Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

Two months later, in May, 1799, the great Eed, or day of sacrifice, was kept, but in this as in all things the shadow of the French occupation overhung the people and embittered their feelings. Sheep, which for several reasons are the animals generally chosen for sacrifice, could not be had, partly because the flocks of the neighbouring villages had been almost wholly consumed by the French and partly because the restless condition of the country prevented those of more distant places being sent into the town. So the salvos of artillery with which according to custom the occasion was celebrated were listened to by the people but failed to awaken the usual enthusiasm, and, fired as they were by the unorthodox hands of the French gunners, were to the Moslems little better than a mockery.

Early in the year when the plague had first appeared rigorous police regulations had been issued for the protection of the French, who suffered from the dread of epidemics so universal in Christian Europe, but which, as readers of Kinglake's "Eothen" will remember, so slightly disturb the Oriental mind. As the year had advanced the plague had shown no signs of disappearing, and new and more stringent orders were issued in the hope of restricting it. Dire penalties were therefore imposed for concealing a case or a death, or for neglecting the prescribed sanitary precautions, and some idea of the frantic terror that possessed the compilers of these regulations may be gathered from the fact that death was the punishment proclaimed for any one sick of the plague who should dare enter any other house than his own dwelling.

Thus the first year of the French occupation and the year of the Moslem calendar came to an end within a few days of each other, and Gabarty winds up his long and yet all too brief record of the woes and tribulations of the twelve months by saying that it had been full of "unheard-of events, the most important being that the people of Egypt had been unable to make the pilgrimage to Mecca!"

A very notable conclusion of the year's story – a conclusion that tells us much of the people and their most extraordinary and irrational way, as you no doubt think it, of looking upon the affairs of life. The coming of the French, the terrible sufferings of the panic-stricken town, the gathering of that wild storm of revolt, its bursting, collapse, the long-delayed hope of relief, the daily outraging of the most cherished prejudices of the people – all these, the great flood of evil and sorrow that was the one recollection of that miserable time for all the people – all this was of less importance than the fact that a few hundred individuals had been unable to perform the dangerous journey to Mecca!

Death, want, misfortune and misery of every kind had filled the record of the year for one and all of the people, but this one thing in which but a few of them only could have any direct personal interest, this was "the most important event of the year!"

Is it any wonder that the people refused to fall down and worship the golden calf of the French Republic that Bonaparte and his Staff were so vainly trying to exalt!

That the reader may the more justly appreciate Gabarty's comment on the history of the year he must recall two facts with reference to the composition of his history – first that it was written at the time. It is not a record compiled in after years when the feelings, emotions, and thoughts of the moment had been forgotten or blurred, It was rather a diary scribbled down from day to day, and one written, too, with no special object other than that of recording the principal occurrences of the time. A mere narrative, not written in support of a theory, nor as a study of men or things, nor as a text for the exposition of the author's views, but simply in the plainest and most literal sense a mere narrative. Secondly, it is not as an opinion but as a fact that he puts this failure of the pilgrimage down as the most important event of that disastrous year. And he puts it down as a fact in terms that show clearly that he believes that as a matter of opinion it is one no one who may ever read his history will for a moment think of questioning or doubting in any way.

If the reader can by any possibility bring himself to comprehend in the faintest degree the true purport of this summing up of the year's history he will have got a long, a very long, way on the road to a clear comprehension of the Egyptian as he was in 1798, and as he still is.

It may help the reader somewhat to form some idea of his own on this subject if I turn aside for a moment to tell him what this pilgrimage to Mecca is, and how it is regarded by the Moslems of Egypt and other countries.

