Hely-Hutchinson now turned his attention to Alexandria, which he had left invested by General Coote when the main body advanced upon Cairo. Thanks to the arrival of large reinforcements from England, he was now able to besiege it in due form, and pushed on his works so fast that on the 31st of August the garrison, 10,528 strong, surrendered on terms identical with those granted at Cairo. The Royal Irish were present at the operations, and with other picked troops their grenadier company, with drums beating and Colours flying, marched into Alexandria to take formal possession of the town. Their triumphal entry marked the end of the Egyptian campaign, in which 500 officers and men were killed and 3058 were wounded: how many died from sickness is not known, but the mortality must have been considerable. In the regiment Captain-Lieutenant G. Jones was killed, and Captain W. Morgue, Ensign H. Bruley, Ensign W. Brand, Quartermaster M. M‘Dermott, and fifty-six of the other ranks died from wounds, accident, or disease.[115] During the summer the Royal Irish suffered much from sickness, and in the month of July more than two hundred men were in hospital, chiefly from ophthalmia, which was then raging among the troops.
The thanks of Parliament were voted to both services; the XVIIIth Royal Irish were authorised to carry on the Colours the emblem of a Sphinx and the word “Egypt,” and gold medals were presented by the Sultan to all the officers of the regiment. It was not until the year 1847 that a British medal was issued for this campaign, when only three officers--Hill, Beavan, and Deane--were still alive to claim the decoration.
As soon as the last of the French were shipped off to France, Hely-Hutchinson’s army was broken up. Some of the troops remained to share with Baird’s contingent the duty of holding Egypt for a few months; the remainder returned to various parts of the Mediterranean to await the results of the negotiations for peace then going on between the Governments of England and France. The Royal Irish were sent first to Malta, and then on to Elba, where Montresor was appointed military governor of Porto Ferraio for the second time: and when peace was declared the regiment was ordered home, and landed at Cork at the end of August, 1802.