mod_rewrite - how to catch old links and redirect ?

Hi Experts,

On a site recently developed I've used url rewriting to allow the site to have "nice urls"

Now this works just fine - but I'm also eager to capture any "old" urls - and redirect them to the new site.

So I made a list with all the old URL's and in the db I matched them to the new sites - but today I uploadet everything and all old urls aren't captured, they just get redirected to the / page :(

Here's my .htaccess file
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
 
# Directories to ignore
RewriteRule ^(assets|inc|cms|css|images|img|admin|js|topimages|video)(/.*)?$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(index\.php)$ - [L]  
RewriteRule ^(mod_redirect\.php) - [L]
RewriteRule ^(balule_mail\.php) - [L]

RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.html)$ mod_redirect.php?url=$1$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/?$     index.php?lang=$1&url=$2  [NC]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/?$    index.php?url=$1  [NC]

I thought that the third-last rule would capture all request that ends with .html - but thats not the case it seems...

An url will include numerous folder names etc - I guess this could be the problem ??
An example could be htttp://www.myhost.com/html_files/safari/buy_tickets.html

Lots of different folders - would like to test if the URL ends with .html and if so, send the request to mod_redirect.php?url=[the complete url]

Can any of you experts help me out, this is really urgent to me :|

Best regards!