CHAPTER III.—THE RULE OF MEHEMET ALI
Mehemet’s rise to power: Massacre of the Mamluks: Invasion of the Morea: Battle of Navarino: Struggle with the Porte: Abbas Pasha, Muhammed Said, and Ismail Pasha: Ismail’s lavish expenditure: Foreign bondholders and the Dual Control.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century, the destiny of Egypt was the destiny of one man; he aided the political movements, and accelerated or retarded social activity; he swayed both commerce and agriculture, and organised the army to his liking; he was the heart and brain of this mysterious country. Under the watchful eyes of Europe, attentive for more than forty years, this Macedonian soldier became the personification of the nation under his authority, and, in the main, the history of the country may be summed up in the biography of Mehemet Ali. If we consider the events of his life, and the diverse roads by which he reached the apogee of his fortunes, reviewing the scenes, now sombre, now magnificent, of that remarkable fate, we obtain a complete picture of Egypt itself, seen from the most intimate, real, and striking point of view.
According to the most authentic accounts, Mehemet Ali was born in 1768 (a. h. 1182), at Cavala, a seaport in Turkey in Europe. He was yet very young when he lost his father, Ibrahim Agha, and soon after this misfortune, his uncle and sole remaining relative, Tussun-Agha, was beheaded by order of the Porte. Left an orphan, Mehemet Ali was adopted by the Tchorbadji of Praousta, an old friend of his father, who brought him up with his own son. The boy spent his early youth in the discharge of unimportant military duties, where, however, he frequently found opportunity to display his intelligence and courage. He was even able to render many services to his protector in the collecting of taxes, which was always a difficult matter in Turkey, and occasionally necessitated a regular military expedition.
Anxious to reward Mehemet for all his services, and also doubtless desirous of a still closer connection, the aged Tchorbadji married him to his daughter. This was the beginning of the young man’s success; he was then eighteen years old. Dealings with a French merchant of Cavala had inspired him with a taste for commerce, and, devoting himself to it, he speculated with much success, chiefly in tobacco, the richest product of his country.
This period of his life was not without its influence upon Egypt, for we know how strenuously the pasha endeavoured to develop the commercial and manufacturing industries.
The French invasion surprised him in the midst of these peaceful occupations. The Porte, having raised an army in Macedonia, ordered the Tchorbadji to furnish a contingent of three hundred men, who entrusted the command of this small force to his son Ali Agha, appointing Mehemet Ali, whose merit and courage he fully appreciated, as his lieutenant. The Macedonain recruits rejoined the forces of the pasha-captain, and landed with the grand vizier at Abukir, where was fought that battle which resulted in victory for France and the complete defeat of the sultan’s army. Completely demoralised by this overthrow, Ali Agha left Mehemet Ali in command of his troops, and quitted the army.
It is well to consider in a brief survey the state of the country at the moment when the incapacity of General Menou compelled the French to withdraw from Egypt. Arrayed against each other were the troops of the sultan, numbering four thousand Albanians and those forces sent from England under the command of Admiral Keith, on one side; and on the other were the Mamluks striving for supremacy; and it was a question whether this powerful force would once more rule Egypt as before the French invasion, or whether the country would again fall under the dominion of the Porte.
There was occasion for anxiety among the Mamluks themselves; their two principal beys, Osman-Bardisi and Muhammed el-Elfi, instead of strengthening their forces by acting in concert, as Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey had done before the French occupation, permitted their rivalry for power so completely to absorb them that it was finally the means of encompassing their ruin and that of their party.
The first pasha invested with the viceroyalty of Egypt after the departure of the French troops was Muhammed Khusurf, who faithfully served the Porte. His government was able and zealous, but the measures he employed against his haughty antagonists lacked the lofty intelligence indispensable to so difficult a task. Muhammed Khusurf, whose rivalry with Mehemet Ali had for some years attracted European attention, found himself at last face to face with his future opponent.
Mehemet Ali, by dint of hard work and the many important services rendered to his country, had passed through successive stages of promotion to the rank of serchime, which gave him the command of three or four thousand Albanians. Foreseeing his opportunity, he had employed himself in secretly strengthening his influence over his subordinates; he allied himself with the Mam-luks, opened the gates of Cairo to them, and, joining Osman-Bardisi, marched against Khusurf. He pursued the viceroy to Damietta, taking possession of the town, conducted his prisoner to Cairo, where he placed him in the custody of the aged Ibrahim Bey, the Nestor of the Mamluks (1803).
At this moment, the second Mamluk bey, Muhammed el-Elfi, returned from England, whither he had accompanied the British to demand protection when they evacuated Alexandria in March of the same year, and landed at Abukir. This arrival filled Bardisi with the gravest anxiety, for Muhammed el-Elfi was his equal in station, and would share his power even if he did not deprive him of the position he had recently acquired through his own efforts. These fears were but too well founded. Whilst Bardisi was securing his position by warfare, el-Elfi had gained the protection of England, and, as its price, had pledged himself to much that would compromise the future of Egypt.
Far from openly joining one or other of the rival parties, Mehemet Ali contented himself with fanning the flame of their rivalry. The rank of Albanian captain, which gave him the air of a subaltern, greatly facilitated the part he intended to play. He worked quietly and with unending perseverance. Flattering the ambitions of some, feeding the resentment of others, winning the weak-minded with soft words, overcoming the strong by his own strength; presiding over all the revolutions in Cairo, upholding the cause of the pashas when the Mamluks needed support, and, when the pasha had acquired a certain amount of power, uniting himself with the Mamluk against his allies of yesterday; above all, neglecting nothing which could secure him the support of the people, and making use for this end of the sheikhs and Oulemas, whom he conciliated, some by religious appearances, others by his apparent desire for the public good, he thus maintained his position during the numerous changes brought about by the respective parties.
