Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

The modern Englishman will scarcely admit that his ancestors who, in the time of Shakespeare and long after, were accustomed to call a spade a spade, and never blushed to crack a plain-spoken jest, had in truth a moral standard higher than his own, and that the man who keeps these things for his intimate friends and his hours of abandon is less healthy in mind and morals than the man who thinks no shame to speak them openly. The difference between the two types is the difference that prevails between the European and the Oriental standard of decency. Hence to-day, as in the time of the French occupation, the verdict that either of the peoples would pass upon the decency and morality of the other, would be utter condemnation. But this fact remains – that throughout the whole of Islam openly practised vice and immorality exist only under the actively exercised protection of the Christian Powers. Not only so, but if the traveller wishes to gauge with infallible accuracy the extent of the influence exercised by the Christian Powers in any Mahomedan country, he can do so by simply ascertaining the extent of the open vice and immorality that is permitted. This is the true hall-mark of European civilisation in Moslem lands.

But among the Frenchmen with the expedition there were, as there always are when a number of Frenchmen are brought together, men of high ideals, men whom to know is to esteem. From their altogether too restricted and hampered intercourse with such, the men of kindred type among the Ulema and notables learned to appreciate, to some extent, the better side of European civilisation. They saw clearly, too, that there was nothing in the civilisation that such men represented that could be held as inimical to Islam or contrary to its teaching. To the present day the conviction they thus acquired is bearing good fruit. Prior to the French occupation, thanks to the utter isolation of the country, it was the common and universal belief that everything connected with the social and moral condition of Europeans was in its nature essentially anti-Islamic and accursed. Precisely the same idea still widely prevails in Persia and other parts of the Mahomedan East to-day, as well as throughout the whole of the North of Africa. But the truly honest man, honest in spirit as well as deed, recognises his fellow of whatever race, religion, or speech he may be. Gabarty and his peers in Cairo were no exception to the rule, and could discern with infallible accuracy the men who really desired to benefit the country and the people. For such they had unbounded goodwill and respect, and through their intercourse with these they acquired some knowledge of the latent possibilities of that civilisation of which the expedition, as a whole, was such a poor exponent.

It was in this way that the arrival of the French in Egypt was, as I have termed it, "The dawn of the new period," but I have used the word "dawn" as the only one the language gives me, though it does not rightly express the meaning I wish to convey, for this dawn of the new period was not the "bright, rosy dawn of day," but the faint, dimly discernible dawn to which the Arabs give the name of "el Fujr." The true dawn was to come later, and its herald was to be not a Frenchman, nor a man of learning or culture, but a Moslem, an illiterate and wholly self-made man.

I have had to say some hard things of the French, but before passing on to consider the events that followed their departure I must pause to say that I would not have the reader suppose that in speaking of the occupation, I have myself forgotten the necessity of remembering time and place I pointed out to others in an earlier chapter. In this, as in other things, the reader must remember that I am in this book endeavouring to present to him the story of the development of modern Egypt as it presents itself to one who knows the Egyptians of to-day, and who, from his religious and other sympathies with them, can understand how the events of which he speaks has affected them in the past and does so in the present. There is no charge more constantly or more unjustly brought against the Egyptian than that he is ungrateful for the benefits and blessings that European Governments and peoples have conferred upon him. The charge, I repeat, is absolutely unjust, and could never be made were it not for the failure of those who make it to recognise two of the most important factors in the evidence they ought to weigh before attempting any judgment upon the question. These factors are – first, that the Egyptians and their rulers were never one and the same people, and secondly, that to a large extent the very things for which their gratitude is asked are frequently those that most grate upon their feelings and susceptibilities. I have pointed out these facts before, but they are so constantly and so widely ignored that I desire to impress them upon the reader's attention in the hope that he, at least, will in future bear them in mind whenever he is called upon or tempted to criticise the Egyptians. It has, therefore, been from no wish to say unkindly things of the French that I have felt bound to speak strongly of the darker side of the French occupation. This should indeed be clear from the references I have made to the conditions prevailing in England at that time. I no more think that the French in Egypt were actuated by any evil or ignoble intentions than that the English Government of that day did not believe itself the most perfect conceivable, but the facts of history show that both were, in blundering ignorance, pursuing their way by means and methods that truth, justice, and equity must condemn. If, then, any French reader should feel aggrieved by what I have said of the occupation, let him console himself with my assurance that, if I had been writing of the English Government of that day and its conception of justice, I should have had to denounce it as one of the most brutal and brutalising ever known, and infinitely worse than any that Egypt has ever had. Let him who doubts the justice of this judgment turn to the records of the time, or, if he prefers to seek its confirmation in lighter literature, let him take up Dickens's "Barnaby Rudge."

