Siege of Alexandria

Siege of Alexandria
Part of the French Revolutionary Wars
Map of Egypt with Alexandria highlighted
Date 17 August - 2 September 1801 Location Alexandria, Egypt Result British victory
Belligerents
First French Republic	United Kingdom
Commanders
Jacques-Francois Menou	John Hely-Hutchinson
Casualties and losses
10,000 captured

The Siege of Alexandria was fought between 17 August and 2 September 1801, during the French Revolutionary Wars, between French and British forces and was the last action of the Egyptian Campaign. The French had occupied Alexandria, a major fortified harbour city on the Nile delta in northern Egypt, since 2 July 1798.

A battle between the British and French at Canope on 21 March 1801 resulted in a French repulse. Historians relate that the French garrison, feeling abandoned by an uncaring Republic, gradually abandoned the high standards of conduct and service characteristic of the French Revolutionary Army. Many soldiers refused to renew their oath to the Republic, or did so half-heartedly.^[1]

Increasingly disillusioned with the campaign, the French surrendered to the British on 2 September 1801, under terms which allowed them to keep their personal weapons and baggage, and to return to France on British ships. However, all French ships and cannons at Alexandria were surrendered to the British.

In his memoirs, the surgeon-in-chief of Napoleon's Grand Army, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, remembers how the consumption of the meat of young Arab horses helped the French to curb an epidemic of scurvy. He would so start the 19th-century tradition of horse meat consumption in France.^[2]

Notes

References

• Smith, D. The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book. Greenhill Books, 1998.
• Lynne, John A. "Toward an Army of Honor: The Moral Evolution of the French Army, 1789-1815." French Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Spring, 1989)