‘Why have we come here? The Directory has deported us,’ grumbled the heat-stricken and exhausted soldiers of Napoleon’s Army of the Orient, having travelled for days across the desert to a spot just west of Cairo. There, at what would later be called the Battle of the Pyramids, they would face the forces of the Ottoman governor Murad Bey. Napoleon lifted his men’s spirits with a vision of history: ‘Go and remember that 40 centuries are looking down upon you,’ he told them. Though opposed by ‘vastly superior Mamluk forces’, the French exploited discipline, firepower and innovative tactics to win the day.
Vividly described, this is just one of the fateful encounters discussed in Anthony Pagden’s book, Worlds at War, which seeks to recount and explain the ‘2,500-year struggle’ between East and West. According to myth, the struggle began with the abduction of Helen by ‘a foppish Trojan playboy’, but for the historical Greeks it began soon after 500 BCE in a series of clashes with the immense and wealthy Persian empire.
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