AFTER THE BATTLE
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 city. When that news came to the people, who had been
looking forward to receiving tidings of the destruction of the French,
then Ibrahim Bey and Bekir Pacha, filled with alarm at this first note
of disaster, jointly called upon the whole population to take up arms
and hasten to the riverside for the defence of their homes and
families. Weapons and ammunition were served out as long as they could
be got to all comers, and when the supply of deadlier arms ran short,
the deficiency was made good in intention, if not in fact, by the
distribution of naboots, long staffs of hard wood, which the Egyptians
of the lower classes are accustomed to use much as our distant
forebears used their quarter-staffs. Other impromptu weapons were
provided by the people themselves, such as knives lashed to the end of
long sticks, this primitive arm which could be either wielded as a
lance or thrown as a javelin being destined at a later date to deprive
the French of one of their ablest generals.
Cairo was at that time separated from the river by an open stretch of
ground, now covered by the avenues lined by the villas and mansions
that form the Kasr el Aini and Ismailia quarters of the town. At the
north end of this space was the small town of Boulac, which served as
the port of the city then as it still does. This was the spot chosen
by Ibrahim Bey as the headquarters for the defence of the town, and
here and around the people were gathered, and quantities of stores and
ammunition of every kind collected, whatever was needed or desired, if
not found in the magazines of the State, being seized without ceremony
wherever it could be got. For several days the space between the two
towns was covered with the crowds coming and going, engaged in the
transport of the various materials required; and so great was the
haste to finish the work and the desire to help it on, that men of
almost all degrees assisted in the task. As it was impossible to find
accommodation for everybody at Boulac, a large number of the people
returned to their homes in the city to pass the night and gain
well-earned repose, but only to return at the first dawn of day.
Unwonted and severe as was the labour they had to undergo, all worked
not only willingly but with the greatest enthusiasm, and with all the
needless noise and tumult that is a never-failing part of any exertion
the Egyptian worker is called upon to make. Not unnaturally the
workers encouraged each other by vaunting cries of contempt and
derision for the enemy they were expecting, and thus incurred the
censure of the Egyptian historian Gabarty, who condemns such conduct
as lacking in the dignity that should distinguish the defence of
Islam.
The Ulema, who, like the Druids of old, have always been exempt from
military service and taxation, were like them, not backward in
encouraging others in their toil or in assisting in such ways and
manners as befitted their character. Very properly they busied
themselves especially in prayer, and at all the stated hours of
worship offered up fervent supplications to the Deity for protection
and victory, and, the children of all the schools being under their
charge, they gathered these and led them in processions reciting
invocations suited to the occasion.
The dervishes, or, as they are often incorrectly termed, the "Monks of
Islam," who are in reality simply members of lay confraternities, such
as those of the Catholic Church, also assembled themselves and paraded
the streets flying their banners and accompanied by the weird Arab
music of pipes and drums that, unwelcome to European ears, has a
strange fascination for the Arab and Egyptian, and, like the "Ca ira"
or "Marseillaise" in the streets of Paris, fills its hearers with a
fierce longing for action and excitement, a wild craving to be up and
doing they know not what, or why.
Some of the wealthier citizens left the town to seek refuge in the
neighbouring villages, others simply sent their families and valuables
away and joined the gathering at Boulac, and the town being thus
practically deserted--even the Sheikhs el Harah, petty officials
appointed in all the quarters of the town to look after public order,
being engaged at Boulac--the streets, which in ordinary times were
swept and watered daily, were neglected, and business of every kind
being of necessity at a standstill, the poorer classes, who lived from
hand to mouth on their daily earnings, no longer finding any
employment, were driven by sheer starvation to seek in robbery and
crime a means of living.
The Dewan having been broken up by the departure of Murad Bey and
others of the Mamaluk chiefs, no regular council could be held; but
Bekir Pacha, with some of the Ulema and leading men who remained, held
frequent consultations and were in constant communication with Ibrahim
Bey, who remained at Boulac day and night to supervise the work there
and along the river, by the side of which batteries were being erected
for a distance of nearly three miles north of Boulac.
