EGYPT 1801: The End of Napoleon's Eastern Empire

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Covers the 1798 French expedition led by Bonaparte to seize Egypt and consolidate French influence in the Mediterranean, plus open up a direct route to Indian and provide an opportunity to destroy the East India Company and fatally weaken Great Britain.

Bonaparte returned to France to mount a coup which would eventually see him installed as Emperor of the French, but behind him he abandoned his army, which remained in control of Egypt, still posing a possible threat to the East India Company, until in 1801 a large but rather heterogeneous British Army led by Sir Ralph Abercrombie landed and in a series of hard-fought battles utterly defeated the French.

The first campaign medal awarded to British soldiers is reckoned to be that given to those men who fought at Waterloo in 1815, but a decade and a half earlier a group of regiments were awarded a unique badge -- a figure of a Sphinx -- to mark their service in Egypt in 1801.

It was a fitting distinction, for the successful campaign was a remarkable one, fought far from home by a British army which had so far not distinguished itself in battle against Revolutionary France, and one moreover which had the most profound consequences in the Napoleonic wars to come.