Napoleon Bonaparte visiting plague-stricken soldiers at Jaffa in 1799. Engraving by F. Pigeot after A.J. Gros, 1804.

The engraving shows an episode in Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign. Egypt and Palestine were then governed by the Ottoman Turks. In 1799 an army under Napoleon's command seized the town of Jaffa in Palestine (part of the present city of Tel Aviv in Israel), and massacred many of the inhabitants. His own army was weakened by bubonic plague, and the infected people (French soldiers and local civilians) were separated in an isolation hospital (lazaretto). Napoleon visited them there, although he risked being infected with plague. This is the scene shown in the engraving, which is based on a heroic painting by Baron Gros, one of Napoleon's propaganda men. Napoleon is shown in the centre touching a plague bubo (swelling) in the armpit of one of the diseased soldiers, to give encouragement to the sick soldiers