In the meantime fighting had been going on almost incessantly in front of Alexandria. General Coote, who was in command of the besieging force, gradually gained ground. The French lines were forced backward, and on September 2nd, finding the contest altogether hopeless, and most of the British troops from Cairo having returned, reinforced by a British native Indian army, the garrison capitulated. The number of troops, including the sick, who surrendered in Alexandria, were 10,528, while the force that surrendered at Cairo, which, like the other, was embarked in British ships and taken to France, was 13,672; included among them were 1900 sailors who had for the most part been landed after the battle of Aboukir, while some had been drawn from the French war-ships that had succeeded in running the blockade.