Despite presenting themselves as “liberators” of the Egyptians from cruel tyrants, the French, in the face of harsh resistance, resorted to violence to maintain control over the country. Although some participants in the campaign may not have fully supported these methods, the stark contrast between revolutionary ideals and the violence employed in Egypt was rarely questioned. This was not merely an isolated contradiction, but rather a continuation of practices established during the Revolutionary wars, beginning with the civil war in the Vendée and continuing in Italy, where brutal force was routinely used against those who resisted. In Egypt, such violence was further justified by Orientalist beliefs that it was “normal” in the imagined Orient, a place where people were presumed to be accustomed to tyranny and naturally submissive to slavery