Napoleons Egyptian Campaign  

1798 - 1801

On May 19th 1798, a French expeditionary force consisting 40,000 men  under General Napoleon Bonaparte set sail from Toulon France with orders from the Directory to commence with the occupation of Egypt. This would have the dual effect of attacking British commerce and undermine Britain’s access to her Indian and the far east colonies.

After seizing the strategic island of Malta, the task force proceeded across the Mediterranean landing unopposed in the Egyptian port of Alexandria on July 1st. The French then advanced eastward across the desert toward the Nile River basin and Cairo.

the march was a nightmare for the European soldiers unused to the dry conditions and extreme heat but after nine days of excessive hardship, the French troops succeeded in reaching there objective on July 10th having lost 3,000 men due to heat stroke and sickness.

Awaiting the French were two Turkish armies numbering 40,000 men under Murad and Ibrahim bey, blocking the approaches to the Egyptian capital, one on each bank of the Nile. such a split gave Napoleon the opportunity he needed to defeat each one in turn.

On July 21st, Napoleons army of 35,000 men, 30,000 Infantry and 5,000 Cavalry supported by two hundred cannons, marched against Murads 21,000 men, 15,000 Infantry and 6,000 elite Mamluke Cavalry. Murad opened the battle ordering his entire force of cavalry forward.

In response Napoleon ordered the divisions of Generals Desiax and Reynier to form square which easily repelled and broke up the massed cavalry assault with highly disciplined cannon and rifle fire.

By late afternoon Murads repeated failed frontal assaults had exhausted his army and he gave the order to fall back to upper Egypt. the battle of the pyramids was now over. Ottoman losses numbered 6,000 Infantry and 4,000 of the irreplaceable Mamluke cavalry. French casualties practically were non existent with 300 killed and an equal number wounded.

Witnessing Murads defeat, Ibrahim withdrew his 19,000 men north to Palestine, allowing Napoleon to enter Cairo unopposed on the 24th. However on August 3rd disastrous news reached Napoleon when the supporting French fleet of 14 warships and 300 transport vessels were utterly destroyed in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the Nile by the British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson, thus isolating the French army from France.

Turkey now declared war on France, assembling two armies, one in Syria the 28,000 strong army of Damascus under Jezzar Pasha and the army of Rhodes which was to land in Aboukir under Mustapha Pasha numbering 10,000. Napoleon knew this would undoubtedly take time before they became operational which would allow him to complete his conquest of lower Egypt from Cairo to the Red Sea.

On February 6th, Napoleon decided to march into Palestine with the aim of defeating the army of Damascus before the army of Rhodes arrived in Egypt. However he encountered heavy and unexpected resistance at Jaffa by five thousand elite Ottoman troops and was forced to give siege until the city fell to French forces on March 7th.

This enabled the British to reinforce there garrison at Acre father north so that when Napoleon arrived before the port on March 18th he faced the prospect of another lengthy siege. Meanwhile Jezzar Pasha and the army of Damascus had began to advance toward acre to support the British but were badly mauled by Napoleon at the battle of Mt.Tabor suffering 5,000 casualties.

The army of Rhoads now landed at Aboukir on July 11th, Napoleon now felt he had no choice but to abandon his campaign and pull back to the Nile to deal with this threat to his lines of supply and communication. Napoleon engaged Mustapha Pasha at the battle of Abukir on July 25th, practically annihilating his force of ten thousand men inflicting 8,000 casualties upon him.   

With French rule in Egypt now finally secure, the politically ambitious Napoleon decided to return to Paris. Accompanied by a handful of advisers and Generals, Napoleon left his army under General Jean Kleber and slipped past the British naval block-aid on August 22nd 1799. The remaining 25,000 French soldiers were not to see there homeland again until 1802.

The Napoleonic Wars

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