Siege of Acre (1799)

The Siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman city of Acre (now Akko in modern Israel) and was the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, along with the Battle of the Nile. It was Napoleon's first decisive defeat in his career as three years previously he had been tactically defeated at the Second Battle of Bassano. As a result of the failed siege, Napoleon Bonaparte retreated two months later and withdrew to Egypt.

Siege of Acre
Part of the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria
Artistic representation of Napoleon's 1799 siege of Acre
Date 20 March – 21 May 1799 Location Acre, Sidon Eyalet, Ottoman Empire 32.922°N 35.070°E / 32.922; 35.070 Result Decisive Anglo-Ottoman victory
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire  Great Britain	France
Commanders and leaders
Jazzar Pasha Haim Farhi Sidney Smith	Napoleon Bonaparte
Strength
30,000[1]	9,000
Casualties and losses
2,300 killed and wounded	4,500 killed and wounded

Sidney Smith's description of the Siege of Acre, The Times, Aug 02, 1799

Background

Main article: French campaign in Egypt and Syria

Acre was a site of significant strategic importance due to its commanding position on the route between Egypt and Syria. Bonaparte wanted to capture it following his invasion of Egypt. He hoped to incite a Syrian rebellion against the Ottomans and threaten British India. After the Siege of Jaffa, which was followed by two days and nights of massacre and rape by the French forces, the defenders of the citadel were even more determined to resist the French.

Siege

The French attempted to lay siege on 20 March using only their infantry. Napoleon believed the city would capitulate quickly to him.[2] In correspondence with one of his subordinate officers he voiced his conviction that a mere two weeks would be necessary to capture the linchpin of his conquest of the Holy Land before marching on to Jerusalem.

However, the troops of the capable Jezzar Pasha, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months. Haim Farhi, al-Jazzar's Jewish adviser and right-hand man, played a key role in the city's defence, directly supervising the battle against the siege. After Napoleon's earlier conquest of Jaffa, rampaging French troops had savagely sacked the conquered city, and thousands of Albanian prisoners of war were massacred on the sea-shore,[3] prior to the French offensive further northwards. These facts were well known to the townspeople and defending troops (many of them Albanians) in Acre, and the prospect of being massacred is likely to have stiffened their resistance.

A Royal Navy flotilla under Commodore Sidney Smith helped to reinforce the Ottoman defences and supplied the city with additional cannon manned by sailors and marines. Smith used his command of the sea to capture the French siege artillery being sent by a flotilla of gunboats from Egypt and to bombard the coastal road from Jaffa.

See also: List of gun-vessels Commodore Sir Sidney Smith captured at Acre in March 1799

An artillery expert from the fleet, Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux, then redeployed against Napoleon's forces the artillery pieces which the British had intercepted.

Smith anchored the British ships Tigre and Theseus so their broadsides could assist the Ottoman defence. British gunboats, which were of shallower draft, could come in closer, and together they helped repel repeated French assaults.

On 16 April a Ottoman relief force was fought off at the Mount Tabor. By early May, replacement French siege artillery had arrived overland and a breach was forced in the defences. At the culmination of the assault, the besieging forces managed to make a breach in the walls.

A painting of Sidney Smith at the walls of Jaffa

However, after suffering many casualties to open this entry-point, Napoleon's soldiers found, on trying to penetrate the city, that Farhi and de Phélippeaux had, in the meantime, built a second wall, several feet deeper within the city where al-Jazzar's garden was. Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of them taking the city was minimal. Moreover, after the assault was again repelled, Ottoman reinforcements from Rhodes were able to land.

Having underestimated the stubborn attitude of the defending forces combined with a British blockade of French supply harbours and harsh weather conditions, Napoleon's forces were left hungry, cold and damp. Plague had struck the French camp as a result of the desperate condition of the men, and had by now led to the deaths of about 2,000 soldiers.

Throughout the siege, both Napoleon and Jezzar sought in vain the assistance of the Shihab leader, Bashir—ruler of much of present-day Lebanon. Bashir remained neutral. As things turned out, it was the French which suffered most from the attitude of Bashir, whose intervention on their side might have turned the balance of power in their favour.

