August 18, 2010 • 25 mins
In 1798 Napoleon decided to launch an expedition to Egypt instead of leading a direct attack on England -- but why? In this episode, Katie and Sarah explore the Battle of the Pyramids (Napoleon himself came up with the title). Tune in and learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah and
I were talking a little bit about podcast names today
(00:21):
because of course we get to title our own episodes
and tell us how you did this one. Well. Usually
podcast names involve a lot of fraud, last minute decision making.
We come into the studio to record and scramble, scramble
to figure something out. Jerry Prune's down the amount of
punctuation we want to use. We're big in nicolon. But
(00:41):
I mean the simple fact is, sometimes really interesting podcast
topics don't have obviously interesting titles, and you have to
throw in words like murder or heretic to make things
a little more spicy. But fortunately for this episode, Napoleon
did our job for us. And I'd like to ask
you a question. Would you have listened to a podcast
(01:03):
on the Battle of Ambaba or perhaps the Mama Luke's
at the Melon Fields. I would have done that one still,
though My point is epic founding battles like the Battle
of the Pyramids or the Battle of the Nile send
a lot better and apparently you guys are listening now,
so it must have worked a little bit. But before
(01:23):
we get to these battles with inflated names, you have
to wonder why Napoleon is around the Pyramids and the
Nile in the first place. Because we're in about sevent
right now, so France has barely recovered from the revolution
and from the terror. There are all sorts of internal
problems and trouble in Europe. So why are the French
(01:45):
in Egypt instead of taking care of things at home. Yeah,
they're conquering and they're spreading democracy and they're liberating the people.
But to be honest, they're messing with the British and
Egypt and of course the English and the French arch
enemies for life. So let's explain a little bit about
the state of affairs in France in seventeen The country
(02:06):
has been at war with much of Europe since the
revolution because fellow monarchs really didn't want to let the
execution of a king slide. No re decide, not okay,
But by seventeen ninety eight they've made peace with Holland, Prussia,
the Austrian Empire in Spain. Only England is left as
far as people who aren't getting along enemies. Yes, So
(02:29):
during this time Napoleon, who is a young officer, is
making quite a name for himself. And we'd like to
remind anyone who hasn't heard already Napoleon was not short,
although he was shorter than we are. So he's won
his first battle in seventeen ninety three, but he's not
Napoleon Napoleon yet, like not how we think of him,
(02:50):
like crowning Joseph yeah, or being consulate. Even the consulate
comes after this whole Egypt expedition Frances instead being ruled
by five men the direct Jory, Napoleon is still just
a general, but he's a really popular general, unlike the Directory,
so it's highly convenient when he proposes this idea that
(03:10):
will effectually get him out of the country. So instead
of leading a direct attack on England, he's going to
lead an expedition to Egypt, and a win there would
be a really great indirect victory over Britain and it
would disturb their overland route to the jewel of all
the colonies of the East, which is of course India.
(03:31):
So for the Directory there's nothing to lose, and for Napoleon,
there are some major possibilities of glory. And if you're
wondering why Egypt, Francis had its eye on Egypt for
a very long time. Louis the sixteenths advisers had even
told him Egypt does not belong to anybody. Nominally, it
belongs to the Ottoman Empire, which of course is on
(03:53):
the decline at this time. Except for the past five
hundred years it's been ruled by a mostly white war
Your slave caste called the Mamelukes and the Motolukes, don't
replenish their ranks in any sort of dynastic way. Instead,
they buy slaves from Eurasia, boys who are scouted for
their good teeth and strong limbs, and then train them
(04:15):
up as super warriors. And without families, they have no
past and no future except for this one, so they
live these really luxurious lives in Egypt. You shouldn't think
of them how you would normally think of slaves. Totally
different situation. They dressed themselves in silk and turbans, and
they carry all of their priceless possessions actually on their persons,
(04:37):
sometimes hidden in their robes. So imagine them with jeweled
swords and coins tucked into pouches. And Egypt in sev
is being ruled by two of them, Ibrahim Bay in
Alexandria and Mead Bay and Cairo. And they're very oppressive rulers.
They tax people heavily, they levy these heavy duties and
(04:59):
live in elaborate palaces. But because they don't bother sending
much of that tax revenue to the Ottoman Sultan, Napoleon figures, well,
maybe the Turks won't even really mind if I invade Egypt,
which is a incorrect, terribly incorrect assumption. So Napoleon, that
gives you an idea. Though Napoleon doesn't really know what
(05:19):
to expect in Egypt, neither did anyone else, because despite
the fact that they're about fifty French merchants operating in
Egypt and French consulates in Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo, Egypt
is still this mystery land to most Europeans. And some
thought that they'd find this scary, lawless country with you know,
(05:40):
overrun by violent Bedouins. Others thought they would find an
Oriental paradise. We're at neither one, and we're somewhere in
the middle between these two somewhere. So we're gonna start
May with Napoleon putting together this mission to Egypt. He's
he's really excited about it. Yeah, and it's secret, which
is probably one of the strangest aspects of the whole thing.
