The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte Author:William Hazlitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XX. THE BATTLES IN 1799 IN SYRIA. Buonaparte remained during the rest of the year 1798 at Cairo, ripening his plans, and watching the progress of e... more »vents. Soon after the battle of the Nile, the Porte, no longer kept in awe by the French fleet or else alarmed for its possessions in the East, declared war against France. In the beginning of 1799 the Turkish armies assembled, one at Rhodes, the other in Syria, in order to attack the French in Egypt. They were to act in concert in the month of May, the .first by landing at Aboukir, the second by crossing the Desert which divides Syria from Egypt. In the beginning of January news arrived that Gezzar Pacha had been appointed Seraskier of the army of Syria ; that his vanguard, under the command of Abdallah, had already arrived at El-Arisch, and was occupied in repairing the fort, which may be considered as the key of Egypt on the Syrian side. A train of artillery of forty guns, served by 1200 cannoneers in the European manner, had been landed at Jaffa ; considerable magazines were conveyed to that town, by means of vessels from Constantinople; and at Gaza stores of skins to hold water had been collected, sufficient, it was said, to enable a large army to cross the" Desert. Had the French remained stationary, they would have been attacked by both armies at once; and it was also to be apprehended that the Turks would shortly be joined by a body of European troops. Thus hemmed in, the French would have no retreat open to them by sea, as they had no fleet; and by land, the Desert of seventy-five leagues, which separates Syria from Egypt, was not passable by an European army in the height of the hot season. It was therefore the business of the French General to anticipate his enemies, to cross the Great Desert during the winte...« less