At length, in the beginning of March, 1805, as the people were beginning to weary of disturbances as violent as they were frequent, Mehemet Ali promised the sheikhs to restore peace and order if they would assure him their co-operation and influence. He then incited a revolt against the Oulemas, besieged Kourshyd Pasha in the citadel, made himself master of Cairo in the space of a few days, and finished his work by expelling the Mamluks. The Albanians and Oulemas, completely carried away by his valour and manouvres, proclaimed him pasha immediately. Always prudent, and anxious to establish his claims upon the favour of the Porte, Mehemet Ali feigned to refuse. After considerable hesitation, which gave way before some costly gifts, or possibly on consideration of the difficulties hitherto experienced in establishing the authority of the pashas, the Turkish government determined to confirm the choice of the Egyptian people. Mehemet Ali received, therefore, the firman of investiture on July 9,1805; but during the ensuing seven months he governed in Lower Egypt only, Alexandria still being under the authority of an officer delegated by the sultan. As for Upper Egypt, it had remained the appanage of the Mamluk beys, who had contrived to retain possession of the Saïd.
Mehemet Ali had no sooner been proclaimed than Elfi, who had reorganised his party in Upper Egypt, did all in his power to overthrow the new pasha. He first offered to assist Kourshyd to regain his former position; he promised his allegiance to the Porte on condition of the dismissal of Mehemet Ali, and then turned his attention to England. He found difficulty in obtaining her concurrence by promising to give up the chief ports of Egypt. These negotiations, suspended the first time by M. Dro-vetti, the French consul at Alexandria, co-operating with the pasha, were again renewed some time after through the influence of the English ambassador, who, in the name of his country, demanded the re-establishment of the Mamluks, guaranteeing the fidelity of Elfi. The Porte at once sent a fleet to Egypt bearing a firman, appointing Mehemet Ali to the pashalic of Salonica. At this juncture, the viceroy, feeling sure of the support of the sheikhs, who had assisted him to his present position, only sought to temporise. He soon received the further support of the Mamluk beys of Bardisi’s party, who forgot their personal grievances in the desire to be revenged upon the common foe; at the same time, twenty-five French Mamluks, urged thereto by M. Drovetti, deserted the ranks of Elfi’s adherents and joined Mehemet Ali.
The Pasha of Egypt possessed a zealous partisan in the French ambassador at Constantinople. The latter, perceiving that the secession of the Mamluks made the regaining of their former power an absolute impossibility, pleaded the cause of Mehemet Ali with the Porte, and obtained a firman re-establishing his viceroyalty, on condition of his payment of an annual tribute of about $1,000,000.
The power of Mehemet Ali was beginning to be more firmly established, and the almost simultaneous deaths of Osman-Bardisi and Muhammed el-Elfi (November, 1806, and January, 1807) seemed to promise a peaceful future, when, on March 17th, the English, displeased at his reconciliation with the Porte, arrived in Egypt. Their forces numbered some seven or eight thousand men, and it was the intention to stir up the Mamluks and render them every assistance. A detachment of the English forces, led by General Fraser, took possession of Alexandria, which the English occupied for six months without being able to attempt any other enterprise. The remainder of the troops were cut to pieces at Rosetta by a small contingent of Albanians: thus ended the expedition. The viceroy, who at the beginning of the campaign had displayed really Oriental cruelty, and sent more than a thousand heads of English soldiers to Cairo to decorate Rumlieh, finished his operations by an act of European generosity, and delivered up his prisoners without demanding ransom. The plan of defence adopted by the pasha was the work of Drovetti, to whom, consequently, is due some of the glory of this rapid triumph.
Mehemet Ali, having nothing further to fear from the English, who evacuated Egypt in September, 1807, began to give scope to his ambitious schemes, when the easily disturbed policy of the Porte saw fit to send the wily pasha against the Wahabis, who threatened to invade the Holy Places. Before obeying these injunctions, the viceroy deemed it wise, previous to engaging in a campaign so perilous, to ensure Egypt against the dangers with which, in the absence of the forces, she would be menaced.
But Egypt had no more powerful enemies than the Mamluks, who, since 1808, had kept the country in a constant state of agitation. Mehemet Ali therefore determined to put an end to this civil war, root and branch, and to exterminate completely this formidable adversary. He did not hesitate in the choice of means. War would not have succeeded; murder, therefore, was the only alternative, and the viceroy adopted this horrible means of accomplishing his designs. He invited the entire Mam-luk corps to a banquet, which he proposed to give in the Citadel Palace in honour of the departure of Tussun Pasha for Mecca. This palace is built upon a rock, and is reached by perpendicular paths. On May 1st, the day fixed upon for the festivity, Mehemet Ali received his guests in great splendour and with a cordiality calculated to dispel any suspicions the Mamluks might have entertained. At the conclusion of the banquet, as they were returning home, they were fired upon in the narrow pass, where retreat and resistance were perfectly impossible. Thus, after having defeated the bravest troops in the world, they died obscurely, ingloriously, and unable to defend themselves. Hassan Bey, brother of the celebrated Elfi, spurred his horse to a gallop, rode over the parapets, and fell, bruised and bleeding, at the foot of the walls, where some Arabs saved him from certain death by aiding his flight. The few who escaped massacre took refuge in Syria or Dongola.
Whilst this horrible drama was being enacted in Cairo, similar scenes were taking place in those provinces whose governors had received stringent commands to butcher every remaining Mamluk in Egypt. THUs nearly all perished, and that famous corps was destroyed for ever.
Although Mehemet Ali had no doubt whatever as to the intentions which had prompted the Porte to organise the expedition against the Wahabis, he hastened to prepare for this lengthy war. Mehemet himself was in command of an army in the Hedjaz when Latif Pasha arrived, bearing a firman of investiture to the pashalic of Egypt. Luckily, Mehemet Ali on his departure had left behind him, as vekyl, a trustworthy man devoted to his interests, namely, Mehemet Bey. This faithful minister pretended to favour the claims of Latif Pasha, and then arrested him, and had him publicly executed.