(06:04):
Even though some people know they're going to Egypt, and
even though there's a there's secret talk that the destination
is probably Egypt, very few of the soldiers know where
they're really bound. And it's a measure of Napoleon's popularity
that people are okay with this. It doesn't matter if
you have no idea where you're going, they'll still if
you're with Napoleon, it's probably going to be good. The
(06:26):
soldiers have to go, of course, but civilians are volunteering
for this, and that's because in addition to the thirty
six thousand soldiers and seventeen thousand sailors, Napoleon's bringing along
a group of scientists and artists. And we'll talk about
this group of savants in a later episode, but by
bringing them, Napoleon has a plan for this. He knew
(06:49):
if he was going to conquer a country, he'd have
to understand the country, and he'd also need educated help
doing things like surveying the land and finding water. But
he also loves science, and he wants these talented savants
who are experts in their field and students students to
collect all the information on Egypt that they can, and
(07:10):
traveling with them will make him like Alexander traveling with
his philosophers, kind of Napoleon's hero. We've got to say
this whole episode or minds us a little bit of Horace.
Horace and Alexander episode. So we've got the forces of troops,
we have the savants. They're all crossing on four hundred transports,
(07:30):
one warships, most of which are leaving from Toulon, and
the British fleet, which has been lurking nearby, you know,
suspecting the French might be up to something, is scattered
by a storm only a day before the ship's leave,
and it's commander Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson guesses that Napoleon's
headed east and decides to follow him. And then you
(07:52):
have this little game of cat and mouse. Nelson misses
Napoleon narrowly two times before Napoleon is finally able to
unload his men. You really don't want the British fleet
to catch you on the water, and the French gain
control of Malta, and from there they sailed towards Alexandria.
They arrived west of the city in early July and
(08:14):
they're pretty excited, and you know, they see Pompey's column,
but are a bit underwhelmed by the rest of it.
There's kind of a lot of sand and a lot
of feral dogs, and it's not quite the Oriental paradise
some of them were expecting. So the British have been
spotted in the area though, So Napoleon is not gonna
(08:34):
just hang out on the ship for a few days
and check out Alexandria from afar, So even though it's storming,
he has some of his men come ashore in the
middle of the storm, nineteen of them drown, and then
once they're on land, Napoleon, with three of his generals,
takes four thousand, five hundred men to go conquer Alexandria.
(08:55):
It's not hard work conquering the city. The Mama Luke
Ibraheim Bay loses the city in a matter of hours,
and Napoleon steps in, publishing a proclamation claiming he's coming
to free the Egyptian people. He's setting himself up not
as an enemy of the Egyptians, but as an enemy
of the mam Lukes, and a few groups are dispatched
(09:15):
to set up garrisons while the bulk of them, the
twenty five thousand, take a hike to Cairo, which of
course is a five day hike across the desert with
no water and in wool coats. As you can imagine,
a lot of them don't survive the trips, some even
commit suicide. Some are left behind and savonk esparmnge coins
(09:36):
the word mirage. But the two savants who attend this
march are riding up front with Napoleon, and they're just
having a great time riding through the desert, checking out
all the interesting natural phenomena. Well behind them, men are
blowing your brains exactly. So are there better ways to
get to Cairo than walking? Yes, there definitely are. But
(09:58):
Napoleon was afraid that if he took the Nile to
get to Cairo, he'd run into some British ships along
the way. So finally, July temp we have these dying
men reach the Nile, or reach this muddy little branch
of the Nile, and it wouldn't be water you or
I would want to drink. It's gross and muddy and
(10:19):
full of leeches and crocodiles. Some of them men drown
in their heavy clothing. You can imagine they're not taking
too many precautions after a five day march in their
wool coats. They just want to get in there. But
guess who else is in the area. It's our buddy
Murad Bay and a bunch of Mama Luke's and they
skirmish at l Romania. And this is number one of
(10:41):
our Mama Luke encounters. And we should note to a
lot of this battle info that's about to come up
is from John Dellinger's article for Military History, but for
a pretty fun source on the savants, I'd recommend Nina
Burley's Mirage, which I'm in the middle of reading right now.
And I'm a big fan of John Dellinger. After our
amy had the great podcast on that came in handy,
(11:02):
so thank you Military History, awesome writer. So a few
days of rest for Napoleon's men, and then they run
into the mam Lukes again. This time it's at shuber
Kit and encounter number two is a little more intense
than the last one, but still Napoleon's able to press on. Finally,
we have our third encounter with the Mamlukes on July
(11:23):
twenty one, and this is what should be called the
Battle of Embabe, but that is where it was after all,
but since it's in sight of the Pyramids, it gets
a much cooler name. They had our our podcast titles
must have been. So at about two pm, Napoleon approaches
the village and the mam lukes of both of the bays,
(11:46):
Ibraheim and Murad, are waiting for him across the river,
and Napoleon isn't going to be able to cross that
river with all these guys waiting on the other side
to get to Cairo. So good position, it seems like, yeah,
it seems like very good position ning, except for some reason,
Murad Bay decides that he's going to cross the river
and attack Napoleon on the west bank, So this splits
(12:09):
the Egyptian forces and Abraham Bay is left stranded or
waiting and watching rather on the east bank. Napoleon takes
stock of the situation and tells his men soldiers from
the Summit of Yonder Pyramids forty centuries behold you. And
as a side note here, he almost gets the age right,
(12:30):
which is crazy because it's not officially determined for about
fifty more years, so that Napoleon guest Napoleon. So the
Egyptians are about one mile off, and just to give
you some numbers on it, they have about four thousand
to six thousand of these Mamlukes, who are crazy fighters,
really talented and really brave. They have some highly trained
(12:54):
Turkish soldiers and they have about forty cannons. And then
there's a lot of infant free men and they're called Fellaheen,
about fifteen thousand of them, which sounds good. That sounds
like a lot of guys, right, except that the Philaheen
are really just a bunch of rabble, basically peasants with clubs,
and they're not particularly effective fighters. Abrahim has an additional
(13:17):
eighteen thousand Fellaheen, plus several thousand Mamelukes, but he doesn't
really matter at this point because he is across the river,
not in the game, and Napoleon has seen how the
Mamoluke cavalry fight. They come in swarming on their Arabians,
their silk scarves billowing and first they fire their musket
and pistols and toss them behind them for a servant
(13:39):
to collect. I would not want that to be my job.
