Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

The riot having been thus promptly suppressed, the Turkish officers turned their attention to the defence of the town from the attack by the French, which they rightly judged would not long be delayed. A hurried survey of the available means of defence showed that these were of the poorest. Gunpowder and munitions of all kinds were deficient in quantity and defective in quality, but there was no thought of submission to the coming foe, and, directed by the troops, the people were set to work once more to barricade the entrances to the town. The memories of the sufferings that had accompanied and followed the great revolt against the French were still vivid in the minds of the people, but their enthusiasm was as great as it had been while yet the horrors of a siege were unknown to and undreamt of by them. Some of the Mamaluk chiefs, seeing how woefully the town was deficient in the things most urgently needed to enable it to make a stand, were anxious to withdraw, but neither the Turkish troops nor the people would consent to their doing so, and they had perforce to remain and take their part in the defence.

Fighting was commenced by an attack upon the house of Elfi Bey, in the Esbekieh quarter, which Bonaparte having chosen as his residence was still in the occupation of the French. One day's firing having exhausted the supply of cannon-ball, the defect was made good for the moment by charging the guns with metal weights collected from the shops in the bazaars, and such other missiles as could be found. Under the direction of Osman Agha, shot and powder factories were established, and all the craftsmen of the town whose skill could be applied to the manufacture of defensive arms or materials were put to work to provide what was needed, or the best substitute that could be improvised. Being unable to ascertain anything of the movements or intentions of the French, the chiefs decided that it was imperatively necessary to be ready for an assault upon the town at any moment. Orders were given, therefore, that all the townsmen as well as the troops were to take up positions behind or near the barricades, and were to remain on the spot day and night, sleeping as best they could at their posts.

For eight days the fighting was continued in this way, the firing being confined to the north-west end of the town, or that facing the position occupied by the French. On the eighth day the return of General Kleber, who had been in pursuit of the flying Turkish army, brought about a change. With the troops he had with him, and those already in garrison, he had a force quite equal to the siege of the town in regular form, and he lost no time in surrounding the two towns, Cairo and Boulac, as Gabarty expresses it, "as a bracelet encircles the arms." Thenceforth the siege was carried on with vigour. Amply provided with arms and ammunition, the French poured a ceaseless hail of shot and shell upon the towns, not only from the forts around, but also from the heights of the Mokattam hills, which command the greater part of the city of Cairo.

For ten days and nights the siege and bombardment went on unceasingly. For ten days and nights the people and the troops were without any rest worthy of the name, and the long strain was beginning to tell upon their energies. To add to the horrors of the bombardment under which the buildings of the town were steadily crumbling away and filling the streets with their ruins, not only was death busy, but hunger and thirst were beginning to assail the living. Food was not only scarce, but what there was was ruthlessly appropriated by the Turkish troops, and the water was not only short but bad. Still, all ranks kept manfully to their task, and while the lower classes laboured cheerfully at what work there was for them to do, in clearing the streets of the wreckage that threatened to block them entirely, and in attending upon the troops, carrying ammunition to and fro as needed, and so on, the highest of the Turks and Egyptians moved constantly among them, encouraging them and bidding them hope for the best. Of the Christians many had escaped from the town to seek shelter with the French, in whose ultimate triumph they had the fullest and withal most justifiable confidence. Of those that remained in the town, not a few lent what aid they could to its defence, partly to conciliate the mob and partly no doubt in recognition of the protection given them by the leaders of the people, as evidence of their loyalty to the Sultan, and as the line of conduct most likely to conduce to their own interests. Many who under the Mamaluks had grown wealthy and under the French had escaped having to bear anything like their fair share of the burthens laid upon the people, now bid for popularity by contributing funds towards the defence. But the steadily growing weakness of their position, the exhaustion of the people and the troops, and the prospect of an utter failure of food and other supplies compelled the leaders to think of making terms with the French while they were yet in a position to profit from whatever concessions they could obtain. And the French knowing pretty well how things were going in the city, and having no desire for useless bloodshed, made repeated offers to treat. But the people would hear nothing of a surrender, and nothing of treating for terms. They had had enough of the French, and would have no more of them, if by any means, by any sacrifice, they could get rid of them. The Turkish Vizier with his army was sure to come to their relief soon, and perhaps the English, for were not the English the enemies of the French? And Mourad Bey with a large force of Mamaluks and troops was not far off, and he too must come sooner or later to their aid. So they would rather starve and thirst and suffer until help came; and besides, was it not evident that the French must be nearly exhausted? if not, why did they offer terms?

