The enemy abandoned Cairo during the following night and two days later, on 24 July, Napoleon entered the Egyptian capital. The imams and other leaders anxious to win favour had urged their people to come out on to the streets to welcome the French general and his army. As Napoleon and his staff rode up to the open gateway that gave on to the city’s main thoroughfare the religious leaders, the highest officials and the wealthiest merchants met him at the gate and formally offered him the surrender of the city. Napoleon listened to their speeches through an interpreter and then respectfully accepted the surrender. With the Egyptians leading the way and a smartly turned out battalion from each division following Napoleon and his staff, the procession wound its way through the main streets of Cairo towards the palace of the Pasha.The soldiers with their smart facings and brightly polished buttons marched to the tunes of their bands and sang as they tramped through the baking streets, made more uncomfortable still by the press of bodies of the city’s inhabitants who had come to see the spectacle.

Napoleon bowed his head graciously to either side as he passed through the cheering crowds. He had been told that the natives measured a man’s status by his finery and wore his best uniform coat, hurriedly adorned with ample gold lace, and a silk sash of red and blue tied about his waist. This was not France, where a man was obliged to demonstrate his pious devotion to duty with no thought of reward if he was to win the affection of the public. They were in a new land, far from home, and needed to win the support of the local people if the influence of France was to spread into the east and encroach upon the territory and trade routes of England.

Besides, he reflected with a faint smile as he progressed along the streets, he had liked the image he cut in his fine uniform as he had examined himself in a mirror earlier that day. And his pride in his achievements, and those of his army, merited this celebration. In less than a month he had won a new land for France, and his mind churned with phrases and grand figures of speech that he would deploy when he wrote the dispatch to France telling them of the magnificent victory gained in the very shadow of the great pyramids. A fine phrase, he thought. One to note down the moment he had time to return to his papers.