Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day Part 8

I have dwelt upon this point at the greater length that I am convinced of the importance of the European critics of Egypt and the Egyptians learning to look at this question from the true point of view. At the present day it is the commonly a.s.serted belief of almost all the Europeans in the country that the Egyptians are a bigoted and fanatical race. I deny it entirely. I have travelled and lived among Moslems in more lands than one, among Kurds and Afghans, Indians and others, and I have never met a Moslem people not only so free from fanaticism but so lax, from the Moslem point of view, as the Egyptians. Nor must the reader forget two points that tend to show that the bitterness of the people towards the Christians was the result of political and not of religious animosity. These facts are that Moslems of whose orthodoxy there was no doubt were during the revolt and during the siege a.s.saulted, ill-treated, and in more than one case killed, by the mob on the accusation of befriending or simply of being in sympathy with the French. The Sheikh El Sadat was one of those who had to suffer in this way, and almost all of the Sheikhs who had gone as a deputation to treat for peace during the siege. So, on the other hand, the Jews, who have always refrained from interfering in politics, and who have ever been studiously careful to avoid taking sides with any party or sect in the country, although they are the subject of far stronger personal and religious dislike than are the Christians, were never the object of direct attack from the people, though they, like the Moslems, on many occasions suffered when the mob broke out against the Christians. In the time of the French occupation the Harat el Yahoud, or Jews' Quarter, was situated, as it still is, off the Mousky, then the princ.i.p.al residence of the Franks and Christians, yet in the list that Gabarty gives of the quarters of the town that had been raided by the mob this is not included. All through the troubled days of the French occupation the Jews had to bear their share of the ills that fell upon all; but the people bore them no special hatred, had no special grievance against them, did not look upon them as their personal enemies, and thus they escaped the direct attacks that were made upon the Christians.

The hatred, then, with which the Egyptians had learned to regard the French was not the hatred of fanaticism and had but little reference to the question of religion. Had the French understood the people and been willing and able to rule them with due regard for their prejudices and desires, there was no reason why they should not have gained the goodwill, and with certain limitations, the loyalty of the people. It was not only possible for the French to have done this, but it would have been easier for them to do so than to follow the mad course they chose to adopt. The fact of the French being Christians, for as such the Egyptians regarded them, would have had but small weight if they had conceded to Moslem sentiment its reasonable demands. To the Egyptian mind the Mamaluks were not much better Moslems than the French might easily have been. This the French could not see, and not being able to see it, or to understand the people, they could find no other way to rule them but that which the Mamaluks had adopted--force. And it was with them as with every government that has ever existed or ever can exist, the admission that it is compelled to use force to rule any people whatever is a confession that the task of rightly ruling that people is beyond their strength, that it is one for which they are unfitted and one in which they never can succeed.

It is a law of nature in the moral as in the physical world and one from which there is no escape--that no force can operate without creating resistance to its own action, and the greater the force the greater the resistance. A given force may for a time appear to crush all opposition, but if it could do so in reality it would be but to find itself exhausted and effete. Unable to understand either the people of Egypt or their history, the French could not see that while for centuries the rule of the country had been founded upon force, it had been maintained not by force but by the pliancy of its rulers. No one knew this better than the Mamaluk chiefs. These cared nothing for the people or their desires, and they never hesitated to drive them to the uttermost, but they knew equally well that there was a limit and, though they but yielded to conquer, they yielded when that limit was reached. Nor did they, like the French, waste their force in unprofitable directions or in exciting needless opposition, but devoted it wholly and solely to the attainment of their one great object--the procuring of the funds they needed.

In the East the shepherd goes before his flock; whither he leads they follow, and his dogs serve only to bring up the stragglers or hasten the steps of the laggards. It is much the same with the people.

