What happened at Abukir on 8 March 1801?
On 8 March 1801 a British army under Sir Ralph Abercromby landed from the boats of Admiral Keith's fleet at Aboukir Bay, east of Alexandria, to drive the French army out of Egypt. French troops under General Friant fired on the boats from the dunes and the castle, but Major General John Moore's reserve stormed the great sand hill in about twenty minutes, and by evening the beach was British. It opened the campaign that ended with the French surrender in Egypt.1
Aboukir Bay had already seen two battles in three years: Nelson's destruction of the French fleet in 1798 and Napoleon's defeat of an Ottoman army in 1799. The third, in March 1801, was a British landing from the sea against a defended shore, and it decided the fate of the French army that Napoleon had left behind in Egypt.2
An army sent to Egypt
Napoleon had invaded Egypt in 1798 and left for France the next year, but his Army of the Orient remained. In late 1800 the British government ordered Abercromby to take some 15,000 men to Egypt and capture Alexandria. BritishBattles.com notes that the French army there was believed to number about 15,000, but was nearer 30,000. Abercromby, who remembered the badly prepared landing in Holland in 1799, rehearsed this one for weeks in Marmaris Bay on the Turkish coast, drilling troops and sailors in three lines of boats.3 › Battle of the Pyramids, 1798
The fleet sailed on 22 February and anchored in Aboukir Bay on 2 March. Abercromby and Moore reconnoitered the beach in a cutter: the guns of Aboukir Castle ruled out the northwestern end of the bay, so the landing would go in on the sand hills from the center to the southeast. Then a gale blew for four days. In his dispatch Abercromby wrote simply that the weather did not permit any landing before the 8th; the National Army Museum adds that the delay gave the French time to organize.4
Rowing in under fire
General Friant, commanding at Alexandria, had placed troops on the dunes above the beach and garrisoned Aboukir Castle. Their numbers vary: the NAM gives about 2,000 men with 10 field guns, BritishBattles.com 1,600 men, and Abercromby wrote of the fire of fifteen guns and the musketry of 2,500 men.5
At 3.30 a.m. on 8 March the boats left the transports. By 9 a.m. the first line of 58 flat boats, each carrying about 50 men with unloaded muskets, set off for the shore, followed by lines of cutters and launches, with gunboats on the wings and armed cutters under Sir Sidney Smith behind. The boats had almost a mile to row under fire, Abercromby reported. A shell struck a boat full of Coldstream Guards, killing and wounding many, and part of the line swerved aside.6
The great sand hill
Moore's reserve, the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers, the 28th and the 40th, steered straight for the great sand hill at the center of the bay. They jumped ashore and climbed it without stopping to load; the French 61st demi-brigade on the summit was driven back into the plain, and Moore held the hill within twenty minutes. On his left the 42nd Highlanders formed and loaded in time to beat off a French cavalry charge, the Guards landed in some confusion and were also attacked by cavalry, and the 54th and the Royal Scots threw back a French battalion advancing on their flank.7
After an hour and a half of fighting the French were pushed off the dunes altogether. The British took eight guns, as Abercromby reported. While the first wave fought, the boats went back for more troops; BritishBattles.com and the NAM say the rest of the army was landed by nightfall, while Abercromby's dispatch says the remainder was landed on the 9th.8
The cost
BritishBattles.com counts 31 officers and 621 soldiers of the army killed, wounded or missing, and 97 naval officers and men, over 700 in all; the NAM gives about 700. French losses were 300 to 400 killed, wounded or captured.9
To Alexandria and beyond
Friant fell back toward Alexandria. On 13 March the British fought again at Mandora, and on 21 March General Menou attacked their lines outside Alexandria and was beaten, though Abercromby was mortally wounded in the battle. A map of the operations from the landing to the battle of Alexandria was already on sale in London in May 1801. The French garrison of Cairo surrendered on 27 June and Menou capitulated at Alexandria on 31 August 1801. For the British Army, the NAM concludes, the victory at Alexandria that the landing made possible was a welcome boost to morale after setbacks against the French elsewhere.10
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”. ↩
- National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”; BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”. ↩
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria”; National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”. ↩
- National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”; The London Gazette Extraordinary, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”; Royal Collection Trust, “A Plan of the Operations of the British Forces in Egypt from the Landing in Aboukir Bay (RCIN 735088.1)”. ↩
Sources
- BritishBattles.com, “Battle of Alexandria” (section on the landing in Aboukir Bay, 8 March 1801)
- National Army Museum, “Egyptian campaign”
- The London Gazette Extraordinary, no. 15360, 3 May 1801, p. 477, “Copy of a Letter from Sir Ralph Abercromby to the Earl of Elgin, dated Camp before Alexandria, 16th March 1801”
- Royal Collection Trust, Military Maps, “A Plan of the Operations of the British Forces in Egypt from the Landing in Aboukir Bay (RCIN 735088.1)”
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