AN UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE
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 being made under torture was of course
perfectly worthless. In it he stated that he had been employed to
commit the infamous deed by a high officer of the Turkish Army that
Kleber had defeated at Materiah. That he was a Syrian, and that he had
only been in Egypt for a few weeks, were facts that were easily
established. The French believed, however, that he was encouraged if
not instigated by Egyptians, and although there was absolutely nothing
to suggest that this was the case, except perhaps their keen sense of
the hatred with which they were regarded, they determined to discover
all that could be discovered of the origin of the crime. The wretched
prisoner was therefore handed over to the care of the Chief of the
Police, a Greek of infamous character, a notorious evil-liver,
detested and abhorred by all for his wanton cruelties, abominable
vices, and utter depravity. Selected for the post he held as one whose
unbridled and unconcealed hatred for the people of the country was a
guarantee of his fidelity to the French, his selection is an all too
eloquent testimony as to the real nature of the relations between the
French and the Egyptians. No man viler, more depraved, or more
despicable, could have been placed in a position such as that accorded
to this villain--a position that practically placed him above and
beyond all law and all restraint, and gave free scope to his
inhumanity, his outrageous vices, and devilish passions. Like Oates,
he delighted to seduce and betray his fellow-men; like Jeffreys, he
rejoiced when sending them to prison, torture, or death; like the
caitiff James, he revelled in witnessing their anguish and agonies. To
this wretch Kleber's assassin was handed over, and by him almost all
that could be done by torture or otherwise to induce the criminal to
denounce others as his accomplices or abettors was tried. At length,
when all other means had failed to accomplish the end at which he
aimed, the wretch persuaded his miserable victim, by a promise of free
pardon to himself, to give the names of some Sheikhs of the Azhar to
whom, as he admitted, he had made known the purport of his visit to
Cairo.
One of these Sheikhs, it was found, had already left the country, but
the others were at once arrested. These admitted that they had been
spoken to on the subject by the prisoner, but asserted, and as it
would appear truly, that they had endeavoured to dissuade him from the
commission of the crime, and, on finding that he persisted in his
intention, had kept aloof from him; but while granting the full value
of the plea the Sheikhs thus offered, it must be admitted that the
French were justified, by all known law and custom, in sentencing them
to death, as, had they denounced the Syrian's intention, there is no
doubt but that his crime would have been effectually prevented.
The sentence passed upon the assassin does not admit of equal
justification. Kleber, whatever his faults or errors as an
administrator, or however harsh and faithless his treatment of the
Egyptians had been, was a brave and gallant gentleman, a man of whom
his countrymen were and are justly proud, and one who had endeared
himself to all under his command, while in the position in which they
then were the whole body of the French looked up to him as the only
one from whom they could seek or obtain the leadership so essential to
their almost desperate case. But with the fullest sympathy for the
bitterness of spirit that must at the moment have oppressed the
French, it is impossible to condone the sanction they accorded to the
base treachery of their minion, the Chief of the Police, by whom the
pardon he had promised the assassin, as the price to be paid him for
giving up the names of the Sheikhs, was withdrawn immediately the
names had been given, and without the slightest pretext being offered
for this vile breach of faith. Nor can the sentence passed be
regarded as otherwise than a brutal one, though it was not indeed more
so than others that have been passed by nations and peoples claiming
to represent the most advanced civilisation. It was that the
prisoner's right hand should be cut off, that he should witness the
execution of the Sheikhs, and that he should himself be impaled alive.
The execution of the condemned men was fixed to take place immediately
after the funeral of the General, and it was wholly in vain that some
of the Sheikhs and notables pleaded for a mitigation of the penalty.
On the appointed day the prisoners were marched out to a rising ground
on the route the General's funeral was to follow, and posted there, at
the spot selected for the execution, they were compelled to view the
mournful procession that, with all the pomp of a State ceremony,
accompanied the General's remains to the temporary burial-ground in
which they were to be laid. There, on the completion of the funeral
rites, the sentences on the condemned men were carried out, and the
Sheikhs having been beheaded the wretched assassin was impaled alive
and left to linger in the most horrible anguish for over four hours.
A punishment such as this was not then, nor ever can be, other than
purely and simply an act of vengeance. In the East especially it is
but a perversion of terms to pretend that such penalties can be
justified as deterrents. History proves conclusively that they have no
such effect, except perhaps for the moment, but that they have the
effect of hardening and brutalising the hearts of those they are
supposed to terrify is certain. In the present case there was not even
the slightest ground of excuse. The criminal was a foreigner, and it
had been clearly proved at his trial that his crime had met with no
encouragement or sympathy from the people of the country. The whole
conduct of the people from the first arrival of the French had been
sufficient to show that there was absolutely no reason to suspect them
of any desire to repeat, in any form, the crime that this foreigner
had committed. Three times "peace" had been declared in Cairo by the
French, and three times the people--though on two occasions most
unwillingly accepting the peace--had kept it loyally and with the most
perfect and submissive good faith. In the revolt and the siege they
had shown with what pleasure they could set themselves to the task of
slaying the French, but peace once declared all ranks and grades of
Frenchmen went about in perfect safety. The French complained that the
people were ungrateful; but does it not seem that the people might
have retorted that the French were infinitely more so?