And then they go close range with javelins, battle axes,
maces and jeweled scimitars. And these are big guys. So
if you imagine it, you can see how intimidating it
would be. Bright colors and yeah, all really impressively, very Hollywood.
But the tactic is straightforward. It's charge, that's it. So
(14:02):
Napoleon knows how to counter such a straightforward tactic. So
with some riverboat cover, he groups his men into square
divisions that can work in any direction, and Encyclopedia Britannica
calls this idea massive divisional square, Napoleon's one significant contribution
to tactics. And just to give you a basic explanation
(14:23):
of how it works, imagine a square with cavalry in
its center. All around are about six ranks of infantry,
so heavy padding on every side. Then the corners are
studded by artillery. So the beauty of the square is
that it can move in any direction and that it's
equally protected from all directions, so it doesn't matter what
(14:46):
side you're attacked from you can accommodate it. Napoleon sets
up five of these in a line along the nile,
and his is in the middle, because that offers him
the most protection of each side and the ability to
see what's going on. Sarah called the Beauty of the squares.
I think that would be a lovely title for a
collection of short stories. And the other point, of course,
(15:09):
is that you can't chicken out, because you're only safe
in your square. If you try to get out of it,
you're completely screwed. Mama Luke is going to be cutting
you down with his sword. So the mom Lukes charged
the right flank, and the artillery that's positioned at the
corners there go ahead and fire, but the infantry holds. Finally,
when the Mamo Lukes are right in front of them
pretty much, they fire, and a lieutenant writes that the
(15:32):
soldiers fired with such coolness that not a single cartridge
was wasted, waiting until the last minute when the horsemen
were about to break our square. The number of corpses
surrounding our square soon was considerable, and the close of
the dead and wounded mam Lukes were burning like tinder.
The blazing wads of our muskets penetrated at the same
time as our bullets through their rich uniforms which were
(15:55):
embroidered with gold and silver and floated as lightly as gauze,
so in that in a close range just the sparks
were setting them on fire as they were getting shot. Yeah,
so Napoleon's middle squares also shelling the cavalry, and a
group of frenchmen has been dispatched to the nearby village
and they've camped out on the rooftop, so they have
(16:15):
a lot of covering fire. But the square tactic is
working really well. Is that the mamlukes don't get the point.
They keep on charging. They don't know what else to do,
and their buddies on the east bank, who of course
are just watching and can't fight themselves, cheer them on,
probably encouraging them to go on these suicidal missions. We
(16:35):
also read about a very strange encounter which was this
man to man combat when one old mom luke strips
about one of these squares and a French lieutenant comes
out to accept his challenge. They face off. The mom
luke is shot, but he crawls away and cuts off
the feet of the French lieutenant's horse before the lieutenant
(16:58):
goes ahead and gets him with his say burt and
finally the other frenchman come over and rifle butt him.
So that was the end of that encounter. Let the
end for the mom Luke after about an hour of
fighting Nearad Bay, who is also wounded by this point,
escapes before the French cut off the retreat and the
mom Lukes, who are trapped though, meet a pretty bad fate.
(17:21):
They try to distract the French by throwing coins about
which shiny doesn't work because you know, you can also
collect your coins when you're a dead body lying there.
So some of them jump into the nile and some
of them drown, and some of them are shot, probably
by frenchmen trying to get some of those riches. But
where's Abraham and all of this, we have to wonder
(17:43):
what's he doing with all of his guys just sitting
on the other side of the river. The problem is
a dust storm has come up, so he can't see
what's really happening. He flees east miad Bay eventually flees
to the south and there we go. That's pretty much
the end of the Mamlukes fight against Napoleon. This is
(18:05):
a decisive win for the French. And if you're wondering
what napoleon goddess is, spoils of war an Arabian horse,
which we can only hope is as good as a maringo,
even though he's yet to come. And to mom Luke boys.
Even though slavery is illegal in France, Napoleon's he keeps.
(18:25):
I think one of them becomes Josephine's servant. So they
last a long time. But on July, Cairo is surrendered
to Napoleon and he enters the city July. He tries
to court the people, show his sympathy for Islam. But
things are are pretty good at first for the French.
