Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah and I were talking a little bit about podcast names today because of course we get to title our own episodes and tell us how you did this one. Well. Usually podcast names involve a lot of fraud, last minute decision making. We come into the studio to record and scramble, scramble to figure something out. Jerry Prune's down the amount of punctuation we want to use. We're big in nicolon. But I mean the simple fact is, sometimes really interesting podcast topics don't have obviously interesting titles, and you have to throw in words like murder or heretic to make things a little more spicy. But fortunately for this episode, Napoleon did our job for us. And I'd like to ask you a question. Would you have listened to a podcast on the Battle of Ambaba or perhaps the Mama Luke's at the Melon Fields. I would have done that one still, though My point is epic founding battles like the Battle of the Pyramids or the Battle of the Nile send a lot better and apparently you guys are listening now, so it must have worked a little bit. But before we get to these battles with inflated names, you have to wonder why Napoleon is around the Pyramids and the Nile in the first place. Because we're in about sevent right now, so France has barely recovered from the revolution and from the terror. There are all sorts of internal problems and trouble in Europe. So why are the French in Egypt instead of taking care of things at home. Yeah, they're conquering and they're spreading democracy and they're liberating the people. But to be honest, they're messing with the British and Egypt and of course the English and the French arch enemies for life. So let's explain a little bit about the state of affairs in France in seventeen The country has been at war with much of Europe since the revolution because fellow monarchs really didn't want to let the execution of a king slide. No re decide, not okay, But by seventeen ninety eight they've made peace with Holland, Prussia, the Austrian Empire in Spain. Only England is left as far as people who aren't getting along enemies. Yes, So during this time Napoleon, who is a young officer, is making quite a name for himself. And we'd like to remind anyone who hasn't heard already Napoleon was not short, although he was shorter than we are. So he's won his first battle in seventeen ninety three, but he's not Napoleon Napoleon yet, like not how we think of him, like crowning Joseph yeah, or being consulate. Even the consulate comes after this whole Egypt expedition Frances instead being ruled by five men the direct Jory, Napoleon is still just a general, but he's a really popular general, unlike the Directory, so it's highly convenient when he proposes this idea that will effectually get him out of the country. So instead of leading a direct attack on England, he's going to lead an expedition to Egypt, and a win there would be a really great indirect victory over Britain and it would disturb their overland route to the jewel of all the colonies of the East, which is of course India. So for the Directory there's nothing to lose, and for Napoleon, there are some major possibilities of glory. And if you're wondering why Egypt, Francis had its eye on Egypt for a very long time. Louis the sixteenths advisers had even told him Egypt does not belong to anybody. Nominally, it belongs to the Ottoman Empire, which of course is on the decline at this time. Except for the past five hundred years it's been ruled by a mostly white war Your slave caste called the Mamelukes and the Motolukes, don't replenish their ranks in any sort of dynastic way. Instead, they buy slaves from Eurasia, boys who are scouted for their good teeth and strong limbs, and then train them up as super warriors. And without families, they have no past and no future except for this one, so they live these really luxurious lives in Egypt. You shouldn't think of them how you would normally think of slaves. Totally different situation. They dressed themselves in silk and turbans, and they carry all of their priceless possessions actually on their persons, sometimes hidden in their robes. So imagine them with jeweled swords and coins tucked into pouches. And Egypt in sev is being ruled by two of them, Ibrahim Bay in Alexandria and Mead Bay and Cairo. And they're very oppressive rulers. They tax people heavily, they levy these heavy duties and live in elaborate palaces. But because they don't bother sending much of that tax revenue to the Ottoman Sultan, Napoleon figures, well, maybe the Turks won't even really mind if I invade Egypt, which is a incorrect, terribly incorrect assumption. So Napoleon, that gives you an idea. Though Napoleon doesn't really know what to expect in Egypt, neither did anyone else, because despite the fact that they're about fifty French merchants operating in Egypt and French consulates in Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo, Egypt is still this mystery land to most Europeans. And some thought that they'd find this scary, lawless country with you know, overrun by violent Bedouins. Others thought they would find an Oriental paradise. We're at neither one, and we're somewhere in the middle between these two somewhere. So we're gonna start May with Napoleon putting together this mission to Egypt. He's he's really excited about it. Yeah, and it's secret, which is probably one of the strangest aspects of the whole thing. Even though some people know they're going to Egypt, and even though there's a there's secret talk that the destination is probably Egypt, very few of the soldiers know where they're really bound. And it's a measure of Napoleon's popularity that people are okay with this. It doesn't matter if you have no idea where you're going, they'll still if you're with Napoleon, it's probably going to be good. The