Siege of Alexandria (1801)

Siege of Alexandria
Part of the French Revolutionary Wars
Date 17 August - 2 September, 1801 Location Alexandria, Egypt Result French surrender; end of Egyptian Campaign; Decisive British Victory.
Belligerents
First French Republic	United Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Jacques-Francois Menou	John Hely-Hutchinson
Casualties and losses
10,000 troops and civilians surrendered (later repatriated) All French ships & canon surrendered	?

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 was fought at Alexandria on 21 March 1801. The French surrendered to the British on 2 September 1801, under the terms of surrender the French were allowed to keep their personal weapons and baggage, and were returned to France by 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 epidemy of scurvy. He would so start the 19th-century tradition of horse meat consumption in France.

References

• Smith, D. The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book. Greenhill Books, 1998.