French Revolution: Napoleon Invades Egypt

Episode 38 Bonaparte in Egypt

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

Following his brilliant campaign in Italy, the Directory appointed General Napoleon Bonaparte to investigate a possible invasion of England. He decided it was more strategic to invade Egypt. According to Desan, the French first considered invading Egypt in 1763, following their defeat by the British in the Seven Years hope. Now they hoped it could replace St Domingue (which was on the verge of independence)* as source of sugar and coffee. They were already looking at building a canal at Suez between the Mediterranean and Red Sea and limiting Egypt’s role in the British trade route to India.

In May 1798, Napoleon set out with 30,000 troops, 30 ships and a 167-member scientific and artistic commission. As part of the vast Ottoman empire, Egypt was ruled by former Turkish slave soldiers from the Caucasus known as Mamluks.** Pursued by British admiral Horatio Nelson, Napoleon landed at at Aboukir Bay and led his men on a difficult 15-mile desert march to engage the somewhat smaller Mamluk army. Deploying his troops in large squares, a classic defense against a cavalry charge, Napoleon easily defeated them.

In the subsequent Battle of the Nile, Admiral Nelson used his naval fleet to surround Napoleon’s vessels in Aboukir Bay. Napoleon had no choice but to surrender after the British sank 21 French ships and killed 3,200 French sailors.

Despite his naval defeat, Napoleon continued to occupy Egypt, embarked on a total overhaul of the Egyptian government. Assisting its intellectual elites and Muslim and Coptic Christian leaders in setting up new republican councils (called divans), he tore down buildings to widen roads, set up hospitals, printing presses and communal ovens and reformed taxation and the Egyptian judicial system. He also used his 167 European scholars to set up the Institute of Egypt, to indoctrinate Egyptians in European liberalism. During his occupation one of his soldiers discovered an ancient basalt slab inscribed in Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics which came to be known as the Rosetta Stone.

In October 1798, the people of Alexandria revolted against Napoleon’s new taxes and he suppressed the insurrection by firing on the civilian population with hi canons.

In 1799, he marched his troop east towards Syria, hoping to launch a preemptive strike on the Ottoman troops. When the city of Jaffa (in modern day Israel) refused to surrender, he also bombarded them with canon fire and executed 2500 prisoners of war.

Leaving his officers and the bulk of his troops to govern Egypt, he returned to France to be welcomed as a great hero. He used his uncanny skill at self-promotion to conceal what actually happened in Egypt, with his numerous publications about Egyptian culture leading to the first wave of European Egyptomania.

In 1801, a British/Ottoman coalition would drive the last of Napoleon’s troops out of Egypt.

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*See The French Revolution Leads to Revolution in Haiti

**See Mongol Invasion of the Islamic World