soldiers have to go, of course, but civilians are volunteering for this, and that's because in addition to the thirty six thousand soldiers and seventeen thousand sailors, Napoleon's bringing along a group of scientists and artists. And we'll talk about this group of savants in a later episode, but by bringing them, Napoleon has a plan for this. He knew if he was going to conquer a country, he'd have to understand the country, and he'd also need educated help doing things like surveying the land and finding water. But he also loves science, and he wants these talented savants who are experts in their field and students students to collect all the information on Egypt that they can, and traveling with them will make him like Alexander traveling with his philosophers, kind of Napoleon's hero. We've got to say this whole episode or minds us a little bit of Horace. Horace and Alexander episode. So we've got the forces of troops, we have the savants. They're all crossing on four hundred transports, one warships, most of which are leaving from Toulon, and the British fleet, which has been lurking nearby, you know, suspecting the French might be up to something, is scattered by a storm only a day before the ship's leave, and it's commander Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson guesses that Napoleon's headed east and decides to follow him. And then you have this little game of cat and mouse. Nelson misses Napoleon narrowly two times before Napoleon is finally able to unload his men. You really don't want the British fleet to catch you on the water, and the French gain control of Malta, and from there they sailed towards Alexandria. They arrived west of the city in early July and they're pretty excited, and you know, they see Pompey's column, but are a bit underwhelmed by the rest of it. There's kind of a lot of sand and a lot of feral dogs, and it's not quite the Oriental paradise some of them were expecting. So the British have been spotted in the area though, So Napoleon is not gonna just hang out on the ship for a few days and check out Alexandria from afar, So even though it's storming, he has some of his men come ashore in the middle of the storm, nineteen of them drown, and then once they're on land, Napoleon, with three of his generals, takes four thousand, five hundred men to go conquer Alexandria. It's not hard work conquering the city. The Mama Luke Ibraheim Bay loses the city in a matter of hours, and Napoleon steps in, publishing a proclamation claiming he's coming to free the Egyptian people. He's setting himself up not as an enemy of the Egyptians, but as an enemy of the mam Lukes, and a few groups are dispatched to set up garrisons while the bulk of them, the twenty five thousand, take a hike to Cairo, which of course is a five day hike across the desert with no water and in wool coats. As you can imagine, a lot of them don't survive the trips, some even commit suicide. Some are left behind and savonk esparmnge coins the word mirage. But the two savants who attend this march are riding up front with Napoleon, and they're just having a great time riding through the desert, checking out all the interesting natural phenomena. Well behind them, men are blowing your brains exactly. So are there better ways to get to Cairo than walking? Yes, there definitely are. But Napoleon was afraid that if he took the Nile to get to Cairo, he'd run into some British ships along the way. So finally, July temp we have these dying men reach the Nile, or reach this muddy little branch of the Nile, and it wouldn't be water you or I would want to drink. It's gross and muddy and full of leeches and crocodiles. Some of them men drown in their heavy clothing. You can imagine they're not taking too many precautions after a five day march in their wool coats. They just want to get in there. But guess who else is in the area. It's our buddy Murad Bay and a bunch of Mama Luke's and they skirmish at l Romania. And this is number one of our Mama Luke encounters. And we should note to a lot of this battle info that's about to come up is from John Dellinger's article for Military History, but for a pretty fun source on the savants, I'd recommend Nina Burley's Mirage, which I'm in the middle of reading right now. And I'm a big fan of John Dellinger. After our amy had the great podcast on that came in handy, so thank you Military History, awesome writer. So a few days of rest for Napoleon's men, and then they run into the mam Lukes again. This time it's at shuber Kit and encounter number two is a little more intense than the last one, but still Napoleon's able to press on. Finally, we have our third encounter with the Mamlukes on July twenty one, and this is what should be called the Battle of Embabe, but that is where it was after all, but since it's in sight of the Pyramids, it gets a much cooler name. They had our our podcast titles must have been. So at about two pm, Napoleon approaches the village and the mam lukes of both of the bays, Ibraheim and Murad, are waiting for him across the river, and Napoleon isn't going to be able to cross that river with all these guys waiting on the other side to get to Cairo. So good position, it seems like, yeah, it seems like very good position ning, except for some reason, Murad Bay decides that he's going to cross the river and attack Napoleon on the west bank, So this splits the Egyptian forces and Abraham Bay is left stranded or waiting and watching rather on the east bank. Napoleon takes stock of the situation and tells his men soldiers from the Summit of Yonder Pyramids forty centuries behold you. And as a side note here, he almost gets the age right, which is crazy because it's not officially determined for about fifty more years, so that Napoleon guest Napoleon. So the Egyptians are about one mile off, and just to give you some numbers on