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Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> <h3>A COUNCIL OF STATE</h3> As soon as the news of the arrival of the French Fleet had been received by Murad Bey, he rode to the country house of Ibrahim Bey, now the Kasr el Aini Hospital, on the east bank of the Nile overlooking the Island of Rhodah. There a council of the leading men of the city was hastily summoned to consider the steps to be taken for the defence of the country, and it was characteristic of the conditions under which the people were then living, that all those present, with the single exception of Bekir Pacha, the Governor and representative of the Sultan's authority, belonged to one of two classes—the military rulers and the religious leaders of the people. The excitement that prevailed in either class was plainly evident at the meeting, though the feelings and fears induced in each by the news they had met to discuss were very different. The military element consisted entirely of the Mamaluk Beys, who formed, as we have seen, the real ruling power, their title of Bey—or, as it is written in the Turkish language from which it is taken, Beg—being fairly equivalent to that of Baron as used in our own country in the days of King John, though it has long since ceased to signify any more than the French Legion of Honour, save that, like our Knighthood, it carries a personal title. By the people generally, these Beys were spoken of as Emirs, a title properly nearly equal to that of Prince, and the one employed by the rulers of Afghanistan, so well known to us as the Ameers of that country. I have already spoken of the dominant position the Beys held, but I may add here, as further illustrating their character, that if they had not, as the French nobles had in the days of Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, the right of carrying on war among themselves, they did not hesitate to put their rivalries to the test of battle. Confident in the prowess of their own body, these men had treated with indifference the alarm occasioned by the arrival of Nelson, but when the warning he had given was confirmed by the presence of the French, and the extent of the fleet that was gathering at Alexandria was known, not only through the exaggerated terms in which Sayed Mahomed had described it, but also by the arrival of reports from Rosetta and Damietta to the same effect, they awoke to the necessity for action. Centuries had then passed since the Arabs or their Mamaluks had measured their strength against that of European armies, and altogether unacquainted with the advance their ancient foes had made in the art of war, it was perhaps natural enough that they should be a little over-confident in their own might, especially as such stories of the Crusades as still lingered among them were not of a kind to excite any very lively fears of an enemy that, according to these traditions, they had never met but to defeat. Moreover, ignorant as they were of the progress of the world outside their own country, they knew that the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean were a constant terror to all ships of Christian countries that had to pass the inhospitable coasts of the Barbary States, and that throughout the north of Africa European Christians were found as the slaves of Moslem masters. Added to this the fact that the insulting treatment they themselves accorded to European ships visiting their ports, and their tyrannous behaviour to European subjects resident in the country, long continued as these abuses had been, had brought no effective or warlike protest from the nations thus gravely injured and insulted, and we can easily conceive that they placed no high value upon the military or naval power of peoples who thus meekly, as it seemed to them, submitted to such outrages upon their subjects. Hence, while they regarded the present occasion as one calling for active measures of defence, they had no presentiment of the disastrous fate that was so soon to overtake them, and so, undismayed by the news of the arrival of the French, cried vauntingly, "Let them come that we may trample them under our horses' feet!" As to the second class of those present at the Council, the Ulema, or "learned men," that is to say, those who in virtue of their proficiency in the study of the laws of Islam were the acknowledged and duly graduated religious leaders of the people, these looked upon the danger with very different eyes. Unlike the Mamaluks they were men of the country, allied by blood to its people, and therefore, though like priests and ministers of all religions in all countries, forming a class severed from the great body of the people by special and mutually conflicting ideals, aims, and interests, they were not, and could not be, wholly indifferent to the welfare of the people, of whom, by kinship of every degree, birth, marriage, and parentage, they never ceased to form an integral part. These, therefore, had a lively fear of the inevitable distress any warlike operations in the country must bring upon the people, while the fact that the enemy approaching was a Christian one, gave to their anticipations a personal character they would not have borne had the invader been of the Moslem faith. Like those of the Mamaluks their conceptions of the character of the European peoples were mainly founded upon the traditions of the Crusades—traditions that included only too many incidents, such as that of the soldiers of the Cross, at the taking of Jerusalem, dashing out the brains of innocent infants; traditions that are still recalled in Moslem lands, and are in no small degree responsible for the anti-Christian and anti-European spirit that exists among Mahomedan peoples. Their feelings at the thought of the possibility of a French victory were, therefore, quite apart from those of the Mamaluks, if, indeed, these ever gave such an idea a moment's thought. If they did, they still had before them three possibilities—victory, which to them meant gain in many ways; defeat and flight, leaving them at least the hope of retrieving their fortune later on, or in some other land; or death in honourable and glorious warfare, warfare