Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt
At dawn on 30 June 1798 French soldiers, peering out from the impressive fleet that had brought them across the Mediterranean, sighted what some called a tower, and others a mosque, on the Egyptian coast south-west of Alexandria. The following day, with the bigger ships riding at anchor in the rough sea, a small fleet of barges and rowing boats struggled against the waves to deposit the expeditionary force on the beaches.
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt had begun.
It was one of the strangest episodes in the wars that followed the French Revolution. An army of 26,000 infantry, 3,000 horseless cavalry, 3,000 gunners and 25 balloonists had been ferried, at great risk, across the Mediterranean, and had arrived, intact, before their objective in the stifling heat of summer. But, for most of those sent on this perilous mission, that destination came as a surprise. After all, they had taken up arms to defend France and wage war against the crowned heads of Europe, why, then, were they being sent to conquer Egypt?
Napoleon knew, even if it wasn’t entirely his idea. France was a republic in which the sanguinary and idealistic rule of the Jacobins had given away to the oily Directory, an oligarchy more interested in acquiring unequalled wealth for the few rather than giving rights to the many. An influential clique within this new fraternity looked on the British empire with envious eyes and, acknowledging that the Caribbean, France’s greatest source of wealth before the revolution, was becoming increasingly difficult to retain, considered India a softer target. They thought that Egypt, still nominally ruled by the Ottomans, increasingly sick and pale in the eyes of Europe, might be seized and turned into an obstacle between British goods and Europe, or even a stepping-stone towards India itself. Once this bold plan, conceived by the silky Talleyrand, became policy then the justifications began. Egypt, famously fertile, could grow more sugar cane and coffee and there would be no need to ship slaves across the Atlantic. Egypt, famously civilised, could be restored to its ancient greatness and thus reveal the civilising powers of France. Egypt, famously dry, had the Nile but had once boasted what scholars called the Canal of Ptolemy, or the Canal of the Pharaohs, a way of connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and, if this could be restored, then France would control the trade routes to and from the east.
With the war in Europe easing into a war against just Britain and Portugal, the Directory thought the time was right to spare an army and, as Talleyrand was quick to note, an enthusiastic leader was ready to command them. Napoleon had conquered Italy the year before and was kicking his dusty heels by the Adriatic in late 1797. He had considered Greece a worthy target for the armies of the republic but, ever the dreamer, was sufficiently ambitious to propose emulating Alexander the Great and conquering the Levant. He was fortunate that Talleyrand agreed, although the latter had given the dream a more pragmatic bent, and so whilst Napoleon wrote letters on glory and the ancients, Talleyrand drew up ledgers to count the potential profits. When in early 1798 the heart and the head came together, and when Paris had been persuaded to back the scheme with the republic’s resources, Napoleon was duly appointed to command what was branded the Army of the Orient.
That army set off from France and Italy in the early summer of 1798 uniquely accompanied by dozens of scholars and scientists who would catalogue Egypt’s ancient civilisation and assess how Egypt might be modernised. The army seized Malta on the way and were before the walls of Alexandria in the first few days of July. This they stormed, securing a port in which they could land supplies, artillery and a grand piano, before turning south towards Cairo to finish the war.
Although promised an enthusiastic welcome, the French soldiers met a rather different reception and so these men, who were bearing the brunt of Napoleon’s ambition, faced the task of conquering this strange and hostile land in the teeth of strange and hostile enemies. Chief among them were the Mamelukes, a warlike caste, who had side-lined Ottoman governors to rule Egypt as their own fief, and they easily fielded great masses of mounted warriors to oppose Napoleon’s slog through the desert. The two armies eventually met at the legendary battle of the Pyramids, where, with 40 centuries looking down upon them, the French soldiers brought down swathes of Egypt’s finest horsemen, destroying their army in 40 minutes.
This enabled the French to enter Cairo where their triumph was soon overshadowed by news that Nelson had destroyed the French fleet off Aboukir and blocked Napoleon’s troop transporters in Alexandria. The French were trapped in their conquest. To make matter worse the Ottomans declared holy war. Cairo rose up in revolt.
Napoleon, always one to sack one city if others needed encouraging, scourged Cairo and ended the rebellion, levying huge fines, beheading the ringleaders and stabling his horses in the city’s main mosque as punishment. This European pasha then determined to further secure his new realm by driving the fugitive Mamelukes and their warlord allies from neighbouring Palestine. He launched yet another fast-moving campaign into Gaza, seizing towns, smiting armies, and spending many more than forty days in the wilderness before the one place that would not concede: Acre. Humbled, he fell back to Egypt, leading a dispirited band of plague-infested survivors in retreat towards Egypt. He then brushed them down, formed them up, and marched them back into Cairo in triumph, telling the world that he had returned a conquering hero.