At last the chiefs took action for themselves, and a deputation of Sheikhs was sent out to the French headquarters to treat for terms.

Kleber received the deputation courteously, but reproached them for having taken the part of the Turks, and given these their aid and support. The Sheikhs very justly replied that they had but followed the advice he had himself given them when announcing the approaching departure of the French. Eventually it was agreed that there should be a truce of three days to enable the Turkish troops and all who cared to go with them to leave the town. "As to the people," said Kleber, "they have nothing to fear; are they not our people?" Full of hope and joy at the result of their mission, the Sheikhs returned to report what they believed would be accepted as good news by the famine-stricken garrison. But far from accepting the terms offered, the people insulted the Sheikhs and denounced them as traitors. "If," said they, "the Christian dogs were not at the end of their resources they would not be so ready to make peace." So fighting was resumed, and carried on on both sides with vigour until the 25th of April.

Boulac was the first to fall. A heavy thunderstorm had broken over the devoted towns, and torrents of rain had quickly converted their unpaved streets into quagmires, that rendered walking almost impossible. With abundance of skill and material at their disposal, and in robust health and spirits, the French had every advantage over the famished, exhausted and undisciplined mob that had so long faced them at such desperate odds, yet it was but foot by foot only that they succeeded in forcing their way to victory through streets heaped with the bodies of the slain.

It was a heroic fight, that of this poor famine-pinched, undisciplined mob against the well-fed, well-clothed veterans of France. Strange that our friends the historians, who are always so impartial and free from bigotry and fanaticism, can see in this desperate defence nothing more than the contumacy of an ignorant and foolish people. Strange, for, after all, "how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of their gods?" For this in the very literal sense of the words was what these poor starving Egyptians were doing, it being not the least of their complaints against the French that these had desecrated the graveyards of the city, and defiled the temple in which they worshipped God.

A wild carnival of pillage and brutality followed the fall of the town, and then the troops that had been investing Boulac turned with revived appetite to assist in the siege of Cairo. There, as at Boulac, the scarcity of food and water, and the want of proper rest and shelter, had reduced the people to a condition that would have justified their abandoning the hopeless struggle without further effort; yet it was not the people, but their chiefs – the Mamaluk Beys and the Turkish officers – men whose experience told them how unavailing the attempt to hold out must prove, that spoke or thought of treating with the foe. They had, as we have seen, already made an effort in that direction, now, finding the French gradually gaining ground, pushing their way slowly but surely into the town and, to add fresh terrors to those by which the unhappy defenders were almost overwhelmed, firing the houses as fast as they could reach them, the chiefs once more asked for terms, and were accorded three days in which to quit the town. Even then the people would have refused to yield, and it was with difficulty that their leaders at last forced from them a sullen and unwilling submission. Kleber, in addition to granting the Turks and Mamaluks three days within which to evacuate the town, undertook to supply funds and transport to enable them to go, but demanded the exchange of hostages. All who wished were to be free to depart with the retiring troops. These were liberal terms, but still the people were unwilling to submit, and when the French hostages arrived they had to be protected by a large body of the Turkish troops, and even Osman Agha himself, who throughout the siege had been foremost in the defence, and ever where danger was thickest, even he had to seek protection from the wrath of the mob that still furiously cried out against the admission of the French.

At length, peace and order having been restored, the Turks and Mamaluks made haste to leave the town, and a general amnesty having been proclaimed, Cairo was once more treated to a grand triumphal entry of the French, and was once more directed to decorate and illuminate itself in token of rejoicing.

