The great events of the campaign were the surrender of Cairo on the 28th June, 1801, and of Alexandria on the 2nd September. It was during the march on Cairo that the ingenuity and endurance of the Royal Artillery were most severely tried. Other writers have borne testimony--in glowing, but not exaggerated terms--to the gallantry of the other arms of the service in this campaign; and it must not be assumed that the necessary allusions to a particular corps in a work like this imply any assertion of superiority; such conduct would be at once unjust, and subversive of the main purpose of this history. There are regiments, the very mention of whose names brings instinctively to the hearer’s memory the brave story of Egypt; but, where all were brave, the special professional duties of Artillerymen obtained for those, who served in that capacity, opportunities of displaying energy and ingenuity which were denied to others. There have been campaigns where the exertions of the Infantry have dwarfed those of the other arms; there have been occasions--sung by poets, and boasted of with just pride by all Englishmen--when the honour of England was entrusted to her Cavalry, and was brought back with redoubled lustre; it is, therefore, in no spirit of depreciation of the other arms that the services of the Artillery are especially pointed out, during a campaign where the hardest work was not in battle, and in a work which hopes to hand down to their successors the merits of those who, in Egypt, were responsible for their Regiment’s reputation. It is with such a hope that words like the following, referring to the siege [Sidenote: Stewart’s ‘Highlanders of Scotland.’] of Alexandria, are reproduced:--“The proceedings against Alexandria showed to what a pitch of perfection the British Artillery had arrived. The battery on the Greenhill opened at six o’clock on the morning of the 26th August, and before mid-day the enemy were completely silenced, their batteries destroyed, and their guns withdrawn. On the west of Alexandria, the tower of Marabout was bombarded from a battery commanded by Captain Curry,[9] of the Royal Artillery. The first shot struck the tower, four feet from the ground; every succeeding shot struck the same spot; and in this manner he continued, never missing his mark, till a large hole was in a manner completely bored through, when the building fell, and, filling up the surrounding ditch, the place was instantly surrendered.”