by Pascal Toupy and Marco Poutré

In the previous article of this series, we began exploring the auxiliary units the French raised during their campaign in Egypt and Syria. We’ll finish that review with the Régiment de dromadaires (Dromedary Regiment) and then look at how the French player can best use Auxiliary Units in their quest for victory in our game Napoleon in Egypt.

The Dromedary Regiment

An emblematic unit of the campaign, the Régiment de dromadaires is one of the most famous thanks to the impressive amount of documentation on it.

While the remnants of Murad Bey’s army fled to southern Egypt, French convoys and garrison sentries were constantly harassed by small bands of Mamluks. Exasperated, Napoleon asked Desaix to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the French cavalry were either short of mounts or the ones they had were unable to keep up with the Mamluks’ (of Syrian or Persian breeds), who were far superior in terms of speed and endurance.

At the end of 1798, during a visit to Suez, Bonaparte was struck by how alert the dromedaries still were at end of day despite their heavy loads. He asked around and received confirmation of the animal’s robustness, docility, and resistance to effort (a dromedary with a load of 200 kg could still cover up to 70 km a day). What’s more, local merchants assured him that on Egyptian soil, a dromedary outruns the fastest horse in a race.

Bonaparte ordered his son-in-law Eugène Beauharnais and soon-to-be lieutenant-general Edouard Colbert to try riding and driving dromedaries. These officers carried out the orders of their general, who followed them at a gallop unable to catch up. Convinced, Bonaparte announced that within a month he would have a regiment of dromedaries to police Egypt!

The Régiment de dromadaires was formed on January 9, 1799. It consisted of two squadrons of four companies. Each company had:

• 1 captain
• 1 lieutenant
• 1 sergeant-major
• 2 sergeants
• 1 corporal fourrier
• 4 corporals
• 50 dromaderies
• Supporting staff (around 10 people)

The regiment thus numbered between 500 and 600 men under the leadership of brigade commander Cavalier. The regiment was not considered cavalry but mounted infantry. In fact, at the outset, each animal had to be ridden by two men standing back to back. The obvious discomfort for the man with his back to the direction of travel soon led to the abandonment of this practice. The Régiment de dromadaires was mainly used for small-scale warfare (skirmishes) or as a scouting unit. If combat was necessary, they would dismount their dromedaries and use them as shields. Fast, capable of lightning raids, they soon became an elite unit, considered equal to the guides of general Bonaparte himself. At the start of the battle of Canope, a group of mounted dromedaries carried out a commando operation on the forward British artillery positions.

On November 26, 1800, a 24-man artillery company was added to the regiment, along with two 4-pounder guns, two ammunition caissons, and ten additional dromedaries.

However, during a recon operation in May 1801, most of the regiment was surrounded and captured by the British and Ottomans. Cavalier, the regiment’s brigade commander, was among the prisoners taken. On their return to France, remaining men of the regiment either joined the Consuls’ Guard or ended their careers in the Gendarmerie.

Auxiliary Units in the Game

How does that translate in the game? First of all, three of the auxiliary troops mentioned in part 1 of this article are embodied by Events (the Tarabin Bedouin are actually a subset of the Janissaries on foot). These Events provide a welcomed boost to the French Player, but be warned that all three of them are Alpha cards—no Beta nor Omega cards add Auxiliary Units, so if you want more later in the game, you’ll have to Recruit them the old-fashioned way!

To better understand the value of Auxiliary Units, we have to tie the French isolation to the game’s mechanics. The French Player starts with a LOT of Regular Units (35 of them to be exact). Most of these Units will come back to the game once as Grognards, less-effective Units that represent battered soldiers rejoining their regiments after a stint at the Military Hospital. Eliminated Grognards are gone for good. So what happens when, after the Battle of the Pyramids, clashing with Murad and Ibrahim Bey and the first few encounters with the Ottomans, the French Player wishes to replenish their ranks? Like Napoleon back then, they’ll have to turn their sights to local recruitment.

1 AP allows the French Player to Recruit a Militia Unit—admittedly a cheap way to hold conquered Cities but not something you’d rampage the countryside with. 2 APs allow the French Player to Recruit an Auxiliary Unit, and this is what abstractly represents the gradual integration of locals that was described in this 2-part article. In a Battle, an Auxiliary Unit is comparable to a Grognard, a Mamluk Cavalry, and an Ottoman Regular Unit. But as the Allied Player is defending their own lands, they have plenty of Events that put a bunch of their Units on the board; overall, Recruitment is an expensive way for the French Player to try and keep up.

That brings us to the main perk Auxiliary Units provide. As you’d expect, Egypt and Syria can be quite an inhospitable land for foreign soldiers. A forced march through a desert can quickly sap the will of troops longing for home who, after the naval defeat at the battle of Aboukir, weren’t even sure they would set foot on French soil again. Local guides provide travel advice, survival techniques, workarounds, shortcuts, etc. As long as an Auxiliary Unit is part of a French stack that moves into Difficult or Inhospitable Terrain, the French Player enjoys these benefits:

• The move costs 1 AP instead of 2.
• Any Attrition roll is made with a favorable -1 DRM.

This opens the door to all kinds of strategies, whether you want to surprise your opponent, avoid him, or beat him to a specific Space. Open Spaces (the circles) are easy to navigate (1 AP), but Auxiliary Units give the French Player extra flexibility.

You’d think the Allied Player enjoys the same benefits by default? Well, the issue for them is that a single French Unit represents around 1,000 men while a single Allied Unit represents around 10,000 men! If you magnify this by 10 for a 10-unit stack, we’re talking about 100,000 men! Even if you’re familiar with the territory, there’s no way a desert crossing with such a great host is going to be fast or safe!

Part-military campaign, part-expedition, the Auxiliary Units are just one of many particulars of Napoleon’s journey in Egypt and Syria at the turn of the 19^th century!

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Napoleon in Egypt: Local Units Side with the French (Part 1)