The Turkish outposts were assaulted early next morning, and driven in with great slaughter; but the French, when they advanced, came within the range of the batteries, and also of the shipping that lay close by the shore, and were checked.  Their retreat might have ended in a rout, but for the undisciplined eagerness with which the Turks engaged in the task of spoiling and maiming those that fell before them—­thus giving to Murat the opportunity of charging their main body in flank with his cavalry, at the moment when the French infantry, profiting by their disordered and scattered condition, and rallying under the eye of Napoleon, forced a passage to the entrenchments.  From that moment the battle was a massacre.  The Turks, attacked on all sides, were panic-struck; and the sea was covered with the turbans of men who flung themselves headlong into the waves rather than await the fury of Le Beau Sabreur,[29] or the steady rolling fire of the Sultan Kebir.  Six thousand surrendered at discretion:  twelve thousand perished on the field or in the sea.  Mustapha Pacha, the general, being brought into the presence of his victor, was saluted with these words:—­“It has been your fate to lose this day; but I will take care to inform the sultan of the courage with which you have contested it.”  “Spare thyself that trouble,” answered the proud pacha, “my master knows me better than thou.”

Napoleon once more returned to Cairo on the 9th of August; but it was only to make some parting arrangements as to the administration, civil and military; for, from the moment of his victory at Aboukir, he had resolved to entrust Egypt to other hands, and Admiral Gantheaume was already preparing in secret the means of his removal to France.

Buonaparte always asserted, and the Buonapartist writers of his history still maintain, that this resolution was adopted in consequence of a mere accident;[30] namely, that Sir Sydney Smith, in the course of some negotiations about prisoners which followed after the battle of Aboukir, sent a file of English newspapers for the amusement of the General.  Some say the English Commodore did so out of mere civility:  others, that he designed to distract the movements of Napoleon, by showing him the dangerous condition to which, during his absence, the affairs of France, both at home and abroad, had been reduced.  It seems, however, to be generally believed (as without doubt it is the more probable case) that Buonaparte had long ere now received intelligence of the great events in which he was so deeply concerned.  He had, assuredly, many friends in Paris, who were watching keenly over his interests, and who must have been singularly ill served if they never were able to communicate with him during so many months.

However this might have been, the General succeeded in preventing any suspicion of his projected evasion from arising among the soldiery; and when he finally turned his back on Cairo, it was universally believed that it was but to make a tour in the Delta.