Cuba under siege – how to defend the revolution

Preface of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. This is a Librivox recording, all Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Ipagonzales. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today, by Haji A. Brown. Preface Every year's of passing, I first can see the idea of writing his book, but just an autumn till about two years together, I was able to find time to put together, a first row of outlines to form I wish it to take. In the interval I've been obliged from time to time to lay aside altogether, and, as there are most favourable signs, I have never had more than a few hours a week to devote to it. I had just completed my head intended to be the last chapter, when I then secure that obliged me to write it, and that I met you so fitly, I waited to issue if those events. Esteberg-Nerstharnsib is at best, but in my outline, a large volume than this might easily be written upon each of several of the subjects. I've but glance at, yet I hope I have succeeded in giving a connected and intelligible sketch, and one sufficient for the attainment of the cheap object I have had in view, that are representing the description as he really is, to the many who, whether living Egypt, or out of it, have but few and in perfect opportunities of learning to understand him. For over the past few years I have given all I have had to give, for the promotion of two objects, first that pan is the Mism. We try to conceive to be the true interest of the Islamic well, and secondly, to develop and a friend of relations between the Muslims of the East and the Rijem-Pah. How much how little I have been able to accomplish to also fulfil my aim to disimpossible who it's estimate, but from boyhood I have had an earnest fate in a belief that right and truth, Mism, Dey and prevail, and that he who acts for this, or for what he honestly believes just to be, never works in vain. Knowing the Egyptian as I know him, I can have a think that he is greatly misunderstood, and by those who are sincere anxious to befriend him, his faults and his failings are to be found at large in almost any of the scores at books that have of late years been written about him and his country, but, though not a few, have given him credit for self his more salient good points, yet nor that I have seen have shown any just appreciation of him, as he really is. Cairo, May 1907 The End of Preface It was the 23rd of June, 1898. The day in Cairo had been unusually hot and oppressive, but as the sun went down, a cool wind from the north came blowing softly over the city. I was then living at a little corner of the old town still wholly untouched by the ruthless hand of the reform, that, in every other part, was busy marring with modern improvements, the old-time charm of the city of the Caliphs. As midnight approached, I went up on the roof to enjoy the cool freshness and quiet of the night, and the stillness was almost unbroken. Now and then, in the narrow lanes below, the watchmen, who in their drab-colored coats and with long staffs and lanterns in their hands, made one think of old London, and the days of Dogbury, called to one another, or challenged some belated passerby. And at times a murmuring echo told of the restless traffic and turbulent life yet stirring, the carriage crowded streets of the European quarters of the town. But otherwise the silence was undisturbed. As I stood there, leaning on the parapet of the roof, my thoughts wandered back to the night, just one hundred years before. The 23rd of June, 1798. When possibly, some wakeful citizen had stood, perhaps on the very spot on which I was then standing, and gazed upon the very scene, the same limited range of house tops and sidewalls that was around me. That distant night is one of which the historians of the country make no mention, and yet it is one of most worthy of note, as having been at once one of the most peaceful, and one of the most memorable Cairo has ever known. Peaceful, for, when not lured from his slumbers by one of the night-quenching festivals he so dearly loves, the Cairene is an early and sound sleeper. And being then, as now, blessed was an easygoing conscious, unbounded faith, in the beneficence of destiny, we may be certain that on that night he slept the sleep of the just man who was weary. Nor was that night less memorable than peaceful, for little as he could foresee it, it was the last for over a century of time on which the Cairene was to sleep so free from care or thought of the moral. For while the city slumbered, away in the villages on the banks of the Nile, sleepers were being unwantedly awakened and dismayed by the sounds of horsemen, hurrying through the night with the rushing haste of men who are bearers of tidings of life and death. Onward, onward, they came, these messengers of the night, weary, with their long, forced ride from Alexandria, the city of the sea, which they had left, they before. Onward, onward, as rapidly as they could press forward the steeds, that, as one after another failed, were replaced by others, seized from the nearest stables for the service of the state. Onward, and onward, on their trying ride, spreading as they went, the news they bore, news that murdered the sleep of those who heard it, and flung a pall of panic fear over the land. They were still on the road when the Cairenes, rising, as all good inhabitants should, with the first dawn of day, proceeded to the duties of the morning with the leisurely diligence that is one of their characteristics. But long before midday the messengers had discharged their task, and the faithful news they had brought was being discussed throughout the town. It was news that, to the Cairen, was fraught with most dioriful possibilities, for it was news that a fleet of English ships of war had arrived at Alexandria, and that the governor of the town, feeling utterly incapable with the scanty resources at his disposal, of offering an effective resistance to a hostile landing, had sent to beg for immediate assistance in men and munitions of war. Many and fervent were the prayers said in the mosques that day, and loud and deep were the inathemas launched against the foreigner who was at their gates. It is not surprising that it should be so, for, of all evils he could imagine, a foreign invasion was to the Cairen, as to the people of Egypt generally, one of the most suggestive of personal loss and misery. Exactly 100 years had passed since that day, and the dying hours of that century of time left the Egyptian, as its opening hours had found him distrustful of the English, rejecting their friendship, and cursing them as foes. That it should have been thus, is one of the problems that perplex those who attempt to know or understand the Egyptian. As I thought of these things, it seemed to me that, living as I then was among the most conservative class of the people, the class that still prides itself on living the life of its fathers and grandfather's lead, and holds all things foreign to be abominations. And yet meeting from day to day with the modern, half-Europeanized citizens, and being myself almost an oriental in thought and sympathy, I could read the story of that 100 years and comprehend the feelings of the people through all its incidents, better perhaps than any other European, and that by sketching the history of that century as it appears to me, I might help others to understand the people and their history better, and thus aid in promoting the mutual goodwill, that is as essential to the interests of the Egyptian himself, as to those of the great army of foreigners who are dwellers in his hospitable land. As told by the writers of today, the history of Egypt extends over nearly 7,000 years, three-score and tenth centuries, just one for every year allotted by the psalmist to man as the period of his life. But of all that great stretch of time, the hundred and odd years lying between the fateful 23rd of June in 1798 and the present day. Although unfortunately the materials available for a study of it are scanned and for the most part unreliable, have more of human interest as a chapter in the history of mankind than all the long ages that preceded it. Yet, if the reader would rightly comprehend the lesson of this period, he must grasp the fact that in a very full and ample sense all history is a part of one, nay is but one and the same story written in different characters. How utterly unlike in all externals are the gospels written in the Latin, Greek, Arabic, Nagri or Chinese characters and languages. But the essence and the spirit of all these versions are the same. So it is with the histories of man and nations. The stories of England, France, Spain, India, Egypt. How different? And yet in all that is the final essential of true history, the story of man's combat with his surroundings, the same. It is so because in the last analysis all men are the same, like the ocean. His sea in no showing the same. His sea and the same, Nithal showing. Scattered in the deserts of Persia, the traveler comes upon isolated villages where in men and women are born, grow up, marry, begot families, and die, and never once pass beyond the mirage haunted horizons of their little oasis. With world in search of circling ideas and ambitions, the traveler thinks of the mad maelstrom of life in the crowded cities of the west, and wonders that men can be so different and still be men, and yet more so, that between himself and these Persians of the desert, drifting through life in a daily round that never changes, never varies, there should be anything in common. And the wonder is, not that they have the same shape and form as he, that they can cry with shy-lock, if you prick us, do we not bleed, if you poison us, do we not die? All that is as nothing, since it lifts the man no higher than the roots of the field. But in all else, in all that is the essential differential of man, even in these, these children of the waste, are such as we, moved by the same passions, stirred by the same affections, urged by the same desires, however, variously all these may find expression, further yet afield. The miserable mackers and the mangs of the Indian Deccan, who, living or dead, are held by all the peoples around them, as not less vile than the carry on they do not scorn to eat. Even there among these, if you will, you may trace as the venerable missionary Wilson did, deep buried under the man debasing foulness of their lives, the humanity of the man, as the dominating all-controlling element, severing them by an immeasurable and impassable distance from the noblest of the animals, unlinking them by an unseverable bond to the noblest of their fellow-man. All that may characterize the individuals outside of this is but the accident of his life and being, the essential element guiding and swaying him in all things is this fundamental, ineradicable, humanity. It is the fashion nowadays to speak of the brotherhood of man. But how few realize how absolutely, how completely, the phrase expresses the simple truth? A truth that nullifies all the arrogantly-arrayed arguments and fancy-founded fallacies of Haco, and the whole field of monists and the materialists. If then we would understand the Egyptian or any other people, you must start by recognizing that, however wide and apparently unbridgeable may be the gulf that divides us from them, whether physical, mental, or moral. It has been caused by the rushing flow of the multitudinous circumstances that have molded the life and character of each. And, as Mill and Buckle have said, not to any originating differences in our natures. As a boy at school, to me history was the dullest of dull tasks; but when I came to mix with the peoples of foreign lands, and fascinated by the charm of the living kaleidoscope of Indian life, sought some clue to the myriad-minded moods and manners of its peoples, I long for a history that should tell me, how and why these peoples were so different from, and yet so like, my own. But histories, as they are written, are rarely more than chaffing-dish hashes of the funeral baked meats of court-cronicles served up with a positive platitudes and pedantry for sauce. From such histories we may gather a great array of useless, and for the most part, perfectly uncertain and unreliable, facts; but of the true story of a people scarce anything more than a few doubtful indications. For true history is no bold chronicle of events, but the history of man's too often blind, but always intuitive, struggle towards happiness. Back in those memory forsaken ages, of which even myth and legend now tell us nothing, men strove in the same ceaseless, never-ending struggle. What if the immediate aim of that struggle varied then and now, with time and place? What if the dweller in the ice-cold lands of the north should be ever seeking the warmth from which the sun-burned inhabitant of the torrid zone would feign escape? To neither is the heat or the cold, I think to be desired or shunned, save only as either serves to swell the total of his enjoyment of life; but just as the nature of the climate in which they dwell modifies their conception of enjoyment. So also a host of other circumstances, some minute and scarcely traceable in their influence, others broad and plainly visible mold the ideas and ideals of man and nations; thus and thus only, it is that the Egyptian and the Englishmen are so far apart, in all that constitutes the individual or national characteristics of each. Thus it is that the restless activity and energy of the one is abhorrent to the other, and that the Englishmen today finds the Egyptians, as Herodotus found them so long ago, men distinguish from the rest of mankind by the singularity of their institutions in their manners. I would therefore have my readers avoid the error of judging the Egyptians merely from comparison with their own standards, and without due regard to the study of the causes that have made them what they are. If the Egyptian be found lacking in qualities upon the possession of which we justly pride ourselves, he is not that for reason alone to be condemned or despised. He has, even as we have, faults and imperfections that may be justly censored. Like Meredith's captain to Cray, we are all very negated with faults. These put a test to our common humanity, and for the Egyptian it may at least be said that he has that charity that covers a multitude of sins, the charity of heart that far ad values the charity of the purse. Judged with equity, he compares favorably in many respects with many other men, less backward than the Spaniard, less bigoted than the Portuguese, less fanatical than any other Oriental, not embittered in spirit as the Irish peltz, patient intribulation, long suffering, plackable, forgiving, hospitable, honest, and with all one who, like Ibauban edam, loves his fellow man. There is much, very much, in the Egyptian, that may well serve to gain him the friendship and good will of those who seek to know him as he really is. But with all this there is one difference between the Egyptian and all European peoples, that, as it seems to me, becomes an almost impassable barrier to the growth of close friendship, or even intimate companionship