Caliphs, Sultans, Beys, and French may seem to be driving them, but in reality they are not being driven but led, led by perhaps unseen and unknown shepherds that are yet more potent for good or evil than any ruler that ever sat on an Eastern throne. Europeans cannot see this, yet every Eastern who has given the subject a moment's thought knows that it is so. As often as not the real leader and ruler of the people is himself unconscious of his power or position. It was so in the days before the revolt of Cairo. An open avowed leader the people would most probably have distrusted, but the almost silent man who said but little, who a.s.sumed no authority but rightly gauged the feelings stirring around him and knew how, by simple words, to influence the current of those feelings, could sway the people as he willed. The demagogue who cries aloud in the market-places, bidding men accept him as their guide and friend, obtains but a poor following. He may stir up latent feeling to action, but he cannot direct either the feeling or the action. So far as he can rightly interpret the feeling he may pose as the spokesman and leader of a party, but true leader he never is. Mahdis are for ever arising to preach, like Peter the Hermit, the glory and duty of a "Holy War," but among the people of the East they gain but poor success. The negro races flock to the standards of these men and have died in thousands for their sake, but the Eastern asks for a miracle before he will be convinced, and, holding aloof from the would-be guide, follows all unknowingly some other.

If the reader has followed me so far he will now have pretty clearly grasped the truth that the rule of the French in Egypt had proved an utter failure, and to some extent he will have seen why this was so.

That failure was brought about by not one but many causes. Of these, besides those that I have already dealt with, there is one that I may speak of here.

I have shown in a previous chapter how, although the teachings of the Christian and Mahomedan religions are almost identical as to the duty of obedience to those in authority, the varying circ.u.mstances affecting the peoples of England and those of the East lead these to interpret and apply those teachings very differently. It is so with other matters. Christianity and Islam are at one in ranking Justice and Mercy as the greatest of the virtues. "The Lord thy G.o.d" is "a just G.o.d," but also "a merciful G.o.d" is the teaching of the Koran as well as of the Bible. It is the belief of the Moslem as well as of the Christian. But the European conception of justice is to the Moslem, and indeed to all Easterns, hopelessly imperfect, so imperfect that in their eyes it becomes injustice. One law for all, for high and low, rich and poor. That is the ideal of civilised Europe--an ideal that never has been and in all probability never will be accepted in the East. The man of high position who commits an offence should, says the West, be punished in the same way and in the same degree as an humbler man would be for the same offence. That, says the East, is just in theory but impossible in practice. And the East is right. In no conceivable case is it possible to accord to two men an exactly equal amount of punishment. Whether it be a sixpenny fine or the death penalty, every penalty inflicted affects the person upon whom it is inflicted precisely in proportion to facts and circ.u.mstances that it is not possible should be known to or weighed by his judge. That this is so is admitted by all, but in England and other countries men are content with an attempt at "justice" that almost wholly ignores this fact. Not so the Easterns. That one of the Ulema, a Pacha or any other person of position should be punished by a penalty such as might be inflicted upon any ordinary citizen is to the Eastern mind not justice but gross injustice.

But the difference in the Englishman's conception of justice and that of the Eastern lies even deeper than this. To the English mind the idea of justice is mainly a.s.sociated with the administration of punishment to the guilty and with abstention from injustice in dealing with others. The Eastern, until he has acquired that tinge of European thought and sentiment that unconsciously yet constantly causes him to mislead Europeans as to what is and what is not Eastern thought on such subjects, but rarely connects the idea of punishment with that of justice. To him punishment is not the administration of justice but the administration of a deterrent. That as such it may be just or unjust he quite recognises, but the justice or injustice of a punishment is to his mind an incident and not an essential of the punishment, and the justice so often lauded in the East is not the justice of the courts but the personal quality that prevents a man wronging another or leads him when he has acted unjustly to admit his error and seek to remedy it.

And while the two peoples are thus apart in their interpretation of justice, they are still more widely so in the positions they a.s.sign to justice and mercy. The European, and perhaps especially the Englishman, places justice first and only allows mercy to come in a long way off. Not so the Eastern. To him mercy is first and justice second. That this should be so is a direct result of the conditions under which the two peoples have lived for many centuries. As all history shows, the races of Europe have always had a genius for and a tendency towards organised government. Whether we peruse the records of liberty-loving England or of thraldom-trodden Spain, of republican France, or of despotic Russia, in every European country we find the people regarding an organised government, a government acting in a prescribed manner upon a prescribed system, as a natural complement of existence as a nation. It is not so in the East. There the whole bent of opinion tends towards autocratic if not to pure despotic rule. The difference is due to various causes, but possibly to none more than this--that in Europe the community of interests binding individuals together and causing them to recognise each other as members of a group are territorial, limited chiefly and sometimes wholly by geographical boundaries, whereas in the East this community of interest rests almost entirely upon the religious distinctions that divide peoples living in the same countries. In Europe, though there have been religious wars, war has in the main been the result of the rivalries of peoples distinguished from each other by language, habits, and character. In the East religion has in general been the line of distinction. It has followed from this that in Europe the peoples have been and still are obliged to group themselves as nations, while in the East they group themselves by their religions.

