Empire Collections

Mameluk with umbrella

Reference : SPH2

Throughout the Napoleonic era there was a special Mamluk corps in the French army. In his history of the 13th Chasseurs, Colonel Descaves recounts how Napoleon used the Mamluks during the French campaign in Egypt and Syria. In the so-called "Instructions" that Bonaparte gave to Jean Baptiste Kléber after departure, Napoleon wrote that he had already bought from Syrian merchants about 2,000 Mamluks with whom he intended to form a special detachment..

Read more

(3 Avis)

The French Campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria, proclaimed to defend French trade interests, weaken Britain's access to British India, and to establish scientific enterprise in the region. It was the primary purpose of the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, a series of naval engagements that included the capture of Malta.

Though a military failure, the expedition was successful from a scientific and cultural point of view. The discovery of ancient Egypt fascinated artistic and scholarly Europe. Legends surrounding the campaign became part of the imperial regime’s propaganda, before nourishing the Napoleonic myth. This discovery of Oriental civilisation was a shock for many of the French: the “return from Egypt” style became all the rage under the Consulate and the Empire, while Orientalism flourished in the French arts for several decades. Research into the civilisation of the pharaohs also thrived, from the monumental Description de l’Egypte (1809-1829), down to the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Champollion (Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens égyptiens, 1824), without forgetting the opening of the Egyptian museum by Charles X in the Louvre in 1826, or the unveiling of the obelisk of Luxor on Place de la Concorde in 1836. For decades, competition between French and British Egyptologists was rife. France and Egypt kept up a special relationship throughout the entire century, concretised by travel, trade and diplomatic exchanges. The expedition to Egypt, a bloody conflict, of uncertain utility, nevertheless allowed Egypt to open out to the world and to begin the exchanges with Europe that were to develop throughout the 19th century.