Itself surrounded by the hills of the desert district of the Hegaz, the city of Mecca has grown around and encircles a great rectangular open but cloister-bounded space, in the centre of which rises a flat-roofed building occupying a mere spot in the vast courtyard, and which, but for its height, might be termed a cube, clothed on all sides by a hanging cloth of the deepest black, relieved only by a band of Arabic lettering wrought in gold. Nature herself has produced no more impressive sight than that presented by this small building thus strangely garbed and hid away in the wastes of the desert. In size, in form, in all things save its sable garment gently swaying to the slightest breeze, the building is one that would never draw from the stranger a second glance, but as it is, once seen it dwells upon the mind for ever with a vividness of detail no other sight can produce. This is the Beit Allah, the "House of God" of Islam, first erected, as Moslem tradition relates, by the Prophet Abrahim, and ever since a place of pilgrimage for all true worshippers of God. Hither while yet Christianity and Islam were yet unknown, in the "days of ignorance," when the Arabs still worshipped idols of stone, they came from all parts of the Arab-speaking world as pilgrims, counting all the many dangers of the road as nought compared to the rich rewards awaiting in the future those who should accomplish this duty. Enjoined upon the Moslems as one of the five great obligations of their creed, the pilgrimage to-day draws Moslems from the most distant parts of the world by long and tedious journeys through the wildest and least-civilised parts of the earth, heedless of dangers and difficulties, counting it a gain to suffer by the way, and content to die once their eyes have fallen upon the sacred building. And of all Moslems the Egyptian, and most especially the Cairene, has a special and peculiar interest in the pilgrimage since it is the privilege of Cairo to supply from year to year the new Kiswa, or clothing for the Beit Allah.

Here, then, we have a partial clue to the importance attached to the failure of the pilgrimage by the Cairenes, but, as I have said, the failure was one that directly affected but a few hundreds of the people – those who under more favourable circumstances would have taken part in the pilgrimage. But these, from the point of view of their own pilgrimage, would accept the impossibility of performing it in that year as a matter of destiny, and would have regarded the impoverishment of their resources caused by the endless exactions of the French as a greater evil, as one not only preventing their making the pilgrimage in that year, but possibly also in future years, since the expenses of the journey are such that to the ordinary pilgrim they are only to be met by the economy of years.

There was, therefore, some other reason why the failure of the pilgrimage should be looked upon as so great a calamity, and if the reader will recall the incident of the omitted prayer at the festival of the Eed, it may assist in guiding him to the solution of the problem, for in that incident we get an aid to the understanding of the Egyptian's attitude towards his religion and his interpretation of its duties. This and other matters that I have had occasion to speak of may perhaps enable the reader to understand at least this much – that this people has a standard of good and evil very different to his own, and that no scale of weal and woe that he could draw out would be at all likely to commend itself to their acceptance. He who has grasped this fact will have gained a position from which he may hope to pursue his study of the Egyptians and their history, with at least one solid, indisputable fact to guide him – a fact that, almost impossible as one would think it to be, the ordinary historian of the country seems quite unable to realise. It is true that in so many set words or phrases they tell their readers that the Egyptian does not reason or think as other men do, but having said so much they describe and criticise their actions and thoughts without the least reference to this fundamental and controlling fact. Nor is it the historians alone who make this crass mistake. Men living in the country, nay, even those born and reared in it, and living in the closest intimacy with Egyptians, are no wiser, and hence, whenever Egyptian thought or opinion run counter to their own, they all agree in attributing the difference to "stupidity" or "fanaticism." And what is still less realised is that this difference is not limited to the Moslems, but is shared by the Christians of the country. Severed from each other as the Moslem and Eastern Christian are in thought and aspiration, they are, though not wholly one, strongly sympathetic in their estimates of European civilisation as it is commonly presented to them. The active effect of their sympathy is partly nullified by the interest the Christian has in seeing the predominant power in the hands of his coreligionists, and it was this interest, and this interest alone, and not any sympathy with French views or French ideals, that gained from the Christians of Egypt whatever of support they gave the French. In all books on the East it is tacitly assumed by the writers that were the East Christianised it would be in full sympathy with European thought. No greater error is conceivable. The Coptic or the Syrian clerk in the service of the Egyptian Government of to-day, compelled as he is by the official regulations, attends his office in European dress, but goes home to throw that off at the first possible moment to resume the garb of the country, the loose, flowing garments that good sense and experience alike tell him are not only the most comfortable but the most healthy in a climate such as that of Egypt. And as in this so in other things. Like the Moslem, he accepts many of the comforts and conventions of European life, but like him he rejects not a few of these that north of the Mediterranean are deemed indispensable.