There remains but little to be said of the French occupation. After
the death of Kleber the command of the army devolved upon General
Menou. As he had for some time professed himself a convert to Islam,
and had married a woman of the country, it might have been thought
that the change would have tended to promote better feelings between
the two peoples. It proved otherwise. None of the Egyptians believed
in the sincerity of the General's conversion, and it had therefore no
other effect than to discredit the professions of sympathy for Islamic
ideas that other Frenchmen made, and perhaps to raise hopes that were
not to be fulfilled.
As a measure tending to conciliate French feeling, the Ulema had asked
for and obtained permission to close the Azhar mosque, which, from its
great extent and the straggling, irregular arrangement of its courts
and their surrounding buildings, was of all others the place most
capable of affording shelter to strangers visiting the town with evil
intent. But the French were quite unable to appreciate the true
meaning of this action, and, actuated by a vindictive spirit most
unworthy of a civilised people, sought further vengeance for the crime
of a foreigner upon the unhappy Egyptians. A heavy "contribution" was
therefore exacted, and European and native Christians vied with each
other in heaping insult and contumely upon the Moslems. Some steps
were indeed taken by Menou that seem to have been intended to favour
the Moslems and gain their support. Thus the Dewan was reorganised,
and, for the first time under the French, was composed exclusively of
Mahomedans, one French official only being appointed to assist at its
meetings. In the Government service also Copts were largely replaced
by Mahomedans--a step that exceedingly embittered the Copts--and the
French were subjected to the taxes from which they had theretofore
been free--a measure that excited their indignation. With scarcely an
exception, the French were heartily sick of the country. All the
enthusiasm by which they had at first been stimulated had vanished.
They had arrived in Egypt, looking for a sojourn that should be a
triumphal progress towards the attainment of great ideals and vast
projects. It was to be the first step, as they had hoped, towards
making France the Mistress of the World, but, save for the first
victory over the Mamaluks, the story of their stay in the land was
little else but one of disappointments, losses and vexations; for the
suppression of the revolt, the routing of the Turkish Army, and the
retaking of Cairo were not events upon which they could look with
other than bitter feelings, since, although victories, all the
circumstances surrounding them tarnished the little glory they might
have possessed under happier conditions. But General Menou was not so
weary or so hopeless as his countrymen; he still thought it possible
to colonise the country and to establish French influence upon a safe
basis.
It had been the blunder, or rather the weakness, of Bonaparte and
Kleber, that they had not realised the truth Burke taught, that "The
temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first
study of a statesman." Bonaparte had thought to win his way by
wheedling, and, failing to do so, had turned to force. Kleber had had
no other conception than that of "the iron hand," as we nowadays term
it, and had not the tact to clothe it with the pretence of a glove.
Menou seems to have sought to play the part of the old man in the
fable, and try to please everybody, with the inevitable result of
pleasing none. On the one hand, as we have just seen, he favoured the
Moslems in some few respects, on the other he offended their keenest
prejudices by allowing wine to be sold and drunk openly in the
streets, while, encouraged by the protection granted them by the
French, the lowest classes of the Christians and Mahomedans gave
themselves up to an open practice of vice and immorality that had
never before been permitted. This alone was a wanton outrage upon the
sentiments of the whole of the respectable population, Christian as
well as Mahomedan, that was sufficient to make the French hated and
detested by all but the most debased--a class which in Egypt, even
to-day, after a century of the nourishing protection of European
civilisation, is infinitely smaller in proportion to the population
than in any other country, except a few like Persia, that are almost
entirely outside of or beyond that protection. Not that the French in
Egypt by any means laid themselves open to a charge of profligacy.
There seems no reason to believe that they did anything of the kind,
but that which to them was entirely unobjectionable was to the
Easterns, among whom they were dwelling, utterly abominable. Thus the
drinking of wine in public, and the free intercourse of the two sexes
in public places, however innocent to the French, were to the
Egyptians something more than simply distasteful; and that they should
be so is a matter not only of custom and habit, but one of climatic
and other conditions which Europeans ignore. To the Moslem peoples
these things are subject to the further objection that they are
opposed to the teaching of their religion.
