Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

by Abdullah Browne

That was the purport, though not the words of the message, and never since the day on which the English troops had entered Cairo, just sixteen years before, had there been in the town or country anything like the excitement this intelligence induced. Everywhere, among all classes and nationalities, the words "Marchand" and "Fachoda" were on the lips of all.

It was natural enough that it should be so.

Over two years had passed away since news had been received in Cairo that a French expedition, under the command of a certain Captain Marchand, had started from Loango, on the West Coast of Africa, bound for the interior of the continent. Nothing was known as to the ultimate object or destination of this expedition, but as, from time to time, rumours of its progress reached the outer world, the suspicion that it was aiming at the Nile began to spread. When, therefore, the report that there were white men at Fachoda went down to Cairo, all Egypt jumped to the conclusion that these white men must be Marchand and his companions.

Only those in close touch with the life of the country at the time can form any idea of the intense eagerness with which the confirmation or contradiction of this rumour was awaited. That eagerness arose from the recognition of the fact that if Marchand were indeed at Fachoda, his presence there must inevitably bring France and England face to face for a struggle which, whether it should be carried on by force of arms or by might of words, must decide once for all which of the two Powers was thereafter to be pre-eminent in Egypt. The reactionary party was jubilant. Now, at last, the French would have to assert their rights and privileges, defend their honour and justify their claims; and how could they do aught of these things otherwise than by maintaining the position the gallant Marchand had gained? And how could they maintain that position without driving the English out of Egypt? And if some of the party were less confident than others in their anticipations of the answer that France would give to these questions, they were not less hopeful of the coming early discomfiture of the hated English. So hopeful were they, indeed, that the veriest stranger might have picked them out in the streets by the joyous air they wore.

By the Englishmen in Egypt, as by those elsewhere, the news was received as news of the greatest gravity. It was impossible to ignore the fact that the position was one of the most serious nature, and one from the difficulties of which there was no possible escape except by war or a happy and scarcely to be hoped for combination of diplomatic skill and generous consideration on the part of each of the two rivals. For Marchand himself the greatest sympathy was felt. His presence at Fachoda was the practical realisation of a daring and almost hopeless ambition, proving that he possessed in the highest degree those lofty qualities of the best of his race, the courage, vigour, enterprise, that in spite of all obstacles have always kept alive among us something of a spirit of comradeship for our oft-time ally and oft-time foe. We laugh, now and then, freely enough at our neighbour across the Channel, but we respect him all the same, for no one knows better—nor, indeed, so well as we—the sterling qualities of his race. And Marchand's feat was one that placed him in the foremost rank of men of fearless heart and daring action, and entitled him to a place beside our own Stanley as a dashing and heroic pioneer.

Gladly, however, as we should have seen Marchand reap the full fruit of his long, toilsome, and perilous journey, we could not, with justice to either Egypt or ourselves, yield it to him. Our aims were alike. His magnificent march through the unknown dangers of some of the wildest parts of Africa, the campaign we had just brought to a successful and triumphant conclusion, were alike efforts to win the same prize—the possession of the Egyptian Soudan. We could not both have it. We could not share it. It must go to either France or Egypt. One or the other must surrender the prize so nearly within its unquestioned grasp. We could only be generous to Marchand and France by being disloyal to Egypt and ourselves.

There is no need to repeat here the story of the negotiations that followed. That belongs, indeed, not to the story of Egypt, but to that of England or France; for Egypt by itself could no more have contended with France for the possession of the Soudan than it could have regained it without the aid of England. The question, therefore, was one between England and France; and, happily for all, the mutual goodwill of the two nations so tempered their discussion of the interests and claims involved, that war was averted and the French consented to withdraw from the Soudan. But the course of the negotiations was necessarily slow. It demanded little less than heroic fortitude on the part of the French Government to give a decision that it well knew could not fail to be extremely unpopular, and some weeks therefore elapsed before the decision could be announced and the order issued to Marchand for his retirement from Fachoda.