(18:46):
They have little expeditions to the Pyramids, which I'm glad
they get to do that. I mean, imagine you're this
French soldier, you'd want to see the Pyramids while you
were there. They have really luxurious living quarters. But the
victory is extremely short lived because only ten days after
the Battle of the Pyramids, Horatio Nelson finally catches up
(19:09):
with the French fleet, and that's in Abu Kuer Bay
near Alexandria. But why is Napoleon's fleet still there because
they landed weeks ago, yes, and they're still just hanging
out here, loaded with supplies and gunpowder. That's a little
bit strange. It is strange, and according to Napoleon's secretary,
(19:30):
the general had had plans to unload all of that
stuff once Egypt was finally secure and send the ships
back to Toulon to rejoin the navy, and from there,
who knows, maybe go across the channel attack the British.
But it's August and the ships are still sitting there,
and Nelson finally comes across them at about two am
(19:51):
and decides he's going to fight that very morning, and
he maneuvers between the fleet and the shore, which is
something that the French thought was impossible bowl and consequently
they neglected to put any weapons on that side of
the ship, so they're completely vulnerable. The French admiral is
aboard the flagship, of course, and the flagship had been
(20:13):
the home of these very impressive salons on the journey
to Egypt, and it was filled with lots of intelligent conversation,
but right now it's filled with all of the powder
from the expedition, so it is a giant ship bomb
and even after the admiral's legs are blown off by cannon,
he's still on the ship, directing the course of the fight.
(20:35):
Finally he's killed by a cannonball. In about an hour
after his death, the fire that has spread aboard the
ship finally reaches the powder magazine. We have this huge explosion.
It's heard fifty miles away. Hundred frenchmen are dead, their
three thousand prisoners. No fleet left, no way home unless
(20:57):
you're managed to hop aboard a merchant ship, no communication,
no supplies. Can things get any worse? And sure enough,
they do get worse. By September eleven, the Ottoman Sultan
Selim the Third it declares war on France, and by
October one there's a revolt in Cairo because people aren't
(21:18):
really buying Napoleon's argument that he's here for the Egyptians
and he really loves them. So Napoleon is defeated in
Ottoman Syria, which is now part of Israel, and by August,
it's just a little more than a year after he
arrived in Egypt, Napoleon's out of there. He high tails
it on this merchant ship and leaves the army there
(21:40):
for another two years. He has other things to do.
I guess the Battle of the Nile was the beginning
of the end for the French in Egypt. The Battle
of the Pyramids was simply a fleeting victory, but while
it didn't secure French success, it did open up Cairo
to the savants, which is something that really helped develop
the field of archaeology and led to this obsession with
(22:03):
Egypt that swept through Europe and also through our elementary
school classrooms. Yeah, so that is of course an episode
for next time. But I guess it brings us to
listener mail. So we've been getting tons of mail on
our podcast on King Ludvig the Second. Mad King Ludvig,
he would have so many dinner guests. I think maybe
(22:25):
had been around he would So our first is from
Julie and she wrote, you said, if you're in Bavaria,
let us know what Germans think of King Ludwig the Second. Well,
I just got back from various specifically Munich, yesterday, and
have I got some Ludvig the Second facts for you.
And she goes on to talk a little bit about
how elaborate his family's castles were and how that probably
(22:46):
set a precedent for his own designs. But she also
mentioned that the Bavarian political party that wants to bring
back the monarchy only receives about one percent of the votes,
and she writes Germans don't love the idea of a
monarch and practice, but they recognized that King Ludwig the
Second was, despite his eccentricities, a brilliant man and a visionary.
(23:08):
He funded several early flight attempts and you can now
find a statue of him in the Munich airport. He
treated his workers very well, giving them a portion of
their pay if they were injured or disabled, and paying
their families if they died on the job. So Ludvig,
he's a little bit ahead of his times, I guess.
She also writes if Germans don't love lud Wig, they
(23:28):
certainly respect the brilliance and humanity that the mad king possessed.
We're Ludwig fan, so we can go along with that.
And our second email as also about Ludwig. This one's
from Kelly, who was an army brat and lived in
West Germany in the eighties, and she said, in school,
we had a host Nation teacher whose favorite topic was
(23:48):
King Ludwig the second. Unfortunately, Sarah and I did none
of his teacher And two things that she told us,
which I always assumed were true, that you didn't mention
in your podcast were one. He invented a toilet system
in his castles as a child. The first time I
visited Ni sevon Stein, I asked the tour guide if
I could see the bathroom and was disappointed to be
(24:09):
told that it was off limits and not part of
the tour. And too, he invented the magic table because
he had gum disease, was ashamed about his bleeding gums,
and therefore wanted to dine in private. So now I
feel a little bad about making fun of that whole
table contraption. Now I loved the table. I will never
make fun of the table. If you'd like to email us,
(24:32):
our address is History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter and missed in History, and we
have a Facebook fan page, and if you'd like to
read a little bit more. In preparation for our Sammonts podcast,
Sarah wrote a great article called how Archaeology works, and
you can find it if you search our homepage on www.
