Bonaparte In Egypt And The Egyptians Of To-Day - free ebook by Abdullah Browne

AND THE EGYPTIANS OF TO-DAY

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN ADELPHI TERRACE. MCMVII "In proportion as we love truth more and victory less, we shall become anxious to know what it is which leads our opponents to think as they do." ( All rights reserved. )...

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Preface

Eight years have passed since I first conceived the idea of writing this book, but it was not until about two years ago that I was able to find time to put together a first rough outline of the form I wished it to take. In the interval I have been obliged from time to time to lay it aside altogether; and, at the most favourable times, have never had more than a few hours a week to devote to it. I had just completed what I had intended to be the last chapter, when events occurred that obliged me

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CHAPTER I

It was the 23rd of June, 1898. The day in Cairo had been unusually hot and oppressive, but as the sun went down, a cool wind from the north came blowing softly over the city. I was then living in a little corner of the old town still wholly untouched by the ruthless hand of the "reform" that, in every other part, was busy marring with modern "improvements" the old-time charm of the "City of the Caliphs." As midnight approached, I went up on the roof to enjoy the cool freshness and quiet of the n

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CHAPTER II

To understand the Egyptian as he is, we must go back to that memorable 23rd of June in 1798, and learn not only what he then was, but how he had become that which he was. Happily, it needs no long historical details, or wearisome discussion of remote or doubtful causes to gain this necessary knowledge. A few words to show how the Egyptian of to-day is linked with his ancestors of far distant ages, and a short sketch of the social and political conditions existing in the country at the close of t

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CHAPTER III

The period which was to be that of the regeneration of Egypt and its people was ushered in by social and political storm and tempest. But the first warning note of its coming, after a brief moment of panic, was unheeded by the people. Nearly three centuries had passed since the country had been invaded by an enemy. That enemy was now the sovereign Power, and under the grasping, selfish rule of its executive the trade and commerce of the country had almost entirely disappeared, and thus isolated

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CHAPTER IV

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 Be

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CHAPTER V

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

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CHAPTER VI

That the advance to Cairo might be made as rapidly as possible, Bonaparte decided that the bulk of his army should proceed direct to Damanhour, a town thirty-three miles to the south of Alexandria, and on the most direct road to the capital. As it would have been most difficult to convey the heavy baggage of the expedition by this route, lying as it did across desert and inhospitable lands, General Dugua was commissioned to proceed by the longer but more practical and agreeable one, usually adop

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CHAPTER VII

Before leaving Cairo to meet and oppose the French advance, Murad Bey had arranged that a large chain was to be stretched, as a boom, across the river, and batteries erected upon the adjacent shore to play upon the enemy in the confusion he anticipated would arise from their meeting with this obstacle. It was not, however, until the news of the defeat of the Mamaluks at Shebriss had thrown the capital into the utmost confusion, that any serious efforts were made to prepare the defences of the ci

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CHAPTER VIII

Bonaparte having thus accomplished the first and, though he did not think so, last step on the way towards the building of the great Eastern Empire that he had dreamed was to "take Europe in reverse," despatched a portion of the army in pursuit of the fugitive Mamaluks, and settled down in his new quarters to scheme and prepare for the future. The troops remaining in Cairo, in the best of humour at the agreeable change the city gave them from the hardships of the advance, began with the rough go

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CHAPTER IX

Cairo in 1798 as a city wherein to wander was much safer for the wanderer than was London in that year of grace. It had no Alsatia, such as Whitefriars had been in the days of Nigel, nor "Holy Land," such as the Seven Dials was down almost to our own day. It had no criminal class, and its mendicants were then as now few, and almost all strangers from elsewhere. The peaceful citizen or stranger could walk through any part of the town by day or night free from the dangers he would even to-day enco

