The Forgotten Battles n°13 - St Jean d'Acre & le Mont-Thabor 1799 (in French)

Having conquered Egypt, Bonaparte must embark on a new campaign to prevent the imminent arrival of an Ottoman army from Syria. At the end of a long march through the desert and several sieges in order, weakened by the plague, fatigue and deprivation, his army comes to camp under the walls of Saint-Jean-d'Acre held by the Turks of the Pasha Achmed-el-Djezzar and their English allies. For 62 days, the belligerents vie for control of the city with incredible fierceness. The French had to face numerous exits and incessant bombardments from the besieged garrison and for their part attempted several desperate assaults against impregnable fortifications. When two enemy reinforcing armies approach to break the encirclement of the city, Bonaparte can only send a single division to meet them. In an unequal fight, the French managed to rout the adversary in the Battle of Mont-Thabor. But the echoes of an Egypt in full insurrection, the absence of heavy artillery, and the human losses which accumulate, force Bonaparte to raise the siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, on May 20, 1799 and to regain the banks of the Nile. Supported by the Journal du Siege and numerous archival documents, this work retraces day by day the little-known history of Bonaparte's painful failure.