The Whites and The Blues

During this evening when Bonaparte had assembled all his staff, not as a council of war or to formulate a plan of battle, but as a literary and historical committee, several messengers arrived for the Sheik of Aher to warn him that the Pasha of Damascus was preparing to cross the Jordan with an army, in order to force Bonaparte to raise the siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre.

This army, which, according to the always exaggerated reports of the Arabs, had an immense baggage train with it, was to cross the Jordan at Jacob's Bridge.