By 1799, the French Revolutionary Wars had resumed after a period of relative peace in 1798. The Second Coalition had organized against France, with Great Britain allying with Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and several of the German and Italian states. While Napoleon's army was still embroiled in Egypt, the allies prepared campaigns in Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Egypt Napoleon had consolidated his control of Egypt for the time being. Soon after the beginning of the year, he mounted an invasion of Syria, capturing El Arish and Jaffa. On 17 March, he laid siege to Acre, and defeated an Ottoman effort to relieve the city at the Battle of Mount Tabor on 17 April. However, his repeated assaults on Acre were driven back by Ottoman and British forces under the command of Jezzar Pasha and Sir Sidney Smith. By May, with plague rampant in his army and no sign of success against the city, Napoleon was forced to retreat into Egypt. In July, Turkey, with the help of the British navy, mounted an invasion by sea from Rhodes. Napoleon attacked the Turkish beachheads and annihilated their army at Aboukir. In August–September, after six months of getting no news from France due to an effective enemy blockade, and now reading some French newspapers conveniently provided to him by his enemy Great Britain, Napoleon decided to return to Europe the next day, hearing from these newspapers of the political and military crisis in France. Leaving his 'Army of Egypt' behind with Kléber in command, he somehow managed to sail through the British blockade and returned to France on 9 October and then on to Paris where he resolved to take control of the then five-man Directory government there in a coup. Netherlands In August, the allies mounted an invasion of the Netherlands (which at that time was a French vassal state, known as the 1795-1806 Batavian Republic) with a combined Anglo-Russian army under the Duke of York, who landed at the northern tip of Holland. This army fought a series of battles, winning the first couple of fights and then losing the next few before finally ending in the defeat at Castricum on 6 October. That town passed from British-Russian to Batavian-French hands several times until the former finally fled, losing 2536 men and 11 guns; the Batavian-French losses stood at 1382. The Battle of Castricum persuaded the Duke that his