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I did a research paper on it a few years ago. Pretty interesting topic. Why France would float an army of 35,000 men with 200 scientists to Egypt when it could have established a stranglehold on the European continentis certainly an....interesting strategic choice. The French could probably have carved up a lot of the German principalities with little opposition from the England or Prussia. Instead, the French get an army stranded in the Levant and their entire Mediterranean fleet gets decimated by the British at Abukir Bay.

Despite the expedition's complete failure from a military standpoint, I found was that the 1798 expedition to Egypt was absolutely crucial to Napoleon's later rise to power. It allowed him to increase his credibility as a national leader, helping him to secure support from key merchants in Marseille and several of France's leading enlightenment scientists and thinkers. The former was critical because Napoleon secured a reputation as a man who would use military force to expand French colonial trade and keep the ports humming, and the latter helped Napoleon establish himself as an appropriately forward-thinking enlightenment leader. Because Napoleon carefully censored reports of the Army of the Orient's dire condition in Egypt, most Frenchmen were completely unaware of how badly the operation was going until after Napoleon had secured power and implemented stern censorship policies regarding the expedition.

It was pretty clear that the Egyptian expedition was in Napoleon's best interests, but was it really in France's best interests?

Controlling Egypt would have gained them a propaganda victory and also the possibility to control trade from the (East) Indies - by ship to Sinai, then (slowly) up to the Mediterranean coast . Should be faster than the trip around Africa.

Was something like the Suez channel already considered ? If so, then that might have influenced the expedition.

Raesene wrote:Controlling Egypt would have gained them a propaganda victory and also the possibility to control trade from the (East) Indies - by ship to Sinai, then (slowly) up to the Mediterranean coast . Should be faster than the trip around Africa.

Was something like the Suez channel already considered ? If so, then that might have influenced the expedition.

No, Suez wasn't until much later. There was an interest to find a way to make up for lost trade in the Antilles, after Saint Dominique (Haiti) broke down into revolution against French rule. That certainly was a consideration for the merchants at least, but it seems to me that France could have had more to gain economically through domination of Germany.

Napoleon did in fact consider a canal and had surveys performed, only to conclude erroneously that the canal would require locks and thus be too expensive. His archeologists also examined the remnants of several ancient canals the Egyptians built to indirectly connect the Red Sea and Mediterranean. Building a canal back then we have been no great technical challenge, but it easily would have taken 15 years to do the job. As it was the real Suez canal pretty much was dug by all by hand, with steam dredges completing only the approach channels.

Overall given the lack of French naval superiority invading Egypt could only be a waste of resources for the nation.

didn't Britain retreat from the Med before the invasion of Egypt (or rather return because of the fleet assembled for it ?)

I believe Nelson was stationed in Sicily or Naples for the time being, actually.

TC Pilot wrote:I believe Nelson was stationed in Sicily or Naples for the time being, actually.

Actually, it's both. Sort of. He was stationed in Naples but it was the "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" then.

Actually, this brings up (indirectly) what I think is one of the more fascinating what-ifs of the age. Nelson missed catching Napoleon in his escape by only the slimmest of margins. Namely, how would history have changed if Nelson had caught Napoleon, or if Nelson had stranded Napoleon in Egypt.

Partly, the rationale for the operation was personal glory. It's dangerous to attribute grand operations of state to individual motives, I know, but in this specific instance- well, it is Napoleon Bonaparte we're talking about here.

Remember, at the time when the operation was launched, he was a hero, not the only military hero France had but probably the biggest, and the Directory were not entirely comfortable with him.
It suited him to go adventuring in foreign climes with his uncomfortably loyal Army of Italy, and it suited the Directory to send him there.

Not that it would have happened if there hadn't been a strategic pretext; the idea had to be at least viable. Egypt looked weakly held by the Ottoman Empire, and the overland route to India seemed viable; that would put a real dent in the British empire, be a genuinely good strategic move, if possible. It was the personal factors that caused Bonaparte, and the Directory, to overlook the information they had that was saying it wasn't possible.

What were the alternatives- more pushing and shoving in Europe? Looking at the events of 1799-1800, which Napoleon came back to, I do not think 'carving up' was the most likely outcome.
On the Rhine, some movement, but considering the kicking the French actually recieved around Switzerland and the Alps in the southern theatre- largely at the hands of the Austrian army- a French defeat was a distinct possibility. There was distant Russian support moving up slowly, too.

Napoleon and the brains trust he brought back from Egypt with him, running the British blockade to do so, managed to turn that, Marengo was the decisive battle of that phase of the war- he saved the day and got rid of a potential rival, Desaix- and that did a lot to propel him to the status of First Consul.

The Royal Navy largely abandoned the Med after Napoleon's victories of 1796-7 with the Army of Italy; there being no friendly ports to replenish from, and no local allies left to support. The Two Sicilies were the one exception really, and whether they could be called effective is debatable.
Well, actually, no it isn't, they were bloody useless; conscripts with little training and less enthusiasm. Nelson was there trying to encourage them to do something effective when there was word of a French invasion fleet on the move.

I have to think that the French did themselves no favours at Aboukir Bay; an open running sea fight would have served them better, there would have been more chance to manoeuvre, more chaos to exploit- some possibility of inflicting real damage on the British, and although I certainly wouldn't reckon on an overall French victory, honours would have been more even and the number of survivors on the French side substantially greater.

Still, the treaty of Campo Formio was still in effect in 1797, and Russian support was not nearly as close at hand. The forces which effectively opposed the French for a time in the Second Coalition campaign were, as far as I can tell, still being assembled in 1798 and would not have been prepared to challenge a strong French push under Napoleon.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:I have to think that the French did themselves no favours at Aboukir Bay; an open running sea fight would have served them better, there would have been more chance to manoeuvre, more chaos to exploit- some possibility of inflicting real damage on the British, and although I certainly wouldn't reckon on an overall French victory, honours would have been more even and the number of survivors on the French side substantially greater.

It also would have allowed them to use the superior speed, better built and greater maneuverability of their ships. However, you have to understand the lack of officers really forced their hand. The french tactic made sense with regards to that they believed it would not allow Nelson to cut the line.

The problem was that Nelson caught them unawares - they were not ready for a fight.