Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

The trying march was over at last, the Nile was reached, and then came the relief of battle and easy victory. The Mamelukes were great horsemen, the best in the world, perhaps; but they had no infantry and no artillery worth the name. In the hands of Napoleon they were children. Battle with Mamelukes was target practice, during which French marksmen, in hollow square, shot out of their saddles the simple-minded Mamelukes, who fancied that they could do everything with horses.

In all of the battles which took place, the tactics of the French were the same: “Form square: savants and asses to the centre.” Then, while the baggage, the learned men, and the long-eared donkeys rested securely within the lines, a steady fire of musketry and cannon emptied the saddles of the heroes of the desert.

To see the Mamelukes come thundering on to the attack, was magnificent; to see them drop in the sand without having been able to reach the French, was pitiful.

After a skirmish at Shebreis, in which the Mamelukes were driven off without any difficulty (July 13), came the encounter known as the Battle of the Pyramids (July 21), chiefly remembered now as that in which Napoleon dramatically exclaimed to his troops as they were being made ready for the struggle, “Soldiers, from yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you!” The telescope had revealed to him the fact that the artillery of the enemy consisted of guns taken from their flotilla on the river. These guns were not on carriages, like field artillery, and therefore they could not be moved at will during battle. This suggested to him a change in his own dispositions. A portion of his army being left to deal with the stationary artillery and the infantry which manned the feeble, sand-bank intrenchments, he directed the other to march out of the range of the guns, for the purpose of throwing against the Mameluke horse his own cavalry, supported by infantry and artillery. Murad Bey, the commander-in-chief of the opposing army, seized the moment when this change was being made by Napoleon to launch against him a mass of seven thousand Mameluke horse. This mighty host struck the division of Desaix when it was in motion, and therefore unprepared for cavalry. For an instant the French, at least of that column, were in peril. So quickly, however, did the veterans of Desaix form squares, so quickly did Napoleon see the point of danger and send relief, that the battle was never in real doubt. The camp of the Arabs was stormed, the Mameluke cavalry slaughtered; and, inflicting a loss computed at ten thousand on the enemy, the French had but a score or two killed and one hundred and twenty wounded.

The Mameluke power was shattered by the Battle of the Pyramids, and the conquest of Egypt was practically achieved. For some days Frenchmen fished the Nile for dead Mamelukes, to secure the wealth which those warriors carried on their persons.

Arrived in Cairo, Napoleon did his utmost to assure the permanence of his triumph. He caused the religion, the laws, the customs of the country, to be respected. Pursuing his policy of trying to deceive the Mahometans, he proclaimed that the French were the true champions of the Prophet; that they had chastised the Pope, and conquered the Knights of Malta; therefore the people of Egypt should be convinced that they were the enemies of the Christians.

“We are the true Mussulmans!” read the proclamation. “Did we not destroy the Pope because he had preached a crusade against the Mahometans? Did we not destroy the Knights of Malta because they said that God had directed them to fight the followers of Mahomet?”

He cultivated the influential men of the country, and encouraged the belief that he himself might become a Mussulman. In truth, Napoleon admired Mahomet greatly, and he never shrank from saying so, then or afterward. In the classification of the books of his private library, made in his own writing, he grouped under the same head the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and Mythology, and Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. These he enumerated in the class of Politics and Morals. He reminded his soldiers that the Roman legions had respected all religions. He did not remind them that Roman rulers had considered all religions as equally useful for purposes of government; nor that Roman philosophers had regarded them all as equally sons and daughters of that primeval pair, Fear and Fraud—fear of the unknown, and the fraud which practises upon it.

Napoleon found that Mahometan priests were as eager to convert him as Christian priests had been to capture Constantine and Clovis. In the one case as in the other, the priests were willing to compromise the creed to gain the convert. Napoleon did not quite join the faithful himself, but he approved of General Menou’s apostasy, and he ostentatiously observed the Mahometan festivals.

Both Napoleon and Bourrienne denied, as others assert, that he went into the mosque, sat cross-legged on the cushion amid the faithful, muttered Koran verses as they did, and rolled head and body about as a good Mussulman should. If he did not do so it was because he thought, as a matter of policy, that the act would not compensate him for the trouble and the ridicule. He afterward did just about that much for the Christian religion; and faith had no more to do with his conduct in the one case than in the other.