The Ottoman Empire had landed 18,000 troops at Aboukir to reclaim Egypt. Napoleon attacked immediately — a classic offensive response to a threat that would only grow stronger if allowed to establish itself. The battle lasted a single day. Murat's cavalry charge drove the Ottoman forces off the peninsula and into the sea; the Turkish troops, caught between the French cavalry and the Mediterranean, had no choice but to drown or surrender. Mustafa Pasha was captured after being wounded. The victory was so complete — only 5,000 Ottoman troops escaped of 18,000 — that Napoleon considered it among his greatest.
Aboukir demonstrated Napoleon's tactical genius in isolation from his strategic situation — he was still stranded in Egypt with no way home. He used the victory as propaganda to disguise the failure of the Egyptian expedition, and returned to France shortly afterward to participate in the 18 Brumaire coup that made him First Consul. The battle won him nothing strategically but saved him politically.
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The Fascist Grand Council voted 19-7 to strip Mussolini of command, and King Victor Emmanuel III had him arrested as he left the royal palace. Mussolini reportedly said nothing and was driven away in an ambulance.
Mussolini's fall led to Italy's armistice in September 1943 and eventual switch to the Allied side, opening the Italian campaign.
Outcome
Mussolini arrested; Italy begins negotiations to switch sides
On July 25–26, 2026, the army and its allied Joint Forces retook Bara — North Kordofan's second-largest town, which had changed hands several times since 2023 — together with Jabra al-Sheikh, Umm Sayala and surrounding villages, securing the Export Road and the supply routes into El Obeid. The advance continued through the autumn: Hamrat al-Wiz, on the road to Khartoum, on September 6; eleven areas along the old Forty Days Road toward Darfur on September 17; the town of Sodari on September 25; and on October 2 al-Mazroub, which had been the RSF's largest remaining stronghold in the state. The RSF claimed a victory of its own at Abu Qauod, west of El Obeid, in September. By early October the army had pushed the RSF out of much of North Kordofan and was advancing toward En Nahud and Al Khuway in West Kordofan, where the RSF was massing its forces. Almost all battlefield details come from army statements and have not been independently confirmed.
The army's largest territorial gains since it retook Khartoum in March 2025, and it pushed the RSF back from El Obeid, the junction it needed for any route back toward the capital. It moved the front line west toward the RSF's own heartland — and made a negotiated pause less likely: on October 6 Burhan rejected talks outright.
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