too, that being in defence of Islam, would give them the rank and, better still, the rewards of martyrs for the faith. On their part the Ulema could see only two possibilities: a victory that, however glorious, would have to be paid for at a heavy cost of suffering to the people, or a defeat involving all that they could imagine of dire disaster and woe. That we may fully comprehend the influences swaying the members of the two classes of which the Council was composed, we must recall their mutual relations. The Mamaluks, then, being Mahomedans in little more than name, yielding their loyalty to the Sultan and to Islam simply from a regard to their own interests, were commonly looked upon by the Ulema, as well as by the people generally, as scarcely better than heretics, while their ceaseless rapacity and heartless cruelty made them at once feared and hated. Conscious of these facts, but not daring to place themselves in open opposition to the Ulema, they sought in every way to gain these to their support, and more especially by their professions of loyalty to the faith, and by treating the Ulema with all dignity and respect. This, indeed, they were bound to do, since not only was it in the power of the Ulema to incite the people against them, but with the aid of the Ulema of Constantinople to secure the Sultan's action on their own behalf in case of need. In a word, therefore, while despising the Ulema with the man of action's contempt for the mere student or scholar, the Mamaluks found it essential to their own safety to cultivate their toleration, knowing well that this was all they could obtain from them. As to the Ulema, fully recognising the insincerity of the Mamaluks, they were fain to accept their homage as the only course for them to follow except one of open hostility, which, however little they, as a body, need fear its results, to each one individually involved risks not lightly to be run. Having no power of excommunication, such as that possessed by the priests of the Catholic Church or the Brahmins, the Ulema had no direct means of coercing those who displeased them, and were thus not infrequently obliged to accept or adopt a line of conduct that under other circumstances they would have refused to follow. It is, therefore, to their credit that throughout the history of their class, they have always been an independent and, on the whole, a fearless set of men, and that it is but rarely indeed they have been opposed to reason or right as they have understood it, though, unhappily, their conceptions of these have not always been such as enlightened minds could approve. Like the clergy of all Churches, with, perhaps, the exception of the Catholic, they have not seldom been compelled to choose between interest and principle. That they should never err in such a case, they must have been more than human. Diverse as were the interests of the Beys and those of the Ulema at this Council, the aims and hopes of the two classes were in the most perfect accord, both being dominated by the single desire to concert such measures as should seem best for the protection of the country. In this they were heartily joined by Bekir Pacha. As the representative of the Sultan's authority, his chief duty and personal interest lay in seeing that the annual remittances to the Sultan were made as early and as large as possible, and that the country was kept as free from wars and seditions as might be. So long as he could in some fair measure secure these aims, though always, like all servants of the Empire, at the mercy of intriguing aspirants, he might hope to retain, if not his post, at least the Sultan's favour. Although thus constrained to court the goodwill of both the Beys and of the Ulema, his personal sympathies were strongly with the latter, and were not weakened by his keen sense of the treacherous nature of the friendship for himself and of the loyalty to the Empire professed by the former. The relations thus existing between the three parties at the Council—the one-man party of Bekir Pacha, and those of the Mamaluks and Ulema—had then been in force for some years, and, coupled with the fact that Ibrahim Bey was a man who, though of approved courage, was withal a constant promoter of peace and concord, had contributed not a little to gain for the people the few years of comparative immunity from care and trouble they had been enjoying. Murad Bey was a man of different stamp. Of great energy, proud and ambitious, ever ready to sacrifice friends as well as foes for his own profit, he is said to have been at times daring to foolhardiness, and again timid to poltroonery, but always consistently selfish, grasping, and tyrannical. From the time that he and Ibrahim Bey had agreed to work together in the government of the country they had shared between them the greater part of the revenue; and Murad, while constantly adding to his private property large areas of land confiscated from the people under various pretexts, spent large sums of money in developing the military resources at his disposal, constructing cannon, storing ammunition, and building vessels for military service on the Nile. Passionate, impulsive, and keenly conscious of the fact that the Sultan looked upon him and his fellow-Mamaluks with no friendly eye, upon hearing of the arrival of the French he jumped to the conclusion that they had come, if not as the allies of the Sultan, yet with his connivance. For Bekir Pacha, both as an individual and as the Sultan's representative, he had a contempt that, though veiled under the courtesy of pretended amity, lost no opportunity of wounding his feelings or depreciating his authority. Swayed by these sentiments, he did not hesitate on joining the Council to charge the Pacha with being privy to the invasion, alleging it as inconceivable that the French should venture upon such an undertaking if they had not some reason to look for the support, or at least the countenance of the Turkish Government. The spirit and tact with which the Pacha repelled this accusation showed that had he been in a position of greater power he might have proved himself a man better able to deal with the danger they had to meet than was his accuser. It was soon