Meanwhile it was quite natural that to the amateur politicians of Egypt the problem should seem to be unsolvable save by an appeal to the sword. To the educated Egyptian especially this appeared the one possible solution. Unable to comprehend rivalry without enmity, or to see in an open opponent anything but a foe to be crushed at any cost, they never dreamed that England and France could both approach the subject in a conciliatory spirit, and it is a striking illustration of the attitude they took that they discussed the question solely and entirely as one between England and France. Scarcely anywhere was a word to be heard from the natives as to the claims of their own country, or the least recognition of the fact that it was Egyptian and not English interests that were at stake. The truth is that at the moment the only question in which the Egyptian took the smallest interest was the one whether England or France was in the future to control the destiny of the country. There was much talk of liberty, of independence, but it is doubtful if even the most sincere looked upon all this as anything more than a phase of the anti-English agitation. Assuredly there was not a man in the country who did not know and believe, however reluctant he might be to admit it, that Egypt had, and could have, no other future before it than one dominated by some foreign Power or Powers. That the independence they talked of, and that of which they were as unceasingly dreaming, were very different things no one more thoroughly recognised than they themselves. And though the "Patriot" politicians never said so, and probably never realised that it was so, the one real objection they had to the presence of the English in the country was the fact that they themselves were out of power and hopelessly incapable of attaining it so long as English influence should prevail. This was particularly the case of the so-called "Turkish" party, which was in much the same position as that of the Protestant Ascendancy party in Ireland after the Union. Unlike that party, however, they had one hope—that the rivalry of the European Powers might afford them an opportunity of regaining something, if not all, of their lost prestige and power; and, unlike that party, being bound by no ties of loyalty or blood to the Power that wounded their susceptibilities, or to the people of the country, they cared for nothing but the gratification of their own ambitions. Towards the English, therefore, their feeling was one of invincible hatred; towards Egypt and the Egyptians of utter indifference; towards France one of hopefulness, such as the Irish insurgents had turned towards the same country while yet Bonaparte was on his way to Alexandria. Fachoda was consequently to these what Killala had been to the Irish, and Marchand another Humbert. The parallel is completed by the entire lack of support the two daring adventurers met with, and by the absolute frustration of all their hopes. It is a curious coincidence that of the two events thus compared, the former, which cannot now be regarded as anything but the knell of French influence in Egypt, should find its parallel in an event taking place in the very year and month in which Bonaparte had struck the first blow in favour of French ascendancy in the land of the Pharaohs. Had the members of the anti-English party been skilled in history, the parallel might have seemed to them an omen of disaster. As it was they had but the single fact of Marchand's presence at Fachoda to consider, and most earnestly they prayed that it might prove the downfall of English influence in Egypt.

How, apart from the classes I have spoken of, the great body of the people thought was not so evident, but it is none the less certain. This vast, patient mass of humanity had for years been hearing, and was still daily hearing, that the English had no other object and no other ambition in Egypt than that of self-aggrandisement. They were taught by the Press, the Pachas, and the Ulema that they were being despoiled and downtrodden by the hated feringhee, but if they listened silently and apparently approvingly, they could not but feel that it was not so. Of what the English were doing or not doing they really knew almost nothing. Everything that was done was done in the name of the Khedive. When it was good, he, and he alone, got the credit; when it was bad, or such as they could be persuaded to believe was bad, it was invariably attributed to the "tyranny" of Lord Cromer and the "malice" of the English. All that the peasantry and the people generally knew for certain was that on the whole they were satisfied with things as they were. The English might be ruining the country and enslaving the people, but each man felt and knew that whatever they were doing, he himself, the individual, was personally better off than he had ever been before. Almost all the evils that had most oppressed him, the corvée, the korbag, the endless fear of the tax-collector, of the officials of all grades, and the perpetual uncertainty as to what new trials another day might bring him—all these and other evils had either disappeared or had been mitigated in a degree, of which he was fully conscious. He could not understand it, and felt indeed as the man who fell among thieves must have felt towards the Good Samaritan. The one he had been taught to despise and revile as an incarnation of evil had come to him as a benefactor. And against the solid and invaluable advantages that the people were conscious of there was no set-off save their rooted aversion to non-Moslem control, while this again was counterbalanced by the fear that any further change might, and most probably would, be a change for the worse. But ages of oppression have engrafted upon these people a habit of the utmost reticence in the expression of their thoughts—a reticence so deep, so perfect, that no man among them ever wholly unburthens his soul to another, not to his nearest kin, much less to a stranger. Whatever thoughts they uttered were consequently but the echoes of those which, so far as they could judge, were most likely to keep them in favour with those immediately around and above them. It is not surprising, therefore, that the English in Egypt could learn nothing of their real thoughts or that they regarded the people as ungrateful and unappreciative. But if, of necessity, the English failed, as in the East they ever do fail, to understand the people, those who were working in the districts in close daily touch with them could see by incontestable and constantly growing signs that they were developing an absolute confidence in the Englishman's love of justice and in the reality of his desire to benefit the people, and clear-minded Anglo-Egyptians were beginning to see, as the wisest Anglo-Indians have long since seen in India, that these two characteristics are the battalions that best buttress the might of England in the East, for from Cairo to Calcutta the peoples sum up what they regard as the typical Englishman almost in the words of the Eton boy—"He is a beast, but he is a just beast."

