THE BURSTING OF THE STORM
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 liberty, equality, and fraternity it
symbolised were flouted by this people, whose whole history was a
record of slavery and degradation. But they did not see that they
themselves were hated and detested, that the cordiality with which for
a time the people had fraternised with the soldiers had been but a
passing reaction, and that, sincere as it was for the moment, it could
not continue.
The French in Cairo were then, as Europeans in the East almost always
are, quite content to see the surface of the life around them. Of its
hidden depths they knew nothing, and therefore judged the strangers
amidst whom they were wholly by their own standards. It is but little
better to-day. In Egypt, as in India, everything "native" is despised,
not because it is native, nor yet that it is bad, but because it is
not such as the critical European has been accustomed to, and is
therefore not "good form." To stop and ask whether the native may not
have good sense, and be acting with good reason in doing as he does,
never occurs to the self-satisfied European. So, having the power to
do so, we thrust our misbegotten "reforms" upon the people, scorn
these for not appreciating our absurdities, and despise them for not
applauding our follies. We talk of the Egyptian as backward, bigoted,
and prejudiced. A falser charge could not be brought against any
people. From highest to lowest, among the most "fanatical" as among
the most lax and liberal, the Egyptian takes and adopts as his own
whatever he finds good in the ways of other peoples. Nowhere is there
a people of greater adaptability, nowhere a people more ready or more
willing to accept innovations. Nor is there in all the East a people
who has the same, or anything like the same, silly self-sufficiency as
the typical Englishman in the East. Other Europeans are bad enough in
this respect, but none fall near so low in the scale of common sense
as does the Englishman.
But if the Egyptian is willing to accept innovations he is stubbornly
insistent upon accepting them in his own manner. He is not willing to
have them forced upon him, nor to accept those that clash with his
cherished prejudices, nor those that do not commend themselves to him
as beneficial, and he demands, further, that whatever change he is
asked to adopt is made smoothly and without any abrupt or violent
alteration of old-established custom or habit. All these conditions
were violated day after day by the French. The reforms they introduced
were opposed to all the traditions of the country. They disturbed the
habits of the people, interrupted the current of their old-time
routine, offended their prejudices, and were forced upon them suddenly
and as peremptory mandates demanding immediate and unquestioning
obedience. Had they been allowed to criticise and discuss each new
proposal they might, being as fond as old Mr. Easy himself of arguing
the question, have been won by patience and tact to accept most of
them.
So as time went on, and the people had abundant scope for comparisons
between French promises and French performances, they were not without
reason in accusing them of the faithlessness that the Turks have
stamped as their characteristic in the rhyming phrase, "Fransiz
imansiz." Still, though daily finding fresh cause of grievance against
the French, the people were outwardly submissive, and it did not occur
to the French that their pacific attitude could be otherwise than
willing. So far, indeed, they were right--it was willing, but the
cause of its being so was very different to that which the French
assumed it to be, for it is clear that these believed that this
willingness was due partly to the people's acceptance of their
professions of friendship and partly to their inability to resist. But
the submissiveness of the Egyptians had a very different origin. They
knew that news of the arrival of the French had been despatched to
Constantinople from Cairo almost as soon as it had been received
there, and they were certain that the events that followed, the defeat
of the Mamaluks and the seizure of Cairo by the French, had also been
communicated to the Sultan, and they were therefore looking forward
from day to day to the coming of a Turkish army, and never for a
moment fancied that the French occupation would or could be other than
a temporary one. These things were discussed freely and fully enough
in the houses of the people, but the French, as we have seen, had
deliberately closed the only door by which a knowledge of the real
sentiments and feelings of the people could reach them. To speak of a
French disaster or defeat was a punishable treason, and so the
Cairenes, doing violence to their natural inclinations, held their
tongues in public, only to talk the more and the more bitterly in
their homes. Nor did the Egyptians look upon the Mamaluks as having
been finally and decisively beaten. French troops had now been in
pursuit of the fugitive Beys for some months, and though the French
were careful to publish everything that could be made to redound to
the glory and credit of their arms, they had not yet been able to
record any success worthy of note or which was not discounted by the
facts reaching the people from other sources. Nor had the severity
with which Bonaparte had punished those who were convicted of
circulating the news of the destruction of the French fleet failed to
impress the Cairenes with the great importance they attached to that
event, or to increase their hopes of the early and utter destruction
of the French army. To the Egyptians, therefore, the ultimate
disappearance of the French was only a question of time, and situated
as they were it is not surprising that they bore the miseries the
occupation was inflicting upon them with the outward semblance of
content that so misled the French.
Towards the middle of September a Turkish eunuch arrived from
Constantinople, and the people, believing that he was the bearer of
letters from the Sultan, flocked in thousands after him as he passed
through the streets. Bonaparte happened just then to be in the town,
whither he had gone to pay a visit to one of the leading Sheikhs, and
returning came in sight of the crowd following the new arrival.