Ibrahim Bey appears to the last to have preserved his confidence in
the certainty of the Mamaluks proving victorious, but Bekir Pacha,
when the news of the near approach of the French was received, decided
in conjunction with some of the Ulema to make an attempt to treat with
the enemy. With this object in view they sent for a Monsieur Bandeuf,
who was regarded as the leader of the French colony, and begged him to
tell them candidly what he thought was the object of the invasion. He,
of course, was no better informed upon this point than they were
themselves, but he could at least form an idea, and his reply was that
he believed it most likely the French desired nothing more than a free
passage through the country to enable them to proceed to India to join
their countrymen there in their struggle with the English. Accepting
this as, at least, a possibly true explanation of the invasion, they
proposed to Monsieur Bandeuf that he should go as an envoy from them
to Bonaparte, and assure him of their willingness to facilitate him in
every way if such were his object. Not without some hesitation
occasioned by his fear that it would not be possible for him to reach
the French camp in safety, Monsieur Bandeuf consented to do this, and
was preparing to set out, with an escort of the Mamaluks of Ibrahim
Bey for his protection, when the reverberations of the cannon at
Embabeh were heard, and they realised that it was too late for such an
embassy as they had proposed.
As soon as Ibrahim Bey heard the commencement of the battle he began
to take such steps as he could to forward assistance to Murad Bey, but
long before any effective move in that direction could be made the
battle was over, and Ibrahim Bey, hearing of the flight of Murad,
hastened back to Cairo with Bekir Pacha, to take their families and
valuables and flee.
Words fail to describe the panic that overwhelmed the people. Utterly
helpless, and unaccustomed to think or act for themselves, unarmed and
without any possible means of defence, they saw themselves, deserted
by their leaders, at the mercy of a foe from whom, as they thought,
they could expect no quarter and no pity, while the military force, in
the protection of which they had felt such unbounded confidence, was
in full flight leaving them to their fate. To any unwarlike and
helpless people to be thus suddenly abandoned as a prey to an unknown
foe must have seemed an appalling disaster, but in this case no
circumstance seems to have been wanting that could by any possibility
add to the natural terror of the people at the calamity that had so
suddenly befallen them. In less than an hour they were plunged from an
exulting ecstasy of triumphant anticipation to the crushing
despondency of the direst despair. The consternation that had been
occasioned by the first news of the defeat of the Mamaluks at Shebriss
had been largely, if not wholly, dissipated by the representations of
the Mamaluks, and so loud and blatant were the vauntings of the people
that Gabarty, whose Arab blood had but little sympathy for any open
expression of the emotions, speaks in the most contemptuous terms of
their conduct as wholly unworthy of a people deserving of any esteem.
Nor had the Mamaluks, knowing well how little love the people bore
them, neglected to contribute all they could to their fear of the
French by attributing to these the lust of rapine and bloodthirsty
cruelty. And with the news of the defeat and flight of Murad Bey came
the tale of the slaughter of the Mamaluks by the riverside to confirm
and augment the worst fears of the people. Later on reports were
spread that the French were still busy slaying and destroying all
before them, and, Ibrahim Bey having ordered the burning of all the
boats to prevent the French using them to cross the river, the people,
ignorant of this, took the dense columns of smoke arising from the
riverside as confirmation of the ruthless ravage the French were said
to be wrecking. In the dire madness of the despair that seized them no
room was left for any other thoughts than those of self-preservation,
and, as the evening closed in and night fell, the whole population,
laden with all they could carry of their goods or wealth, streamed out
of the city gates. In the maddened rush for safety, all the claims of
blood and friendship were forgotten, and men and women alike, frantic
from their fears, fought their way through the fleeing crowds heedless
of parents, wives, brothers, sisters.
More than one writer has taken this wild exodus as a text to accuse
the people of cowardice. Nothing could be more unjust. They were
flying from what to them was a very real and immediate danger, and for
the most part on foot from mounted foes. They could see no other
choice but fly or die, and the darkness of the night, the suddenness
of the danger, everything helped to urge them onward. Not more sure
was Christian that he was fleeing from the City of Destruction than
were they. It was a panic such as seizes a people with all the more
uncontrollable force in that it comes as a sudden revulsion from
peaceful ease; one such as those that in our own days in London,
Paris, New York, and San Francisco have turned laughing, joyous crowds
of pleasure-seekers into mobs of frenzied fugitives. When in the days
of the dynamite scare in London the crash of the Scotland Yard
explosion was heard in the Strand, men dashed here and there for
safety from the danger that had passed. Not long after I saw a roomful
of men hurl themselves headlong down a narrow flight of stairs,
fleeing madly from the report of a detonating cigar! I have seen panic
seize a thousand emigrants on board a German ship in mid-ocean;
another, the pilgrims for Mecca on an Austrian ship in Bombay Harbour;
another, the coolies working on the Hurnai Railway in Beloochistan. In
these cases the panic-creating danger was an imaginary one, and yet in
real danger these same victims of panic remained calm and collected.
It was so, as we shall have occasion to see, with the unhappy
Cairenes.
