Siege of Acre

Siege of Acre, Napoleon’s unsuccessful siege of the Ottoman-controlled, walled city of Acre (today in northwest Israel) that lasted from March 18 to May 20, 1799. It was his first setback in the Egyptian campaign and one of his few defeats, and it marked the end of his hopes of carving out an empire in the East. Furthermore, the resulting British command of the Mediterranean Sea made the whole expedition to Egypt increasingly irrelevant.

Effectively marooned in Egypt through the loss of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile (1798), Napoleon decided to continue his war with the Ottoman Turks and marched into Palestine. On March 18, his forces encountered the walled city of Acre, whose 5,000-strong garrison was supported by two Royal Navy ships of the line under Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith. The British had captured a flotilla containing half of Napoleon’s siege guns, and the town’s fortifications were improved by Smith and Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux, a French émigré officer. Smith was a particular bête noire of Napoleon’s, having organized the British and Royalist evacuation of Toulon six years earlier, setting numerous French ships afire, and then been imprisoned in Paris for two years on Napoleon’s orders until finally being paroled, During the siege at Acre Smith wrote Napoleon, taunting him with the fact that “a poor prisoner in the cell of the Temple prison . . . an unfortunate for whom you refused, for a single moment, to give yourself any concern” was now thwarting the French commander’s efforts to seize “the sands of Syria.”

A series of French infantry assaults was repulsed, forcing Napoleon to instigate formal siege operations. To add to his difficulties, the Turks sent a large army to raise the siege. General Jean-Baptiste Kléber was ordered to repel this force, and, despite being heavily outnumbered, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Turks at the Battle of Mount Tabor on April 16.

By the end of April, the French had secured sufficient artillery to make a breach in Acre’s walls. Five desperate assaults were launched by the French from May 1–10, but when the attackers had fought their way onto the walls, they discovered that the defenders had built a series of equally formidable internal fortifications. While Acre continued to be resupplied by sea, the demoralized French were suffering grievous shortages, with disease starting to take hold and with mounting casualties that could not be evacuated by sea because of the British blockade. Reluctantly, Napoleon accepted defeat and began the long retreat back to Egypt.

Tel Akko, the hill southeast of Acre where Napoleon established his camp, is still known as "Napoleon’s Hill." The site, formerly that of a Canaanite and then Phoenician city, is a popular tourist attraction, along with a cemetery of Napoleon’s soldiers.

Losses: French, 2,200 dead, 2,000 wounded or ill of 13,000; Ottoman Turkish, unknown.