|
Returning to besiege Acre, Bonaparte learned that contre-amiral Perrée had landed seven siege artillery pieces at Jaffa. Bonaparte then ordered two assaults, both vigorously repulsed. A fleet was sighted flying the Ottoman flag and Bonaparte realised he must capture the city before that fleet arrived there with reinforcements. A fifth general attack was ordered, which took the outer works, planted the French tricolour on the rampart, pushed the Ottomans back into the city and forced the Ottoman fire to relent. Acre was thus taken or about to capitulate. However, one of those fighting on the Ottoman side was the French émigré and engineer officer Phélippeaux, one of Bonaparte's classmates at the École militaire. Phélippeaux ordered cannon to be placed in the most advantageous positions and new trenches dug as if by magic behind the ruins which Bonaparte's forces had captured. At the same time Sidney Smith, commander of the British fleet, and his ships' crews landed. These factors renewed the courage of the besieged and they pushed Bonaparte's force back, with stubborn fury on both sides. Three final consecutive assaults were all repulsed, convincing Bonaparte that it would be unwise to continue trying to capture Acre. He raised the siege in May and consoled his soldiers with the proclamation: “ After feeding the war for three months in the heart of Syria with a handful of men, taking forty guns, fifty flags, 10,000 prisoners, razing the fortifications of Gaza, Kaïffa, Jaffa, Acre, we shall return to Egypt. ” Retreat from Acre The French force's situation was now critical – the enemy could harass its rear as it retreated, it was tired and hungry in the desert, it was carrying a large number of plague-sufferers. To carry these sufferers in the middle of the army would spread the disease, so they had to be carried in the rear, where they were most at risk from the fury of the Ottomans, keen to avenge the massacres at Jaffa. There were two hospital depots, one in the large hospital on Mount Carmel and the other at Jaffa. On Bonaparte's orders, all those at Mount Carmel were evacuated to Jaffa and Tentura. The gun horses were abandoned before Acre and Bonaparte and all his officers handed their horses over to the transport officer Daure, with Bonaparte walking to set an example. To conceal its withdrawal from the siege, the army set off at night. Arriving at Jaffa, Bonaparte ordered three evacuations of the plague sufferers to three different points – one by sea to Damietta, one by land to Gaza and one by land to Arish. During the retreat the army picked clean all the lands through which they passed, with livestock, crops and houses all destroyed by sword and fire and Gaza the only place to be spared, in return for remaining loyal to Bonaparte. To speed the retreat, Bonaparte also took the controversial step of killing prisoners and plague-stricken men along the way. His supporters argued that this was necessary given continuing harassment of stragglers by Ottoman forces. Back in Egypt Finally, after 4 months away from Egypt, the expedition arrived back at Cairo with 1800 wounded, after losing 600 men to the plague and 1200 to enemy action. In the meantime Ottoman and British emissaries had brought news of Bonaparte's setback at Acre to Egypt, stating that his expeditionary force was largely destroyed and Bonaparte himself was dead. On his return Bonaparte scotched these rumours by re-entering Egypt as if he was at the head of a triumphal army, with his soldiers carrying palm branches, emblems of victory. In his proclamation to the inhabitants of Cairo, Bonaparte told them: “ He is back in Cairo, the Bien-Gardé, the head of the French army, general Bonaparte, who loves Mahomet's religion ; he is back sound and well, thanking God for the favours he has given him. He has entered Cairo by the gate of Victory. This day is a great day; no one has ever seen its like; all the inhabitants of Cairo have come out to meet him. They have seen and recognised that it is the same commander in chief, Bonaparte, in his own person; but those of Jaffa, having refused to surrender, he handed them all over to pillage and death in his anger. He has destroyed all its ramparts and killed all those found there. There were around 5,000 of Jezzar's troops in Jaffa – he destroyed them all. ” Abukir to withdrawal Land battle at Abukir Bonaparte Before the Sphinx, (ca. 1868) by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Hearst Castle At Cairo the army found the rest and supplies it needed to recover, but its stay there could not be a