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Image: The Destruction of L’Orient at the Battle of the Nile George Arnald, 1827.
On August 1, 1798, Horatio Nelson defeated a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. The clash left Napoleon’s 45,000-man Armée d’Orient stranded in Egypt with no way to return home.
The Battle of the Nile was fought between the British Royal Navy and the Navy of the French Republic at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast off the Nile Delta of Egypt between 1–3 August 1798. The battle was the climax of a naval campaign that had raged across the Mediterranean during the previous three months, as a large French convoy sailed from Toulon to Alexandria carrying an expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte. The British fleet was led in the battle by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson; they decisively defeated the French under Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys d’Aigalliers, destroying the best of the French navy, which was weakened for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars.
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History Daily With Francis Chappell Black 