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Napoleon's Plague Victims of Jaffa - Visiting the original room at the Armenian monastery, Israel

63 views · Published 14 January 2018 · 3:42 · Indexed 1 October 2026

Channel: The Holy Land, by Zahi Shaked · 2018 · Travel & Events

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Zahi Shaked A tour guide in Israel and his camera
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Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa (Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa) is an1804 painting commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte from Antoine-Jean Gros to portray an event during the Egyptian Campaign.[1] The scene shows Napoleon during a striking scene which occurred in Jaffa in 1799. It was an attempt to quell unsavory rumours after Napoleon ordered that fifty incurable plague victims in Jaffa be poisoned (without complete success) during his retreat from his Syrian expedition.
This is part of the collection of French paintings at the Louvre. 
It is set in the Armenian monastery, whose courtyard we can see in the background. Further into the background are the walls of Jaffa, with a breached tower above which flies an oversized French flag. The smoke from a fire, or excessive cannon smoke, dominates the town..
The capture and violent sack of Jaffa by the French army under Bonaparte on 7 March 1799 were rapidly followed by an outbreak of bubonic plague, identified by January 1799, which decimated the army. On 11 March, Bonaparte made a spectacular visit to the sick, touching them, which was considered to be either magnificent or suicidal according to one's point of view on the Napoleonic legend or of the terrors of an age of plagues.
The sick man with bandaged eyes on the right is suffering from blindness as well as plague. Since the army's arrival in Egypt in July 1798, several French had suffered serious eye problems due to the sand, dust and extreme light of the sun.
On 23 April 1799, during the siege of Acre, Bonaparte suggested to Desgenettes, the expedition's chief doctor, that the sick should be administered a fatal-level dose of opium - that is, mercy-killed. Desgenettes refused. On 27 May that same year, Napoleon made a second visit to the plague victims.
In the context of the Troubadour style, and especially at the moment when Napoleon was becoming emperor, this episode evoked the tradition of the thaumaturgical laying-on-of-hands which the French kings carried out with sufferers of scrofula.

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