long one. Bonaparte had been informed that Murad Bay had evaded the pursuit by generals Desaix, Belliard, Donzelot and Davoust and was descending on Upper Egypt. Bonaparte thus marched to attack him at Giza, also learning that 100 Ottoman ships were off Aboukir, threatening Alexandria. Without losing time or returning to Cairo, Bonaparte ordered his generals to make all speed to meet the army commanded by the pasha of Rumelia, Saïd-Mustapha, which had joined up with the forces under Murad Bey and Ibrahim. Before leaving Giza, where he found them, Bonaparte wrote to Cairo's divan, stating: “ 80 ships have dared to attack Alexandria but, beaten back by the artillery in that place, they have gone to anchor in Aboukir Bay, where they began disembarking [troops]. I leave them to do this, since my intention is to attack them, to kill all those who do not wish to surrender, and to leave others alive to led in triumph to Cairo. This will be a handsome spectacle for the city. ” First Bonaparte advanced to Alexandria, from which he marched to Aboukir, whose fort was now strongly garrisoned by the Ottomans. Bonaparte deployed his army so that Mustapha would have to win or die with all his family. Mustapha's army was 18,000 strong and supported by several cannon, with trenches defending it on the landward side and free communication with the Ottoman fleet on the seaward side. Bonaparte ordered an attack on 25 July and the Battle of Abukir ensued. In a few hours the trenches were taken, 10,000 Ottomans drowned in the ocean and the rest captured or killed. Most of the credit for the French victory that day goes to Murat, who captured Mustapha himself. Mustapha's son was in command of the fort and he and all his officers survived but were captured and sent back to Cairo as part of the French triumphal procession. Seeing Bonaparte return with these high-ranking prisoners, the population of Cairo superstitiously welcomed him as a prophet-warrior who had predicted his own triumph with such remarkable precision. Bonaparte leaves Egypt The land battle at Abukir was Bonaparte's last action in Egypt, partly restoring his reputation after the French naval defeat at the same place a year earlier. However, with the Egyptian campaign stagnating and political instability developing back home, a new phase in Bonaparte's career was beginning – he felt that he had nothing left to do in Egypt which was worthy of his ambition and that (as had been shown by the defeat at Acre) the forces he had left to him there were not sufficient for an expedition of any importance outside of Egypt. He also foresaw that the army was getting yet weaker from losses in battle and to disease and would soon have to surrender and be taken prisoner by its enemies, which would destroy all the prestige he had won by his many victories. Bonaparte thus spontaneously decided to return to France. During the prisoner exchange at Aboukir and notably via the Gazette de Francfort Sidney Smith had sent him, he was in communication with the British fleet, from which he had learned of events in France. As Bonaparte saw (and later mythologised) it France was thrown back into retreat, its enemies had recaptured France's conquests, France was unhappy at its dictatorial government and was nostalgic for the glorious peace it had signed in the Treaty of Campo Formio – as Bonaparte saw it, this meant France needed him and would welcome him back. He only shared the secret of his return with a small number of friends whose discretion and loyalty were well-known. He left Cairo in August 1799 on the pretext of a voyage in the Nile Delta without arousing suspicion, accompanied by the scholars Monge and Berthollet, the painter Denon, and generals Berthier, Murat, Lannes and Marmont. On 23 August 1799 a proclamation informed the army that Bonaparte had transferred his powers as commander in chief to general Kléber. This news was taken badly, with the soldiers angry with Bonaparte and the French government for leaving them behind, but this indignation soon ended, since the troops were confident in Kléber, who convinced them that Bonaparte had not left permanently but would soon be back with reinforcements from France. As night fell, the frigate Muiron silently moored by the shore, with three other ships escorting her. Some became worried when a British corvette was sighted at the moment of departure, but Bonaparte cried "Bah! We'll get there, luck has never abandoned us, we shall get there, despite the English." Bonaparte's voyage to France On their 41-day voyage back they did not meet a single enemy ship to stop them, with some sources suggesting that Bonaparte had purchased the British fleet's neutrality via a tacit agreement, though others hold this unlikely, since many would argue that he also had a pact with Nelson to leave him to board on the Egyptian coast unopposed with the fleet bearing his large army. It has been suggested that Sidney Smith and other British commanders in the Mediterranean helped Napoleon evade the British blockade, thinking that he might act as a Royalist element back in France, but there is no solid historical evidence in support of this conjecture.