For a few awed minutes every gun was dumb. Then the _Franklin_, the French ship that had taken fire, began the fight again. But the _Defence_ and _Swiftsure_ brought down her masts, silenced nearly all her guns, and forced her to surrender. By midnight the first seven ships in that gallant French line had all been taken or sunk; every man who could be saved being brought on board the victorious British men-of-war and, of course, well treated there. The eighth Frenchman, the _Tonnant_, still kept up the fight, hoping to stop the British from getting at the five astern. Her heroic captain, Thouars, had, first, his right arm, then his left, and then his right leg, smashed by cannon balls. But, like Brueys, he would not leave the deck, and calmly gave his orders till he died. Dawn found the _Tonnant_ still trying to stem the British advance against the French rear, and the French frigate _Justice_ actually making for the disabled British battleship, _Bellerophon_, which she wished to take. But the light of day soon showed the remaining French that all they could do for their own side now was to save as many ships as possible. So the rear then tried to escape. But one blew up; two ran ashore; and, of all the fleet that was to have made Napoleon's foothold sure, only four escaped, two from the line of battle and two from the frigates on the flank. Nelson had won a victory which was quite perfect in reaching his great aim--the complete destruction of Napoleon's power in Egypt and the East. Napoleon himself escaped to France, after a campaign in Palestine followed by a retreat to Egypt. But his army was stranded as surely as if it had been a wrecked ship, high and dry. Three years after the Battle of the Nile the remnant of it was rounded up and made to surrender. Moreover, Malta, the central sea base of the whole Mediterranean, had meanwhile (1800) fallen into British hands, where, like Egypt, it remains to this day.