From this moment the real reign of Mehemet Ali begins. Possessed of a fertile country, he promptly began to consider the ways and means of improving the deplorable state of its finances, and to grasp all the resources which agriculture and commerce could yield for the realisation of his ambitious schemes. Nothing must be neglected in the government of a country for so many years the scene of incessant warfare; the labourer must be made to return to the field he had deserted during the time of trouble; political and civil order must be reestablished so as to reassure the inhabitants, and secure the resumption of long abandoned industries.
The most important matter was to restrain the depredations of the Bedouins, and, to assure the obedience of these hitherto unsubdued tribes, he kept their sheikhs as hostages: at the same time he checked the delinquencies of the Kopts, in whose hands the government of the territories had been from time immemorial. A sure and certain peace thus having been ensured to the interior of the country, the pasha turned his attention to another enterprise, the accomplishment of which is always somewhat difficult after a lengthy crisis. He wished to encourage and regulate the payment of taxes without hindering the financial operations of private individuals. To this end, he re-established the custom of receiving tribute in kind, and to support the payment of this tribute he organised the export trade. A thousand vessels built at his own expense ploughed the waters of the Nile in all directions, and conveyed Egyptian produce to the shores of the Mediterranean, where huge warehouses stored the goods destined for foreign countries.
Mehemet Ali preserved a continual intercourse with foreign merchants, and the country owed many fortunate innovations to these relations: agriculture was enriched by several productions hitherto unknown. A Frenchman, M. Jumel, introduced improvements in the production of cotton, whilst M. Drovetti, the pasha’s tried friend, helped to further the establishment of manufactories by his advice and great experience of men and things. Before long, cotton mills were built, cloth factories, a sugar refinery, rum distillery, and saltpetre works erected. The foreign trade despatched as much as seven million ardebs of cereals every year, and more than six hundred thousand bales of cotton. In return, European gold flowed into the treasury of this industrious pasha, and the revenues of Egypt, which hitherto had never exceeded $150,000,000, were more than doubled in 1816.
The very slight success which Mehemet Ali had obtained when commanding the irregular forces during the expedition against the Wahabis decided him to put a long-cherished idea into execution, namely, to organise an army on European lines. Henceforth this became the sole occupation of the enterprising pasha and the exclusive goal of his perseverance. The Nizam-Jedyd was proclaimed in the month of July, 1815, and all the troops were ordered to model themselves after the pattern of the French army.
This large undertaking, which in 1807 had cost Selim III. his life, proved almost as fatal to Mehemet Ali. A terrible insurrection broke out amongst the alien soldiers, who principally composed the army; the infuriated troops rose against the tyrant and the unbeliever, the palace was pillaged, and the pasha had scarcely time to seek the shelter of his citadel. His only means of saving his life and recovering his authority was solemnly to promise to abandon his plan. Mehemet Ali therefore deferred his military schemes and awaited the opportunity to test its success upon the natives, who would be far more easily managed than the excitable strangers, brought up as they were on the old traditions of the Okaz and the Mamluks. The war which still raged in Arabia gave him the means of ridding himself of the most indomitable men, whom he despatched to Hedjaz under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, his eldest son.
Now came success to console Mehemet Ali for the failure of his reformatory plans. After a long series of disasters, Ibrahim succeeded, in the year 1818, in taking Abd Allah Ibn-Sonud, the chief of the Wahabis, prisoner. He sent him to the Great Pasha, a name often applied to Mehemet Ali in Egypt, at Cairo, bearing a portion of the jewels taken from the temple at Mecca. The unfortunate man was then taken to Constantinople, where his punishment bore testimony to the victory rather than the clemency of his conquerors.
In reward for his services, the sultan sent Ibrahim a mantle of honour and named him Pasha of Egypt, which title conferred on him the highest rank among the viziers and pashas, and even placed him above his own father in the hierarchy of the dignitaries of the Turkish Empire. At the same time Mehemet Ali was raised to the dignity of khan, an attribute of the Ottomans, and the greatest distinction obtainable for a pasha, inasmuch as it was formerly exclusively reserved for the sovereigns of the Crimea.
After destroying Daryeh, the capital of Nedj, Mehemet Ali conceived the idea of extending his possessions in the interior of Africa, and of subduing the country of the negroes, where he hoped to find much treasure. He accordingly sent his son, Ishmail Pasha, with five thousand men, upon this expedition, which ended most disastrously with the murder of Ishmail and his guard by Melek Nemr, and the destruction of the remainder of his forces.
In the year 1824, Sultan Mahmud, realising the impossibility of putting down the Greek insurrection by his own unaided forces, bent his pride sufficiently to ask help of his vassal Mehemet Ali. Mehemet was now in possession of a well-drilled army and a well-equipped fleet, which were placed at the service of the sultan, who promised him in return the sovereignty of Crete, the pashalic of Syria, and possibly the reversion of Morea for his son Ibrahim. The Greeks, deceived by their easy successes over the undisciplined Turkish hosts, failed to realise the greatness of the danger which threatened them. The Egyptian fleet managed, without serious opposition, to enter the Archipelago, and, in December, 1824, Ibrahim, to whom Mehemet Ali had entrusted the supreme command of the expedition, established his base in Crete, within striking distance of the Greek mainland. The following February he landed with four thousand regular infantry and five hundred cavalry at Modon, in the south of Morea.
The Greeks were utterly unable to hold their own against the well-disciplined fellaheen of Ibrahim Bey, and, before the end of the year, the whole of the Peloponnesus, with the exception of a few strongholds, was at the mercy of the invader, and the report was spread that Ibrahim intended to deport the Greek population and re-people the country with Moslem negroes and Arabs.