I have spoken already of the fears that the coming of the French had
awakened in the hearts of the people, and to the Cairenes it must have
seemed on that most miserable of nights as if the realisation of all
the worst of those fears was but the question of a few moments. As the
evening had fallen had they not seen the columns of flame-emblazoned
smoke that to them were a proof of the ferocious fury of the foe? Had
they not seen the Mamaluk Chiefs, the bravest of the brave, fleeing
for life with breathless haste? With no arms, no leaders, nothing but
instant flight as the only means of safety they could conceive, surely
a people who had not been panic-stricken in such dire peril would
have been a nation of heroes such as the world has never yet seen!
But if safety for them lay outside the city, it was not beneath its
walls, for there the Bedouin tribesmen, whom Ibrahim Bey had summoned
to assist him in the defence of the town, disappointed of the plunder
of the French army to which they had looked forward as their only
inducement to take part in the contest, with untroubled consciences
turned to the pillage of the unhappy fugitives as a heaven-sent
compensation for their unrealised hopes. Nor were they content with
the rich plunder that thus easily fell into their hands, but with
wanton savagery murdered the men and outraged and slew the women. Thus
finding at the hands of their co-religionists, who had been summoned
for their defence, no better mercy than the unrestrained cruelty they
feared from the French, the unhappy people, or at least so many of
them as escaped from the Bedouins, returned to their homes, while the
Mamaluk Chiefs and their followers rode away through the desert
indifferent to the fate of all they had left behind them.
Meanwhile the French army, after a short rest, had advanced along the
left bank of the river as far as Ghizeh, a village lying in the line
between the city and the pyramids, where Bonaparte decided to encamp.
On their way from Embabeh the troops had an opportunity of seeing
across the river the town of Cairo and the nearly mile-wide stretch of
open land lying between, studded with the gardens and summer
residences of some of the wealthier of the Beys. Elated by their
victory, and perhaps still more so by the rich loot they had gleaned
from the dead bodies of their fallen foes, they forgot the fatigues of
their long advance, and set themselves to enjoy the rest they so much
needed and the comparatively luxurious fare they expected to
compensate them for all the hardships they had endured. Many were the
castles that rose in the air as they sat around the bivouac fires, and
joked and jested until, wearied by the labours of the day, "Nature's
soft nurse" lulled them to the repose she withheld from their
vanquished enemies.
But the coming of daylight on the morrow of the battle brought to the
horror-whelmed citizens some small gleam of comfort. Fugitives from
the west bank of the river told them how the French had settled
peacefully down at Ghizeh, and people coming into the town from Boulac
explained the fires that had added so much to the terror of the night.
With the calmer mood thus induced came the remembrance of what they
had heard of the mildness and humanity of the French at Alexandria and
Rosetta, and along the line of their advance, and though the mourners
were wailing for their dead and missing in every street and corner of
the town, and their homes had been dismantled or disordered by the
flight of the night before, and swept by the thieves of the city of
whatever had been left behind, the people still, as ever, impulsive
and hopeful, began with the truest of courage to repair as best they
might the havoc that awful night had wrought, and to face the fears
and dangers yet before them with a spirit little short of heroism.
Early in the morning the Ulema and the few leading men who remained in
the town gathered together to consult as to what course it would be
best for them to follow. They had not much scope for discussion, for
they recognised from the first that the only question left for them to
deal with was how best to conciliate the conquerors. Eventually it was
agreed to send a deputation to the French camp to announce their
submission and crave the forbearance and protection of the French
General, and thus to ascertain as far as possible what they had to
hope and what to fear. Tactless as he is in a moment of emergency,
when he stays to take thought with himself in calm and serious mood,
the Egyptian not unfrequently shows a wisdom that his critics seldom
accord him. Thus, wholly inexperienced as they were in such diplomatic
matters, they wisely judged that to send as the representatives of the
town men who could claim to be neutrals would tend to further the
objects of their mission. Two Maghribeen Sheikhs--that is members of
the Ulema from the Barbary States--were therefore selected, and with
many injunctions and entreaties counselled to plead the cause of the
town in the most earnest manner they could achieve. Accompanied by the
prayers and blessings of the whole population, the deputation, not
without some small lingering doubt as to the nature of the reception
that might await it, set out for Guizeh.
Bonaparte, to whom their coming was not so unexpected as they
themselves thought it to be, received them with the affability he so
well knew how to show, and which throughout his stay in Egypt did much
to lessen the friction between the two peoples. One of the Sheikhs was
able to speak French, and had had some experience of French manners,
and he, acting as spokesman, discharged his task well and discreetly,
and concluded his address by an appeal for clemency. Bonaparte replied
that he was the friend of the Egyptians--not their enemy--that he came
to the country to release them from the tyranny of the Mamaluks, and
in short gave them a verbal restatement of the proclamation, with many
fine flourishes, about the high aims and noble ideals by which the
French were actuated. So with many fair words the deputation was
dismissed, but with the request that the chief men remaining in the
town should wait in person upon the General to hear from him the
arrangements he proposed to make.