At length the day came for the French to go. The English and the Turks
had brought their combined forces to bear, and not only was an English
fleet once more off Alexandria, but Colonel Baird, with a strong force
of Sepoy soldiers from India, had arrived by the Red Sea. For the
French to have attempted to hold out against the enemy that was now at
their door would have been an act of madness, but it was at least
possible for them to ask and to obtain honourable terms; and these
having been granted, the evacuation of the country was agreed upon,
and the French, rejoiced at the prospect of once more returning to
their beloved native land, for the second time during their stay
prepared to quit a country to which so many bitter memories were
attached. In June, 1801, just a year after the death of Kleber, the
French garrison of Cairo capitulated, but Menou held out for some time
longer, and only resigned himself to the inevitable on the 30th of
August, and on the 18th of September sailed for Europe.
Thus ingloriously ended the great dream of a French Empire in the
East. At Cairo nothing could exceed the joy of the people as they at
last saw the now utterly hated and detested foreigners leaving. In
their case it was eminently true that "the evil that men do lives
after them." They had sown the seeds of a bitterness of feeling
towards all Europeans, and of a mistrust of European civilisation,
that still bear fruit and still retard the advancement of the country.
It was the French occupation that proved the greatest difficulty and
stumbling-block in the way of the English occupation, and for such a
long time rendered the task that the English administrators had
undertaken seem almost a forlorn hope. Every promise and pledge
offered by the English was weighed in the scale of those made by
Bonaparte and his successors. Every profession of respect for the
institutions and religion of the country was interpreted by the
recollection of the French cavalry stabled in the Azhar, and the
tyrannies, vexations, and outrages upon their most cherished
prejudices that the people had sustained under the French. It has been
the custom to trace to the French occupation whatever advance the
country has since made. In two ways only had it any lasting beneficial
effect--it brought to the attention of the few men like Gabarty a keen
sense of the great advantages of an orderly government, and a warm
appreciation of the advance that science and learning had made in
Europe, and it opened the way for the man who was to be the real
founder and maker of the Egypt of to-day. These were the only two
benefits that the French left behind them, and the greatest of these
was quite unintentional and unforeseen. As to all else, the occupation
left nothing but evil memories and evil influences behind it. It had
lowered the moral standard of the lowest classes, had taught these to
look upon vice and immorality from a new and more debasing point of
view, and had almost wholly destroyed the controlling influence the
Ulema and better classes had theretofore exercised upon them. European
historians have never seen that this is so--that they should fail to
see it is not surprising, since even the Europeans living in the
country are incapable of perceiving it. The European's standard of
morality is so different to that of the Eastern, and he is so
fanatically attached to his own ideas that he cannot understand any
one rejecting these, except from sheer perversity. For thousands of
years the Egyptians have been accustomed to bathe freely in the Nile,
to-day they are debarred at Cairo and elsewhere, lest the sight of a
nude figure should shock some sensitively minded European who happens
to look up from his, or her, perusal of the latest London society
scandal. It is so much easier to see the mote than the beam!
The modern Englishman will scarcely admit that his ancestors who, in
the time of Shakespeare and long after, were accustomed to call a
spade a spade, and never blushed to crack a plain-spoken jest, had in
truth a moral standard higher than his own, and that the man who keeps
these things for his intimate friends and his hours of abandon is less
healthy in mind and morals than the man who thinks no shame to speak
them openly. The difference between the two types is the difference
that prevails between the European and the Oriental standard of
decency. Hence to-day, as in the time of the French occupation, the
verdict that either of the peoples would pass upon the decency and
morality of the other, would be utter condemnation. But this fact
remains--that throughout the whole of Islam openly practised vice and
immorality exist only under the actively exercised protection of the
Christian Powers. Not only so, but if the traveller wishes to gauge
with infallible accuracy the extent of the influence exercised by the
Christian Powers in any Mahomedan country, he can do so by simply
ascertaining the extent of the open vice and immorality that is
permitted. This is the true hall-mark of European civilisation in
Moslem lands.
But among the Frenchmen with the expedition there were, as there
always are when a number of Frenchmen are brought together, men of
high ideals, men whom to know is to esteem. From their altogether too
restricted and hampered intercourse with such, the men of kindred type
among the Ulema and notables learned to appreciate, to some extent,
the better side of European civilisation. They saw clearly, too, that
there was nothing in the civilisation that such men represented that
could be held as inimical to Islam or contrary to its teaching. To the
present day the conviction they thus acquired is bearing good fruit.
Prior to the French occupation, thanks to the utter isolation of the
country, it was the common and universal belief that everything
connected with the social and moral condition of Europeans was in its
nature essentially anti-Islamic and accursed. Precisely the same idea
still widely prevails in Persia and other parts of the Mahomedan East
to-day, as well as throughout the whole of the North of Africa. But
the truly honest man, honest in spirit as well as deed, recognises his
fellow of whatever race, religion, or speech he may be. Gabarty and
his peers in Cairo were no exception to the rule, and could discern
with infallible accuracy the men who really desired to benefit the
country and the people. For such they had unbounded goodwill and
respect, and through their intercourse with these they acquired some
knowledge of the latent possibilities of that civilisation of which
the expedition, as a whole, was such a poor exponent.
