118 GRAND CAIRO. 
CHAP. Neither Buonaharte nor Kleber distressed the 
III 
_■ people oi Cairo, by their extortions, so much 
as did Menou; who, in the latter part of his 
tyrannical government, omitted no measures 
whereby he might plunder the inhabitants of 
their property. Nothing was too mean for his 
avarice; nothing vast enough for his rapacity. 
In addition to all the privations and horrors the 
citizens had endured, the plague spread its 
ravages to every corner of the city, and thirty- 
two thousand persons, in one year, became its 
victims. A disorder, not less fatal than the 
plague, (the dysentery,) begins to prevail when 
the plague retires; but this principally attacks 
strangers. Colonel Stewart's regiment, quartered 
at Dj'iza, near the Pyramids, was reduced by 
this complaint, in one month, from three 
hundred men to seventy. The Colonel was 
lodged in the palace ofMurad Bey. Of this edi- 
fice it is difficult to give an idea by description : 
it contained barracks capable of quartering sixtv 
thousand men, including a very great proportion 
of cavalry; together with a cannon-foundry, 
and every thing necessary for the immense 
system of warfare carried on by that prince, 
who rivalled in wealth and power the antient 
sovereigns of Egypt. 
