Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

by Abdullah Browne

Of the early life of Mahomed Ali but little is known, and that little mainly on the authority of his own statements. According to the version most generally accepted he was, if not a Turk, at least of Turkish blood; yet the whole story of his life and character seem to me to mark him out clearly, not as a Turk but as a Moslem Macedonian: in some things alike, the two races yet stand apart in character and aptitudes, for the Turk is first and chiefly an Oriental, and the Macedonian essentially a European. Coming originally from a Greek stock—the Arnaout—the Albanian or Macedonian Moslem whom Sir Richard Burton so cordially detested is, like the Turk, by nature a gentleman, and the world has no race that it can put before these two for the manly qualities of bravery and self-respect; but while the Turk might find his ideal of social life in the stately circles of the Seize Quarterings of Europe, the Arnaout would more quickly be at home amidst the hurly-burly of American life. A lover of peace, though dauntless in battle, the Turk is content to pass his life in the dull pursuit of a settled routine; the Arnaout, though no brawler, is quick to resent offence, fearless in fight, and full of restless energy and ambition. No one, knowing the two races and reading the story of Mahomed Ali's life, can doubt to which race he was most akin, for on every page of it is written, in the most legible characters, "Arnaout," and most strongly of all in the quick decision, steady, unbending determination and strong will-power that carried him successfully through dangers and difficulties that must have overwhelmed any man not armed, as he was, with these mightiest of weapons in the warfare of life.

To our friends the historians this Mahomed Ali is a source of much perplexity. On the one hand, they find him achieving what by all the canons of probability should be deemed impossibilities, and setting up an empire rather by force of wily wits than of martial might, and by masterful force of will turning the whole current of Egyptian life and thought into new and unwelcomed channels. Were this all, what a hero they could make of this man! But alas! over and against these things the historians are compelled to place the means whereby they were accomplished, betrayed friendships, treachery, ruthless massacre, bloodshed and tyranny. No wonder his biographers seem always halting between the desire to laud his achievements and their perception of the need to censure his acts. Yet if we make allowances for all the circumstances of his position—the time in which he lived, the men he had to overcome, the fact that, once entered upon, the contest for supremacy was a contest without quarter, that he must either triumph or be crushed—we may comprehend that, utterly inexcusable and unpardonable as his offences appear to us, to him they may have seemed to be far otherwise. The worst of all his crimes—the massacre of the ill-fated Mamaluks—was unsurpassable in its baseness as an act of treachery, but viewed apart from that it was a mere bagatelle in crime compared with Bonaparte's massacre of the Jaffa prisoners. To Mahomed Ali the extermination of the Mamaluks was almost a matter of life and death to himself, and a winning move in the great game he and they were playing. These men have to die—it was thus, no doubt, he argued—in the field or elsewhere, for there can be no peace, no settled government in the country while they are at large; and since they must die, what matter how or when? Surely now, and all of them in one grand sacrifice to the cause of peace! Poor Mahomed Ali! he has long since learned a little better, and knows now that the end does not justify the means, and that such foul deeds as this, with all floggings, tortures, hangings, killings, massacres, and all kinds of inhumanities and abominations, are the price men have to pay when they attempt to govern a people with a lying policy, a hollow pretence of serving God and man, when in truth they are but seeking their own ends.

And yet there are authors and others who speak of the "Great" Mahomed Ali even as they do of the "Great" Bonaparte. "Great" they both were in the sense of occupying a great space in the history of their time and in that of having done much, principally evil, but "great" in the sense of noble, worthy of esteem or admiration! Like a miser greedy for gold but that he may hoard it, these men were avaricious of power solely from the lust for it; both attained it in high degree, and if to-day men are in any way better for their having done so they are so rather in spite than in virtue of their success. And withal they were men of mean ideals. Mahomed Ali was accustomed to boast that he was born in the same year as Bonaparte, apparently thinking this a matter for congratulation as if in some occult way he thereby partook of the glory of the Corsican. Unfortunately there were a million or two of other people born in the same year, "mostly fools," and these two were but the most eminent of that miserable majority, for what else were they but fools, strenuous fools wading through seas of blood, and trampling upon the hearts and souls of men, the one that he might end his days with the surges of St. Helena droning in his ears, the other that he might still more miserably sink into the living death of dotage? Fools indeed, sacrificing all that should attend old age and death for less than a wretched mess of pottage, bartering all the realities of life for the pursuit of a phantom they were never to grasp. Unlike Sam Weller, I cannot fix the date on which I first wore small clothes, but it was about that time that I first read the story of Bonaparte's boyhood, and I can still recall a tale told of his going about "with his stockings half down." It was thus, figuratively, if not literally, he went through life, his mental stockings and clothing generally shiftlessly loose and out of order. "Clothed" indeed, but by no means "in his right mind," "clothed" and yet a wanderer among the tombs of false ideals and unholy aspirations.

Rather pitiable greatness this!

Yet Mahomed Ali did some good. Out of the chaos that existed as the legacy of the French occupation he produced order. It was his lawless self-seeking that opened the path whereby the Egyptians have had their future placed in their own hands. That was probably the very last thing he thought of doing—a thing, indeed, that he would have laughed to scorn if anybody had been so rash as to propose it to him. The Egyptians did not know that then, perhaps even now they only partly recognise it, but they did very fully recognise the fact that he had rid them of the rats that had been preying upon them for so long. For that they were not ungrateful, but their gratitude was that of Lazarus for the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.

