page_title: Alexandria expedition of 1807
section_title: Battle of Rosetta
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandria expedition of 1807 / Battle of Rosetta
caption_attribution_description: English: "Portrait of Lieutenant-General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser of Inverallochy, M.P. (c.1758-1809)".
context_page_description: The Alexandria expedition of 1807 or Fraser expedition was an operation by the Royal Navy and the British Army during the Anglo-Turkish War of the Napoleonic Wars to capture Alexandria in Egypt with the purpose of securing a base of operations against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a part of a larger strategy against the Ottoman-French alliance of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III. It resulted in the occupation of Alexandria from 18 March to 25 September 1807. The people of Alexandria, being disaffected towards Muhammad Ali, opened the gates of the city to the British forces, allowing for one of the easiest conquests of a city by the British forces during the Napoleonic Wars. Attempts to proceed inland however, were to prove disastrous with British troops being twice defeated in battles at Rosetta, at a cost of over 900 officers and men killed and more than 500 captured. Consequently British troops were forced to retreat to Alexandria, where they remained besieged.
context_section_description: On March 21, 1807 AD, the people of Rashid, led by its governor Ali Bey Al-Slanki, confronted the English campaign led by General Fraser, two years after Muhammad Ali assumed power in Egypt. The British had seized the struggle between the governor Muhammad Ali and the Mamluks and the weakness of the home front, so they agreed with Muhammad Bey Al-Alfy, the leader of the Mamluks, to support the British campaign, in exchange for England to guarantee the Mamluks the seizure of the country's reins. However, Al-Alfi died before this campaign reached Egypt.
  The plan was for the Mamluks to crawl to Cairo to occupy it, and the British occupied their fleet of Egyptian ports, and then to crawl to the Delta and occupy Cairo to overthrow the rule of Muhammad Ali, provided that the Mamluks assisted their agents in Egypt, especially the Millennium Front.  General Fraser was in Alexandria, had received a report from the British Consul in Rashid on the state of Egypt and its forces, which made him crawl overland to Rashid to occupy it, and took a military base for his forces, and assigned the commander "and is serving" this military mission.
  500 troops of the 31st Foot and the Chasseurs Britanniques were detached, accompanied by a section of Royal Artillery, under Major-General Patrick Wauchope and Brigadier-General the Honorable Robert Meade
  Wauchope moved in 2,500 soldiers from Alexandria to Rashid. The Governor of Rashid Ali Bek Al-Slanki province and his 700 soldiers are determined to resist the British soldiers, and Sheikh Hassan Crere mobilized the people for popular resistance, so he ordered the removal of the Egyptian boats from the front of the Nile, Rashid, to the eastern bank opposite the Green Island and a spindle tower in the Moutoubis county, to prevent the people from getting over them and fleeing the city, so that his garrison men do not find a way to revert, surrender or withdraw, as the Alexandria garrison did before.  The garrison among the people became concealed in the homes inside the city of Rashid, in front of them only fighting and resistance, and ordered them not to move or fire unless after the issuance of an agreed signal, so the British advanced and did not find any resistance, so they believed that the city would surrender as the garrison of Alexandria did, so they entered the city's streets in safety and they took a rest after walking in the sand from Alexandria to Rashid, and spread in the streets of the city and markets to find places to take refuge and rest in.  They almost did not rest, until the call to the call to prayer issued by the Slanki order was launched from the minaret of the Sidi Zaghloul mosque, chanting: “Allah Akbar! (God is great) For jihad!” Residents and Rashid's garrison fire broke out from the windows and rooftops, killing the soldiers and officers from the campaign, and those who remained alive fled.
  The British losses amounted to 185 dead, 282 wounded, and 120 captured at Rashid’s garrison. Muhammad Ali came with his forces after the British withdrew to Alexandria. Muhammad Ali Pasha and General Fraser negotiated the withdrawal from Egypt that he left with his forces. Rashid’s people thwarted the British project to occupy Egypt, and on September 19th it became a national holiday to the Beheira province.
caption: Alexander Mackenzie Fraser
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