The European nation or community is therefore a secular body, and as such seeks a secular government, whereas the Eastern peoples are not nations so much as religious communities. To each an organised government is necessary for self-protection and internal adjustment.

This the European is obliged to find in the organisation of a special governing body, while the Easterns find it ready to hand in the organisation of their Churches. Now in the organisation of a nation with regard to its internal affairs, justice is almost of necessity placed before mercy, whereas in that of a religion, mercy is exalted above justice. Hence a people like the English learn to look upon justice, or whatever near approach to it can be attained, as the greatest good to be sought for from their rulers and in their efforts to attain this end, like the political economists of whom Ruskin complained, forget the human equation, and that justice, however finely balanced by tale and weight of legal prescription, can never be more nor less than a failure, if it be not dominated by mercy. In Europe peoples have again and again revolted against the tyrants that have oppressed them that they might thereby secure justice and its complement liberty, and they could do this because there was no higher or conflicting interest to hold them back; but it has not been so in the East. There all the organisation that the peoples have needed for the administration of their internal affairs has always been found in the organisation of their religion, and whether the tyranny and oppression from which they have suffered from times immemorial afflicted them through the hands and acts of their co-religionists or from those of other and rival religions, the interests of their religion, and therefore of their fellows, demanded submission to such ills rather than a resistance that could not fail to injure that which they deemed the higher and better cause. And in the sufferings they were thus called upon to bear they naturally turned to their religion for consolation, and found it in their belief in the ineffable mercy of the Deity, and thus learning to look upon mercy as the highest attribute of G.o.d inevitably rank it as the n.o.blest virtue in man. And to the Moslem the appreciation of mercy he thus acquires is enforced by the teaching of the Koran. The law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, is ordained to Moslems, but with the promise that to him who exacts less his forbearance shall be accounted as a charity and as such shall gain him a rich reward. To bridle one's anger, to forgive men and to intercede "with a good intercession"--these are virtues that are endlessly praised and commended in "The Book of G.o.d."

What a poor subst.i.tute for these is the "even-handed justice" that is the boast of our vaunted civilisation!

Is it necessary for me to say now that the price the French asked the people of Cairo to pay for the peace that had been accorded them, was to them a violation of all justice? Or need I point out at length that this incompatibility of ideals on the subjects of justice and mercy was one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the failure of the French to realise the antic.i.p.ations with which they had entered the country, as it is still one of the causes that hold the East and West apart, and forms a never-resting cause of misunderstanding between all Orientals and Europeans. Unfortunately in this, as in other matters, the Oriental is too p.r.o.ne to keep his ideals as a standard whereby to judge the merits and failings of others, rather than as a guide for his own actions. It is one of the greatest of the Englishman's merits that he does not do this. He strives as best he may to realise his ideals, and in this it would be well indeed for the Egyptian to imitate him. With both people, as indeed with all others if we would judge them justly, we must, however, take account first of their ideals and next of the sincerity and earnestness with which they seek to bring these into practice.

