There was something of a postscript to the battle, because not all Turkish forces at Aboukir had been destroyed. Some 2,000 to 2,500 fleeing Turkish soldiers had managed to reach the temporary safety of Aboukir castle, the massive fortress on the tip of the peninsula. Although they could hold the French at bay, they found they had scant food and little water.

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The morning after the battle, Bonaparte sent generous surrender terms out to the castle’s residents, even promising safe passage to the fleet that still hovered off the coast. The Turkish officers were inclined to accept the French offer, but the rank and file were not. This Egyptian campaign had often degenerated into a war of mutual extermination, with little quarter given. The French had, for instance, killed prisoners in a mass execution at Jaffa, and the garrison at Aboukir expected a like fate.

And so Aboukir castle held out for a week, bombarded by French forces under Général de Division Jacques-François de Boussay, Baron Menou. When it finally surrendered on August 2, the French described its famished garrison as looking ‘like ghosts.’ Perhaps 1,000 had died during the siege, more from hardship than from French gunfire. Crazed with thirst, some had even taken to drinking seawater and subsequently perished.

Less than a month after the battle, Bonaparte was gone, sailing back to France on August 23 with a select entourage. When he landed in France on October 17, he found that the news of Aboukir had preceded him. This last great Middle Eastern battle had secured — for the time being — French rule in Egypt and also allowed Bonaparte to leave Kléber in command and return to Paris a hero. The dazzling victory, however, obscured the fact that the général-en-chef had left a weakened and homesick army behind.

For Bonaparte, the Battle of Aboukir was a stepping stone, even a springboard, to power. For the languishing Armée de l’Orient, the victory allowed the soldiers to survive but also condemned them to two more years of hardships and homesickness before finally being repatriated to France by the victorious British in 1801.

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