The only barrier opposed to the entire extinction of the Greek population was their single stronghold of Missolonghi, which was now besieged by Rashid Pasha and the Turks. If Ibrahim had joined his forces with the besieging army of the Turks, Missolonghi could hardly have resisted their combined attack, and the Greek race would have been in danger of suffering annihilation.
Meanwhile the Great Powers of Europe were seriously concerned with this threatened destruction of the Greeks. England proposed a joint intervention in defence of Greece on the part of the Powers, but Russia desired to act alone. A huge army was gradually concentrated upon the Turkish frontier. The Greek leaders now offered to place Greece under British protection, and the Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg to arrange the terms of the proposed joint intervention. A protocol was signed at St. Petersburg April 4, 1826, whereby England and Russia pledged themselves to cooperate in preventing any further Turco-Egyptian agression. A more definite agreement was reached in September, aiming at the cutting off of Ibrahim in Morea by a united European fleet, thus forcing the Turks and Egyptians to terms. On July 6,1827, a treaty was signed at London, between England, France, and Russia, which empowered the French and English admirals at Smyrna to part the combatants—by peaceful means if possible, and if not, by force.
Admiral Codrington at once sailed to Nauplia. The Greeks were willing to accept an armistice, but the Turks scorned the offer. At about this time an Egyptian fleet of ninety-two vessels sailed from Alexandria and joined the Ottoman fleet in the bay of Navarino (September 7th). Five days later Admiral Codrington arrived and informed the Turkish admiral that any attempt to leave the bay would be resisted by force. French vessels had also arrived, and Ibrahim agreed not to leave the bay without consulting the sultan. A Greek flotilla having destroyed a Turkish flotilla, Ibrahim took this as a breach of the convention and sailed out to sea, but Codrington succeeded in turning him back. Ibrahim now received instructions from the Porte to the effect that he should defy the Powers. A new ultimatum was at once presented and the allied fleet of the European Powers entered the bay of Navarino. The Turco-Egyptian fleet was disposed at the bottom of the bay in the form of a crescent. Without further parleying, as the fleet of the English and their allies approached, the Turks and Egyptians began to fire, and a battle ensued, apparently without plan on either side: the conflict soon became general, and Admiral Codrington in the Asia opened a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and quickly reduced his vessel to a wreck. Other vessels in rapid succession shared the same fate, and the conflict raged with great fury for four hours. When the smoke cleared off, the Turks and Egyptians had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with fragments of their ships.
Admiral Codrington now made a demonstration before Alexandria, and Mehemet Ali gladly withdrew his forces from co-operating with such a dangerous ally as the sultan had proved himself to be. Before the French expedition, bound for the Morea, had arrived, all the Egyptian forces had been withdrawn from the Peloponnesus, and the French only arrived after the Anglo-Egyptian treaty had been signed August 9, 1828.
Mehemet Ali’s chief ambition had always been to enlarge the circle of regeneration in the East. In Morea he had failed through European intervention. He felt that his nearer neighbour, Syria, which he had long coveted, would be an easier conquest, and he made the punishment of Abdullah Pasha of Acre, against whom he had many grievances, his excuse to the Porte. In reality it was a case of attacking or being attacked. Through a firman of the Divan of Constantinople, which had been published officially to the European Powers, he knew that his secret relations with Mustapha Pasha of Scodra had become known. He knew also that letters had been intercepted in which he offered this pasha money, troops, and ammunition, while engaging himself to march on the capital of the empire, and that these letters were now in the hand of the Sultan Mahmud. He wras also informed that the Porte was preparing to send a formidable army to Egypt; and his sound instinct taught him what to do in this position.
Ibrahim Pasha was appointed commander-in-chief of the invading army, which was composed of six regiments of infantry, four of cavalry, forty field-pieces, and many siege-pieces. Provisions, artillery, and ammunition were on board the men-of-war. Thousands of baggage camels and ambulances were being collected ready for departure when cholera broke out. Coming from India, after having touched along the coasts of the Persian Gulf, it had penetrated into the caravan to Mecca, where the heat and dearth of water had given it fresh intensity. It raged in the Holy Town, striking down twenty thousand victims, and touched at Jeddah and Zambo, where its effects were very dire. Passing through Suez, it decimated the population, and in August it reached Cairo and spread to Upper and Lower Egypt. The army did not escape the common scourge, and when about to invade Syria was overtaken by the epidemic. Five thousand out of ninety thousand perished. All preparations for the expedition were abandoned until a more temperate season improved the sanitary conditions.
About the beginning of October, 1831, the viceroy gave orders to his son to prepare for departure, and on November 2d the troops started for El Arish, the general meeting-place of the army. Ibrahim Pasha went to Alexandria, whence he embarked with his staff and some troops for landing. Uniting at El Arish, the army marched on Gaza and took possession of that town, dispersing some soldiers of the Pasha of Acre. Thence it turned to Jaffa, where it met with no resistance, the Turkish garrison having already evacuated the town.
At this time the army which had sailed from Alexandria was cruising about the port of Jaffa, and Ibrahim Pasha landed there and took over the command of the army, which advanced slowly on St. Jean d’Acre, seizing Caiffa to facilitate the anchoring of the fleet, which had landed provisions, artillery, and all kinds of ammunition. After six months’ siege and ten hours’ fighting, Ibrahim Pasha obtained possession of St. Jean d’Acre, under whose walls fell so many valiant crusaders, and which, since the repulse of Napoleon, had passed for all but impregnable. Abdullah Pasha evinced a desire to be taken to Egypt, and he landed at Alexandria, where he was warmly welcomed by the viceroy, who complimented him on his defence.
Hostile in everything to Mehemet Ali, the Porte seized every opportunity of injuring him. When Sultan Mahmud learned of the victory of the viceroy’s troops in Syria, he sent one of his first officers to enquire the reason of this invasion. The viceroy alleged grievances against the Pasha of Acre, to which his Highness replied that he alone had the right to punish his subjects.
