Napoleon in Egypt – Expédition Baïonnette en Argent

Seeing the pre-orders and teasers for the upcoming release of the Silver Bayonet Egypt prompted me to take a break from Spring Cleaning and return to this project.

These are French line grenadiers wearing Kleber ordnance, a pair from the 88eme demi-brigade and a pair from the 85eme. Rather than the usual blue jackets, the Kleber ordnance is much more colourful. The 88eme had violet jackets with green cuffs and blue collars, whilst the 85eme had brown jackets with yellow cuffs and red collars. Other demi-brigades had red, green or sky-blue jackets. Essentially, the Kleber ordnance is perfect for something like the Silver Bayonet as your basic soldiers can all have distinctively coloured uniforms whilst still satisfying any button counting tendencies.

Dismounted French Dragoons are next to join my Armée d’Orient. I liked the idea of maybe using these as the standard ‘Soldier’ troop type for Silver Bayonet units, with the leader a potential Officer figure.

These have been painted in the colours of the 15e Regiment of Dragoons. Napoleonic French Dragoon regiments were grouped by facing colours, with slight differences between regiments as to whether collars, cuffs, lapels, lacing etc. appeared in green or their regimental colour (image below for thise with the interest in such detail). The 15e were a pink faced regiment, and thanks to the long gloves worn by the models, I didn’t have to worry about remembering the green cuffs. I stuck with green coats, although there are records of lack of supplies meaning many ended up dressed in undyed cloth.

Besides having fun painting the poppy pink, another reason for painting these as the 15e was their long boots, a uniform feature noted as being particular to that regiment (according to Perrys’ website anyway!). I went with a typical reversed colours for the trumpeter, although I’ve no idea if that is accurate.

All figures are again Paul Hicks sculpts sold by Brigade Games, with image backgrounds by John Hodgson via one of his backdrop books.

Three mounted troopers of the Dromedary Corps to go with their dismounted equivalents in the previous entry.

There’s lots of sources that depict the camel furniture in a wide variety of different colours, with the cloth hanging from the saddle in particular being illustrated in lots of colours and highly embroidered/decorated. I decided to be a bit restrained and went with the regimentally proscribed red cloth with white edging.

My first finished models for 2024 are these trio of dismounted Dromedary Corps troopers.

The Regiment de Dromedaries was raised by Napoleon after landing in Egypt in 1799, and disbanded at the end of the Egyptian campaign. At its largest, the unit had around 700 men split into three squadrons, although not all were mounted. They most likely fought as mounted infantry, and were used for scouting, escort and message delivery roles.

Their uniforms had many variations. They wore sky blue dolman and breeches, with red cuffs and collar on the jacket and white hussar style braiding. Dress uniform included a red kaftan worn over the dolmen. Initially they wore a white turban, replaced by a black bicorn in 1800. White Turkish style trousers were also worn, which were replaced by dark red Turkush style trousers after Kleber’s uniform changes.

One of the things that drew me to these Brigade figures is that offer the chance to depict quite a few of these uniform differences. None wear the red kaftan, but I took the opportunity to have both white and red Turkish style trousers. One has a turban, the other two bicorns. This ends up in three nicely unique individuals, important for skirmish games.

Next up will be their mounted equivalents, which means working out how to paint camels.

The Army of the Orient was not only a military force, being accompanied by scientists, archaeologists and administrators to conduct research and to determine the potential of Egypt as a French colony.

Bonaparte established the Egyptian Institute of Arts and Sciences in Cairo, August 1798. The principal objectives of the Institute were the ‘progress of knowledge and its propagation I Egypt’, ‘Research, study and publication of the natural, industrial and historical facts about Egypt’, and ‘To give advice on the various questions upon which it may be consulted by the Government.’

These figures are in civilian clothing, with a couple based on a picture by Bob Marrion. They will be used for the more civilian-type troop choices in the Silver Bayonet, such as Doctors, Occultists and Supernatural Investigators. They can also have potential as clue markers, particularly the sitting chap.