between the European and the Egyptian. This difference is in their modes of thinking and reasoning, for not until the Ethiopian changes his skin, will the Oriental think or reason as a European does? There are hundreds of volumes wherein the Egyptian is portrayed as he has been seen or known by the authors. But like all other Easterns, the Egyptian is, perhaps always will be, something of a mystery to the European. The thoughts and reasonings of the two people are so constantly and so utterly at variance on points and matters that seem to each to admit of little or no controversy, that any attempt to reconcile them must be abandoned as impossible. As was a natural result of this incompatibility, that the Egyptian, as commonly described by Europeans, is a very different being to the Egyptian as he really is. It is so all over the East, through all the widely differing races, nationalities, and religions of the Asiatic continent, with perhaps the single exception of the Armenians, who in this respect are as distinctly allied to the races of Europe as the Egyptians are to those of Asia. Tourists wander for an hour or two through the bazaars of Egypt or India, and flatter themselves that they have seen and can describe the people. Young officials tell you glibly that they can read them as a book. The veteran who has grown gray in their service will tell you that the longer he is known them, the less he is able to comprehend them. Orientals generally are capable of a high degree of training and education according to our standards. In India, we have men who, in debate and authorship in our language, are entitled to rank with some of our own best men. But mentally, even these are apart from us, and in this respect, as Kipling says, East is East and West is West, and never the Twain shall meet. Nor is it we only who cannot understand them since they stumble so often in air as widely in their efforts to comprehend us, and even, as I think, more grossly and more hopelessly. Nonetheless, it is, I believe, quite possible for a European to at least partly bridge the gulf and become familiar with Eastern thought and sentiment. But to do so, he must pay a heavy price. For it is to be done only by one who will give not merely years of time, but years of self-abnegation, or self-suppression, of self-isolation to the task. Abandoning all that he has been, he must seek to become that which he has not. And severing his life from all that has made it his, forgo his tastes, stifle his prejudices, ignore his pre-elections, suppress his emotions, thwart his inclinations, and laughing when he would weep, weep when he would laugh. And with this slaying of his own individuality, he must in all things strive to identify himself with those alien to him, ever seeking to see, hear, think, and act as they do. And he must do this not for a week, a month, or a year, but for many years. Not in one city, town or country, but in several. Not merely mixing as best he may with the wealthy and the poor, the illiterate and the learned, but learning to be at home in the abodes of the prosperous and the haunts of the miserable, become equally so with the merchant in the bazaar and the wandering faker in the desert. Through it all, he must ever be other than his home life and training have made him, ceaselessly on the alert to detect the nature, feelings, and impulses of others and to hide his own. And he must be and do all this day and night, in the loneliness of the desert as in the busy haunts of man. And in doing this he is treading a road over which there is no return. The further he goes, the more perfect is his success; the more impossible it becomes for him to regain his starting point. Never again can he be that which he has been before. He may quit the east, return to the home of his childhood, and mix again with his fellows as one of them; but he can never recover the place he has left and lost. For he who goes down into the east, though his heart never ceased to yearn for home in the things of home, is daily, slowly, imperceptibly, yet surely being estranged, and he goes home to find that he no longer has a home, that neither in the east nor in the west, is there any rest for him. Thenceforth and forever he is alone in the world. world, and, with his own sympathies enlarged and enriched, can hope for no sympathy, no fellowship, amidst all the teeming millions of the earth. Friends and kindred, may crowd around his board, ties of love and affection may be renewed, but even with the nearest and dearest, the fullness of old-time sympathies, can never be revived. For though the east is a burnth from which the traveler may return, it is one from the glamour of which he may never free himself. When is in the east his heart forever looked yearningly to the west, so from the west it will look forever back with desire to the east. To him the whole world is clothed with the horror, with which the lonely, terrible streets of London so bruised the heart of the Irish poet. Such is the price that he who would know the east must pay for his knowledge, a price that few have paid, that none would willingly or wittingly pay. I speak that which I know. For over thirty years have passed away since I first went down into the east, and as a mere boy, as Lady Burton disdainfully described me, set myself the task I have never abandoned. Consequently, as it is my object in this book to try and show what, as he appears to me, the Egyptian of today is, and how he has become that which he is, the picture I shall draw of him will necessarily be unlike those drawn by others. But although I freely admit that it will be my aim throughout to seek to gain for the Egyptian more generous consideration than he has commonly accorded, my sketch will be as faithful to truth as I can make it. Should it fail to be interesting, the fault will assuredly be with the writer, and not with the subject. End of Chapter 1. The Story of 100 Years. Recording by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California. Chapter 2. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Graham McMillan. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today, Bihagyi A. Brown, Chapter 2, links with the past. To understand the Egyptian as he is, we must go back to that memorable 23rd of June in 1798, and learn not only what he then was, but how he had become that which he was. Happily, it needs no long historical details, or weary some discussion of remote or doubtful causes to gain this necessary knowledge. A few words to show how the Egyptian of today is linked with his ancestors of far distant ages, and a short sketch of the social and political conditions existing in the country at the close of the 18th century will tell the reader all he need know to enable him to comprehend the story of the years that have since he lapsed. Although the people were then well-established in the land and possessed a high degree of civilization, their history, as we now know it, dates only from the reign of many's, somewhere over 5,000 years before the birth of Christ. From that date, down to the present time we have a continuous record, the whole course of which may be divided into three clearly distinguished periods. Of these, the first was not only buffered the longest, but in every way the most brilliant. In it, Egypt was an independent country with a social system of an advanced type, the spontaneous product of the genius of the people, and it was the one in which, under native rulers, the land was filled with the marvelous pyramids, temples, and the sculptures which, though now in ruins, still excite the admiration and wonder of the world. The second period began in 529 BC, with a conquest of the country by Cambysus. In it, after nearly 200 years of Persian rule interrupted by a brief restoration of the native power, Egypt was for a little more than three and a half centuries in the hands of the Greeks, from whom, in the 30th year of the Christian era, it passed to the Roman Empire. Six centuries later, in 638, when the flood tide of Islamic conquest first swept westward from Arabia, the country became a prey to the Arabs. Who, in 1171, were in their turn succeeded by the revolting slaves, under whom, as the Mamaluk sultans had remained until, in 1517, it became a province of the Turkish Empire. In this period, under this way of foreigners, the country suffered from all the ills we are accustomed to associate with the idea of the Dark Ages of Europe, and everything that was greater noble in the people or their civilization, perished. It was indeed, during this time, that the world-famous cities of Alexandria and Cairo were built, as well as the magnificent mosques that are the pride of all Islam. But these were all the work, not of the people themselves, but of the foreigners by whom they were held in thralldom, and are therefore monuments not of the country's glory, but of its shame. The third and present period began in 1798, when the landing of Bonaparte was the first of the series of events, which, by the introduction and gradual development of European influence, have brought about the now-existing social and political condition of the country. In this period, Egypt has ceased to be a province of the Turkish Empire, and having acquired the semi-independent position of a tributary state, has been lifted from an appalling condition of social and commercial destitution, produced by the ruinous misgovernment and reckless tyranny, of a dominant class. To one of an unexampled prosperity and of social and political freedom not exceeded in any country of the world. The three periods into which I have thus divided Egyptian history are then distinguished by differences so deep and so far reaching that almost the only links by which they can be bound into one consistent whole are the persistence of the people and the preservation of the monuments that testify to their former greatness. That the Egyptian of today is in truth the lineal descendant of those who inhabited the country 6,000 years ago is beyond all doubt. Wherever we go in the Nile Valley or in the Delta, we meet with man and women whose faces and features are living reproductions of the portraits of the kings and people of the most ancient times as sculptured by the artists of their days. And in their habits, manners and customs, we find today striking traces of those that seem to have prevailed when 4,000 years before Christ, Fat Hotepp wrote his book of instructions, now believed to be the oldest book in the world. And from their building in those far off ages, down to the present day of pyramids, temples and tombs, have stood surviving witnesses of the early greatness of the country. And though but heedless spectators of its vicissitudes, silent guardians of its departed glory ever linking its present with its past. Closely united as the living Egyptian thus is with his earliest ancestors, all the men and almost all the events that preceded the French invasion are as nothing to the Egypt of today. Not a single ruler, patriot, statesman, demagogue, artist or author in short, no man or woman that lived before the dawn of the modern period has been instrumental in the making of Egypt or the Egyptians what they now are. Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, all these have held the people in bondage, but their influence never reached below the surface of the life of the country and has vanished completely with the man upon whom it depended. And though some of these have left monuments, all but imperishable of their greatness and glory, those to the Egyptians, heirs of their creators are but idle relics of a forgotten and unheeded past. As it has been with the men almost so it has been with events, for there are but two of these that, preceding the French invasion, have exercised an influence of such vitality as to survive the great change in the condition of the country that has since been wrought. These two events, with four that belong to the modern period, are indeed all that the whole history of the country presents to us as still clearly and prominently exerting an important and permanent influence upon both the character of the people and the existing circumstances and condition of their country. Of these six events, the two that belong to the second period are the conquest of the land by the Arabs and its subsequent seizure by the Turks. The other four are the French invasion, the rise of Muhammad Ali, the English occupation, and the evacuation of Fakoda by the French. Each and all of these six events have played important parts in molding the present day aspect of Egypt and its people. And the more closely do we study the existing conditions, the more strikingly do these six events stand out from all others as the great and dominating landmarks in the history of modern Egypt. Compared with these, all the other incidents of that story of 70 centuries, the long procession of Dynastic pharaohs, Talamis, Caliphs, Sultans, K-dives, are all but shadows that have come and gone. It is not so with the landmarks I have named, for not only are these events that have influenced and are still influencing the thoughts and feelings of the people, but the influence they do exert is recognized by the people themselves and must be taken into account in any endeavor either to understand the present condition of the country or to forecast its future. Although, therefore, the third of these landmark forms, as we have already seen, the starting point of the story of modern Egypt, to rightly comprehend that story, it is necessary that we should have a clear conception of the effects brought by the first two events, and of the influence these have had and still have upon the affairs of the country. Let us remember here that Egypt, like most civilized countries, has in reality two stories, one the history of the nation as a political body. In other words, its history has history is commonly understood and written. The record of the rise and fall of its rulers, the tale of the triumph and of their failures, and chronicle of their wars, victories, defeats, and all the events that have made or marred their destiny. The other, the story of the people themselves, of the growth of their character in institutions, and of the development of their social and moral surroundings. It is with this latter story that we have to deal, and it is therefore from the point of view that I have estimated the importance of the events of which I have just spoken. In the history of some countries, the two stories, if rightly told, are so interwoven that they become as one. But in the first and second periods of Egyptian history, they have scarce anything in common. For so long as the people remained under the rule of the Pharaohs, or of the foreigners who succeeded them, they were little more than passive victims of the varying fortunes that affected their rulers. Almost the only fluctuations in their state, during the long ages stretching from the time of minnis to the French invasion, were those occasioned by the varying degrees of the tyranny to which they were subjected. Now and again, under some ruler of more humanity, or of greater laxity than others, their condition may be said to have for the time improved. But such changes were far too