en 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:

"The admiral will to-morrow acquaint the commander-in-chief by a
report whether the squadron can enter the port of Alexandria, or
whether, in Aboukir Roads, bringing its broadside to bear, it can
defend itself against the enemy's superior force; and in case both
these plans should be impracticable, he must sail for Corfu ...
leaving the light ships and the flotilla at Alexandria."

Brueys speedily discovered that t