Siege of Alexandria - Aftermath

Aftermath

By 2 September total of 10,000 French surrendered 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.

Of the warships captured in the harbour, the French frigates Égyptienne (50) and Régénérée (40), and the ex-Venetian frigate Léoben (26) went to Britain, while the French frigate Justice (44), the ex-Venetian ship of the line Causse (64) and frigate Mantoue (26), and the ex-Turkish corvettes Halil Bey, Momgo Balerie and Salâbetnümâ went to the Turks, under Capitan Pacha (sic).

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. 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.