That ancient city no longer possessed its magnificent edifices, its innumerable houses, and its immense population. Three-fourths of it was in ruins. The Turks, the wealthy Egyptians, the European merchants dwelt in the modern town, which was the only part preserved. A few Arabs lived among the ruins of the ancient city: an old wall, flanked by towers, enclosed the new and the old town, and all around extended those sands which in Egypt are sure to advance wherever civilisation recedes. The four thousand French led by Bonaparte arrived there at daybreak. Upon this sandy beach they met with Arabs only, who, after firing a few musket-shots, fled to the desert. Napoleon divided his men into three columns. Bon, with the first column, marched on the right towards the Rosetta gate; Kléber, with the second, marched in the centre towards the gate of the Catacombs.
The Arabs and the Turks, excellent soldiers behind a wall, kept up a steady fire, but the French mounted with ladders and got over the old wall. Kléber was the first who fell, seriously wounded on the forehead. The Arabs were driven from ruin to ruin, as far as the new town, and the combat seemed likely to be continued from street to street, and to become sanguinary, when a Turkish captain served as a mediator for negotiating an arrangement. Bonaparte declared that he had not come to ravage the country, or to wrest it from its ruler, but merely to deliver it from the domination of the Mamluks, and to revenge the outrages which they had committed against France. He promised that the authorities of the country should be upheld; that the ceremonies of religion should continue to be performed as before; that property should be respected. On these conditions, the resistance ceased, and the French were masters of Alexandria. Meanwhile, the remainder of the army had landed. It was immediately necessary to decide where to place the squadron safely—whether in the harbour or in one of the neighbouring roads;—to form at Alexandria an administration adapted to the manners of the country; and also to devise a plan of invasion in order to gain possession of Egypt.
At this period the population of Egypt was, like the towns that covered it, a mixture of the wrecks of several nations,—Kopts, the survivors of the ancient inhabitants of the land; Arabs, who conquered Egypt from the Kopts; and Turks, the conquerors of the Arabs. On the arrival of the French, the Kopts amounted at most to two hundred thousand: poor, despised, brutalised, they had devoted themselves, like all the proscribed classes, to the most ignoble occupations. The Arabs formed almost the entire mass of the population. Their condition was infinitely varied: some were of high birth, carrying back their pedigree to Muhammed himself; and some were landed proprietors, possessing traces of Arabian knowledge, and combining with nobility the functions of the priesthood and the magistracy, who, under the title of sheikhs, were the real aristocracy of Egypt.
The original of the illustration (upon the opposite page) is
to be seen in a finely illuminated MS. of the ninth century,
A. D., preserved in the India Office, London. The picture is
of peculiar interest, being the only known portrait of
Muhammed, who is evidently represented as receiving the
divine command to propagate Muhammedanism.
In the divans, they represented the country, when its tyrants wished to address themselves to it; in the mosques, they formed a kind of university, in which they taught the religion and the morality of the Koran, and a little philosophy and jurisprudence. The great mosque of Jemil-Azar constituted the foremost learned and religious body in the East. Next to these grandees came the smaller landholders, composing the second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots. These last were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in abject poverty. There was also a class of Arabs, namely, the Bedouins or rovers, who would never attach themselves to the soil, but were the children of the desert. These wandering Arabs, divided into tribes on both sides of the valley, numbered nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, and could furnish from twenty to twenty-five thousand horse. They were brave, but fit only to harass the enemy, not to fight him. The third and last race was that of the Turks; but it was not more numerous than the Kopts, amounting to about two hundred thousand souls at most, and was divided into Turks and Mamluks. The Turks were nearly all enrolled in the list of janizaries; but it is well known that they frequently had their names inscribed in those lists, that they might enjoy the privileges of janizaries, and that a very small number of them were really in the service. Very few of them composed the military force of the pasha. This pasha, sent from Constantinople, was the sultan’s representative in Egypt; but, escorted by only a few janizaries, he found his authority invalidated by the very precautions which Sultan Selim had formerly taken to preserve it. That sultan, judging that Egypt was likely from its remoteness to throw off the dominion of Constantinople, and that a clever and ambitious pasha might create there an independent empire, had, as we have seen, devised a plan to frustrate such a motive, should it exist, by instituting a Mamluk soldiery; but it was the Mamluks, and not the pasha, who rendered themselves independent of Constantinople and the masters of Egypt.
Egypt was at this time an absolute feudality, like that of Europe in the Middle Ages. It exhibited at once a conquered people, a conquering soldiery in rebellion against its sovereign, and, lastly, an ancient degenerate class, who served and were in the pay of the strongest.
Two beys, superior to the rest, ruled Egypt: the one, Ibrahim Bey, wealthy, crafty, and powerful; the other, Murad Bey, intrepid, valiant, and full of ardour. They had agreed upon a sort of division of authority, by which Ibrahim Bey had the civil, and Murad Bey the military, power. It was the business of the latter to fight; he excelled in it, and he possessed the affection of the Mam-luks, who were all eager to follow him.
Bonaparte immediately perceived the line of policy which he had to pursue in Egypt. He must, in the first place, wrest that country from its real masters, the Mam-luks; it was necessary for him to fight them, and to destroy them by arms and by policy. He had, moreover, strong reasons to urge against them; for they had never ceased to ill-treat the French. As for the Porte, it was requisite that he should not appear to attack its sovereignty, but affect, on the contrary, to respect it. In the state to which it was reduced, that sovereignty was not to be dreaded, and he could treat with the Porte, either for the cession of Egypt, by granting certain advantages elsewhere, or for a partition of authority, in which there would be nothing detrimental; for the French, in leaving the pasha at Cairo, and transferring to themselves the power of the Mamluks, would not occasion much regret. As for the inhabitants, in order to make sure of their attachment, it would be requisite to win over the Arab population. By respecting the sheikhs, by flattering their old pride, by increasing their power, by encouraging their secret desire for the re-establishment of their ancient glories, Bonaparte reckoned upon ruling the land, and attaching it entirely to him. By afterwards sparing persons and property, among a people accustomed to consider conquest as conferring a right to murder, pillage, and devastate, he would create a sentiment that would be most advantageous to the French army. If, furthermore, the French were to respect women and the Prophet, the conquest of hearts would be as firmly secured as that of the soil.