evident, however, that the Pacha had the confidence of the assembly. Murad was obliged, therefore, to accept his denial, and the attention of those present being turned to the more practical aspects of the subject that had brought them together, after a brief consultation it was arranged that Murad should advance to meet and oppose the French, and, as they all hoped, drive them back into the sea, while Ibrahim Bey was to remain at Cairo and provide for the defence of the capital in the event of the enemy pushing their way so far. Had the Council limited itself to the discussion of these points I might have passed it with briefer notice; but perhaps the only really debatable issue brought before it was one the reception of which throws some light upon the important question of the feelings of those present towards the Christians then living in the country. Urged, mainly, in all probability, by the desire not to remain a mere silent member of the Council, one of those present suggested, as a measure of defence, a massacre of all the Christians in the town. There is, I believe, no record as to who made this wild proposal, but we may be certain that it was one of the youngest, and a man little read in either the history or teaching of his religion. To the tolerant spirit that now happily prevails in England and the West of Europe, such a suggestion, made, even as it was, in an hour of panic, seems savagely revolting. But in our criticisms of this and other incidents in history we too often overlook the lapse of time and compare the Egyptians and other peoples of the past to that which we are at present, and not to that which we ourselves were at the same time. Thus when we condemn the fanaticism of those who made and supported this proposal at the Kasr El Aini Council, we forget to remember what was even then passing in our own country. This Council was held on the 4th of July, in 1798, and on that day the Irish rebels who had been defeated at Vinegar Hill, on the 21st of June, the very day on which Nelson had reached the Egyptian coast, these rebels were still trembling fugitives sheltering in the mountains and bogs of their native land from the ruthless "no-quarter" pursuit of the vengeance-wrecking soldiers of the Crown. Nor let it be thought that in speaking of this I am taking a partial or party view of the events of those days, for my ancestors were with the pursuers, not with the pursued. And if it be objected that this was in Ireland, and that the atrocities perpetrated by both parties were due rather to political than to religious rancour, let us go back but eighteen years, for was it not in 1780 that for four days the Gordon rioters held London in their hands, and, crying "Death to the Catholics!" sacked and pillaged, burned and wrecked the churches, shops, and houses of Catholics and of those who favoured the cause of Catholic emancipation? Let it be remembered, too, that the fanatics of Cairo had at least this excuse, that they were in terror of an approaching foe to whom those they proposed to slay were friendly, while the only danger that the London mob had to face was at most a political one, and that one based upon mere possibilities, and not even on probabilities. Let us—but no! the Reign of Terror in France, the echoes of which were then still ringing throughout Europe, the one unsurpassable horror of all time, that was the maniac outbreak of a people frenzied by the long pent-up wrath of their endless wrongs and sufferings, a horror only possible when the inhumanity of a class had shattered the humanity of the mass. But we may recall the crimes of the Commune, which in our own days washed the streets of Paris with blood, and was an unreasoning, insensate outburst of political fanaticism, and also the recent massacres of Jews in Russia. These events have had but little in common, except that they were alike the products of fanaticism—whether political or religious—but they show that in condemning the fanaticism of the Cairo Council we must make allowance for time, place, and circumstances, and, remembering how much more grievously we ourselves and our European kinsmen have sinned, hesitate to accept such incidents as these as stamping the people as in this respect other than ourselves. Bearing these facts and dates in mind, let us now learn what was the fate of the bloodthirsty proposal thus brought before the Cairo Council, but first a word as to who and what the Christians were whose lives were thus endangered. The Christians then resident in Cairo, as in other parts of Egypt, were of two classes, distinguished from each other and from the Mahomedan inhabitants by the different political conditions under which they lived. These classes were the Copts and the Franks. The former were the descendants of those Egyptians who, after the Arab conquest, remained faithful to their religion, and the latter Christians of European origin. The Copts were, and still are, the purest descendants of the early Egyptians left in the country, as since the Arab invasion they have intermarried almost exclusively with their own race, whereas the Mahomedans have freely mixed themselves with the Soudanese and other wholly alien peoples. Under the Mamaluks the Copts almost entirely monopolised the service of the Government as clerks and accountants, and wherever mere clerical skill was an essential. Docile, or rather servile, in their submission to all in authority over them, they were in spirit and act hostile to the people generally, and readily availing themselves of their power as petty officials to further the tyrannous oppression of the rulers, at the same time enriched themselves at the expense of all unable to resist their rapacity. The Franks, who were mostly Levantines, were almost all engaged in trade. Like the Copts they were compelled to live within certain fixed limits of the town, the Frank quarter being the street still known as the Mousky, and now the "Cheapside" of Cairo. This locality was chosen for the accommodation of the European Christians by Salah ed Deen, who, in 1173, granted to the Republic of Pisa the first of the long list of "Capitulations," or Treaties, which the Turkish Government has accorded the European Powers, with a view to