(24:55):
Dot how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of u their topics, visit how stuff works
dot com and be sure to check out this stuff
you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff
Works dot com point page. H
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah and
I were talking a little bit about podcast names today
(00:21):
because of course we get to title our own episodes
and tell us how you did this one. Well. Usually
podcast names involve a lot of fraud, last minute decision making.
We come into the studio to record and scramble, scramble
to figure something out. Jerry Prune's down the amount of
punctuation we want to use. We're big in nicolon. But
(00:41):
I mean the simple fact is, sometimes really interesting podcast
topics don't have obviously interesting titles, and you have to
throw in words like murder or heretic to make things
a little more spicy. But fortunately for this episode, Napoleon
did our job for us. And I'd like to ask
you a question. Would you have listened to a podcast
(01:03):
on the Battle of Ambaba or perhaps the Mama Luke's
at the Melon Fields. I would have done that one still,
though My point is epic founding battles like the Battle
of the Pyramids or the Battle of the Nile send
a lot better and apparently you guys are listening now,
so it must have worked a little bit. But before
(01:23):
we get to these battles with inflated names, you have
to wonder why Napoleon is around the Pyramids and the
Nile in the first place. Because we're in about sevent
right now, so France has barely recovered from the revolution
and from the terror. There are all sorts of internal
problems and trouble in Europe. So why are the French
(01:45):
in Egypt instead of taking care of things at home. Yeah,
they're conquering and they're spreading democracy and they're liberating the people.
But to be honest, they're messing with the British and
Egypt and of course the English and the French arch
enemies for life. So let's explain a little bit about
the state of affairs in France in seventeen The country
(02:06):
has been at war with much of Europe since the
revolution because fellow monarchs really didn't want to let the
execution of a king slide. No re decide, not okay,
But by seventeen ninety eight they've made peace with Holland, Prussia,
the Austrian Empire in Spain. Only England is left as
far as people who aren't getting along enemies. Yes, So
(02:29):
during this time Napoleon, who is a young officer, is
making quite a name for himself. And we'd like to
remind anyone who hasn't heard already Napoleon was not short,
although he was shorter than we are. So he's won
his first battle in seventeen ninety three, but he's not
Napoleon Napoleon yet, like not how we think of him,
(02:50):
like crowning Joseph yeah, or being consulate. Even the consulate
comes after this whole Egypt expedition Frances instead being ruled
by five men the direct Jory, Napoleon is still just
a general, but he's a really popular general, unlike the Directory,
so it's highly convenient when he proposes this idea that
(03:10):
will effectually get him out of the country. So instead
of leading a direct attack on England, he's going to
lead an expedition to Egypt, and a win there would
be a really great indirect victory over Britain and it
would disturb their overland route to the jewel of all
the colonies of the East, which is of course India.
(03:31):
So for the Directory there's nothing to lose, and for Napoleon,
there are some major possibilities of glory. And if you're
wondering why Egypt, Francis had its eye on Egypt for
a very long time. Louis the sixteenths advisers had even
told him Egypt does not belong to anybody. Nominally, it
belongs to the Ottoman Empire, which of course is on
(03:53):
the decline at this time. Except for the past five
hundred years it's been ruled by a mostly white war
Your slave caste called the Mamelukes and the Motolukes, don't
replenish their ranks in any sort of dynastic way. Instead,
they buy slaves from Eurasia, boys who are scouted for
their good teeth and strong limbs, and then train them
(04:15):
up as super warriors. And without families, they have no
past and no future except for this one, so they
live these really luxurious lives in Egypt. You shouldn't think
of them how you would normally think of slaves. Totally
different situation. They dressed themselves in silk and turbans, and
they carry all of their priceless possessions actually on their persons,
(04:37):
sometimes hidden in their robes. So imagine them with jeweled
swords and coins tucked into pouches. And Egypt in sev
is being ruled by two of them, Ibrahim Bay in
Alexandria and Mead Bay and Cairo. And they're very oppressive rulers.
They tax people heavily, they levy these heavy duties and
(04:59):
live in elaborate palaces. But because they don't bother sending
much of that tax revenue to the Ottoman Sultan, Napoleon figures, well,
maybe the Turks won't even really mind if I invade Egypt,
which is a incorrect, terribly incorrect assumption. So Napoleon, that
gives you an idea. Though Napoleon doesn't really know what
(05:19):
to expect in Egypt, neither did anyone else, because despite
the fact that they're about fifty French merchants operating in
Egypt and French consulates in Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo, Egypt
is still this mystery land to most Europeans. And some
thought that they'd find this scary, lawless country with you know,
(05:40):
overrun by violent Bedouins. Others thought they would find an
Oriental paradise. We're at neither one, and we're somewhere in
the middle between these two somewhere. So we're gonna start
May with Napoleon putting together this mission to Egypt. He's
he's really excited about it. Yeah, and it's secret, which
is probably one of the strangest aspects of the whole thing.
