Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

So far the people had contented themselves with verbal protests, and even these had been so infrequent and so moderate in tone that the French may almost be excused for misreading the submissive, all-bearing attitude with which the great majority of their innovations were accepted, and for believing that the people were incapable of any more effective resistance. They were now to learn by evidence that could not be gainsaid that it was no cowardly fear that had dictated their passiveness. It was not the first time that the Cairenes were to give a proof that they could act in their own defence when they chose to do so, but it was the first since the arrival of the French, and it served to show that, like that of a finely tempered spring when released from restraint, the pliancy of their temper but rendered its reaction sharper and stronger. A fiery, quarrelsome people would have broken out against the French a dozen times while yet the Egyptian was silently submitting to his wrongs, but their outbreaks would not have had the weight or force of that which was now to interrupt and change the whole relations of the vanquished and the vanquishers.

According to custom, the newly proposed house-tax was made known to the people by printed copies of the decree concerning it being posted all over the town. On the whole it was a moderate and most inoffensive measure, and one that trespassed less on the prejudices of the Cairenes than did many of those that had preceded it. The private houses and dwellings of the town were to be grouped in three classes according to their value. The first and highest class was to pay eight, the second six, the third three dollars a year. Dwellings let at less than a dollar a month were to be exempt. Shops, public baths, cafés, and other buildings for the accommodation of the public were rated at from thirty to forty dollars. Many of the people accepted this fresh burthen without any special comment, looking upon it as but one straw more of the heavy load being laid upon them; but others grumbled, less at the tax itself than at the principle involved in its application. Some of the Sheikhs lending their support to this latter party, it quickly developed itself, and the angry malcontents, without any very definite plan or accepted leader, began to arm themselves with the weapons that, in spite of all the efforts of the French to disarm the population, they had kept hidden away in their houses and elsewhere.

It was a Sunday morning, but as neither the French nor the Cairenes at that time paid any respect to the day, the city wore its everyday aspect, until the discontented began to gather, and with loud cries of "Victory for Islam!" set out for the house of the Cadi. Alarmed at the approach of the turbulent mob, and having no clear knowledge of its aims, the Cadi hastened to have his doors closed and refused admission to the rioters. Enraged at the reception given them by the man who of all others they regarded as their natural and proper leader, the people, without a moment's hesitation, attacked the house, shattering its windows with stones picked up from the street.

In this attack upon the Cadi's house we have a clear measure of the wrath that was stirring the people, for the Cadi, the Chief of the Ulema, Chief Justice of the country, and the local supreme orthodox authority of the Moslem faith and law, sent from Constantinople as the representative and exponent of the spiritual authority vested in the Sultan as the Caliph of Islam, was and is to the Egyptian almost as a Cardinal is to the followers of "that most fascinating of all superstitions," as Macaulay styled the Catholic Church. As the hustling, shouting horde of rioters approached the Cadi's house the whole fate of the day was placed in his hands, for, as he must have known, they were approaching him that he might become their leader and mouthpiece, it being thus that they had been accustomed to make their protests against the tyrannies and exactions of the Beys. A most ingenious and effective diplomatic wile, for the people thus presented themselves to the Beys under the sheltering patronage of the Cadi, whose definite decision the hardiest of the Beys would not dare to openly dispute, while the Cadi himself could plead that he was acting under compulsion and yet give the claims of the people such support as he deemed fit. A strong man might have used the power thus placed in his hands with potent effect upon the welfare of the country, but unhappily there is no instance of a Cadi who has done so. Like all other officials of the Turkish Empire, their tenure of office was always uncertain, and, from the worldly point of view, the one and only wise course for them to pursue was to be, in politics and all things outside their strict duty as interpreters and administrators of the law, as absolutely quiescent as might be. This was the conception that the man who held this post in Bonaparte's time had adopted. Had he been a strong man, a man with some thought of duty and of right, with some desire to benefit the people, he might have accomplished much good. As it was, his influence was mostly that of inaction, that coming from his not-doing rather than from his doing. And he was a man loving his own comfort and most anxious to get through life safely and with the least care, trouble, or vexation of any kind. Of the French he stood in most unwholesome fear, and, while execrating them and all their ways with the most intense hatred, was studiously careful to tender them nothing but the most courteous and affable submission. In short, he was a miserable, time-serving poltroon, thinking of nothing but his own most worthless self and the peril to his peace of mind, and possibly also to his bodily comfort, that any real or apparent connivance with hostility to the French might bring upon him from the hands of these enemies of God and man, as he esteemed them. So, closing his doors, he listened with trembling ears to the stones crashing through his windows, in deadly fear that the mob would break in and wreak their anger on himself. For some reason, however, the mob were content with the smashing of the windows, which having been done to its satisfaction, surging and shouting it turned about and took a new direction.

