Back Aa

Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> <h3>THE PROCLAMATION THAT FAILED</h3> As soon as Bonaparte's flagship, l'Orient, had arrived sufficiently near to the shore a boat was sent into the harbour to bring off the French Consul, Monsieur Magallon. With their usual want of tact in a sudden emergency the people at once protested against his leaving, and would have prevented his going had it not been that the commander of a Turkish warship then in the harbour, having probably a keen sense of the possible results to himself and his ship a refusal might produce, persuaded the Governor to allow him to go. From Monsieur Magallon, therefore, Bonaparte learned the little serious opposition the town could offer, since not only was the garrison limited to a body of about five hundred janissaries, a species of militia possessing scarcely any military training or experience, but it was so wholly unprovided with ammunition and other necessaries that at the most it could make but a momentary resistance. Bonaparte, influenced no doubt by the fear that Nelson returning might surprise him in the act of disembarking, decided upon landing immediately. It was in vain that Admiral Brueys pleaded for a brief delay, urging that the weather was most unpropitious, and that the roughness of the sea, their distance from the shore, their ignorance of the coast, the rocky and dangerous nature of the landing-place, and the approach of night, all combined to render the operation a most hazardous one. Bonaparte would hear of no delay, and so, the fleet having been warily drawn close to the shore, the task of landing the forty thousand men of the expedition was commenced. The spot chosen for this purpose was one about three miles to the west of the town, and the first boatloads reached the shore at ten o'clock at night. The beaching of the boats was a work of the utmost danger and difficulty, the darkness upon the rocky beach rendering the scene one of the greatest confusion. Fortunately for the French, no attempt was made to oppose their landing, for had the full resources of the town been brought to bear upon them at this critical point, slight as those resources were, the invaders must have suffered heavily. As it was, Bonaparte himself landed a little after midnight, and having slept for an hour or so upon the sands, set out on foot for the town with a party of four hundred men. He was, we are told, in the best of spirits, and marched gaily along with no ear for the surges beating on the beach, and never recking that, even then, other surges were drearily droning on the shores of St. Helena the melancholy music that was to be the doleful dirge of his dying days. Just as the day was breaking a number of Bedouin Arabs attacked the little force, but after exchanging a few shots retired beyond range, and Bonaparte, followed near at hand by additional troops, continued his advance without further incident until close under the walls of the town. Although quite conscious of the hopelessness of their position, the Governor and the townspeople determined to resist, and the arrival of the French was therefore saluted with a brisk but ineffectual cannonading from the walls. Promptly dividing his force into three divisions, Bonaparte commanded a general assault to be made, and soon, in spite of the fusillading of the enemy and the showers of stones and burning materials thrown upon them, two of the divisions succeeded in scaling the walls, while the third forced its way through one of the gates. A sharp but brief contest followed in the streets of the town, but the Governor and the militia having retired to one of the forts, the people, accepting the assurances that Bonaparte had conveyed to them, that he came to re-establish the authority of the Sultan and to overthrow their oppressors, the Mamaluks, by whom it had been usurped, and that their own lives, property, and religion would be respected, threw down their arms. The town thus occupied by the French, the Governor, short of ammunition, and without hope of succour or aid of any description, yielded to the inevitable and surrendered with his troops. Anxious to conciliate the people as much as possible, Bonaparte at once offered to reinstate the Governor upon the condition of his consenting to remain faithful to the French, and the offer having been accepted he was replaced in charge of the town, but subject to the supervision of General Kleber, who having been wounded in the attack was to remain for the time in command of the French garrison. Having thus easily established himself upon Egyptian soil, Bonaparte lost no time in preparing for an advance upon Cairo, and the landing of the remainder of the troops, together with the horses for the cavalry, and the whole of the baggage and equipment of the expedition, was pressed forward as rapidly as possible. Both as a measure tending to facilitate this movement and as an important part of the policy he had resolved to follow in his dealings with the people, Bonaparte set himself to gain their friendship. Strict orders were, therefore, issued that the people were not to be molested in any way, and some soldiers having been detected in looting after the surrender of the town, he seized the opportunity to give a proof that his assurances were not intended to be an idle parade of words, and had the offenders summarily and severely punished. In this, as in other ways, it is evident that Bonaparte was under the impression that he could gain, if not the full allegiance, at least the passive neutrality of the Alexandrians, and, indeed, it was clear from the preparations that he had made prior to his actual arrival in the country, that he had looked forward to being received by the Egyptians as a deliverer and