However, the troops of the capable Jezzar Pasha, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months. Haim Farhi, al-Jazzar's Jewish adviser and right-hand man, played a key role in the city's defence, directly supervising the battle against the siege. After Napoleon's earlier conquest of Jaffa, rampaging French troops had savagely sacked the conquered city, and thousands of Albanian prisoners of war were massacred on the sea-shore, prior to the French offensive further northwards. These facts were well known to the townspeople and defending troops (many of them Albanians) in Acre, and the prospect of being massacred is likely to have stiffened their resistance.