It was in this way that the arrival of the French in Egypt was, as I
have termed it, "The dawn of the new period," but I have used the word
"dawn" as the only one the language gives me, though it does not
rightly express the meaning I wish to convey, for this dawn of the new
period was not the "bright, rosy dawn of day," but the faint, dimly
discernible dawn to which the Arabs give the name of "el Fujr." The
true dawn was to come later, and its herald was to be not a Frenchman,
nor a man of learning or culture, but a Moslem, an illiterate and
wholly self-made man.
I have had to say some hard things of the French, but before passing
on to consider the events that followed their departure I must pause
to say that I would not have the reader suppose that in speaking of
the occupation, I have myself forgotten the necessity of remembering
time and place I pointed out to others in an earlier chapter. In this,
as in other things, the reader must remember that I am in this book
endeavouring to present to him the story of the development of modern
Egypt as it presents itself to one who knows the Egyptians of to-day,
and who, from his religious and other sympathies with them, can
understand how the events of which he speaks has affected them in the
past and does so in the present. There is no charge more constantly
or more unjustly brought against the Egyptian than that he is
ungrateful for the benefits and blessings that European Governments
and peoples have conferred upon him. The charge, I repeat, is
absolutely unjust, and could never be made were it not for the failure
of those who make it to recognise two of the most important factors in
the evidence they ought to weigh before attempting any judgment upon
the question. These factors are--first, that the Egyptians and their
rulers were never one and the same people, and secondly, that to a
large extent the very things for which their gratitude is asked are
frequently those that most grate upon their feelings and
susceptibilities. I have pointed out these facts before, but they are
so constantly and so widely ignored that I desire to impress them upon
the reader's attention in the hope that he, at least, will in future
bear them in mind whenever he is called upon or tempted to criticise
the Egyptians. It has, therefore, been from no wish to say unkindly
things of the French that I have felt bound to speak strongly of the
darker side of the French occupation. This should indeed be clear from
the references I have made to the conditions prevailing in England at
that time. I no more think that the French in Egypt were actuated by
any evil or ignoble intentions than that the English Government of
that day did not believe itself the most perfect conceivable, but the
facts of history show that both were, in blundering ignorance,
pursuing their way by means and methods that truth, justice, and
equity must condemn. If, then, any French reader should feel aggrieved
by what I have said of the occupation, let him console himself with
my assurance that, if I had been writing of the English Government of
that day and its conception of justice, I should have had to denounce
it as one of the most brutal and brutalising ever known, and
infinitely worse than any that Egypt has ever had. Let him who doubts
the justice of this judgment turn to the records of the time, or, if
he prefers to seek its confirmation in lighter literature, let him
take up Dickens's "Barnaby Rudge."
The failure of the French occupation was due to the fact that it was a
military occupation, having for its first and chief aim the
acquisition of territory and the extension of empire, and that its
leaders were mainly men of the ambitious, unreflecting temperament of
the typical soldier, or freebooter, who looks to a victory of arms as
the highest and noblest achievement worthy of his efforts. Had it been
possible for the French _savants_ to have landed in the country alone,
and to have pursued their aims in the peaceful way they would have
chosen, nothing but good could have come of their presence in the
country. But the exigencies of a great military expedition and the
selfish aims of its leaders destroyed almost all possibility of the
occupation benefiting the country, and, placing endless barriers in
the way of those who would and could have influenced the future of the
country for the welfare and happiness of the people, baffled all their
efforts to do so. It is, and for ever must be so. Civilisation and
empire are two different aims; and just as no man can serve two
masters, neither can he pursue two aims, least of all two aims that
must be in so many points in constant and irreconcilable conflict;
not indeed that there is any such incompatibility as to prevent the
coexistence of civilisation and empire, but the man or Government that
seeks to introduce either into a foreign country will for ever find
that he must sacrifice now one and now the other if he is to attain
either. Unhappily, in the French occupation in Egypt it was
civilisation that had to give place to empire, and the result, as we
have seen, was the utter failure of both. Many thousands of lives had
been offered up on the altar of the "Great" Bonaparte's ambition. When
he entered the country the feeling of the people towards Christian
Europe was one of disdain, when the last of the expedition had
departed it left behind it bitterness and illwill born of tyranny,
broken promises, and outraged prejudices and susceptibilities--a
bitterness that all the long years that have since passed have not
wholly buried--a bitterness that still exists, and that always will
exist, unless and until Christian Europe learns that it has no right
to force its ideals upon a Moslem people, and that, however pure and
beneficent its intentions may be, so long as it persistently and from
day to day insists upon outraging their religious, moral, and social
instincts and desires, it has no just ground for accusing them of
being an ungrateful people.