Battle of Abukir (1799)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 25th of July 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte stood near the Egyptian peninsula of Abukir and looked out at a problem that should have been unsolvable. Facing him were 15,000-18,000 Ottoman troops, dug into two lines of fortification with their flanks anchored on the sea itself. There was no way to go around them. And yet, by nightfall, the Ottoman army had been annihilated, its commander sat as a French prisoner missing two fingers, and one cavalry general had ridden his horse straight into the enemy commander's tent.

  This was the Battle of Abukir, and it would become one of the most celebrated French military victories of the era, earning a plate relief on the Arc de Triomphe and a street in Paris named in its honor. But the battle was more than a tactical masterpiece. It was the pivot point of an entire campaign, the event that cleared Napoleon's path back to France, and the moment a thirty-year-old Albanian-born officer named Muhammed Ali was pulled from the sea by British boats. Six years later, that same man would rule Egypt.

• 2. The Road to Abukir

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  Egypt had been discussed as a French target since 1774, though it was nominally part of the Ottoman Empire and had functioned as a semi-autonomous province for centuries. Napoleon proposed the annexation in early 1798, framing Egypt as the first step toward Constantinople and ultimately India, where he hoped to strike at British possessions. A French expeditionary force of over 40,000 landed in Alexandria in July 1798.

  The British and Ottomans declared war on France and, in 1799, moved two armies toward Egypt. Napoleon went north first, taking Gaza City, El Arish, and Jaffa. At Acre, though, he was stopped cold. The city's defense was led by Djezzar Pasha, the Ottoman governor, with the assistance of Antoine de Phélippeaux, an artillery engineer who had studied alongside Napoleon at the Ecole militaire but was now fighting as a British colonel. The Royal Navy continuously resupplied the city, and plague decimated the French ranks. Napoleon withdrew, abandoning his plans for Constantinople.

  On the 14th of July, a British fleet of sixty ships deposited 16,000 men under Mustafa Pasha at Aboukir. The Ottoman troops overran an encampment of 300 French soldiers nearby and slaughtered them, then besieged a fortress held by just 35 French troops, who surrendered three days later. Ottoman flags flew from the bastion. Mustafa Pasha, proud of this success, showed no urgency about marching on Cairo.

• 3. The Tactical Trap

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  Mustafa Pasha was not a reckless commander. He had fought against the Russians in the Russo-Turkish War and understood what Napoleon's infantry squares could do to cavalry. He knew that charging directly into French formations was a path to destruction. His answer was to turn the peninsula into a fortress, building two defensive lines with both flanks resting on the sea, making flanking maneuvers impossible. He would force Napoleon to come at him head-on.

  When a report arrived from Marmont, the military governor of Alexandria, on the 15th of July describing the landing of a large Anglo-Ottoman fleet, Napoleon was northwest of Cairo pursuing Murad Bey. He moved immediately. He ordered Murat to stop that pursuit and converge on Damanhur, 40 miles south of Aboukir. Kléber was to march his division from the eastern Delta. Desaix was to bring his forces down the Nile as a reserve. Napoleon himself set out from Cairo with almost all available troops.

  At Damanhur, Napoleon assembled 10,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. He arrived near Aboukir on the 24th of July and was, according to the source, relieved to find the Ottoman army still waiting on the peninsula. He had feared they would march out into Egypt before he could concentrate his forces. The Pasha's defensive strategy, meant to neutralize Napoleon's advantages, had instead handed him a contained battlefield where a routed enemy would have nowhere to flee.

• 4. The Charge That Ended It

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  On the morning of the 25th of July, Napoleon ordered the attack. He approached with the divisions of Lannes and Desaix and Murat's cavalry, some 7,700 infantry and 1,000 horsemen. General Lanusse's division struck the Ottoman right flank on the western side of the peninsula, where the fortifications were still unfinished. After ferocious fighting, Lanusse broke through, then swung behind the left flank of the first defensive line. Thousands of Ottomans, with no path of retreat inland, ran into the water and tried to swim to the ships offshore. Most drowned. Napoleon later described the sight as the most horrible he had ever witnessed.

  The second Ottoman line held. The French attack, struck by gunfire from both Ottoman and British ships, was repulsed. Ottoman soldiers poured out of their fortifications to behead French corpses on the ground. Napoleon studied the western bay and moved his artillery to a cape there, allowing his guns to bombard the Ottoman right flank from a new angle. The Ottomans shifted slightly inland to compensate, opening a gap in their line.

  Murat saw it. He also saw hundreds of Ottoman soldiers stepping outside their fortifications to mutilate the French dead, leaving themselves exposed. He launched his cavalry. The charge moved so fast that Murat broke through the entire Ottoman camp and reached Mustafa Pasha's tent. The Pasha stepped forward and shot Murat in the jaw with a pistol. Murat swung his sabre and cut off two of the Pasha's fingers, then ordered his men to seize him. Murat was operated on that same evening and was back at his duties the following day.

• 5. The Siege at Aboukir Fort

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  The main Ottoman army shattered completely. Thousands fled into the sea on both sides of the peninsula. A few thousand survivors, including the Pasha's son, retreated north and took refuge inside Aboukir fort. Sidney Smith reinforced them with a detachment of British marines.

  Napoleon left for Alexandria and handed the siege to Lannes. Mustafa Pasha, now a French prisoner, wrote multiple dispatches ordering the fort to surrender. The besieged troops refused. They had heard about the massacre of Ottoman prisoners by the French at the siege of Jaffa, and they swore to hold the fort to the end. A ceasefire was eventually brokered, but the French engineer colonel Bertrand used the pause to reconnoiter the fort's defenses. When fighting resumed, the Ottomans sallied out and captured houses in front of the fort, then made further sorties that drove them back. Lannes was wounded by a musket ball and evacuated. General Menou took command.

  On the night of the 30th, French sappers began mining below the fort to blow up the counterscarp. By the 2nd of August, it was over. The garrison had been starved and had drunk seawater until many became delirious. They walked out en masse without sending any envoy first. The French captain Charles François recorded what he saw: the son of the Pasha and his lieutenants came out at the head of soldiers who looked like ghosts, threw down arms they no longer had the strength to carry, and bowed down asking for death. French commanders and soldiers, by his account, felt compassion for their state and gave them food and drink. Despite precautions, three-quarters of those 3,000 men died of indigestion from eating after prolonged starvation.

• 6. The Toll and What Was Taken

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  Sidney Smith wrote to Horatio Nelson on the 2nd of August to inform him of the defeat. He cited the Ottoman army's poor organization, its actual size being far smaller than reported, and the failure of the Turkish gunboats to take their assigned positions as the primary causes of the catastrophe. He noted that when he arrived five days after the disembarkation, he found only 5,000 men, not the 15,000 that had been reported. The uncoordinated behavior of the Ottoman irregular infantry, he wrote, could not withstand the cavalry charge that broke through their line.

  The French losses at Abukir stood at 220 dead and 600 wounded. The Ottoman losses were of a different scale entirely: 2,000 dead on the battlefield, 11,000 drowned, 5,000 taken prisoner, and 2,000 missing. Napoleon claimed that not one man who came ashore escaped. Smith noted this was false, as he sent boats to rescue some of the Ottomans who fled into the water.

  Among those pulled from the sea was a thirty-year-old officer of Albanian descent named Muhammed Ali. Six years later, he would seize power in Egypt and transform the country. The French also captured 100 Ottoman banners, 32 field guns, 400 horses, and three Pasha's Bunchuks, the ceremonial flags issued to Pashas. Among the seized cannons were two small British artillery pieces that had been presented by George III to Ottoman Sultan Selim III as a gift. Napoleon gave them to a French cavalry brigade.

• 7. Napoleon's Exit

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  The victory gave the French a breathing space in Egypt, but it also handed Napoleon something more personally consequential. During the prisoner exchange negotiations, Sidney Smith passed French envoys several recent European newspapers. The papers confirmed what Napoleon had suspected: the political situation in France was dire. A coalition was threatening French territory, Austrian forces had retaken almost all the Italian territories Napoleon had conquered, and a new insurrection was breaking out in the Vendée.

  Smith told the envoy verbally that the Directory had summoned Napoleon back to Paris. He had read the summons letter after the British intercepted it. Whether his motive was to weaken the French position in Egypt by removing its commander, or something else, Smith then lifted the blockade of the Egyptian coast to resupply his fleet at an allied port, stating that his salted provisions were exhausted. The opening was brief, but it was enough.

  On the 23rd of August, Napoleon boarded the frigate Muiron in secret, leaving only a letter for Kléber informing him of the handover on the same day he sailed. He took with him Berthier, Murat, Lannes, and several of his scholars, including the mathematician Gaspard Monge. Kléber, who received the letter upon Napoleon's departure, was furious. He later read Napoleon's dispatches to the Directory and found that Napoleon had minimized and downplayed the precarious conditions of the Egyptian campaign. Kléber sent his own strong-worded letter to the Directory describing the reality. He maintained French control of Egypt with a victory at Heliopolis on the 18th of March 1800, but was murdered in his garden in Cairo less than a month later. His successor, Menou, was defeated at Canopus, and the French army sailed home to France in British ships on the 2nd of September.