slight, and their possible duration always far too uncertain for these benefits to be more to the people than as the grateful but passing pleasure of leading morning cloud brings to the traveler in a sun-burnt desert. Hence, such as the phallahine or peasantry were, when Chiopps was building his pyramid, such they remained in almost all respects down to the arrival of the French. The history of the country has therefore, in the first two periods, little to say of the people. In the modern period, the two stories touch each other more closely. For in it, the people have begun to have a political existence. They have not, indeed, a representative government, and so they have no direct power. But they have a press, the freedom of which is absolutely unrestricted, and they have a legislative council as a body of elected representatives, through whom, though they cannot control the action of the government, they are at least able to make their voices heard, and their wishes known. More importantly still, they have begun to comprehend the right of a people to be governed, not only justly, but with regard to their interests as well as to those of their rulers. A fundamental principle that in the past would have been deemed an unpartenable heresy. The first step to where the realization of this improvement, the one for long wholly unproductive of any political benefit to the people, was the Arab conquest, which by the resulting conversion of almost the whole population to the Muhammad and religion, brought about a change still fruitful in its influence upon their ideals and aspirations. To fully describe the importance of this event, it would be necessary to enlarge upon the character and tendency of the Muhammad and religion, at a length my limits forbid. And I must hear therefore content myself with noting that, great as was the moral and mental revolution this conversion occasioned, it was by no means commensurate, with that which followed the introduction of Islam into other countries. On the everyday life of the people, it seems indeed to have had but little effect, other than that of altering the moral standard and modifying in some slight degree their habits and mode of living. It was perhaps inevitable that this should be so. For of all the peoples of the East, the Egyptians were, and are, the least susceptible of and by being the spirit that marked the early spread of Islam, giving it the energy that carried it to victory, and still gives it such vitality as it continues to possess. Christianity had been for a long time the state religion of the country, but it seems clear that the great majority of the people were never more than mere nominal followers of the cross. And the arrival of the Arabs was therefore quickly succeeded by the voluntary adoption of Islam by all but the small minority to whom Christianity was something more than a name, and whose descendants constitute the Coptic Church of today. The political condition of the people was little, effort all affected, by the change in their religion. And consequently under the caliphs and their successors, the Egyptian continued to be as he had been before, a man with no higher ambition than that of passing through life with the least possible trouble. From year to year his one prayer was for an abundant nile and a plentiful crop. Not that he might thereby enrich himself, but that he might thereby secure his efficiency for himself and his family, and suffer less from the repacious tyranny and heartless cruelty of those never resting oppressors. His rulers and all who, as officials or favorites, were lifted even a little above his own level. It was, and is, of the essence of Islam, that it appeals to Freeman and favors that love of freedom that is the birthright of every man. But Islam brought no freedom to the Egyptians, save indeed the spiritual and moral one their rulers could not rob them of. So such as he had been before, such he remained after the Arab conquest, but with a loftier sense of the dignity of manhood, a nobler conception of life and of its duties, and a strong faith than a hereafter that should compensate him for all his sufferings and privations in this life. As an individual, therefore, he was somewhat altered, but as a member of the state, if we may apply that term to one who had no political existence, save that involved in yielding to his rulers the utmost penny worth of value they could rest from him by tyranny and cruelty. He was, the same helpless, hopeless, downtrodden being, less valued and less cared for than the beasts in his fields. But the conversion of the Egyptians that had filled them with that intense attachment to the faith of Islam, that shared by all the homadins, has given rise to the charge of fanaticism so commonly brought against them. A charge that, in the case of the Egyptians, if not wholly unjust, is too often exaggerated. Although nonetheless there is nothing excites the wrathful passions of the people, or, in milder moods, sways their reactions more than their fidelity to their religion. It is the fact that this is so that renders the Arab conquest their first great landmark in the story of modern Egypt. For it is not too much to say that this attachment of the Egyptians to their faith is to the present day the most important factor with which all who are concerned in the administration of the country have to deal. If socially and otherwise the Egyptians profited but little from the establishment of the Caliphate, they gained still less from the domination of the Turks. To the people indeed this change was scarcely more than a mere nominal one. It left them practically under the same rulers. Although the system of government was modified, it placed the executive power, if not in the hands of the same men as before, at least in those of men of the same stamp, who ruled them as their predecessors had done, in the same manner, through the same agents, and with the same cruelty and wanton oppression. Yet the Turkish, like the Arab, conquest, brought one important effect. The influence of which time has strengthened so that it is only second to that in the urgency of its bearing upon existing conditions. Under the Arabs the Egyptians have been ruled by foreigners, but by foreigners who were in some degree allied to them. Under the Turks their sovereign was and is not only a foreigner, but one of an utterly alien race, wholly separated from them by language, character, habits, by everything indeed saved the bond of their common religion. Nonetheless a spirit of loyalty to the Turkish Empire has grown and spread among the people, which though it would be an error to credit it with the intense popular writers of the country ascribed to it, it is unquestionably a powerful influence upon the views and opinions of the great majority of the people. To Europeans this loyalty, which it is worthy of mention here, is shared by the Muslims of India, has always appeared somewhat of an enigma. No one, however, who knows the peoples of the two countries, can doubt that, apart from the fact of the sultan being the official head of their religion, their loyalty to him is largely due to the desire of peoples who have lost the place they once held in the comedy of nations, to associate themselves with such kindered peoples as having some extent maintain their ancient status. The Indian and the Egyptian Muhammadans alike look back to the time when Islam was the one dominant, unopposable power in their native lands, and conscious of their own fallen condition would feign relieved the darkness of their destiny by seeking a place, however humble, within the only radiance they can claim to share. Now therefore the loyalty of the Egyptians to the Turkish Empire is only a part of their loyalty to their religion. It has this, from the political point of view, important difference, that it is not irrevocable, but more or less dependent upon the sultan maintaining his political supremacy in the Muhammad and world. For should he lose the position he holds as the most powerful ruler in Islam, not only the Egyptians, but his own immediate subjects would feel justified in transferring their allegiance to any ruler who might succeed him, but absolutely as the sultan may depend upon the loyalty of the Egyptians as against any non-Muslim power. Yet as we have occasion to see, not only can he not do so against a Muslim rival, but he can only ensure their loyalty and obedience as his subjects, by seeding to conditions they hold they have a right to impose upon him. Were therefore the hopes of the large section of the Muhammadans, which is filled with the desire for the restoration of an Arab caliphate to be realized, it would entirely depend upon circumstances that it is quite impossible to foresee, whether the Egyptians would or would not remain faithful to the empire. Meanwhile, the revival of the Arabic power being a possibility too far removed from probability to take a place in the politics of the day, the loyalty of the Egyptians to the Turkish empire must be accepted as a controlling feature in the affairs of the country. Such then are the links that bind the Egypt of the present day to the Egypt of the past, but important as has been and is the part that the Arab and Turkish conquests have played in shaping the present, and will yet have in molding the future of the people, it was not to these events, but to others occurring outside the country that we owe the inauguration of the modern period of Egyptian history. What these events were and how they affected the making of the Egyptian what he now is, we have now to see. of chapter 2, links with the past. Chapter 3 of Bonaparte, Egypt and the Egyptians of today. By Haji A. Brown. Chapter 3, The Dawn of the New Period. The period which was to be that of the regeneration of Egypt in its people was ushered in by social and political storm and temperature. But the first warning note of its coming, after a brief moment of panic, was unheeded by the people. Nearly three centuries had passed since the country had been invaded by an enemy. That enemy was now the sovereign power. Under the grasping, selfish rule of its executive, the trade and commerce of the country had almost entirely disappeared. Thus, isolated from the rest of the world, the people had no conception of the growth of the power and civilization of the European nations. They were therefore completely ignorant of the events and political impulses that were, though for the moment indirectly only, shaping the future that lay before them. They were both Englishmen and Frenchmen in the country at the time. But the rulers of the land, arrogant in their petty might, and the people not less so in their degradation, alike held all foreigners in contempt, and thus profited nothing from their presence. They had therefore no means of knowing what the relations between the two great European powers were, or of anticipating how those relations were liable to affect their country. Yet the fact that brought about the opening of the modern period in their history, and thus decreed the ultimate fate of the country, was the mutual hostility that swayed the two powers. This hostility had no relation to Egypt or its people, and, but for contributing causes, could never have affected these. Yet it was the desire of the French government to strike what it fondly hoped would prove a decisive blow at the growth of English power in the east that was the chief inspiring cause of its decision to order the invasion of Egypt. The directory, which was at the time the governing body in France, had indeed more than one reason for taking this step. Nor was it under the directory that the eyes of the French had been turned to the valley of the Nile for the first time. Leibniz, in 1672, had urged upon Louis XIV the conquest of the country as an object worthy of his attention, declaring that the possession of it would render France the mistress of the world. Though nothing was done at that time to realize the far-seeing policy he had educated, there can be no doubt that the idea was never abandoned. Talleyrand, indeed, said on his accession to office he had found more than one project for its accomplishment, lying in the pigeonholes of the foreign office. He himself entered heartily into the scheme, believing that it would be a most important move toward the fulfillment of his theory that the future of France depended upon the extension of her influence along the shores of the Mediterranean. Volney, the traveler and author of "Ruin of Empires," having visited Egypt head in 1786, reported that it was in a practically defenseless condition. Magalon, the French consulate Alexandria, having for years urged the government to interfere on behalf of its subjects in Egypt, had in 1796 made a voyage to France with the express purpose of protesting against the indignities and ill usage from which they were suffering. He fully confirmed the views of Volney and Liebnitz. The directory, where thus at once shown the possibility of acquiring a colony of the utmost value, and provided with a reasonable excuse for its annexation. These another arguments against which the fact that the French nation was then at peace and on good terms with the Sultan of Turkey, the sovereign of the country, weighed as nothing, decided the directory. In March 1798, therefore, the order to organize an expedition for the conquest of Egypt was given to Bonaparte. Two months later, on May 19, he set out in command of a vast armada, sailing from Toulon and other ports of the south of France. Thus it was the aspirations of the French nation for the extension of its influence in the Mediterranean, and for the acquisition of new colonies in its conquest rivalry with England, and not events in the country itself that heralded the dawn of the new period. Eventually, though chiefly indirectly, this produced the greatest change in the condition and prospects of the people that their history records. The rapidity with which the French expedition was prepared, in the secrecy with which its destination was concealed, led the directory and Bonaparte himself to hope that it would escape all risk of interference on its way to Egypt. In this they were not disappointed. But hearing of the assembling of a great military naval force in the south of France, and believing that it was intended to make a descent upon the Irish coast with a view to cooperation with rebels there, Lord Vincent warned Nelson to watch for and if possible, destroy it. The people of India were then, however, like those of Ireland, in negotiation with the French, and in particular the famous Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore. Longing to be revenge for the defeat and losses Lord Cornwallis had inflicted upon him, and sought their aid. Nelson was aware of this. Having a strong sense of the danger to English interests in India and the East generally, the possession of Egypt by the French would be, he guessed the real destination of the expedition. Finding that the French had got away to see, he immediately started in pursuit. Acting upon his own conception as to its aim, he steered straight for Egypt. Bonaparte had, however, after leaving the French coast, proceeded to Malta, which he seized. When Mastilade some days on