The Egyptian Institute was responsible for finding the Rosetta Stone in 1799, but it was given up to the British as part of the terms of French capitulation in 1801.

First models painted are some French sailors. Both the French and the British landed troops in amphibious assaults during the Egyptian campaign, with sailors and marines supporting army units.

Post Battle of the Nile, those French sailors that survived the loss of the fleet were formed into an infantry regiment called the Legion Nautique. My figures aren’t wearing the uniforms of the Legion, which had short red coats and round black hats.

Instead they have typical sailor outfits, which I’ve broadly painted according to the colours of the French navy. One was inspired by a picture by Bob Marrion, based on a contemporary description of seaman wearing “a lilac coloured short coat with a red sash, plus varnished round hat.” I also gave one striped trousers, since it’s a commonly depicted thing for sailors from the period.

Another wall of text post whilst I start getting paint on figures.

Strictly speaking, Napoleon’s misadventures in Egypt aren’t part of the ‘Napoleonic Wars’. The French campaign in Egypt ran from 1798-1801, with Bonaparte leading the expedition as a General of Revolutionary France under the Directory. But we’re going to ignore that distinction for the duration of this project.

I’m going to include a short summary of the campaign for anyone unfamiliar with it, starting with why the French were in Egypt in the first place. There were a few different factors at play. Politically, there was the desire of the Directory to put some distance between Paris and a dangerously powerful military man, who was flushed with his spectacular success in Italy. There was also interest from both the Directory and Napoleon to attempt to remove Britain’s powerbase on the Indian sub-continent, whilst avenging losses from the Seven Years War, notably Canada and the colonies in the Indies.

The French Army of the Orient assembled at several Mediterranean ports, with Napoleon departing from Toulon in May 1798 at the head of ~36,000 men. They managed to dodge the Royal Navy, who were aware of the preparation for an invasion and were looking to intercept any French fleet, but scattered by a gale that allowed the French to depart Toulon unmolested. The French captured Malta on their way to landing at Aboukir Bay in Egypt, before marching on Alexandria. From Alexandria, the French marched to Cairo, defeating the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798.

At this point the Royal Navy finally caught up with French fleet, Admiral Nelson finding them anchored in a strong defensive position in Aboukir Bay. Nelson demonstrated his characteristic boldness, ordering his fleet to attack, slipping half of his ships in between the land and the French line, thus attacking from both sides. The Battle of the Nile was perhaps the worst French defeat of the whole Napoleonic period. The British suffered paltry casualties (no ships lost; ca.200 dead & 700 wounded), whilst the French lost eleven warships and two frigates, with only two warships and two frigates escaping. Unlike at Trafalgar, the results of battle were felt immediately. Without a fleet in the Mediterranean, France could no longer run the Egyptian campaign satisfactorily. Malta subsequently returned to British control. The Turks declared war on France on 4^th September, and as a result of the lack of naval support Napoleon was to meet with failure at the siege of Acre, and his army struggled with supply issues for the remainder of the campaign.

The French set about consolidating their foothold in Egypt, quelling an uprising in Aciro, and Desaix pursing the Mamluk’s into the upper Nile area. In 1799, Napoleon attempted to counter an Ottoman attack into Egypt by invading Syria. The Syrian campaign concluded with the failed siege of Acre, an interesting siege in that the French held none of the typically advantages of a besieger, yet still persisted with the attempt – they were outnumbered by the defenders, lacked siege artillery, and had poor supply lines (whilst Ace was re-supplied by sea by the Royal Navy). The French retreated back to Cairo, with 1,800 wounded, having lost 600 men to the plague and 1,200 to enemy action.

In July 1799 a Turkish fleet landed an army in Aboukir, with the French engaging them in a land battle. This was Napoleon’s last action in Egypt. His army was diminishing from losses in battle and disease, difficulties in resupply were paramount, and there was news of political instability at home. He abandoned the Army of the Orient in August 1799, accompanied by some of his favoured generals (Berthier, Murat, Lannes and Marmont), leaving General Kleber to command those left behind. From 1800-1801 the British combined with the Ottomans in a land offensive that defeated the French, who finally capitulated in 1801.