These were things that the French did not and perhaps could not see. And there was yet another obstacle they had to surmount, but of the presence of which they seem to have been oblivious. The civilisation that the French wished to plant in Egypt had not been the growth of a day, but the fruit of centuries of slow and halting progress. Had it been possible for a foreign power to have attempted to introduce that civilisation into France, say in the ninth or tenth century, what manner of reception would it have had? Think you that the French people of that time would have hailed the innovations forced upon them with rapturous delight? that they would at once have appreciated every little detail, and hastened to abandon all their time-honoured habits and customs to adopt those of their new teachers? How did our Hereward the Wake look upon the innovations of the Norman Conqueror? Was it with an ecstasy of admiration that Gurth the swineherd thought of the Norman civilisation of his day? Was it enthusiasm for the benefits advancing civilisation was bestowing upon them that led the Luddites in their machine-wrecking riots? The parallels are not perfect I admit, yet there is in them a sufficient resemblance of circumstance and fact to justify the comparison, and more than enough to discredit the conclusions that so many authors have drawn from the attitude of the people of Egypt towards the French.

We have not reached the pleasant lands of our modern civilisation wafted by a gentle breeze on a smoothly gliding bark, but have won our way through storm and tempest by paths bedewed with blood and tears, and withal our progress has been less a striving for good than a flight from evil, and though we are not perhaps all sensible of it, our appreciation of our civilisation is largely our appreciation of our triumph over evils and difficulties. The ignorant and thoughtless, whether of the "Smart Set" or of the slums, do not see this. They and all of their class take life, as do their cats and dogs and the beasts of the field, as they find it. Yet he who can and will think must admit that it is so, and, admitting this, will see that in addition to the other causes that prevented the Egyptians accepting the French and their reforms there was this very important one, that they could not in any way appreciate them as reforms, seeing that they were not yet conscious of the existence of the evils they were intended to remedy. To the Egyptian, as I have said before, the life he had been living under the Mamaluks needed but little to make it perfect. Moderate taxation and the abolition of the erratic tyranny from which the people suffered were the two things wanted to make his life wholly desirable and pleasant. These evils, so far from being abolished by the French, were, in the opinion of the Egyptian, increased a hundredfold. And to these the French added a host of minor evils: worrying and wearisome regulations, cramping the liberty and freedom the people had always enjoyed, thwarting their natural instincts and burthening them with a sense of control they had never before experienced.

Again, I ask, what wonder was it that they did not fall down and worship the golden calf of the Republic?

CHAPTER XIII
THE SIEGE OF CAIRO

It was the middle of June, 1799, before Bonaparte got back to Cairo from Syria. His prolonged siege of Acre had been an utter failure, and save for a little worthless loot the whole expedition had been but a sample of that which his whole life was to be – a selfish, reckless waste of human life, useless, unprofitable, and, in spite of the servile adulation it has had, entirely contemptible. That this man was personally brave, skilful in war, a clever general – in short, that he was a man of many abilities that, rightly exercised, would have entitled him to respect and admiration – is perfectly true, but it is not more true of him than of many that the world has rightly and properly agreed to class as criminals. Seeking nothing but his own gain, in this futile expedition he had sacrificed thousands of lives, wrecked hundreds of innocent homes. More than a third of his army had perished, including twelve hundred of his sick and wounded abandoned to the vengeance of the enemy for his own ruthless slaughter of his prisoners. Such is the great hero of modern civilisation!

But defeated and discomfited as he was, he entered Cairo in triumph with banners flying, drums beating, and all the rest of the idle fanfaronade and pompous puerilities associated with triumphal entries. Five long hours the grand procession occupied in passing through the city gates, and thenceforth for three days and nights his coming was celebrated with loud rejoicings and feastings, and the Egyptians looked on and even took such part in the hollow mockery as they were commanded to do, but they were in no way deceived; the gaunt skeleton of defeat and failure was clothed but not concealed by the gaudy glare of lying pretence.

