French Invasion of Egypt

Syria SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية‎ Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā;... Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî, officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest. In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, some 90% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians.
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The Levant or Arabic: المشرق العربي‎ al-Mashrīq al-'Arabiyy is a... geographic and cultural term referring to the region of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt". The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Cyprus, Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the historic area of Greater Syria; precise definitions have varied. The Levant has been described as the "crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean and northeast Africa". In earlier periods, the Levant encompassed all the "Mediterranean lands east of Italy". The term Levant, which first appeared in English in 1497, originally meant the East in general. It is borrowed from the French levant 'rising', that is, the point where the sun rises. Similar etymologies are found in Ancient Greek Ἀνατολή , Germanic Morgenland and in the Hungarian Kelet which literally means the place of rising. Most notably, "Orient" and its Latin source oriens meaning "east", is literally "rising", deriving from Latin orior "rise".
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The Mediterranean campaign of 1798 was a series of major naval operations surrounding a French expeditionary force sent to Egypt under Napoleon... Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars. The French Republic sought to capture Egypt as the first stage in an effort to threaten British India, and thus force Great Britain to make peace. Departing Toulon in May 1798 with over 30,000 troops and hundreds of ships, Bonaparte's fleet sailed southeastwards across the Mediterranean Sea. They were followed by a small British squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, later reinforced to 13 ships of the line, whose pursuit was hampered by a lack of scouting frigates and reliable information. Bonaparte's first target was the island of Malta, which was under the government of the Knights of St. John and theoretically granted its owner control of the Central Mediterranean. Bonaparte's forces landed on the island and rapidly overwhelmed the defenders, securing the port city of Valletta before continuing to Egypt.
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The Battle of Abukir was Napoleon Bonaparte's decisive victory over Seid Mustafa Pasha's Ottoman army on 25 July 1799 during the French invasion of... Egypt . The French forces had just returned from a campaign to Syria, and the Ottoman force had been transported to Egypt by Sidney Smith's British fleet to put an end of the French rule in Egypt. Seid Mustafa Pasha was an experienced commander who had fought against the Russians. He knew of the futility of cavalry charges against the French squares and so sought to avoid that by fortifying his beach head with two defensive lines. From this beach head Mustafa could carry out the invasion of Egypt. Napoleon however immediately saw the flaw of such a tactic as it meant that the Turks had nowhere to run if routed. The French attacked the Ottoman positions and quickly broke through the first defensive line which had not been fully completed. The second line however proved tougher to defeat and the French withdrew for a while. As was customary of the Ottoman army in their previous battles against the French, the Ottomans came out of their positions and began finishing off the wounded and mutilating the dead.
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The Siege of Jaffa was fought from 3 to 7 March 1799 between France and the Ottoman Empire. The French were led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and they... captured the city. Jaffa was surrounded by high walls, flanked by towers. Ahmed al-Jazzar 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, the commander 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.
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The Battle of Heliopolis was a French victory by the armée d'Orient under General Kléber over the Ottoman army at Heliopolis on 20 March... 1800. Kléber engaged in negotiations with both the English and Ottomans, with the aim of honourably evacuating the remains of the French force from Egypt to take part in operations in Europe. An accord was concluded on 23 January 1800 allowing such a return to France, but it proved impossible to apply due to internal dissensions among the English and the dithering of the Sultan, and so the conflict in Egypt re-started. Kléber was betrayed by the English Admiral Keith, who did not respect the El Arich convention. Kléber restarted hostilities, for he refused to surrender. The English and the Ottomans believed the armée d'Orient was now too weak to resist them, and so Yussuf Pasha marched on Cairo, where the local population obeyed his call to rise up. Kleber led the outnumbered French troops to attack the Ottoman army at Heliopolis, decisively winning the battle and enabling them to re-enter Cairo and bring an end to the revolt.
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The revolt of Cairo occurred on 21 October 1798 against the French occupation of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1798, Napoleon led the French... army into Egypt, swiftly conquering Alexandria and Cairo. However, on October of that year, an uprising by the people of Cairo surprised the French forces, while Bonaparte was in old Cairo, the city's population was spreading weapons around the streets and fortifying strongpoints, especially at the Great Mosque. The French commander, General Dupuy, was murdered, as well as Bonaparte's Aide-de-camp Joseph Sulkowski. Excited by the sheikhs and imams, the Egyptians swore by the Prophet to exterminate all Frenchmen and any Frenchman they met — at home or in the streets — was mercilessly killed. Crowds rallied at the city gates to keep out Bonaparte, who was repulsed and forced to take a detour to get in via the Boulaq gate. The French army's situation was critical — the British were menacing coastal towns, Murad Bey was still in the field in Upper Egypt, and generals Menou and Dugua were only just able to hold down Lower Egypt.
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