The French had occupied Alexandria, a major fortified harbour city on the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, since 2 July 1798, and the garrison there surrendered on 2 September 1801.

Joined by a sizable Turkish force Hutchinson invested Cairo and on 27 June the 13,000-strong French garrison under General Augustin Daniel Belliard, out-manned and out-gunned, surrendered.

While the reserve feinted to the east, Coote, with the Guards and two other brigades, landed on 16 August to its west where fierce opposition was encountered by the garrison of Fort Marabout, which the 54th Regiment of Foot eventually stormed.

Both sides mounted combined assaults but the French soldiers, unable to break out and with food shortages and disease taking their toll, became increasingly disillusioned with the campaign.

[4] 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.

Inscriptions painted in white on the artifact state "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" on the left side and "Presented by King George III" on the right.