I saw these wonderful two paintings, Scott said at the time.
One was of a man sitting on a horse staring at the Sphinx, and it was Napoleon.
So I thought I had to have that because no one has done the Egyptian campaign.
And the truth [is] they took it over pretty easily.
He is partially right.
Napoleon did indeed conquer Egypt with relative ease in 1798.
This, of course, did not happen.
The so-called Battle of the Pyramids occurred several kilometers away from its namesake.
Napoleon was in Egypt when he was made aware, yet again, of his brides unfaithfulness.
I am sick of humanity.
I have no more reason to live.
At twenty-nine years of age, I am worn out.
That letter was then intercepted in the Mediterranean by a British warship.
It became a great source of laughter from London newspapers to the palaces of Russia.
It was his own bad leadership that carried him into his first disasteras well as his greatest legacy.
This starts with arriving on the Egyptian coast outside Alexandria in 1798 during a storm.
Hundreds of soldiers drowned in the violent, churning surf after their small boats capsize.
It would be prescient of things to come.
Fortunately for Napoleon, the French population did not hear of these things.
seems to unhorse all of his Mameluke opponents, was nonetheless a resounding success for the French.
In fact, the actual Battle of the Pyramids was a bloodbath.
The Mamelukes tactics, right down to their bejeweled swords, were positively medieval.
Which was a disadvantage when falling upon French rifles.
More than 10,000 of the Mamelukes charging cavalry died; meanwhile the French lost a mere 289 soldiers.
When the enslaved soldiers finally hastened into a retreat, Napoleon ordered a massacre.
He conquered Cairos defenses in an afternoon.
It would prove to be a pyrrhic victory though.
Yet onlyoneof Napoleons windmills was ever built.
It stood alone, a sad monument to failed modernity and a generals folly.
Napoleon won Egypt but he would barely hold onto it for more than a year.
Admittedly, conquering the land of the Nile made good sense for the French.
His body was found with the tricolor sash of France wrapped around the corpse.
He led 13,000 men across various deserts, losing thousands to conflict, and thousands more to bubonic plague.
This did not include the prisoners he took in Jaffa.
He eventually returned to Egypt in defeat.
The irony is that even before he set out for Damascus the whole enterprise was lost.
He didnt even tell his second-in-command, General Kleber, about his hasty flight.
The last words Kleber heard were death to the infidel dogs!
Consider it a preview for coming attractions in Russia.
His underlings stare on, too, in bewilderment at their general.
This merely teases Napoleons curiously erudite and philosophical interests.
He called them his savants.
And he wasnt wrong.
The stele, or stone, was found near a town named Rosetta.
With that loss went the knowledge of one of the oldest and most prodigious record-keeping civilizations in history.
Being able to finally decipher hieroglyphs was an opportunity that exceeded even Napoleons wildest dreams.
But even then it wasnt an immediate innovation.
Champollion also proved it was the last remnant of the ancient Egyptian language.
… And Champollion even was able to preview his discoveries to Napoleon when they met.
This moment, too, aligns with another scene in Scotts movie.
All the years of blood, snow, and loss in the wastes of Russia are forgotten and forgiven.
Afterward, the emperor set up headquarters in a nearby town where he plotted his reclamation of French greatness.
They discussed Egypt, Coptic, and the history of emperors and scholars; kings and pawns.
This of course never came to pass since Napoleon met his literal Waterloo a few months later.
It is a self-crowned emperors greatest legacy, a true conquest that wrested knowledge from ignorance.
When all is said and done, which is the shadow and which is the substance?
Which is worth having?
Which is worth striving for?
Napoleon yearned for both and wound up with neither.
Napoleon is streaming on Apple TV+ now.
