Just as much military history as science history
When the expedition departed, only Napoleon and a few of his closest colleagues knew the final destination of the voyage. The savants who volunteered for the journey weren’t informed they were going to Egypt until they were halfway across the Mediterranean. When the French reached the North African Coast, they were attacked by the English navy (England also had claims to Egypt) and routed in the Battle of the Nile. Thousands of French soldiers and sailors lost their lives in the battle, and all of the savants’ scientific equipment ended up at the bottom of Abukir Bay. When the scientists reached Alexandria, they found the city much shabbier and more desolate than the exotic Oriental paradise they had imagined. Thus was the inauspicious start to an arduous undertaking that would last three years and take many French lives.
The majority of the book is about the harsh conditions and hazards that the French invaders—soldiers and savants alike—were forced to endure, including but not limited to the punishing desert heat, starvation, swarms of insects, eye diseases, an epidemic of bubonic plague, and deadly altercations with Mamelukes, Turks, and Brits. The savants had the added danger of being despised by the very troops they were accompanying. They enjoyed the favor of Napoleon, however, who was quite a scientific dilettante. Most of the book is a catalog of horror stories of desert warfare. Burleigh doesn’t really delve deeply into the scientific and archaeological achievements of the expedition until about chapter 8 (of 12). The final chapter discusses the making of the mammoth 23-volume book Description de l’Egypte, a lavishly illustrated compendium of all the savants’ scientific and cultural discoveries. Burleigh follows the lives of several of the savants through their post-expedition careers up until their deaths.
As I’ve explained above, this isn’t strictly a science history or a story of archaeological exploration, even if the subtitle and packaging make it out to be one. Nevertheless, there is plenty here for enthusiasts of science history and exploration narratives to enjoy. Among the savants that Burleigh highlights are the mathematician Gaspard Monge, chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, zoologist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, physicist Joseph Fourier, physician René-Nicolas Desgenettes, and the MacGyver-like inventor Nicolas Conté. Burleigh’s book is relatively brief, but it does provide an admirably comprehensive overview of the expedition. Of course, you’ll find more detailed information in more specialized monographs, and after reading Mirage you might very well want to look up individual biographies of some of the more interesting savants. I for one would very much like to learn more about the scientific and archaeological discoveries of these explorers, and I have Burleigh to thank for inspiring my curiosity with this well-researched and accessible history of the expedition.
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