The failure of the French occupation was due to the fact that it was a military occupation, having for its first and chief aim the acquisition of territory and the extension of empire, and that its leaders were mainly men of the ambitious, unreflecting temperament of the typical soldier, or freebooter, who looks to a victory of arms as the highest and noblest achievement worthy of his efforts. Had it been possible for the French savants to have landed in the country alone, and to have pursued their aims in the peaceful way they would have chosen, nothing but good could have come of their presence in the country. But the exigencies of a great military expedition and the selfish aims of its leaders destroyed almost all possibility of the occupation benefiting the country, and, placing endless barriers in the way of those who would and could have influenced the future of the country for the welfare and happiness of the people, baffled all their efforts to do so. It is, and for ever must be so. Civilisation and empire are two different aims; and just as no man can serve two masters, neither can he pursue two aims, least of all two aims that must be in so many points in constant and irreconcilable conflict; not indeed that there is any such incompatibility as to prevent the coexistence of civilisation and empire, but the man or Government that seeks to introduce either into a foreign country will for ever find that he must sacrifice now one and now the other if he is to attain either. Unhappily, in the French occupation in Egypt it was civilisation that had to give place to empire, and the result, as we have seen, was the utter failure of both. Many thousands of lives had been offered up on the altar of the "Great" Bonaparte's ambition. When he entered the country the feeling of the people towards Christian Europe was one of disdain, when the last of the expedition had departed it left behind it bitterness and illwill born of tyranny, broken promises, and outraged prejudices and susceptibilities – a bitterness that all the long years that have since passed have not wholly buried – a bitterness that still exists, and that always will exist, unless and until Christian Europe learns that it has no right to force its ideals upon a Moslem people, and that, however pure and beneficent its intentions may be, so long as it persistently and from day to day insists upon outraging their religious, moral, and social instincts and desires, it has no just ground for accusing them of being an ungrateful people.

CHAPTER XVI
MAHOMED ALI AND HIS SUCCESSORS

The three years of French rule in Egypt had been to the people an endless round of trials and vexations such as they had never before experienced. Compared with the worries and tribulations they had endured at the hands of the French the evils from which they had suffered under the Mamaluks appeared to them as mere trifles. For the future, therefore, their highest aspiration was to live once more the free, unfettered lives they had been wont to enjoy in the past. Had the departure of the French left the government in the hands of the Beys as of old all would have been well. The lordly tyranny of the Beys would, no doubt, have promptly exacted the utmost "contribution" that could be extracted from their impoverished pockets, but however harsh their measures might have proved they would have been seasoned and softened by concessions here and there, and the people would have borne them patiently enough as being for the good of the Moslem faith and therefore for the glory of God and, above all perhaps, as a thankoffering for their release from the rule of the once disdained but now detested feringhee.

But this was not to be. The French had gone but the Turks were within and the English were without their gates, and the unhappy people soon found that instead of the period of repose for which they longed they had entered upon a new era of misfortune. We have seen how the Turkish troops had behaved at their first arrival just before the siege of Cairo, but their conduct then was mild and humane compared to what it now became. Adopting the convenient theory that they were in a newly conquered country, the army acted accordingly, and no appeal to their chiefs or to the civil authority that had been set up in the name of the Sultan, was of the slightest effect in checking this fresh flood of outrage. For four years, therefore, the country was so torn by the intrigues of rival parties, the contests of opposing factions, and the incapacity of the nominal rulers that its condition can only be described as one of lawless anarchy. At length, picking his way step by step with wondrous skill and boundless energy and self-reliance, one man slowly but surely, with unfaltering persistency, advanced to the front, and while yet making no pretence or show of power suddenly planted himself as master over all. This man was the famous Mahomed Ali, the founder of the present Khedivial family and the man who first set in motion the train of events that have led directly to the present Anglo-European occupation of the country.

