Siege of Jaffa

• 1. Introduction

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  The Siege of Jaffa lasted just five days, from the 3rd to the 7th of March, 1799, but what happened in those days and in the hours after would haunt Napoleon Bonaparte for the rest of his life. Bonaparte himself described the aftermath as "all the horrors of war, which never appeared to me so hideous." Historians have called the siege "one of the most tragic episodes of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign" - a phrase that covers not just the fighting but the killing of civilians, the plunder of the city, and the execution of thousands of prisoners on the seashore south of Jaffa. Who gave that order? Why? And what did it mean for the campaign - and for Napoleon's reputation - when the news spread across the Levant?

• 2. The Road to Jaffa

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  Napoleon's army had already seized Alexandria and Cairo before the march toward Jaffa began. The campaign through the Levant followed hard on the heels of success at El Arish, an Ottoman fortress that fell between the 17th and the 20th of February, 1799, just weeks before the army's boots reached the walls of Jaffa. At stake was more than a single city. Jaffa was one of Greater Syria's principal mercantile centres, and its harbour would provide the French fleet with shelter it badly needed. Without Jaffa, Napoleon could not advance further into Ottoman territory. The entire expedition's fortunes were tied to taking this one port.

• 3. Five Days at the Walls

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  Jaffa's fortress rose behind 12-foot walls, reinforced with extensive Ottoman-built fortifications. Ahmed al-Jazzar had placed the defence in the hands of his own troops, including 1,200 artillerymen. The siege opened at noon on the 3rd of March. By the 7th, Bonaparte sent an officer and a trumpeter forward under a flag of surrender, carrying a message warning al-Jazzar that the city would suffer if it did not yield. Al-Jazzar's answer was swift: he had the two messengers decapitated, displayed one head on the city walls, and ordered his troops to attack. That sortie was beaten back the same evening. French forces then destroyed one of the towers in the fortifications, and the city fell. The killing of the French messengers gave Bonaparte the justification he would later use for the violence that followed.

• 4. The Massacre

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  When Jaffa fell, Napoleon allowed his soldiers two days and two nights of killing, pillage, and rape against the civilian population. He also ordered the execution of Abdallah Bey, the Ottoman governor. Then came the harder question: what to do with thousands of prisoners. Napoleon did not want to feed them, did not have enough troops to escort them safely out of the war zone, and feared that if released they would simply return to the Ottoman army. He had cause for that fear. After El-Arrish, he had freed prisoners on the condition they return to Damascus and stay out of the fighting. Many had broken that promise and rejoined the pasha's army. French soldiers recognised former pardoned prisoners among those captured at Jaffa. Bonaparte settled on executing all but 20 Ottoman officers. The prisoners - estimated at somewhere between roughly 2,440 and 4,100, most of them Albanians - were marched to the seashore south of Jaffa and shot or killed with bayonets. It took three days to complete the task.

• 5. Law, Justification, and Debate

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  The question of whether Bonaparte had any legal or moral ground to stand on consumed his officers and later historians alike. Emer de Vattel's treatise The Laws of Nations, published in 1758, was the most widely consulted authority on the conduct of war at the time. De Vattel, who lived from 1714 to 1767, raised the exact scenario Bonaparte faced: whether a commander who cannot feed or securely guard a large body of prisoners may lawfully execute them, or must parole them and risk them rejoining the enemy. Vattel's own answer favoured parole and repatriation. Napoleon's defenders pointed to the plague that was already spreading from the French headquarters in Ramla, the impossibility of sparing escort troops, and the strategic calculation that a show of terror might weaken al-Jazzar's remaining forces. His officers' written memoirs ran from reluctant acceptance of the decision to outright revulsion. Bonaparte's own stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, had made personal promises to prisoners that their lives would be spared - promises Napoleon overrode.

• 6. Aftermath and Reversal

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  Napoleon released hundreds of local civilians from Jaffa with the calculated hope that their accounts of the sack would terrify defenders elsewhere in Syria into surrendering without a fight. The tactic produced mixed results. When French forces moved against Acre, the news of Jaffa had the opposite effect: Acre's defenders fought harder, not less. Months later, at Abukir, the French reputation for giving no quarter pushed Ottoman soldiers to flee. Plague continued its own campaign alongside the military one. Poor hygiene at the French headquarters in Ramla spread the disease through both the local population and the French army. Overwhelmed in the north, Napoleon eventually abandoned Palestine altogether. After his departure, British forces under William Sidney Smith, allied with the Ottomans, rebuilt Jaffa's fortifications. Between 1800 and 1814, following a fresh nine-month siege, Jaffa passed back under the control of Ahmed al-Jazzar, the same Ottoman commander who had ordered Napoleon's messengers beheaded on the city walls.