Before we follow the crowd it is as well that I should note how clearly this little incident vindicates the people from the charge of slavish servility so often and unjustly brought against them. Let the reader recall what I have said of the power and influence of the Ulema and of the Cadi, and that to rebel against the Cadi was, in the eyes of the people, almost the same thing as to rebel against the Sultan himself, and thus a crime that brought them perilously close to infidelity, being, in fact, little short of rebellion against heaven itself, yet – strange symptom of servility and curious evidence of the bigotry that is supposed to dominate this people – the shower of stones went smashing through the Cadi's windows as vigorously and as recklessly as though the mob were in London and the Cadi an unpopular statesman!

There is another point to be noted as to this incident that may help us to understand the people, and that point is the reason why the people thus fiercely testified their anger. As to this there is no doubt. The reason was plain enough, though not perhaps obvious to the European unfamiliar with Islam and the East. It was well known that the Cadi stood in fear of the French, and that he was inclined to temporise and be somewhat too friendly in his relations with them, and much too willing to promote their views and aims; but all these were matters which, while they rendered him the subject of jest and ridicule, were very far from destroying his authority and were quite insufficient to produce the smashing of his windows, for the Egyptians, though lax themselves in obeying the duties and obligations of their religion, and often enough, like others, willing to "Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, by damning those they have no mind to," yet are not given to "prove their doctrine orthodox by apostolic blows and knocks," unless indeed they be urged thereto by some other and more pressing inducement, and would never carry their condemnation of such irregularities to the extent of breaking the windows of the offenders. It was not, therefore, the Cadi's alleged unorthodox submission to French influence that the Cairenes so forcibly reprimanded, but what in their eyes was a much more serious fault, that shutting his doors in their faces he should refuse to hear their complaint – this was his offence. I have pointed out before that, in Egypt as elsewhere in the East, the worst of tyrants, as a rule, poses from time to time as a benefactor of the people, and it is rare indeed to find an instance of their openly closing their ears to the cry of the distressed or the plaint of the suffering. They would hear and reject the pleas offered to them, but they would at least hear them. That the Cadi should have done this, that he should have listened to what the people had to say, and that having done so he should have refused point-blank to act or speak for them, nay, that he should have roundly abused them and told them to submit – all this they would have borne, though it were with murmuring, grumbling, and unwilling patience and obedience – but that he should refuse to hear them – that they would not bear and would not forgive. That was an abdication of his right to their submission and obedience. And since he would not give them an opportunity of saying by word of mouth what they had to say, they let him know their opinion of his conduct by the very audible and self-interpreting voice of the stones whistling through his windows – a voice admitting of no ambiguity as to the purport of its message.

Looking at the records of window-breakings in Europe and comparing those with this particular breakage, the incident seems but a small one, scarcely worth chronicling, yet, like the battle of the Pyramids, it is noticeable for the consequence that followed it, for it was the poltroonery of the Cadi and his desire to avoid any personal conflict with the French that decided the issue of the day and turned the mob into the very path the Cadi would have diverted them from. It was, in fact, upon his reception of the mob that the question of peace or war depended. No one knew that it was to be so, but, as we shall see, it was the Cadi's refusal to hear the people that led to the bursting of the storm that had been so long gathering. Had the Cadi received the people, had he reasoned with them, warned them of the evils that might come from any rashness, or had he taken a higher and bolder position and ordered them to accept the new decree and not to attempt to oppose the French without the sanction of himself and the rest of the Ulema – had he adopted either of these courses he would have stayed the evil that was at hand, at least for the time. Let us follow the mob and see what happened as it moved away from the Cadi's.

Rumours of excitement in the town having reached the French headquarters, General Dupuy took a small party of troops and set out to see what was the matter. He had not far to go, and as fate would have it, had scarcely entered the town when he met the angry mob returning from the Cadi's with no very definite idea as to what it should do next. All doubts they had on this point were set at rest by the appearance of the General. At once the cry went up, "Death to the French!" And with the words went acts. The mob vastly outnumbering the little party of troops with the General and taking them by surprise routed them before they could do much more than assume a posture of defence. In the hurry-skurry of this impromptu battle, one of the first to fall was the gallant General, who was fatally wounded in the neck by one of the primitive weapons with which many of the people were armed – a knife lashed to the end of a long staff. Thus the first result of the Cadi's cowardly action was the committal of the people to overt rebellion, and the sacrifice of a brave and gallant gentleman to the fury of an angry mob.

Meanwhile in other parts of the town other parties of the people had assembled and were apparently acting quite independently. The firing in the fight between General Dupuy's men and the rebels, as we may now term them, quickly informed the whole town of what was happening, and, the news that a French General had been slain and the troops with him driven off spreading rapidly, practically the whole town rose to arms to follow up this, as they thought it, most auspicious opening of a campaign. At once the gates of the town were seized, the mustabas, or stone-built benches in front of the shops torn up to find material for the barricading of the streets, and the people set themselves with a will to prepare for a stubborn fight, little realising the long odds against them.