So the "Great" Bonaparte paid honour to himself, heedless of the droning of the surges on St. Helena's distant shore.

A month later the long-expected Turkish army arrived by sea, and, landing at Abou Kir on the 14th of July, was besieged by the French under Bonaparte himself on the 25th. Although aided by Sir Sidney Smith, who was in command of a fleet that had already assisted in the defence of Acre, the Turks, defeated by starvation, had to yield on the 2nd of August.

The news of the arrival of the Turks had been received in Cairo with unbounded joy, though none but a few of the hot-headed lower classes had given any open expression to their feelings, but when Bonaparte returned to the city with a long file of Turkish prisoners the despondency of the people was overwhelming; yet, though it was felt by all to be a rebinding of the chains of their bondage, they gave no sign, and the life of the town went on in the listless way that was becoming habitual to it. It was the easier for the people to bear this reverse that they by no means looked upon it as in any way a final one. The defeat of the Turks was but the defeat of a small force taken at great disadvantage, and one which they did not doubt was but the advance guard of an army against which the French could make no stand. Meanwhile, the period of the inundation having arrived, the rising of the Nile was celebrated by order, as it had been the year before, but this time with an abandon on the part of the Christians that gravely shocked Gabarty, who tells us that the eve of the fête was spent by them in boats on the river, or in the open along its banks, with feasting and drinking and women and music. "On this occasion," he writes, "they forgot their self-respect and cast modesty aside for indecency, raillery, impudence, and impiety. The pen refuses to paint the scandals of the night. Licence was carried to its extreme, and the dregs of the people, following the example set them, the debauchery and effrontery were without limit." All night the Bacchanalian festival was continued, the outrageous orgie ceasing only with the utter exhaustion of the degraded devotees of pleasure.

Some four days later Bonaparte gave a fresh proof of his greatness by deserting the army that had served him so faithfully, and, abandoning his dream of founding an Eastern Empire, hastened back to Europe to pursue with unabated enthusiasm his own selfish ambitions. His departure, like his coming and all his stay, was accompanied by the silly rigmarole of braggart falsehoods he was never tired of issuing, and which deceived no one but himself. He was going, so he said, to open communications with France, and was to return in three months to exterminate "the enemies of order."

Under General Kleber, whom Bonaparte had named as his successor in the command of the French army, matters went smoothly enough, although he was less affable in his treatment of the natives than Bonaparte had been. He, like all the French, was heartily sick of the country, and longing for an opportunity of escaping from it. The first glamour of the occupation had long since passed away, and the dreary monotony of their lives, coupled with the debilitating effect of the climate, needed only the cowardly desertion of their chief to plunge the French into a state of deep despondency. The task entrusted to General Kleber was one, therefore, sufficient to try the ablest, and it was not lessened by the complete destruction of trade and commerce, the heavy expenses of the army, and the difficulty of dragging any further large supplies from the impoverished people. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the arrival of a Turkish army from Syria was announced, the General hastened to accept the offer of the English Admiral to give the French army a safe and honourable opportunity of retiring. A convention was signed by which it was agreed that the French were to evacuate the country within three months. This being promptly made known to the Egyptians, the people rejoiced openly and without restraint, the lower classes going so far as to insult and abuse the French to their faces, to the great indignation of Gabarty, who does not fail to condemn their conduct not only as foolish but as unworthy of a self-respecting people. A few days later a Turkish officer arrived, and was received with rapturous acclamations. The day following the Vizier Yosuf, who was in command of the Turkish forces, issued his first orders to the people through the mouth of the officer they had thus cordially welcomed. Nothing could well be briefer or more explicit than these orders. They were but two in number, and were, first, that the people were to receive the officer in question as Chief of Customs, with the power of establishing monopolies of all food supplies; and secondly, the immediate raising of a sum of three thousand purses, to be paid to the French as a contribution towards the expenses of their evacuation of the country. "Thus," says the always candid Gabarty, "from the first moment the country had to suffer two evils at the hands of the Turks." But the tax levied was quickly collected, the people paying gladly to hasten the departure of the French. "Blessed be the day on which the infidel dogs quit us," was the cry raised, loudest of all by those who had most availed themselves of the presence of the French to indulge in a laxity of living offensive to all the better classes. Notwithstanding the reminder the people had so promptly received that the Turks, however much they were to be preferred to the French, were by no means lenient rulers, the rejoicings for their coming were universal among the Moslems, and though there were not a few of the more enlightened and sensible who were wise and bold enough to protest against the offensive treatment of the French, the current of popular feeling was too strong, and carried with it even men who had heretofore kept their heads. So once more the children of the schools were led by their masters through the streets, as they had been at the first arrival of the French, chanting songs in derision of, or of malediction on, the hated feringhees.