Nor was it only among the peasantry and those classes of the people who derived most benefit from the presence of the English that this feeling prevailed. Of all classes in the country the "effendis," the small officials, were those who gained the least and suffered the most from the English occupation. From petty tyrants they had been degraded to mere quill-drivers. Their service no longer opened to them vistas of possible elevation to high places, no longer brought them the servile submission they had in the old days been able to extort from the people in general. They could no longer, more or less openly, enhance their incomes by selling their favour or by other means that had formerly made their posts valuable, nor could they practise or benefit from the nepotism and favouritism that had been their prerogative. They, of all classes, had in the past been the least prejudicially affected by the rise or fall of Governments or rulers, and suffered least of all from the tyranny and cruelty that wrecked the lives of others, and they, of all, gained almost absolutely nothing from the benefits that under the English were already enriching the classes above and below them. But of all classes of the people probably none has been more misunderstood or more misjudged than this. Amidst all that has been written of Egypt and its peoples nowhere do we once find a suggestion that this class has ever been anything but a greedy, grasping, servile pack of bribe-seeking, torture-using, petty tyrants. That such a description was too often and too generally a just one cannot be denied, but we must remember the circumstances in which these men were placed. For the most part younger and more or less penniless sons of fathers too poor or too uninfluential to give them a fair position, they were invariably crippled at their start in life by want of money and their complete dependence upon the favour of their immediate superiors. The first lesson taught them in their new career was to bend to the esprit de corps which ruled the official life of those days, that is to say, to recognise the value of their positions as these were seen and valued by their fellows, to look upon the superior officials as patterns to be followed and imitated without question in all things. What wonder if the young official bowed to the inevitable, and learning as his second lesson that taught by Iago, "Put money in thy purse," and knowing that resistance or remonstrance could only result in his being thrown aside and plunged in want and misery, yielded, whatever protests his better nature may have been inclined to make, and so became such as he has so often been painted? And as time went on, with every step he made onward in his official career he was plunged deeper and deeper in the mire of the necessity that swamped every good or honest aspiration he might have had, for as he progressed step by step so the claims upon his purse rose steadily and the demands upon his services increased. It was then, and still is, the custom of the impecunious Egyptian to settle himself as a dependent upon some of his well-to-do relations, and thus the rising official had, in general, not only his own family to support but a troop of indigent relatives of his own and of his wife or wives' families; and thus as he advanced, if his increased influence enabled him to gain a larger income from bribes and commissions, it doubled and redoubled his expenses and compelled him, in his turn, to pay larger bribes. What result could such a system bring about other than the corruption of the whole service? Yet, atrocious as were the consequences, those who have criticised this class have been unjust to them. It has invariably been forgotten that the abominable corruption that existed in Egypt up to the purification of the Government services by the English was not only not of necessity the result of the true character of the people, but that it might have existed in absolute opposition to that character. None the less, I am convinced that this is the truth, and that the fact that it is so has been one of the most potent influences in facilitating the work of reform that has been and is being accomplished, for as soon as this much-abused class had discovered that under English control they might look for a fair wage according to their rank, feel secure in the possession of their pay, and free from the exactions and oppressions of their superiors, they began to settle down contentedly under the new conditions, and accepted it as a gain that they were no longer subject to the old necessity for acquiring wealth as rapidly as possible that they might satisfy the greed of those above by despoiling those beneath them. This release from the never-ceasing cares and worries that were inseparable from the old system was perhaps the one direction in which the small officials felt themselves benefited by the English occupation. In the main, therefore, they were content with their lot, and had no desire for any change. The continuance of the occupation would ensure them practically all the conditions that made life most enjoyable to them and gave them all the liberty they cared for, and they could look for no improvement as a likely or even possible result of any alteration. They knew, too, how perfectly futile it was to hope that Egypt would ever be able to free herself from European or Christian interference, and though they, not less earnestly nor less sincerely than any of their countrymen, deplored the fact, they had the sense to see that whether that interference was exercised through a visible occupation of the country, or simply through diplomatic channels, the eventual result must be the same, so far as Moslem or Egyptian independence was concerned.