A Sherlock Holmes in his power of reading the thoughts of others, a Doctor Nikola in his art of subduing them to his own will, and a Captain Kettle in the calculating daring of the resources by which he won his way, the story of Mahomed Ali, could it be told in detail and truthfully, not as it appeared to the many who could not understand the man, but as it really was, would be one of the most engrossing pages of history that could be told. As it is, the mere bald recital of its incidents is a narrative that, even badly related, is full of interest. But to deal with his story at all adequately or justly needs not a chapter but a long volume. Here, therefore, I shall not attempt to even enumerate the principal events of his career, but content myself with merely mentioning the few points essential to the purpose of this book, the facts necessary to enable the reader to understand the influence he had upon the formation of the Egyptian of to-day.

Born at Cavala, the small seaport town facing the Island of Thasos at the head of the Ægean Sea, in 1769, Mahomed Ali had early settled down to the peaceful and uneventful life of a tobacco merchant when, in 1800, the Sultan having decided to send an army for the expulsion of the French from Egypt, he was appointed lieutenant of a contingent of three hundred militia recruited from his native district. Soon after the arrival of the troop in Egypt the officer in charge, abandoning his post, returned to Turkey, and Mahomed Ali, assuming command, gave himself the rank of Bim-Bashi, or Colonel. In the turbulent times that followed his arrival he courted the support now of one party now of another abandoning each in turn as his own interests seemed to dictate, and seizing every opportunity that offered or that he could create, by the exercise of a masterful combination of tact, cunning, and cautious boldness, succeeded, in the course of four years, in placing himself at the head of affairs and getting himself recognised as the Governor of the country.

This was in the early part of the year 1805. The people of Cairo had grown so weary of the tyranny and turpitude of the Turkish soldiers and of the ceaseless and unmeasured evils from which they were suffering, and, rightly attributing these to the incompetency of Khurshid Pacha, the Governor of Egypt appointed by the Sultan, came to the determination that they would have no more of him. Recognising, as the Sheikhs had said when Bonaparte first formed the Cairo Dewan, that to secure good government it is necessary to place power in the hands of men who can and will use it and who are capable of ruling, and that there were none to be found among the Egyptians themselves qualified to undertake the task with any hope of success, they looked around to see who among the many men then contending for power and in a position to take definite action, would be the best to replace the Governor they had decided to depose. Of all they could think of Mahomed Ali was the one that met the most general approval. He had not then taken any very prominent place in the turmoil of the time, but he had made himself known to the leading Sheikhs and notables as a Turkish officer of but little ambition, great modesty, wise in council, an advocate of smooth things, and one who sympathised with the people and their troubles, and withal a man who could act and who could command. To the Sheikhs, indeed, he must have seemed little if at all less than a God-sent candidate for the post they chose to consider as at their disposal. On the whole they were probably not far wrong, for difficult as it would be to picture Mahomed Ali as a messenger from heaven, so far his career, to the extent to which it was visible, had been almost entirely such as to justify the Sheikhs' belief in his good qualities. That he was shortly to assume a different character the Sheikhs could not possibly foresee. Could they have done so, most probably they would not have chosen him, but as it was they made unquestionably the wisest choice open to them.