For the third time the people settled down to bear the rule of the French with what patience they could, and, in the manner that still characterises their daily lives, the quarrel of the moment having been abandoned, they let it sleep and went about their affairs as much as possible as if nothing had ever occurred to interrupt them. Not that they were in the least reconciled to the French, or that they had ceased to long for redemption from the slavery in which they were held. Far from that, but loyal to the terms they had accepted, they desisted from all open or, indeed, covert opposition. It would have been unreasonable to ask or expect more than this. So the truce having once been made the French, though they did not think so, were absolutely safe from any molestation or annoyance from the people who, as a body, with all their faults, fear God, and, obeying the law of Islam, observe their covenants even when made with an enemy.

One might have thought that this people, who had so strenuously resisted the making of peace, who had turned against the most trusted of their own leaders for accepting terms, who, in the hope of rendering peace impossible, had frantically attempted to attack the hostages – one might have thought that this people would have repudiated the terms, and have sought every opportunity to injure and annoy the French. Nor could they with any reason have been held altogether blamable in refusing to abide by terms made in direct opposition to their wishes. Yet this is, as I have said, just what they did not do, and peace once established, the French went about among them as safe and as free from molestation as though the people had no grievance against them.

Let us turn now and see how the French interpreted the amnesty they had accorded the people.

CHAPTER XIV
THE PRICE OF PEACE

"They have nothing to fear; are they not our people?"

Was it possible for the people of Cairo to have any better assurance than these words of General Kleber, that the "Aman," or amnesty, that was so loudly proclaimed and, by the French, so enthusiastically celebrated, was to be the full and free "Aman" which alone is understood by Oriental peoples? One would have thought not, but the Cairenes were to learn differently. They were to be taught that "amnesty" is a word which, like so many others, may be interpreted in varying senses, and that it has no other meaning than that which the user chooses to accord to it.

Among the rejoicings for the great victory of a strong, well-supplied, and well-nourished army of well-trained and disciplined veterans over a famished, half-naked, wholly undisciplined, and almost wholly exhausted mob of civilians, there had been, among other things, a great banquet, to which all the notables of the town were invited, and at which they were received by Kleber in a gracious manner – so gracious, indeed, that they went away full of pleasant dreams for the future. General Kleber had taken the opportunity to invite a number of the Ulema to meet him on the following Friday morning, and believing that it was his intention, as indeed he had declared it to be, to discuss with them the revival of the Dewan and other matters, they did not fail to appear punctually at the appointed time, some of them looking forward to receiving some recognition of their services in the promotion of peace. Arrived at the General's, they were not long in learning that the gala costume with which they had honoured the occasion was most unhappily inappropriate.

As a first intimation of the vanity of their hopes they were kept waiting in an ante-chamber until their patience was almost exhausted. At length Kleber entered, and without any words of welcome or apology straightway proceeded once more to censure them for having allied themselves with the Turks. When the Sheikhs once more protested that they had done so under his own instructions, given at the time that he had announced the approaching departure of the French, he blamed them for not having suppressed the "insurrection." They replied that this was wholly out of their power, and that those who, as he was aware, had made an effort to stop the fighting had been rudely treated, and even roughly handled, by the people. But it was the old story of the wolf and the lamb. Kleber was determined to bring the Sheikhs in guilty in any case, and upbraided them with being double-faced. This was not what the poor Sheikhs, who had honestly done their best in the cause of peace, had expected as the reward of their efforts, or as the natural sequence of the courtesies extended to them at the banquet. All this, however, was but the preface to the announcement of what was, in fact, the real object of their being summoned to meet the General. This was nothing less than the seizing the Sheikhs as hostages for the payment by the city of an enormous indemnity and the infliction of exorbitant fines upon each of five of the leading Sheikhs. While yet the Sheikhs, dumbfoundered by this novel interpretation of the word "amnesty," were trying to assure themselves that they were not the victims of an ill-timed jest, the General left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and the Sheikhs found that they were prisoners.