But if the Moslems were exultant, the Christians of the town were plunged in despondency and were keenly lamenting the folly that had led them to outrage Moslem sentiment in the manner they had done. Fearful that in the excited state of the people these would now seek to avenge the wanton insults that had been offered them, they withdrew from the streets and public places and hid in their houses, awaited in trembling fear the attack they anticipated would be made upon them. But the people were thinking of other things, and were too full of joy at the promise of their early escape from the bitter thraldom of the French to have a thought to spare for the minor grievances which they had endured from their Christian countrymen, and so these were left in peace.

Meanwhile small parties of the Turkish troops began to enter the town, and these, according to a pleasant custom that survives in the Turkish army up to the present day in outlying parts of the Empire, at once proceeded to constitute themselves partners in the commercial affairs of the people, without the aid of notaries or anything more than the very simplest of procedures. Seating themselves on the mustabahs, or raised fronts of the shops that serve at once as seats for the customers and counters for the display of the shopman's goods, they simply waited until a customer arrived and then demanded from the shopkeeper a share of his profits, alleging, not always untruthfully, that they had assisted in the sale of the goods by praising their quality, cheapness, and so forth, and, when a customer appeared unconvinced, not unfrequently by threatening him with violence should he refuse to complete a purchase. Needless to say, customers and dealers alike soon learned to shun the transaction of business in the presence of these "partners." Complaints were made to the new Governor of the town, but the only satisfaction accorded to the indignant plaintiffs was that they ought to be pleased at the opportunity of contributing to the upkeep of the troops that had come to defend them from the French and free the country from their infidel rule.

Eager as the people were to be rid of the French, these were not less so to get away from a town that no longer had any charm for them, and was associated with so much of disappointment. The work, therefore, of preparing for the evacuation was carried on with goodwill, and the citadel and the forts around the town were handed over to the Turks, while the French assembled themselves in camps in and about the Esbekieh.

The three months allowed for the evacuation was drawing to a close when the folly of the British Government suddenly altered the whole position. The convention which Sir Sidney Smith had accorded the French had been drawn up on a thorough understanding of the actual facts with which he had to deal. Knowing well that it was entirely out of his power to dictate terms to the French, and realising how greatly it would be to the advantage of his own country that the French should retire, he had treated with Kleber rather as a friend than as an enemy. But the Government, with absolutely nothing to guide it but Sir Sidney's report, declined to listen to his advice or to accept the action he had taken, and ordered him to insist upon the French making an unconditional surrender. A wiser and stronger man than Sir Sidney would have ignored instructions so fatal to the honour and interests of his own country, and so gratuitously insulting to brave and honourable foes; but, to the great misfortune of all concerned, Sir Sidney had not the courage to do justice to himself, and so communicated the decision of the Government to General Kleber. The blow was a bitter one. Honourable as the convention he had accepted had been, it had demanded some sacrifice of pride on the part of the French to adopt it, and Kleber was perfectly justified in terming the demand now made "insolent." Thus the madness of our Government at the moment when the French were straining every nerve to leave the country, forced them to remain, and not only gave them fresh and good reason to detest us, but laid a train of anti-English feeling in Egypt that bears consequences prejudicial to English interests even to the present day.

