The landing and Napoleon's manifesto

01The landing and Napoleon's manifesto

Napoleon's policy at the start

• Napoleon judged that the best way to consolidate France's authority was to flatter the Ottoman State and draw the Egyptians to his side.
• He convinced the Egyptians that he had come to fight the foreign Mamluks who drained Egypt's wealth and wronged its people.
• He promised to found a local (civil) government in which authority would belong to the Egyptians.
• He issued a manifesto in June 1798 and circulated it before the Campaign reached the Egyptian shores.

The ideas of the manifesto

• It claimed that he believed in God, honoured His Prophet and the Qur'an, and that all people are equal before God.
• It said that only reason, virtues and knowledge distinguish people from one another.
• At the same time it threatened to burn any village that attacked the French forces.

Arrival of the Campaign

• The Campaign arrived in early July 1798; the Mamluks had exhausted their strength in internal quarrels and had not fortified the country's borders.