1.
French campaign in Egypt and Syria
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It was the primary purpose of the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, a series of naval engagements that included the capture of Malta. On the scientific front, the led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. At the time of the invasion, the Directoire had assumed power in France. The notion of annexing Egypt as a French colony had been discussion since François Baron de Tott undertook a secret mission to the Levant in 1777 to determine its feasibility. Baron de Totts report was favorable, but no action was taken. Nevertheless, Egypt became a topic of debate between Talleyrand and Napoleon, which continued in their correspondence during Napoleons Italian campaign, in early 1798, Bonaparte proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt. Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East, with the dream of linking with Frances ally Tipu Sultan. At the time, Egypt had been an Ottoman province since 1517, but was now out of direct Ottoman control, in France, Egyptian fashion was in full swing – intellectuals believed that Egypt was the cradle of western civilization and wished to conquer it. French traders already based on the River Nile were complaining of harassment by the Mamluks and he assured the Directoire that as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their possessions. The Directoire agreed to the plan in March 1798, though troubled by its scope, however, they saw that it would remove the popular and over-ambitious Napoleon from the center of power, though this motive long remained secret. Rumors became rife as 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors were gathered in French Mediterranean ports, a large fleet was assembled at Toulon,13 ships of the line,14 frigates, and 400 transports. To avoid interception by the British fleet under Nelson, the target was kept secret. It was known only to Bonaparte himself, his generals Berthier and Caffarelli, Bonaparte was the commander, with subordinates including Thomas Alexandre Dumas, Kléber, Desaix, Berthier, Caffarelli, Lannes, Damas, Murat, Andréossy, Belliard, Menou, and Zajączek. His aides de camp included his brother Louis Bonaparte, Duroc, Eugène de Beauharnais, Thomas Prosper Jullien, and the Polish nobleman Joseph Sulkowski. The fleet at Toulon was joined by squadrons from Genoa, Civitavecchia and Bastia and was put under the command of Admiral Brueys and Contre-amirals Villeneuve, Du Chayla, Decrès and Ganteaume. The fleet was about to set sail when a crisis developed with Austria, the crisis was resolved in a few weeks, and Bonaparte received orders to travel to Toulon as soon as possible. It is claimed that, in a meeting with the Directoire, Bonaparte threatened to dissolve them and directeur Reubell gave him a pen saying Sign there. Bonaparte arrived at Toulon on 9 May 1798, lodging with Benoît Georges de Najac, grand Master von Hompesch replied that only two foreign ships would be allowed to enter the port at a time
2.
Antoine-Jean Gros
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Antoine-Jean Gros, also known as Baron Gros, was both a French history and neoclassical painter. Born in Paris, Gros began to learn to draw at the age of six from his father, Jean-Antoine Gros, who was a miniature painter, and showed himself as a gifted artist. The death of his father, whose circumstances had been embarrassed by the French Revolution, threw Gros, in 1791 and he now devoted himself wholly to his profession, and competed in 1792 for the grand prix. He supported himself at Genoa by the means, producing a great quantity of miniatures and fixes. He visited Florence, but returned to Genoa where he made the acquaintance of Joséphine de Beauharnais and he followed her to Milan, where he was well received by her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte. On 15 November 1796, Gros was present with the army near Arcola when Bonaparte planted the French tricolor on the bridge, Gros seized on this incident, and showed by his treatment of it that he had found his vocation. In 1799, having escaped from the city of Genoa, Gros made his way to Paris. Les Pestiférés de Jaffa was followed by The Battle of Aboukir,1806, at the Salon of 1804, Gros debuted his painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa. The painting launched his career as a successful painter and it depicts Bonaparte in Jaffa visiting soldiers infected with the bubonic plague. He is portrayed reaching out to one of the sick, unfazed by the illness, while Bonaparte did actually visit the pesthouse, later, as his army prepared to withdraw from Syria, he ordered the poisoning of about fifty of his plague-infected men. The painting was commissioned as damage control when word spread of his actions, the painting is in the Neo-Classical style, though it shows elements such as the lighting and a taste for the exotic that are precursors to the upcoming Romantic ideals. In 1810, his Madrid and Napoleon at the Pyramids show that his star had deserted him, again citing Britannica, Exasperated by criticism and the consciousness of failure, Gros sought refuge in the gros pleasures of life. On 25 June 1835, he was drowned on the shores of the Seine at Meudon. From a paper which he had placed in his hat, it known that tired of life. Gros was decorated and named Baron of the Empire by Napoleon, after the Salon of 1808, the number of Gross pupils was very great, and was considerably augmented when, in 1815, David quit Paris and gave over his own classes to him. He became a member of the Institute, professor at the École des Beaux Arts, Gros had also been an inspiration to Eugene Delacroix, especially with his work in lithography. The two both worked in the time period, and both did portraits of Napoleon. Though at one point, Gros had referred to Delacroixs Chios, G. Dargenty produced a book titled Les Artistes Celebres Le Baron Gros GILBERT WOOD & Co
3.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
4.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
5.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
6.
