A COUNCIL OF STATE
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.