At about nine in the evening the French flag-ship was observed to be on fire, from what cause has never been certainly known. The British guns, trained on the part in flames, helped to paralyze all efforts to extinguish them, and they gained rapidly. The brave and unfortunate Brueys was spared the sight of this last calamity. Already twice wounded, at half-past eight a cannon-ball carried away his left leg at the thigh. He refused to be taken below, and passed away calmly and nobly a few moments before the fire broke out. At ten the "Orient" blew up. Five ships ahead of her had already surrendered, and the eighty-gun ship "Franklin" also hauled down her flag before midnight.
Six of the French still had their colors flying; but either from their cables being cut by shot, or from the necessity of slipping to avoid the explosion of the "Orient," they had drifted far astern. The three in the extreme rear had been but slightly engaged; of the others, the "Tonnant" was totally dismasted, while the "Heureux" and "Mercure" had received considerable injury.[194] The following morning these vessels were attacked by some of the least injured of the British, with the result that the "Tonnant," "Mercure," "Heureux" and "Timoléon," the last of which had been the extreme rear, or flank, ship of the original order, ran ashore. There the three first named afterwards hauled down their flags, and the fourth was burned by her officers. The two other French ships, "Guillaume Tell" and "Généreux," escaped. The former bore the flag of Rear-Admiral Villeneuve, who had commanded the rear in this battle, and was hereafter to be commander-in-chief of the allied fleet at the memorable disaster of Trafalgar. His inaction on this occasion has been sharply criticised, both in his own time and since. Upon the whole, the feeling of later French professional writers appears to be that his courage, though unquestionable, was rather of the passive than the active type; and that in Aboukir Bay there was afforded him a real opportunity and sufficient time to bring the rear ships into action, which he culpably failed to improve.[195] Bonaparte, on the contrary, wrote to Villeneuve, soon after the battle, that "if any error could be imputed to him, it was that he had not got under way as soon as the 'Orient' blew up; seeing that, three hours before, the position Brueys had taken had been forced and surrounded."[196]