In this vivid and timely history, Juan Cole tells the story of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Revealing the young general's reasons for leading the expedition against Egypt in 1798 and showcasing his fascinating views of the Orient, Cole delves into the psychology of the military titan and his entourage. He paints a multi-faceted portrait of the daily travails of the soldiers in Napoleon's army, including how they imagined Egypt, how their expectations differed from what they found, and how they grappled with military challenges in a foreign land. Cole ultimately reveals how Napoleon's invasion, the first modern attempt to invade the Arab world, invented and crystallized the rhetoric of liberal imperialism.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, set sail for Egypt with 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection of scholars, artists, and scientists to establish an eastern empire. He saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians from oppression. But Napoleon wasn’t the first—nor the last—who tragically misunderstood Muslim culture. Marching across seemingly endless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, pushed to the limits of human endurance, his men would be plagued by mirages, suicides, and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor would degenerate into chaos. And yet his grand failure also yielded a treasure trove of knowledge that paved the way for modern Egyptology—and it tempered the complex leader who believed himself destined to conquer the world.

This panoramic volume tells the story of French art, culture and life from the 1770s to the 1820s: the first French voyages of discovery to Australia, the stormy period of social change with the outbreak of the French Revolution, and the rise to power of the young Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine.

'My horse took the force of his sabre, but I was able to hack at his hands... Wounded quite badly, he went down only to try again. I was tired of this game, so I threw myself onto him and staved in his head.' Jonathan North presents an astonishing history of Napoleon's early 'bartering of lives for glory' based on the words of the soldiers.

This classic study of the French occupation of Egypt presents a lucid and comprehensive account of Napoleon’s stunning victories and devastating losses. Originally published in 1962, J. Christopher Herold's Bonaparte in Egypt is considered the definitive modern account of this extraordinary campaign. In an elegantly written and detailed study, Herold covers all aspects of Bonaparte's expedition: military, political, and cultural. Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt was a bold adventure that reached the extremes of total triumph and utter defeat. Bonaparte won a decisive victory at the Battle of the Pyramids and quickly captured Cairo. But his fleet was completely destroyed by Admiral Nelson at Abukir Bay and his ambition to conquer the Holy Land was frustrated at Acre. Despite these reverses, Bonaparte returned to France where he was greeted as a hero and seized political power in 1799. His attempt to take permanent control of Egypt and Syria for France was a critical stage on his road to power, and it is one of the most revealing episodes in his spectacular career.

The uniforms, organisation and equipment of Napoleon's French army in Egypt.

Napoleon Bonaparte's goal in setting sail for Egypt in 1798 was to establish new colonies for the French and to threaten British trade with India. While the immediate impact of the invasion has been the subject of many studies, it should also be considered in the context of the geopolitics of the period and the longer-term historical trends in Egypt. The papers in this volume consider all aspects of the French occupation and trace its repercussions into the late twentieth century. The background to the invasion is analyzed, including political and economic trends, French/British rivalry, French colonial fortunes and populist French Republican ideology. The work of the savants, those engineers and mathematicians who mapped and recorded ancient Egyptian artifacts, is shown to have had a formative influence on modern archaeological practice. The post-occupation contributions of French technocrats are exemplified by the pioneering work of a military surgeon. The contentious debate over the historiography of the occupation is reviewed, with a case study of its use during the Nasserist period. And in conclusion, a sweeping survey of Egyptian culture shows that Egypt's reappropriation of Egyptology has had a regenerating effect on Egyptian national consciousness. Resulting from the international conference on Napoleon in Egypt held in 1997 at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, these papers are written by experts in the field.

A French Officers dramatic account of Napoleons invasion of Egypt. The memoirs of Captain Moiret, translated and edited by Rosemary Brindle, offer a unique insight into Napoleons invasion of Egypt in 1798. Primary and secondary sources detail the campaign in its entirety. Includes a comprehensive transcription of Napoleons key speeches, historical overview and footnotes by the translator/editor.

The first campaign medal awarded to British soldiers is reckoned to be that given to those men who fought at Waterloo in 1815, but a decade and a half earlier a group of regiments were awarded a unique badge – a figure of a Sphinx - to mark their service in Egypt in 1801. It was a fitting distinction, for the successful campaign was a remarkable one, fought far from home by a British army which had so far not distinguished itself in battle against Revolutionary France, and one moreover which had the most profound consequences in the Napoleonic wars to come. In 1798 a quixotic French expedition led by a certain General Bonaparte not only to seize Egypt and consolidate French influence in the Mediterranean, but also to open up a direct route to Indian and provide an opportunity to destroy the East India Company and fatally weaken Great Britain. In the event, General Bonaparte returned to France to mount a coup which would eventually see him installed as Emperor of the French, but behind him he abandoned his army, which remained in control of Egypt, still posing a possible threat to the East India Company, until in 1801 a large but rather heterogeneous British Army led by Sir Ralph Abercrombie landed and in a series of hard-fought battles utterly defeated the French. Not only did this campaign establish the hitherto rather doubtful reputation of the British Army, and help secure India, but its capture en route of the islands of Malta gained Britain a base which would enable it to dominate the Mediterranean for the next century and a half. This little understood, but profoundly important campaign at last receives the treatment it deserves in the hands of renowned historian Stuart Reid.