Kitabı oku: «Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day», sayfa 14

And as it was with the Christians of the country so it was with the French – whatever of hatred the people had for them was due not to religious fanaticism or bigotry but to the oppression they inflicted upon the people.

I have dwelt upon this point at the greater length that I am convinced of the importance of the European critics of Egypt and the Egyptians learning to look at this question from the true point of view. At the present day it is the commonly asserted belief of almost all the Europeans in the country that the Egyptians are a bigoted and fanatical race. I deny it entirely. I have travelled and lived among Moslems in more lands than one, among Kurds and Afghans, Indians and others, and I have never met a Moslem people not only so free from fanaticism but so lax, from the Moslem point of view, as the Egyptians. Nor must the reader forget two points that tend to show that the bitterness of the people towards the Christians was the result of political and not of religious animosity. These facts are that Moslems of whose orthodoxy there was no doubt were during the revolt and during the siege assaulted, ill-treated, and in more than one case killed, by the mob on the accusation of befriending or simply of being in sympathy with the French. The Sheikh El Sadat was one of those who had to suffer in this way, and almost all of the Sheikhs who had gone as a deputation to treat for peace during the siege. So, on the other hand, the Jews, who have always refrained from interfering in politics, and who have ever been studiously careful to avoid taking sides with any party or sect in the country, although they are the subject of far stronger personal and religious dislike than are the Christians, were never the object of direct attack from the people, though they, like the Moslems, on many occasions suffered when the mob broke out against the Christians. In the time of the French occupation the Harat el Yahoud, or Jews' Quarter, was situated, as it still is, off the Mousky, then the principal residence of the Franks and Christians, yet in the list that Gabarty gives of the quarters of the town that had been raided by the mob this is not included. All through the troubled days of the French occupation the Jews had to bear their share of the ills that fell upon all; but the people bore them no special hatred, had no special grievance against them, did not look upon them as their personal enemies, and thus they escaped the direct attacks that were made upon the Christians.

The hatred, then, with which the Egyptians had learned to regard the French was not the hatred of fanaticism and had but little reference to the question of religion. Had the French understood the people and been willing and able to rule them with due regard for their prejudices and desires, there was no reason why they should not have gained the goodwill, and with certain limitations, the loyalty of the people. It was not only possible for the French to have done this, but it would have been easier for them to do so than to follow the mad course they chose to adopt. The fact of the French being Christians, for as such the Egyptians regarded them, would have had but small weight if they had conceded to Moslem sentiment its reasonable demands. To the Egyptian mind the Mamaluks were not much better Moslems than the French might easily have been. This the French could not see, and not being able to see it, or to understand the people, they could find no other way to rule them but that which the Mamaluks had adopted – force. And it was with them as with every government that has ever existed or ever can exist, the admission that it is compelled to use force to rule any people whatever is a confession that the task of rightly ruling that people is beyond their strength, that it is one for which they are unfitted and one in which they never can succeed. It is a law of nature in the moral as in the physical world and one from which there is no escape – that no force can operate without creating resistance to its own action, and the greater the force the greater the resistance. A given force may for a time appear to crush all opposition, but if it could do so in reality it would be but to find itself exhausted and effete. Unable to understand either the people of Egypt or their history, the French could not see that while for centuries the rule of the country had been founded upon force, it had been maintained not by force but by the pliancy of its rulers. No one knew this better than the Mamaluk chiefs. These cared nothing for the people or their desires, and they never hesitated to drive them to the uttermost, but they knew equally well that there was a limit and, though they but yielded to conquer, they yielded when that limit was reached. Nor did they, like the French, waste their force in unprofitable directions or in exciting needless opposition, but devoted it wholly and solely to the attainment of their one great object – the procuring of the funds they needed.