The eyes of Europe were now fixed upon the Levant, where a novel struggle was going on between vassal and suzerain. Authority and liberty were again opposing each other. The Powers watched the struggle with intense interest. The viceroy protested against bearing the cost of the war, and demanded the investiture of Syria. Mehemet Ali was then declared a rebel, and a firman was issued against him, in support of which excommunication an army of sixty thousand men advanced across Asia Minor to the Syrian boundaries, while a squadron of twenty-five sail stood in the Dardanelles ready to weigh anchor.
The Porte forbade the ambassadors of the Powers to import ammunition into Egypt, for it feared that the viceroy might find a support whose strength it knew only too well. But the viceroy had no need of this, for his former connections with Europe had put him in a position of independence, whereas the Porte itself was obliged to fall back on this support. Russia, the one of the three Great Powers whose disposition it was to support the authority of the sultan, lent him twenty thousand bayonets, whilst Ibrahim Pasha made his advance to the gates of Constantinople.
Immediately after the taking of St. Jean d’Acre Ibrahim Pasha, following up his successes, had turned towards Damascus, which town he entered without a blow being struck, the governor and the leading inhabitants having taken flight. The commander-in-chief established his headquarters under the walls of the conquered country, and then marched in three columns on Horns. The battle of Horns (July 8, 1832) demonstrated the vast superiority of the Egyptian troops. On both sides there were about thirty thousand regular soldiers, but the Egyptians were the better organised, the better disciplined, and the more practised in the arts of war. When it is remembered that at Horns the Turks lost two thousand men killed, and 2,500 taken prisoners, while the Egyptian casualties were only 102 killed and 162 wounded, one is not astonished at the enthusiasm with which Ibrahim Pasha wrote after the battle: “I do not hesitate to say that two or three hundred thousand of such troops would cause me no anxiety.”
It is not surprising that the beaten pashas were so struck with terror that in their flight they abandoned sixteen more pieces of artillery and all the ammunition they had managed to save from their defeat. They fled as if they could not put sufficient distance between themselves and their redoubtable enemy.
This battle foretold the result of the Syrian campaign. The population of Syria seemed to call for the domination of the conqueror; the viceroy protested his submission to the Porte and his desire for peace, and meanwhile Ibrahim Pasha marched forward.
The Porte counted on its fleet to guard the Dardanelles, but it needed an army and a commander to oppose Ibrahim Pasha, who again defeated the Turks at Oulon-Kislak. He then advanced towards the plains of Anatolia, where he met Rashid Pasha.
It was now December, 1830, and the atmosphere was heavy with a thick fog. The armies opened fire on each other on December 21st, with the town of Koniah in the background. The grand vizier was at the head of close on sixty thousand men, while the Egyptian army only comprised thirty thousand, including the Bedouins. The fighting had continued for about six hours when Rashid Pasha was taken prisoner; the news of his capture spread along the Turkish lines and threw them into disorder, and the Egyptians remained masters of the field, with twenty pieces of mounted cannon and some baggage: the Turks had lost only five hundred men, while the Egyptian losses were but two hundred.
The battle of Koniah was the last act in the Syrian drama. The sultan’s throne was shaken, and its fall might involve great changes in the politics of the world. Ibrahim Pasha was only three days’ journey from the Bosphorus, and the way was open to him, with no Turkish army to fight and the whole population in his favour. In Constantinople itself Mehemet Ali had a powerful party, and, if the West did not interfere, the Ottoman Empire was at an end. However, European diplomacy considered that, in spite of its weakness, it should still weigh in the balance of the nations.
Trembling in the midst of his harem, Sultan Mahmud cried for help, and Russia, his nearest neighbour, heard the call. This was the Power that, either from sympathy or ambition, was the most inclined to come to his aid. The Emperor Nicholas had offered assistance in a letter brought to the sultan by the Russian General Mouravieff, and a Russian squadron appeared in the Bosphorus with eight thousand men for disembarkment. The Russians, however, agreed not to set foot on shore unless Mehemet Ali should refuse the conditions that were being proposed to him. The viceroy refused the conditions, which limited his possessions to the pashalics of Acre, Tripoli, and Seyd, and which seemed to him incompatible with the glory won by his arms.
The sultan did not wish to give up Syria, but that province was no longer his. The sword of Ibrahim had severed the last bonds that fastened it to him, and he was obliged to yield it, as well as the district of Andama. On his side, the viceroy acknowledged himself a vassal of the Porte, and agreed to make an annual payment of the monies he received from the pashas of Syria. This peace was concluded on May 14, 1833, and was called the peace of Kutayeh, after the place where Ibrahim signed it.
It was impossible that the convention of Kutayeh should be more than an armistice. The pasha benefited by it too greatly not to desire further advantages, and the sultan had lost so much that he must needs make some attempt at recovery. Mahmud’s annoyance was caused by the fact and nature of the dispossession rather than by its material extent. The descendant of the Os-manlis, ever implacable in his hatreds, who had allowed Syria, the cradle of his race, to be wrested from him, now awaited the hour of vengeance. Mehemet Ali knew himself to be strong enough to carry a sceptre ably, and he realised that there would be no need for his numerous pashalics to pass out of his family. Henceforth his mind was filled with thoughts of independence and the rights of succession.
The viceroy and the sultan continued to strengthen their forces, and a conflict occurred near Nezib on June 24, 1839. The Egyptians completely routed their adversaries, despite the strenuous resistance of the Imperial Guard, who, when called upon to surrender, cried in the same words used at Waterloo, “Khasse sultanem mamatenda darrhi tuffenguini iere Koimas.” (“The guards of the sultan surrender arms only to death”).