CHAPTER XV

AN UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE

Boulac had fallen on the 14th of April, 1800. Exactly two months later, on the 14th of June, General Kleber was a.s.sa.s.sinated. He was taking a morning walk in the garden of General Dugua's house, when a young man, a Syrian, approached him as if to offer a pet.i.tion, and before the unfortunate General could detect his purpose, struck him several blows in the breast with a dagger. The a.s.sa.s.sin was arrested soon after, and made a confession. Of his guilt there could be no doubt, but his confession being made under torture was of course perfectly worthless. In it he stated that he had been employed to commit the infamous deed by a high officer of the Turkish Army that Kleber had defeated at Materiah. That he was a Syrian, and that he had only been in Egypt for a few weeks, were facts that were easily established. The French believed, however, that he was encouraged if not instigated by Egyptians, and although there was absolutely nothing to suggest that this was the case, except perhaps their keen sense of the hatred with which they were regarded, they determined to discover all that could be discovered of the origin of the crime. The wretched prisoner was therefore handed over to the care of the Chief of the Police, a Greek of infamous character, a notorious evil-liver, detested and abhorred by all for his wanton cruelties, abominable vices, and utter depravity. Selected for the post he held as one whose unbridled and unconcealed hatred for the people of the country was a guarantee of his fidelity to the French, his selection is an all too eloquent testimony as to the real nature of the relations between the French and the Egyptians. No man viler, more depraved, or more despicable, could have been placed in a position such as that accorded to this villain--a position that practically placed him above and beyond all law and all restraint, and gave free scope to his inhumanity, his outrageous vices, and devilish pa.s.sions. Like Oates, he delighted to seduce and betray his fellow-men; like Jeffreys, he rejoiced when sending them to prison, torture, or death; like the caitiff James, he revelled in witnessing their anguish and agonies. To this wretch Kleber's a.s.sa.s.sin was handed over, and by him almost all that could be done by torture or otherwise to induce the criminal to denounce others as his accomplices or abettors was tried. At length, when all other means had failed to accomplish the end at which he aimed, the wretch persuaded his miserable victim, by a promise of free pardon to himself, to give the names of some Sheikhs of the Azhar to whom, as he admitted, he had made known the purport of his visit to Cairo.

One of these Sheikhs, it was found, had already left the country, but the others were at once arrested. These admitted that they had been spoken to on the subject by the prisoner, but a.s.serted, and as it would appear truly, that they had endeavoured to dissuade him from the commission of the crime, and, on finding that he persisted in his intention, had kept aloof from him; but while granting the full value of the plea the Sheikhs thus offered, it must be admitted that the French were justified, by all known law and custom, in sentencing them to death, as, had they denounced the Syrian's intention, there is no doubt but that his crime would have been effectually prevented.

The sentence pa.s.sed upon the a.s.sa.s.sin does not admit of equal justification. Kleber, whatever his faults or errors as an administrator, or however harsh and faithless his treatment of the Egyptians had been, was a brave and gallant gentleman, a man of whom his countrymen were and are justly proud, and one who had endeared himself to all under his command, while in the position in which they then were the whole body of the French looked up to him as the only one from whom they could seek or obtain the leaders.h.i.+p so essential to their almost desperate case. But with the fullest sympathy for the bitterness of spirit that must at the moment have oppressed the French, it is impossible to condone the sanction they accorded to the base treachery of their minion, the Chief of the Police, by whom the pardon he had promised the a.s.sa.s.sin, as the price to be paid him for giving up the names of the Sheikhs, was withdrawn immediately the names had been given, and without the slightest pretext being offered for this vile breach of faith. Nor can the sentence pa.s.sed be regarded as otherwise than a brutal one, though it was not indeed more so than others that have been pa.s.sed by nations and peoples claiming to represent the most advanced civilisation. It was that the prisoner's right hand should be cut off, that he should witness the execution of the Sheikhs, and that he should himself be impaled alive.

The execution of the condemned men was fixed to take place immediately after the funeral of the General, and it was wholly in vain that some of the Sheikhs and notables pleaded for a mitigation of the penalty.

On the appointed day the prisoners were marched out to a rising ground on the route the General's funeral was to follow, and posted there, at the spot selected for the execution, they were compelled to view the mournful procession that, with all the pomp of a State ceremony, accompanied the General's remains to the temporary burial-ground in which they were to be laid. There, on the completion of the funeral rites, the sentences on the condemned men were carried out, and the Sheikhs having been beheaded the wretched a.s.sa.s.sin was impaled alive and left to linger in the most horrible anguish for over four hours.

A punishment such as this was not then, nor ever can be, other than purely and simply an act of vengeance. In the East especially it is but a perversion of terms to pretend that such penalties can be justified as deterrents. History proves conclusively that they have no such effect, except perhaps for the moment, but that they have the effect of hardening and brutalising the hearts of those they are supposed to terrify is certain. In the present case there was not even the slightest ground of excuse. The criminal was a foreigner, and it had been clearly proved at his trial that his crime had met with no encouragement or sympathy from the people of the country. The whole conduct of the people from the first arrival of the French had been sufficient to show that there was absolutely no reason to suspect them of any desire to repeat, in any form, the crime that this foreigner had committed. Three times "peace" had been declared in Cairo by the French, and three times the people--though on two occasions most unwillingly accepting the peace--had kept it loyally and with the most perfect and submissive good faith. In the revolt and the siege they had shown with what pleasure they could set themselves to the task of slaying the French, but peace once declared all ranks and grades of Frenchmen went about in perfect safety. The French complained that the people were ungrateful; but does it not seem that the people might have retorted that the French were infinitely more so?

