They met with no real resistance on the march. There can be little doubt that the French generals were hampered by the intense longing among the troops to return to France. Their disasters in Syria had to some extent been retrieved by the defeat of the Turks at Aboukir, but the appearance of the great fleet of men-of-war and transports on the coast, followed by the failure of Menou to drive, as was confidently expected, his assailants back to their ships, produced a profound effect. The report that Alexandria had been almost cut off from the rest of Egypt by the inundation of Lake Mareotis, and that to regain the city an army would have to force its way along the narrow neck of land between the lakes Mareotis and Aboukir, seemed to diminish still further their hope of ever getting away.
The news, therefore, that a great force of British and Turks, supported by gun-boats, and accompanied by an immense flotilla carrying stores, was ascending the Nile, reduced them almost to despair, and so unwilling were they to fight, that when, on the approach of the Vizier's army to Cairo, it was met by four thousand French, these suffered themselves to be repulsed by the rabble and fell back to Cairo.
They were well aware that if they surrendered they would be guaranteed a passage back to France. Better terms than this they could not hope to obtain after the most vigorous resistance, involving a great and useless loss of life. Therefore as soon as the whole allied force approached Cairo, negotiations were begun, and on the 28th of June (1801) these were concluded, and one of the gates of the town occupied by the Capitan Pasha's body-guards, and a fort by the 30th Regiment, and on the 10th the French evacuated the city, and the next day the Turkish troops took possession of it.
In the meantime fighting had been going on almost incessantly in front of Alexandria. General Coote, who was in command of the besieging force, gradually gained ground. The French lines were forced backward, and on September 2nd, finding the contest altogether hopeless, and most of the British troops from Cairo having returned, reinforced by a British native Indian army, the garrison capitulated. The number of troops, including the sick, who surrendered in Alexandria, were 10,528, while the force that surrendered at Cairo, which, like the other, was embarked in British ships and taken to France, was 13,672; included among them were 1900 sailors who had for the most part been landed after the battle of Aboukir, while some had been drawn from the French war-ships that had succeeded in running the blockade.
The Indian force arrived in time to witness the surrender of Alexandria, but the fact that the work was practically accomplished by the 12,000 men who landed under General Abercrombie, aided after their work was half done by a Turkish force of no great value, renders the operation one of the most brilliant in our military history, and redounds equal credit upon the gallant soldier who died in the hour of victory, on his successor whose operations were most skilfully conducted, and on the British officers and soldiers who endured no ordinary amount of privation and labour under a burning sun.
Upon the advance to Cairo Edgar had been accompanied by the sheik and his son with a score of their followers. The information that they were enabled to give the general was of the greatest importance and value. The sheik was intimately acquainted with every foot of the ground, and on the force halting in the afternoon he was able to inform the quartermaster-general of the most likely spot for the next camping-ground, and of the distance and nature of the country to be traversed. At daybreak he would start ahead with his party, ascertain from the inhabitants of the villages whether any bodies of the enemy were in the neighbourhood, and arrange with them to forward such supplies of food and vegetables as remained at their disposal for sale, to the spot selected for the camping-ground that afternoon.
The supplies were but small, for the French had well-nigh made the whole country below Cairo a desert. Nevertheless, such as could be produced were gladly purchased by the commissariat for the use of the troops, and owing to the custom prevalent throughout the East of storing grain in covered pits, the supply obtained as forage for the horses largely exceeded expectations, for the peasants regarded the British as deliverers from their oppressors, and upon being assured by the sheik that they paid well for everything that they required, the pits that had escaped the French searchers were thrown open at once. General Hutchinson, on his return to carry out the siege of Alexandria to a conclusion, reported to Admiral Keith his very warm appreciation of the services that Lieutenant Blagrove had rendered him. Long before that time the admiral had received from England a confirmation of the acting rank he had given Edgar. As soon as the capitulation was signed, although it had been stipulated that the British troops were not to go into the town until the French took their departure, many officers did so, as General Menou freely gave permission to enter to anyone who applied for it. Edgar was one of the first of these, and, riding in, alighted at his father's house.