This month's cover design is of the surrender of a group of Ottomans to Napoleon at the Battle of Abukir in Egypt in 1799. It is probably intended to show the surrender of Mustapha Pasha, the Ottoman commander. In the background you can make out a suggestion of the fort at the tip of the peninsula. This engagement, along with the Battle of the Pyramids a year earlier, is probably the most famous of the battles involving the Ottomans during the Napoleonic era for most Westerners.

In truth it was a very small battle, involving only about 7,700 men on the French side and only about 7,000 for the Ottomans.

During the Napoleonic era the Ottomans would fight hundreds of battles on three continents against the British, French, Russians and Austrians, to say nothing of numerous internal struggles, some involving hundreds of thousands of combatants.

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