Napoleon Bonaparte (France)

Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798 and the Land of Israel in February 1799. He took El-Arish, Gaza and Jaffa, where he had thousands of prisoners killed, and from 20 March to 21 May 1799 besieged Acre. The city was defended by its governor Ahmad al-Jazzar, his Jewish adviser Haim Farhi, and a British squadron under Sir Sidney Smith, and Napoleon had to retreat to Egypt. On 22 May 1799 the French government paper, Le Moniteur, reported that he had called on the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag to restore ancient Jerusalem. No original survives, and most historians doubt the fuller text published in 1940.

As First Consul from late 1799 and Emperor from 1804 until his fall in 1815, Napoleon spread the emancipation that the French Revolution had granted the Jews of France in 1791: his armies tore down ghetto walls in Italy and gave Jews civil rights in the Netherlands, the Rhineland and Westphalia. He also convened the Assembly of Notables and the Grand Sanhedrin of 1807 (see Napoleon's Sanhedrin), created the consistories, and in 1808 restricted Jewish moneylending with the "Infamous Decree".