There was indeed one more true triumph, however. The Ottomans were trying to retake their province and had sent an invasion fleet across from Rhodes. Napoleon waited for the Janissaries to land and then attacked, viciously, driving the Turks back into the sea. This savage battle took place not far from the scene of Nelson’s glory so Napoleon dubbed his victory Aboukir, forever erasing the humiliation of that name to French ears. Even so, France was no longer just at war with the Turks and their British allies, Nelson’s victory the previous August had stirred Europe into taking up arms against the French republic and soon Austrian and Russian armies were conquering Italy and moving towards the Rhine. The siren call to return and win fresh victories in Italy, a theatre in which he had made his name, was too much for a man who always fancied himself a saviour and, on 23 August 1799, with 40 centuries now looking the other way, Napoleon embarked for France.
Napoleon duly saved the republic and then promptly abolished it in his famous coup that November. He would later toy with plans of returning to Egypt or conquering the sands of north Africa but, in the event, it was the expanses of Russia that eventually lured him in and he would only leave Europe one more time in his life. In 1815 and as a captive when he set sail for exile in St Helena.
For those he had left behind him in Egypt, however, the campaign was not yet over. General Kléber, a gruff Alsatian, doggedly ran the colony with an iron fist until a zealot assassinated him in June 1800. General Menou then took over. He was a milder man who had married a Muslim woman and who treated Egypt almost as well, but he was forced to capitulate when the Ottomans returned and brought with them several British expeditionary forces. The British seized Cairo and much else, and, indeed, a few months later, the Rosetta Stone went on display in London.
This brought French rule to an end, and the conquest of Egypt was undone. The French took with them a few artefacts and copious drawings, which they would publish, along with a fascinating descriptive text, to public acclaim. This would power decades of Egyptomania whilst Egypt itself returned to the Ottomans, this time bolstered by British advisers who propped up the old regime, and any new ones, for the next 140 years. As for Egypt itself, it was though it had been shaken before drifting back into the comfort of slumber. Only the Europeans had been awaken to her possibilities, and they would not rest make use of it. Even that old canal, surveyed by Napoleon’s engineers, but never restored, again became an object of curiosity and perhaps the prototype for that much more ambitious project: the Suez canal.
That, then, is the political and military story of Napoleon’s most exotic adventure. But there is another tale to be told, and perhaps a far more interesting one. Napoleon had taken 30,000 other individuals with him, from veteran soldiers to wide-eyed conscripts, and from useful geologists and historians to more questionable individuals such as mathematicians and poets. Many of these recorded their impressions of Egypt in letters, diaries and memoirs and they give us an insight into what it was like to be transported from familiar Europe into the ancient and yet fascinatingly new world of Egypt. They marvelled at the pyramids (“the biggest is 500 paces high and each face 680 paces wide” according to Jean Claude Vaxelaire), broke into spontaneous applause when they caught sight of Dendera and climbed the sphynx. They struggled with the food, finding it either bad or weird (Jean-François Detroye noted that “sour little lemons are the only fruits here. And bananas which taste a bit like some of our pear varieties in Europe”), took to drinking copious amounts of strong coffee, and fumed at the lack of wine and white bread. They accustomed themselves to strange habits, especially those concerning meals (as General Belliard put it, bemoaning the lack of chairs and cutlery, “bum on the floor, as tradition dictates, and the fork Old Adam [ie fingers] made use of”) but they never could habituate themselves to the local landscape (replete with scorpions, lizards and snakes) or harsh climate, and prevalent diseases such as the plague, dysentery and ophthalmia continued to terrify them throughout the occupation. They found the locals difficult too. Although befriended by the Copts and Jews, they were set upon by the Bedouin Arabs whilst fugitive Mamelukes continued to dog them in the far south and the northern fringes of the new colony. Some of the French married locally, or freed slaves to keep as concubines, but, on the whole, there was little trust on either side and the French remained locked up, both physically and psychologically, in towns and forts, keeping a wary eye out for signs of trouble and an ear open for whisperings of jihad.
And yet, for all the suffering, for all the death and tragedy, the French would take something meaningful away with them amongst their artefacts and drawings. As Captain Pierre de Pelleport put it:
“As we drew away from Egypt, where I had lost relatives, close friends and good comrades, I felt heart-broken and utterly sad. And so this great expedition came to an end. Then, and indeed for some time afterwards, it was an event which engendered pride and satisfaction in those who had taken part. Of course, the material and political gain was nil. Still, perhaps our grandchildren will reflect on our achievements. That is the sincere wish of this last of the Egyptians.”
He was not alone in sharing this sense that they had survived an exotic adventure in which the eyes of the world had, momentarily, rested on them and puzzled at what had become of famous old Egypt. There was a little pride that they had been a part of this process of conquest or opening up, and, of course, understandable relief that they had survived Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. In many ways history reminds us that, whilst it was Napoleon’s invasion, it was their story.
Jonathan North is a historian and the author of Napoleon’s Invasion of Egypt: An Eyewitness History.