There remains but little to be said of the French occupation. After the death of Kleber the command of the army devolved upon General Menou. As he had for some time professed himself a convert to Islam, and had married a woman of the country, it might have been thought that the change would have tended to promote better feelings between the two peoples. It proved otherwise. None of the Egyptians believed in the sincerity of the General's conversion, and it had therefore no other effect than to discredit the professions of sympathy for Islamic ideas that other Frenchmen made, and perhaps to raise hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

As a measure tending to conciliate French feeling, the Ulema had asked for and obtained permission to close the Azhar mosque, which, from its great extent and the straggling, irregular arrangement of its courts and their surrounding buildings, was of all others the place most capable of affording shelter to strangers visiting the town with evil intent. But the French were quite unable to appreciate the true meaning of this action, and, actuated by a vindictive spirit most unworthy of a civilised people, sought further vengeance for the crime of a foreigner upon the unhappy Egyptians. A heavy "contribution" was therefore exacted, and European and native Christians vied with each other in heaping insult and contumely upon the Moslems. Some steps were indeed taken by Menou that seem to have been intended to favour the Moslems and gain their support. Thus the Dewan was reorganised, and, for the first time under the French, was composed exclusively of Mahomedans, one French official only being appointed to a.s.sist at its meetings. In the Government service also Copts were largely replaced by Mahomedans--a step that exceedingly embittered the Copts--and the French were subjected to the taxes from which they had theretofore been free--a measure that excited their indignation. With scarcely an exception, the French were heartily sick of the country. All the enthusiasm by which they had at first been stimulated had vanished.

They had arrived in Egypt, looking for a sojourn that should be a triumphal progress towards the attainment of great ideals and vast projects. It was to be the first step, as they had hoped, towards making France the Mistress of the World, but, save for the first victory over the Mamaluks, the story of their stay in the land was little else but one of disappointments, losses and vexations; for the suppression of the revolt, the routing of the Turkish Army, and the retaking of Cairo were not events upon which they could look with other than bitter feelings, since, although victories, all the circ.u.mstances surrounding them tarnished the little glory they might have possessed under happier conditions. But General Menou was not so weary or so hopeless as his countrymen; he still thought it possible to colonise the country and to establish French influence upon a safe basis.

It had been the blunder, or rather the weakness, of Bonaparte and Kleber, that they had not realised the truth Burke taught, that "The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first study of a statesman." Bonaparte had thought to win his way by wheedling, and, failing to do so, had turned to force. Kleber had had no other conception than that of "the iron hand," as we nowadays term it, and had not the tact to clothe it with the pretence of a glove.

Menou seems to have sought to play the part of the old man in the fable, and try to please everybody, with the inevitable result of pleasing none. On the one hand, as we have just seen, he favoured the Moslems in some few respects, on the other he offended their keenest prejudices by allowing wine to be sold and drunk openly in the streets, while, encouraged by the protection granted them by the French, the lowest cla.s.ses of the Christians and Mahomedans gave themselves up to an open practice of vice and immorality that had never before been permitted. This alone was a wanton outrage upon the sentiments of the whole of the respectable population, Christian as well as Mahomedan, that was sufficient to make the French hated and detested by all but the most debased--a cla.s.s which in Egypt, even to-day, after a century of the nouris.h.i.+ng protection of European civilisation, is infinitely smaller in proportion to the population than in any other country, except a few like Persia, that are almost entirely outside of or beyond that protection. Not that the French in Egypt by any means laid themselves open to a charge of profligacy.

There seems no reason to believe that they did anything of the kind, but that which to them was entirely un.o.bjectionable was to the Easterns, among whom they were dwelling, utterly abominable. Thus the drinking of wine in public, and the free intercourse of the two s.e.xes in public places, however innocent to the French, were to the Egyptians something more than simply distasteful; and that they should be so is a matter not only of custom and habit, but one of climatic and other conditions which Europeans ignore. To the Moslem peoples these things are subject to the further objection that they are opposed to the teaching of their religion.

