In early 1799, the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, who had taken control of Egypt in a few months, decided to attack Syria in order to forestall the hostile intentions of the sultan who had been concentrating an army there since his declaration of war on France (September 9, 1798).
We went to Israel in 2019 (the expedition, despite its name, having taken place entirely in this current country, apart from the passage through Gaza on the way there and back) and visited the places where General Bonaparte passed during this four-month campaign, the battlefield of Mount Tabor, as well as the adjacent battle sites. The photos on this page are from this stay.

February 1799

The Citadel of Ashdod
- February 10 - Napoleon Bonaparte left Cairo [Al-Qāhira] in the evening and took the desert road towards Syria. He slept at Bilbeis, a city on the eastern edge of the southern part of the Nile Delta, whose fortifications had been rebuilt the previous year on his orders.
- February 11 - After reviewing his cavalry, he continued northeast to El Qurein, a city known for its palm groves, where he slept.
- February 12 - He passed through El Salheya in the middle of the day and stopped in the evening at the Treasury Bridge [Qantara El Hasnah].
- February 13 - Napoleon arrived at Bir Qatia where he stayed for two days. He sent towards Arish the division of General Louis André Bon as an advance guard, and ordered Rear-Admiral Honoré Joseph Antoine Ganteaume to send a flotilla there.
- February 15 - He took to the road again, was the victim, along with General Louis-Alexandre Berthier, of an attack by local peasants, then, saved by the cavalry, he bivouacked in the evening at Bir-el-Abd, on the banks of Lake Bardawil.
- February 16 - He arrived at the Mesoudiah (or Amoudiah) farm, a few kilometers from Arish.
- February 17 - In the evening, Napoleon was in front of Arish, where the division of General Jean Louis Ebénézer Reynier , who had been besieging the fort for eight days, was waiting for him.
- February 20 - The French managed to take the fort of Arish.
- February 22 - Napoleon left Arish with the Bon division and that of Jean Lannes, then with a small group of officers and guides advanced to Khan Yunis [in the current Gaza Strip] to join the vanguard commanded by General Jean-Baptiste Kléber ; but this one was lost, and under the threat of the Ottomans Napoleon turned back and fell back on the Bedouin town named Sheikh Zuweid, twenty kilometers from there.
- February 23 - Return to Khan Yunis, passing by the Well of Reyfay [Rafah]
- February 24 - After a painful march of sixty leagues in the desert, Napoleon arrived in front of the city of Gaza, which he entered the next day and where he remained three days.
- February 28 - Napoleon left Gaza for Ashdod, where ruins of an Ottoman then Crusader citadel still stood [31.78035, 34.62176].
March 1799

Dor's Bay
- March 1st - Napoleon Bonaparte was in Ramleh [Ramla] where he climbed the White Tower [31.92796, 34.86565], remains of a Romanesque church transformed into the white mosque of Ramla, from the 13th century. In the evening he slept at the Franciscan Hospice of St. Nicodemus of this city.
- March 3rd - He was in front of Jaffa [Yafo].
- March 4 - He entered Jaffa by force where he established his quarters in Kedumim Square, at the monastery of Saint Peter . However, some soldiers began to feel the fearsome beginnings of the plague.
- March 11 - Napoleon visited the Armenian monastery of Saint Nicholas , to the most affected soldiers [this scene will be immortalized in 1804 by the painter Antoine-Jean Gros in one of his most famous paintings ], which he was forced to leave in the good care (for the time...) of the monks of this convent.
- March 14 - Napoleon Bonaparte, who headed north by an inland route away from the coastal area at that time very marshy, arrived at Meski [Miska, village destroyed in 1948].
- March 15 - A small battle, or skirmish, against the Samarian militias, took place in the vicinity of Qaqun, in front of the ruins of a Crusader fortress [32.35947, 34.99530]. The Ottoman army was defeated there by Napoleon's. In the evening, bivouac at the Tower of Zeïtah [destroyed village, near the current kibbutz of Lehavot Haviva] .
- March 16 - The French arrived at the small port of Tanturah [Dor] [32.61449, 34.91759] formerly created by the Phoenicians and then used by the Romans, which could only accommodate small boats. Napoleon decided to set up a naval base there and sent his cannons by sea on small boats heading north, with the idea of recovering them before the siege of Acre. In the evening he arrived near Hanieh or Sendianeh [Regavim] .
- March 17 - He was two and a half leagues (11 kilometers) from Haifa [between the current Yagur and Nesher] .
- March 18 - He was at Mount Carmel , which dominates Haifa , then went down to the bay separating Haifa from Acre [Akko]. There he found an unexpected English fleet, which boarded the French flotilla and seized the cannons that would serve the defenders of the city.
- March 19 - He was in front of Acre [Akko] , a heavily fortified city whose harbor was a strategic issue, and began the siege. The city put up fierce resistance, thanks in part to the efforts of a French émigré, Louis-Edmond Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux, a former comrade of the young Napoleon Bonaparte at Brienne who had become a colonel in the English army. Commodore Sidney Smith , commanding a Royal Navy flotilla, and Haim Farhi, at the head of the Jewish community (and advisor to Pasha Ahmad Djezzar "the Butcher"), also played a leading role in the defense of the city.
- March 28 - The French attempted a first, unsuccessful assault on Acre, at the end of which Pasha Djezzar had all his prisoners strangled.
April 1799