When at length, late in the evening, the sorely-troubled Sheikhs had recovered somewhat from the consternation into which they had been thrown by the General's treatment of them, and the extravagance of the demand he had made, they proceeded to draw up classified lists of the inhabitants of the town and fix the sums that each class was to contribute towards the payment of the indemnity. As a basis upon which to allot the debt householders were assessed at a year's rent, and every trade, business, and industry in the town, down to the street musicians, jesters, and jugglers, was called upon to pay its share. This done the Sheikhs were, with the exception of a few who were to be imprisoned until they had paid the special fines inflicted upon them, released, but under military guard. Among those imprisoned was the Sheikh el Sadat, the Chief of the Shereefs, or descendants of the Prophet, upon whom a fine of 500,000 dollars had been imposed.

Then began the darkest days in the history of the country. Thenceforth tyranny and torture of every kind was adopted to force the payment of the indemnity, and all that the superior civilisation of France had to offer the wretched people to whom they had accorded an "amnesty," and whom they termed "our people," was the introduction of refinements in the tortures inflicted upon them, such as the bringing of the wife of the Sheikh el Sadat to witness the tortures inflicted upon her husband.

Historians glide lightly over this part of their story, and being perforce compelled to mention some of these incidents, are not ashamed to stoop to the contemptible excuse that such things were "the custom of the East," that the French were only availing themselves of the means that would have been employed against themselves in like case. Indeed, this was the excuse the French offered at the time. "Living in the East," said Vigo Roussillon, one of those present at the massacre of the Turkish prisoners at Jaffa, "we adopted the morals of the East."

There is an old chemical experiment in which the mixing of two coloured fluids produces a clear, transparent one, but no such experiment is possible in morality. Evil-doing is evil-doing, and neither the casuistry of the Jesuits nor the art of man can make it good or right doing. I myself believe that all evil eventually produces good – "That every cloud that spreads above and veileth love, itself is love;" but that affords no excuse for evil-doing. Nor could the French have found a falser or more barren excuse than this one. It is true that in the East, as in the West, tyranny and torture had been for ages the tools of tyrants, but those tyrants had in using those tools done so ignorantly and stupidly because they knew no better. They acted upon the natural impulse of men who knew no law but that of force, no right but that of the sword, no morality but their own pleasure, and as the circumstances and conditions of the times seemed to them to dictate. They had no sense of doing evil. To them there was no other way of influencing men against their wills save by physical or mental pain, and they acted accordingly. It was quite otherwise with the French. They, with a perfect knowledge of what they were doing, did this evil, knowing it to be evil, and they did it deliberately, not in a moment of anger but with cool, thoughtful determination, and all the sophistry in the world cannot free them from the degradation and dishonour of having done so. But we must remember that Europe in that day, greatly as it had advanced in civilisation, was still far behind the point it has since reached, and that if the French are to be censured for what they did in Egypt it is not because we in England were incapable of evil; nay, what, after all, was the torture inflicted upon the Sheikh el Sadat to that inflicted by the law of England on a mere boy sentenced to be flogged once a fortnight for two years? or to the flogging of a seaman "round the fleet" that was so often carried out long after? For sheer brutality and gross wanton inhumanity the world has scarcely any record that can approach that of the "Holy Office," but the records of England's prisons are not far behind, and leave us no room for anything but shame and humility on the score of our humanity in the past. It is not therefore to picture the French as monsters of iniquity that I have spoken of this matter, but as the natural reply of the Egyptian when he is accused, as he so often is, of ingratitude and want of appreciation of the blessings that we good, kind-hearted Europeans have so generously bestowed upon him. To the European critic of Egypt and its affairs the benefits conferred upon the country and its people by the introduction of European civilisation are so great and so many as to overshadow and hide all else. Unfortunately it is not so to the Egyptian. He knows only too well that there has been a reverse side to the picture that the European draws. The evils of which I have been speaking have long since passed away, but they have left a trail of bitter feeling that still survives. Some of the most prominent of the Egyptian citizens of Cairo to-day are the direct descendants of the men who suffered so severely under the French. Would it be human in them to forget that to the present day they are sufferers from the ills their immediate ancestors had to bear? And yet these men, true to the traditions of their families, are to-day as they were in the time of the French, the men most ready to give a cordial welcome to all real progress – men who, though they cannot forget the past, are content to bury its bitterness and who fully recognise that the Europe of to-day is not altogether the same thing as the Europe of a century ago.