it, they have about four thousand to six thousand of these Mamlukes, who are crazy fighters, really talented and really brave. They have some highly trained Turkish soldiers and they have about forty cannons. And then there's a lot of infant free men and they're called Fellaheen, about fifteen thousand of them, which sounds good. That sounds like a lot of guys, right, except that the Philaheen are really just a bunch of rabble, basically peasants with clubs, and they're not particularly effective fighters. Abrahim has an additional eighteen thousand Fellaheen, plus several thousand Mamelukes, but he doesn't really matter at this point because he is across the river, not in the game, and Napoleon has seen how the Mamoluke cavalry fight. They come in swarming on their Arabians, their silk scarves billowing and first they fire their musket and pistols and toss them behind them for a servant to collect. I would not want that to be my job. And then they go close range with javelins, battle axes, maces and jeweled scimitars. And these are big guys. So if you imagine it, you can see how intimidating it would be. Bright colors and yeah, all really impressively, very Hollywood. But the tactic is straightforward. It's charge, that's it. So Napoleon knows how to counter such a straightforward tactic. So with some riverboat cover, he groups his men into square divisions that can work in any direction, and Encyclopedia Britannica calls this idea massive divisional square, Napoleon's one significant contribution to tactics. And just to give you a basic explanation of how it works, imagine a square with cavalry in its center. All around are about six ranks of infantry, so heavy padding on every side. Then the corners are studded by artillery. So the beauty of the square is that it can move in any direction and that it's equally protected from all directions, so it doesn't matter what side you're attacked from you can accommodate it. Napoleon sets up five of these in a line along the nile, and his is in the middle, because that offers him the most protection of each side and the ability to see what's going on. Sarah called the Beauty of the squares. I think that would be a lovely title for a collection of short stories. And the other point, of course, is that you can't chicken out, because you're only safe in your square. If you try to get out of it, you're completely screwed. Mama Luke is going to be cutting you down with his sword. So the mom Lukes charged the right flank, and the artillery that's positioned at the corners there go ahead and fire, but the infantry holds. Finally, when the Mamo Lukes are right in front of them pretty much, they fire, and a lieutenant writes that the soldiers fired with such coolness that not a single cartridge was wasted, waiting until the last minute when the horsemen were about to break our square. The number of corpses surrounding our square soon was considerable, and the close of the dead and wounded mam Lukes were burning like tinder. The blazing wads of our muskets penetrated at the same time as our bullets through their rich uniforms which were embroidered with gold and silver and floated as lightly as gauze, so in that in a close range just the sparks were setting them on fire as they were getting shot. Yeah, so Napoleon's middle squares also shelling the cavalry, and a group of frenchmen has been dispatched to the nearby village and they've camped out on the rooftop, so they have a lot of covering fire. But the square tactic is working really well. Is that the mamlukes don't get the point. They keep on charging. They don't know what else to do, and their buddies on the east bank, who of course are just watching and can't fight themselves, cheer them on, probably encouraging them to go on these suicidal missions. We also read about a very strange encounter which was this man to man combat when one old mom luke strips about one of these squares and a French lieutenant comes out to accept his challenge. They face off. The mom luke is shot, but he crawls away and cuts off the feet of the French lieutenant's horse before the lieutenant goes ahead and gets him with his say burt and finally the other frenchman come over and rifle butt him. So that was the end of that encounter. Let the end for the mom Luke after about an hour of fighting Nearad Bay, who is also wounded by this point, escapes before the French cut off the retreat and the mom Lukes, who are trapped though, meet a pretty bad fate. They try to distract the French by throwing coins about which shiny doesn't work because you know, you can also collect your coins when you're a dead body lying there. So some of them jump into the nile and some of them drown, and some of them are shot, probably by frenchmen trying to get some of those riches. But where's Abraham and all of this, we have to wonder what's he doing with all of his guys just sitting on the other side of the river. The problem is a dust storm has come up, so he can't see what's really happening. He flees east miad Bay eventually flees to the south and there we go. That's pretty much the end of the Mamlukes fight against Napoleon. This is a decisive win for the French. And if you're wondering what napoleon goddess is, spoils of war an Arabian horse, which we can only hope is as good as a maringo, even though he's yet to come. And to mom Luke boys. Even though slavery is illegal in France, Napoleon's he keeps. I think one of them becomes Josephine's servant. So they last a long time. But on July, Cairo is surrendered to Napoleon and he enters the city July. He tries to court the people, show his sympathy for Islam. But things are are pretty good at first for the French. They have little expeditions to the Pyramids, which I'm glad they get to do that. I mean, imagine you're this French soldier, you'd want to see the Pyramids while you