[citation needed] On 1 October Napoleon's small flotilla entered port at Ajaccio, where contrary winds kept them until 8 October, when they set out for France. When the coast came in sight, ten British ships were sighted. Contre-amiral Ganteaume suggested changing course towards Corsica, but Bonaparte said "No, this manoeuvre would lead us to England, and I want to get to France.". This courageous act saved them and on 8 October 1799 (16 vendémiaire year VIII) the frigates anchored in the roads off Fréjus. As there were no sick men on board and the plague in Egypt had ended six months before their departure, Bonaparte and his entourage were allowed to land immediately without waiting in quarantine. At 6pm he set off for Paris, accompanied by his chief of staff Berthier. He stopped off at Saint-Raphaël, where he built a pyramid commemorating the expedition. End of the campaign Assassination of Kléber, painting in the Musée historique de Strasbourg. British victory over the French at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801 The troops Bonaparte left behind were supposed to be honourably evacuated under the terms of a treaty Kléber had negotiated with Smith in early 1800, but British Admiral Keith reneged on this treaty, sending an amphibious assault force of 30,000 Mamlukes against Kléber. Kléber defeated the Mamlukes at the battle of Heliopolis in March 1800, and then suppressed an insurrection in Cairo. However, on 14 June (26 prairial) 1800 a Syrian student called Suleiman al-Halabi assassinated Kléber with a dagger in the heart, chest, left forearm and right thigh. Command of the French army passed to Menou, who held command from 3 July 1800 until August 1801. Menou's letter was published in Le Moniteur on 6 September, with the conclusions of the committee charged with judging those responsible for the assassination: “ The committee, after carrying through the trial with all due solemnity and process, thought it necessary to follow Egyptian customs in its application of punishment ; it condemned the assassin to be impaled after having his right hand burned ; and three of the guilty sheikhs to be beheaded and their bodies burned. ” Under continual harassment from the new Anglo-Ottoman land offensive, defeated by the British in the Battle of Alexandria on March 21 and then besieged in Alexandria from 17 August – 2 September 1801, Menou eventually capitulated to the British. Under the terms of his capitulation, the British general Ralph Abercromby allowed the French army to be repatriated in British ships. Menou also signed over to Britain the priceless hoard of Egyptian antiquities such as the Rosetta Stone which it had collected. After initial talks in Al Arish on 30 January 1800, the Treaty of Paris on 25 June 1802 ended all hostilities between France and the Ottoman Empire, resecuring Egypt for the Ottomans. Scientific expedition The Egyptian Expedition under the orders of Bonaparte, painting by Léon Cogniet, early 19th century. An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of an enormous contingent of scientists and scholars ("savants") assigned to the invading French force, 167 in total. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered as an indication of Napoleon's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment, and by others as a masterstroke of propaganda obfuscating the true motives of the invasion; the increase of Bonaparte's power. These scholars included engineers and artists, members of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, the geologist Dolomieu, Henri-Joseph Redouté, the mathematician Gaspard Monge (a founding member of the École polytechnique), the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, Vivant Denon, the mathematician Jean-Joseph Fourier (who did some of the empirical work upon which his "analytical theory of heat" was founded in Egypt), the physicist Étienne Malus, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the botanist Alire Raffeneau-Delile, and the engineer Nicolas-Jacques Conté of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. Their original aim was to help the army, notably by opening a Suez Canal, mapping out roads and building mills to supply food.