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

On 1 July 1798 a French fleet carrying General Napoleon Bonaparte and the new Army of the Orient anchored off Alexandria. The Directory in Paris had approved the expedition to plant a French colony in Egypt, threaten Britain's route to India and, not least, keep the ambitious general far from the capital. Alexandria fell the next day. Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire, but real power lay with the Mamluks, a caste of slave soldiers turned rulers, led in 1798 by two beys, Murad and Ibrahim. Bonaparte declared war on them alone, hoping to keep the sultan neutral and win over the Egyptians.²

The march on Cairo

The road to Cairo was a march of some 240 km through desert in July. World History Encyclopedia describes heat above 35 degrees, wells blocked or poisoned, eye disease, sandstorms, and stragglers killed by Mamluk and Bedouin horsemen. At Damanhur the generals came close to mutiny, and one of them, Mireur, shot himself. On 13 July Murad Bey tried to stop the French at Shubra Khit and was driven off, the infantry forming squares while the flotilla on the Nile fought a desperate action of its own.³

Embabeh, opposite Cairo

On 21 July the five French divisions, about 25,000 men, came up to the village of Embabeh on the west bank of the Nile, where Murad Bey had entrenched himself. Across the river Ibrahim Bey held a second army before the walls of Cairo. The size of Murad's army is uncertain. World History Encyclopedia gives some 6,000 mounted Mamluks and perhaps as many as 54,000 foot militia, noting that other estimates put the militia at only 15,000. The pyramids of Giza stood on the horizon, and Bonaparte's order of the day told his men that forty centuries looked down on them.⁴

Bonaparte knew that the only part of the enemy army that mattered was the cavalry. The Mamluks were formidable horsemen, but World History Encyclopedia notes that their tactics were dated and that they had little experience of modern European ones. Against them he formed each division into a great square, six ranks deep, with guns at the corners and the cavalry and baggage inside. HistoryOfWar.org describes the front and rear of each square formed by a half brigade each, with the third half brigade making up the two sides.⁵

The charge that broke on the squares

The French advanced in the afternoon, Desaix and Reynier on the right against the enemy center, Bon and Vial on the left against Embabeh. At about 3:30 p.m. the Mamluk cavalry charged while the squares of Desaix and Reynier were loosened by a grove of palm trees. They closed up just in time. One French officer, quoted in World History Encyclopedia, remembered horses and riders crashing onto the bayonets of the first rank and wounded Mamluks, their clothes set alight by burning musket wads, slashing at the soldiers' legs.⁶

The horsemen could find no gap. They rode between the squares under fire from all sides, and Bonaparte used the moment to send Bon and Vial against the entrenchments of Embabeh. A second charge, from Murad's right wing, broke in the same way, and Bon's men stormed the village. The garrison fled to the Nile and tried to swim to Ibrahim's army, which watched helplessly from the far bank. World History Encyclopedia counts at least 1,000 drowned and 600 shot in the water. By about 4:30 p.m. it was over, and Murad rode off south with some 3,000 surviving Mamluks.⁷

How many fell

The French reported only 29 killed and 260 wounded, and HistoryOfWar.org puts French losses at about 300. Egyptian losses are much less certain. HistoryOfWar.org estimates 4,000 to 6,000 killed, while World History Encyclopedia gives nearly 10,000 Egyptian casualties. Seeing Murad's army destroyed, Ibrahim Bey's larger force at Cairo broke up and withdrew, leaving the capital open.⁸

Cairo, and then the Nile

Three days later the French entered Cairo unopposed, while both beys fled into Upper Egypt. Bonaparte sent Desaix after Murad and set about building a French administration. The victory was the high point of the expedition. Only days later Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile, cutting the army off from Europe. A year later Bonaparte abandoned the expedition, returned to Paris and seized power in the coup of 18 Brumaire; the army he left behind surrendered to British and Ottoman forces in 1801.⁹ › Battle of Abukir, 1801

The battle is remembered as a clash between two eras of war. HistoryOfWar.org calls it a fight between a modern European army and a medieval Middle Eastern one. The squares settled it in about two hours, and the pyramids that Bonaparte pointed to in his order of the day gave the battle its name.¹⁰