Napoleon in Egypt is novelist and philosopher Paul Strathern’s account of this disastrous Middle Eastern sojourn. Yet on August 24, 1799, one year and several major battles later – bankrupt, having lost most of his troops and many of the Savants, his Navy destroyed by the British under Admiral Nelson – Napoleon abandoned his Egyptian dream and the remnants of his army, and hightailed it back to France, where he proclaimed the whole a glorious victory. Then, in a bout of indomitable energy and attention to detail, Napoleon established a new Egyptian government with himself as titular head.

The French arrived in Egypt on July 1 and by August they had taken Alexandria and marched across the desert to defeat the Mameluke army at the Battle of the Pyramids and at Cairo. (Someone had to pay for his fantasy of becoming the new Alexander the Great.) John, established Malta as a French satellite, and looted millions of francs of gold, silver, and gems from the nation’s treasury.

There, Napoleon ousted the traditional rulers, the Knights of St. Napoleon Bonaparte sailed from Italy with an army of nearly 40,000 men – along with another, smaller army of scientists, engineers, artists, and linguists, the so-called “Savants” – to conquer Egypt.įirst stop, however, was Malta.

Napoleon in egypt