In 1798, a French armada of over three hundred ships slips out of Toulon under the command of a young general already famous for his victories in Italy. The destination is kept secret even from most of his own officers: Egypt, then nominally under Ottoman rule, chosen as a strategic blow against British trade routes to India. The film follows Napoleon Bonaparte's forces as they take Alexandria, march across the desert toward Cairo, and crush the ruling Mamluk cavalry at the Battle of the Pyramids. It also covers the expedition's other legacy, the scholars and scientists Napoleon brought along, whose work founded modern Egyptology and produced the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Historians and battle maps trace how the campaign's fortunes turned when Admiral Nelson's fleet destroyed the French navy at Aboukir Bay, stranding Bonaparte's army and setting up his eventual abandonment of the expedition. The result is a portrait of ambition colliding with logistics, three years before Napoleon crowned himself emperor.