Having made their choice the Sheikhs went, on the 14th of May, 1805, to the residence of the Arnout Commander, and being received by him with the courtesy he always extended to the representatives of learning and religion, as compensation perhaps for his own deficiencies in respect of both, they told him, with scant waste of words, that the townspeople had come to the decision that the Pacha must be "sent down," in plain English – deposed. "And whom," said their host, – "whom do you desire to put in his place?" They answered that he was the man whom they desired to rule over them. To this he raised objections. But though like Macbeth he had not thought it within the prospect of belief that he should be king, he had no mind to let "I dare not" wait upon "I would," and finally consented, whereupon the Sheikhs wrapped him in a robe of honour and brought him forth mounted upon a gallant steed that all the town might salute their new Governor.

But weak and incompetent as Khurshid Pacha was, he had no intention of abandoning his post until he should be deposed therefrom by the man by whom he had been appointed. So, shutting himself up in the citadel, he bid defiance to Mahomed Ali and all who dared question his most impotent authority, and would not even enter upon a discussion. Thereupon Mahomed Ali besieged the citadel, and, being unwilling to resort to extremes, contented himself with investing it so as to cut off supplies; and while his enemy, to whom, in passing it may be said, he owed much of the progress he had made in Egypt, was thus cooped up in the citadel, the wily Arnaout began to lay a train more effectual than one of powder for the attainment of his own aims. This was the despatch to Constantinople of messengers, with an account of the action he had taken, an abundance of justifying facts and arguments, and an humble petition that his Majesty the Sultan would be pleased to sanction the steps taken, to recall Khurshid Pacha and issue the firmans, or imperial mandates, necessary to place the acting government on a proper basis. Unable to oppose this usurpation of authority, and being further moved by the appeals sent by the Ulema of Cairo on behalf of their choice and action, the Sultan granted the request made, and sent a messenger duly empowered to recognise Mahomed Ali as the Governor of Egypt and to recall the unlucky Khurshid.

Thus it was by the spontaneous act of the Egyptians themselves that they were released, as it proved to be, once and for ever from the atrocious misgovernment to which they had so long been subject. Apart from this fact, which in itself possesses an importance none of the historians of the country appear to have realised, this incident is one that must not be overlooked in considering the attitude of the Egyptians, and indeed of all Moslems, towards the Sultan of Turkey both as Sultan and as Caliph. Of the general aspect of that subject I have already spoken, and we have here one of those limitations to the loyalty the Sultan can command which I then mentioned as existing – that that loyalty is only due so long as the Sultan acts consistently with the law of Islam as interpreted by the Ulema, whence the deposition of Khurshid having the approval of the Ulema it became an act almost of necessity assumed to be consistent with the dignity and authority of the Sultan, and one that must have his ultimate consent and sanction. The election of Mahomed Ali as Pacha, or Governor, of Egypt was not therefore, as historians have incorrectly represented it to be, an act of rebellion, but the exercise of a power legally invested in the Ulema; moreover, it was at once referred to the Sultan for his approval, and could therefore claim to be a simple forestalling of what the Ulema conceived would have been his own action had he been on the spot. But while the Ulema in this matter acted upon their own authority and within the limits of their privileges, it is plain that they did so at the instigation of the people, and their action must accordingly be taken as that of the people. As such it is a noticeable fact that in the emergency in which they were placed this people, so little accustomed and so unwilling to concern themselves in the organisation or administration of the government, intuitively selected the one and only man in the country capable of accomplishing their desire and of reducing the anarchy that prevailed to order. Their choice is the more remarkable in that, up to that moment, Mahomed Ali had had no adequate opportunity of showing that he possessed the masterful character the Ulema recognised as a necessary qualification of the man who would successfully rule the country. He had until then played the part of a modest spectator interfering in public affairs or in the rivalries of parties and factions only when forced to do so, and then always as a promoter of peace and harmony. There were, however, two facts strongly in his favour. These were the sympathy he showed towards the people, and the manner in which he restrained his own small body of troops from imitating the licentious conduct of the rest of the Turkish army. These were points the people could and did appreciate, and points in which he had no rival. And though not a few writers have hinted that his sympathy was but a hollow pretence, I see no reason for believing that this was so. Prior to his going to Egypt his life had been such as might well render him sympathetic towards peaceful citizens outraged and robbed by a turbulent soldiery. If, in after years, he proved a grinding taskmaster to this same people it is quite possible he never realised the fact, but thought that he was dealing well and fairly with them and as was best for their own interests. If this were so he has had many well-intentioned but equally fallible successors, and was withal but repeating the great blunder of the French – a blunder that, as I have elsewhere said, is a common fault of the philanthropists and reformers of the day, and which is, perhaps, a failing of the majority of men, that of wrongly estimating the needs and wishes of others and of seeking to force upon them a false and inadequate standard of life and happiness.