his way to Egypt, Nelson passed without falling in with him. Thus it was that on June 21st, the Alexandrians were startled by the approach of the English fleet. As soon as the character of the ships thus unexpectedly appearing on their coast became no one, the town was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement. The governor, believing that the fleet was a hostile one, sent off to Cairo, the messengers whose arrival there I have already chronicled, and at the same time sent other messengers to summon the Bedouins, or nomad Arabs, inhabiting the neighboring deserts to assist in the defense of the town. Nelson lost no time in sending a shore to seek news of the French, but the reception given to his officers was far from friendly. Refusing to credit the statement that the English came as friends and protectors, and not as enemies, the governor openly expressed his distrust. And in doing so he simply voiced the feelings of the people. Utterly ignorant of everything outside the narrow range of their own experience, it was indeed impossible for these to comprehend how the occupation of Egypt by the French could be a matter of vital importance to the English. So when Nelson's officers assured the government that they had asked nothing more than to await the arrival of the French and to buy a few supplies of which the fleet was in need, he answered them that they could have nothing. Egypt said he belongs to the Sultan, and neither the French nor any other people have anything to do with it, so please go away. It was a bold speech, and as foolish as it was bold, for no one knew better than the governor himself that he was quite powerless to oppose the English if they wished to land, or to take what they needed by force. It was a speech, too, worth noticing, for it affords a clue to much that puzzles the ordinary critic of Egyptian history. Judge by any no-one canon of social or international courtesy or policy, it was not less inexcusable than indiscreet. It was as likely to enrage an enemy as to anger a friend. But it was just what one knowing the people might have expected, the utterance of the impulse of the moment, and therefore a full and truthful statement of the speaker's thought. For to the Egyptian mind, the visit of a fleet of foreign ships of war could have no other object than the conquest or rating of the country, hence the English fleet must be a hostile one. It was neither lawful nor wise to give provision or sucker of any kind to an enemy. Therefore they had nothing to say to the English, but please go away. It was thus that the people of Alexandria argued then, and it is thus that the people of Egypt generally still argue. For they have always been incapable of taking a broad or general view of any subject. No matter how many cited a question may be, they as a rule could see but one aspect of it at a time. They look, in fact, at all things, through a mental telescope, that bringing one narrow and limited aspect of a subject into bold and clear relief, shuts from their view all it surrounds it. Hence, when, as they can and sometimes do, they change their point of view. The change is commonly as abrupt as it is thorough, and those who see only the surface tax them with fickleness. Of late years there have been signs that, at all events, the educated classes are learning to reason on sure and safer grounds. But if the reader would understand their story, he must ever bear in mind the narrow basis of their judgments and therefore of their actions. While the answer of the governor to the English is thus illustrative of a point to be remembered in the character of the Egyptians, the life story of the man himself also helps us to more fully grasp their mental attitude under the changing circumstances of the period. This governor, Sayed Muhammad Kareem, was an Egyptian of humble birth, but one of pure Arab blood claiming to be a Syed or Sharif. That is to say, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad's family, and that's one of the Arab nobility. In his early manhood, this man, who, as a Syed, was in his blessed and prayed for by every Muhammadin in the world at every time of praying, was glad to fill the modest post of a wearer in the customs, gifted with intelligence and other qualities that commended him to his superiors by their favor and his own ability he rose rapidly to become the local director of customs, and eventually as we find him, governor of the town. That in this position he had the confidence and respect of his townsmen seems clear, and it is thus evident that tyrannical and oppressive as was the rule under which they lived, there was an open path to place and power for able men. Bribery and corruption, it is true, were a rife, so much so that we may safely assume that Sayed Muhammad did not attain his high position wholly without their aid. But they did not play the dominating part assigned to them by historians of the day. We shall see but little more of this Sayed Muhammad, for though still a young man, he had about a short span of life to run. Yet the little we shall see makes him a no. notable man, and one that should be studied. Bold, impulsive, proud, and fearless, with that decision of character so praised by Foster, quick to decide and unalterable in his decisions, deciding rightly from his own standpoint, but often with too limited a view, emphatically more of an Arab than an Egyptian type, and yet in the few glances we get of him, illustrating most aptly the Egyptian character. Thus, as his answer to the English was essentially Egyptian and not Arab in substance in manner, so also was a subsequent action. For an Arab in such a straight would have sought to gain time by fair speaking, so that he might take such measures as he could, or at the worst secure better terms. Whereas Siyad Muhammad spoke in a manner that had the English bin as he supposed "enemies" must have precipitated hostilities, and having done so, a gain Egyptian like, made no adequate attempt to protect the town from the possible consequences of his rashness. Whether fortunately or otherwise, no man can say, Nelson, too intent upon the object he had in view to be moved from his immediate purpose, took the rebuff offered him calmly, and, after a day's rest off the port, sailed away, leaving the Alexandrians to congratulate themselves upon their own astute-ness, and to indulge themselves in vain glorious anticipations of the prodigies of valor they were to perform should the French land upon their soils. A week having passed by without the appearance of an enemy, the people had regained their wanted calm. When, as unexpectedly as though no warning had been given of its coming, the French fleet of twenty-one vessels of war, and over three hundred transports, was seen in the offing heading for the port. This sudden and unlooked for proof of the reality of the danger they had refused to credit, produced the utmost consternation. Once more, the governor dispatched messengers in all haste to the capital, and describing the French fleet as one, without beginning or end, begged earnestly but all too late for aid. The people of Cairo, like those of Alexandria, when their first alarm at the arrival of Nelson's fleet had passed away, seeing in his departure a confirmation of their own conception of his visit, ceased to think of the matter, save as the subject of jest, but were overwhelmed with dismay as the new alarm, even the government which had been but little moved by the first being now stirred to activity and a sense of danger. The government of Egypt was then, at least nominally, such as it had been constituted after the Turkish conquest in 1517 by Sultan Saleem. Keenly recognizing the impossibility of enforcing his authority and a province of the empire so far off and so difficult of access from his own capital, the Sultan had, not unwisely, contented himself with the organizing a system of government that was, in his opinion, the one most likely to ensure the permanency of his sovereignty, and guarantee him the receipt of a goodly share of the wealth of his new possession. Egypt was placed, therefore, as the other provinces of the empire then were, and still are, under the government of Apacya, who was in effect, though he was accorded neither the style nor the honor of that rank, a viceroy. But the Sultan, anxious to hold the Pacha in check by some power ever present and active, divided the territory under his charge into twenty-four districts, and placed each of these as a kind of local governorship in the hands of a mammalic chief or bay. Of the bays chosen for these posts, seven were to form a D1 or council of state, nominally to advise and assist, but in reality to control Apacya, whose decisions this council was empowered to veto. All real power was therefore vested in the mammalics, who, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to recall, were the troops that, originally brought into the country as slaves by the Fatemite Caliphs, had gradually developed their power and influence until their chiefs had become feudal lords, holding lands and keeping according to their individual means, troops of mounted followers, whose physical qualities in effect of training rendered them one of the finest bodies of cavalry that has ever existed. As must invariably happen when a week an incompetent government seeks the aid of slaves or mercenaries to sustain its failing dominion, the mammalics had eventually acquired such power that they were unable to usurp the government of the country, and had, as we have seen, maintained their position as sultans of Egypt from the time of Selah and deep up to the Turkish conquest. Under the system of government established by the sultan Saleem, though unable to regain the absolute independence they had lost, they soon recovered almost all their former influence and power, and as they controlled the military strength of their country, the small Turkish garrison being quite helpless to oppose them, they soon became, as before, the real rulers of the land. Being invariably foreigners or the immediate descendants of foreigners, Cercations, Armenians or other slaves, it was but natural that these bays should have no sympathy for the people of the country. With the arrogant characteristics of a military body that has attained political power, they despised all outside of their own ranks and held it as a disgrace to intermarry with the Egyptians. Actuated by none but the most selfish of aims, they sought and cared for nothing but their own interests, each of them being a veritable ishmail, looking upon all men as his enemies, only accepting the cooperation of his fellow Mamaluk's as a necessary measure of defense, confiding in the loyalty of his immediate followers only so far as he was able to control them by rendering their faithfulness to him conducive to their own interests. Among themselves they have necessity accepted the dominion of the one who by force of arms in Trees or other favoring circumstances was in a position to enforce his will against that of the others. And as might be expected, the bay who held this prominent position was the one to whom the post of Sheikh El-Balid, or Governor of Cairo, was accorded, that being the post of all others the most coveted by them, this bay being in practice the real governor of the country, his power being only limited by the necessity he was under of consulting and conciliating the wishes of the other members of the D'Ihwan. It may seem strange that with the power they thus possessed the Mamaluk should continue to offer even a faint show of respect to the Pacha, or of loyalty to the Empire. For light as was the Yoke these laid upon them, it was sufficiently galling to men who lived as they did, each wholly absorbed in the prosecution of his own personal aims and interests, and the more so that, as the wealth of the country declined under their greedy and ruthless rule, the remittances of revenue exacted by the Sultan was a yearly draft that seriously limited their resources. But if the Mamaluk hated and despised all men, not of his own class, he was in turn hated by all others with a hatred all the fiercer and more bitter that it had no outlet. Thus, with no friend upon whom he could rely save his own right arm, the Mamaluk chief, however powerful, was feigned to accept the patronage of the Sultan, as the only aid he could look for in his combat with the world, and he must needs therefore be content to pay for that aid with a certain tribute of grudging loyalty. Nor must it be forgotten that, ever ready to combine and cooperate against a common foe, which Mamaluk was equally ready to turn his hand and sword against his fellow, if therefore he might gain ought for himself. Had it not been for the mutual distrust, the knowledge of this fact forced upon them, they might easily have regained the independence rested from them by the Turks. This had indeed been momentarily accomplished by Ali Bey, who, in 1776, not only succeeded in setting himself up as Sultan of Egypt, but aspiring to extend his rule, had attacked and conquered the Muhammadin holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Arabia. His triumph was, however, but short-lived. For Muhammad Bey, the most trusted of his favorites, to whom he had confided the command of an army for the conquest of Syria, abandoned his task, and revolting, took his master Ali prisoner by a treacherous ambush. Unable alone to maintain the power he had thused for the moment seized, the traitor at once tendered his submission to the Sultan, and was, in reward for his fatality, appointed Pasha of Egypt. His tendency of this office was, however, but brief, his death soon after leaving the country once more appraised the mutual rivalries of the Bays. In the contest for supremacy that followed, two of these, freed slaves of his, though constantly opposed to and frequently in arms against each other, eventually agreed to share the power between them. Number one, Murad Bey, becoming the military chief of the Mamalooks, and the other, Ibrahim Bey, the Sheikh Al-Balad. Under the joint sway of these two men, the country enjoyed a brief period of greater quiet and peace than it had known for a long time, and although the tyranny and oppression from which they suffered was little, if at all, abated. The people had been so completely dispoiled before, and had so little to lose that, as he that is down need fear no fall, they had but small anxiety for the moral. This was the condition that existed on that memorable night of the 23rd of June in 1798. The eve of the day upon which Cairo had its first warning of the approach of the French, could a plebiscite of the hopes and fears of the people have been taken on that evening. We may be sure that it would have been unfavorable to any change, and that they would have elected to bear the ills they had rather than face the possibility, far worse any change might bring to them. End of chapter 3, The Dawn of the New Period, Recording by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California, 2012. Chapter 4 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today by Haji A. Brown. Chapter 4, A Council of State. As soon as the news of the arrival of the French fleet had been received by Murad Bay, he rode