saviour. Two of these preparations deserve special mention here. One, curiously characteristic of the French spirit of the day, was the provision of an immense number of tricoloured cockades to be distributed to, and worn by, the people as evidence of their reconciliation with the French; the other was the composition and printing of a proclamation in Arabic which was to serve at once as a declaration of the aims and intentions of the French in entering Egypt and as an appeal to the friendship and support of the people. This proclamation has, with great justice, been described as a most extraordinary document. Of considerable length, it was framed throughout with the object of soothing the religious susceptibilities of the Egyptians, and was so worded as to represent Bonaparte and the French, if not as Mahomedans, at least as the special friends and protectors of Islam. Beginning with the well-known formula, "In the name of the most merciful God," invariably prefixed by Mahomedans to all important writings, it proceeded to state that the French had arrived in Egypt with the intention of punishing the Mamaluks for their ill-treatment of the French and other foreign subjects resident in the country; to restore to the people themselves the rights of which they were deprived by their tyrannical rulers, and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan of Turkey, the legitimate sovereign. Had the proclamation stopped here it would in all probability have been accepted by the people as a genuine expression of the purport and scope of the invasion, but it went on with great elaboration to promise boons to the people that these were quite incapable of either comprehending, or had they done so, of appreciating. These promises were couched in the spirit then dominant in Paris, and, indeed, throughout France, that is to say, the spirit of the Revolution, the "Gospel" of "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," that was to turn the world into a paradise. Thenceforth, it declared, it was to be possible for all to arrive at the most exalted posts; public affairs were to be directed by the most learned, virtuous, and intelligent; and thus the people were to be made happy. All this was in perfect accord with the theory and teaching of the Mahomedan religion, but it was in some respects very far indeed from the practice to which the people had for centuries been accustomed. As to the promise of opening out facilities for advancement, we have seen that in the Governor of the town the people had a convincing proof that these already existed, and it is not at all probable that it ever occurred to them that the facilities at which the French General hinted were of a very different nature to those of which Sayed Mahomed had availed himself. It is not surprising, therefore, that these promises seemed to the Egyptians nothing more than mere idle bombast, and were by them promptly put down as simply a valueless bid for their favour. What followed was still less calculated to win their confidence, for, as evidence of the friendly spirit of the invasion, Bonaparte went on to declare his faith in the unity of God, his respect for the Prophet Mahomed and the Koran, and to claim that he had "destroyed the Pope" and the Knights of Malta because they were the enemies of Islam. Such professions as these to the Egyptians carried on their face their own contradiction, for, if Bonaparte was in truth a Moslem, or a friend of Islam, how was it, they asked, that he had entered the dominions of the Sultan without some acknowledgment from him of the claim thus made to be acting upon his behalf? The concluding phrases of the proclamation came, too, rather as an anti-climax to the lofty spirit of benevolence and high aim that the body of it was intended to express, for the whole rigmarole—I can scarcely find a better word for it—came to an end with a commonplace promise that those who submitted to the French should be "exalted," while those who opposed them should be "utterly destroyed." One can fancy how the Egyptians smiled to themselves at this conclusion and accepted it as in itself the whole object and purport of the document. But whatever may have been their private feelings on the subject, and their own historians have told us how little reliance they put upon the professions and promises thus offered them, it is certain that outwardly the Alexandrians discreetly accepted both the cockades and the proclamation without any show of feeling other than that of amused curiosity. So little, indeed, did they betray their true feelings, the French were unquestionably deceived, and did not realise how different these were from those which they had expected the proclamation to excite. But it is certain that none of the Egyptians were in the least deceived by its plausible tone, and while they refrained from any display of hostility to the French, they were looking forward with high hopes to their early annihilation by the Mamaluks. Large numbers of this proclamation having been printed by the aid of the Oriental type and printing presses, with which the expedition was provided, Bonaparte not only had it freely distributed in Alexandria, but forwarded copies of it to Cairo and elsewhere, using as his messengers for this purpose some Mahomedans he had released from the prisons of Malta, and had brought with him to Egypt, with the object of utilising them as interpreters, and in the hope that gratitude for their release would cause them to espouse and advocate his cause. That Bonaparte's conception of the probable attitude of the Egyptians towards the expedition was entirely erroneous, is clearly evident from the whole tone of the proclamation. Thoroughly well-informed as he appears to have been, as to the