Yet one word more is necessary on this subject. Whatever truth there was in the French excuse that they were but "doing in the East what the Easterns did," this was not true of the Egyptians. All historians agree in one thing – that from the earliest days down to the French occupation (which, as we have seen, was the introduction of an era of "liberty, equality, and fraternity") the Egyptian people had always been the downtrodden slaves of the long string of foreign rulers who had exploited them in the most merciless manner. Yet in these same histories we find the people spoken of as if they had been the rulers, and all the vices and sins of the Mamaluks, their followers and their servants the Copts, are put down with a most generous impartiality to the unhappy people who had to bear the bitter burthen these sins and vices cast upon them. Tyranny, torture, bribery, corruption were rife in the country, therefore the Egyptians were tyrannical, corrupt, and so on. And the same writers, with a calm indifference to the claims of logic and common sense not altogether peculiar to them, tell us that the people were slothful, lacking in energy, content to live from hand to mouth, servile and, to cap the pyramid of their faults and follies, fatalists! How is it that these brilliant historians are unable to see that the centre and controlling feature of all the history of the country has been the utter irreconcilability of the characters of the ruled and their rulers? This was so in the days of the Ptolemies and of the Caliphs as in the days of the Mamaluks and of the French.

Crushing as was the indemnity imposed by the French upon the miserable citizens of Cairo, it was not in the eyes of the Egyptians the worst of the evils from which they had to suffer. We have seen that in their day of trouble the Christians, if they had found assailants among the Moslems, had also found very vigorous protectors. Now that the Christians had an opportunity of showing their gratitude they hastened to do so. The French, with a paltry spite that admits no excuse, forbade the Moslems to ride, commanded them, under pain of the bastinado, to stand up whenever a Frenchman passed, and in other ways sought to humiliate them as much as possible, not the least being the permission they tacitly, if not directly, accorded the native Christians to insult, abuse, and ill-treat the Moslems. And all this was done to "Our people" in virtue of the "Amnesty" that had been granted, not in the fiery heat of open hostility or wrath, or to crush opposition, but with deliberate vindictiveness when all excuse for such brutality had ceased. And the native Christians, following the good example set them and in gratitude for the protection they had received from Moslem defenders, availed themselves to the utmost of the privilege accorded them.

It has been said that this was but a recoil upon the Moslems of ill-treatment they had in times past inflicted upon the Christians. No falser excuse could be offered. It is true that, as I have before admitted, the lower classes of the Moslems had constantly insulted and ill-used the Christians, and under some of the Sultans these had been subjected to degrading and vexatious tyrannies; but, as we have seen, the better class of the people and the Moslem rulers in general always afforded them the full and ample protection to which they were entitled in accordance with Moslem law and religion, even when the granting of that protection necessitated the shedding of Moslem blood. Never once in the history of the country had the Christians been without some of the Moslems for their protectors, and never once had the Moslems, in cool blood or with deliberate malice, persecuted them as native and European Christians now persecuted the Moslems. In moments of wrath and of political excitement Christians had been massacred and their houses pillaged, the lower classes were habitually offensive to them, they had been subjected to humiliating conditions and restrictions by some of the rulers of the land as they had been petted and pampered by others, but with all this they had always been not worse but better off than the bulk of the Moslems. Nor must it be forgotten that it was not as Christians, but as the servants of the Government, that the Christians were hated by the people. Bigots and fanatics have existed, such as Nasooh Pacha, but they were and are regarded by all true Moslems as little better than heretics and infidels. Nowhere throughout Islam are Christians hated as Christians, or for the sake of their religion, but for their actions towards and treatment of Moslems.

