The
SiegeA siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. The term derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit"....
of JaffaJaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa is located south of Tel Aviv, Israel on the Mediterranean Sea...
was fought from 3 to 7 March 1799 between
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
. The French were led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and they captured the city.
Jaffa was surrounded by high walls, flanked by towers.
Ahmed al-JazzarAhmed al-Jazzar was the ruler of Acre and the Galilee from 1775 till his death.-Biography:...
entrusted its defence to his elite troops, including 1,200 artillerymen. Napoleon had to win Jaffa before he could advance any further, and the whole expedition's success depended on its capture — the town was one of Syria's main mercantile centres, and had a harbour which would provide vital shelter for his fleet.
All the exterior works could be besieged and a breach was feasible; when Bonaparte sent a Turk to the city's commander to order its surrender, he instead decapitated the Turk and ordered a sortie.
The
SiegeA siege is a military blockade of a city or fortress with the intent of conquering by attrition or assault. The term derives from sedere, Latin for "to sit"....
of JaffaJaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa is located south of Tel Aviv, Israel on the Mediterranean Sea...
was fought from 3 to 7 March 1799 between
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
. The French were led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and they captured the city.
Course
Jaffa was surrounded by high walls, flanked by towers.
Ahmed al-JazzarAhmed al-Jazzar was the ruler of Acre and the Galilee from 1775 till his death.-Biography:...
entrusted its defence to his elite troops, including 1,200 artillerymen. Napoleon had to win Jaffa before he could advance any further, and the whole expedition's success depended on its capture — the town was one of Syria's main mercantile centres, and had a harbour which would provide vital shelter for his fleet.
All the exterior works could be besieged and a breach was feasible; when Bonaparte sent a Turk to the city's commander to order its surrender, he instead decapitated the Turk and ordered a sortie. He was pushed back and as early as the evening of the same day the weight of the besiegers caused one of the towers to collapse and so, despite hopeless resistance by its defenders, Jaffa was taken.
According to some sources, the French messengers who brusquely told the city of Napoleon's ultimatum had been arrested, tortured, castrated and decapitated, and their heads impaled on the city walls. This harsh treatment led Napoleon, when the city fell, to allow his soldiers two days and nights of slaughter and rape. He also executed the Turkish governor Abdallah Bey. Bonaparte no longer wished to honour the promises of his adopted son
Eugene de BeauharnaisEugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince Français, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, Hereditary Grand Duke of Frankfurt, 1st Duke of Leuchtenberg and 1st Prince of Eichstätt ad personam was the first child and only son of the future French emperor Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine...
that prisoners' lives would be spared and ordered that a large part of the Ottoman prisoners (according to some sources around 2,440, according to others 4,100), many of them Albanians, be shot or stabbed to death with bayonets. Napoleon's eulogists later wrote of this decision: "For, to keep in submission so considerable a number of prisoners, it would have been necessary to detach guards for them, which would have severely diminished his army's numbers; and if he had allowed them to leave free men, it was reasonable to fear that they might swell the ranks of Ahmed al-Jazzar's troops."
Aftermath
Napoleon also allowed hundreds of Egyptians to leave, hoping that the news they would carry of Jaffa's fall would intimidate the defenders of the other cities in Syria. This backfired, since their news instead made these defenders fight all the more fiercely. Meanwhile, a plague epidemic caused by poor hygiene in the French headquarters in
RamlaRamla , is a city in central Israel with a mixed Arab and Jewish population. Ramla was founded circa 705–715 CE by the Umayyad Caliph Suleiman ibn Abed al-Malik...
decimated the local population and the French army alike. As he had also suggested during the
siege of AcreThe Siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman-defended, walled city of Acre and was the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria.-Background:...
, on the eve of the retreat from Syria-Palestine Napoleon suggested to his army doctors (led by
DesgenettesRené-Nicolas Dufriche, baron Desgenettes was a French military doctor. He was chief doctor to the French army in Egypt and at Waterloo.-Early life:...
), that the seriously ill troops who could not be evacuated should be given a fatal dose of laudanum, but they forced him to give up the idea. Overcome in the north of the country by the Turks, Napoleon abandoned Palestine. After his departure the English, allied to the Turks and commanded by William Sidney Smith, rebuilt Jaffa's city walls.
In the years 1800 to 1814, after a new nine month siege, Jaffa was again taken over by Napoleon's former opponent, Ahmed al-Jazzar, Acre's governor, a
BosnianBosnians are people who reside in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds citizenship of the state. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats...
.