[2] They founded the Institut d'Égypte with the aim of propagating Enlightenment values in Egypt through interdisciplinary work, improving its agricultural and architectural techniques for example. A scientific review was created under the title Décade égyptienne and in the course of the expedition the scholars also observed and drew the flora and fauna in Egypt and became interested in the country's resources. The Egyptian Institute that Napoleon established saw the construction of laboratories, libraries, and a printing press. The group worked prodigiously, and some of their discoveries were not finally cataloged until the 1820s.[12] A young engineering officer, Pierre-François-Xavier Bouchard, discovered the Rosetta Stone in July 1799. However, many of the antiquities collected by the French in Egypt were seized by the British Navy and ended up in the British Museum – only about 50 of the 5,000 Egyptian objects in the Louvre were collected during the 1799–1801 Egyptian expedition. Even so, the scholars' research in Egypt gave rise to the Description de l'Égypte, published on Napoleon's orders between 1809 and 1821. Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt gave rise to fascination with Ancient Egyptian culture and the birth of Egyptology in Europe. The Printing Press The printing press was first introduced to Egypt by Napoleon.[13] He brought with his expedition a French, Arabic, and Greek printing press, which were far superior in speed, efficiency and quality than the nearest presses used in Istanbul. In the Middle East, Africa, India and even much of Eastern Europe and Russia, printing was a minor, specialized activity until the 1700s at least. From about 1720, the Mutaferrika Press in Istanbul produced substantial amounts of printing, of which some Egyptian clerics were aware of at the time. Juan Cole reports that, "Boneaparte was a master of what we would now call spin, and his genius for it is demonstrated by reports in Arabic sources that several of his more outlandish allegations were actually taken seriously in the Egyptian countryside."[13] Bonaparte's initial use of Arabic in his printed proclamations was rife with error. In addition to much of the awkwardly translated Arabic wording being unsound grammatically, often the proclamations were so poorly constructed that there were simply undecipherable.[14] The French Orientalist Jean Michel de Venture de Paradis, perhaps with the help of Maltese aides, were responsible for translating the first of Napoleon's French proclamations into Arabic. The Maltese, Catholic Christians, speak a dialect distantly related to Egyptian dialect. However, they were seldom schooled in writing classical Arabic, which differs greatly in grammar, vocabulary, and idiom. Venture de Paradis, alternatively, who had lived in Tunis, understood Arabic grammar and vocabulary, but did not know how to use them idiomatically. The Sunni Muslim clerics of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo reacted incredulously to Napoleon's proclamations.[13] Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, a Cairene cleric and historian, received the proclamations with a combination of amusement, bewilderment, and outrage.[15][16][17] He berated the French's poor Arabic grammar and the infelicitous style of their proclamations. Over the course of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, al-Jabarti wrote a wealth of material regarding the French and their occupation tactics. Among his observations, he rejected Napoleon's claim that the French were "muslims" (the wrong noun case was used in the Arabic proclamation, making it a lower case "m") and poorly understood the French concept of a republic and democracy – words which did not exist at the time in Arabic.[13] Analysis Cemetery of French Soldiers of Napoleon Egypte Expedition, Fomm el-Khaleeg – Cairo – Egypt In addition to its significance in the wider French Revolutionary Wars, the campaign had a powerful impact on the Ottoman Empire in general and the Arab world in particular. The invasion demonstrated the military, technological, and organisational superiority of the Western European powers to the Middle East, leading to profound social changes in the region. The invasion introduced Western inventions, such as the printing press, and ideas, such as liberalism and incipient nationalism, to the Middle East, eventually leading to the establishment of Egyptian independence and modernisation under Muhammad Ali Pasha in the first half of the 19th century and eventually the Nahda, or Arab Renaissance. To modernist historians, the French arrival marks the start of the modern Middle East.