,"
Revuedesetudesnapoleoniennes 13 (1918): 296-312, 302.
97. ErnestHauterive,La policesecrete du premier empire(Paris, 1908), 1:95.
98. Although our emphases differ,I address problems similar to those treated by
Michael Marrinan in his discussionof Gros'sBattleofEylau (1808), despite the fact
thathe describesJaffaas a relativelystableimage. While I disagree withMarrinan's
insistenceon the determiningpower of Napoleon's words,particularlyhis bulletins,
I concur withhis argumentthatauthoritarianregimes'incompletecontrolrequires
an acknowledgmentof horror,or, in my words, failure,withinits discourse. See
Michael Marrinan,"Literal/Literary/'Lexie': History,Text,and Authorityin Napo-
leonic Painting,"Wordand Image7, no. 3 (July-September1991).
99. For example, Bourrienne, Memoirs,1:361-66. Police bulletins regularlyincluded
reportsregarding "Les bruits";see Hauterive, La policesecrete;Robert B. Holtman,
NapoleonicPropaganda(Baton Rouge, 1950), 111-19.
100. Chateaubriand,De Buonaparte,desBourbons,7.
101. Michaud de Villette,Tableauhistorique, 107.
102. It is likelyBourrienne describes the general's second visitto the hospital at Jaffa,
while Gros paints his first.See his Memoirs,1:214; cited in La Jonquiere,L'expedition
enEgypte,4:575 n. 1.
103. John Pinkerton,Recollections ofParis in theYears1802-3-4-5 (London, 1806), 1:244-
47 (my emphasis). I would like to thankDr. Gerald Carr for drawing my attention
to thisinvaluable record of an Englishman'sresponse to Gros's paintingat the time
of itsexhibition.Pinkertondeems Gros'spaintingthe Salon's best work; ibid., 1:248.
104. Vivant Denon to Napoleon, "Notes sur le Salon de l'an 13," Archives nationales,
Paris. AF 4 1050 Dossier 1.38 (myemphasis).
105. See, forexample, G.J. Target's 1797 Essai physique, moraletpolitiquede la Franceau 12
floreal de l'anneecinquiemede la republique, cited in Pierre Lascoumes, Pierre Poncela,
and Pierre Lenoel, Au nomde l'ordre:Une histoire politiquedu codepenal (Paris, 1989),
215. Alexis de Tocqueville, a writerof opposite politicalconvictions,described the

ofJaffa 45

revolutionas a "virus,"cited in R. R. Palmer,ed., The TwoTocquevilles Fatherand Son
(Princeton, 1987), 242. Also Napoleon's contemporariesoften characterized the
French Revolution in the same termsused to describe Oriental alterity:savagery,
barbarism,horror,and chaos; see, withina discussion of the Egyptian campaign,
Marmont,Memoires, 86.
106. Gros's valorizationof Napoleon and his accompanyingmilitaryofficersas an an-
swer to Revolutionarystrifeand domestic fragmentationwas underscored by its
juxtaposition withinthe Salon to Hennequin's vast and inchoate representationof
Revolutionarycivil war, Battle of Quiberon(Musee des Augustins, Toulouse). In
Hennequin's painting,the atomisticcompressedweb of uniformedbodies is at once
leveled and heterogeneous.Societyhas been rendered chaotic,fractured,individu-
alized but anonymous.Not surprisingly, art criticismreveals thatthe Battle of Qui-
beron engendered an anxiety regarding the dissolution of identity,specifically
national identity,in the midst of factionalstrife,but it did not offera resolution;
instead, a counterpointto domesticdisintegrationand factionalismwas offeredby
Gros'stableau, whichhung on the opposite wall.
107. Quatremere de Quincy,"Dissertationsur la diversitedu genie,"363-64.
108. The aestheticproblemsposed bythe Frenchmilitaryuniformcontinued to concern
criticsthroughoutthe Empire. Besides discussionsregarding Hennequin's Battleof
Quiberon,forinstance,see criticismof David's Distribution oftheEagles ( 1810).
46 REPRESENTATIONS


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Rumor, Contagion, and Colonization in Gros's Plague-Stricken of Jaffa (1804)

Author(s): Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby

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IN H I S Memoires pourservira l'histoire

REPRESENTATIONS 51 * Summer 1995 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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Although Said brieflydiscussesone significantvisual and textualrep-

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1. Grs Boaat :iitn le etfr ea, 10._Olo avs ue

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fact,I believe it is of fundamentalimportthat in Gros's painting,French men

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of the Napoleonic empire warrantsfurtherconsideration,particularlyconsid-

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Gros'sPlague-Stricken ofJaffa purportedlyrepresentsa historicalevent.

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than throughexposure between people. Nevertheless,most medical attendants

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In this passage, we encounter the paradoxical nature of Napoleon's action and

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appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars, got-up shirt-frontswere

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FIGURE 6. Jacques-Louis David, La mortdeBara, 1794. Oil on canvas.

ynous,as in corporal soliloquieslikeTheDeathofBara (fig.6), nor tautand upright

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In order to valorizethe masculinityof physicalcontactwithdiseased men, Napo-

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Withinthe new,solelymasculine economyof Gros'sPlague-Stricken of

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FIGURE Gerome Le generalBonaparteau Came 1867~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

68AiW nwoe ae TeAtMsu rneo

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It mightbe helpfulhere to returnto Conrad's novel and to mentiona

FIGURE 10. Anonymous,T...

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that closelyresemblesSaid's analysis.Here, Orientalistassumptionsabout East-

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To discuss the terror,the fear,evoked by Gros's paintingof plague at

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Ruor Cntginan Cloiztin n ro'sPagu-tick ofaf 25

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Rumor,Contagion,and Colonizationin Gros'sPlague-Stricken

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Neithersudden death duringa promenade nor disposal as a nocturnalvictim

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