In the East the shepherd goes before his flock; whither he leads they follow, and his dogs serve only to bring up the stragglers or hasten the steps of the laggards. It is much the same with the people. Caliphs, Sultans, Beys, and French may seem to be driving them, but in reality they are not being driven but led, led by perhaps unseen and unknown shepherds that are yet more potent for good or evil than any ruler that ever sat on an Eastern throne. Europeans cannot see this, yet every Eastern who has given the subject a moment's thought knows that it is so. As often as not the real leader and ruler of the people is himself unconscious of his power or position. It was so in the days before the revolt of Cairo. An open avowed leader the people would most probably have distrusted, but the almost silent man who said but little, who assumed no authority but rightly gauged the feelings stirring around him and knew how, by simple words, to influence the current of those feelings, could sway the people as he willed. The demagogue who cries aloud in the market-places, bidding men accept him as their guide and friend, obtains but a poor following. He may stir up latent feeling to action, but he cannot direct either the feeling or the action. So far as he can rightly interpret the feeling he may pose as the spokesman and leader of a party, but true leader he never is. Mahdis are for ever arising to preach, like Peter the Hermit, the glory and duty of a "Holy War," but among the people of the East they gain but poor success. The negro races flock to the standards of these men and have died in thousands for their sake, but the Eastern asks for a miracle before he will be convinced, and, holding aloof from the would-be guide, follows all unknowingly some other.

If the reader has followed me so far he will now have pretty clearly grasped the truth that the rule of the French in Egypt had proved an utter failure, and to some extent he will have seen why this was so. That failure was brought about by not one but many causes. Of these, besides those that I have already dealt with, there is one that I may speak of here.

I have shown in a previous chapter how, although the teachings of the Christian and Mahomedan religions are almost identical as to the duty of obedience to those in authority, the varying circumstances affecting the peoples of England and those of the East lead these to interpret and apply those teachings very differently. It is so with other matters. Christianity and Islam are at one in ranking Justice and Mercy as the greatest of the virtues. "The Lord thy God" is "a just God," but also "a merciful God" is the teaching of the Koran as well as of the Bible. It is the belief of the Moslem as well as of the Christian. But the European conception of justice is to the Moslem, and indeed to all Easterns, hopelessly imperfect, so imperfect that in their eyes it becomes injustice. One law for all, for high and low, rich and poor. That is the ideal of civilised Europe – an ideal that never has been and in all probability never will be accepted in the East. The man of high position who commits an offence should, says the West, be punished in the same way and in the same degree as an humbler man would be for the same offence. That, says the East, is just in theory but impossible in practice. And the East is right. In no conceivable case is it possible to accord to two men an exactly equal amount of punishment. Whether it be a sixpenny fine or the death penalty, every penalty inflicted affects the person upon whom it is inflicted precisely in proportion to facts and circumstances that it is not possible should be known to or weighed by his judge. That this is so is admitted by all, but in England and other countries men are content with an attempt at "justice" that almost wholly ignores this fact. Not so the Easterns. That one of the Ulema, a Pacha or any other person of position should be punished by a penalty such as might be inflicted upon any ordinary citizen is to the Eastern mind not justice but gross injustice.

But the difference in the Englishman's conception of justice and that of the Eastern lies even deeper than this. To the English mind the idea of justice is mainly associated with the administration of punishment to the guilty and with abstention from injustice in dealing with others. The Eastern, until he has acquired that tinge of European thought and sentiment that unconsciously yet constantly causes him to mislead Europeans as to what is and what is not Eastern thought on such subjects, but rarely connects the idea of punishment with that of justice. To him punishment is not the administration of justice but the administration of a deterrent. That as such it may be just or unjust he quite recognises, but the justice or injustice of a punishment is to his mind an incident and not an essential of the punishment, and the justice so often lauded in the East is not the justice of the courts but the personal quality that prevents a man wronging another or leads him when he has acted unjustly to admit his error and seek to remedy it.