Napoleon
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Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, one of the greatest commanders in history, his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleons political and cultural legacy has ensured his status as one of the most celebrated and he was born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Corsica to a relatively modest family from the minor nobility. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, Napoleon was serving as an officer in the French army. Seizing the new opportunities presented by the Revolution, he rose through the ranks of the military. The Directory eventually gave him command of the Army of Italy after he suppressed a revolt against the government from royalist insurgents, in 1798, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic and his ambition and public approval inspired him to go further, and in 1804 he became the first Emperor of the French. Intractable differences with the British meant that the French were facing a Third Coalition by 1805, in 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon quickly defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, then marched the Grand Army deep into Eastern Europe, France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. Tilsit signified the high watermark of the French Empire, hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, Napoleon invaded Iberia and declared his brother Joseph the King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support, the Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, and ended in victory for the Allies. The Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states, especially Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, the Russians routinely violated the Continental System and enticed Napoleon into another war. The French launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the collapse of the Grand Army, the destruction of Russian cities, in 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France. A lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, the Allies then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April. He was exiled to the island of Elba near Rome and the Bourbons were restored to power, however, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June, the British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died six years later at the age of 51
7.
Prisoner of war
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A prisoner of war is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the prisoner of war dates to 1660. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian, typically, little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more likely to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a known as raptio. Typically women had no rights, and were legally as chattel. For this he was eventually canonized, during Childerics siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later, Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so, many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat, in Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusades, likewise, the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed, their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the status of the captive. In feudal Japan there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, in Termez, on the Oxus, all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain. The Aztecs were constantly at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, for the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, between 10,000 and 80,400 persons were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims routinely captured large number of prisoners, aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act, there also evolved the right of parole, French for discourse, in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain better accommodations, if he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Early historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including perspectives of literate women captured by the peoples of North America. The writings of Mary Rowlandson, captured in the fighting of King Philips War, are an example
8.
French Revolutionary Wars
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The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts, lasting from 1792 until 1802, resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted the French First Republic against Britain, Austria and several other monarchies and they are divided in two periods, the War of the First Coalition and the War of the Second Coalition. Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension as the political ambitions of the Revolution expanded, French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe. The Revolutionary Wars began from increasing political pressure on King Louis XVI of France to prove his loyalty to the new direction France was taking. In the spring of 1792, France declared war on Prussia and Austria, the victory rejuvenated the French nation and emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy. A series of victories by the new French armies abruptly ended with defeat at Neerwinden in the spring of 1793, by 1795, the French had captured the Austrian Netherlands and knocked Spain and Prussia out of the war with the Peace of Basel. A hitherto unknown general called Napoleon Bonaparte began his first campaign in Italy in April 1796, in less than a year, French armies under Napoleon decimated the Habsburg forces and evicted them from the Italian peninsula, winning almost every battle and capturing 150,000 prisoners. With French forces marching towards Vienna, the Austrians sued for peace and agreed to the Treaty of Campo Formio, the War of the Second Coalition began with the French invasion of Egypt, headed by Napoleon, in 1798. The Allies took the opportunity presented by the French strategic effort in the Middle East to regain territories lost from the First Coalition. The war began well for the Allies in Europe, where they pushed the French out of Italy and invaded Switzerland—racking up victories at Magnano, Cassano. However, their efforts largely unraveled with the French victory at Zurich in September 1799, meanwhile, Napoleons forces annihilated a series of Egyptian and Ottoman armies at the battles of the Pyramids, Mount Tabor, and Abukir. These victories and the conquest of Egypt further enhanced Napoleons popularity back in France, however, the Royal Navy had managed to inflict a humiliating defeat on the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, further strengthening British control of the Mediterranean. Napoleons arrival from Egypt led to the fall of the Directory in the Coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon then reorganized the French army and launched a new assault against the Austrians in Italy during the spring of 1800. This latest effort culminated in a decisive French victory at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800, another crushing French triumph at Hohenlinden in Bavaria forced the Austrians to seek peace for a second time, leading to the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. With Austria and Russia out of the war, the United Kingdom found itself increasingly isolated and agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleons government in 1802, concluding the Revolutionary Wars. The lingering tensions proved too difficult to contain, however, in 1789–1792, the entire governmental structure of France was transformed to fall into line with the Revolutionary principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. As a result, one of the first major elements of the French state to be restructured was the army, the transformation of the army was best seen in the officer corps. Before the revolution 90% had been nobility, compared to only 3% in 1794, Revolutionary fervour was high, and was closely monitored by the Committee of Public Safety, which assigned Representatives on Mission to keep watch on generals
9.