(06:04):
Even though some people know they're going to Egypt, and
even though there's a there's secret talk that the destination
is probably Egypt, very few of the soldiers know where
they're really bound. And it's a measure of Napoleon's popularity
that people are okay with this. It doesn't matter if
you have no idea where you're going, they'll still if
you're with Napoleon, it's probably going to be good. The
(06:26):
soldiers have to go, of course, but civilians are volunteering
for this, and that's because in addition to the thirty
six thousand soldiers and seventeen thousand sailors, Napoleon's bringing along
a group of scientists and artists. And we'll talk about
this group of savants in a later episode, but by
bringing them, Napoleon has a plan for this. He knew
(06:49):
if he was going to conquer a country, he'd have
to understand the country, and he'd also need educated help
doing things like surveying the land and finding water. But
he also loves science, and he wants these talented savants
who are experts in their field and students students to
collect all the information on Egypt that they can, and
(07:10):
traveling with them will make him like Alexander traveling with
his philosophers, kind of Napoleon's hero. We've got to say
this whole episode or minds us a little bit of Horace.
Horace and Alexander episode. So we've got the forces of troops,
we have the savants. They're all crossing on four hundred transports,
(07:30):
one warships, most of which are leaving from Toulon, and
the British fleet, which has been lurking nearby, you know,
suspecting the French might be up to something, is scattered
by a storm only a day before the ship's leave,
and it's commander Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson guesses that Napoleon's
headed east and decides to follow him. And then you
(07:52):
have this little game of cat and mouse. Nelson misses
Napoleon narrowly two times before Napoleon is finally able to
unload his men. You really don't want the British fleet
to catch you on the water, and the French gain
control of Malta, and from there they sailed towards Alexandria.
They arrived west of the city in early July and
(08:14):
they're pretty excited, and you know, they see Pompey's column,
but are a bit underwhelmed by the rest of it.
There's kind of a lot of sand and a lot
of feral dogs, and it's not quite the Oriental paradise
some of them were expecting. So the British have been
spotted in the area though, So Napoleon is not gonna
(08:34):
just hang out on the ship for a few days
and check out Alexandria from afar, So even though it's storming,
he has some of his men come ashore in the
middle of the storm, nineteen of them drown, and then
once they're on land, Napoleon, with three of his generals,
takes four thousand, five hundred men to go conquer Alexandria.
(08:55):
It's not hard work conquering the city. The Mama Luke
Ibraheim Bay loses the city in a matter of hours,
and Napoleon steps in, publishing a proclamation claiming he's coming
to free the Egyptian people. He's setting himself up not
as an enemy of the Egyptians, but as an enemy
of the mam Lukes, and a few groups are dispatched
(09:15):
to set up garrisons while the bulk of them, the
twenty five thousand, take a hike to Cairo, which of
course is a five day hike across the desert with
no water and in wool coats. As you can imagine,
a lot of them don't survive the trips, some even
commit suicide. Some are left behind and savonk esparmnge coins
(09:36):
the word mirage. But the two savants who attend this
march are riding up front with Napoleon, and they're just
having a great time riding through the desert, checking out
all the interesting natural phenomena. Well behind them, men are
blowing your brains exactly. So are there better ways to
get to Cairo than walking? Yes, there definitely are. But
(09:58):
Napoleon was afraid that if he took the Nile to
get to Cairo, he'd run into some British ships along
the way. So finally, July temp we have these dying
men reach the Nile, or reach this muddy little branch
of the Nile, and it wouldn't be water you or
I would want to drink. It's gross and muddy and
(10:19):
full of leeches and crocodiles. Some of them men drown
in their heavy clothing. You can imagine they're not taking
too many precautions after a five day march in their
wool coats. They just want to get in there. But
guess who else is in the area. It's our buddy
Murad Bay and a bunch of Mama Luke's and they
skirmish at l Romania. And this is number one of
(10:41):
our Mama Luke encounters. And we should note to a
lot of this battle info that's about to come up
is from John Dellinger's article for Military History, but for
a pretty fun source on the savants, I'd recommend Nina
Burley's Mirage, which I'm in the middle of reading right now.
And I'm a big fan of John Dellinger. After our
amy had the great podcast on that came in handy,
(11:02):
so thank you Military History, awesome writer. So a few
days of rest for Napoleon's men, and then they run
into the mam Lukes again. This time it's at shuber
Kit and encounter number two is a little more intense
than the last one, but still Napoleon's able to press on. Finally,
we have our third encounter with the Mamlukes on July
(11:23):
twenty one, and this is what should be called the
Battle of Embabe, but that is where it was after all,
but since it's in sight of the Pyramids, it gets
a much cooler name. They had our our podcast titles
must have been. So at about two pm, Napoleon approaches
the village and the mam lukes of both of the bays,
(11:46):
Ibraheim and Murad, are waiting for him across the river,
and Napoleon isn't going to be able to cross that
river with all these guys waiting on the other side
to get to Cairo. So good position, it seems like, yeah,
it seems like very good position ning, except for some reason,
Murad Bay decides that he's going to cross the river
and attack Napoleon on the west bank, So this splits
(12:09):
the Egyptian forces and Abraham Bay is left stranded or
waiting and watching rather on the east bank. Napoleon takes
stock of the situation and tells his men soldiers from
the Summit of Yonder Pyramids forty centuries behold you. And
as a side note here, he almost gets the age right,
(12:30):
which is crazy because it's not officially determined for about
fifty more years, so that Napoleon guest Napoleon. So the
Egyptians are about one mile off, and just to give
you some numbers on it, they have about four thousand
to six thousand of these Mamlukes, who are crazy fighters,
really talented and really brave. They have some highly trained
(12:54):
Turkish soldiers and they have about forty cannons. And then
there's a lot of infant free men and they're called Fellaheen,
about fifteen thousand of them, which sounds good. That sounds
like a lot of guys, right, except that the Philaheen
are really just a bunch of rabble, basically peasants with clubs,
and they're not particularly effective fighters. Abrahim has an additional
(13:17):
eighteen thousand Fellaheen, plus several thousand Mamelukes, but he doesn't
really matter at this point because he is across the river,
not in the game, and Napoleon has seen how the
Mamoluke cavalry fight. They come in swarming on their Arabians,
their silk scarves billowing and first they fire their musket
and pistols and toss them behind them for a servant
(13:39):
to collect. I would not want that to be my job.