And while the two peoples are thus apart in their interpretation of justice, they are still more widely so in the positions they assign to justice and mercy. The European, and perhaps especially the Englishman, places justice first and only allows mercy to come in a long way off. Not so the Eastern. To him mercy is first and justice second. That this should be so is a direct result of the conditions under which the two peoples have lived for many centuries. As all history shows, the races of Europe have always had a genius for and a tendency towards organised government. Whether we peruse the records of liberty-loving England or of thraldom-trodden Spain, of republican France, or of despotic Russia, in every European country we find the people regarding an organised government, a government acting in a prescribed manner upon a prescribed system, as a natural complement of existence as a nation. It is not so in the East. There the whole bent of opinion tends towards autocratic if not to pure despotic rule. The difference is due to various causes, but possibly to none more than this – that in Europe the community of interests binding individuals together and causing them to recognise each other as members of a group are territorial, limited chiefly and sometimes wholly by geographical boundaries, whereas in the East this community of interest rests almost entirely upon the religious distinctions that divide peoples living in the same countries. In Europe, though there have been religious wars, war has in the main been the result of the rivalries of peoples distinguished from each other by language, habits, and character. In the East religion has in general been the line of distinction. It has followed from this that in Europe the peoples have been and still are obliged to group themselves as nations, while in the East they group themselves by their religions. The European nation or community is therefore a secular body, and as such seeks a secular government, whereas the Eastern peoples are not nations so much as religious communities. To each an organised government is necessary for self-protection and internal adjustment. This the European is obliged to find in the organisation of a special governing body, while the Easterns find it ready to hand in the organisation of their Churches. Now in the organisation of a nation with regard to its internal affairs, justice is almost of necessity placed before mercy, whereas in that of a religion, mercy is exalted above justice. Hence a people like the English learn to look upon justice, or whatever near approach to it can be attained, as the greatest good to be sought for from their rulers and in their efforts to attain this end, like the political economists of whom Ruskin complained, forget the human equation, and that justice, however finely balanced by tale and weight of legal prescription, can never be more nor less than a failure, if it be not dominated by mercy. In Europe peoples have again and again revolted against the tyrants that have oppressed them that they might thereby secure justice and its complement liberty, and they could do this because there was no higher or conflicting interest to hold them back; but it has not been so in the East. There all the organisation that the peoples have needed for the administration of their internal affairs has always been found in the organisation of their religion, and whether the tyranny and oppression from which they have suffered from times immemorial afflicted them through the hands and acts of their co-religionists or from those of other and rival religions, the interests of their religion, and therefore of their fellows, demanded submission to such ills rather than a resistance that could not fail to injure that which they deemed the higher and better cause. And in the sufferings they were thus called upon to bear they naturally turned to their religion for consolation, and found it in their belief in the ineffable mercy of the Deity, and thus learning to look upon mercy as the highest attribute of God inevitably rank it as the noblest virtue in man. And to the Moslem the appreciation of mercy he thus acquires is enforced by the teaching of the Koran. The law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, is ordained to Moslems, but with the promise that to him who exacts less his forbearance shall be accounted as a charity and as such shall gain him a rich reward. To bridle one's anger, to forgive men and to intercede "with a good intercession" – these are virtues that are endlessly praised and commended in "The Book of God."

What a poor substitute for these is the "even-handed justice" that is the boast of our vaunted civilisation!

Is it necessary for me to say now that the price the French asked the people of Cairo to pay for the peace that had been accorded them, was to them a violation of all justice? Or need I point out at length that this incompatibility of ideals on the subjects of justice and mercy was one of the principal causes of the failure of the French to realise the anticipations with which they had entered the country, as it is still one of the causes that hold the East and West apart, and forms a never-resting cause of misunderstanding between all Orientals and Europeans. Unfortunately in this, as in other matters, the Oriental is too prone to keep his ideals as a standard whereby to judge the merits and failings of others, rather than as a guide for his own actions. It is one of the greatest of the Englishman's merits that he does not do this. He strives as best he may to realise his ideals, and in this it would be well indeed for the Egyptian to imitate him. With both people, as indeed with all others if we would judge them justly, we must, however, take account first of their ideals and next of the sincerity and earnestness with which they seek to bring these into practice.