No better evidence of the true relations between the two peoples or of their conduct to each other can be asked for than that afforded by Gabarty's history, with its perfect freedom from bigotry and fanaticism. So far from exonerating or condoning the faults of the Moslems, he speaks of and condemns these more frequently and more freely than those of the Christians, and the fact that he does so is the more noticeable, and by far the more significant, that he was writing, not for Christian or European readers, but solely for his countrymen and coreligionists. Nor can we forget in weighing its value that, plain-spoken as it is on the faults and failings of the Moslems, it is the most popular history written in their language. If the Moslems of Egypt were the bitter fanatics they are so commonly accused of being this could not be so. But that the Moslems never did oppress the Christians is proved by the simple historical fact, attested by all the Christian historians of the country, that, from the first introduction of Islam into the country down to the present day, the Moslem Egyptians have never had the power or means of oppressing or tyrannising over the Christians or any one else. Not only so, but they have never had the means or the power to protect themselves from the tyranny and oppression of the Christians. Under the Caliphs and their successors the Mamaluks whatever there was of tyranny and oppression fell with fullest weight upon the Moslems. Their grievances were real enough, and not, as were those of the Christians, little more than sentimental; the kurbag, the corvée, extortion and injustice of every kind, were the evils from which the Moslems had to suffer, while for the most part the Christians escaped these and had as their chief grievances the facts that they were treated socially as an inferior race, were not allowed to ride horses, or to hold land, and had to wear a distinctive dress. And as a set-off to these grievances they had no small share in the golden harvest extorted by cruelty and torture from the Moslems. What wonder if the Moslems felt bitterly against them, or that their bitterness was increased by their impotency to protect themselves. And yet, save for such wild outbursts as that incited by Nasooh Pacha, they were content to leave the Christians alone.

And when we recall the relative position of the Christians and the Moslem people in the country we cannot be surprised that the bitterness I have spoken of should develop into hatred. So far as the people were concerned, it was the Christians, and the Christians alone, who were mainly responsible for their sufferings. It was the Christians who were the real oppressors of the people. They constituted the one class in the country which, if it had willed to do so, could have softened the endless sufferings of the people – the one class that, without a complete change in the government, could have benefited them. But far from benefiting they were the one and only class that in season and out of season never ceased to pursue the miserable people day or night, grinding them in the dust from pure malicious hatred. It was they who carried on the atrocious tyranny that wrecked the commerce of the country and well-nigh desolated the land, for it was they who fixed and they who collected the assessments that crushed and starved the peasantry. They might, with little loss to themselves, have vastly bettered the condition of the people, but far from doing so they pushed their power for evil to the utmost. That is why the Moslems hated them. Ruthless, savage as were the Mamaluks, they were always under some restraint. As a mere matter of policy they could not wholly resist the intercessions of the Ulema, and so it was to their Coptic and other Christian clerks that the Beys turned for advice and counsel as to how much and how the people could be forced to pay. The Beys thought nothing of annihilating a village that would not or could not pay the sum demanded of it, but it was the Christian clerks of the Beys who fixed the amount to be paid and who persuaded the Beys that it was unwillingness and not inability that kept the people from paying. These are facts that cannot be denied or disputed. They are practically admitted by all historians, none of these failing to point out that the administrative branch of the government has always been in the hands of the Christians, though none of them seem to have ever cared to recognise the logical and inevitable consequence of this fact. It was not in the power of the Christians to have wholly averted the evils from which the people had to suffer, but they might have done much that would have vastly mitigated not only the outrageous extortion practised but also the cruelty and brutality with which it was enforced. It was, then, not as Christians but as their heartless oppressors that the Moslems hated the Christians, and the sole excuse that these could offer for their wanton inhumanity was the contempt and social ill-treatment they received, not from the people but from the men they served.