The bigwigs in Cairo were still making their last stand, but the scattered French officers and soldiers outside were different. Knowing full well that the Egyptian front was beyond saving and that their retreat had been cut off, only fools would fight to the bitter end.
The surrender terms promised by Austria were merely a catalyst. What truly made everyone resolve to act was the dwindling supplies in their hands.
Some fortress strongholds trapped within the encirclement had already begun rationing food. If this dragged on, they would be finished before the enemy even launched an attack.
Aswan, on the eastern bank of the Nile River, was merely an inconspicuous small city. It had only become known because of the great uprising a few years earlier.
The rebels had blown up the Aswan Dam, and the flooding waters submerged the downstream delta, drawing the attention of the European media and making it famous across the world.
Once bitten, twice shy. After wiping out the rebels, the Egyptian colonial government stationed heavy forces in the Aswan region. The once-unremarkable small city of Aswan leapt into prominence as a strategic military stronghold.
After the outbreak of the Continental War, to avoid a repeat of the tragedy of the flooded delta, the French once again reinforced the Aswan region, with total troop strength at one point exceeding eighty thousand.
Relying on their formidable forces, the garrison in the Aswan region had repeatedly smashed Austrian attacks. Unfortunately, it was utterly useless. The gains and losses of a single city or patch of land could not turn the tide of a large-scale war.
As time passed, friendly troops in the surrounding areas fell one after another beneath enemy guns, and the French forces in the Aswan region gradually became an isolated army.
At the