Book Review: Napoleon in Egypt

CS Monitor (M.M. Bennett)

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. Then, in a bout of indomitable energy and attention to detail, Napoleon established a new Egyptian government with himself as titular head.

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, along with the remnants of his army, hightailed it back to France, where he proclaimed the whole a glorious victory.

Napoleon in Egypt is novelist and philosopher Paul Strathern’s account of this disastrous Middle Eastern sojourn.