In the end the French retreated with great loss, and--the Turks, headed by the English seamen, pursuing them to their lines--a great mine, designed to blow up the chief tower of Acre, was explored, and means taken for countermining it.
Meanwhile a vast Mussulman army had been gathered among the mountains of Samaria, and was preparing to descend upon Acre, and attack the besiegers in concert with the garrison of Djezzar.

Junot, with his division, marched to encounter them, and would have been overwhelmed by their numbers, had not Napoleon himself followed and rescued him (April 8) at Nazareth, where the splendid cavalry of the orientals were, as usual, unable to resist the solid squares and well-directed musketry of the French.

Kleber, with another division, was in like manner endangered, and in like manner rescued by the general-in-chief at Mount Tabor (April 15).

The Mussulmans dispersed on all hands; and Napoleon, returning to his siege, pressed it on with desperate assaults, day after day, in which his best soldiers were thinned, before the united efforts of Djezzar's gallantry, and the skill of his allies.

At length, however, a party of French succeeded in forcing their way into the great tower, and in establishing themselves in one part of it, in despite of all the resolution that could be opposed to them.