encourage their subjects to visit and settle in the country, and which grant to those who do so, special rights and privileges for the protection of their lives and property, and the freedom and encouragement of their trade. As the Copts then did and still do, the Franks then wore the costume of the country, and at the time of the French invasion, almost all of those who remained at Cairo had been born in Egypt. Earlier in the century there appears to have been a considerable number of foreign-born Europeans residing in the capital, but in 1770, owing to the gross oppression of all foreigners by the Mamaluks, who did not hesitate to despoil them by the imposition of taxes and charges of all kinds whenever the Government was in need of funds, the number of French subjects resident at Cairo had fallen so low that there were but fifteen houses there engaged in trade, and a few years later, the French Consul having withdrawn, the number continued to decrease until, in 1785, only three French firms were left, and the English, who had been endeavouring to utilise the desert route between Cairo and Suez to develop trade with India, finding it impossible to contend against the constant raiding of their caravans by the Bedouins and the oppressive exactions of the Government, had likewise abandoned the town. The Christians whose massacre had been demanded at the Kasr el Aini Council were therefore practically all natives of the country, but natives subject to the same vile treatment, gross injustice, and wanton outrage that the Christians of Europe then and even now were, and are, inflicting upon the unhappy descendants of Israel. Indeed, no one who has read the accounts of the recent persecutions of the Jews in Europe and will compare them with those of Christians in Moslem lands, can fail to admit that the balance to be drawn is in favour of the Moslem. And there has constantly been, especially in Egypt, this important distinction between Christian and Moslem persecutions, that persecution in Christian lands has almost invariably originated with the people, while in Moslem lands, when not occasioned by the fanatical bigotry of some despotic ruler, it has almost as constantly been the result of a weak and impotent Government fomenting fanaticism for the promotion of its own ends. In both cases it is indisputably true that the greater the fanaticism has been, the more clearly and surely can it be traced to the teaching of the spiritual leaders of the peoples concerned. Not that these leaders have necessarily or directly advocated persecution, but that their teaching, even when professedly and honestly denouncing it, has been such that it could have no other effect than that of rendering those who accepted it fanatical in spirit, for of what avail can it be that the ministers of a religion should preach toleration, if at the same time they vehemently denounce the followers of other religions as the "enemies of God," doomed to eternal damnation? Now let us take note that the suggestion of a massacre of the Christians was made at this Council at a moment when almost every possible condition that could favour its acceptance was present, and that in spite of this the proposal was rejected. There was not a man at that Council who did not know that the withdrawal of the protection of the Government from the Christians would have been hailed with delight by the populace, not from fanaticism, but for the sake of the plunder that would thus have been brought within their reach. It is, therefore, to the credit of Bekir Pacha and Ibrahim Bey that, waiving the mutual want of sympathy that separated them on ordinary matters, they in this instantly joined in protesting against the suggested massacre. Each of them knew that in thus acting he was risking his own personal interests. On his part Bekir Pacha was only too well aware that, although he was the accredited Governor of the country, the small semblance of authority he was permitted to exercise was accorded to him by the Beys only for their own purposes; that it was their delight to thwart his aims, tarnish his honour, and diminish his influence on every possible occasion and in every possible way, and that it was to the Ulema that he had to look for any local support in any contest with his powerful foes. This knowledge, and the fact that, as we have seen, Murad had openly taxed him with being accessory to the arrival of the French, although his denial had been accepted, might well have caused him to hesitate to speak in defence of the Christians. None the less he did so, promptly and boldly, and, referring more particularly to the Copts, he reminded those present that as subjects of the Sultan they paid the Capitation tax, and that while their doing so exempted them from military service, it gave them a right both by the laws of Islam and by the laws and customs of the Empire to the fullest protection. Happily for the Christians of Cairo the good counsels of these men, supported by the better informed and more enlightened of the Ulema, prevailed, and the Council, not satisfied with simply deciding the matter thus, issued proclamations prohibiting any interference with the Christians. This matter having been thus settled, the Council broke up never to meet again, and thus the last official act of the Beys and Ulemas of Cairo acting together in a Council of State was one for which Christianity and Humanity should never cease to have a grateful memory, the more so that the protection given to the Christians was not limited to mere words, since, finding that the people, whether instigated by fanatics or acting for themselves, were assuming a threatening attitude towards the Franks, Ibrahim Bey had these all brought from the European quarter and placed under the care of his own and other reliable men. For the ladies of the Frankish colony the Bey's wife opened one of his residences, a palatial building in the southern part of the city known as the Birket el Feel, or Elephant's Pond, then one of the best and pleasantest portions of the town. Thus the safety and decent comfort of the whole community was provided for. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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