NAPOLEON IN SYRIA; Field Marshal Suvorov Retakes Italy in 1799 -- Napoleon Journal #15

It was Napoleon's conquest of Malta in 1798, and the disbanding and looting of the Knights of St. John of Malta, of which Tsar Paul was titular head, that provoked the Russians into joining a second coalition with England and Austria against revolutionary France in 1799. They would take advantage of the absence of General Bonaparte and his 35,000 veterans, now isolated in Egypt. The Allies were led by the venerable Russian Field Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevich Suvorov, who in four short months would recapture the territory of northern Italy lost to Bonaparte's campaign of 1796-97