u going to take us
to India thus," he abashed the speaker and his comrades by the quick
retort, "No, I would not undertake that with such soldiers as you."
French honour, touched to the quick, reasserted itself even above the
torments of thirst; and the troops themselves, when they tardily
reached the Nile and slaked their thirst in its waters, recognized the
pre-eminence of his will and his profound confidence in their
endurance. French gaiety had not been wholly eclipsed even by the
miseries of the desert march. To cheer their drooping spirits the
commander had sent some of the staunchest generals along the line of
march. Among them was the gifted Caffarelli, who had lost a leg in the
Rhenish campaign: his reassuring words called forth the inimitable
retort from the ranks: "Ah! he don't care, not he: he has one leg in
France." Scarcely less witty was the soldier's description of the
prowling Bedouins, who cut off stragglers and plunderers, as "The
mounted highway police."

After brushing aside a charge of 800 Mamelukes at Chebreiss, the army
made its way up the banks of the Nile to Embabeh, opposite Cairo.
There the Mamelukes, led by the fighting Bey, Murad, had their
fortified camp; and there that superb cavalry prepared to overwhelm
the invaders in a whirlwind rush of horse (July 21st, 1798). The
occasion and the surroundings were such as to inspire both sides with
desperate resolution. It was the first fierce shock on land of eastern
chivalry and western enterprise since the days of St. Louis; and the
ardour of the republicans was scarcely less than that which had
kindled the soldiers of the cross. Beside the two armies rolled the
mysterious Nile; 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
horsem