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Governments that Tried to Create Super Soldiers and Super Weapons

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2022 37 min

Super Facts - Workers at the Temmler factory in Berlin, where methamphetamine-based Pervitin tablets were produced for the German military — Workers at the Temmler factory in Berlin, where methamphetamine-based Pervitin tablets were produced for the German military. The Guardian

‘The Battle of the Pyramids’, by Antoine Jean Gros. Wikimedia

13. The French Invasion of Egypt Was Fueled by Copious Amounts of Wine

Throughout much of French military history, the soldiers’ intoxicant of choice was alcohol – cognac and wine, and lots of it. Napoleon Bonaparte had a famous dictum that armies marched on their stomachs. Those stomachs often needed not just food to fuel the soldiers, but also alcohol to settle their stomachs and the butterflies that fluttered in them. Wine was also useful to fuel their courage and turn them, if not into super soldiers, then at least into ones with temporary super courage. As they campaigned in Europe, French armies seldom had a problem in the procurement and acquisition of wine or other types of alcohol.

However, when Napoleon launched his Egyptian Campaign in 1798, things were different. He and his French forces found themselves in a Muslim country with precious little home-distilled alcohol. Things got worse for every thirsty French when British admiral Horatio Nelson and the Royal Navy destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in early August 1798. Suddenly, Napoleon and his men found themselves cut off from resupply from home. Catastrophically from their perspective, what with the fact that they were French and all, they were cut off from resupply of wine. So they cast for a substitute and settled upon hashish.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.