Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

21 July 1798

Battle of the Pyramids

CHAPTER VI

Faithful to the orders they had received, the French withheld their fire until the enemy were close upon them, so close that the ruthless rending of the ranks of the Mamaluks by the fierce hail of shot poured upon them was all insufficient to stay their headlong charge, which, bearing down the resistance of their foes, carried them into the centre of the broken square. But the French veterans, always cool and prompt, turned about, and the Mamaluks, finding themselves encircled by their enemies' fire, fought their way back and out of the square, but only to bring themselves under a heavy crossfire from the square and the division of General Kleber, who was moving up to its support. Eyoub's party being thus routed, the French made a direct attack in force upon the entrenched position in front of the village of Embabeh and carried it at the bayonet's point, while the divisions forming the left wing of the attack pushed on between the village and the river. The Mamaluks were thus caught between the horns of a crescent that was threatening to close and entirely surround them. Seeing the danger, Murad Bey at once withdrew his men, and sought the scanty shelter of a grove of date-trees at a little distance from the village. In doing this he was compelled to leave behind him some hundreds of the Mamaluk troops who, caught between the French and the river, utterly unable to defend themselves or to fly, were deliberately shot down by the French or perished in an attempt to escape across the river. As one historian says, it was no longer a fight but a massacre; and thus ingloriously ended what is termed by the Egyptians the "Battle of Embabeh," and by the French the "Battle of the Pyramids," a battle by which the power of the Mamaluks was shattered, and Bonaparte was left for the moment master of Egypt; a battle in which the steady discipline of modern warfare proved once and for all its immeasurable superiority over the wild chivalry of the past; a battle which, apart from this and the vast consequences that have resulted from its issue, is scarcely worthy of remembrance.

CHAPTER X

Looking at the records of window-breakings in Europe and comparing those with this particular breakage, the incident seems but a small one, scarcely worth chronicling, yet, like the battle of the Pyramids, it is noticeable for the consequence that followed it, for it was the poltroonery of the Cadi and his desire to avoid any personal conflict with the French that decided the issue of the day and turned the mob into the very path the Cadi would have diverted them from. It was, in fact, upon his reception of the mob that the question of peace or war depended. No one knew that it was to be so, but, as we shall see, it was the Cadi's refusal to hear the people that led to the bursting of the storm that had been so long gathering. Had the Cadi received the people, had he reasoned with them, warned them of the evils that might come from any rashness, or had he taken a higher and bolder position and ordered them to accept the new decree and not to attempt to oppose the French without the sanction of himself and the rest of the Ulema--had he adopted either of these courses he would have stayed the evil that was at hand, at least for the time. Let us follow the mob and see what happened as it moved away from the Cadi's.