beyond glittered the slender minarets of Cairo; and on the south there loomed the massy Pyramids.  To the forty centuries that had rolled over them, Bonaparte now appealed, in one of those imaginative touches which ever brace the French nature to the utmost tension of daring and endurance.  Thus they advanced in close formation towards the intrenched camp of the Mamelukes.  The divisions on the left at once rushed at its earthworks, silenced its feeble artillery, and slaughtered the fellahin inside.

But the other divisions, now ranged in squares, while gazing at this exploit, were assailed by the Mamelukes.  From out the haze of the mirage, or from behind the ridges of sand and the scrub of the water-melon plants that dotted the plain, some 10,000 of these superb horsemen suddenly appeared and rushed at the squares commanded by Desaix and Reynier.  Their richly caparisoned chargers, their waving plumes, their wild battle-cries, and their marvellous skill with carbine and sword, lent picturesqueness and terror to the charge.  Musketry and grapeshot mowed down their front coursers in ghastly swathes; but the living mass swept on, wellnigh overwhelming the fronts of the squares, and then, swerving aside, poured through the deadly funnel between.  Decimated here also by the steady fire of the French files, and by the discharges of the rear face, they fell away exhausted, leaving heaps of dead and dying on the fronts of the squares, and in their very midst a score of their choicest cavaliers, whose bravery and horsemanship had carried them to certain death amidst the bayonets.  The French now assumed the offensive, and Desaix’s division, threatening to cut off the retreat of Murad’s horsemen, led that wary chief to draw off his shattered squadrons; others sought, though with terrible losses, to escape across the Nile to Ibrahim’s following.  That chief had taken no share in the fight, and now made off towards Syria.  Such was the battle of the Pyramids, which gained a colony at the cost of some thirty killed and about ten times as many wounded:  of the killed about twenty fell victims to the cross fire of the two squares.[104]

After halting for a fortnight at Cairo to recruit his weary troops and to arrange the affairs of his conquest, Bonaparte marched eastwards in pursuit of Ibrahim and drove him into Syria, while Desaix waged an arduous but successful campaign against Murad in Upper Egypt.  But the victors were soon to learn the uselessness of merely military triumphs in Egypt.  As Bonaparte returned to complete the organization of the new colony, he heard that Nelson had destroyed his fleet.

On July 3rd, before setting out from Alexandria, the French commander gave an order to his admiral, though it must be added that its authenticity is doubtful: