20 May to 14 June 1799
The retreat to Egypt
The army leaves Acre at night to hide its withdrawal and abandons the gun horses. Bonaparte and his officers hand their horses over for the sick and wounded, and Bonaparte walks. The plague patients in the hospital on Mount Carmel are taken to Jaffa and Tantura, and from Jaffa the sick are sent on in three groups, by sea to Damietta and by land to Gaza and El Arish.
Monument to French soldiers of 1799 in front of the Stella Maris monastery on Mount Carmel, Haifa, photographed in 2008Wikimedia Commons, Shmuliko, CC BY-SA 3.0 (NapoleonSoldiersMonument.JPG)
On the way the army strips the country of crops and livestock and burns the villages, sparing only Gaza. At Jaffa Bonaparte proposes that plague patients who cannot be moved, between 15 and 50 by different accounts, be given a fatal dose of opium. His doctors refuse, and whether it is done remains disputed.
The army reaches Cairo on 14 June. On 29 June Bonaparte reports to Paris the loss of 5,344 men and asks for 6,000 reinforcements.
Sources
- David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966).
- Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt (2008).
- Frank McLynn, Napoleon: A Biography (1997).
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