With the arrival of Alexandria, there are new events and a new level of this expedition.
It is a very critical moment, and the implementation of this expedition must be transferred in a perfect way in order to keep the process of this expedition going on properly.
According to spies who were in Egypt before this expedition and their reports, they recommended that; the perfect position to invade and conquer Egypt is through Alexandria, the ancient capital of Alexander the Great, which had two harbors and was a tiny city at his time with less than 10000 populations.
Usually, the inhabitants used to receive invading from the east side from the side of “ abu qir” Bay, but no one knows why Napoleon and his fleet entered this city from the other side near the Fortress of the Quietbay.
On a full-moon night around 3 July, Napoleon arrived in Alexandria, so he started to move from his ships to the land, carefully discovering this city and trying to contact its governor.
When “ Mohamed Koraeam” received the disturbing news about this expedition, he had a mixture of feelings, because three days before came to Alexandria messengers of general nelson asked about the French campaign, and they even told him they might invade Egypt, and they want to defeat them before being in their country, and they don’t demand anything from Egypt except paid supply of food and water!!!
But because of their short sight and lack of ability to read the situation well, they paid no attention to this news, even though they thought it is just a trick to invade Egypt, and the replay of this news was this text; “ Egypt belongs to the Ottoman sultan, and neither British nor french could invade a land relates to the ottoman empire”
So this upset replay forced general nelson to search as soon as possible for another place to get his supply chain of water and food for his fleet, which was one of the Greek islands.
And many scholars were very astonished about this second occasion which made both fleets very close to each other for the first one, nearby Secylia and Malta, and now for the second time nearby the target destination in Alexandria.
And the main question was; “what could have happened?”
What could have happened if both fleets had a confrontation in the Mediterranean Sea, before being in Alexandria, how would this battle between great British general Nelson and great army leader Napoleon be?
In my estimation, there would be a great change in the path of this expedition if any battle would happen in the Mediterranean Sea between French and British fleets, even I could assure you the British would defeat the French completely since they are the kings of the sea, and according to history, always British won the fleet battles with their enemies.
Back to Alexandria and its governor who is most hypothetically come from Morocco and as a trader, had his position as a governor of this city, and because of his origin and type of his character, he was very diplomatic with Napoleon and his strategy depended on welcoming Napoleon and his army, showing him loyalty and ability to support his strategy and meanwhile sending messengers to mamluks in Cairo, even in one day he sent 17 messengers to Cairo, in order to be ready to stop and defeat this campaign.
When Napoleon got news about Nelson’s company which was in Alexandria 3 days before his arrival, he said “Destiny gave me three days, so I shouldn’t waste even one hour”!!!!!!!!
Very actively he started with his commanders and soldiers to prepare all weapons which were brought from France, from their ships to the land of Alexandria.
And then to fortify this city as much as possible, Napoleon understood the British were observing and monitoring his campaign, so he should be careful as much as possible to guard his connection with France through Alexandria.
In fact, the soldiers fortified the city properly and professionally, on the other hand, Nelson asked the general to find the proper place to keep the ships and battleships of the army in a safe and strategic place because they might be attacked by British anytime, but there were discussions between generals about finding the proper place or port of it, because of depth variety of these ships.
And by the end, the important thing which was needed was animals; horses for the soldiers and camels to carry up the weapons of the campaign, the governor of Alexandria did this mission perfectly through his relationships with Bedouins who lived in the west of Delta, they supplied napoleon with 1000 camels and around 300 horses and their instruments, plus they had from France 680 horses.
After all the above mentioned steps Napoleon spent just 7 days working hard to fortify this city and meanwhile preparing his campaign for Cairo, because the key achievement of his campaign is to obtain the capital under his control, without Cairo there is no real starting point to construct a French colony in Egypt.