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CHAPTER X

Looking back now we can see that as the month of September drew to a close the gathering of clouds betokening the growing storm was becoming more and more evident. But the French were altogether unconscious of anything being wrong. That the Egyptians were woefully wanting in gratitude, and most strangely incapable of appreciating the benefits that were being showered upon them—this they saw plain enough. Nor were they blind to the fact that flaunt the tricolour as bravely as they would, the libe

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CHAPTER XI

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

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CHAPTER XII

The months succeeding the suppression of the revolt were months of peace though scarcely of honour, and certainly not of content. The people were no longer harassed by daily innovations or angered by daily arrests and executions, and looking forward to the early coming of a Turkish army as certain to sooner or later bring them relief, they submitted passively to the presence of the French. The Dewan, which had been suspended from the time of the revolt, was at the end of the year re-formed, and

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CHAPTER XIII

It was the middle of June, 1799, before Bonaparte got back to Cairo from Syria. His prolonged siege of Acre had been an utter failure, and save for a little worthless loot the whole expedition had been but a sample of that which his whole life was to be—a selfish, reckless waste of human life, useless, unprofitable, and, in spite of the servile adulation it has had, entirely contemptible. That this man was personally brave, skilful in war, a clever general—in short, that he was a man of many abi

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CHAPTER XIV

"They have nothing to fear; are they not our people?" Was it possible for the people of Cairo to have any better assurance than these words of General Kleber, that the "Aman," or amnesty, that was so loudly proclaimed and, by the French, so enthusiastically celebrated, was to be the full and free "Aman" which alone is understood by Oriental peoples? One would have thought not, but the Cairenes were to learn differently. They were to be taught that "amnesty" is a word which, like so many others,

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CHAPTER XV

Boulac had fallen on the 14th of April, 1800. Exactly two months later, on the 14th of June, General Kleber was assassinated. 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 petition, and before the unfortunate General could detect his purpose, struck him several blows in the breast with a dagger. The assassin was arrested soon after, and made a confession. Of his guilt there could be no doubt, but his confession be

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CHAPTER XVI

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

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CHAPTER XVII

"Marchand is at Fachoda." Day and night, night and day since the great fight at Omdurman the telegraph had been busy sending and receiving messages of all kinds: a wondrous medley of tidings, congratulations, lamentations, inquiries, hopes, fears, rejoicings; almost all the emotions that stir the hearts of men, going to and fro over the wires mingled with dry, official reports, prosaic details of army and commissariat work, and now and then the flowing periods of some war correspondent still at

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CHAPTER XVIII

Though the outline I have given of the history of Egypt under Mahomed Ali and his successors has been of the briefest, it is sufficient for the purpose of this volume. It would no doubt be a study of great interest to see in some detail how the varying characters and actions of their rulers and the events these gave rise to affected the people, but the effects thus produced have proved for the most part of a purely temporary nature, and have been of such conflicting characters that without a ver

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CHAPTER XIX

I should have been well contented if it had been possible for me to write this chapter as a parody of that ever famous one on "The Snakes of Ireland." Unhappily there are unhealthy influences in Egypt—influences placing difficulties in the way of the English administrators of the country, ever discouraging and disheartening the Egyptian, ever tending to turn him from the path of progress, influences that have been and are holding back the advance that is being made. In my last chapter I spoke of

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CHAPTER XX

We come now to consider unhealthy influences arising either from the present constitution of the administration of the country or directly or indirectly from the action of the Government. That we may understand the position taken by the Egyptians with respect to these matters, it is necessary to see what are the conditions they consider the English administrators of the country are bound to fulfil to justify official statements as to the objects and extent of the occupation. These, as seen by th

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CHAPTER XXI

So far I have spoken of the Egyptians collectively, and I have aimed at sketching as faithfully as possible, not the views or ideas of a class but those which are common to the whole body of the people of all ranks and grades. Whether there is any one Egyptian, or any class of the Egyptians, to whom my description might be applied without any qualification or modification is probably doubtful, but that that description, taken in the sense and to the extent intended, is absolutely correct there i

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