Napoleon at the Pyramids

An artillery officer, then aide-de-camp to Napoleon I, whose life he saved on two occasions, General Gourgaud was one of the Empire’s leading memoirists. We owe him, in particular, this famous exhortation attributed to Bonaparte before the French army in Egypt, assembled on the plain of Giza at dawn on 2 July 1798… .but which he never actually delivered: ‘Soldiers! You have come to these lands to rescue them from barbarism, to bring civilisation to the East, and to free this beautiful part of the world from the yoke of England. We are going to fight. Remember that from the top of these pyramids, forty centuries are watching you.’