The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other countries. The wars are divided into two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and the Rhineland. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.
The Battle of the Pyramids, also known as the Battle of Embabeh, was a major engagement fought on 21 July 1798, during the French Invasion of Egypt. The battle took place near the village of Embabeh, across the Nile River from Cairo, but was named by Napoleon after the Great Pyramid of Giza visible nearly nine miles away.
By 1799, the French Revolutionary Wars had resumed after a period of relative peace in 1798. The Second Coalition had organized against France, with Great Britain allying with Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and several of the German and Italian states. While Napoleon's army was still embroiled in Egypt, the allies prepared campaigns in Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
In the Battle of Abukir Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Seid Mustafa Pasha's Ottoman army on 25 July 1799, during the French campaign in Egypt. It is considered the first pitched battle with this name, as there already had been a naval battle on 1 August 1798, the Battle of the Nile. No sooner had the French forces returned from a campaign to Syria, than the Ottoman forces were transported to Egypt by Sidney Smith's British fleet to put an end to French rule in Egypt.
The siege of El Arish was a successful siege by French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte against Ottoman forces under Mustafa Pasha. The French army, commanded by Jean Baptiste Kléber and Jean Reynier laid siege to the fortress of El Arish for nine days. The fortress finally fell to the French on 20 February 1799.
The siege of Jaffa was a military engagement between the French army under Napoleon Bonaparte and Ottoman forces under Ahmed al-Jazzar. On the 3 of March, 1799, the French laid siege to the city of Jaffa, which was under Ottoman control. It was fought from 3 to 7 March 1799. On the 7 March, French forces managed to capture the city. For the pillaging of the city, the rape and murder of its civilian population by Napoleon's troops, and the execution of the Ottoman prisoners of war, the siege of Jaffa has been called "one of the most tragic episodes of [Napoleon's] Egyptian campaign."
The Eyalet of Sidon was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, the eyalet extended from the border with Egypt to the Bay of Kisrawan, including parts of modern Israel and Lebanon.
Bashir Shihab II was a Lebanese emir who ruled the Emirate of Mount Lebanon in the first half of the 19th century. Born to a branch of the Shihab family which had converted from Sunni Islam, the religion of previous Shihabi emirs, he was the only Maronite ruler of the Mount Lebanon Emirate.
The French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was a Napoleonic campaign in the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria, executed by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon proclaimed to "defend French trade interests" and to establish "scientific enterprise" in the region. It was the primary purpose of the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, which was a series of naval engagements that included the capture of Malta and the Greek island Crete, later arriving in the Port of Alexandria. The campaign ended in defeat for Napoleon after abandoning his troops to head back to France for the looming risk of a Second Coalition. This led to the death and withdrawal of French troops in the region.
The Battle of Mount Tabor was fought on 16 April 1799, between French forces commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte and General Jean-Baptiste Kléber, against an Ottoman Army under Abdullah Pasha al-Azm, ruler of Damascus. The battle was a consequence of the siege of Acre, in the later stages of the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria.
Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar born Ahmed Pervan(Arabic: أحمد باشا الجزّار, c. 1720–30s – 7 May 1804) was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of Damascus Eyalet in 1785–1786, 1790–1795, 1798–1799, and 1803–1804. Having left his native Bosnia as a youth, he began a military career in Egypt in the service of mamluk officials, eventually becoming a chief enforcer and assassin for Ali Bey al-Kabir, Egypt's practical ruler. He gained the epithet of al-Jazzar for his deadly ambush on a group of Bedouin tribesmen in retaliation for the death of his first master in a Bedouin raid. Al-Jazzar fell out with Ali Bey in 1768 after refusing to take part in the assassination of another of his former masters. He ultimately fled to Syria, where he was tasked by the Ottomans with defending Beirut from a joint assault by the Russian Navy and Zahir al-Umar, the Acre-based ruler of northern Palestine. He eventually surrendered and entered Zahir's service before defecting from him and fleeing with stolen tax money.
