England and the Orléans Monarchy

by John Hall

The Sultan, Mahmud II., had always been keenly alive to the necessity of remedying the decrepit condition of his Empire. But only a Peter the Great could have eradicated effectually the many evils from which Turkey was suffering, and Mahmud was merely an Oriental despot. All through his reign, however, he set himself resolutely to destroy the almost independent power which some of his Pashas had begun to assume over the provinces which they governed. He imposed the European dress upon his ministers and officials, he introduced the French system of drill into his army, and he exterminated the janissaries, when they rebelled against his innovations. Even at a time of profound peace reforms of this superficial character could have effected little real improvement. Under the actual conditions under which they were carried out they proved a cause of anarchy and a further source of weakness to the State.

In 1821 the Sublime Porte was called upon to deal at the same time with the rebellion of Ali, the celebrated “Lion of Janina,” and with the more serious national rising of the Greeks. After the struggle in the Morea had been carried on for three years, with ruthless barbarity on both sides, the Sultan was reluctantly compelled to invoke the aid of his too powerful vassal, the Pasha of Egypt. The intervention of the well-equipped fleet of Mehemet Ali deprived the Greeks of the sea power, which had been the secret of their success. Nevertheless, Ibrahim’s invasion of the Morea in 1825, by compelling the Powers to interfere, gave Greece her independence. The romantic episodes of the struggle, the classic memories with which the theatre of war was associated, had gained for the insurgents the popular sympathies of the western nations. The philhellenism of the French and English people gradually drove Villèle[269] and Canning to concert measures for terminating the conflict with Nicholas, whose subjects were eager to strike a blow on behalf of their co-religionists.

Negotiations proceeded slowly, but, on July 6, 1827, Great Britain, France and Russia bound themselves by treaty to obtain the autonomy of the Morea. Moreover, in a secret article, it was provided that an armistice was to be proposed to both sides to be enforced by such means as might “suggest themselves to the prudence of the High Contracting Parties.” Three months later, on October 20, the allied fleets of the three Christian Powers, under the command of Codrington, the senior admiral, were face to face with the Mussulman armada in the Bay of Navarino. Immediate hostilities were probably not intended, but a dispute about the position of a fire-ship led to an exchange of shots. Before nightfall the “untoward event” had come to pass—the Turkish and Egyptian fleets had been destroyed completely.

Mahmud in his fury proclaimed a holy war, and declared null and void the convention of Akkerman, which he had recently concluded with Russia for the settlement of certain points, long in dispute between the two Powers. Canning was dead and Wellington was determined to abstain rigidly from anything in the nature of hostile action against Turkey. Nevertheless, under the conditions which had been created by Canning’s departure from the traditional policy of his party, he could do nothing to prevent Nicholas from appealing to the last argument of princes. On May 6, 1828, the Russians crossed the Pruth and the war began, which British and Austrian diplomacy had always striven to avert. The Turks, however, in a struggle with their hereditary foes displayed unexpected powers of resistance, and it was not until September 14, 1829, when Constantinople appeared to lie at the mercy of the invaders, that peace was concluded at Adrianople.

In accordance with his promises to the Powers, Nicholas had exacted no cession of territory in Europe. But Turkey had been compelled to grant a practical independence to the Danubian principalities, to pay a heavy war indemnity and to surrender to Russia Anapi and Poti on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Moreover, the Sultan was forced to acknowledge the complete independence of Greece, which was placed under the guarantee of Great Britain, France and Russia. The loss of the Morea was a serious blow to the Porte. Not only was the Turkish navy deprived of its finest recruiting ground, but the countenance given by the Powers to the rising of the Greeks necessarily had a most disturbing effect upon all the Christian subjects of the Sultan.

Whilst the power of the Sultan was thus sensibly diminished, Mehemet Ali, who had taken no part in the Russian war, was preparing to avail himself of the embarrassed condition of the Empire for the prosecution of his own designs. This remarkable man was born at Cawala, a small seaport town in Roumelia, in 1769, the year which gave birth to Napoleon Bonaparte and to Wellington. His father was a yeoman farmer and he himself, in early life, was a small trader in tobacco. In 1798, however, Bonaparte’s descent upon Egypt gave him his opportunity. Young Ali sailed for the country in which he was so rapidly to acquire fame, in the rank of second-in-command to a regiment of Bashi-Bazouks. In the troublous times which followed, his military talents and his statesmanlike qualities soon brought him into prominence. In 1804, the sheikhs of Cairo elected him Pasha, and, two years later, a, firman of the Sultan confirmed their selection. The last obstacle to his complete ascendency over Egypt was removed, on March 1, 1811, by the terrible affair known as the massacre of the Mamelukes. The Beys and chiefs, to the number of 470, were invited to witness the ceremony of investing his second son with the command of the army destined for operations against the Wahabites. These men versed in all the wiles and stratagems of eastern politics complied, and walked blindly into the trap set for them by one who, they must have known, was their deadly enemy. On leaving the citadel of Cairo they were relentlessly shot down by a picked body of the Pasha’s Albanian troops, at a point where the road becomes a narrow winding pathway cut out of the rock. Alone Emin Bey, by blindfolding his horse and by forcing him through a gap and down a high, precipitous bank, succeeded in escaping from the scene of slaughter.[270]

During the next few years Mehemet Ali won a high reputation in the Moslem world by his wars against the Wahabites, and by his deliverance of the Holy Cities of Medina and Mecca from these enemies of the true faith. He had always entertained a great liking and admiration for Europeans, and his experience of French and English troops had impressed him with the superiority of western over eastern methods. As early as 1803 he had begun to build up a fleet, and with the assistance of Colonel Sèves, known in Egypt as Soliman Pasha, a former aide-de-camp of Marshal Ney, he hoped to obtain an army trained and disciplined on a European model. His efforts had been so far crowned with success, that, but for the intervention of the Powers, his son Ibrahim would, unquestionably, have crushed the Greek rebellion.

Mehemet Ali’s curious experiment in state socialism can be discussed more conveniently later on. Suffice it to say that, unsound as was his economic system, and destined as it was largely to contribute to his ultimate undoing, it, for a time, furnished him with ample funds for the prosecution of his ambitious schemes. By nature he appears to have been rather a kind-hearted than a cruel man. To some extent, without doubt, he was an oppressor of the people, yet at the same time he constantly protected them from the ill-treatment and exactions of his officials. But, although he was too large-minded to find any satisfaction in useless tyranny, when he conceived that reasons of state called for their application, he would resort unhesitatingly to the most ruthless measures.[271] In passing judgment on Mehemet Ali, however, it must always be remembered that he was an altogether illiterate man, who had only taught himself to read in middle life by dint of great perseverance. Nor should it be forgotten that Egypt, when he assumed the supreme control, was in a state of confusion and anarchy almost impossible to realize.

It was not loyalty which had prompted Mehemet Ali to assist the Porte to crush the Greek insurrection. In 1822 he had obtained the island of Crete from the Sultan, and the Morea and the pashalics of Syria and Damascus were to have been his rewards in 1825. The intervention of the Powers had deprived him of the Morea, which he had always regarded as one of the gates of Constantinople. After the Russo-Turkish war, however, he felt confident of his ability to take forcible possession of Syria, the eastern avenue of approach to the Imperial city. A quarrel with Abdullah Pasha of Acre furnished him with an excuse for setting his army and his fleet in motion. On November 1, 1831, a force of about 10,000 Egyptians, under Ibrahim, entered Syria and laid siege to the fortress of Saint-Jean d’Acre.