were there. They have really luxurious living quarters. But the victory is extremely short lived because only ten days after the Battle of the Pyramids, Horatio Nelson finally catches up with the French fleet, and that's in Abu Kuer Bay near Alexandria. But why is Napoleon's fleet still there because they landed weeks ago, yes, and they're still just hanging out here, loaded with supplies and gunpowder. That's a little bit strange. It is strange, and according to Napoleon's secretary, the general had had plans to unload all of that stuff once Egypt was finally secure and send the ships back to Toulon to rejoin the navy, and from there, who knows, maybe go across the channel attack the British. But it's August and the ships are still sitting there, and Nelson finally comes across them at about two am and decides he's going to fight that very morning, and he maneuvers between the fleet and the shore, which is something that the French thought was impossible bowl and consequently they neglected to put any weapons on that side of the ship, so they're completely vulnerable. The French admiral is aboard the flagship, of course, and the flagship had been the home of these very impressive salons on the journey to Egypt, and it was filled with lots of intelligent conversation, but right now it's filled with all of the powder from the expedition, so it is a giant ship bomb and even after the admiral's legs are blown off by cannon, he's still on the ship, directing the course of the fight. Finally he's killed by a cannonball. In about an hour after his death, the fire that has spread aboard the ship finally reaches the powder magazine. We have this huge explosion. It's heard fifty miles away. Hundred frenchmen are dead, their three thousand prisoners. No fleet left, no way home unless you're managed to hop aboard a merchant ship, no communication, no supplies. Can things get any worse? And sure enough, they do get worse. By September eleven, the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Third it declares war on France, and by October one there's a revolt in Cairo because people aren't really buying Napoleon's argument that he's here for the Egyptians and he really loves them. So Napoleon is defeated in Ottoman Syria, which is now part of Israel, and by August, it's just a little more than a year after he arrived in Egypt, Napoleon's out of there. He high tails it on this merchant ship and leaves the army there for another two years. He has other things to do. I guess the Battle of the Nile was the beginning of the end for the French in Egypt. The Battle of the Pyramids was simply a fleeting victory, but while it didn't secure French success, it did open up Cairo to the savants, which is something that really helped develop the field of archaeology and led to this obsession with Egypt that swept through Europe and also through our elementary school classrooms. Yeah, so that is of course an episode for next time. But I guess it brings us to listener mail. So we've been getting tons of mail on our podcast on King Ludvig the Second. Mad King Ludvig, he would have so many dinner guests. I think maybe had been around he would So our first is from Julie and she wrote, you said, if you're in Bavaria, let us know what Germans think of King Ludwig the Second. Well, I just got back from various specifically Munich, yesterday, and have I got some Ludvig the Second facts for you. And she goes on to talk a little bit about how elaborate his family's castles were and how that probably set a precedent for his own designs. But she also mentioned that the Bavarian political party that wants to bring back the monarchy only receives about one percent of the votes, and she writes Germans don't love the idea of a monarch and practice, but they recognized that King Ludwig the Second was, despite his eccentricities, a brilliant man and a visionary. He funded several early flight attempts and you can now find a statue of him in the Munich airport. He treated his workers very well, giving them a portion of their pay if they were injured or disabled, and paying their families if they died on the job. So Ludvig, he's a little bit ahead of his times, I guess. She also writes if Germans don't love lud Wig, they certainly respect the brilliance and humanity that the mad king possessed. We're Ludwig fan, so we can go along with that. And our second email as also about Ludwig. This one's from Kelly, who was an army brat and lived in West Germany in the eighties, and she said, in school, we had a host Nation teacher whose favorite topic was King Ludwig the second. Unfortunately, Sarah and I did none of his teacher And two things that she told us, which I always assumed were true, that you didn't mention in your podcast were one. He invented a toilet system in his castles as a child. The first time I visited Ni sevon Stein, I asked the tour guide if I could see the bathroom and was disappointed to be told that it was off limits and not part of the tour. And too, he invented the magic table because he had gum disease, was ashamed about his bleeding gums, and therefore wanted to dine in private. So now I feel a little bad about making fun of that whole table contraption. Now I loved the table. I will never make fun of the table. If you'd like to email us, our address is History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter and missed in History, and we have a Facebook fan page, and if you'd like to read a little bit more. In preparation for our Sammonts podcast, Sarah wrote a great article called how Archaeology works, and you can find it if you search our homepage on www. Dot how stuff Works dot com. For more on this and thousands of u their topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out this stuff you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff Works dot com point page. H