Battle of the Nile
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The British fleet was led in the battle by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, they decisively defeated the French under Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys dAigalliers. Bonaparte sought to invade Egypt as the first step in a campaign against British India and he chased the French for more than two months, on several occasions only missing them by a matter of hours. Bonaparte was aware of Nelsons pursuit and enforced absolute secrecy about his destination and he was able to capture Malta and then land in Egypt without interception by the British naval forces. With the French army ashore, the French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay,20 miles northeast of Alexandria, Commander Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys dAigalliers believed that he had established a formidable defensive position. The British fleet arrived off Egypt on 1 August and discovered Brueyss dispositions and his ships advanced on the French line and split into two divisions as they approached. One cut across the head of the line and passed between the anchored French and the shore, while the other engaged the seaward side of the French fleet. Trapped in a crossfire, the leading French warships were battered into surrender during a fierce battle, while the centre succeeded in repelling the initial British attack. As British reinforcements arrived, the centre came under renewed assault and, at 22,00, the battle reversed the strategic situation between the two nations forces in the Mediterranean and entrenched the Royal Navy in the dominant position that it retained for the rest of the war. It also encouraged other European countries to turn against France, and was a factor in the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition. Bonapartes army was trapped in Egypt, and Royal Navy dominance off the Syrian coast contributed significantly to its defeat at the Siege of Acre in 1799 which preceded Bonapartes return to Europe. Nelson had been wounded in the battle, but he was proclaimed a hero across Europe and was subsequently made Baron Nelson—although he was dissatisfied with his rewards. His captains were highly praised and went on to form the nucleus of the legendary Nelsons Band of Brothers. The legend of the battle has remained prominent in the popular consciousness, despite significant efforts, British control of Northern European waters rendered these ambitions impractical in the short term, and the Royal Navy remained firmly in control of the Atlantic Ocean. However, the French navy was dominant in the Mediterranean, following the withdrawal of the British fleet after the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1796. During the spring of 1798, Bonaparte assembled more than 35,000 soldiers in Mediterranean France and Italy and he also formed the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a body of scientists and engineers intended to establish a French colony in Egypt. On 9 June, the fleet arrived off Malta, then under the ownership of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Bonaparte demanded that his fleet be permitted entry to the fortified harbour of Valletta. When the Knights refused, the French general responded by ordering a large invasion of the Maltese Islands. While Bonaparte was sailing to Malta, the Royal Navy re-entered the Mediterranean for the first time in more than a year and this squadron, consisting of three ships of the line and three frigates, was entrusted to Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson
10.
Siege of Acre (1799)
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The Siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman-defended, walled city of Acre and was the turning point of Napoleons invasion of Egypt and Syria. It was one of Napoleons few defeats, 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 and he hoped to incite a Syrian rebellion against the Ottomans and threaten British rule in 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 fierce, the French attempted to lay siege on 20 March using only their infantry. Napoleon believed the city would capitulate quickly to him, however, the troops of the capable Jezzar Pasha, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months. Haim Farhi, al-Jazzars Jewish adviser and right-hand man, played a key role in the citys defense and these facts were well known to the townspeople and defending troops in Acre, and the prospect 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 cannon manned by sailors. Smith used his command of the sea to capture the French siege artillery being sent by a flotilla of gunboats from Egypt, an artillery expert from the fleet, Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux, then redeployed against Napoleons forces the artillery pieces which the British had intercepted. Smith anchored the line-of-battle ships Tigre and Theseus so their broadsides could assist the defence, the gunboats, which were of shallower draft, could come in closer, and together they helped repel repeated French assaults. On 16 April a Turkish 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 forces managed to make a breach in the walls. Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of their taking the city was minimal, moreover, after the assault was again repelled, Turkish reinforcements from Rhodes were able to land. Plague had struck the French camp as a result of the condition of the men. Throughout the siege, both Napoleon and Jezzar sought in vain the assistance of the Shihab leader, Bashir—ruler of much of present-day Lebanon. As things turned out, it was the French side which suffered most from the attitude of Bashir, Napoleon Bonaparte retreated two months later on 21 May after a failed final assault on 10 May, and withdrew to Egypt. I would have made them into a Sacred Battalion--my Immortals, I would have finished the war against the Turks 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, whether this is true or not, Farhi defended the city with the rest of the Turks. Whatever Napoleons actual intentions, these stories and rumors are considered to be among the earliest harbingers of what would become the Zionist Movement
11.
