incited to the deed by a Janissary refugee
at Jerusalem, who had brought letters to the sheiks of the Azhar, who,
however, refused to give him any encouragement. Three of these,
nevertheless, were executed by the French as accessories before the
fact, and the assassin himself was impaled, after torture, in spite of a
promise of pardon having been made to him on condition of his naming his
associates. The command of the army then devolved on General J. F.
(Baron de) Menou (1750-1810), a man who had professed Islam, and who
endeavoured to conciliate the Moslem population by various measures,
such as excluding all Christians (with the exception of one Frenchman)
from the divan, replacing the Copts who were in government service by
Moslems, and subjecting French residents to taxes. Whatever popularity
might have been gained by these measures was counteracted by his
declaration of a French protectorate over Egypt, which was to count as a
French colony.

French evacuation.

In the first weeks of March 1801 the English, under Sir R. Abercromby,
effected a landing at Aboukir, and proceeded to invest Alexandria, where
on the 21st they were attacked by Menou; the French were repulsed, but
the English commander was mortally wounded in the action. On the 25th
fresh reinforcements arrived under Husain, the Kapudan Pasha, or high
admiral; and a combined English and Turkish force was sent to take
Rosetta. On the 30th of May, General A. D. Belliard, who had been left
in charge at Cairo, was assailed on two sides by the British forces
under General John Hely Hutchinson (afterwards 2nd earl of Donoughmore),
and the Turkish under Yusuf Pasha; after negotiations Belliard agreed to
evacuate Cairo and to sail with his 13,734 troops to France. On the 30th
of August, Menou at Alexandria was compelled to accept similar
conditions, and his force of 10,000 left for Europe in September. This
was the termination of the French occupation of Egypt, of which the
chief permanent monument was the _Description de l'Egypte_, compiled by
the French savants who accompanied the expedition. Further than this,
"it brought to the attention of a few men in Egypt a keen sense of the
great advantage of an orderly government, and a warm appreciation of the
advance that science and learning had made in Europe" (Hajji Browne,
_Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of to-day_, 1907, p. 268).

British, Turks and Mamelukes.

Soon after the evacuation of Egyp