Acre [Akko]
- April 1st - Napoleon Bonaparte narrowly escaped being killed during a second assault on the city of Acre by bomb fragments and the collapse of a wall.
- April 2nd to 14 - The siege of the city continued, with no major local events.
- April 8 - General Junot, heavily outnumbered, won near Lubya [destroyed village], northeast of Cana the Battle of Nazareth against a gathering of some 4,000 Ottoman horsemen [this battle would be illustrated with great realism by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1801 ].
- April 9 - Napoleon entrusted Jean-Baptiste Kléber with the command of a column of three thousand men, in order to advance against the troops of Abdullah (Abdullah Pasha al-Azem - عبد الله باشا العظم), Pasha of Damascus, who had just crossed the Jordan River at the Daughters of Jacob bridges [destroyed in June 1946 during the "Night of the Bridges"], north of Lake Tiberias [Sea of Galilee or Kinneret] , and Medjameh [32.62458, 35.56464], to the south.
- April 12 - General Murat drove the Ottomans back to Safed [Tsfat] .
- April 15 - Napoleon, observing the beginning of demoralization of his troops, left to join General Kléber. In the evening, he bivouacked on the heights of Sepphoris [Tsipori], north of Nazareth.
- April 16 - In the plain of Esdraelon [Jezreel Valley] , at the foot of Mount Tabor , the decisive battle took place - which has since borne the name of this eminence - that saw the French troops rout the Ottomans and Turks, who were vastly superior in number. In the evening, it is the hospice of the Franciscans Casa Nova [32.70204, 35.29701] in Nazareth which housed generals Bonaparte, Kléber and Junot.
- April 17 - Napoleon (according to sources) climbed Mount Tabor .
- April 18 - Still in Nazareth , he went to the Franciscan Church [on the site of which the Basilica of the Annunciation was built in the mid-20th century ].
- April 19 to 23 - He returned to Acre.
- April 24 and 25 - Two new assaults, still unsuccessful, were launched.
- April 27 - Napoleon asked that opium be given to the plague-stricken soldiers, to alleviate their suffering. General Louis Marie Maximilien de Caffarelli du Falga , who had been wounded during an assault and had his right arm amputated, died that day [his grave is located north-northeast of the city of Akko ] [32.93539, 35.08711]
- April 28 to 30 - The siege continued without notable event.
May 1799

Jaffa [Yafo]
- May 1st - Fresh siege pieces having arrived by land from Jaffa, a new assault on the fortifications of Acre was made. On the same day, Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux died of disease (plague) or exhaustion.
- May 2nd and 6 - Two sorties by the besieged were repulsed.
- May 7 and 8 - Two new assaults were launched; during the second one, the French managed to cross a breach , but then realized that a second enclosure had been erected a few meters from the first, and they retreated.
- May 10 - A final assault proved as unsuccessful as the previous ones.
- May 11 - The situation becoming critical, Napoleon Bonaparte had to resolve to lift the siege.
- May 12 to 16 - Preparations for departure were made, while the artillery bombarded the city heavily , destroying part of the Pasha's palace.
- May 17 to 20 - French troops began their retreat.
- May 21 - The French were in Haifa, then again in the small port of Tanturah [Dor] , where they threw their cannons into the sea, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
- May 22 - The army bivouacked in the ruins of Caesarea [32.50054, 34.89272].
- May 23 - The troops were at the mouth of the small El-Haddar River [Nahal Poleg] [32.26794, 34.83415].
- May 24 - Jaffa was reached.
- May 25 to 27 - The army stayed in Jaffa. On the 27th, Napoleon Bonaparte visited the soldiers sick with the plague for the second time.
- May 28 - He was in Yibna [Yavneh], a city on the central coastal plain where stood a 14th century minaret [31.86618, 34.74723].
- May 29 - The day's stage was interrupted by a one-hour stop at Ashdod during the morning, after which General Bonaparte arrived at around 1:30 p.m. at the village of El-Mechdin [present-day Migda, a district of Askelon], near which he slept.
- May 30 - The French reached Gaza around noon.
- May 31 - Napoleon was at Khan Yunis [present-day Gaza Strip], which he left the next day to return to Egypt by the same route as that used on the way there in February.
All of Napoleon's movements from 1769 to 1821
Photos credits
Photos by Lionel A. Bouchon.Photos by Didier Grau.
Photos by Michèle Grau-Ghelardi.
Photos by Marie-Albe Grau.
Photos by Floriane Grau.
Photos by various authors.