The house of General Cafarelli in the Birket el Fil quarter of the town, formerly the residence of one of the Beys, with ample gardens and spacious courtyards surrounded by luxurious apartments, was attacked, and some of the French who happened to be there were struck down before they had time to realise what was taking place. The General himself was absent, as well as several others of the French staff who had their quarters in the roomy buildings of the old Bey's palace, and the few persons left managing to escape, the mob spent its energies in smashing a valuable collection of scientific instruments and engineering appliances.

Elsewhere in the town Frenchmen and native Christians, wandering about as usual, quite unsuspicious of the danger they were incurring, were ruthlessly cut down, and while the bulk of the rioters were busy preparing to defend the town against the French, some of the lower classes set themselves to pillage the houses of the Christians, but in their anxiety for booty did not stop to spare the houses of Moslems dwelling in the Christian quarters.

Entirely unprepared for the outbreak, it was some little time before the French troops appeared upon the scene, and then they approached the town just where it was defended by the barricades the defence of which had been allotted to the Maghrabins, or Arabs from the Barbary States resident in Cairo, a much more warlike and combative people than the Egyptians. These, attacked by the French, returned the fire of their assailants with such good effect that the French had to retire. Firing was, however, kept up on both sides all through the night with considerable loss to both parties. When morning broke the French found themselves favoured by several circumstances. Only a part of the town had been able to join in the revolt. The people of Boulac and of Old Cairo, as well as those of the Esbekieh and other quarters in which the French were established in force, being quite unable to offer their townsmen any assistance, and the quarters in revolt being thus those in which there were few, if any, French residents, the French were able to bring up their artillery and concentrate its fire upon the rebels. So as the day went on the unequal fight proceeded, and under the storm of ball and shot by which they were assailed the Cairenes showed none of the cowardice or distrust of themselves that their critics would have us believe to be among their characteristics. They were on that day a people showing very different traits to those that the great panic at the first triumph of the French had seemed to stamp them with. All through the night and the following day these people, scantily provided with arms and patched-up weapons, stood holding their barricades against the foe that but a few weeks before had scattered what they had regarded as the invincible army of the Mamaluks. Truly a stubborn, stiffnecked people when they took it into their heads to be so – a people who, notwithstanding their everyday docility, could give their rulers no little trouble whenever they had a mind to do so.

Midday passed, and the battle went on with no abatement of ardour on either side, and with no talk or thought of submission on the side of the rebels. But as the time of the afternoon prayer approached the Ulema who could, in spite of their pacific character, form a better and more reliable estimate of the probable final result of the struggle, appealed to the people, and went to General Bonaparte himself to intercede for peace, begging him to stop the bombardment that was making such havoc in the town, and was more harmful to the innocent and helpless than to those most in fault. Bonaparte, accusing the Ulema of being responsible for the outbreak, reproached them bitterly, but finally yielded to their entreaties, and, ordering the batteries to be silenced, promised an amnesty for all who should at once lay down their arms.

Evening was drawing near as the Sheikhs returned from their self-appointed embassy. The people, wearied with the heavy strain of the long night and day of constant action, with their small stock of munitions almost exhausted, and finding their strength failing, with their women and children shrieking and weeping in terror at the houses crumbling around them under the hail of shell from the French batteries, were compelled to accept the offered peace, and as the sun went down the firing on both sides stopped, save that the warlike Maghrabins, who thoroughly enjoyed the battle, kept up a fight upon their own account for yet an hour or so longer, being most loath to abandon it at all.

The storm that thus ended almost as abruptly as it had broken out had cost the French one of their best generals, and not a few valuable lives of less degree in the service. The Egyptians, too, had lost heavily. Many peaceful citizens had been slain, and many houses more or less completely wrecked. For the Cairenes it had been their "baptism of fire." They had taken up arms to fight, scarcely knowing how to handle them, and to be under the fire of an enemy was a wholly new experience to them, scarce one of them having even seen a cannon fired save for the harmless purpose of a salute. Yet, astounded as they were at the destruction wrought by the French guns, they had held their ground staunchly all through that to them most terrible day, and in doing so learned something of their own strength though almost nothing of how to use it.

But whatever the people had learned, Bonaparte learned but little from the storm. It taught him, indeed, that the people were not quite so docile as he had thought them to be, and that they were still less friendly to the French and their ideas than he had imagined possible; but that was all. It taught him nothing of that which it would have been most serviceable for him to have learned – something of the real nature of the people and of the best and wisest way of dealing with them. Had he been a great man in any true sense of the phrase, had he been even a clever one, or still less nobly, even a cunning one, he might have turned the storm and its collapse very greatly indeed to his own advantage. Never from the day of his arrival had he had the people so completely at his mercy, so wholly under his own control, if he had only known how to exercise it. But knowing no means of attaining his objects but through the brute force of his battalions and such terror as they could inspire, and no higher diplomacy than the yielding of minor points as to which he was in truth indifferent, he, most naturally for him, did exactly the things most calculated to strengthen the hatred of the people for the French, and thus to heap up difficulties in his own path.