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah and I were talking a little bit about podcast names today because of course we get to title our own episodes and tell us how you did this one. Well. Usually podcast names involve a lot of fraud, last minute decision making. We come into the studio to record and scramble, scramble to figure something out. Jerry Prune's down the amount of punctuation we want to use. We're big in nicolon. But I mean the simple fact is, sometimes really interesting podcast topics don't have obviously interesting titles, and you have to throw in words like murder or heretic to make things a little more spicy. But fortunately for this episode, Napoleon did our job for us. And I'd like to ask you a question. Would you have listened to a podcast on the Battle of Ambaba or perhaps the Mama Luke's at the Melon Fields. I would have done that one still, though My point is epic founding battles like the Battle of the Pyramids or the Battle of the Nile send a lot better and apparently you guys are listening now, so it must have worked a little bit. But before we get to these battles with inflated names, you have to wonder why Napoleon is around the Pyramids and the Nile in the first place. Because we're in about sevent right now, so France has barely recovered from the revolution and from the terror. There are all sorts of internal problems and trouble in Europe. So why are the French in Egypt instead of taking care of things at home. Yeah, they're conquering and they're spreading democracy and they're liberating the people. But to be honest, they're messing with the British and Egypt and of course the English and the French arch enemies for life. So let's explain a little bit about the state of affairs in France in seventeen The country has been at war with much of Europe since the revolution because fellow monarchs really didn't want to let the execution of a king slide. No re decide, not okay, But by seventeen ninety eight they've made peace with Holland, Prussia, the Austrian Empire in Spain. Only England is left as far as people who aren't getting along enemies. Yes, So during this time Napoleon, who is a young officer, is making quite a name for himself. And we'd like to remind anyone who hasn't heard already Napoleon was not short, although he was shorter than we are. So he's won his first battle in seventeen ninety three, but he's not Napoleon Napoleon yet, like not how we think of him, like crowning Joseph yeah, or being consulate. Even the consulate comes after this whole Egypt expedition Frances instead being ruled by five men the direct Jory, Napoleon is still just a general, but he's a really popular general, unlike the Directory, so it's highly convenient when he proposes this idea that will effectually get him out of the country. So instead of leading a direct attack on England, he's going to lead an expedition to Egypt, and a win there would be a really great indirect victory over Britain and it would disturb their overland route to the jewel of all the colonies of the East, which is of course India. So for the Directory there's nothing to lose, and for Napoleon, there are some major possibilities of glory. And if you're wondering why Egypt, Francis had its eye on Egypt for a very long time. Louis the sixteenths advisers had even told him Egypt does not belong to anybody. Nominally, it belongs to the Ottoman Empire, which of course is on the decline at this time. Except for the past five hundred years it's been ruled by a mostly white war Your slave caste called the Mamelukes and the Motolukes, don't replenish their ranks in any sort of dynastic way. Instead, they buy slaves from Eurasia, boys who are scouted for their good teeth and strong limbs, and then train them up as super warriors. And without families, they have no past and no future except for this one, so they live these really luxurious lives in Egypt. You shouldn't think of them how you would normally think of slaves. Totally different situation. They dressed themselves in silk and turbans, and they carry all of their priceless possessions actually on their persons, sometimes hidden in their robes. So imagine them with jeweled swords and coins tucked into pouches. And Egypt in sev is being ruled by two of them, Ibrahim Bay in Alexandria and Mead Bay and Cairo. And they're very oppressive rulers. They tax people heavily, they levy these heavy duties and live in elaborate palaces. But because they don't bother sending much of that tax revenue to the Ottoman Sultan, Napoleon figures, well, maybe the Turks won't even really mind if I invade Egypt, which is a incorrect, terribly incorrect assumption. So Napoleon, that gives you an idea. Though Napoleon doesn't really know what to expect in Egypt, neither did anyone else, because despite the fact that they're about fifty French merchants operating in Egypt and French consulates in Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo, Egypt is still this mystery land to most Europeans. And some thought that they'd find this scary, lawless country with you know, overrun by violent Bedouins. Others thought they would find an Oriental paradise. We're at neither one, and we're somewhere in the middle between these two somewhere. So we're gonna start May with Napoleon putting together this mission to Egypt. He's he's really excited about it. Yeah, and it's secret, which is probably one of the strangest aspects of the whole thing. Even though some people know they're going to Egypt, and even though there's a there's secret talk that the destination is probably Egypt, very few of the soldiers know where they're really bound. And it's a measure of Napoleon's popularity that people are okay with this. It doesn't matter if you have no idea where you're going, they'll still if you're with Napoleon, it's probably going to be good. The