On arriving at Rosetta General Baird and his force hoped to be able to take part in the siege of Alexandria, but their ardour was damped by the receipt of a letter from General Hutchinson, announcing that the French had sent a flag of truce to him to treat for a surrender. General Baird was ordered to halt where he was.
On the 1st September General Baird called upon General Hutchinson in his tent. He learned from him that the capitulation had been actually signed and that the British troops were to take possession of the outworks of Alexandria the following morning.
The Anglo-Indian army then disembarked and encamped at Aboumandur, not far from Rosetta.
For some months the Indian army remained encamped near Rosetta without orders either from England or from India. Meanwhile a difficulty arose. General Hutchinson had resolved to proceed to England, and the British Government had replaced him by Lord Cavan. This officer declined to look upon General Baird as commanding a separate force distinct from the British army, but desired to place him and his troops in the same alignment, as it were, as the troops who had come direct from England. To this General Baird objected, assigning as one great obstacle to the success of such an arrangement the fact that the troops under his orders received Indian rates of pay, and that the money he had to dispose of as commanding the Indian expedition was the property, not of the Crown, but of the East India Company. General Hutchinson appeared to see great force in these objections; but he did not the less, on his departure, the 6th November,