And then they go close range with javelins, battle axes,
maces and jeweled scimitars. And these are big guys. So
if you imagine it, you can see how intimidating it
would be. Bright colors and yeah, all really impressively, very Hollywood.
But the tactic is straightforward. It's charge, that's it. So
(14:02):
Napoleon knows how to counter such a straightforward tactic. So
with some riverboat cover, he groups his men into square
divisions that can work in any direction, and Encyclopedia Britannica
calls this idea massive divisional square, Napoleon's one significant contribution
to tactics. And just to give you a basic explanation
(14:23):
of how it works, imagine a square with cavalry in
its center. All around are about six ranks of infantry,
so heavy padding on every side. Then the corners are
studded by artillery. So the beauty of the square is
that it can move in any direction and that it's
equally protected from all directions, so it doesn't matter what
(14:46):
side you're attacked from you can accommodate it. Napoleon sets
up five of these in a line along the nile,
and his is in the middle, because that offers him
the most protection of each side and the ability to
see what's going on. Sarah called the Beauty of the squares.
I think that would be a lovely title for a
collection of short stories. And the other point, of course,
(15:09):
is that you can't chicken out, because you're only safe
in your square. If you try to get out of it,
you're completely screwed. Mama Luke is going to be cutting
you down with his sword. So the mom Lukes charged
the right flank, and the artillery that's positioned at the
corners there go ahead and fire, but the infantry holds. Finally,
when the Mamo Lukes are right in front of them
pretty much, they fire, and a lieutenant writes that the
(15:32):
soldiers fired with such coolness that not a single cartridge
was wasted, waiting until the last minute when the horsemen
were about to break our square. The number of corpses
surrounding our square soon was considerable, and the close of
the dead and wounded mam Lukes were burning like tinder.
The blazing wads of our muskets penetrated at the same
time as our bullets through their rich uniforms which were
(15:55):
embroidered with gold and silver and floated as lightly as gauze,
so in that in a close range just the sparks
were setting them on fire as they were getting shot. Yeah,
so Napoleon's middle squares also shelling the cavalry, and a
group of frenchmen has been dispatched to the nearby village
and they've camped out on the rooftop, so they have
(16:15):
a lot of covering fire. But the square tactic is
working really well. Is that the mamlukes don't get the point.
They keep on charging. They don't know what else to do,
and their buddies on the east bank, who of course
are just watching and can't fight themselves, cheer them on,
probably encouraging them to go on these suicidal missions. We
(16:35):
also read about a very strange encounter which was this
man to man combat when one old mom luke strips
about one of these squares and a French lieutenant comes
out to accept his challenge. They face off. The mom
luke is shot, but he crawls away and cuts off
the feet of the French lieutenant's horse before the lieutenant
(16:58):
goes ahead and gets him with his say burt and
finally the other frenchman come over and rifle butt him.
So that was the end of that encounter. Let the
end for the mom Luke after about an hour of
fighting Nearad Bay, who is also wounded by this point,
escapes before the French cut off the retreat and the
mom Lukes, who are trapped though, meet a pretty bad fate.
(17:21):
They try to distract the French by throwing coins about
which shiny doesn't work because you know, you can also
collect your coins when you're a dead body lying there.
So some of them jump into the nile and some
of them drown, and some of them are shot, probably
by frenchmen trying to get some of those riches. But
where's Abraham and all of this, we have to wonder
(17:43):
what's he doing with all of his guys just sitting
on the other side of the river. The problem is
a dust storm has come up, so he can't see
what's really happening. He flees east miad Bay eventually flees
to the south and there we go. That's pretty much
the end of the Mamlukes fight against Napoleon. This is
(18:05):
a decisive win for the French. And if you're wondering
what napoleon goddess is, spoils of war an Arabian horse,
which we can only hope is as good as a maringo,
even though he's yet to come. And to mom Luke boys.
Even though slavery is illegal in France, Napoleon's he keeps.
(18:25):
I think one of them becomes Josephine's servant. So they
last a long time. But on July, Cairo is surrendered
to Napoleon and he enters the city July. He tries
to court the people, show his sympathy for Islam. But
things are are pretty good at first for the French.