soldiers have to go, of course, but civilians are volunteering for this, and that's because in addition to the thirty six thousand soldiers and seventeen thousand sailors, Napoleon's bringing along a group of scientists and artists. And we'll talk about this group of savants in a later episode, but by bringing them, Napoleon has a plan for this. He knew if he was going to conquer a country, he'd have to understand the country, and he'd also need educated help doing things like surveying the land and finding water. But he also loves science, and he wants these talented savants who are experts in their field and students students to collect all the information on Egypt that they can, and traveling with them will make him like Alexander traveling with his philosophers, kind of Napoleon's hero. We've got to say this whole episode or minds us a little bit of Horace. Horace and Alexander episode. So we've got the forces of troops, we have the savants. They're all crossing on four hundred transports, one warships, most of which are leaving from Toulon, and the British fleet, which has been lurking nearby, you know, suspecting the French might be up to something, is scattered by a storm only a day before the ship's leave, and it's commander Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson guesses that Napoleon's headed east and decides to follow him. And then you have this little game of cat and mouse. Nelson misses Napoleon narrowly two times before Napoleon is finally able to unload his men. You really don't want the British fleet to catch you on the water, and the French gain control of Malta, and from there they sailed towards Alexandria. They arrived west of the city in early July and they're pretty excited, and you know, they see Pompey's column, but are a bit underwhelmed by the rest of it. There's kind of a lot of sand and a lot of feral dogs, and it's not quite the Oriental paradise some of them were expecting. So the British have been spotted in the area though, So Napoleon is not gonna just hang out on the ship for a few days and check out Alexandria from afar, So even though it's storming, he has some of his men come ashore in the middle of the storm, nineteen of them drown, and then once they're on land, Napoleon, with three of his generals, takes four thousand, five hundred men to go conquer Alexandria. It's not hard work conquering the city. The Mama Luke Ibraheim Bay loses the city in a matter of hours, and Napoleon steps in, publishing a proclamation claiming he's coming to free the Egyptian people. He's setting himself up not as an enemy of the Egyptians, but as an enemy of the mam Lukes, and a few groups are dispatched to set up garrisons while the bulk of them, the twenty five thousand, take a hike to Cairo, which of course is a five day hike across the desert with no water and in wool coats. As you can imagine, a lot of them don't survive the trips, some even commit suicide. Some are left behind and savonk esparmnge coins the word mirage. But the two savants who attend this march are riding up front with Napoleon, and they're just having a great time riding through the desert, checking out all the interesting natural phenomena. Well behind them, men are blowing your brains exactly. So are there better ways to get to Cairo than walking? Yes, there definitely are. But Napoleon was afraid that if he took the Nile to get to Cairo, he'd run into some British ships along the way. So finally, July temp we have these dying men reach the Nile, or reach this muddy little branch of the Nile, and it wouldn't be water you or I would want to drink. It's gross and muddy and full of leeches and crocodiles. Some of them men drown in their heavy clothing. You can imagine they're not taking too many precautions after a five day march in their wool coats. They just want to get in there. But guess who else is in the area. It's our buddy Murad Bay and a bunch of Mama Luke's and they skirmish at l Romania. And this is number one of our Mama Luke encounters. And we should note to a lot of this battle info that's about to come up is from John Dellinger's article for Military History, but for a pretty fun source on the savants, I'd recommend Nina Burley's Mirage, which I'm in the middle of reading right now. And I'm a big fan of John Dellinger. After our amy had the great podcast on that came in handy, so thank you Military History, awesome writer. So a few days of rest for Napoleon's men, and then they run into the mam Lukes again. This time it's at shuber Kit and encounter number two is a little more intense than the last one, but still Napoleon's able to press on. Finally, we have our third encounter with the Mamlukes on July twenty one, and this is what should be called the Battle of Embabe, but that is where it was after all, but since it's in sight of the Pyramids, it gets a much cooler name. They had our our podcast titles must have been. So at about two pm, Napoleon approaches the village and the mam lukes of both of the bays, Ibraheim and Murad, are waiting for him across the river, and Napoleon isn't going to be able to cross that river with all these guys waiting on the other side to get to Cairo. So good position, it seems like, yeah, it seems like very good position ning, except for some reason, Murad Bay decides that he's going to cross the river and attack Napoleon on the west bank, So this splits the Egyptian forces and Abraham Bay is left stranded or waiting and watching rather on the east bank. Napoleon takes stock of the situation and tells his men soldiers from the Summit of Yonder Pyramids forty centuries behold you. And as a side note here, he almost gets the age right, which is crazy because it's not officially determined for about fifty more years, so that Napoleon guest Napoleon. So the Egyptians are about one mile off, and just to give you some numbers