to the country house of Ibrahim Bay, now the Khazr El-Anni hospital, on the east bank of the Nile overlooking the island of Rota. There a council of the leading men of the city was hastily summoned to consider the steps to be taken for the defense of the country. It was characteristic of the conditions under which the people were then living, that all those presents, with the single exception of Vekir Pasha, the governor and representative of the Sultan's authority, belonged to one of two classes, the military rulers and the religious leaders of the people. The excitement that prevailed in either class was plainly evident at the meeting, though the feelings and fears induced in each by the news they had met to discuss were very different. The military element consisted entirely of the Mamalutbees, who formed as we have seen the real ruling power, their title of "be" or as it is written in the Turkish language from which it is taken, "beg." Being fairly equivalent to that of Beren as used in our own country in the days of King John, though it has long since ceased to signify any more than the French Legion of Honor, save that like our knighthood it carries a personal title. By the people generally, these bays were taken as amirs, a title properly, nearly equal to that of Prince, and the one employed by the rulers of Afghanistan, so well known to us as the amirs of that country. I have already spoken of the dominant position the bays held, but I may add here, as further illustrating their character, that if they had not, as the French nobles had in the days of Louis XIV, and Philip the Fair, the right of carrying on war among themselves, they did not hesitate to put their rivalries to the test of battle. Confident in the prowess of their own body, these men had treated with indifference the alarm occasion by the arrival of Nelson, but when the warning he had given was confirmed by the presence of the French, and the extent of the fleet that was gathering at Alexandria was known. Not only through the exaggerated terms in which Saeed Muhammad had described it, but also by the arrival of reports from Rosetta and Demietta to the same effect, they awoke to the necessity for action. Centuries had then passed since the Arabs or their Mamaloks had measured their strength against that of European armies, and altogether unequainted with the advance their ancient foes had made in the art of war. It was perhaps natural enough that they should be a little overconfident in their own might, especially as such stories of the crusades as Dillinger'd among them were not of a kind to excite any very lively fears of an enemy, which, according to these traditions, had never met but to defeat. Moreover, ignorant as they were of the progress of the world outside their own country, they knew that the Muslim corsairs of the Mediterranean were a constant terror to all ships of Christian countries that had to pass the inhospitable coasts of the Barbary States, and that through the north of Africa, European Christians were found as the slaves of Muslim masters. Added to this the fact that the insulting treatment they themselves accorded to European ships visiting their ports, and their tyrannous behavior to European subjects resident in the country, long continued as these abuses had been, had brought no effect of or warlock protest from the nations thus gravely injured and insulted, and we can easily conceive that they placed no high value upon the military or naval power of peoples who thus meekly, as it seemed to them, submitted to such outrages upon their subjects. Hence while they regarded the present occasion as one calling for an act of measures of defense, they had no pre-centiment of the disastrous fate that was so soon to overtake them, and so undismayed by the news of the arrival of the French, cried vultingly, "Let them come that we may trample them under our horse's feet." As to the second class of those present at the council, the Ulyma, or Learned Men, that is to say those who in virtue of their proficiency in the study of the laws of Islam, were the acknowledged and duly graduated leaders of the people. These looked upon the dangers with very different eyes. Unlike the Mamelux, there were men of the country, allied by blood to its people, and therefore, though like priests and ministers of all religion, in all countries, forming a class severed from the great body of the people by special and mutually conflicting ideals, aims and interests they were not and could not be wholly indifferent to the welfare of the people. Of whom by kinship of every degree, birth, marriage, and parentage, they never ceased to form an integral part. These therefore had a lively fear of the inevitable distress any warlike operations in the country must bring upon the people. While the fact that the enemy approaching was a Christian one, gave to their anticipations a personal character that they would not have borne had the invader been of the Muslim faith. Like those of the Mamelux, their conceptions of the character of the European peoples were mainly founded upon the traditions of the Crusades. Traditions that included only too many incidents, such as that of the soldiers of the cross, at the taking of Jerusalem, dashing out the brains of innocent infants. Those that are still recalled in Muslim lands, under no small degree responsible for the anti-Christian and anti-European spirit that exists among Muhammad and peoples. Their feelings at the thought of the possibility of a French victory were, therefore, quite apart from those of the Mamelux. If indeed these ever gave such an idea a moment's thought. If they did, they still had before them three possibilities. Victory, which to them meant gain in many ways. Even flight, leaving them at least the hope of retrieving their fortune later on, or in some other land. Or death in honorable and glorious warfare. Warfare too, that being in defense of Islam, would give them the rank, and better still, the rewards of martyrs for the faith. On their part, the Eulema could see only two possibilities. A victory that, however, glorious would have to be paid for at a heavy cost of suffering to the people. Or a defeat involving all that they could imagine of dire disaster and woe. That we may fully comprehend the influences swaying the members of the two classes of which the council was composed. We must recall their mutual relations. The Mamelux then, being Muhammadans and little more than name, yielding their loyalty to the Sultan and to Islam simply from a regard to their own interests, were commonly looked upon by the Eulema, as well as by the people generally, as scarcely better than heretics. While their ceaseless repasity and heartless cruelty made them at once feared and hated. Conscious of these facts, but not daring to place themselves in open opposition to the Eulema, they sought in every way to gain these to their support. And more especially, by their professions of loyalty to the faith, and by treating the Eulema with all dignity and respect. This indeed, they were bound to do, since not only was it in the power of the Eulema to incite the people against them, but with the aid of the Eulema of Constantinople to secure the Sultan's action on their own behalf in case of need. In a word, therefore, while despising the Eulema with the man of actions contempt for the mere student or scholar, the Mamelux found it essential to their own safety to cultivate their toleration, knowing well that this was all they could obtain from them. As to the Eulema, fully recognizing the insincerity of the Mamelux, they were fain to accept their homage as the only course for them to follow except one of open hostility, which, however little day as a body need fear its results, to each one individually involved risks not likely to be run. Having no power of excommunication, such as that possessed by the priests of the Catholic Church or the Brahmins, the Eulema had no direct means of coercing those who displeased them, and with us not infrequently obliged to accept or adopt a line of conduct, which under other circumstances they would have refused to follow. It is therefore to their credit that throughout the history of their class they have always been an independent and, on the whole, a fearless set of men, and that it is, but rarely indeed they have been opposed to reason or right as they have understood it, though unhappily their conceptions of these have not always been such as enlightened minds could approve. Like the clergy of all churches, with perhaps the exception of the Catholic, they have not seldom been compelled to choose between interest and principle, that they should never air in such a case they must have been more than human. Diverse as were the interests of the bays and those of the Eulema at this council, the aims and hopes of the two classes were in the most perfect accord, both being dominated by the single desire to concert such measures as should seem best for the protection of the country. In this they were hardly joined by Bakes here Pasha, as the representative of the Sultan's authority, his chief duty and personal interests lay in seeing that the annual remittances to the Sultan were made as early and as large as possible, and that the country was kept as free from wars and seditions as might be. So long as he could in some fair measure secure these aims, they'll always, like all servants of the empire, at the mercy of intriguing aspirants, he might hope to retain, if not as posed, then at least the Sultan's favor. Although thus constrained to court the good will of both the bays and the Eulema, his personal sympathies were strongly with the latter, and were not weakened by his keen sense of the treacherous nature of the friendship for himself and of the loyalty to the empire, professed by the former. The relations thus existing between the three parties at the council, the one man party of Bakes here Pasha and those of the Mamalux and Eulema, had then been enforced for some years, and coupled with the fact that Ibrahim Bay, was a man who, though of approved courage, was with all a constant promoter of peace and concord, had contributed not a little to gain for the people the few years of comparative immunity from care and trouble they had been enjoying. Murad Bay was a man of a different stamp, of great energy, proud and ambitious, ever ready to sacrifice friends as well as foes for his own profit. He had said to have been at times daring to fool the hardiness, and to gain timid to pull trunery, but always consistently, selfish, grasping, and tyrannical. From the time that he and Ibrahim Bay had agreed to work together in the government of the country, they had shared between them the greater part of the revenue. And Murad, while constantly adding to his private property, large areas of land confiscated from the people under various pretexts, was a man who was a man of a different kind. context. Spent large sums of money in developing the military resources at a disposal, constructing cannon, storing ammunition, and building vessels for military service on the Nile. Passionate, impulsive, and keenly aware of the fact that the Sultan looked upon him at his fellow Mamelux with no friendly eye. Upon hearing of the arrival of the French, he jumped to the conclusion that they had come, if not as the allies of the Sultan, yet with his connivance. For Bacier Pasha, both as an individual and as the Sultan's representative, he had a contempt that, though veiled under the courtesy of pretended amity, lost no opportunity of wounding his feelings or depreciating his authority. Swade by those sentiments, he did not hesitate in joining the council to charge Dapacha with being privy to the invasion, alleging it as inconceivable that the French should venture upon such an undertaking if they had not some reason to look for the support, or at least the countenance of the Turkish government. The spirit and tact with which Dapacha repelled this accusation showed that he had been in a position of greater power he might have proved himself a man better able to deal with the danger that they had to meet than was his accuser. It was soon evident, however, that Dapacha had the confidence of the assembly. Murad was obliged, therefore, to accept his denial, and the attention of those present being turned to the more practical aspects of the subject that had brought them together. The brief consultation that was arranged that Murad should advance to meet and oppose the French. And as they all hoped, drive them back into the sea, while Ibrahim Bey was to remain at Cairo and provide for the defense of the capital in the event of the enemy pushing their way so far. Had the council limited itself to the discussion of these points, I might have passed it with brief renotis. But perhaps the only really debatable issue brought before it was the one the reception of which throws some light upon the important question of the feelings of those present toward the Christians then living in the country. Urged mainly in all probability by the desire not to remain a mere silent member of the council, one of those present suggested, as a measure of defense, a massacre of all the Christians in the town. There is, I believe, no record as to who made this wild proposal, but we may be certain that it was one of the youngest, and a man little red in either the history or teaching of his religion. To the tolerant spirit that now happily prevails in England and the west of Europe, such suggestion, made even as it was in an hour of panic, seems savagely revolting. But in our criticisms of this and other incidents in history, we too often overlook the laps of time, and compare the Egyptians and other peoples of the past to that which we are at present, and not to that which we ourselves were at the same time. That's when we condemn the fanaticism of those who made and supported this proposal, at the Cazaer El-Ani council. We forget to remember what was even then passing in our own country. This council was held on the 4th of July in 1798, and on that day the Irish rebels who had been defeated at Vinegar Hill, on the 21st of June, the very day on which Nelson had reached the Egyptian coast. These rebels were still trembling fugitives, sheltering in the mountains and bogs of their native land, from the ruthless no-quarter pursuit of the vengeance-recking soldiers of the crown. Nor let it be thought that in speaking of this I am taking a partial or a party view of the events of those days, for my ancestors were with the pursuers, not with the pursued. And if it be objected that this was in Ireland and that the atrocities perpetrated by both parties were due rather to political than to religious ranker, let us go back about 18 years. There was it not in 1780 that for four days the Gordon rioters helped London in their hands, and, crying, death to the Catholics, sacked and pillaged, burned and wrecked the churches, shops, and houses of Catholics, and of those who favored the cause of Catholic emancipation. Let it be remembered too that the fanatics of Cairo had at least disexcuse, that they were in terror of an approaching foe to whom those they proposed to slay were friendly, while the only danger that the London mob had to