The Massacre.
"I took some trouble to investigate the causes which led to the horrible massacre of June 15, 1858. This is far from being an old tale of times which will not return; it is an example of what may occur any day in the present excited state of the Moslem world. Moreover, the conditions under which it occurred are precisely those of the present moment, and an ugly symptom has just appeared.[7] The village moplah (Malabar Moslem), who murdered Mr. Conolly, has been allowed to escape from surveillance at Jeddah, to embark at Líth, and probably to return to India viâ Makalla in Hadramant. But as popular memory in England is short upon such subjects, it is necessary to give a résumé of the facts.
"The innovation of appointing European Consuls to Jeddah, the 'Gate of the Holy City,' was resented by the Moslems, both on the grounds of religion and of private interests, especially when protected foreign subjects began to absorb the greater parts of the commerce. Several ballons d'essai were launched. In 1848 an attempt was made to assassinate, near the Medinah Gate, M. Fulgence Fresnel, the famous Arabist, who was often consulted upon questions of casuistry by the D.D.'s of Mecca. The criminal was saved by a certain Abdullah Muhtásib, a Fellah of Lower Egypt, who began life as a baker, and who rose to be farmer of the octroi and Chief of the Police; thus being able to bribe and bully à discretion. In 1849, Mr. Consul Ogilvie was openly insulted in the bazar, and obtained no redress. During my first visit to Jeddah, Mr. Consul Cole had avoided all troubles by his firmness and conciliatory manners; but, after his departure, the so-called 'War of the Sherífs' (1854) suggested a grand opportunity for despoiling the Christians. Abdullah Muhtásib again appeared as the villain of the play. He was, however, arrested, and exiled to Masáwwah by the Wali of the Hejaz, Namik Pasha.
"In 1856 Abdullah Muhtásib returned triumphant from his exile, and the Sepoy war of 1857 once more offered him a tempting opportunity. Actively assisted by his son, he brought into the plot the Kadi (Abd el Kadir Effendi), the Sayyid el Amúli, the Shaykh Bagafur, Abdullah Bakarum, and the wealthy merchant Yusuf Banaji. Presently, in June, 1858, during the height of the pilgrimage, it became known that Captain Pullen, H.M.S. Cyclops, intended to carry off the Irania, an English ship upon which Turkish colours had been hoisted. Abdullah Muhtásib and his friends met at the Custom-house café, and sat, en permanence, to direct the issue of their conspiracy. At two p.m. on June 15, the ship was worked out, the boats of the Cyclops left, and the coast was clear.
"Violent harangues in the bazar roused the cry of 'Death to the Infidel!' The plot burst like a barrel of gunpowder, and at six p.m. the massacre began. The Sayyid el Amúli took charge of Mr. Page, whom he beheaded with his own hand; the body was thrown into the streets to be hacked to pieces by the mob; the house was plundered, and the flagstaff was torn up. M. Sabatier, however, is in error when he reports that the English dragoman and kawwás were murdered: one died lately, and the other, a very old man, is still living.
"Meanwhile, two bands of ruffians attacked the other objects of their hate. One rushed to the French Consulate, and broke in the doors when they were closed by the kawwás. Madame Eveillard was first stabbed, and then her husband was cut down, despite the heroic defence of the daughter, Mdlle. Elsie, who, after seizing one of the chief murderers by the beard, and severely biting his arm, was wounded by a yataghan in the face. She and the lady's-maid, saved by the tardy arrival of the kaimmakám (commandant) and two Government kawwáses, were taken from the blood-bespattered home to a Turkish house. Monsieur Emérat,[8] the Chancellor, after bravely fighting for fifteen minutes, was preserved in the same way, and, sabred in three places, was led by his faithful Algerian, Haji Mahommed, to the quarters of Hasan Bey, commanding the artillery. M. de Lesseps was, therefore, misinformed about Mdlle. Eveillard saving herself by drawing the cushions of the divan over her body, and by simulating death whilst the murderers slashed at her legs. He says nothing of the kaimmakám, and he attributes the honour of saving the two lives to a negro boy and the old Algerine soldier.[9] The flagstaff was torn down, the tricolour trampled upon, and the Consulate given over to plunder.
"The other band rushed to the house of Sabá Mascondi, the richest of the Greek merchants, and therefore the most obnoxious of all the Christians. My husband well remembers this amiable and inoffensive man. He had been repeatedly warned, but he refused to believe a massacre possible till he and his party, some twenty men, mostly from Lemnos, met one evening. At length, when it was reported that the Consulates were being pillaged, three of them went out to inquire. Meanwhile the armed mob rushed in, and instantly cut down eight; the rest jumping out of the windows, and flying over the terraces and down the street, to reach the sea. Poor Sabá veiled his head, and also tried to escape. M. Sabatier heard two accounts of his death: one was that he was killed in the house of the English dragoman (an error); the other, that he was recognized in his rude disguise by the son of Abdullah Muhtásib, who blew out his brains with a pistol. This is a fact.
"The French Consul-General also relates that the Cyclops, anchored only three miles off, perceiving a tumult in the town, armed her boats and sent them to find out the cause; that the crews were fired upon, and that they returned, without further action, to their ship. It is hard to believe this. A few shells thrown into Jeddah would have cleared every street in half an hour. No justification was wanted for resenting so gross an insult, and instant measures might have saved some unhappy lives. But in those days we were still under the glamour of that most unfortunate Crimean War, and modern England does not, as a rule, encourage her officers to incur any manner of responsibility.
"The first act of retribution was on the early morning of July 25, when the Cyclops, at the distance of twenty-five hundred yards, bombarded Jeddah for two hours. This was repeated till noon on the 26th, when the new Governor-General, Namik Pasha, arrived. The people, of course, evacuated the town; a few houses were injured, a minaret was knocked crooked, and some fifteen boats were destroyed.
"Presently France, who, whatever may have been her sins of omission and commission, has ever shown a noble jealousy of her national honour, determined not to be played with after this fashion; and she sent, not a 'person of rank,' but M. Sabatier, the fittest head and hand for the work. The inapt and treacherous politic of the Porte on this occasion bears a fraternal resemblance to her manœuvres adopted after the massacre of Damascus (1860), with this difference: at Beyrout there was no Sabatier, but there was a certain trickster of the first order, Fuad Pasha, whose reckless ambition had caused the catastrophe. The Sultan appointed, as his Commissioner, one Ismail Pasha, who hastened off to the Hejaz, and, in concert with the feeble and negligent Namik Pasha, put to death half a dozen poor devils, complied a voluminous Mazbatah (procès verbale), and hurried back to Constantinople with thirty-nine 'compromised' individuals. Heavy bribes had induced him to estimate the damage done to Christian property at twenty thousand francs. 'Il était difficile de faire associer les consuls de France et d'Angleterre à meilleur marché,' is M. Sabatier's only comment upon this part of the proceeding.