All the town was awaiting the return of the deputation with an
eagerness and suppressed excitement that made their short absence seem
an age, and great was the relief when they were seen once more
approaching the landing, and great the joy with which the news they
bore was received throughout the town. No time was lost in responding
to Bonaparte's invitation, and, taking with them the keys of the city,
all the chief men set out for Guizeh, anxious at once to gain renewed
assurance of the fair hopes awakened by the report of the deputation,
and at the same time give the French General a proof of their
readiness to comply with his desires.
Bonaparte was, if possible, more gracious than before, and again
dilated upon the purely friendly and beneficent intentions of the
invasion, of his sympathy for Islam, and his desire to make his coming
the opening of a new era in the history of the people, who were
thenceforth to enjoy all the blessings that the establishment of the
Republic had already conferred upon the French themselves. He was
listened to with the emotionless stolidity of the Oriental, but not
without occasional exclamations of approval, yet as he went on his
hearers were moved by steadily growing wonder at and distrust of a
speech so utterly unlike anything they had ever heard of, or conceived
as possible, from the lips of a conqueror. They had, indeed, read the
proclamation, copies of which had been sent to Cairo, but it had
failed with them, as with the people of Alexandria, to convey any
intelligible conception of the ideas it was intended to impart, and
the "Little Corporal's" discourse reaching them through the mouth of
an interpreter helped them nothing at all to grasp the real aims and
object of the French. All that they could comprehend was that they
were expected to accept the French as their rulers; that their lives,
property, and religion would be respected; and that the French were as
eager to reward their friends as to annihilate their enemies. But
loyalty to the French and loyalty to the Sultan were so mixed up in
the proclamation and in Bonaparte's speech, and were in themselves, in
the eyes of the Egyptians, two such absolutely irreconcilable things,
that the Sheikhs were completely bewildered by the attempt to solve
the enigma thus presented to them. So they were content for the
moment to accept the French assurance that they were to be treated as
friends, and for the rest God was great, and they put their trust in
Him.
But if the speech of Bonaparte thus made upon them but little
impression of a definite kind, the courtesy shown them by all the
French with whom they came in contact was not so barren. Accustomed as
they were to the hollow insincerity of Court life under the Beys, the
Sheikhs could not fail to appreciate the genuine character of the
politeness with which they had been received by the French. It was due
rather to this appreciation than to the plausible promises of the
General that they returned to the city somewhat, though not wholly,
reassured as to the immediate future. On their part the French were
sufficiently pleased with the docility of the deputation, and from the
dignity, self-possession, and courtesy of its members augured well for
the realisation of their own views.
As a consequence of the good understanding thus arrived at, boats were
sent over to Guizeh to convey the advance guard of the army to Cairo,
and returning after sunset with a detachment of the troops escorted
through the town by some of the leading men, and, lighted by torches,
led to the citadel, of which it took possession.
The following day the bulk of the army was moved across the river, and
historians record, with some disgust, the revolting glee with which
the soldiers fished out of the stream the hideously swollen and
disfigured bodies of the Mamaluks and of the horses that had perished
in the attempted escape from Embabeh that they might despoil the
miserable carcases of whatever remained upon them of value. We must
remember, however, that in those days the armies of Europe were
recruited from classes that had scarcely as yet been touched by the
advance of civilisation. Nowhere was human life then regarded with the
sanctity a more enlightened age accords it. To his superiors the
soldier was of no value but as "food for powder," and it is not
surprising that the little value placed upon his life by others should
lead him to look upon the lives of his foes at a still lower rate and
deprive him of all feelings of humanity towards them.
As to the people of the town, released from the fears that had plunged
them in such disastrous despair and as responsive as always to the
impulse of the moment and the play of their surroundings, these
received the French, if not with the open arms that Bonaparte had
looked for, at least with a toleration and absence of hostile
demonstration that speedily put the French at their ease. Everything
thus bidding fair for the realisation of all his hopes, Bonaparte
himself crossed over the river on the 27th of July and took up his
quarters in a new palace that Elfy Bey, one of the wealthiest of the
Mamaluk chiefs, had only just had completed and furnished in a
magnificent manner, on the bank of the small lake to the north-west of
the city, the site of which is now occupied by the garden and
buildings of the Esbekieh quarter of the new town.