By David Tresilian THE MAGNIFICENT setting of the église du D�me at Les Invalides in Paris is the backdrop for a small exhibition, running until September 2009, designed to celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of the first volumes of the Description de l'Egypte, the famous account of Egypt drawn up by French scientists during the military campaign mounted by Napoleon Bonaparte in the country from 1798 to 1801. Occupying a space to the left of the main entrance to the church, which was built by Jules Hardouin-Mansart in the late 17th century to glorify the rule of Louis XIV, the exhibition has been placed only a few metres from Napoleon's tomb. The latter, a five- metre high structure in red quartzite, has occupied the open crypt beneath the dome since the French emperor's remains were installed in the church in 1840, and it is surrounded by the names of some of his more outstanding victories, among them at the battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Wagram, as well as, in 1798, over the Egyptian mamlukes at the Battle of the Pyramids. As the notes to the exhibition point out, there is something fitting about the location chosen, if only because of Napoleon's personal involvement in the production and publication of the Description de l'Egypte. Originally commissioned in 1802 by Napoleon himself, who saw the work as a fitting memorial to his military expedition in Egypt and wanted it to appear in 1809 to mark the tenth anniversary of his rule, the complete work did not appear until 20 years later when a second edition was completed in 1829, though the first volumes did appear on time and bear the date 1809. A vast work of description and illustration undertaken by some 160 scholars taken to Egypt by Napoleon in 1798 together with his military forces, the Description consists of nine folio volumes of text, together with a large-format introductory volume. The text volumes contain some 7,000 pages of material by 43 authors on every aspect of Egypt, ancient and modern. Added to this are a further dozen volumes of illustrations, which contain some 836 sheets of engraved illustrations, 60 or so in colour, and required the work of 200 engravers and 62 illustrators, 46 of whom made drawings in Egypt as part of the original military expedition. According to the dedication to the whole, reproduced here as an introduction to the exhibition, the Description contains a --collection of observations and research made in Egypt during the expedition of the French army, published by order of His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon the Great.� Visitors to the exhibition will thus be able to have the unusual experience of viewing sheets from the Description within a yard or two of the final resting place of the man who led the Egyptian military campaign and commissioned the original volumes. For those eager to know more about Napoleon's campaigns, among them his expedition to Egypt, the Army Museum at Les Invalides, which now occupies the bulk of this building originally constructed by Louis XIV to house retired servicemen, contains a new presentation of the warfare of the period, including the French revolutionary wars. A hat and coat worn by Napoleon on the battlefield have been preserved and are on display, as is a mameluke harness said to have come from the field of battle at the Pyramids in 1798. Unstressed here is the fact that Napoleon's Egyptian expedition was an almost unqualified failure. Ostensibly designed to free Egypt from mameluke rule, but in fact aimed at increasing French power in the eastern Mediterranean at the expense of the English, the expedition could not fail but peter out when Napoleon himself left the country in 1799 for Paris, where he staged the coup d'état that made him first consul of the republic, a stepping stone on the path to his coronation as emperor in 1804. However, even before Napoleon's departure for Paris French naval defeat at the hands of the English in 1798, followed by a generally catastrophic campaign in Syria and the Levant, had cut French forces in Egypt off from any possibility of reinforcement, making them easy pickings for the English and their Ottoman and mameluke allies. Harried on all sides and defeated in battle, French forces in Cairo surrendered in 1801. While Napoleon did not achieve his ambition of building French power in the eastern Mediterranean from a base in Egypt, he did provide the impetus for one of the most complete, if not the most complete, anatomies of a country hitherto carried out. It is this achievement, remembered in the form of plates from the illustrations to the Description de l'Egypte, together with various items of memorabilia and images of the French scientists involved, that is celebrated in the present exhibition under the église du D�me at Les Invalides. La Description de l'Egypte, Musée de l'Armée -- Eglise du D�me, H�tel national des Invalides, Paris. 17 June -- 21 September 2009
