Bonaparte was not about to be marooned in an Egyptian backwater when Europe was ablaze and France seemed to be in danger again. And there was always the hope that France’s present government, the corrupt Directory, had been fatally weakened by those events. If so, maybe Bonaparte could test the political waters himself. But for now, he had to play a waiting game. Another Turkish force, the Army of Rhodes, was going to invade Egypt at any moment. There was also Egyptian resistance yet to overcome. Although defeated in the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798 (see Military History, August 1998), the Mameluke leader Murad Bey was still at large, fomenting revolt and generally making himself a nuisance.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Yes, Bonaparte was waiting to leave, and he secretly ordered Admiral Honoré-Joseph-Antonie Ganteaume to keep two frigates, La Murion and La Carriere, ready for the journey to France. Even the return journey required delicate handling. The Royal Navy commanded the sea, and Bonaparte had no burning desire to become an involuntary guest of the British government.

As always, Bonaparte managed to keep himself busy during those weeks of waiting. Although he had shown administrative talents before, Egypt afforded him a golden opportunity to actually rule a country with little or no interference from his nominal superiors, the Directory. Egypt, backward and medieval, was malleable clay in the hands of its modern conqueror.

Bonaparte was a mixture of good and bad traits. He was a realist, yet his realism was tinged with romanticism and some genuine idealism. Bonaparte could be harsh, and he routinely ordered the executions of those perceived to be a threat to the French occupation — occasionally by beheading — on the flimsiest of pretexts. On the other hand, Bonaparte genuinely tried to improve the lot of the fellaheen, or Egyptian peasants. Hospitals were set up, sanitary rules enforced, mills built and irrigation projects improved. Cairo got its first street lamps and Egypt its first newspaper, Courier de l’gypte, under the French conqueror.

All these various administrative chores were interrupted by news that Bonaparte’s old nemesis, Murad Bey, was at Gizeh, only a few miles from Cairo. In fact, it was said that the white-bearded old Mameluke had climbed the Great Pyramid of Khufu and signaled his wife in her home in Cairo. He had about 200 or 300 men, a nucleus around which to build future armies. Murad had played a cat-and-mouse game with General Louis Antoine Desaix for some time; maybe Bonaparte would have better luck.

Bonaparte moved his headquarters to Gizeh, but by the time he arrived, Murad Bey had slipped the net. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity to inspect the Great Pyramid for a second time. Bonaparte explored the area with his customary thoroughness, accompanied by an entourage that included his aide Gérard Duroc — limping from a wound acquired at Acre — and his secretary Louis Antoine Favelet de Borrienne.

He had just about completed his inspection when a courier arrived with a message from Général de Brigade August Marmont, commander of the seaport of Alexandria. More than 100 sails had been spotted off the coast. The long-awaited invasion by the Army of Rhodes was at hand.

This was a serious situation indeed, because the Army of Rhodes was not the only adversary Bonaparte had to contend with. Besides Murad Bey hovering to the south, there was also Ibrahim Bey, whose Army of Damascus had been defeated and scattered in Syria, but who was regrouping around Gaza.

Accounts differ as to what Bonaparte did next, but the differences are ones of detail, not substance. All agree Bonaparte acted with alacrity, issuing a flurry of orders far into the night of July 15. Bourrienne, for example, related in his Memoirs of Napoleon that Bonaparte dictated orders until 3 o’clock on the morning of the 16th. Couriers were sent in all directions with instructions to various commands. ‘If the landing indeed proves serious,’ ran one missive to Desaix, ‘it will be necessary to evacuate the whole Upper Egypt while leaving a few of your men to garrison forts there.’

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to