on it, they have about four thousand to six thousand of these Mamlukes, who are crazy fighters, really talented and really brave. They have some highly trained Turkish soldiers and they have about forty cannons. And then there's a lot of infant free men and they're called Fellaheen, about fifteen thousand of them, which sounds good. That sounds like a lot of guys, right, except that the Philaheen are really just a bunch of rabble, basically peasants with clubs, and they're not particularly effective fighters. Abrahim has an additional eighteen thousand Fellaheen, plus several thousand Mamelukes, but he doesn't really matter at this point because he is across the river, not in the game, and Napoleon has seen how the Mamoluke cavalry fight. They come in swarming on their Arabians, their silk scarves billowing and first they fire their musket and pistols and toss them behind them for a servant to collect. I would not want that to be my job. And then they go close range with javelins, battle axes, maces and jeweled scimitars. And these are big guys. So if you imagine it, you can see how intimidating it would be. Bright colors and yeah, all really impressively, very Hollywood. But the tactic is straightforward. It's charge, that's it. So Napoleon knows how to counter such a straightforward tactic. So with some riverboat cover, he groups his men into square divisions that can work in any direction, and Encyclopedia Britannica calls this idea massive divisional square, Napoleon's one significant contribution to tactics. And just to give you a basic explanation of how it works, imagine a square with cavalry in its center. All around are about six ranks of infantry, so heavy padding on every side. Then the corners are studded by artillery. So the beauty of the square is that it can move in any direction and that it's equally protected from all directions, so it doesn't matter what side you're attacked from you can accommodate it. Napoleon sets up five of these in a line along the nile, and his is in the middle, because that offers him the most protection of each side and the ability to see what's going on. Sarah called the Beauty of the squares. I think that would be a lovely title for a collection of short stories. And the other point, of course, is that you can't chicken out, because you're only safe in your square. If you try to get out of it, you're completely screwed. Mama Luke is going to be cutting you down with his sword. So the mom Lukes charged the right flank, and the artillery that's positioned at the corners there go ahead and fire, but the infantry holds. Finally, when the Mamo Lukes are right in front of them pretty much, they fire, and a lieutenant writes that the soldiers fired with such coolness that not a single cartridge was wasted, waiting until the last minute when the horsemen were about to break our square. The number of corpses surrounding our square soon was considerable, and the close of the dead and wounded mam Lukes were burning like tinder. The blazing wads of our muskets penetrated at the same time as our bullets through their rich uniforms which were embroidered with gold and silver and floated as lightly as gauze, so in that in a close range just the sparks were setting them on fire as they were getting shot. Yeah, so Napoleon's middle squares also shelling the cavalry, and a group of frenchmen has been dispatched to the nearby village and they've camped out on the rooftop, so they have a lot of covering fire. But the square tactic is working really well. Is that the mamlukes don't get the point. They keep on charging. They don't know what else to do, and their buddies on the east bank, who of course are just watching and can't fight themselves, cheer them on, probably encouraging them to go on these suicidal missions. We also read about a very strange encounter which was this man to man combat when one old mom luke strips about one of these squares and a French lieutenant comes out to accept his challenge. They face off. The mom luke is shot, but he crawls away and cuts off the feet of the French lieutenant's horse before the lieutenant goes ahead and gets him with his say burt and finally the other frenchman come over and rifle butt him. So that was the end of that encounter. Let the end for the mom Luke after about an hour of fighting Nearad Bay, who is also wounded by this point, escapes before the French cut off the retreat and the mom Lukes, who are trapped though, meet a pretty bad fate. They try to distract the French by throwing coins about which shiny doesn't work because you know, you can also collect your coins when you're a dead body lying there. So some of them jump into the nile and some of them drown, and some of them are shot, probably by frenchmen trying to get some of those riches. But where's Abraham and all of this, we have to wonder what's he doing with all of his guys just sitting on the other side of the river. The problem is a dust storm has come up, so he can't see what's really happening. He flees east miad Bay eventually flees to the south and there we go. That's pretty much the end of the Mamlukes fight against Napoleon. This is a decisive win for the French. And if you're wondering what napoleon goddess is, spoils of war an Arabian horse, which we can only hope is as good as a maringo, even though he's yet to come. And to mom Luke boys. Even though slavery is illegal in France, Napoleon's he keeps. I think one of them becomes Josephine's servant. So they last a long time. But on July, Cairo is surrendered to Napoleon and he enters the city July. He tries to court the people, show his sympathy for Islam. But things are are pretty good at first for the French. They have little expeditions to the Pyramids, which I'm glad they get to do that. I mean, imagine you're this French soldier, you'd want to see the Pyramids while