Greatly elated, Ibrahim flung himself into the arms of his companion in glory, Suleiman Pasha. His prediction was verified: “This time we will go to Constantinople, or they shall come to Cairo.” They set out for Constantinople; but the viceroy was again generous. Through the mediation of Captain Caillé, aide-de-camp to Marshal Soult, who, in the name of France, demanded a cessation of hostilities, Mehemet Ali desired his son not to proceed into Asia Minor; so the general halted before Aintab, the scene of his victories, as he had done on a former occasion before Kutayeh.
Consumptive and exhausted with his excesses, Mahmud, whose virtue lay in his ardent love of reforms, died before his time, but this untimely demise at least spared him the knowledge of the Nezib disaster and the treason of his fleet, which passed into the hands of the viceroy. Hafiz Pasha, routed by Ibrahim, was arraigned on his return to Constantinople for leading the attack before receiving the official mandate; but the Turkish general produced an autograph of his defunct master. The sultan had been false to the last, and deceived both European ambassadors and the ministers of the empire, by means of mysterious correspondence, combined with his protestations for the maintenance of peace.
It was while Mehemet Ali was organising the national guard of Egypt, and arranging the military training of the workmen employed in his many factories, that the unlucky treaty of July 15, 1840, which gave the whole of Syria to the Sublime Porte, was concluded. Four Western Powers had secretly met in London and agreed to deprive the sovereign of the Nile of his conquests, and fling him again at the foot of the throne, which he had treated as a plaything. Mehemet Ali haughtily protested against the desecration of his rights, and France, his faithful ally, with hand on sword-hilt, threatened to draw it against whosoever should touch Egypt. England and Austria covered the Syrian sea-coast with their sails and guns. Beyrut, Latakia, Tortosa, Tripoli, Saida, Tyre, St. Jean d’Acre were bombarded and fell. This formidable coalition despatched Lord Napier to Alexandria as negotiator. Mehemet Ali accepted the overtures, and a convention guaranteed to him, as Pasha of Egypt, rights of succession unknown to all other pashalics of the empire. The hatti-sherif of January 12, 1841, consolidated this privilege, with, however, certain restrictions which were regarded as inadmissible by France, the viceroy, and the cabinets. A new act of investiture, passed on June 1, 1841, confirmed the viceroy in the possession of Egypt, transmissible to his male heirs, and also in the government of Nubia. Mehemet Ali asked no more, France declared herself satisfied, and, to prove it, became once more a member of the European league by the treaty of July 15, 1841, which, without being directly connected with the European question, dealing as it did with the claims of Turkey upon the Dardanelles, implied, none the less, accordance upon the Eastern situation. As a token of reconciliation, the Ottoman Porte soon raised its former rival, Mehemet Ali, to the rank of sadrazam.
The political history of Mehemet Ali was now at an end. All the results, good or bad, of his career, had reached fulfilment. As a vanquished conqueror he had been able to remain firm in the midst of catastrophe; his fatherly ideas and feelings had been his salvation. Had he been absolutely heroic, he would have considered it a duty, for his courage and his name’s sake, to carry the struggle on to the bitter end, and to perish in the whirlpool he had raised. He showed that he desired to act thus, but in his children’s interests he refrained, and this was, we believe, the only influence of importance which made him give way. It is true that there was not much difference between a throne crumbling to ruins, or one built thereon; such as it was, however, it seemed firmly secured to his children, and it was for them to strengthen the foundations. The pasha considered this a fitting reward for his labours; as for himself, he was over seventy years of age, and ready to lay down his burdens.
A man without learning and surrounded by barbarian soldiers, Mehemet Ali appears before the world as nature made him. Dissimulation, diplomacy, and deceit, coupled with capability, great courage, genius, and much perseverance, brought him to the head of the government of Egypt. To gain his ends he flattered the powerful Ulemas who were the nation’s representatives to the sultan, but, once having obtained his object, he dismissed them.
Though a clever politician, he was a bad administrator. Being alternately blindly confident and extremely suspicious, he did not choose well the men he employed as his auxiliaries, and, being a Turk and a devout Mussulman, Mehemet Ali wished to give back to the Turks the power they had lost. He only took account of the results of any undertaking, without paying any attention to the difficulties surmounted in its execution, and this characteristic made him commit many injustices. It was his habit to treat men as levers, which he put aside when he had no further use for them. He was quick of apprehension, and of very superior intelligence, and his whole character was a mixture of generosity and meanness, of greatness and littleness.
Mehemet Ali was an affable, an easy business man, and dominated by a desire to talk. He enjoyed relating the incidents of his past life, and, when not preoccupied by affairs of importance, his conversation was full of charm. The foreigners who visited him were always much impressed with his superiority, while his lively humour, his freedom, and that air of good nature he knew so well how to adopt, all captivated his visitors. The expression of his face was exceedingly mobile, and quickly communicated itself to the men who surrounded him, who were in constant observation of his moods, so that one could judge of the state of mind of the viceroy by the calm or disturbed appearance of his servants.
When Mehemet Ali was anxious, his look became fierce, his forehead wrinkled, and his eyes shone with anger, while his speech was broken and his manner brusque and imperious. As regards those in his service, Mehemet Ali was by turns severe or gentle, tolerant or impatient, irascible, and surprisingly forbearing. He was jealous of the glory of others, and desired all honours for himself. He was an enemy of all that was slow. He liked to do everything, to decide everything, and worked night and day. All letters, notices, and memoranda that referred to his government, he read himself or had them read to him. Picked men translated French and English political newspapers into Turkish, and he encouraged discussion on all subjects of high interest, although generally imposing his own opinion. He did not always keep strictly to his word. He was a stoic, and great pain could not destroy his habitual gaiety, and when very ill he would still speak affably to those around him; but illnesses with him were rare, for his health was, as a rule, excellent. He was very careful about his appearance, and was fond of women without being their slave; in his youth his life had been dissolute. He was above the prejudices of his nation, and prayed very often, although a fatalist.