actual state of the country and the deplorable misgovernment from which it was suffering, he and his countrymen seem to have jumped to the conclusion that they would be received and welcomed by the people as deliverers. That they should have so thought is a very noticeable fact, for it plainly proves that all the information that they had received, including that furnished by the Consul Magallon and other French residents, afforded no ground for any suspicion that the French would incur any risk or danger from fanaticism on the part of the people. That they were keenly awake to the absolute necessity of conciliating the intense attachment of the Egyptians to their faith, is not more clearly evident than is the fact that they had no conception of hostile fanaticism as a factor to be considered in their relations with the people. It was with self-satisfied bigotry and not fanaticism that Bonaparte considered he had to deal, and as we shall see in the course of our story, he was so far perfectly correct. But in arguing from this assumption, he was led by ignorance of the facts with which he had to deal, to absolutely erroneous conclusions. The fundamental error into which he fell is one that, notwithstanding the warning his experience might have conveyed, was repeated by ourselves in the beginning of the present occupation of the country, and distinguishes even the recommendations of the brilliant statesman, Lord Dufferin. This error was the assumption that a people so sorely oppressed and downtrodden as were the Egyptians could not fail to be grateful and friendly to any one who should deliver them from their oppressors, yet it needed but a slight acquaintance with the people, with the evils from which they suffered, and the light in which they regarded those evils, to show that this could not be so. As we have seen, the dominant trait of the Egyptians' character was, and is, their loyalty to Islam, and, as a consequence, their fidelity to the Sultan. Knowing nothing of the Christian religion or of the political condition of Christendom, they looked with contempt upon Christians generally as in every way their inferiors, and recalling how great but unavailing had been the struggle of the Christians for the possession of the Holy Land, they regarded their long abstention from all further effort for its conquest, as a proof and tacit admission of their inability to face the armies of the Sultan. Thus the Egyptians of that day, as indeed the great mass of them still do, believed the Sultan to be the greatest and most powerful monarch in the world. That his rule in Egypt was little more than nominal they did not perceive. In their eyes it was a real and substantial power. That they should thus be blind to what seems to us self-evident truth, is largely to be attributed to the fact that almost all that was done in the country, was done in the name of the Sultan. It was in his name and, as they were often assured, by his authority that the taxes and exactions by which they were ruined were imposed; and since Beys, Ulema, and all who represented these, were never tired of preaching that all resistance or disobedience was rebellion against the Sultan, it was but natural that they should regard his rule as very far indeed from being the mere fiction it in reality was. Nor did the tyranny and oppression from which they suffered in the least militate against their loyalty, for they never for a moment attributed their woes or troubles to any more distant cause than the officials by whose immediate action they were inflicted. That the higher officials did not protect them was, as they thought, due solely to the misrepresentations, indifference, or ill-faith of those through whom alone they had access to them. There was not a fellah in the land in those days, nor is there one to-day, that did not or does not believe that if he could only lay his grievances before the Sultan or the Khedive in person, he would receive perfect justice and ample compensation for all his tribulations. They were confirmed in this opinion by the nature of the oppression from which they suffered, for this necessarily varied in different places and at different times, according to the personal character of the officials through or by whom it was inflicted. Moreover, among the worst of their tyrants of high degree, however callous these might be to the miseries of the people, there were but few, indeed, who did not consider it a matter of policy, and therefore in some measure one of pleasure, to pose now and then as a minister of justice, or as a benevolent benefactor. To render justice to the poor and oppressed, and to be profuse in liberality, have ever been the surest means of gaming the real and sincere approbation or devotion of the Egyptians, as of all other Oriental peoples. None knew this fact or appreciated it more thoroughly than some of those from whose heartless cruelty they suffered most. Nor was it difficult in the roughly organised administration of the country, for the worst of their oppressors to play the part of an innocent victim of the wrong-doing of others, for when appealed to, the higher officials threw the blame upon their subordinates, while these in their turn professed to be the unwilling but helpless agents of their superiors. Thus finding all complaints useless, the sufferers always nourished the thought that if they could only plead their case personally to the Sultan, the one and only person who could not urge his own impotency to remedy the evils they complained of, or grant them the relief they sought, they would be assured of the justice and mercy they so sorely needed, and which they could gain from no other. That this should be their idea is not surprising, for they have never as yet risen beyond