Episode 1 of 4
Desert March
- When
- March-April 1805
- Where
- Libyan Desert
- Part of
- Battle of Derne
Eaton led a force from Egypt across the Libyan Desert, facing supply shortages and internal tensions among the diverse mercenary groups.
On 8 March 1805, Eaton began a 500-mile trek westward. During the 50-day journey, supplies dwindled to a handful of rice and biscuits daily. Tensions arose between Christian Greeks and Muslim Arab and Turkish mercenaries, with some Arabs attempting to raid the supply wagon before being repelled.
Sources
- Battle of Derna (1805) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.