Whether done through thoughtless indifference or from a wanton desire to outrage the feelings of the people, the French cavalry were stabled in the mosque of the Azhar, the great university, not only of Egypt but of the whole Moslem world, and this venerated building, to which students came from every land in which Islam had even a small group of followers, was desecrated and defiled, as well by the horses of the troops as by the troopers themselves, in every possible way. If it had been the object of the French to humiliate and insult the people and their faith in the greatest conceivable degree, this was of all others the surest and simplest way of accomplishing it.

Once more the Ulema went to Bonaparte to plead with him for the exercise of a little humanity, and once more he ungraciously granted their request. The evacuation of the mosque was ordered, but, as always, the concession was marred, so far as Bonaparte could mar it, by the arrest of a number of the Sheikhs accused of having fomented or encouraged the revolt, and by his refusal to hear any intercession on their behalf.

The storm had come and gone. Like all storms it had left a trail of damage, but it had to some extent cleared the air. Frenchmen and Egyptians understood one another less than before and yet better; and so drawing daily more and more apart, both literally and figuratively, the French – many of whom had been living here and there in the town amidst the people – began to move and gather themselves more and more together, whilst the Egyptians living in the Esbekieh and other parts that had been specially adopted by the French were ordered to leave.

Other changes followed. The flood-tide of reforms had reached its height and ceased to flow, to the vast relief of the people no longer driven hither and thither by its currents and eddies. The Sheikhs accused of fomenting sedition having been executed, the daily stream of arrests and executions that had continued throughout the occupation was checked, and so the people sadly, but not sullenly, settled themselves down peacefully enough to wait the early coming of the Turkish army that, as they fondly believed, was to scatter the French as the sirocco scatters the sand-heaps of the desert, so that the place should know them no more, and their very name be but as the memory of a dream. Yet with all this, while the people had just cause to congratulate themselves that their outbreak was not altogether unfruitful in its effects, and to grieve over the long list of their dead and wounded and the crumbled ruins of their dwellings, the truth is that they were repenting for their wild outburst; for now that the passionate wrath that had urged them on was gone, the philosophy that had carried them through so many centuries of woe reproached them for their faithlessness. They had fought a stout fight against long odds, and though beaten in form had proved victorious in substance, since, as I have said, the torrent of reform that had so exasperated them was stayed, and it was the French and not they who had to abandon in every way the position they had occupied. But as reflection came they asked themselves whether the gain was worth the cost, and finding less cause for exultation than for regret, so far from rejoicing over what they had done, spoke only of the fight to ask God's forgiveness for their madness.

But the French, knowing nothing of the true feelings of the people, and quite unable to fathom their thoughts, so far from thinking that they had never before been so safe from the anger of the people, began to take all sorts of needless precautions, and not only kept together in their walks and wanderings, but carried arms and shunned the native quarters of the town.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE STORM

Under the changed conditions in which the French were now living they began to find time hanging heavily on their hands, so they turned their attention to the task of providing occupation for their leisure hours, and as a first step in the realisation of this desirable object built themselves an assembly-room. This and some other projects kept them busy for some weeks, and helped to heal the bitterness that the revolt had created, and, like the Egyptians, if not ready to bury the past altogether, they were willing enough to let it lie in oblivion, and, largely influenced by the fact that the destruction of the fleet had left them locked in the country with no very hopeful possibility of their being soon able to receive help from France, they set themselves to get on with the people as well as might be, and included in their schemes some intended at once to please and gratify the Cairenes and impress them with a sense of the superiority of the French.

Among the other devices that it was thought could not fail to serve these ends and win general applause was the construction of a Montgolfier balloon. This having been successfully accomplished, the public were invited to come and see a wonderful contrivance by which the French were able to communicate with far-off lands, and thus, if need should arise, seek and obtain help from their native country or elsewhere. Such an announcement naturally brought the Egyptians, who are always curious to see and inspect novelties of all kinds, in crowds to the Esbekieh on the day appointed for the ascent. Fortune, however, was not generous to the French, and though the balloon was a success in all things that skill could command, an adverse and indifferent wind left it loitering in sight until the moment of its collapse arrived, and it sank ignominiously to earth, to the great scorn of the people, who derisively styled it a "big kite," and compared it to the kites that the boys of Egypt had long been wont to amuse themselves with. The failure was a sad blow to the French, who had hoped to see the balloon float majestically away and disappear in the north, as though it were indeed bound for Paris.