CHAPTER XV
AN UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE

Boulac had fallen on the 14th of April, 1800. Exactly two months later, on the 14th of June, General Kleber was assassinated. He was taking a morning walk in the garden of General Dugua's house, when a young man, a Syrian, approached him as if to offer a petition, and before the unfortunate General could detect his purpose, struck him several blows in the breast with a dagger. The assassin was arrested soon after, and made a confession. Of his guilt there could be no doubt, but his confession being made under torture was of course perfectly worthless. In it he stated that he had been employed to commit the infamous deed by a high officer of the Turkish Army that Kleber had defeated at Materiah. That he was a Syrian, and that he had only been in Egypt for a few weeks, were facts that were easily established. The French believed, however, that he was encouraged if not instigated by Egyptians, and although there was absolutely nothing to suggest that this was the case, except perhaps their keen sense of the hatred with which they were regarded, they determined to discover all that could be discovered of the origin of the crime. The wretched prisoner was therefore handed over to the care of the Chief of the Police, a Greek of infamous character, a notorious evil-liver, detested and abhorred by all for his wanton cruelties, abominable vices, and utter depravity. Selected for the post he held as one whose unbridled and unconcealed hatred for the people of the country was a guarantee of his fidelity to the French, his selection is an all too eloquent testimony as to the real nature of the relations between the French and the Egyptians. No man viler, more depraved, or more despicable, could have been placed in a position such as that accorded to this villain – a position that practically placed him above and beyond all law and all restraint, and gave free scope to his inhumanity, his outrageous vices, and devilish passions. Like Oates, he delighted to seduce and betray his fellow-men; like Jeffreys, he rejoiced when sending them to prison, torture, or death; like the caitiff James, he revelled in witnessing their anguish and agonies. To this wretch Kleber's assassin was handed over, and by him almost all that could be done by torture or otherwise to induce the criminal to denounce others as his accomplices or abettors was tried. At length, when all other means had failed to accomplish the end at which he aimed, the wretch persuaded his miserable victim, by a promise of free pardon to himself, to give the names of some Sheikhs of the Azhar to whom, as he admitted, he had made known the purport of his visit to Cairo.

One of these Sheikhs, it was found, had already left the country, but the others were at once arrested. These admitted that they had been spoken to on the subject by the prisoner, but asserted, and as it would appear truly, that they had endeavoured to dissuade him from the commission of the crime, and, on finding that he persisted in his intention, had kept aloof from him; but while granting the full value of the plea the Sheikhs thus offered, it must be admitted that the French were justified, by all known law and custom, in sentencing them to death, as, had they denounced the Syrian's intention, there is no doubt but that his crime would have been effectually prevented.

The sentence passed upon the assassin does not admit of equal justification. Kleber, whatever his faults or errors as an administrator, or however harsh and faithless his treatment of the Egyptians had been, was a brave and gallant gentleman, a man of whom his countrymen were and are justly proud, and one who had endeared himself to all under his command, while in the position in which they then were the whole body of the French looked up to him as the only one from whom they could seek or obtain the leadership so essential to their almost desperate case. But with the fullest sympathy for the bitterness of spirit that must at the moment have oppressed the French, it is impossible to condone the sanction they accorded to the base treachery of their minion, the Chief of the Police, by whom the pardon he had promised the assassin, as the price to be paid him for giving up the names of the Sheikhs, was withdrawn immediately the names had been given, and without the slightest pretext being offered for this vile breach of faith. Nor can the sentence passed be regarded as otherwise than a brutal one, though it was not indeed more so than others that have been passed by nations and peoples claiming to represent the most advanced civilisation. It was that the prisoner's right hand should be cut off, that he should witness the execution of the Sheikhs, and that he should himself be impaled alive.

The execution of the condemned men was fixed to take place immediately after the funeral of the General, and it was wholly in vain that some of the Sheikhs and notables pleaded for a mitigation of the penalty. On the appointed day the prisoners were marched out to a rising ground on the route the General's funeral was to follow, and posted there, at the spot selected for the execution, they were compelled to view the mournful procession that, with all the pomp of a State ceremony, accompanied the General's remains to the temporary burial-ground in which they were to be laid. There, on the completion of the funeral rites, the sentences on the condemned men were carried out, and the Sheikhs having been beheaded the wretched assassin was impaled alive and left to linger in the most horrible anguish for over four hours.