[18] The campaign ended in what some back home in France believed was a failure, with 15,000 French troops killed in action and 15,000 by disease. However, Napoleon's reputation as a brilliant military commander remained intact and even rose higher, despite some of his failures during the campaign. This was due to his expert propaganda, such as his Courrier d'Égypte, set up to propagandise the expeditionary force itself and support its morale. That propaganda even spread back to France, where news of defeats such as at sea in Aboukir Bay and on land in Syria were suppressed. Defeats could be blamed on the now-assassinated Kléber, leaving Napoleon free from blame and with a burnished reputation. This opened his way to power and he profited from his reputation by engineering his becoming First Consul in the coup d'État of 18 brumaire (November 1799). Mamelukes in French Service Colonel Barthelemy Serra took the first steps towards creating a Mameluke Corps in France. On September 27, 1800 he wrote a letter from Cairo to the first consul, couched in a very fulsome Oriental style. He regretted being very far away from Napoleon and offered his total devotion to the French nation and expressed the Mameluke's wish to become the bodyguard to the first consul. They wished to serve him as living shields against those who would seek to harm him. The first consul became receptive of admitting a unit of carefully selected cavalrymen as his personal guard. He had an officer pay appropriate respects to the foreign troops and provided Napoleon himself with a full report to the number of refugees.[19] French order of battle Main article: Order of battle of the Armée d'Orient (1798) Timeline and battles Battle at Nazareth by Gros 1798 19 May (30 Floréal year VI) – Departure from Toulon 11 June (23 Prairial year VI) – Capture of Malta 1 July (13 Messidor year VI) – Landing at Alexandria 21 July (3 Thermidor year VI) – Battle of the Pyramids, French land victory 1 and 2 August (14-15 Thermidor year VI) – Battle of the Nile, British naval victory over French squadron anchored in Aboukir Bay 10 August – Battle at Salheyeh, French victory 7 October – Battle of Sédiman, French victory 21 October (30 Vendémiaire) – Cairo Revolt 1799 7 March – Siege of Jaffa, French victory 8 April – Battle at Nazareth, French victory, Junot with 500 defeats 3000 Turks 11 April – Battle of Cana, French victory, Napoleon wins a great battle against Turks 16 April (27 Germinal year VII) – Bonaparte relieves the troops under Kléber just as the latter are about to be overwhelmed at the foot of Mount Tabor General Murat at the battle of Abukir, where 11,000 Ottoman soldiers drowned in the Nile. 20 May (1 Prairial an VII) – Siege of Acre, French troops retire after eight assaults** 1 August (14 Thermidor year VII) – Battle of Abukir, French victory 23 August (6 Fructidor year VII) – Bonaparte embarks on the frigate Muiron and abandons command to Kléber 1800 24 January (4 Pluviôse year VIII) – Kléber concludes the convention of El-Arich with the British admiral Sidney Smith February (Pluviôse-Ventôse year VIII) – French troops begin their withdrawal, but the British admiral Keith refuses to recognize the convention's terms. 20 March (29 Ventôse year VIII) – Battle of Heliopolis, Kléber wins one last victory, against a force of 30,000 Ottomans 14 June (25 Prairial year VIII) – A kurd named Suleiman al-Halabi assassinates Kléber in his garden in Cairo. General Menou, a convert to Islam, takes over command 3 September (16 Fructidor year VIII) – The British recapture Malta from the French 1801 8 March (17 Ventôse year IX) – British landing near Aboukir 21 March (30 Ventôse year IX) – Battle of Alexandria, French defeat, army under Menou digs in at Alexandria ready for the siege of Alexandria 31 March (10 Germinal year IX) – Ottoman army arrives at El-Arich 19 April (29 Germinal year IX)– British and Ottoman forces capture Fort Julien at Rosetta after a four-day bombardment, opening the Nile. 27 June (8 Messidor year IX) – General Belliard surrenders in Cairo 31 August (13 Fructidor year IX) – Siege of Alexandria ends in Menou's surrender |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 20:39 , Processed in 0.158190 second(s), 16 queries .
