Battle of the Pyramids, 1798: Bonaparte's squares break the Mamluks

On 1 July 1798, Dodge writes, a French fleet carrying General Napoleon Bonaparte and the Army of the Orient reached Alexandria. The Directory's orders spoke of the French right to keep open a road to India, and Dodge adds that the Directory, fearing and mistrusting Bonaparte, was not averse to being rid of him. Egypt was nominally part of the Sultan's domain but was actually ruled by the Mamluks, a warlike caste, of whose chiefs Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey were the most prominent. Bonaparte proclaimed to the Egyptians that he was fighting only the Mamluks, and wrote to the Sultan's pasha that the French arms would always be at the Sultan's disposal.²

The march on Cairo

The army crossed the desert to Damanhur suffering badly, Bonaparte reported, from the heat and the lack of water. Dodge describes bitter wells, mirages, outcries against the officers and even suicides, and Berthier writes that the Arabs harried the columns so closely that all communication was cut a few hundred toises behind the army. At Shubra Khit Murad Bey tried to stop the French and was driven off: the infantry formed squares while the flotilla on the Nile fought a hard action of its own.³

Embabeh, opposite Cairo

On 21 July the five French divisions came up to the village of Embabeh on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Cairo, where Murad Bey had entrenched himself; across the river Ibrahim Bey stood with a further force before the city. The size of Murad's army is uncertain. Dodge gives ten thousand Mamluks on the plain, each served by three or four footmen, and twenty thousand armed fellahin behind the earthworks; Berthier speaks of six thousand Mamluks and a crowd of Arabs and fellahin. The pyramids of Giza stood on the horizon, and according to the memoirs Bonaparte dictated on Saint Helena he pointed to them and told his soldiers that forty centuries were looking at them.⁴

The strength of the Mamluks was their cavalry; Dodge writes that their foot soldiers counted for little in civilized warfare. Against them Bonaparte formed each division into a square six men deep, with the artillery at the angles and between the battalions and the baggage in the center, as he had at Shubra Khit, and the squares advanced in echelon. If a position had to be stormed, the first and third divisions of each battalion would form columns of attack while the second and fourth kept the square.⁵

The charge that broke on the squares

At two in the afternoon, Bonaparte reported, the French came face to face with the entrenchments and the enemy army. He sent Desaix and Reynier to the right, between Giza and Embabeh, to cut Murad off from Upper Egypt. As soon as Murad saw Desaix moving, he charged; Dodge writes that Desaix, because of broken ground, barely had time to close his square. The French held their fire until the horsemen were fifty paces away and met them with a hail of musketry and grapeshot, and the survivors who rode into the gap between the two divisions were caught in a crossfire.⁶

Bonaparte then sent Bon against the entrenchments and Vial between the beaten cavalry and the camp. Mamluks rode out of the entrenchments to charge Rampon's attack columns, which halted, faced outward and drove them off, and the entrenchments were carried with the bayonet. Berthier writes that 1,500 Mamluks and as many fellahin, cut off by Rampon and Marmont, were all killed or drowned in the Nile; Dodge says some fifteen hundred men drowned, while many Egyptians, being good swimmers, saved themselves. Murad Bey retreated with what was left of his force toward Upper Egypt.⁷

How many fell

Losses were reported very differently. In his report to the Directory of 24 July Bonaparte put the French loss at 20 or 30 killed and 120 wounded, and the Mamluk loss at 2,000 elite horsemen. Berthier gives 10 French killed and about 30 wounded. Dodge writes that Bonaparte claimed 40 killed and 260 wounded and a Mamluk and fellahin loss of ten thousand, two thousand of them Mamluk warriors. That night Ibrahim Bey and the Ottoman pasha burned their boats on the Nile and left Cairo.⁸

Cairo, and then the Nile

On 22 July, Dodge writes, the French occupied the city and its citadel; Bonaparte reported that his troops entered Cairo the day after the battle. Desaix moved up the river to watch Murad Bey, and Bonaparte set about organizing the country. On 1 August, in Dodge's account, Nelson destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, and Bonaparte found himself cut off from France.⁹ › Battle of Abukir, 1801

Berthier saw in the battle proof of the superiority of modern European tactics over those of the Orientals, and of disciplined courage over disordered valor; Dodge called it "an interesting, not a great battle". The pyramids that Bonaparte's soldiers saw on the horizon gave it its name.¹⁰