(18:46):
They have little expeditions to the Pyramids, which I'm glad
they get to do that. I mean, imagine you're this
French soldier, you'd want to see the Pyramids while you
were there. They have really luxurious living quarters. But the
victory is extremely short lived because only ten days after
the Battle of the Pyramids, Horatio Nelson finally catches up
(19:09):
with the French fleet, and that's in Abu Kuer Bay
near Alexandria. But why is Napoleon's fleet still there because
they landed weeks ago, yes, and they're still just hanging
out here, loaded with supplies and gunpowder. That's a little
bit strange. It is strange, and according to Napoleon's secretary,
(19:30):
the general had had plans to unload all of that
stuff once Egypt was finally secure and send the ships
back to Toulon to rejoin the navy, and from there,
who knows, maybe go across the channel attack the British.
But it's August and the ships are still sitting there,
and Nelson finally comes across them at about two am
(19:51):
and decides he's going to fight that very morning, and
he maneuvers between the fleet and the shore, which is
something that the French thought was impossible bowl and consequently
they neglected to put any weapons on that side of
the ship, so they're completely vulnerable. The French admiral is
aboard the flagship, of course, and the flagship had been
(20:13):
the home of these very impressive salons on the journey
to Egypt, and it was filled with lots of intelligent conversation,
but right now it's filled with all of the powder
from the expedition, so it is a giant ship bomb
and even after the admiral's legs are blown off by cannon,
he's still on the ship, directing the course of the fight.
(20:35):
Finally he's killed by a cannonball. In about an hour
after his death, the fire that has spread aboard the
ship finally reaches the powder magazine. We have this huge explosion.
It's heard fifty miles away. Hundred frenchmen are dead, their
three thousand prisoners. No fleet left, no way home unless
(20:57):
you're managed to hop aboard a merchant ship, no communication,
no supplies. Can things get any worse? And sure enough,
they do get worse. By September eleven, the Ottoman Sultan
Selim the Third it declares war on France, and by
October one there's a revolt in Cairo because people aren't
(21:18):
really buying Napoleon's argument that he's here for the Egyptians
and he really loves them. So Napoleon is defeated in
Ottoman Syria, which is now part of Israel, and by August,
it's just a little more than a year after he
arrived in Egypt, Napoleon's out of there. He high tails
it on this merchant ship and leaves the army there
(21:40):
for another two years. He has other things to do.
I guess the Battle of the Nile was the beginning
of the end for the French in Egypt. The Battle
of the Pyramids was simply a fleeting victory, but while
it didn't secure French success, it did open up Cairo
to the savants, which is something that really helped develop
the field of archaeology and led to this obsession with
(22:03):
Egypt that swept through Europe and also through our elementary
school classrooms. Yeah, so that is of course an episode
for next time. But I guess it brings us to
listener mail. So we've been getting tons of mail on
our podcast on King Ludvig the Second. Mad King Ludvig,
he would have so many dinner guests. I think maybe
(22:25):
had been around he would So our first is from
Julie and she wrote, you said, if you're in Bavaria,
let us know what Germans think of King Ludwig the Second. Well,
I just got back from various specifically Munich, yesterday, and
have I got some Ludvig the Second facts for you.
And she goes on to talk a little bit about
how elaborate his family's castles were and how that probably
(22:46):
set a precedent for his own designs. But she also
mentioned that the Bavarian political party that wants to bring
back the monarchy only receives about one percent of the votes,
and she writes Germans don't love the idea of a
monarch and practice, but they recognized that King Ludwig the
Second was, despite his eccentricities, a brilliant man and a visionary.
(23:08):
He funded several early flight attempts and you can now
find a statue of him in the Munich airport. He
treated his workers very well, giving them a portion of
their pay if they were injured or disabled, and paying
their families if they died on the job. So Ludvig,
he's a little bit ahead of his times, I guess.
She also writes if Germans don't love lud Wig, they
(23:28):
certainly respect the brilliance and humanity that the mad king possessed.
We're Ludwig fan, so we can go along with that.
And our second email as also about Ludwig. This one's
from Kelly, who was an army brat and lived in
West Germany in the eighties, and she said, in school,
we had a host Nation teacher whose favorite topic was
(23:48):
King Ludwig the second. Unfortunately, Sarah and I did none
of his teacher And two things that she told us,
which I always assumed were true, that you didn't mention
in your podcast were one. He invented a toilet system
in his castles as a child. The first time I
visited Ni sevon Stein, I asked the tour guide if
I could see the bathroom and was disappointed to be
(24:09):
told that it was off limits and not part of
the tour. And too, he invented the magic table because
he had gum disease, was ashamed about his bleeding gums,
and therefore wanted to dine in private. So now I
feel a little bad about making fun of that whole
table contraption. Now I loved the table. I will never
make fun of the table. If you'd like to email us,
(24:32):
our address is History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're also on Twitter and missed in History, and we
have a Facebook fan page, and if you'd like to
read a little bit more. In preparation for our Sammonts podcast,
Sarah wrote a great article called how Archaeology works, and
you can find it if you search our homepage on www.
(24:55):
Dot how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of u their topics, visit how stuff works
dot com and be sure to check out this stuff
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