Dillon’s regiment during this movement made a brilliant bayonet charge, captured two guns, and turned them instantly on the enemy. Wishing to follow up this success, Sir Ralph attempted to carry the position by a _coup de main_; and advancing across the plain, he directed the brigades of Moore and Hutchinson to assault the flanks of the French position simultaneously. To attempt dislodging a force posted as the enemy were, could only end in certain discomfiture. The troops could make no way--a murderous fire of artillery mowed them down; “the French, no longer in danger, had only to load and fire: aim was unnecessary, the bullets could not but do their office and plunge into the lines.” For several hours the British remained, suffering this exterminating fire patiently; and at sunset, the order being given to fall back, the army retired and took up a position for the night. The British loss, its strength considered, was immense. Eleven hundred men were killed and wounded; while that of the enemy amounted barely to a third, with four field-pieces, which they were obliged to abandon. A strong position was now taken by Sir Ralph; the right reached the sea, resting on the ruins of a Roman palace, and projecting a quarter of a mile over heights in front. This promontory of sandhills and ruins was some three hundred yards across, sloping gradually to a valley, which divided it from the hills which formed the rest of the lines. The extreme left appuied on two batteries, and Lake Maadie protected the rear--and the whole, from sea to lake, extended about a mile. In front of the right, the ground was uneven; but that before the centre would admit cavalry to act. The whole space had once been a Roman colony--and, on its ruined site, a hard-fought day was now about to be decided. The French position was still stronger than the British lines, as it stretched along a ridge of lofty hills, extending from the sea on one side to the canal of Alexandria on the other. A tongue of land in the advance of their right, ran nearly for a mile parallel with the canal, and had obliged the British posts to be thrown considerably back, and thus obliqued their line. In a classic and military view, nothing could be more imposing than the ground on which Menou’s army were encamped. In the centre stood Fort Cretin; on the left, Fort Caffarelli; Pompey’s Pillar showed boldly on the right; Cleopatra’s Needle on the left; while Alexandria appeared in the background, with its walls extending to the sea; and at the extremity of a long low neck of land, the ancient Pharos was visible. Wherever the eye ranged, objects of no common interest met it; some of the “wonders of the world” were contiguous; and “the very ruins under foot were sacred from their antiquity.”