Instantly loud cries broke forth, maledictions on the French, mingled
with shouts of "Victory to the Sultan" and to Islam. Wholly unable to
comprehend the meaning of the demonstration, since it was the habit of
the people to receive him in silence, he asked what it meant, and was
told that the people were acclaiming his presence. "It was," says
Gabarty, "a critical moment, and one that might have had grave
consequence." One can but wonder that the incident passed as
harmlessly as it did, for it is certain that in the temper the people
were in it needed but a word to have stirred them to action.
Fortunately for Bonaparte the dangerous moment passed, and he was left
to return home with no suspicion of how narrowly he had escaped an
ignoble ending of his career.
A few days later the French held high festival in honour of the
anniversary of the Republic. A great space in the Esbekieh was chosen
as the site of the rejoicings, and this was encircled with Venetian
poles swathed in the colours so dear to French sentiment, and linked
together with festooned flowers. A triumphal arch decorated with
frescoes celebrating the defeat of the Mamaluks, was erected in the
centre, and on all sides French and Turkish flags were displayed in
profusion. The Cap of Liberty and the Turkish Crescent, the "Rights of
Man" and the Koran, the glory of the Prophet and that of the French
Republic, were inextricably mixed up in the decorations as emblems of
the hopes of the French, but were in truth more aptly typical of the
absolute irreconcilability of the two peoples assembled in their
presence. In the evening there was a grand banquet, to which all the
principal Sheiks and other leaders of the people were invited, and at
which speeches of great length, but light and witty, full of the
spirit that the French seem always to have at command, were made, and
the night was brought to a close with a display of fireworks, after
which the French went home to sigh for the early coming of the day on
which they could return to their beloved France, and the Egyptians to
pray for the coming of that same day, but for very different reasons
and with very different hopes.
Needless to say that the _fete_ was made an opportunity for the
renewal of all the fine promises and a gorgeous repainting of all the
brilliant prospects that Bonaparte was never weary of holding out to
the Egyptians; but the _fete_ over, he pursued his policy of reform
more vigorously and more recklessly than ever. A new scheme for the
registration of property was introduced, taxes were imposed upon the
inheritance of property, on creditors' claims, on hirings and
lettings, and a host of other things. All the citizens living in the
citadel were turned out, speaking of politics was forbidden, arrests,
confiscations, and executions went on from day to day, the cemeteries
within the city walls were closed, and the disinfecting of the houses
and clothing of the dead was ordered. These, and a host of other
innovations, each in its way reasonable enough, and, according to
modern European ideas, most commendable, came upon the Egyptians as
ruthless invasions of their personal liberty, and were viewed by them
as tyrannical expedients for robbing them. And with these measures for
the social organisation of the town Bonaparte was pressing forward
others for its defence, for in spite of his suppression of speech
among the people he was becoming aware of the fact that they were
looking for the coming of a foe to dispute possession of the country
with him, and an infinitely more deadly foe than Turk or Mamaluk was
already within the walls of the city, and was not to be combated or
ousted by any means that he could command; a foe that mocked the might
of generals and armies, and in the stillness of a night might decimate
the French troops; a foe whose very name--the plague--blanched the
faces and hearts of every European who heard it. So, that the army as
a whole, or whatever fraction of it the plague might spare, should be
in a condition to defend itself from the assaults of Turk or Mamaluk,
the French put feverish haste in the building of defences, and houses,
mansions, tombs, and mosques were pulled down to make room for and
supply materials for forts and other works. Meanwhile the Dewan had
not answered Bonaparte's expectations, and as the almost necessary
result it was neglected. It met from time to time, to disperse again
without having had any affairs presented for its consideration, and
the people drawing their own conclusions from all that was going on,
adding this to other matters, with a steadily rising tide of anger in
their hearts, drew more and more apart from the French, and these
apparently began to have some suspicion that all was not going on so
well as they could wish.
October came, and a new Dewan was formed with delegates from
Alexandria and other towns as members. Then a new law of succession
was proposed, as though the French were determined to leave nothing
undone that would serve to prove how utterly blind they were in the
folly with which they were pushing the people to desperation. The law
of succession that then, as now, prevailed in Egypt, as in all Moslem
lands and amongst all Moslem peoples, is based upon the express
injunctions of the Koran, and being therefore, as all Moslems believe,
conformable to the direct command of God Himself, the mere suggestion
to modify or alter it in any way whatever is an unpardonable offence.
Yet that the madness with which the French were acting should be still
more emphatically proved, not only was the proposed new law of
succession absolutely and utterly rejected by the Moslems, but also by
the Christians and Jews, who declared that sooner than have it they
would prefer the Moslem law. Once more, then, Bonaparte had to suffer
the humiliation of withdrawing a hasty and ill-conceived measure. The
people would no more have his law of succession than his cockades. But
still hopelessly incapable of comprehending the real nature of the
task he was so fatuitously pursuing, he only consented to abandon this
scheme to introduce another not less detestable to the whole
population. This was a proposal for a house-tax, and it was to the
Cairenes the spark that set aflame the fiercely smouldering fires a
hundred others had kindled.
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,
_cafes_, 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.