Battle of the Pyramids

The Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21st July 1798 near Embabeh on the Nile, decided the French invasion of Egypt on land. Bonaparte's army of roughly twenty-five thousand faced a larger Mamluk-Ottoman host under Murad Bey, whose elite cavalry charged the French squares and broke against massed musketry and artillery. The squares held, French columns rolled up the Egyptian positions along the river, and by evening Murad's army was scattered with thousands killed or wounded, while French losses numbered only a few hundred. The victory opened the road to Cairo, which the French entered two days later. Bonaparte is said to have told his troops that forty centuries were watching them from atop the pyramids; on land nothing could yet stop the invasion, but the fleet that kept the expedition supplied would soon be destroyed at the Nile. The squares of Embabeh became one of the set pieces of military history, retold wherever infantry discipline met cavalry bravado.