Siege of Acre
Napoleon besieged Acre for two months in 1799, failed, and abandoned the campaign in Syria. He had marched north from Egypt in February with some 13,000 men, partly to pre-empt an Ottoman attack and partly because the road through Syria was the road to Constantinople and to India in his imagination. Jaffa was stormed in March and some 2,000 to 3,000 prisoners who had surrendered on terms were shot and bayoneted on the beach over two days, on the argument that he could neither feed nor guard them. Plague broke out in the army immediately afterwards. Acre was held by Jezzar Pasha, an Ottoman governor of considerable brutality, and by Sir Sidney Smith with two British ships of the line, who had intercepted the French siege train at sea — the heavy guns arrived in the harbour under British colours and were mounted on the walls. The French had only field artillery, and eight assaults over sixty-two days failed against walls they could not breach properly. Kléber beat a Turkish relief army at Mount Tabor with 2,000 men against many times that number, which changed nothing. Napoleon lifted the siege in May and retreated to Egypt, and the plague victims at Jaffa were reportedly given opium on the way. He left Egypt for France in August, abandoning the army, and reached Paris to seize power in November. He said later that if Acre had fallen he would have changed the face of the world. The expedition's real legacy was not military. The scholars who came with it produced the Description de l'Égypte over twenty years and the Rosetta Stone reached the British Museum, and Egyptology began from an invasion that failed at every one of its stated objects.
- Year: 1799 CE
- Category: Military