At the age of forty-five he learned to read, and he held European learning in great esteem, confessing it superior to that of Turkey; but he continued to regard European scientists and artists only as salaried foreigners, whom he hastened to replace by natives as soon as he considered the latter sufficiently enlightened. Mehemet Ali made one great mistake, with which his nearest servants reproach him, and that is with not having introduced into his family learned men from Europe, picked men devoted to his cause, and well versed in the special things of which his country was in need.
Had they been brought into a close contact with the viceroy, and admitted unreservedly to all the privileges the Turks enjoyed, these men would have adopted Egypt as their country. They would have spoken the language and have become the’ sentinels and safeguards necessary for the maintenance of useful institutions which the Turks either refused or did not understand.
During the administration of Mehemet Ali, public hygiene was not neglected, and a sanitary council watched over the health of the country. Measures were taken to increase the cleanliness and sanitation of the towns; military hospitals were built, and a lazarette was established at Alexandria, whilst vaccine was widely used. In the country the planting of many trees helped the atmosphere, and Egypt, which Europeans had hitherto regarded as the seat of a permanent plague epidemic, became more and more a healthy and pleasurable resort. Mehemet, whose aims were always for the furthering of Egyptian prosperity, profited by the leisure of peace to look after the industrial works. Two great projects that occupied his attention were the Nile dams and the construction of a railway from Suez to Cairo.
The actual condition of the canalisation of Egypt, while vastly improved by the viceroy, was still far from complete. Canals, partial dams, and embankments were attempted; fifty thousand draw-wells carried the water up to a considerable height, but the system of irrigation was insufficient.
The railway from Cairo to Suez was an easier, though not less important, work. The road crossed neither mountain, river, nor forest, while a series of little plains afforded a firm foundation, requiring very few earthworks. Its two iron arms stretched out into the desert, and steam-engines could traverse the distance from the Nile to the Red Sea in three hours.
Suez would thus become a suburb of Cairo, and thus, being brought closer to Egypt, would regain her trade. This enterprise, just as the former one, gave promise of bringing to Egypt the two sources of national wealth and prosperity: agriculture and trade.
The agricultural unity which Mehemet Ali constituted enabled him to bring about improvements which with private proprietorship would have been impossible. The fellah, careless of to-morrow, did not sow for future reaping, and made no progress, but when Mehemet Ali undertook the control of agricultural labour in Egypt, the general aspect of the country changed, though, in truth, the individual condition of the fellah was not improved. Besides the work of irrigation by means of canals, dykes, and banks, and the introduction of the cultivation of indigo, cotton, opium, and silk, the viceroy had also planted thousands of trees of various kinds, including 100,000 walnut-trees; he ordered the maimours, or prefects, to open up the roads between the villages, and to plant trees. He wished the villages, towns, and hamlets to be ornamented, as in Europe, with large trees, under whose shelter the tired traveller could rest.
In the various districts were vast tracts of land which for a long time the plough had not touched. Concessions of these lands were made to Franks, Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, which concessions were free, and for a term of seven or eight years, while the guarantees were exempt from taxes.
During the closing years of his life, between 1841 and 1849, Mehemet occupied himself with improvements in Egypt. He continued to prosecute his commercial speculations, and manufacturing, educational, and other schemes. The barrage of the Nile, which has only been finished during the British occupation, was begun under his direction. In 1847 he visited Constantinople, and was received with the rank of a vizier. In the year 1848 symptoms of imbecility appeared, and his son Ibrahim was declared his successor. After a reign of only two months he died. Mehemet Ali’s death occurred on the 3rd of August, 1849. His direct successor was his grandson, Abbas Pasha, who held the sceptre of Egypt as the direct heir of Ibrahim Pasha. This prince took but little interest in the welfare of his country. He had in him no spark of the noble ambition of his predecessor, and no trace of his genius, and he showed no desire for progress or reforms. He was a real prince of the ancient East, suspicious, sombre, and careless of the destiny of the country entrusted to his care. He liked to withdraw to the privacy of his palace, and, isolated in the midst of his guards, to live that life of the distrustful and voluptuous despots of the East. The palace of Bar-el-Beda, which he had built on the road to Suez in the open desert, a palace without water, lifting its head in the solitude like a silent witness of a useless life and tragic death, impresses the traveller with astonishment and fear.
Abbas Pasha was weak in his negotiations with the European Powers, and this was well for Egypt, as their representative was able to hold in check his silent hostility to Western civilisation. Such guardianship is useful when exercised over a prince like Abbas Pasha, but it tends to become troublesome and baneful when it attempts to interfere with the government of an active and enlightened sovereign animated by just and generous intentions.
Muhammed Said, the successor of Abbas Pasha, was born in 1822, nine years later than his nephew Abbas. He was brought up in Europe by French professors, and M. Kornig, a distinguished Orientalist, remained with his pupil and became his secretary. He not only instructed him in all branches of knowledge becoming to his rank, but also developed in him a love of European civilisation and noble sentiments, of which he gave proof from the moment of his accession. He was imbued with liberal principles, which in an Eastern potentate give proof of great moral superiority, and in this respect Muhammed Said wras second to no prince in Europe. He worked for the emancipation of his subjects and the civilisation of Egypt, and was not content to produce that superficial civilisation which consists in transplanting institutions that the mass of the people could not understand. Said Pasha endeavoured to pursue his father’s policy and to carry out his high aims. He had not, however, the strength of character nor the health necessary to meet the serious difficulties involved in such a task, and he will be chiefly remembered by his abolition of the more grinding government monopolies, and for the concession of the Suez Canal.
