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

68 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTand silver. For days afterward, French troops who remained on the west bankfished bodies out the Nile and went through their pockets for pieces of gold.Few French casualties were taken, perhaps 30 killed and 260 wounded. TheOttoman Egyptians suffered between 800 and 1,600 dead. Bonaparte said thatmany of the great beys were wounded, including Murad Bey, who was injuredin the cheek. Moiret saw nothing wrong with the Ottoman Egyptians’ fightingspirit or bravery; if they had been more familiar with European tactics, headmitted, they could have made the French pay dearly for their victory.In his letter to the Directory, Bonaparte grandiosely named the contest theBattle of the Pyramids, even though these monuments were only faintly visiblefrom Imbaba. The commander in chief wrote to the Directory of his new possession,“All the opulence of these people is in their horses and their armaments.Their houses are pitiable. It is difficult to find a land that is more fertile and apeople more poverty-stricken, more ignorant, or more brutalized. They preferthe button of one of our soldiers to a six-franc coin.” As others have observed,the Romantic-era painters who rendered this victory at the Battle of the Pyramidsneglected to depict the artillerymen with coats buttonless and undone.Major General Berthier boasted, “No battle had ever better proved the superiorityof European tactics over those of the Orientals, of disciplined courageover chaotic bravura.” One would not wish to in any way diminish the contributionof the tacticians, but it should not be forgotten that France had many advantagesin the contest. In 1798, France’s population was about 28 million, sothat the French had a more than five-to-one manpower superiority over theEgyptians. Of course, what mattered was the number of French military men inEgypt. Even there, they were superior in the numbers that counted. TheFrench army at Imbaba numbered some 28,000. Many of these troops had beentested by fire in the Italian campaigns. Archival documentation shows that theseven Ottoman regiments comprised a little over 18,000 troops in 1797, withabout 8,000 of these being cavalry and 10,000 infantry. In addition, the slavesoldier“houses” grouped many cavalrymen who stood outside the old regimentalsystem and so are not being counted here. But Murad and Ibrahim unwiselydivided their forces, with Ibrahim keeping half for a second stand at Bulaq. AtImbaba, only a few thousand emirs and slave soldiers stood against the Frenchin this battle. In addition, the beys summoned perhaps 3,000 allied Bedouin irregulars,along with as many as 20,000 untrained and poorly armed Egyptianpeasants and townsmen, the latter little more than cannon fodder. 3 With regardto professional soldiers, the French far outnumbered the soldiers and cavalrymengathered at Imbaba, by a factor of at least four to one.