At length the day came for the French to go. The English and the Turks had brought their combined forces to bear, and not only was an English fleet once more off Alexandria, but Colonel Baird, with a strong force of Sepoy soldiers from India, had arrived by the Red Sea. For the French to have attempted to hold out against the enemy that was now at their door would have been an act of madness, but it was at least possible for them to ask and to obtain honourable terms; and these having been granted, the evacuation of the country was agreed upon, and the French, rejoiced at the prospect of once more returning to their beloved native land, for the second time during their stay prepared to quit a country to which so many bitter memories were attached. In June, 1801, just a year after the death of Kleber, the French garrison of Cairo capitulated, but Menou held out for some time longer, and only resigned himself to the inevitable on the 30th of August, and on the 18th of September sailed for Europe.

Thus ingloriously ended the great dream of a French Empire in the East. At Cairo nothing could exceed the joy of the people as they at last saw the now utterly hated and detested foreigners leaving. In their case it was eminently true that "the evil that men do lives after them." They had sown the seeds of a bitterness of feeling towards all Europeans, and of a mistrust of European civilisation, that still bear fruit and still r.e.t.a.r.d the advancement of the country.

It was the French occupation that proved the greatest difficulty and stumbling-block in the way of the English occupation, and for such a long time rendered the task that the English administrators had undertaken seem almost a forlorn hope. Every promise and pledge offered by the English was weighed in the scale of those made by Bonaparte and his successors. Every profession of respect for the inst.i.tutions and religion of the country was interpreted by the recollection of the French cavalry stabled in the Azhar, and the tyrannies, vexations, and outrages upon their most cherished prejudices that the people had sustained under the French. It has been the custom to trace to the French occupation whatever advance the country has since made. In two ways only had it any lasting beneficial effect--it brought to the attention of the few men like Gabarty a keen sense of the great advantages of an orderly government, and a warm appreciation of the advance that science and learning had made in Europe, and it opened the way for the man who was to be the real founder and maker of the Egypt of to-day. These were the only two benefits that the French left behind them, and the greatest of these was quite unintentional and unforeseen. As to all else, the occupation left nothing but evil memories and evil influences behind it. It had lowered the moral standard of the lowest cla.s.ses, had taught these to look upon vice and immorality from a new and more debasing point of view, and had almost wholly destroyed the controlling influence the Ulema and better cla.s.ses had theretofore exercised upon them. European historians have never seen that this is so--that they should fail to see it is not surprising, since even the Europeans living in the country are incapable of perceiving it. The European's standard of morality is so different to that of the Eastern, and he is so fanatically attached to his own ideas that he cannot understand any one rejecting these, except from sheer perversity. For thousands of years the Egyptians have been accustomed to bathe freely in the Nile, to-day they are debarred at Cairo and elsewhere, lest the sight of a nude figure should shock some sensitively minded European who happens to look up from his, or her, perusal of the latest London society scandal. It is so much easier to see the mote than the beam!

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 grat.i.tude 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 ign.o.ble 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 a.s.surance 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 d.i.c.kens'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 n.o.blest 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 princ.i.p.al 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 aegean 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, a.s.suming command, gave himself the rank of Bim-Bas.h.i.+, 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 Khurs.h.i.+d 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 G.o.d-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 a.s.sume 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 Khurs.h.i.+d 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 pa.s.sing 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 pet.i.tion that his Majesty the Sultan would be pleased to sanction the steps taken, to recall Khurs.h.i.+d 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 Khurs.h.i.+d.

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 att.i.tude 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 Khurs.h.i.+d having the approval of the Ulema it became an act almost of necessity a.s.sumed 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng 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 apt.i.tudes, 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 pa.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+ps, treachery, ruthless ma.s.sacre, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.sacre of the ill-fated Mamaluks--was unsurpa.s.sable in its baseness as an act of treachery, but viewed apart from that it was a mere bagatelle in crime compared with Bonaparte's ma.s.sacre 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, ma.s.sacres, 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce in the history of their time and in that of having done much, princ.i.p.ally evil, but "great" in the sense of n.o.ble, worthy of esteem or admiration! Like a miser greedy for gold but that he may h.o.a.rd it, these men were avaricious of power solely from the l.u.s.t 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 s.h.i.+ftlessly loose and out of order. "Clothed"