A punishment such as this was not then, nor ever can be, other than purely and simply an act of vengeance. In the East especially it is but a perversion of terms to pretend that such penalties can be justified as deterrents. History proves conclusively that they have no such effect, except perhaps for the moment, but that they have the effect of hardening and brutalising the hearts of those they are supposed to terrify is certain. In the present case there was not even the slightest ground of excuse. The criminal was a foreigner, and it had been clearly proved at his trial that his crime had met with no encouragement or sympathy from the people of the country. The whole conduct of the people from the first arrival of the French had been sufficient to show that there was absolutely no reason to suspect them of any desire to repeat, in any form, the crime that this foreigner had committed. Three times "peace" had been declared in Cairo by the French, and three times the people – though on two occasions most unwillingly accepting the peace – had kept it loyally and with the most perfect and submissive good faith. In the revolt and the siege they had shown with what pleasure they could set themselves to the task of slaying the French, but peace once declared all ranks and grades of Frenchmen went about in perfect safety. The French complained that the people were ungrateful; but does it not seem that the people might have retorted that the French were infinitely more so?

There remains but little to be said of the French occupation. After the death of Kleber the command of the army devolved upon General Menou. As he had for some time professed himself a convert to Islam, and had married a woman of the country, it might have been thought that the change would have tended to promote better feelings between the two peoples. It proved otherwise. None of the Egyptians believed in the sincerity of the General's conversion, and it had therefore no other effect than to discredit the professions of sympathy for Islamic ideas that other Frenchmen made, and perhaps to raise hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

As a measure tending to conciliate French feeling, the Ulema had asked for and obtained permission to close the Azhar mosque, which, from its great extent and the straggling, irregular arrangement of its courts and their surrounding buildings, was of all others the place most capable of affording shelter to strangers visiting the town with evil intent. But the French were quite unable to appreciate the true meaning of this action, and, actuated by a vindictive spirit most unworthy of a civilised people, sought further vengeance for the crime of a foreigner upon the unhappy Egyptians. A heavy "contribution" was therefore exacted, and European and native Christians vied with each other in heaping insult and contumely upon the Moslems. Some steps were indeed taken by Menou that seem to have been intended to favour the Moslems and gain their support. Thus the Dewan was reorganised, and, for the first time under the French, was composed exclusively of Mahomedans, one French official only being appointed to assist at its meetings. In the Government service also Copts were largely replaced by Mahomedans – a step that exceedingly embittered the Copts – and the French were subjected to the taxes from which they had theretofore been free – a measure that excited their indignation. With scarcely an exception, the French were heartily sick of the country. All the enthusiasm by which they had at first been stimulated had vanished. They had arrived in Egypt, looking for a sojourn that should be a triumphal progress towards the attainment of great ideals and vast projects. It was to be the first step, as they had hoped, towards making France the Mistress of the World, but, save for the first victory over the Mamaluks, the story of their stay in the land was little else but one of disappointments, losses and vexations; for the suppression of the revolt, the routing of the Turkish Army, and the retaking of Cairo were not events upon which they could look with other than bitter feelings, since, although victories, all the circumstances surrounding them tarnished the little glory they might have possessed under happier conditions. But General Menou was not so weary or so hopeless as his countrymen; he still thought it possible to colonise the country and to establish French influence upon a safe basis.

It had been the blunder, or rather the weakness, of Bonaparte and Kleber, that they had not realised the truth Burke taught, that "The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first study of a statesman." Bonaparte had thought to win his way by wheedling, and, failing to do so, had turned to force. Kleber had had no other conception than that of "the iron hand," as we nowadays term it, and had not the tact to clothe it with the pretence of a glove. Menou seems to have sought to play the part of the old man in the fable, and try to please everybody, with the inevitable result of pleasing none. On the one hand, as we have just seen, he favoured the Moslems in some few respects, on the other he offended their keenest prejudices by allowing wine to be sold and drunk openly in the streets, while, encouraged by the protection granted them by the French, the lowest classes of the Christians and Mahomedans gave themselves up to an open practice of vice and immorality that had never before been permitted. This alone was a wanton outrage upon the sentiments of the whole of the respectable population, Christian as well as Mahomedan, that was sufficient to make the French hated and detested by all but the most debased – a class which in Egypt, even to-day, after a century of the nourishing protection of European civilisation, is infinitely smaller in proportion to the population than in any other country, except a few like Persia, that are almost entirely outside of or beyond that protection. Not that the French in Egypt by any means laid themselves open to a charge of profligacy. There seems no reason to believe that they did anything of the kind, but that which to them was entirely unobjectionable was to the Easterns, among whom they were dwelling, utterly abominable. Thus the drinking of wine in public, and the free intercourse of the two sexes in public places, however innocent to the French, were to the Egyptians something more than simply distasteful; and that they should be so is a matter not only of custom and habit, but one of climatic and other conditions which Europeans ignore. To the Moslem peoples these things are subject to the further objection that they are opposed to the teaching of their religion.

At length the day came for the French to go. The English and the Turks had brought their combined forces to bear, and not only was an English fleet once more off Alexandria, but Colonel Baird, with a strong force of Sepoy soldiers from India, had arrived by the Red Sea. For the French to have attempted to hold out against the enemy that was now at their door would have been an act of madness, but it was at least possible for them to ask and to obtain honourable terms; and these having been granted, the evacuation of the country was agreed upon, and the French, rejoiced at the prospect of once more returning to their beloved native land, for the second time during their stay prepared to quit a country to which so many bitter memories were attached. In June, 1801, just a year after the death of Kleber, the French garrison of Cairo capitulated, but Menou held out for some time longer, and only resigned himself to the inevitable on the 30th of August, and on the 18th of September sailed for Europe.

Thus ingloriously ended the great dream of a French Empire in the East. At Cairo nothing could exceed the joy of the people as they at last saw the now utterly hated and detested foreigners leaving. In their case it was eminently true that "the evil that men do lives after them." They had sown the seeds of a bitterness of feeling towards all Europeans, and of a mistrust of European civilisation, that still bear fruit and still retard the advancement of the country. It was the French occupation that proved the greatest difficulty and stumbling-block in the way of the English occupation, and for such a long time rendered the task that the English administrators had undertaken seem almost a forlorn hope. Every promise and pledge offered by the English was weighed in the scale of those made by Bonaparte and his successors. Every profession of respect for the institutions and religion of the country was interpreted by the recollection of the French cavalry stabled in the Azhar, and the tyrannies, vexations, and outrages upon their most cherished prejudices that the people had sustained under the French. It has been the custom to trace to the French occupation whatever advance the country has since made. In two ways only had it any lasting beneficial effect – it brought to the attention of the few men like Gabarty a keen sense of the great advantages of an orderly government, and a warm appreciation of the advance that science and learning had made in Europe, and it opened the way for the man who was to be the real founder and maker of the Egypt of to-day. These were the only two benefits that the French left behind them, and the greatest of these was quite unintentional and unforeseen. As to all else, the occupation left nothing but evil memories and evil influences behind it. It had lowered the moral standard of the lowest classes, had taught these to look upon vice and immorality from a new and more debasing point of view, and had almost wholly destroyed the controlling influence the Ulema and better classes had theretofore exercised upon them. European historians have never seen that this is so – that they should fail to see it is not surprising, since even the Europeans living in the country are incapable of perceiving it. The European's standard of morality is so different to that of the Eastern, and he is so fanatically attached to his own ideas that he cannot understand any one rejecting these, except from sheer perversity. For thousands of years the Egyptians have been accustomed to bathe freely in the Nile, to-day they are debarred at Cairo and elsewhere, lest the sight of a nude figure should shock some sensitively minded European who happens to look up from his, or her, perusal of the latest London society scandal. It is so much easier to see the mote than the beam!