Is it true the English Navy gave Napoleon a ride home once they burned his ships in Egypt? No prison time? or Gitmo time? ;-)

Thanks for your insight & for coming on FDL today; posted in the next thread up top that you are back here answering questions again.

To me, it makes more sense that the Christians burned the library. There is much historical evidence that early Christians had exhibited less tolerance (and much disdain) for science and knowledge than early Muslims. For example: The Moors in Spain were quite tolerant of other religious groups (which begat the downfall of the Moors). The fate of Galileo and other early scientists support my assertion.

Thanks for your insight & for coming on FDL today; posted in the next thread up top that you are back here answering questions again.

Every evidence is that the Muslims just took over the Greek-language bureaucracy and ran it that way for a while, so they would, like most conquerors, have very much wanted a nice library to mine for information about their new holding. Egypt was a great prize in the ancient and medieval worlds because the Nile valley, with its natural system of annual crop fertilization, made it a breadbasket for the greater Mediterranean.

The French lamented the decline and decadence of ancient Alexandria and blamed the Muslims. Of course what really happened was earthquakes. Much of the ancient city, and probably the library too, is under water.

Ironically, much of the French fleet joined its new conquest down there.

But Bonaparte conquered Egypt for economic and geopolitical reasons, not from a romantic preoccupation with the East (though he did talk that way).

My guess is that if the Egypt conquest and occupation had gone well, Bonaparte would have had a small fleet built down on the Red Sea at Qena and would have sent some of his army to help Tippoo Sultan fight the British around Madras in India. But the occupation did not go well and this plan became impossible of execution.

Bonaparte then thought seriously of using a French camel corps to imitate Alexander’s Eastern campaign. He would have gone through Syria to Baghdad then up to Kermanshah and over to Qandahar, then down to the Punjab. British intelligence was very worried about this possibility.

In order to have enough men for such a campaign, Bonaparte would have had to be able to attract freebooters from each territory he conquered along the way, creating a polyglot army. That was what Alexander (and in the 18th century Nadir Shah of Iran) had done.

But when Bonaparte could not reduce Acre in Palestine, this Alexander-like campaign to the east also became impossible.

So I think Alexander was there as an inspiration and sometimes as a model, but Bonparte was perfectly happy to copy other models, as well.

A reminder for anyone dropping by at the usual Book Salon

I mean the usual Book Salon time, of course.

Perhaps this linky works?

Thanks, Scarecrow.

Tomgram: Juan Cole, The Republic Militant at War, Then and Now

August 23, 2007.

Can’t get the link to work.