Episode II: The Battle of the Pyramids

The long 19th century was a time when racism was an adventure. In that age when yt ppl were at their most tricknological, quirked up kkkrackas were launching new expeditions in caucasity at unprecedented levels. This is the Yakubian Years...

This was an era which was born in bloodshed and ended in bloodshed, whose bookends were two global conflicts of previously unknown scale: the French Revolutionary (and later Napoleonic) Wars and the First World War. Today's episode takes us right back to the beginning...

At the same time Louis XVI was losing his head, a Haitian Creole freeman named Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the famous author, was rising the ranks of the French military. Forced by racism to enlist as a private, Dumas eventually ascended to the rank of general, serving directly under Napoleon.

Dumas and Napoleon were fighting in northern Italy together when their bitter rivalry began. Napoleon often omitted mentions of Dumas in his reports to the Directory and assigned him to tasks beneath his rank. Nonetheless, Dumas developed a reputation for strong republicanism and battlefield heroism. At the Battle of Clausen, his ferocity when confronting the Austrian forces earned him the nickname "der schwarze teufel" (the black devil) and the title "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol" from his French compatriots.

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of Dumas and the revolutionary fervor of the largely untrained French Revolutionary Army, Napoleon emerged from the War of the First Coalition as a hero and acclaimed strategic genius. He had successfully defended France from the armies of nearly ever other European country at once. With the forces of reaction on the back foot, the Revolution was able to take an offensive stance.

Still reeling from the loss of their American colonies and their setback in the First Coalition, the British Empire was beset on all sides by anti-colonial forces. Inspired by their American and French comrades, Irish Republicans rebelled against the crown in 1798.

Meanwhile, the British East India Company had been engaged in a bitter rivalry with the Sultanate of Mysore for the better part of 30 years. Recently, Tipu Sultan had made use of innovative rocket artillery to successfully repel Governor-general Cornwallis, famous for his surrender to the Americans at Yorktown, and send him packing home to England.

Knowing the precarious situation in the British colonies, Napoleon devised an ambitious scheme. He would make a break for India by overrunning Mamluk Egypt, a highly unstable part of the Ottoman Empire, and establish a double-port at Suez to put pressure on British holdings in India.

Egypt was chosen for a number of reasons beyond its political instability, however. At the time, deistic French intellectuals were reevaluating the foundations of Western Civilization outside of Christian Orthodoxy and many viewed Egypt as the civilizational origin point they were looking for.

In March 1798, General Dumas joined a massive French armada at Toulon preparing to depart for an unknown destination. The fleet invaded Malta, which they conquered in a day. Napoleon then announced that their final destination was Egypt and that Dumas would command all cavalry in the Armée d'Orient.

Napoleon was well aware of the historic implications of his mission and made an appropriately grandiose announcement when Alexandria was in sight, saying, "The first city we will encounter was built by Alexander. We shall find at every step great remains worthy of exciting French emulation."

A short battle ensued after the initial French landing at Alexandria. Following the battle, Napoleon sent Dumas to negotiate a prisoner exchange with some Bedouins, who mistook the tall, black general as the leader of the French army, a slight against Napoleon that the diminutive would-be dictator took personally. Later, as the army struggled to maintain its morale on the rough march to Cairo, Dumas cautioned Napoleon against continuing the campaign. For the conqueror, this was the last straw.

Incensed by the notion of Dumas plotting mutiny (Dumas had the ear of the other generals, who were also concerned for the state of the French troops in the harsh desert), Napoleon threatened to shoot him on the spot. Dumas asked to be relieved and sent back to France, to which Napoleon agreed.

Napoleon needed to finish his mission. He had already dispatched a letter to Mysore saying, "You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England."

The Battle of Embabeh, later called the Battle of the Pyramids by Napoleon, took place on 21 July 1798. The pyramids could be seen on the horizon, 9 miles away. It was a decisive victory for the French, who destroyed almost the entirety of the Ottoman army in Egypt.

While Napoleon was the undisputed best commander of his era on land, oceans were now battlefields. Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson of the Royal Navy made a name for himself when he located the French fleet supporting the occupation of Egypt from the Mediterranean and utterly crushed it during the Battle of the Nile.

Meanwhile, another young British officer, Colonel Arthur Wellesley (future Duke of Wellington), was organizing an offensive against Tipu Sultan in India, initiating a campaign that would eventually result in the Tiger of Mysore's untimely death in battle.

With no navy to safely get them home, the French army was trapped in Cairo. The already unstable region was tipped over into chaos and the Muslim peasants in the city revolted. General Dumas had one last chance to display heroism for France when he stormed the Al-Azhar mosque and decimated the rebels.

As previously arranged, Napoleon shipped Dumas back to France in a damaged ship that began to sink almost as soon as it set off. The crew crash-landed in Naples, expecting a hero's welcome in the Parthenopean Republic, but were instead arrested by the Holy Faith Army that had recently restored the Kingdom of Naples. Dumas spent the next 3 years in prison.

Despite his early successes, Napoleon had failed to achieve his military goals in Egypt. However, his scientific goals were a blockbuster success. The Armée d'Orient had been accompanied by the Commission des sciences et des arts, who made a number of important discoveries (read: stole a lot of shit).

Known popularly as "the savants", the commission was charged with publishing the Description de l'Égypte, the first work of modern Egyptology and the largest published work of its time. Edward Said called the work "that great collective appropriation of one country by another".

But perhaps the greatest known discovery of the expedition was the Rosetta Stone, a Ptolemaic decree stele which contained both hieroglyphs and ancient Greek, opening the door to potentially translating ancient Egyptian script. Unfortunately, without a navy, not much stuff could be taken back to France.

It wasn't until the British captured Egypt back from France in 1801 that serious scientific study of the Rosetta Stone was conducted. It was eventually translated by pioneering orientalist Jean-François Champollion, who would go on to decipher a number of previously untranslated inscriptions.

Napoleon's adventure in Egypt captured the imagination of the Western world and spawned a wave of "Egyptomania" that would continue for the next few decades. It became a point of pride for European monarchs to possess ancient Egyptian artifacts, even going so far as to steal entire obelisks.

Another unfortunate side-effect of Egyptomania was the development of modern phrenology. In an attempt to decipher the racial composition of ancient Egyptian civilization, various skull measurements were made on mummies in order to determine that they were, in fact, white (convenient, huh?).

Perhaps the weirdest contributors to this great historic crime were the Mormons. Joseph Smith purchased 4 mummies, alongside some papyrus fragments, for phrenological purposes (though he would later enounce the practice). Smith alleged that the fragments he bought contained the words of Abraham (they did not).

The consequences of Napoleon's exploits in the Levant would reverberate across the next century, inspiring numerous European explorers to stake and and discover (read: steal) ancient artifacts around the world. The physical evidence of these consequences can still be seen to this day in museums all across the western world!

Tune in next time for another installment of the Yakubian Years featuring a quirked up white boi with a death wish...