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The Mamluks, bewildered by European tactics, impaled themselves upon the bayonets of the French squares. Fifteen thousand men of all arms fell upon the field. The battle had cost the French scarcely a hundred killed and wounded; for, if defeat is terrible for broken squares, the loss is insignificant for victorious squares.
He pursued the viceroy to Damietta, taking possession of the town, conducted his prisoner to Cairo, where he placed him in the custody of the aged Ibrahim Bey, the Nestor of the Mamluks .
He was only nine years old when he was summoned to be ruler of the kingdom of the Mamluks. Naturally he was the sultan only in name, and the real power lay in the hands of Ketboga and Vizier Shujai.
The following year, when he discovered a conspiracy of the Mamluks against him, and when many of the older emirs were dead, he declared that it was for the good of the state that no longer a child, but a man capable of directing internal affairs and leading an army against the enemy, should take over the government.
That sultan, judging that Egypt was likely from its remoteness to throw off the dominion of Constantinople, and that a clever and ambitious pasha might create there an independent empire, had, as we have seen, devised a plan to frustrate such a motive, should it exist, by instituting a Mamluk soldiery; but it was the Mamluks, and not the pasha, who rendered themselves independent of Constantinople and the masters of Egypt.
None of his successors approached his high example Khalil indeed recovered Acre and all that remained of the Crusader's possessions in Palestine, and the Mamluks, who never lost their soldierly qualities whoever happened to be their nominal ruler, handsomely defeated the Mongols again in 1299 and 1303, and for ever saved Egypt from the unspeakable curse of a Mongol conquest Nasir, whose reign covers most of the first half of the fourteenth century, was a great builder, and so were many of the nobles of his court.
Murad Bey had collected here the greater part of his Mamluks, nearly ten thousand in number, and they were attended by double the number of fellahs, to whom arms were given, and who were obliged to fight behind the intrenchments.
The great sheikhs issued the desired declaration, and exhorted the Egyptians to submit to the envoy of God, who reverenced the Prophet, and who had come to deliver his children from the tyranny of the Mamluks. Bonaparte established a divan at Cairo, as he had done at Alexandria, composed of the principal sheikhs, and the most distinguished inhabitants.
The third and last race was that of the Turks; but it was not more numerous than the Kopts, amounting to about two hundred thousand souls at most, and was divided into Turks and Mamluks.
The Mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly sports.
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