Taking Jaffa so easily had left many people feeling buoyant, thinking Saint-Jean-d'Acre would be just as easy to capture.
The two cities were vastly different. At Jaffa, the French had ample ammunition and only needed to deal with the local garrison. At Saint-Jean-d'Acre, they lacked both ammunition and food, and had to contend with the local inhabitants, British warships, and Europe's science.
Eugene and the others had slaughtered Turkish prisoners by the Nile River. One or two men swam away through the blood-red water and spread the news, causing the Turkish villagers near Saint-Jean-d'Acre to flee into the city behind its solid walls.
The cries of women would stir the male inhabitants into desperate resistance. Those former "peaceful residents" became soldiers, even if their original ruler had been brutal.
Generally speaking, poisoning wells in the desert essentially meant employing a scorched-earth strategy. Soldiers were not the only ones who drank from wells; civilians and livestock living around them drank from them too. Once the water was poisoned, not only could soldiers no longer drink it, neither could the local civilians or animals. That entire area would become uninhabitable.
Saint-Jean-d'Acre lay along the coast. The sea stretched out in endless blue waves as far as the eye could see, but saltwater could not be drunk.
When the expeditionary army entered Syria on February 28, everything appeared lush and green, but the wheat shoots had not yet ripened and were equally inedible.
Napoleon could have demanded grain from the locals, but the soldiers were already grumbling bitterly over the lack of drinking water. Letting them come into contact with civilians would only provoke conflict. Mid- and high-ranking officers still had food to eat, while ordinary soldiers could only survive by hunting animals such as dogs.
The search party's discovery of rye and