Battle of Alexandria
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The British position on the night of 20 March extended across the isthmus, the right wing resting upon the ruins of Nicopolis and the sea, the left on the lake of Abukir and the Alexandria canal. In the second line were two brigades and the cavalry. On 21 March, the troops were under arms at 3 a. m. and at 3,30 a. m. the French attacked, the French army now moved forward with great rapidity in their usual formation of columns. The brunt of the attack fell upon Moores command, and in particular upon the 28th Regiment of Foot, the British repulsed the first shock but a French column penetrated in the dark between two British regiments. A confused fight ensued in the ruins, in which the 42nd Black Watch captured a colour, other regiments that assisted in the overthrow of the French column were the 23rd, 40th and 58th. In a second attack the cavalry inflicted severe losses on the 42nd. Sir Ralph Abercromby was here engaged in conflict with some French dragoons. About half-past eight the combat began to wane, and the last shots were fired at ten, the 42nd, twice charged by cavalry, had but 13 men wounded by the sabre. The forces engaged on this day were approximately 14,000 British to about 9,000 French, losses for the British were,1,468 killed, wounded and missing, including Abercromby, Moore and three other generals wounded. The French on the hand had 1,160 killed and 3,000 wounded. The British advanced upon Alexandria and laid siege to it, the French garrison surrendered on 2 September 1801. French campaign in Egypt and Syria
12.
Military of the Ottoman Empire
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The history of military of the Ottoman Empire can be divided in five main periods. The earliest form of the Ottoman military was a cavalry force. This was centralized by Osman I from Turkoman tribesmen inhabiting western Anatolia in the late 13th century and these horsemen became an irregular force of raiders used as shock troops, armed with simple weapons like bows and spears. They were given fiefs called timars in the lands, and were later called timariots. In addition they acquired wealth during campaigns, Orhan I organized a standing army paid by salary rather than booty or fiefs. The infantry were called yayas and the cavalry was known as müsellems, the force was made up by foreign mercenaries for the most part, and only a few Turks were content to accept salaries in place of timars. Foreign mercenaries were not required to convert to Islam as long as they obeyed their Ottoman commanders, the Ottomans began using guns sometime at the 15th century. Ottoman Classical Army was the structure established by Mehmed II, during his reorganization of the state. This is the reorganization following Orhan I which organized a standing army paid by salary rather than booty or fiefs. This army was the force during rise of the Ottoman Empire, the organization was twofold, central and peripheral. Following a century long reform efforts, this Army was forced to disbandment by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 by what is known as Auspicious Incident, the main theme of this period is reforming the Janissaries. The Janissary corps were made up of conscripted young Christian boys who became military educated under the Ottoman Empire. During the 15th and 16th Centuries they became known as the most efficient, aside from the Janissary infantry, there was also the Sipahi Cavalry. They were, however, different from the Janissaries in that they had military and administrative duties. Within these agricultural lands, the Sipahi were in charge of collecting the taxes which would serve as their salary, at the same time they were responsible for maintaining peace and order there. They were also expected to be able to serve in the military whenever the Sultan deemed their service necessary, western cavalry military people were imported as advisors but their abilities to enact change on the Classic Army were limited. The Ottoman Empire made numerous efforts to recruit French experts for its modernization, another officer François Baron de Tott was involved in the reform efforts for the Ottoman military. He succeeded in having a new foundry built to make howitzers and he built fortifications on the Bosphorus and started a naval science course that laid the foundation stone for the later Turkish Naval Academy
Media related to Battle of Abukir (1799) at Wikimedia Commons