face was at most a political one, and that one based upon mere possibilities, and not even on probabilities. Let us, but no. The reign of terror in France, the echoes of which were then still ringing throughout Europe, the one unsurpassable horror of all time, that was the maniac outbreak of a people frenzied by the long pent-up wrath of their endless wrongs and sufferings, a horror only possible when the inhumanity of a class had shattered the humanity of the mass. But we may recall the crimes of the commune, which in our own days washed the streets of Paris with blood, and was an unreasoning, insensate outburst of political fanaticism, and also the recent massacres of Jews in Russia. These events have had but little in common, except that they were alike the product of fanaticism, whether political or religious. But they show that in condemning the fanaticism of the Cairo Council, we must make allowance for time, place, and circumstance, and, remembering much more grievously, we ourselves and our European kinsmen have sinned, hesitate to accept such incidents as these, as stamping the people in this respect, other than ourselves. Baring these facts and dates in mind, let us now learn what was the fate of the bloodthirsty proposal, thus brought before the Cairo Council. The first word, as to who and what, the Christians were whose lives were thus endangered. The Christians then resident in Cairo, as in other parts of Egypt, were of two classes, distinguished from each other, and from the Muhammadin inhabitants by the different political conditions under which they lived. These classes were the cops and the Franks. The former were the descendants of those Egyptians who, after the Arab conquest, remained faithful to their religion, and the latter Christians of European origin. The cops were, and still are, the purest descendants of the early Egyptians left in the country, as since the Arab invasion they have intermarried almost exclusively with their own race, whereas the Muhammadins have freely mixed themselves with the Sudanese and other holy alien peoples. Under the Mamalooks, the cops have almost entirely monopolized the service of the government as clerks and accountants, and wherever mere clerical skill was an essential. Dawsile, or rather servile, in their submission to all an authority over them, they were in spirit and act hostile to the people generally, and readily availing themselves of their power as petty officials, too further the tyranny suppression of the rulers, at the same time enriching themselves at the expense of all unable to resist their repacity. The Franks, who were mostly Levantines, were almost all engaged in trade. Like the cops, they were compelled to live within certain fixed limits of the town, the Frank Quarter being the street still known as the Muschi, and now the Cheap Side of Cairo. This locality was known and chosen for the accommodation of the European Christians by Salah Eddene, who in 1173 granted to the Republic of Pisa the first of the long list of capitulations or treaties, which the Turkish government has accorded the European powers, with a view to encourage their subjects to visit and settle in the country, in which grant to those who do so special rights and privileges for the protection of their lives and property, and the freedom and encouragement of their trade. As the cops then did, and still do, the Franks then wore the costume of the country, and at the time of the French invasion almost all of those who remained at Cairo had been born in Egypt. Earlier in the century there appears to have been a considerable number of foreign-born Europeans residing in the capital, but in 1770, owing to the gross oppression of all foreigners by the Mamalux, who did not hesitate to dispoil them by the imposition of taxes and charges of all kinds whenever the government was in need of funds, the number of French subjects resident at Cairo had fallen so low that there were about fifteen houses there engaged in trade. And a few years later, the French consul having withdrawn, the number continued to decrease. Until in 1785 only three French firms were left, and the English, who had been endeavoring to utilize the desert route between Cairo and Suez to develop trade with India, finding it impossible to contend against the constant raiding of their caravans by the Bedouins in the oppressor's actions of the government, had likewise abandoned the town. The Christians whose massacre had been demanded at the Cazaer El-Ani Council were therefore practically all natives of the country, but natives subject to the same vile treatment, gross injustice, and wanton outrage that the Christians of Europe, then, and even now, were, and are, inflicting upon the unhappy descendants of Israel. Indeed, no one who has read the accounts of the recent persecutions of the Jews in Europe will compare them with those of the Christians in Muslim lands, can fail to admit that the balance to be drawn is in favor of the Muslim. And there has constantly been, especially in Egypt, this important distinction between Christian and Muslim persecutions, that persecution in Christian lands has almost invariably originated with the people, while in Muslim lands, when not occasioned by the fanatical bigotry of some despotic ruler, it is almost as constantly been the result of a weak and impudent government fomenting fanaticism for the promotion of its own ends. In both cases, it is indisputably true that the greater the fanaticism has been, the more clearly and surely can it be traced to the teaching of the spiritual leaders of the people's concerned. Not that these leaders have necessarily or directly advocated persecution, but that they're teaching, even when professedly and honestly denouncing it, has been such that the it could have no other effect than that of rendering those who accepted it fanatical in spirit. For what avail can it be that the ministers of a religion should preach toleration? If at the same time they vehemently denounce the followers of other religions as the enemies of God, doomed to eternal damnation. Now let us take note that the suggestion of a massacre of the Christians was made at this council, at a moment when almost every possible condition that could favor its acceptance was present, and that in spite of this the proposal was rejected. There was not a man at that council who did not know that the withdrawal of the protection of the government from the Christians would have been hailed with delight by the populace, not from fanatism, but for the sake of the plunder that would thus have been brought within their reach. It is therefore to the credit of Bekir Pasha and Ibrahim Bey that, waving the mutual want of sympathy that separated them on ordinary matters, they and this instantly joined in protesting against the suggested massacre. Each of them knew that in thus acting he was risking his own personal interests. On his part, Bekir Pasha was only too well aware that, although he was the accredited governor of the country, the small semblance of authority he was permitted to exercise was accorded to him by the bays only for their own purposes. But it was their delight to thwart his aims, tarnish his honor, and diminish his influence on every possible occasion, and in every possible way. And that it was to the Ilyma that he had to look for any local support in any contest with his powerful foes. This knowledge, and the fact that as we have seen, Murad had openly taxed him with being accessory to the arrival of the French, although his denial had been accepted, might well have caused him to hesitate to speak in defense of the Christians. Nonetheless, he did so, promptly and boldly, and referring more particularly to the cops. He reminded those present that as subjects of the Sultan, they paid the capitation tax, and that while they're doing so exempted them from military service, it gave them a right both by the laws of Islam and by the laws and customs of the empire to the fullest protection. Supply for the Christians of Cairo, the good councils of these men, supported by the better informed and more enlightened of the Ilyma, prevailed, and the council, not satisfied with simply deciding the matter thus, issued proclamations prohibiting any interference with the Christians. This matter having been thus settled, the council broke up, never to meet again, and thus the last official act of the bays and Ilymas of Cairo, acting together in a council of state was one for which Christianity and humanity should never cease to have a grateful memory. The more so that the protection given to the Christians was not limited to mere words, since finding that the people, whether instigated by fanatics or acting for themselves, were assuming a threatening attitude toward the Franks. Ibrahim Bay had these all brought from the European quarter and placed them under the care of his own and other reliable men. For the ladies of the Frankish colony, the bays wife opened one of his residences, a palatial building in the southern part of the city known as the Burkette El-Fiel, or Elephants Pond, then one of the best and pleasantest portions of the town. Thus the safety and decent comfort of the whole community was provided for. Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today, Bahaji A. Brown. Chapter 5 the Proclamation that failed. As soon as Bonaparte's flagship, La Orient, had arrived sufficiently near to the shore, a boat was sent into the harbor to bring off the French consul, Montsourme Magalon. Were there usual want of tact in a sudden emergency, the people at once protested against his leaving, and would have prevented his going had had not been that the commander of a Turkish warship then in the harbor, having probably a keen sense of the possible results, himself and a ship of refusal might produce, persuaded the governor to allow him to go. From Montsourme Magalon, therefore Bonaparte learned the little serious opposition the town could offer, since not only was the garrison limited to a body of about 500 genoceries, as pieces of militia possessing scarcely any military training or experience, but it was so wholly unprovided with ammunition and other necessities that the most it could make but a momentary resistance. Bonaparte influenced no doubt by the fear that Nelson returning might surprise him in the act of disembarking, decided upon landing immediately. It was in vain that Admiral Brewey's pleaded for a brief delay, urging that the weather was most unpropicious, and that the roughness of the sea, their distance from the shore, their ignorance of the coast, the rocky and dangerous nature of the landing place, and the approach of night, all combined to render the operation a most hazardous one. Bonaparte would hear of no delay, and so, the fleet having been wearily drawn close to the shore, the task of landing the forty thousand men of expedition was commenced. The spot chosen for this purpose was one about three miles to the west of the town, and the first boatloads reached the shore at ten o'clock at night. The beaching of the boats was a work of the utmost danger and difficulty. The darkness upon the rocky beach rendering the sea in one of the greatest confusion. Fortunately for the French, no attempt was made to oppose their landing, for had the full resources of the town been brought to bear upon them at this critical point, slight as those resources were, the invaders must have suffered heavily. As it was, Bonaparte himself landed a little after midnight, and having slept for an hour or so upon the sands, set out on foot for the town with a party of four hundred men. He was, we are told, in the best of spirits, and marched galley along with no ear for the surges beating on the beach. I never reckoned that, even then, other surges were drearly droning on the shores of St. Helena, the melancholy music that was to be the doleful dirge of his dying days. Just as the day was breaking, a number of Bedouin Arabs attacked the little force, but after exchanging a few shots retired beyond range, and Bonaparte, followed nearer at hand by additional troops, continued his advance without further incident, until close under the walls of the town. Although quite conscious of the hopelessness of their position, the governor and the townspeople determined to resist, and the arrival of the French was therefore saluted with a brisk but ineffectual cannonating from the walls. Promptly dividing his force into three divisions, Bonaparte commanded a general assault be made, and soon, in spite of the fuselotting of the enemy and the showers of stones and burning materials thrown upon them, two of the divisions succeeded in scaling the walls, while the third forced its way through one of the gates. A sharp but brief contest followed in the streets of the town, but the governor and the militia having retired to one of the forts. The people, accepting the assurances that Bonaparte had conveyed to them, that he came to reestablish the authority of the Sultan and to overthrow their oppressors, the Mamalooks, by whom it had been usurped, and that their own lives, property, and religion would be respected, through down their arms. The town thus occupied by the French, the governor, short of ammunition, and without hope of sucker or aid of any description, yielded to the inevitable and surrendered with his troops. Anxious to conciliate the people as much as possible, Bonaparte at once offered to reinstate the governor upon the condition of his consenting to remain faithful to the French, and the offer having been accepted, he was replaced in charge of the town, but subject to the supervision of General Cleber, who having been wounded in the attack, was to remain for the time in command of the French carousine. Having thus easily established himself upon Egyptian soil, Bonaparte lost no time in preparing for an advance upon Cairo, and the landing of the remainder of the troops, together with the horses for the cavalry, and the whole of the baggage and equipment of the expedition, was pressed forward as rapidly as possible. Both as a measure tending to facilitate this movement, and as an important part of the policy he had resolved to follow in his dealings with the people, Bonaparte set himself to gain their friendship. Strict orders were therefore issued that the people were not to be molested in any way, and some soldiers having been detected in looting after the surrender of the town, he seized the opportunity to give a proof that his assurances were not intended to be an idle parade of words, and had the offenders summarily and severely punished. In this, as in other ways, it is evident that Bonaparte was under the impression that he could gain, if not, the full allegiance, at least the passive neutrality of the Alexandrians. And indeed it was clear from the preparations that he had made prior to his actual arrival in the country that he had looked forward to being received by the Egyptians as a deliverer and savior. Two of these preparations deserve special mention here. One curiously characteristic of the French spirit of the day was the provision of an immense number of tricholored cockades to be distributed to and worn by the people as evidence of their reconciliation with the