After his death Said Pasha was succeeded in the vice-royalty by his nephew, Ismail Pasha, who was proclaimed viceroy without opposition early in the year 1863. Ismail, the first who accepted the title of khédive from the sultan, was born on December 31, 1830, being the second of the three sons of Ibrahim, and grandson of Mehemet Ali. He had been educated at the Ecole d’Etat Major at Paris, and when Ahmed, the eldest son of Ibrahim, died in 1858, Ismail became the heir to his uncle Said. He had been employed, after his return to Egypt, on missions to the sovereign pontiff; the emperor, Napoleon III.; and the Sultan of Turkey. In the year 1861 he was despatched with an army of 18,000 men to quell an insurrection in the Sudan, which undertaking he brought to a successful conclusion. On ascending the throne he was much gratified to find that, on account of the scarcity of cotton, resulting from the Civil War in America, the revenues had very considerably increased from the export of the Egyptian cotton. At this date the cotton crop was worth $125,000,000, instead of $25,000,000, which was the normal value of the Egyptian output. It was a very serious misfortune to Egypt that during his sojourn abroad Ismail had learned many luxurious ways, and had also discovered that European nations were accustomed to make free use of their credit in raising sums of money for their immediate advantage. From this moment Ismail started upon a career which gave to Egypt, in the eyes of the world, a fictitious grandeur, and which made him one of the most talked-of rulers among the cabinets and peoples of the European countries. He began by transferring his own private debts to the state, and thereafter looked upon Egypt merely as his private estate, and himself as the sovereign landholder. Without any sense of his responsibility to the Egyptians themselves, he increased his own fame throughout Europe in the sumptuous fashion of a spendthrift millionaire. He deemed it necessary for his fame that Egypt should possess institutions modelled upon those of European countries, and he applied himself with energy to achieve this, and without any stint of expense. By burdening posterity for centuries to come, Ismail, during the two decades subsequent to his accession, always had a supply of ready money with which to dazzle European guests. During his entire reign Egypt swarmed with financiers and schemers of every description, to whom the complacent Ismail lent an only too willing ear.
In the year 1866, in return for an increase of tribute, he obtained from the sultan a firman giving him the title of khédive (Turkish, khidewi, a king), and changing the law of succession to that of direct descent from father to-son; and in 1873 he obtained a new firman, purchased again at an immense cost to his subjects, which rendered him practically independent of the sultan. Ismail projected vast schemes of internal reform. He remodelled the system of customs and the post-office, stimulated commercial progress, and created the Egyptian sugar industry. He introduced European improvements into Cairo and Alexandria; he built vast palaces, entertained visitors with lavish generosity, and maintained an opera and a theatre. By his order the distinguished composer, Verdi, produced the famous opera “Aïda” for the entertainment of his illustrious guests on the occasion of their visit to Egypt during the festivities connected with the opening of the Suez Canal. On this occasion Mariette Bey ransacked the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings in order to reproduce in a lifelike manner the costumes and scenery appropriate for the occasion.
The opening of this canal gave Ismail much prominence in the courts of Europe. He was made a Grand Commander of the Bath, and the same year visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the lord mayor. In 1869 he again visited London. By his great power of fascination and lavish expenditure he was ever able to make a striking impression upon the foreign courts. During the opening of the canal, when Ismail gave and received royal honours, treating monarchs as equals, and being treated by them in like manner, the jealousy of the sultan was aroused. Ismail, however, contrived judiciously to appease the suspicions of his overlord, Abdul Aziz.
In the year 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners was abolished, and the system of mixed courts was introduced, by which European and native judges sat together to try all civil cases, without respect to nationality.
In the year 1874 Darfur, a province in the Sudan west of Kordofan, was annexed by Ismail. He also engaged in a disastrous war against the Abyssinians, who had ever shown themselves capable of resisting the inroads of Egyptians, Muhammedans, Arabs, and even of European invaders, as was proven by the annihilation of a large Italian army of invasion, and the abandonment of the campaign against Abyssinia by the Italians in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
It was true that Ismail had attempted to carry out the great schemes of his grandfather for the regeneration of the Orient, and it is possible that, if the jealousy of European Powers had not prevented the army of Ibrahim Bej from controlling immense territories in Syria and Anatolia, which they had won by conquest, that the regeneration of the Orient might have been accomplished at least a century earlier. No people would have benefited more by the success of Mehemet Ali’s policy than the Christian people who to-day are under the rule of the barbarous Turks. With the regeneration of the Orient, the trade of European nations in the East would have been very largely increased.
The policy of regeneration, wisely begun by Mehemet Ali, was resumed within Egypt itself in a spendthrift manner by his grandson Ismail. Every act of his reign, with its ephemeral and hollow magnificence, moved towards the one inevitable result of foreign intervention. The price of all the transient splendour was the surrender by slow degrees of the sovereignty and independence of Egypt itself. The European Powers of late have withdrawn their interest in the betterment of the native populations in the Asiatic dominions of the sultan, and have concerned themselves exclusively with the immediate interests of commerce and the enforcement of debts contracted to European bondholders. All progress in the later history of Egypt has originated in the desire of the European Powers to see Egypt in a position capable of meeting her indebtedness to foreign bondholders.
In so far as the cry raised of “Egypt for the Egyptians” was a protest against forcing the Egyptians to pay for an assumed indebtedness which was at least four times greater than anything they had actually received, no movement was ever more just and righteous than the protest of the fellaheen against foreign control, a movement which has been chiefly associated with the name of Arabi Pasha. The issue of Ismail’s financial troubles was most ignominious and disastrous to Egypt, after nearly a hundred years of heroic struggles to keep pace with the progress of modern Europe. Had Ismail modelled his career upon that of his illustrious grandfather, rather than that of Napoleon III., with which it shows many striking parallels, it is probable that the advantage secured to Egypt through the British occupation might have resulted in political and financial independence. When the crash came, and the order for his deposition was sent by the sultan, Ismail resigned the khedivate in complete submission; and, taking away with him a large private fortune and a portion of the royal harem, he spent the remainder of his life in retirement at Naples and Constantinople, and was buried with solemn pomp in the royal cemetery at Cairo.
