Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

22 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTDuring the night the French positioned several launches equipped withcannon all along the shore, flanking Alexandria. Consul Magallon had broughtalong with him a local Egyptian pilot, who helped steer the French landingparty through the reefs. Beginning around one o’clock in the early morning of 2July, Bonaparte and his French troops were able to land about three miles fromthe city.At 3:00 A.M., generals Bon, Kléber, and Jacques Menou each led a unit of430 men as a combined advance guard that marched on Alexandria. It had notproved possible to land artillery or cavalry as yet. Bonaparte marched on footwith the sharpshooters of the vanguard. A mile and a half from the city, thethree hundred Bedouin Arab horsemen who guarded the heights around itcaught sight of the French and fired on them.When they fully realized the size of the French force, the Bedouins hastilyretired. Menou and his unit traversed the small sand dunes along the sea, to thewest of the wall of the Arab quarter of Alexandria, seeking to overwhelm theTriangular Fort. Kléber took his contingent toward the great gate of that wall,which led to Pompey’s Column. Bon and his troops turned to the east of thecity, toward the Rosetta gate. Having taken the fort and the gates by 8:00 A.M.,they halted. Bonaparte headed toward Pompey’s Column and detached severalofficers to reconnoiter the wall of the Arab quarter, which protected Alexandria.They discovered that the wall had been well maintained, and offered them nobreaches.When Bonaparte arrived under the walls of the old city that morning, heseemed ready to begin negotiations, confident that the small city of 8,000 wouldcapitulate in the face of an overwhelming military force. But armed townspeople,excited to combat by the cries of their leaders, women, and children,swarmed the battlements atop the wall and took up positions in its towers,. Thefive hundred slave-soldier cavalrymen under the command of Sayyid MuhammadKurrayim, the governor of Buhayra Province, and the armed Alexandriantownsmen, kept up a steady gunfire against the French, which proved relativelyineffectual. Suddenly the emirs or commanders within the city unveiled theircannon and fired on their enemy.The three or four old pieces of cannon, which were mounted on the wallsand could not be swiveled, did not deter the French attackers. As for the defenders’rain of musket balls, the European infantry raised their own muskets andreplied with a thunderous fusillade, cutting down some Egyptians. Then theFrench light artillery, which had finally arrived, weighed in with cannonballs,forcing the Ottoman-Egyptian cavalry to withdraw to a distance.