Finding his hope of an early return to Europe thus shattered, Kleber took the only line of action open to him, and showed his ability as a general by immediately re-entering the forts around the city which the Turks, finding a residence in the town itself more in accordance with their ideas of comfort, had neglected to occupy. This done, he hastened to attack the Turkish army, which was encamped at Materiah, some five miles from the town, and taking it by surprise and wholly unprepared for action, believing itself in peaceful and unthreatened possession of the country, routed it with ease and without loss. This attack was naturally regarded as a most treacherous one by the Turks and Egyptians, for until the French had actually opened fire upon the Turks these had remained in careless security without the least suspicion that anything could occur to bring them into conflict with the French. But it is quite impossible to blame Kleber. For the French an early and complete victory was now a matter of life and death. To have given the Turks an opportunity of attacking them in the forts around Cairo would have been suicidal madness. With no possibility of relief they could only have held out against a siege until the sickness and famine that were bound to assail them should have accomplished the work of the enemy more effectually than its military strength could.

As the time fixed for the evacuation had approached the excitement in the town had increased, but when the French re-seized the forts and gave other proofs of a sudden activity in a new and, to the Egyptians, wholly inexplicable direction, rumours of the wildest kind were circulated. Of these the one that gained most credence was that the French had discovered it to be the intention of the Turks and the English to surround and massacre them while on their way to the coast. Utterly false as this report was, the outbreak of hostilities between the French and the Turks gave it such apparent verification, that there are not a few of the Egyptians who still believe it.

The Turkish army, utterly discomfited by the French, after having made but a poor defence, took the road towards Syria, with the exception of a part which, finding itself between the French and the town, decided to seek the shelter of the latter. With these were a number of Mamaluk Beys and their followers, who at the first news of the arrival of the Turks had hastened to join them. The Turks who thus entered the town were under the command of Nasooh Pacha, a bigot and fanatic of high rank but little ability. His arrival was greeted by the assembling of a crowd of all the worst characters of the town, who flocked after him as he made his way through the streets, anxious to learn the truth as to what had happened. His first act was to give a general but definite order for the massacre of all the Christians.

We have seen how at the last meeting of the Mamaluk Dewan, and again at Rosetta, proposals to massacre the Christians had been rejected. Now, however, there was no question of a proposal, but a distinct and definite order was given by a Pacha, a Turk, an orthodox Moslem, a high officer of the Empire, and one who at the moment carried with him all the weight of being the immediate representative of the Sultan and Caliph of Islam. Those of the people to whom the order was given were of the lowest and most ignorant class, precisely the one to which such an order might be expected to be welcome, people having nothing to risk but their personal safety, and thinking little of this as weighed against the prospect of a rich harvest of loot. A wild rush was made, therefore, for the Christian quarters of the town, the mob slaying on its way the few Christians who happened to be overtaken by it and unable to escape. Hastily barricading their doors and windows the Christians made a bold stand, and the mob, which was much more anxious to plunder the houses than to slaughter their inhabitants, devoted their unwelcome attentions to the least protected of these, and troubling nothing as to whether the houses attacked were those of Christians or Moslems, were busily engaged in their work of destruction when the quarters in which they were, were swept by Turkish troops, who, without staying to expostulate or explain, quickly routed the rioters with much heavier slaughter than these had been guilty of, and charging them, more ruthlessly and more effectively than they had charged the Christians, promptly restored order. This vigorous suppression of the riot and intended massacre was the work of Osman Agha, an officer of the Turkish army who, though of less degree than Nasooh Pacha, had no sooner heard of the riot than he protested not merely by word of mouth, but by the more practical measure of despatching troops in hot haste with strict orders to spare none of the rioters that did not at once desist. Thus once more the Christians found Moslem protectors ready to defend them against Moslem foes. We shall see later on how the Christians showed their gratitude.