â€œEurope is a molehillâ€¦.â€Everything here is worn outâ€¦tiny Europe has not enough to offer.We must set off for the Orient; that is where all the greatest glory is

Napoleon in Egypt

â€œEurope is a molehillâ€¦.â€
Everything here is worn outâ€¦tiny Europe has not enough to offer.
We must set off for the Orient; that is where all the greatest glory is to be achieved.â€ â€”Napoleon

Napoleonâ€™s invasion of Egypt was the first Western attack in modern times on a Middle Eastern country. In this remarkably rich and eminently readable historical account, acclaimed author Paul Strathern reconstructs a mission of conquest inspired by glory, executed in haste, and bound for disaster.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, mounted the most audacious military campaign of his already spectacular career. With 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection of scholars, artists, scientists, and inventors, he set sail for Egypt to establish an Eastern empire in emulation of Alexander the Great. Like everything Napoleon ever attempted, it was a plan marked by unquenchable ambition, heroic romanticism, and not a little madness.

Napoleon saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians from the oppression of their Mameluke overlords. But while Napoleon thought his army would be welcomed as heroes, he tragically misunderstood Muslim culture and grossly overestimated the â€œgratitudeâ€ he could expect from those heâ€™d come to save. Instead Napoleon and his men would face a grim war of attrition against an ad hoc army of Muslims led by the feared Murad Bey. Marching across seemingly endless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, suffering extremes of heat and thirst, and pushed to the limits of human endurance, they would be plagued by mirages, suicides, and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor and intended for glory would degenerate toward chaos and atrocity.

But Napoleonâ€™s grand failure in Egypt also yielded vast treasures of knowledge about a culture largely lost to the West, and through the recovery of artifacts like the Rosetta Stone, it prepared the way for the translation of hieroglyphics and modern Egyptology. And it tempered the complex leader who believed it his destiny to conquer the world.

A story of war, adventure, politics, and a clash of cultures, Paul Strathernâ€™s Napoleon in Egypt is history at once relevant and impossible to put down.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Bantam
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2008-10-21
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Bantam
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2008-10-21
Format	Kindle eBook

Napoleon in Egypt

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