Featured battle : Pyramids [Embaleh]

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 21 July 1798

The Egyptians were in a strong defensive formation with the town of Embaleh bristling with heavy guns. The only reliable troops were the 6,000 Mameluke horsemen, fierce individual fighters each with a small group of retainers. The remaining infantry were mostly Egyptians stiffened with a few Turks and about 20,000 Arab levies. The French army, mostly experienced troops from the Italian campaign, advanced in echeloned division squares. The Mameluke horsemen simply broke against the discipline ranks, this demoralized the Egyptian infantry and defeat became a rout.

Yangtze Showdown. China and the ordeal of HMS Amethyst

Brian Izzard
Cover to cover a really good read. This is the story of the Yangtze incident in the round, the military and political machinations prior to, during and after the event. If you know the gung-ho 1957 film with hero Richard Todd then prepared to be shocked by the truth. There are action heroes a plenty but there are also ‘politicos’ who are anything but heroes.
The first sentence of the book is ‘A couple of shells whistled overhead and a group of sailors on board HMS Amethyst came to the same conclusion “They couldn’t hit a barn door”. The story goes on with the same engaging vitality. As for the Chinese hitting barn doors I remember newspaper photographs at the time rechristening HMS Amethyst as HMS Pepperpot.
Supporting the text are two useful maps and an informative set of photographs. Also the set of five appendices complete the information given in the story.
Well researched and beautifully written this book will be informative to military buffs and students of cold war politics. But more than those people we highly recommended it to the much wider audience of anyone who enjoy a good read.

Seaforth Publishing, 2020