Haim Farhi, was an adviser to the governors of the Galilee in the days of the Ottoman Empire. Among the Jews he was known as Hakham Haim, because of his Talmudic learning.
The Shihab dynasty is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and local chiefs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. Their reign began in 1697 after the death of the last Ma'nid chief. The family centralized control over Mount Lebanon, destroying the feudal power of the mostly Druze lords and cultivating the Maronite clergy as an alternative power base of the emirate. The Shihab family allied with Muhammad Ali of Egypt during his occupation of Syria, but was deposed in 1840 when the Egyptians were driven out by an Ottoman-European alliance, leading soon after to the dissolution of the Shihab emirate. Despite losing territorial control, the family remains influential in modern Lebanon, with some members having reached high political office.
Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa is an oil-on-canvas painting commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte and painted in 1804 by Antoine-Jean Gros, portraying an event during the French invasion of Egypt. The scene shows Napoleon during a striking scene which is supposed to have occurred in Jaffa on 11 March 1799, depicting the French general making a visit to his ill soldiers at the Armenian Saint Nicholas Monastery.
Elzéar Auguste Cousin de Dommartin became a French general during the French Revolutionary Wars, fought in Italy under Napoleon Bonaparte, and commanded the artillery division of the Armée d'Orient during the French invasion of Egypt in 1798.
Muhammad (Mehmet) Abu Nabbut Agha was the governor of Jaffa and Gaza in the early 19th century on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, from 1807 to 1818, as well as the governor of Thessaloniki from 1819 to 1827 during the Greek War of Independence.
Louis-Edmond Antoine le Picard de Phélippeaux, mainly referred to as Antoine de Phélippeaux, was a French émigré best known for defeating Napoleon Bonaparte in an effort to defend Egypt. In 1783, Louis Phélippeaux met Napoleon Bonaparte at the École Militaire in Paris where the two young men became lifelong enemies. Phélippeaux was also an enemy of the state to France, due to his loyalty to the Ancien Régime and his participation in many anti-revolutionary movements. Previously a French military officer, Phélippeaux emigrated to Great Britain in 1791 during the French Revolution. He served in the Army of Condé and fought against the French Republic. Fighting against Napoleon in a battle in Acre, Phélippeaux died from fever in May 1799.
Sulayman Pasha al-Adil was the Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet between 1805 and 1819, ruling from his Acre headquarters. He also simultaneously served as governor of Damascus Eyalet between 1810 and 1812. He was a mamluk of his predecessor, Jazzar Pasha. His rule was associated with decentralization, a reduction of Acre's military, and limits to his predecessors' cotton monopoly. Moreover, he oversaw a policy of non-interference with his deputy governors, such as Muhammad Abu-Nabbut and Mustafa Agha Barbar, and diplomacy with the autonomous sheikhs of the various Levantine regions where he held authority, including Emir Bashir Shihab II and Musa Bey Tuqan. He exercised control over his domain largely through depending on the loyalty of his deputies, who also had been mamluks of Jazzar. In effect, Sulayman Pasha presided over the world's last functioning mamluk system.
Abdullah Pasha ibn Ali was the Ottoman governor (wali) of Sidon Eyalet between May 1820 and May 1832, with a nine-month interruption in 1822–23. Like his predecessors Jazzar Pasha and Sulayman Pasha, Abdullah Pasha ruled from the port city of Acre. During his reign, all of Palestine and the Syrian coastline came under his jurisdiction. Among his major military victories was his survival of an imperial-backed siege of Acre in 1822 instigated by the Farhi family in retaliation for Abdullah's execution of his mentor Haim Farhi, the suppression of revolts in Mount Lebanon and Jerusalem in 1824 and 1826, respectively, and the 1831 capture of the Sanur fortress.
Abdallah Bey was an Ottoman Arab statesman who served as the governor of Jaffa in the Sidon Eyalet under Wāli Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in the late 18th century.
Ottoman Empire 
Great Britain 
French Republic 
Sidney Smith 
Antoine de Phélippeaux 
