Greatest Battles
EMBABA, EGYPT, 21 JULY 1798
Napoleon seeks glory in Egypt in 1798
Between 1796-97, Napoleon Bonaparte proved himself to be one of the finest generals in the world. His successes in the Italian campaign had also cemented his close relationship with his men, who came to idolise him. Napoleon was now tasked with carrying on the war against Great Britain. His blow against “perfidious Albion” would not land against the British Isles, however, but Egypt.
Upon his return from Italy, he had been given the command of France’s ‘Army of England’, a force assembled to carry out an invasion of Britain. But he had inspected his troops and found them wanting. An alternative was therefore needed, and this left the conquest of Egypt as a means of indirectly harming Britain. Only by capturing Egypt, Napoleon argued, could France “truly destroy England”.
A NEW ALEXANDER
When contemplating his venture to Egypt, Napoleon likened himself to Alexander the
Great. He admired Alexander, seeing him as an enlightened conqueror who had brought the advanced Greek civilisation to the peoples of the ‘backward’ Persian Empire. Napoleon wished to bring the benefits of Western civilisation to Egypt, which he believed had been smothered for centuries under the weight of the stagnant and oppressive Ottomans.
Ensuring good relations with the Egyptians was important to Napoleon. He wanted to win them over and bring them into France’s empire as peacefully as possible. His model, Alexander, had respected local customs of the lands that he conquered, and Napoleon intended to do the same. While in Egypt, Napoleon would give strict orders to his men forbidding them from taking anything from the local people without the express permission of their commanding officers. As it turned out, however, the Egyptians would never accept their conquest by the French, seeing them as alien and non-muslim invaders in their land.
For ten weeks, mountains of supplies and thousands of men were gathered at five Mediterranean ports. All told, some 38,000 men of Napoleon’s ‘Army of the Orient’ were embarked at the various ports, and the convoys set sail in
May 1798. Napoleon’s own convoy of transports departed from Toulon on 19 May, guarded by a fleet under the command of Vice-admiral Francois-paul Brueys. Security had been kept so tight that the soldiers themselves had no idea where they were headed. They were, nonetheless, willing to follow their brilliant general wherever he led them.
If the expeditionary fleet were to reach Egypt safely, it would first have to evade the Royal Navy that was hunting it. Britain’s Mediterranean fleet was commanded by Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson, but he would not have much luck while waiting for the French convoy to depart from Toulon. He knew that it was to sail soon but on 21 May, a fierce storm pushed his own fleet far out to sea and dismasted his flagship, HMS Vanguard. By the time Nelson had made repairs, Napoleon had linked up with the other convoys.
Napoleon’s ships made a landing in the Grand Harbour of Valletta in Malta on 10 June. The Knights of Malta had controlled the island for centuries, but the order had declined greatly since