Of the early life of Mahomed Ali but little is known, and that little mainly on the authority of his own statements. According to the version most generally accepted he was, if not a Turk, at least of Turkish blood; yet the whole story of his life and character seem to me to mark him out clearly, not as a Turk but as a Moslem Macedonian: in some things alike, the two races yet stand apart in character and aptitudes, for the Turk is first and chiefly an Oriental, and the Macedonian essentially a European. Coming originally from a Greek stock – the Arnaout – the Albanian or Macedonian Moslem whom Sir Richard Burton so cordially detested is, like the Turk, by nature a gentleman, and the world has no race that it can put before these two for the manly qualities of bravery and self-respect; but while the Turk might find his ideal of social life in the stately circles of the Seize Quarterings of Europe, the Arnaout would more quickly be at home amidst the hurly-burly of American life. A lover of peace, though dauntless in battle, the Turk is content to pass his life in the dull pursuit of a settled routine; the Arnaout, though no brawler, is quick to resent offence, fearless in fight, and full of restless energy and ambition. No one, knowing the two races and reading the story of Mahomed Ali's life, can doubt to which race he was most akin, for on every page of it is written, in the most legible characters, "Arnaout," and most strongly of all in the quick decision, steady, unbending determination and strong will-power that carried him successfully through dangers and difficulties that must have overwhelmed any man not armed, as he was, with these mightiest of weapons in the warfare of life.

To our friends the historians this Mahomed Ali is a source of much perplexity. On the one hand, they find him achieving what by all the canons of probability should be deemed impossibilities, and setting up an empire rather by force of wily wits than of martial might, and by masterful force of will turning the whole current of Egyptian life and thought into new and unwelcomed channels. Were this all, what a hero they could make of this man! But alas! over and against these things the historians are compelled to place the means whereby they were accomplished, betrayed friendships, treachery, ruthless massacre, bloodshed and tyranny. No wonder his biographers seem always halting between the desire to laud his achievements and their perception of the need to censure his acts. Yet if we make allowances for all the circumstances of his position – the time in which he lived, the men he had to overcome, the fact that, once entered upon, the contest for supremacy was a contest without quarter, that he must either triumph or be crushed – we may comprehend that, utterly inexcusable and unpardonable as his offences appear to us, to him they may have seemed to be far otherwise. The worst of all his crimes – the massacre of the ill-fated Mamaluks – was unsurpassable in its baseness as an act of treachery, but viewed apart from that it was a mere bagatelle in crime compared with Bonaparte's massacre of the Jaffa prisoners. To Mahomed Ali the extermination of the Mamaluks was almost a matter of life and death to himself, and a winning move in the great game he and they were playing. These men have to die – it was thus, no doubt, he argued – in the field or elsewhere, for there can be no peace, no settled government in the country while they are at large; and since they must die, what matter how or when? Surely now, and all of them in one grand sacrifice to the cause of peace! Poor Mahomed Ali! he has long since learned a little better, and knows now that the end does not justify the means, and that such foul deeds as this, with all floggings, tortures, hangings, killings, massacres, and all kinds of inhumanities and abominations, are the price men have to pay when they attempt to govern a people with a lying policy, a hollow pretence of serving God and man, when in truth they are but seeking their own ends.