Mahomed Ali ruled in Egypt for forty-two years from that memorable day on which the people had called upon the foreigner to come and rule over them, even as the English, in 1688, had summoned William of Orange to do the same for them. But his election did not place him at once in full power. It was, in fact, nothing more than the opening of the portals admitting him to the upward path he was destined to tread, and the way beyond was still crowded with obstacles that might well have caused even a daring man to halt. Nor did the arrival of the Sultan's firman place him in a much stronger position, for it was not long before another firman arrived appointing him to the Governorship of Salonica, whither he was instructed to repair without delay. This he refused to do, and being again supported by the Ulema and the people, sent presents and such well-devised explanations to the Sultan that he received in return yet another firman confirming his appointment as Pacha. Thenceforward his progress was unchecked, culminating in 1841 by obtaining from the Sultan the firman granting him the hereditary government of Egypt which is still the foundation of the authority of his successors.

His power once fairly established, Mahomed Ali paid but little heed to the interests of the people, and, in spite of the tears and protests of all classes, proceeded to abolish private property in land. This done, he next, by means of government monopolies and exorbitant taxation, practically took possession of all the produce of the land. With the aid of European experts, he at the same time did much to benefit the country by the extension of irrigation, the introduction of new and profitable crops and better methods of cultivation. From the progress thus made the people gained little advantage. Under the Pacha's administration they grew steadily poorer and poorer, and, though they were freed from many of the evils and vexations that had burthened their lives in the days of the Mamaluks, they had still to suffer from some of the old wrongs, and had, in addition, to bear some new ones. One of the first of the steps taken by the Pacha for the consolidation of his power had been the creation of an Egyptian army. Recruited by conscription, this was an innovation that excited universal indignation, increased by the fact that the army was based upon a European model. Almost the only benefit the reign of Mahomed Ali conferred upon the people was therefore the establishment of order. Under his vigorous rule men's lives and what little property was left to them were safer than they had been under either the Mamaluks or the French, and if the people had but little to enjoy they were, save for the exceptions I have named, allowed to enjoy it in their own way, and that to the Egyptian was a privilege that compensated him for much evil.

In 1848 Mahomed Ali, whose health had failed, fell into a state of dotage that rendered him quite incapable of attending to affairs, and his son Ibrahim Pacha was therefore placed in power, but dying two months later was succeeded by his nephew Abbass. The following year Mahomed Ali died, and was buried in the citadel of Cairo with gorgeous ceremony. But a few years before the eyes of all Europe had been watching his every move, now that the tragedy of his life was over, his death, as Talleyrand said, was "not an event, only a piece of news," but there were many, Europeans as well as natives, as we are told, who followed him to his last resting-place with deep regrets, and not a few who were moved to tears—a fact to be noted and remembered as in a large measure a key to the life-story of the man, for it shows that at bottom of all his sins and all his crimes the essential element of the man himself was good. The evil he had done was the outcome of false training and false teaching whence he derived false ideals and false ambitions, and with his vision thus disturbed, seeing all things distorted and out of just proportion, he naturally and inevitably erred from the paths of truth and justice by which real greatness is alone to be attained.

Cairo, the City of the Caliphs, beloved by tourists and artists, the home of a laughter and jest-loving people, is, to those who know its history, a city of ineffable sadness. Wherever one goes, in its crowded bazaars, through its lonely lanes, wherever one plants a foot or casts an eye, there is some sad recollection of the spot or of its vicinity to be recalled, but there are few, if any, overshadowed by a deeper pathos than that where the great Mahomed Ali lies in a dimly-lit corner of the great mosque built by himself, on the highest point of the citadel.

Abbass, the new ruler, was unlike his grandfather in many respects. Mahomed Ali, so far from being a bigot or fanatic, was lax in his views, an intense admirer of the civilisation of the West. Abbass has been praised for his tolerance by many writers, yet the fact is that it was but a part of his policy, and was in no way to be compared with the true tolerance of men like Ibrahim Bey, who so warmly protected and defended the Christians at the Mamaluk Dewan. He was, to some extent, both a bigot and a fanatic, adverse to the extension of European influence in the country and lacking in all the personal qualities that had enabled his grandfather to triumph over so many difficulties. Mahomed Ali, though he could be generous and liberal, and was lavish in spending money on his army and for the accomplishment of his own projects and purposes, was grasping in his demands upon the people and as ruthless as the Mamaluks in all his dealings with them. Abbass cared little for the army, had no grand schemes to promote, and finding the revenue amply sufficient for the administrative wants of the country and his personal needs, the people profited greatly from the relaxed strain he placed upon their resources. The benefit they thus derived from his rule was increased by his abolishing the Government monopolies and by other measures that at once encouraged trade and gave the people generally a larger share in the profits to be derived from their labours and enterprise. The great stain on the life of this man was his addiction to vice—a failing for which he paid the extreme penalty of his life, being assassinated in his own palace by two of his minions.