french invasion of eegypt: milatary history encyclopedia

French ambitions went beyond Egypt herself. Napoleon’s own personal ambition, needless to say, went even further. A side benefit was to be the seizure of Malta, still ruled by the Knights of St. John, by this point a rather faded force. Malta was to act as a French naval base. Beyond Egypt, the French hoped to challenge the British in India, where French influence had been ended during the Seven Years War. In order to achieve this, one of Napoleon’s orders was to dig a canal through Suez, to allow French fleets into the Red Sea. Napoleon himself appears to have gone beyond just the conquest of Egypt and India. During his Egyptian years, aged only twenty nine, he is on record as having said that Europe was too small for him, and that all greatness was achieved in the east (shades of Julius Caesar worrying that he had achieved nothing at the age that Alexander the Great had already conquered Persia). Having secured Egypt and expelled the British from India, he would rouse the Greeks, destroy the Ottoman Empire, capture Constantinople and attack Europe from the rear. Grand plans, although as events to show, French arms were certainly capable of defeating much larger Ottoman forces.