the idea of personal government, and therefore while their belief in the immaculate justice and merciful disposition of the Sultan was liberally fed and encouraged by all around them, even by those from whose tyranny and greed they suffered most, they attributed his evident indifference to their griefs to the impossibility of his knowing and dealing with all the acts of all the officials of his Empire. Of an organised system of government, in which the controlling power is able to exert itself through all grades of its officials from the highest downwards to the lowest, they had no knowledge, and indeed could have no conception, nor even in the present day, after more than twenty years' experience of the working of such a Government, have they any just idea of its organisation or of the principles or methods upon which its efficiency is based. Nor did the Egyptians see the cruelty and tyranny from which they suffered from the same point of view as the French did, or as we do. However limited and imperfect were the services that the Government rendered them, they were conscious that they were in some respects dependent upon it. It at least afforded them a certain amount of protection for life and property, and gave them a rude system of justice. As a return for these benefits they admitted its right to tax them, and being thus entitled to tax them, it naturally, as it seemed to them, taxed them to the uttermost penny, while they as naturally paid as little as possible. It was simply a contest between the Government and the governing, not unlike the bargaining that was their sole method of carrying on trade in the bazaars and markets, and they had and could have no conception of any other manner in which the Government of a country could be conducted. It was not possible, therefore, for the people to grasp the ideas Bonaparte was anxious to press upon them, nor was it possible that during his short stay in Alexandria they should have any opportunity of gaining a better comprehension of his Republican ideals, so utterly at conflict with all their conceptions of the relations of a people with those who governed them. It is true, that having confirmed Mahomed Kerim as Governor of the town, Bonaparte had appointed a Dewan, or Council of seven members, to aid in the administration of its affairs; and to these he, no doubt, gave sage advice and strict injunctions as to the duty of governing for the benefit of the people; but while to him this Council was suggestive of the Directory of Paris, and thus of the spirit of the Republic, to the Alexandrians it was but a reproduction of the Dewan at Cairo, which to them was typical of nothing but tyranny and torture. Further, the strict discipline necessarily enforced upon all the members of the expedition, and rendered all the more evident and striking, in that all ranks were ceaselessly engaged in the work of receiving the stores from the ships and preparing for the advance, when contrasted with the laxity that prevailed in the ranks of the Mamaluks and of all other troops that the people had previously had any knowledge of, was not at all calculated to point with any but sarcastic emphasis the doctrines of equality and fraternity presented to them. And not only the spirit, but even the wording of the proclamation, was fatal to its success. In it Bonaparte had declared that "all men are equal in the sight of God." This, to Mahomedan ears, was nothing short of rank and absolute blasphemy, for the Koran, which to the Mahomedan is the veritable and literal "Word of God," emphatically asserts, and in the plainest terms, the contrary. This clause was, therefore, in itself sufficient to stamp the whole document with impotency, and showed how imperfectly Bonaparte and his advisers were informed on some of the points most affecting the sentiments and spirit of the people. To the Moslem all mankind is divided into two classes—the Moslems and the non-Moslems. Between these they admit of no equality whatever. Among themselves they are theoretically equal. As a Moslem the Sultan himself is no more than his meanest servant. Hence the democratic spirit that exists everywhere in Islam, and hence the freedom with which servants and even slaves address their masters. But in contradiction to this, the man who rules, whether as Sultan or as his deputy, or in any minor degree as the master of a household or otherwise, is, from the mere fact of his ruling, regarded as being invested with a Divine right to do so, since, although one subject to limitations, it is equally a doctrine of the Koran, that all power is from God, and therefore to be respected as such. Thus in Islam democracy and despotism go hand in hand; and while the Moslem of Egypt, as the Moslem of other lands, sees no incongruity or difficulty in this, to the European mind the concurrent operation of these two conflicting theories gives rise to many puzzling problems. Yet the solution is simple enough, for the democracy of Islam is the democracy of the grave, the recognition of the truth that all must die, and that in death all are equal; for though this belief be shared by all men as the one great truism of life, among Mahomedans everywhere there is an active sense of its verity that ever present with them modifies all their views of life and death in a manner wholly foreign to the European mind. To the Egyptians, therefore, the proclamation was a mere flood of futile folly, and so little confidence was placed in its promises or in the French protestations of amity, that many of the people who could afford to do so made haste to quit the town and seek shelter in Rosetta or elsewhere, wherever they could speed by boat or by land as opportunity offered. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.