Onto uniforms then, specifically French uniforms. The Egypt campaign has essentially three different phases of uniforms for the French.

• The uniform at the initial embarkation of the expedition.
• Changes to the uniform in Egypt to adjust to local materials and supplies.
• The Kelber Ordnance.

The first phase is essentially the uniform of the French Revolutionary armies – long tailed blue coats, bicorns, tricolour trousers and patriotic zeal aplenty.

In 1799 the troops were issued with distinctive leather helmets called petit casquettes, and indigo dyed cotton uniforms were issued alongside loose white trousers to replace their breeches.

Which brings us to the Kleber Ordnance 1799, or where the uniforms really diverge from the usual colours that you’d expect to see on a French soldier. After Napoleon abandoned his army, Kleber was left in charge of the expedition, cut off from supply lines back to friendly territory by the British Navy. Kleber had to make do with whatever material he could find locally to cloth and uniform the French soldiers. This resulted in a variety of very colourful coats for the French infantry, some wearing scarlet coats, others crimson, sky blue, light green, brown and violet – essentially, a very different looking army to the blue coated French that are typical of the period. There’s great scope within a small skirmish game like Silver Bayonet to have an excuse to capture a lot of this variety, so I will be exploring some of the different infantry uniforms of the Kleber Ordnance within this project.

The British army contained contingents from India and troops from South Africa, not to mention marine regiments on land and various German companies, so there is lots of opportunity to build a very diverse and interesting collection focused on this campaign. The Ottomans and Mamluks also have very interesting armies for this area, with very bright and elaborate uniforms. But at the start of this project, I’ll be concentrating on the French.

The start of this project very much mirrors my other Silver Bayonet project. Back when the Silver Bayonet was first announced, I was very intrigued and started having a nose at possible models, looking for potential individual characters from the typically mass ranked figures that (understandably) comprise the majority of Napoleonic miniature ranges. Very quickly I got locked onto the Perrys’ Retreat from Moscow figures; very individual, dynamically posed characters, perfect for a small unit, and giving an interesting theme to set my game within (with the added benefit of 1812 Russia being very different to my Peninsula Napoleonic collection). The idea was to keep the ‘historic’ aspects fairly accurate, and then add in the more fantastical/horror elements with the monsters, giving me the option of also using the soldiers for other Napoleonic games.

Fast forward to now, and a similar thing has happened with the upcoming Silver Bayonet: Egypt book. Joseph McCullough spoke about the expansion in some interviews with OTT in September, which got me looking into what figures are available for this period of Napoleonic warfare. Although the Perrys do have a very nice range of French in Egypt models, and a lovely new range of Ottomans, the models that caught my eye were from Brigade Games in the US –figures sculpted by the very talented Paul Hicks. One of the draws is that some of Paul’s mounted figures have dismounted equivalents based on the same individual models, a pretty important thing for a skirmish game where a cavalry model needs both mounted/on foot versions. The other draw was simply the very characterful sculpts, which also represent a lot of the things I was looking for – officers, camelry, scientists, soldiers, some irregulars as possible bandits…

In terms of research for the period, I’m using a pair of books – Napoleons’ Campaigns in Egypt Vol. 1 & 2 by Charles Grant. The former covers the French, whilst the latter details the British, Egyptians and Ottomans. Each volume is filled with superb illustrations by Bob Marrion, which are going be used as guides and inspiration for painting.

As per my other Silver Bayonet project, the goal is to try for a relatively high level of historical accuracy on the figures, and then add in the beasties and other supernatural elements. As of yet, I’ve no idea what types of monsters might be necessary for the Egypt setting, other than Joe mentioning crocodiles. I’ll also need to make up some new clue markers.