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

50 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTenemy,” Moiret writes, “attempted several cavalry charges, but without success.They whirled on horseback and tried to find an opening in our ranks.” Theykept challenging the French, advancing on them and “making a movement totheir left to turn us.” But, Deponthon reported, “they were all astonished tomeet the division of General Reynier that flanked our right, and the cannon ofwhich dispersed their ranks pretty well. They met the same fate on our left,which was also flanked by the division of General Bon. As to the center, wetook care to defend it.”The yare emirs typically overwhelmed an untrained infantry of townsmenor peasants by their fancy riding and fierce cavalry charges. The French hadthrough drills discovered a new facility in switching from line to infantrysquares, a formidable foe for any cavalry. In addition, the French had better artillery,with greater range, on their side, leaving the slave soldier horsemen unableto deploy their own cannon decisively to break up the French formations.The European troops brandished more powerful muskets, with greater rangeand accuracy than were at the disposal of the Ottoman Egyptians, giving themanother advantage.The local horsemen at one point thought they saw an opening between theNile and the French army, and they poured into it. It was an ambush. They hadhardly advanced before they received musket fire from hidden French troops.Many slave-soldier cavalrymen “were unhorsed and fell lifeless in the bloodieddust.” The French infantry managed to seize the enemy cannons set up on thebanks of the Nile and cart them off. Desperate, Murad Bey’s cavalry nowcharged en masse, “thundering” toward the French “with the speed of lightning.”The French artillerymen and musketeers let them get in range and thenloosed a frightful barrage of shells and grapeshot, inflicting so much carnagethat one eyewitness called it “butchery.” The surviving Ottoman Egyptiansnow wheeled and retreated south, where they knew they could find the protectionof their own gunboats. Vertray thought that this land battle lasted aboutfour hours.The quartermaster for uniforms, Bernoyer, had, like several other civilians,been given passage on a ship. His was commanded by Yaounsky, a Pole, and thisvessel, like the rest of the flotilla, was carried willy-nilly south by the gales, unableto keep close to land or to support the army at the battle of Shubrakhit.The ship came upon an enemy encampment on the Nile. Yaounsky surveyed theshiny weaponry and opulent, silky costumes of the local soldiers with amusementand, laboring under the mistaken impression that the Egyptians were unfamiliarwith artillery, remarked, “I would like to see them approach the cannon