Finally, the siege was raised. Napoleon Bonaparte retreated two months later on 21 May after a failed final assault on 10 May, and withdrew to Egypt.

Significance

In 1805, Napoleon asserted that if he had:

been able to take Acre [in 1799], I would have put on a turban, I would have made my soldiers wear big Ottoman trousers, and I would have exposed them to battle only in case of extreme necessity. I would have made them into a Sacred Battalion--my Immortals. I would have finished the war against the Ottomans with Arabic, Greek, and Armenian troops. Instead of a battle in Moravia, I would have won a Battle of Issus, I would have made myself emperor of the East, and I would have returned to Paris by way of Constantinople.[4]

The allusions from Classical Antiquity included in the speech are to the Sacred Band of Thebes and the Persian Immortals—elite units of, respectively, the city state of Thebes and the Achaemenid Kings of Persia; and to the Battle of Issus where Alexander the Great decisively defeated the latter. (In fact, though Acre was not conquered, Napoleon's Imperial Guard did come to be informally called "The Immortals."[5])

Some hold that a statement attributed to Napoleon during the war, according to which he promised to return the land to the Jews if he were to succeed in his conquest of Palestine, was meant to capture Farhi’s, a Syrian Jew, attention and betray his master by switching his support to the French. Whether this is true or not, Farhi defended the city with the rest of the Ottoman forces.

However, Napoleon never showed any particular interest in winning over the Jews during his campaign,[6] though the account of Las Cases in "Mémorial de Sainte Hélène" about Napoleon's military campaign records that a rumour among Syrian Jews had it that after Napoleon took Acre, he would go to Jerusalem and restore Solomon's temple[7] and decrees were passed in favour of Jews (and Coptic Christians and women) in French-controlled Egypt.[8] Whatever Napoleon's actual intentions, these stories and rumors are considered to be among the earliest harbingers of what would become the Zionist Movement.

Legacy

In present-day Acre, the hill on which Napoleon set his camp, south-east of the city walls of Acre, is still known as "Napoleon's Hill" (גבעת נפוליון). Acre also has a Napoleon Bonaparte Street (רחוב נפוליון בונפרטה), the only Israeli city with such a street name.

Among the Arab population of the Old City of Acre, the knowledge of their forebears having successfully withstood the barrage of such a world-famous conqueror is a source of civic pride and local patriotism. In a folk tale circulated amongst Acre Arabs, Napoleon, upon lifting the siege of Acre, let a cannon shoot his hat into the city "so that at least a part of him would enter into Acre".[9]

Gallery

• 
  The remains of the internal fortification line erected by Farhi and De-Phelipoux within the walls of Acre, during Napoleon's siege, May 1799.
• 
  The general outlook of Old Acre, seen here in a present-day view from above, has changed little since 1799
• 
  Cemetery for Napoleon's soldiers in Acre, including the grave of General Caffarelli
• 
  19th-century cannon, set in the wall of Acre near a sign commemorating Farhi. The Hebrew inscription on the sign reads: Farhi vs. Napoleon. Jezzar's right hand in resisting Napoleon's harsh siege was the Jewish Haim Farhi, senior adviser and minister of finance

References

1. Guerre d'Orient: Campagnes de Égypte et de Syrie - page 80
2. "Napoleon Letter with Orders for Soldiers at Acre". SMF Primary Sources. Shapell Manuscript Foundation.
3. Falk, Avner (2015). Napoleon Against Himself: A Psychobiography. Pitchstone Publishing. p. 185. ISBN 9781939578723.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
4. Napoleon Bonaparte, “On Religions” in The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words, ed. J. Christopher Herold (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 49.
5. Georges Blond, La Grande Armée, trans. Marshall May (New York: Arms and Armor, 1997), 48, 103, 470
6. Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine: L'invention de la terre sainte, 1799-1922, Fayard, Paris 1999 p.18
7. Franz Kobler, Napoleon and the Jews, Masada Press, Jerusalem,1975 p.51
8. Steven Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life, Harvard University Press 2005 p.133
9. Mordechai Kempinsky, "Sipurey Hatzafon" (סיפורי הצפון) in Hebrew, Tel Aviv 1968