you were there. They have really luxurious living quarters. But the victory is extremely short lived because only ten days after the Battle of the Pyramids, Horatio Nelson finally catches up with the French fleet, and that's in Abu Kuer Bay near Alexandria. But why is Napoleon's fleet still there because they landed weeks ago, yes, and they're still just hanging out here, loaded with supplies and gunpowder. That's a little bit strange. It is strange, and according to Napoleon's secretary, the general had had plans to unload all of that stuff once Egypt was finally secure and send the ships back to Toulon to rejoin the navy, and from there, who knows, maybe go across the channel attack the British. But it's August and the ships are still sitting there, and Nelson finally comes across them at about two am and decides he's going to fight that very morning, and he maneuvers between the fleet and the shore, which is something that the French thought was impossible bowl and consequently they neglected to put any weapons on that side of the ship, so they're completely vulnerable. The French admiral is aboard the flagship, of course, and the flagship had been the home of these very impressive salons on the journey to Egypt, and it was filled with lots of intelligent conversation, but right now it's filled with all of the powder from the expedition, so it is a giant ship bomb and even after the admiral's legs are blown off by cannon, he's still on the ship, directing the course of the fight. Finally he's killed by a cannonball. In about an hour after his death, the fire that has spread aboard the ship finally reaches the powder magazine. We have this huge explosion. It's heard fifty miles away. Hundred frenchmen are dead, their three thousand prisoners. No fleet left, no way home unless you're managed to hop aboard a merchant ship, no communication, no supplies. Can things get any worse? And sure enough, they do get worse. By September eleven, the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Third it declares war on France, and by October one there's a revolt in Cairo because people aren't really buying Napoleon's argument that he's here for the Egyptians and he really loves them. So Napoleon is defeated in Ottoman Syria, which is now part of Israel, and by August, it's just a little more than a year after he arrived in Egypt, Napoleon's out of there. He high tails it on this merchant ship and leaves the army there for another two years. He has other things to do. I guess the Battle of the Nile was the beginning of the end for the French in Egypt. The Battle of the Pyramids was simply a fleeting victory, but while it didn't secure French success, it did open up Cairo to the savants, which is something that really helped develop the field of archaeology and led to this obsession with Egypt that swept through Europe and also through our elementary school classrooms. Yeah, so that is of course an episode for next time. But I guess it brings us to listener mail. So we've been getting tons of mail on our podcast on King Ludvig the Second. Mad King Ludvig, he would have so many dinner guests. I think maybe had been around he would So our first is from Julie and she wrote, you said, if you're in Bavaria, let us know what Germans think of King Ludwig the Second. Well, I just got back from various specifically Munich, yesterday, and have I got some Ludvig the Second facts for you. And she goes on to talk a little bit about how elaborate his family's castles were and how that probably set a precedent for his own designs. But she also mentioned that the Bavarian political party that wants to bring back the monarchy only receives about one percent of the votes, and she writes Germans don't love the idea of a monarch and practice, but they recognized that King Ludwig the Second was, despite his eccentricities, a brilliant man and a visionary. He funded several early flight attempts and you can now find a statue of him in the Munich airport. He treated his workers very well, giving them a portion of their pay if they were injured or disabled, and paying their families if they died on the job. So Ludvig, he's a little bit ahead of his times, I guess. She also writes if Germans don't love lud Wig, they certainly respect the brilliance and humanity that the mad king possessed. We're Ludwig fan, so we can go along with that. And our second email as also about Ludwig. This one's from Kelly, who was an army brat and lived in West Germany in the eighties, and she said, in school, we had a host Nation teacher whose favorite topic was King Ludwig the second. Unfortunately, Sarah and I did none of his teacher And two things that she told us, which I always assumed were true, that you didn't mention in your podcast were one. He invented a toilet system in his castles as a child. The first time I visited Ni sevon Stein, I asked the tour guide if I could see the bathroom and was disappointed to be told that it was off limits and not part of the tour. And too, he invented the magic table because he had gum disease, was ashamed about his bleeding gums, and therefore wanted to dine in private. So now I feel a little bad about making fun of that whole table contraption. Now I loved the table. I will never make fun of the table. If you'd like to email us, our address is History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter and missed in History, and we have a Facebook fan page, and if you'd like to read a little bit more. In preparation for our Sammonts podcast, Sarah wrote a great article called how Archaeology works, and you can find it if you search our homepage on www. Dot how stuff Works dot com. For more on this and thousands of u their topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out this stuff you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff Works dot com point page. H