French. The other was the composition and printing of a proclamation in Arabic, which was to serve at once as a declaration of the Ames and intentions of the French in entering Egypt, and as an appeal to the friendship and support of the people. This proclamation has, with great justice, been described as a most extraordinary document. Of considerable length, it was framed throughout, with the object of soothing the religious susceptibilities of the Egyptians, and was so worded as to represent Bonaparte and the French, if not as Muhammadans, at least as the special friends and protectors of Islam. Having with the well-known formula, in the name of the most merciful God, invariably prefixed by Muhammadans to all important writings, it proceeded to state that the French had arrived in Egypt with the intention of punishing the Mamelux for their ill treatment of the French and French. and other foreign subjects resident in the country, to restore the people themselves the rights of which they were deprived by the tyrannical rulers, and to reestablish the authority of the Sultan of Turkey, the legitimate sovereign. Had the proclamation stopped here, it would in all probability have been accepted by the people as a genuine expression of the purport and scope of the invasion, but it went on with great elaboration to promise boons to the people that these were quite incapable of either comprehending or had they done so of appreciating. These promises were couched in the spirit, then dominant in Paris, and indeed throughout France, that is to say the spirit of the revolution, the gospel of liberty, equality, and fraternity that was to turn the world into a paradise. Therefore it declared it was to be possible for all to arrive at the most exalted posts. Public affairs were to be directed by the most learned, virtuous, and intelligent. Thus the people were to be made happy. All this was imperfect accord with the theory and teaching of the Muhammad in religion, but it was in some respects very far indeed when the practice to which the people had for centuries been accustomed. As to the promise of opening out facilities for advancement, we have seen that in the governor of the town the people had a convincing proof that these already existed, and it is not at all probable that it had ever occurred to them that the facilities at which the French general hinted were of a very different nature to those of which Sa'yad Muhammad had availed himself. It is not surprising, therefore, that these promises seemed to the Egyptians nothing more than mere idle bombast, and, whereby them promptly put down as simply a valueless bid for their favor. What followed was still less calculated to win their confidence. For as evidence of the friendly spirit of the invasion, Bonaparte went on to declare his faith in the unity of God, his respect for the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an, and to claim that he had destroyed the Pope, and the Knights of Malta because they were the enemies of Islam. Such professions as these to the Egyptians carried on their face their own contradiction. For if Bonaparte was in truth a Muslim, or a friend of Islam, how was it they asked that he had entered the dominions of the Sultan without some acknowledgement from him of the claim thus made to be acting upon his behalf? The concluding phrases of the proclamation came, too, rather as an anticlimax to the lofty spirit of benevolence and high aim that the body of it was intended to express, for the whole rigmarole, I can scarcely find a better word for it, came to an end with a commonplace promise that those who submitted to the French should be exalted, while those who opposed to them should be utterly destroyed. One can fancy how the Egyptians smiled to themselves at this conclusion, and accepted it as in itself the whole object and purport of the document. But whatever may have been their private feelings on the subject, and their own historians have told us how little reliance they put upon the professions and promises thus offered them. It is certain that outwardly the Alexandrians discreetly accepted both the Caucasians and the proclamation without any show of feeling other than that of amused curiosity. So little indeed they betray their true feelings, the French were unquestionably deceived, and did not realize how different these were from those which they had expected the proclamation to excite. But it is certain that none of the Egyptians were in the least deceived by its plausible tone, and while they refrain from any display of hostility to the French, they were looking forward with high hopes to their early annihilation by the Mamalux. Large numbers of this proclamation having been printed by the aid of the Oriental type and printing presses, with which the expedition was provided, Bonaparte not only had it freely distributed in Alexandria, but forwarded copies of it to Cairo and elsewhere, using as his messengers for this purpose so Muhammadins he had released from the prisons of Malta, and had brought with them to Egypt with the object of utilizing them as interpreters, and in the hope that gratitude for their release would cause them to espouse and advocate his cause. That Bonaparte's conception of the probable attitude of the Egyptians toward the expedition was entirely erroneous, is clearly evident from the whole tone of the proclamation. Thorily well informed as he appears to have been as to the actual state of the country, and the deplorable misgovernment from which it was suffering. He and his countrymen seem to have jumped to the conclusion that they would be received and welcomed by the people as deliverers. But they should have so thought is a very noticeable fact, for it plainly proves that all the information that they had received, including that furnished by the Consul Magallin and other French residents, afforded no ground for any suspicion that the French would incur any risk or danger from fanaticism on the part of the people. That they were keenly awake to the absolute necessity of conciliating the intense attachment of the Egyptians to their faith, is not more clearly evident than is the fact that they had no conception of hostile fanaticism as a factor to be considered in their relations with the people. It was with self-satisfied bigotry and not fanaticism that Bonaparte considered he had to deal, and as we shall see in the course of our story, he was so far perfectly correct. But in arguing from this assumption, he was led by ignorance of the facts with which he had to deal to absolutely erroneous conclusions. The fundamental error into which he fell is one that, notwithstanding the warning his experience might have conveyed, was repeated by ourselves in the beginning of the present occupation of the country, and distinguishes even the recommendations of the brilliant statesman, Lord Dufferin. This error was the assumption that a people so sorely oppressed and downtrodden as were the Egyptians, could not fail to be grateful and friendly to anyone who should deliver them from their oppressors. Yet it needed but a slight acquaintance with the people, with the evils with which they suffered, and the light in which they regarded those evils to show that this could not be so. As we have seen, the dominant trait of the Egyptian's character was, and is, their loyalty to Islam, and as a consequence, their fidelity to the Sultan. Knowing nothing of the Christian religion or of the political condition of Christendom, they looked with contempt upon Christians generally as in every way their infuriars, and recalling how great but unavailing had been the struggle of the Christians for the present possession of the Holy Land. They regarded their long abstention from all further effort for its conquest as a proof and tacit admission of their inability to face the armies of the Sultan. Thus the Egyptians of that day, as indeed the great mass of them still do, believed the Sultan to be the greatest and most powerful monarch in the world, that his rule in Egypt was little more than nominal they did not perceive. In their eyes it was a real and substantial power, that they should thus be blind to what seems to us self-evident truth, is largely to be attributed to the fact that almost all that was done in the country was done in the name of the Sultan. It was in his name, and as they were often assured by his authority, that the taxes and executions by which they were ruined were imposed. And since Beys, Ulyma, and all who represented these, were never tired of preaching that all resistance or disobedience was rebellion against the Sultan. It was but natural that they should regard his rule as very far indeed from being the mere fiction it in reality was. Nor did the tyranny and oppression from which they suffered, in the least mitigated against their loyalty, for they never for a moment attributed their woes or troubles to any more distant cause than the officials by whose immediate action they were inflicted. That the higher officials did not protect them was, as they thought, due solely to the misrepresentations in difference or ill faith of those through whom alone they had access to them. There was not a fella in the land in those days, nor is there one today that did not or does not believe that if he could only lay his grievances before the Sultan or the kid Ive, in person, he would receive perfect justice and ample compensation for all his tribulations. They were firmly convinced, in this opinion, by the nature of the oppression from which they suffered. For this was necessarily varied in different places in a different times, according to the personal character of the officials, through or by whom it was inflicted. Moreover, among the worst of their tyrants of high degree, however callous these might be to the miseries of the people. There were but few indeed who did not consider it a matter of policy, and therefore, in some measure, one a pleasure, to pose now and then as a minister of justice or as a benevolent benefactor. To render justice to the poor and oppressed, and to be profuse in liberality, have ever been the surest means of gaming the real and sincere approbation or devotion of the Egyptians, as of all other oriental peoples. None knew this factor appreciated it more thoroughly than some of those from whom, whose cruelty, they suffered most. Nor was it difficult in the roughly organized administration of the country, for the worst of their oppressors to play the part of an innocent victim of the wrongdoing of others. For when appealed to, the higher officials threw the blame upon their subordinates, while these, in their turn, professed to be the unwilling but helpless agents of their superiors. Thus, finding all complaints useless, the sufferers always nourished the thought that if they could only plead their case personally to the Sultan, the one and only person who could not urge his own impotency to remedy the evils they complained of, or grant them the relief they sought, they would be assured of the justice and mercy they so sorely needed, and which they could gain from no other. That this should be their idea is not surprising, that they have never as yet risen beyond the idea of personal government. And therefore, while their belief in the immaculate justice and merciful disposition of the Sultan was liberally fed and encouraged by all around them, even by those from whose tyranny and greed they suffered most, they attributed his evident indifference to their griefs to the impossibility of his knowing and dealing with all the acts of all the officials of his empire. Of an organized system of government in which the controlling power is able to exert itself through all grades of its officials, from the highest downwards to the lowest, they had no knowledge, and indeed could have no conception. Nor even in the present day, after more than twenty years. 20 years experience of the working of such a government have they any just idea of its organization or of the principles or methods upon which its efficiency is based. Nor did the Egyptians see the cruelty and tyranny from which they suffered from the same point of view as the French did, or as we do. However limited and imperfect were the services that the government rendered them, they were conscious that they were in some respects dependent upon it. It at least afforded them a certain amount of protection for life and property and gave them a rude system of justice. As a return for these benefits they admitted its right to tax them, and being thus entitled to tax them, it naturally, as it seemed to them, taxed them to the uttermost penny, while they as naturally paid as little as possible. It was simply a contest between the government and the governing, not unlike the bargaining that was their sole method of carrying on trade in the bazaars and markets, and they had and could have no conception of any other manner in which the government of a country could be conducted. It was not possible, therefore, for the people to grasp the ideas Bonaparte was anxious to press upon them. Nor was it possible that during his short stay in Alexandria they should have any opportunity of gaining a better comprehension of his republican ideals, so utterly at conflict with all their conceptions of the relations of a people with those who governed them. It is true that, having confirmed Muhammad Kerem as governor of the town, Bonaparte had appointed a D.1, or council of seven members, to aid in the administration of his affairs. To these he no doubt gave sage advice and strict injunctions as to the duty of governing for the benefit of the people. But while to him this council was suggestive of the directory of Paris, and thus of the spirit of the republic, to the Alexandrians it was but a reproduction of the D.1 at Cairo, which to them was typical of nothing but tyranny and torture. Further, the strict discipline necessarily enforced upon all the members of the expedition, and rendered all the more evident and striking, in that all ranks were ceaselessly engaged in the work of receiving the stores from the ships and preparing for the advance. When contrasted with the laxity that prevailed in the ranks of the Mamalooks, and of all the other troops that the people had previously had any knowledge of, was not at all calculated to point with any but sarcastic emphasis, the doctrines of equality and fraternity presented to them. Not only the spirit, but even the wording of the proclamation was fatal to its success. In it Bonaparte had declared that "all men are equal in the sight of God." This to Muhammadin ears was nothing short of rank and absolute blasphemy. For the Qur'an, which to the Muhammadin is a veritable and literal word of God, emphatically asserts. And in the plainest terms, the contrary. This clause was, therefore, in itself sufficient to stamp the whole document with impotency, and showed how imperfectly Bonaparte and his advisers were informed on some of the points most affecting the sentiments and spirit of the people. To the Muslim, all mankind is divided into two classes, the Muslims and the non-Muslims. Between these they admit of no equality whatever, among themselves they are theoretically equal. As a Muslim, the Sultan himself is no