حصار عكا (1799)
حصار عكا (بالهجرية Akka Kuşatması) عام 1799، كان محاولة فرنسية غير ناجحة لحصار مدينة عكا، نجح العثمانيون في هزيمة الجيش الفرنسي، وكانت نقطة تحول لغزوناپليون بوناپرت لمصر وسوريا.
خلفية
تمثل عكا مسقط استراتيجي هام نظراً لمسقطها المشرف على الطريق بين مصر وسوريا، فأراد ناپليون إسقاط ميناء عكا بعد غزوه لمصر. وكان يأمل في تأجيج ثورة السوريين على العثمانيين وتهديد الحكم البريطاني في الهند. غير حتى بعد حصار يافا كان الدفاع عن عكا أكثر شراسة.
الحصار
حاول الفرنسيون ضرب الحصار في 20 مارس عن طريق المشاة فقط. افترض ناپليون حتى المدينة ستسقط بسهولة. في مراسلاته مع أحد ضباطه عبر عن اعتقاده بأنه خلال أسبوعين سيتمكن من إسقاط أبرز النقاط في طريقه لغزوالأراضي المقدسة قبل التوجه إلى القدس.
ومع ذلك، رفضت قوات أحمد باشا الجزار الاستسلام، وصمدت أمام الحصار لشهر ونصف. لعب حاييم فرحي، مستشار يهودي للجزار، وذراعه الأيمن، دوراً محورياً في الدفاع عن المدينة، وقاد بنفسه المعركة ضد الفرنسيين. قبلها غزا ناپليون يافا، وقام الجنود الفرنسيين بهجوم وحشي على المدينة، وذُبح آلاف الأسرى الألبان على شاطئ البحر، قبل حتى يتحرك الفرنسيون شمالاً. وكان أهالي عكا على فهم بما جرى في يافا (الكثير منهم من الألبان).
ساعد أسيطيل تابع للبحرية الملكية بقيادة وليام سيندي سميث في تعزيز الدفاعات العثمانية وأمد المدينة بمدافع إضافية يحرسها البحارة ومشاة البحرية. استخدم سميث قيادته في البحر لإسقاط قوات المدفعية الفرنسية التي أوفدت على ظهر السفن من مصر لقصف الطريق الساحلي من يافا. قام خبير المدفعية أنطوان دفليپو، بنقل بتر المدفعية الفرنسية التي تبتر في مرمى نيران البريطانيين.
Smith anchored HMS Tigre and Theseus so their broadsides could assist the defence. Repeated French assaults were driven back.
On 16 April a Turkish relief force was fought off at the Mount Tabor. By early May, replacement French siege artillery had arrived overland and a breach was forced in the defences. At the culmination of the assault, the besieging forces managed to make a breach in the walls.
However, after suffering many casualties to open this entry-point, Napoleon's soldiers found, on trying to penetrate the city, that Farhi and DePhelipoux had, in the meantime, built a second wall, several feet deeper within the city where al-Jazzar's garden was. Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of their taking the city was minimal. Moreover, after the assault was again repelled, Turkish reinforcements from Rhodes were able to land.
Having underestimated the stubborn attitude of the defending forces combined with a British blockade of French supply harbours and harsh weather conditions, Napoleon's forces were left hungry, cold and damp. Plague had struck the French camp as a result of the desperate condition of the men, and had by now led to the deaths of about 2,000 soldiers.
Throughout the siege, both Napoleon and Jezzar sought in vain the assistance of the Shihab leader, Bashir—ruler of much of present-day Lebanon. Bashir remained neutral. As things turned out, it was the French side which suffered most from the attitude of Bashir, whose intervention on their side might have turned the balance.
في النهاية، رُفع الحصار. وتراجع ناپليون بوناپرت بعد شهرين في 21 مايوبعد فشله في الهجوم الأخير فيعشرة مايو، وإنسحب إلى مصر.
الأهمية
In 1805, Napoleon asserted that if he had
been able to take Acre [in 1799], I would have put on a turban, I would have made my soldiers wear big Turkish trousers, and I would have exposed them to battle only in case of extreme necessity. I would have made them into a Sacred Battalion--my Immortals. I would have finished the war against the Turks with Arabic, Greek, and Armenian troops. Instead of a battle in Moravia, I would have won a Battle of Issus, I would have made myself emperor of the East, and I would have returned to Paris by way of Constantinople.
The allusions from Classical Antiquity included in the speech are to the Sacred Band of Thebes and the Persian Immortals—elite units of, respectively, the city state of Thebes and the Achaemenid Kings of Persia; and to the Battle of Issus where Alexander the Great decisively defeated the latter. (In fact, though Acre was not conquered, Napoleon's Imperial Guard did come to be informally called "The Immortals.")
Some hold that a statement attributed to Napoleon during the war, according to which he promised to return the land to the Jews if he were to succeed in his conquest of Palestine, was meant to capture Farhi’s attention and betray his master by switching his support to the French.
However, Napoleon never showed any particular interest in winning over the Jews of Palestine during his campaign there, though his account of the military campaign records that a rumour among Syrian Jews had it that after Napoleon took Acre, he would go to Jerusalem and restore Solomon's temple and decrees were passed in favour of Jews (and Coptic Christians and women) in French-controlled Egypt. Whatever Napoleon's actual intentions, these stories and rumors are considered to be among the earliest harbingers of what would become the Zionist Movement.
ذكراه
في عكا المعاصرة، يوجد التل الذي عسكر عليه ناپليون، جنوب شرق أسوار مدينة عكا، ويوجد في عكا أيضاً شارع ناپليون بوناپرت.
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The remains of the internal fortification line erected by Farhi and De-Phelipoux within the walls of Acre, during Napoleon's siege, May 1799.
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Cemetery for Napoleons soldiers in Acre, including that of General Caffarelli.
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19th-century cannon, set in the wall of Acre near a sign commemorating Farhi. The Hebrew inscription on the sign reads: Farhi vs. Napoleon. Jezzar's right hand in resisting Napoleon's harsh siege was the Jewish Haim Farhi, senior adviser and minister of finance.
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المصادر
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مشاع الفهم فيه ميديا متعلقة بموضوع [[commons:خطأ لوا في وحدة:WikidataIB على السطر 496: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).|خطأ لوا في وحدة:WikidataIB على السطر 496: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).]]. |
- ^ Napoleon Bonaparte, “On Religions” in The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words, ed. J. Christopher Herold (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 49.
- ^ Georges Blond, La Grande Armée, trans. Marshall May (New York: Arms and Armor, 1997), 48, 103, 470
- ^ Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine: L'invention de la terre sainte, 1799-1922, Fayard, Paris 1999 p.18
- ^ Franz Kobler, Napoleon and the Jews, Masada Press, Jerusalem,1975 p.51
- ^ Steven Englund, Napoleon: A Political Life, Harvard University Press 2005 p.133
- ^ Ze'ev Aner, "Why wasn't the State of Israel created in 1799?" (in Hebrew) [1]
