Bonaparte strove to divert the thoughts of the soldiers by various expeditions, and soon made them forget this disaster.  On the festival of the foundation of the republic, he endeavoured to give a new stimulus to their imagination; he engraved on Pompey’s Pillar the names of the first forty soldiers slain in Egypt.  They were the forty who had fallen in the attack on Alexandria; and the names of these men, sprung from the villages of France, were thus associated with the immortality of Pompey and Alexander.

Bonaparte, after the battle of the Pyramids, found himself master of Egypt.  He began to establish himself there, and sent his generals into the provinces to complete their conquest.  Desaix, placed at the entrance of Upper Egypt with a division of about three thousand men, was directed to reduce the remnants of Murad Bey’s force in that province.  It was in the preceding year (October, 1798), at the moment when the inundation was over, that Desaix had commenced his expedition.  The enemy had retired before him, and did not wait for him till he reached Sediman; there, on October 7th, Desaix fought a sanguinary battle with the desperate remainder of Murad Bey’s forces.  Two thousand French had to combat with four thousand Mamluks and eight thousand fellahs, intrenched in the village of Sediman.  The battle was conducted in the same manner as that of the Pyramids, and like all those fought in Egypt.  The fellahs were behind the walls of the village, and the horse in the plain.  The field of battle was thickly strewn with slain.  The French lost three hundred men.  Desaix continued his march during the whole winter, and, after a series of actions, reduced Upper Egypt as far as the cataracts.  He made himself equally feared for his bravery and beloved for his clemency.  In Cairo, Bonaparte had been named Sultan Kebir, the Fire Sultan.  In Upper Egypt, Desaix was called the “Just Sultan.”

Bonaparte had meanwhile marched to Belbeys, to drive Ibrahim Bey into Syria, and he had collected by the way the wrecks of the caravan of Mecca, plundered by the Arabs.  Returning to Cairo, he continued to establish there an entirely French administration.  Thus passed the winter between 1798 and 1799 in the expectation of important events.  During this interval, Bonaparte received intelligence of the declaration of war by the Porte, and of the preparations which it was making against him with the aid of the English.  Two armies were being formed, one at Rhodes, the other in Syria.  These two armies were to act simultaneously in the spring of 1799, the one by landing at Abukir near Alexandria, the other by crossing the desert which separates Syria from Egypt.  Bonaparte was instantly aware of his position, and determined, as was his custom, to disconcert the enemy and to forestall any offensive movement by a sudden attack.  He could not cross the desert which parts Egypt from Syria in summer, and he resolved to avail himself of the winter for destroying the assemblages of troops