IT is said that when Napoleon approached Cairo, a Mameluke knight, in brilliant attire of silk and damascened armour,* rode up to the French army and challenged the leader to single combat! The poor man was met most unchivalrously by a volley.* Soon after, Napoleon won the Battle of the Pyramids.* He was fond of dramatic poses. Riding in front of his troops before the Pyramids he addressed them: ”Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down upon you!”
Napoleon was master of war on land and he continued to win. But on sea he was helpless. He did not understand it and he does not seem to have had competent admirals. England just then had a genius in command of her navy in the Mediterranean. This was Horatio Nelson. Nelson came, rather audaciously, right into harbour one day and destroyed the French fleet at what is called the Battle of the Nile.* Napoleon was thus cut off from France in a foreign country. He managed to escape secretly and reached France but in doing so he sacrificed his Army of the East.*
* ‘Damascening’ is the art of inlaying patterns on metal, as with this nineteenth-century helmet from Iran at Wikimedia Commons.
* That is, the gallant knight was shot dead in cold blood by French riflemen. A year later, during the Siege of Acre, Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith (1764-1840) issued a similar challenge, in outrage at being called mad. “If Sir Sydney will send Marlborough from his grave to meet me,” the French general replied with all the derision he could muster, “I will think of it. In the mean time, if the gallant commodore wishes to display his personal prowess, I will neutralize a few yards of the beach, and send a tall grenadier, with whom he can run a tilt.” Smith thus fared better than the poor Mamluk knight, and later had the satisfaction of seeing the French besiegers retreat to Egypt in disappointment.
* Napoleon confronted and defeated a Mamluk army at the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21st, 1798. “Soldiers!” he told his troops as they left Crete “you go to undertake a conquest of which the effects upon the civilisation and the commerce of the world are incalculable. You will strike at England the most certain and the most acute blow while waiting to give her the death-stroke. ... The Mamelukes who favour exclusively English commerce ... some days after our arrival will exist no more.” He added that they should treat followers of Mohammed as the Terror in Paris had treated followers of Christ. “Have for the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran the same tolerance that you have had for convents, for synagogues, for the religion of Moses, and for that of Jesus Christ.” He had his moment of triumph, but as Nehru goes on to show it was short-lived.
* The Battle of the Nile, which took place on August 1st-3rd 1798, is also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay. Aboukir or Abu Qir lies twenty miles northeast of Alexandria in Egypt.
* Napoleon ended his ill-fated assault on Moscow in the same way, scurrying back to Paris and leaving his army to fend for itself. See Retreat from Moscow.