Pillaging only enriches a small number of men; it dishonours us, it destroys our resources; it makes enemies of the people who it is in our interest to have as our friends.

For too long this horde of slaves, bought in the Caucasus and Georgia, have tyrannised the most beautiful part of the world; but God, on whom all depends, has ordained that their empire shall end.

People of Egypt, they have told you that I come to destroy your religion, but do not believe it; [tell them] in reply [that] I come to restore your rights, punish the usurpers and that I respect God, his prophet and the Quran more than the Mamluks.

If Egypt is their farm, then they should show the lease that God gave them for it... Cadis, cheiks, imans, tchorbadjis, and notables of the nation [I ask you to] tell the people that we are true friends of Muslims.

As a major chronicler of the French invasion, Jabarti decried the French invasion of Egypt as the start of:"fierce fights and important incidents; of the momentous mishaps and appalling afflictions, of the multiplication of malice and the acceleration of affairs; of successive sufferings and turning times; of the inversion of the innate and the elimination of the established; of horrors upon horrors and contradicting conditions; of the perversion of all precepts and the onset of annihilation; of the dominance of destruction and the occurrence of occasions"[7]Menou had been the first to set out for Egypt, and was the first Frenchman to land.

Bonaparte and Kléber landed together and joined Menou at night at the cove of Marabout (Citadel of Qaitbay), on which the first French tricolour to be hoisted in Egypt was raised.

However, the state of disrepair of the city as well as the desert aspect of the surrounding area pushed the French army to move quickly inland.

While he marched towards the Nile, Bonaparte left in Alexandria a garrison of 2,000 men under the orders of Kléber, who was convalescing, while Menou took command of Rosetta.