And yet there are authors and others who speak of the "Great" Mahomed Ali even as they do of the "Great" Bonaparte. "Great" they both were in the sense of occupying a great space in the history of their time and in that of having done much, principally evil, but "great" in the sense of noble, worthy of esteem or admiration! Like a miser greedy for gold but that he may hoard it, these men were avaricious of power solely from the lust for it; both attained it in high degree, and if to-day men are in any way better for their having done so they are so rather in spite than in virtue of their success. And withal they were men of mean ideals. Mahomed Ali was accustomed to boast that he was born in the same year as Bonaparte, apparently thinking this a matter for congratulation as if in some occult way he thereby partook of the glory of the Corsican. Unfortunately there were a million or two of other people born in the same year, "mostly fools," and these two were but the most eminent of that miserable majority, for what else were they but fools, strenuous fools wading through seas of blood, and trampling upon the hearts and souls of men, the one that he might end his days with the surges of St. Helena droning in his ears, the other that he might still more miserably sink into the living death of dotage? Fools indeed, sacrificing all that should attend old age and death for less than a wretched mess of pottage, bartering all the realities of life for the pursuit of a phantom they were never to grasp. Unlike Sam Weller, I cannot fix the date on which I first wore small clothes, but it was about that time that I first read the story of Bonaparte's boyhood, and I can still recall a tale told of his going about "with his stockings half down." It was thus, figuratively, if not literally, he went through life, his mental stockings and clothing generally shiftlessly loose and out of order. "Clothed" indeed, but by no means "in his right mind," "clothed" and yet a wanderer among the tombs of false ideals and unholy aspirations.

Rather pitiable greatness this!

Yet Mahomed Ali did some good. Out of the chaos that existed as the legacy of the French occupation he produced order. It was his lawless self-seeking that opened the path whereby the Egyptians have had their future placed in their own hands. That was probably the very last thing he thought of doing – a thing, indeed, that he would have laughed to scorn if anybody had been so rash as to propose it to him. The Egyptians did not know that then, perhaps even now they only partly recognise it, but they did very fully recognise the fact that he had rid them of the rats that had been preying upon them for so long. For that they were not ungrateful, but their gratitude was that of Lazarus for the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.

Mahomed Ali ruled in Egypt for forty-two years from that memorable day on which the people had called upon the foreigner to come and rule over them, even as the English, in 1688, had summoned William of Orange to do the same for them. But his election did not place him at once in full power. It was, in fact, nothing more than the opening of the portals admitting him to the upward path he was destined to tread, and the way beyond was still crowded with obstacles that might well have caused even a daring man to halt. Nor did the arrival of the Sultan's firman place him in a much stronger position, for it was not long before another firman arrived appointing him to the Governorship of Salonica, whither he was instructed to repair without delay. This he refused to do, and being again supported by the Ulema and the people, sent presents and such well-devised explanations to the Sultan that he received in return yet another firman confirming his appointment as Pacha. Thenceforward his progress was unchecked, culminating in 1841 by obtaining from the Sultan the firman granting him the hereditary government of Egypt which is still the foundation of the authority of his successors.

His power once fairly established, Mahomed Ali paid but little heed to the interests of the people, and, in spite of the tears and protests of all classes, proceeded to abolish private property in land. This done, he next, by means of government monopolies and exorbitant taxation, practically took possession of all the produce of the land. With the aid of European experts, he at the same time did much to benefit the country by the extension of irrigation, the introduction of new and profitable crops and better methods of cultivation. From the progress thus made the people gained little advantage. Under the Pacha's administration they grew steadily poorer and poorer, and, though they were freed from many of the evils and vexations that had burthened their lives in the days of the Mamaluks, they had still to suffer from some of the old wrongs, and had, in addition, to bear some new ones. One of the first of the steps taken by the Pacha for the consolidation of his power had been the creation of an Egyptian army. Recruited by conscription, this was an innovation that excited universal indignation, increased by the fact that the army was based upon a European model. Almost the only benefit the reign of Mahomed Ali conferred upon the people was therefore the establishment of order. Under his vigorous rule men's lives and what little property was left to them were safer than they had been under either the Mamaluks or the French, and if the people had but little to enjoy they were, save for the exceptions I have named, allowed to enjoy it in their own way, and that to the Egyptian was a privilege that compensated him for much evil.