Napoleon was defeated by a combined Ottoman-British force at the Siege of Acre in 1799, and at the Battle of Abukir in 1801, so that by 1802, France's presence was completely rolled back from the Middle-East. Soon however, from 1803, Napoleon went to great lengths to try to convince the Ottoman Empire to fight against Russia in the Balkans and join his anti-Russian coalition. Napoleon sent General Horace Sebastiani as envoy extraordinary, promising to help the Ottoman Empire recover lost territories. Napoleon also formed a Franco-Persian alliance in 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars, with the continuous aim of having an eventual open path to attack British India.