more than his menace servant. Hence the democratic spirit that exists everywhere in Islam, and hence the freedom with which servants and even slaves address their masters. But in contradiction to this, the man who rules, whether as Sultan or as his deputy, or in any minor degree as the master of a household or otherwise, is from the mere fact of his ruling, regarded as being invested with the divine right to do so. Although one subject to limitations, it is equally a doctrine of the Qur'an that all power is from God, and therefore to be respected as such. Thus in Islam democracy and despotism go hand in hand. And while the Muslim of Egypt, as the Muslim of other lands, sees no incongruity or difficulty in this, to the European mind the concurrent operation of these two conflicting theories gives rise to many puzzling problems. Yet the solution is simple enough, for the democracy of Islam is the democracy of the grave, the recognition of the truth that all must die, and that in death all are equal. Although this belief be shared by all men as the one great truism of life, among Muhammadans everywhere there is an act of sense of its verity that ever present with them modifies all their views of life and death in a manner wholly foreign to the European mind. To the Egyptians, therefore, the proclamation was a mere flood of futile folly, and so little confidence was placed in its promises, or in the French protestations of Amity, that many of the people who could afford to do so made haste to quit the town and seek shelter in Rosetta or elsewhere, wherever they could speed by boat or by land as opportunity offered. End of chapter 5, The Proclamation That Failed, Recording by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California. Chapter 6 of Bonaparte in Egypt in the Egyptians of today. This is Ilybrivox Recording. All Ilybrivox recordings are in the public domain. Bonaparte in Egypt in the Egyptians of today, by Haji A. Brown. Chapter 6, Along March and a Short Battle. That the advance to Cairo might be made as rapidly as possible, Bonaparte decided that the bulk of his army should proceed direct to Demonhor, a town 33 miles to the south of Alexandria and on the most direct road to the capital. As it would have been most difficult to convey the heavy baggage of the expedition by this route, lying as it did across desert and inhospitable lands, General Dugau was commissioned to proceed by the longer but more practical and agreeable one, usually adopted by the people of the country. This led by Rosetta, a town situated four miles from the sea on the west bank of the Nile, and 45 miles from Alexandria. Thence, as soon as the town had been effectively occupied, the general, accompanied by a flotilla of boats, which were to be sent round from Alexandria as transports for the troops in stores, was to proceed up the Nile to Ramonaya, where his division was to meet the main army under the immediate command of Bonaparte. Short as was the distance to Demonhor, the march over the barren, burning desert was a most trying one for the troops of the expedition, who suffered severely from the want of food and water. Meat and bread were alike unobtainable, and the famished soldiers at the end of their day's march had to satisfy their hunger with rude cakes of grain, crush between stones and roughly baked on open fires. Nor did their arrival at Demonhor bring them any very sensible relief or encouragement. For there, as everywhere in their advance, the plain evidence the miserable homes of the people afforded of the chronic poverty in which they lived, with such as to wholly damp the ardor of the troops, and fill them with dismay at the prospect of a sojourn and campaign in such an inhospitable country. Fortunately for them it was the season of the watermelons, and on these and the course cakes of bread I have mentioned, they had to support the fatigues of their march as best they might. To add to their distress, small parties of Arabs hovered perpetually around the wretched column, and while keeping at a safe distance from the main body, lost no opportunity of slaughtering every weary straggler who got separated from his companions. These Arabs were all Bedouins, or nomadic Arabs belonging to tribes inhabiting the deserts that skirt the delta and valley of the Nile, and possessing all the characteristics of their race were nothing more than restless roving bands of robbers, ever ready to pray upon all unhappy enough to fall into their hands. Arabs by race and Muhammadence by religion, they yet acknowledged no ties of kinship or brotherhood outside of their own tribes, and were as ready to plunder ill-use and massacre the Egyptians as the French, or to unite with either against the other as the interest of the moment might dictate. In attacking the French, therefore, they were actuated by no other desire than that of securing the spoil of arms and other loot to be reaped from the bodies of their victims. Of the people of the country, the French during their advance saw almost nothing, for fearing not only the loss of everything they possessed, but that they themselves might be seized and compelled to work as slaves in the service of the army, or be sent for sale in foreign lands, and dreading that their women would be outraged and their children massacred, they had, at the first warning of the approach of the French enemy, hastened to forsake their homes and seek safety in distant towns or villages, taking with them their flocks and herds and as much as possible of their portable property. After spending a couple of nights at Damonhauer and taking the rest it so badly needed, the army set out for Ramonaya by the route leading almost at right angles to that which they had been following, on the way they fell in with a small party of the Mamalooks, with which they had a brief skirmish. Bonaparte himself narrowly escaping capture while separated with a few attendants from the main column of the force. At Ramonaya the army again halted for a rest and to wait the arrival of the division for Rosetta. Meanwhile General Dugua, with the force under his command, had arrived at Rosetta. This town, now fallen into decay and yearly decreasing in population, was then a place of considerable importance, owing to its position at the mouth of the Nile, and the fact of its being the chosen terminus of the journey by boat of those traveling between Cairo and Alexandria. In many ways one of the most pleasant spots in the whole of Egypt, surrounded by gardens and cultivation, and having markets well filled with all the produce of the country. It was probably of all the towns of Egypt, the one most attractive to foreigners. Here, as in other parts of the country, there was a small colony of Christians, including some few Europeans, and when the fugitives from Alexandria began to arrive with the news of the landing of the French and their occupation of that town, these were thrown into a state of the greatest alarm by the prompt outbreak of a fanatical cry for their assassination. There were in the town an uproar. number of candy-ots, who had been drawn to it by the fact that the acting governor was a countryman of theirs, and these had brought with them the fanatical spirit common in their own country. It was among these that the demand for a massacre of the Christians was started, and the governor himself appears to have been favorable to the project, which was in fact one of plunder rather than of murder, conceived in the hope that it would provide the candy-oats with an opportunity of enriching themselves safe from all danger of retribution. That the Egyptians did not readily accept the proposal as clear, as otherwise it would undoubtedly have been put into immediate practice. Happily for the Christians, the opposition offered was strong enough to delay the carrying out of the plan the turbulent bigots had formed. The matter was still being heatedly discussed when messengers arrived from Alexandria with copies of Bonaparte's proclamation. These testified that so far the people of that town had not only received generous treatment from the French, but were being liberally paid for all that the French required from them. The assurances they thus received that they had nothing to fear as to the safety of their lives their property were accepted by the people of Rosetta with the thoughtless impulsiveness of the true Egyptian. From a condition of panic and despair they passed at a bound to one of scarcely doubting satisfaction. Difficult as it may be for us to realize it, this was but the natural consequence of the character of the people, and of the circumstances in which they lived. As we have seen, the rulers, the Mamalux, were foreigners to whom they were united by no ties, whom they hated and feared, and from whom they could expect no benefit or advantage of any kind. When therefore they learned upon the testimony of their own countrymen, the generous behavior of the French to their vanquished enemy, they had reason rather to welcome them to oppose them, their hostility to the idea of being ruled by Christians being for the moment wholly outweighed by the rapture of their release from appalling alarm. The panic that had arisen being thus a laid, the councils of the tolerant Egyptians were promptly accepted, and so heartily was the suggestion of an attack upon the Christians repudiated by the people in general, that the governor and some others who had been foremost in the agitation for the massacre hastened to leave the town, and set out to join the forces of the Mamalux. As soon as their departure became known, it was decided to offer no opposition to the French, and when, therefore, General Duguha approached, he was met by a deputation which presented the keys of the town to him, and gave him an assurance of the peaceful disposition of the inhabitants. Of the attitude of the people of Alexandria and Rosetta toward the French after the first glad acceptance of the terms accorded them, we can learn little from the native historians. It is not, however, difficult to conceive what that attitude really was. Ashered for the time of the peaceful possession of their lives and properties, and freed from the terrors that had assailed them at the first coming of the enemy, they were in no mood to criticize or question the good faith of the newcomers, but as their feelings regained their wanted calm, doubts began to arise. It was to them, and altogether unheard of thing, that a military force should occupy a country, and not at once, seize upon its wealth, or at least exact tribute of some kind, or rather from the people. Nor could they forget that the Mamalux, when moving in the country, alike in time of peace or in time of war, ruthlessly took all they needed as a right to which they were entitled. How came it, then, that the French not only did not dispoil them, but paid, and paid well for what they required? Why should they pay when they could, if they would, help themselves freely? That in the abstract it was but justice that people knew well enough, but that any people could possess so keen a sense of justice as to thus conciliate its claims they could not understand. For after all, they could not but regard it as a voluntary foregoing of what seemed to them, a clearly defined and evident right. Hence, they were not long incoming to the conclusion that the forbearance of the French might be a mere trick to enable them to more effectively carry out some deep-laid scheme for the complete spoilation of the people. But the honest man has an inborn sense of the false and true that has seldom misled. Rogues batten upon rogues, and the Egyptian, by nature honest and thought indeed, is not slow to recognize honesty in others, so the straightforward sincerity of the French beat back his doubts. And baffled and perplexed he took refuge in a halting attitude, a kind of moral, armed neutrality, neither fully accepting nor yet rejecting their proffered friendship. As to the French, though they could not but be conscious that they had not been received with the open arms they had expected to greet them, and were sensible that the people were acting under some restraint, they had no just conception of the real position, and believed that only a little time was needed to enable them to gain the full confidence of the people. On the whole, therefore, things went smoothly enough in the early days of the occupation, and General Duguha lost no time in establishing at Rosetta a provisional administration on the lines of that set up by Bonaparte in Alexandria. This having been done, the work of preparing a flotilla for the Asant of the Nile was carried on with the utmost dispatch. It took but a few days to do all that was necessary, and General Duguha, a leaving a small force as a garrison, started with the division under his command for Ramanaya, which he reached without encountering any difficulty or opposition. From Ramanaya, the French army continued its advance upon Cairo, and keeping always within touch of the West Bank of the Nile, was accompanied by the flotilla laden with the stores and provisions. As he's usual at that time of the year, the Asant of the River was facilitated by the strong winds which blow across the country and up the river, with a strength more than sufficient to counteract the swift downward flow of the stream. Coming from the north, these winds naturally tend to moderate the temperature, but though thus beneficial to the troops, who had already suffered so much from the parching heat of the desert, they proved an unexpected source of danger. For its progress exceeding that of the troops, the flotilla unexpectedly encountered near Shabris, a fleet of gunboats from Cairo, that, born by the downward current of the river, was approaching it at a speed not less than its own, and was supported on either bank of the river by large bodies of the Mamalooks. The French finding themselves thus running right into the midst of their enemies, while their own troops were as yet too far behind to sucker them, the boats of the flotilla were hastily anchored in the positions they happened to occupy at the moment. A brisk engagement followed, in which the invaders were so sorely pressed, that had not the explosion of a powder magazine in one of the Egyptian boats suddenly thrown the enemy into confusion, it is more than probable the whole flotilla would have fallen into the hands of the Egyptians. As it was, several of the French boats were captured, and their crews are either driven into the river or ruthlessly cut down, and their decapitated heads exposed to the horrified gaze of their companions. So evident was the danger that pressed them, that Bertelon, one of the savants who accompanied the force, began to fill his pockets with stones gathered from the ballast of the boat in which he happened to be, and when asked why he did so, replied that he might sink rapidly rather than fall into the hands of the enemy. Fortunately for the French, air the Egyptians had recovered from the confusion the explosion had created, the fall of night put an end to the contest. Meanwhile, intelligence of what was happening, having been sent to Bonaparte, he had hastened to the aid of the flotilla, but only succeeded in reaching it too late to take any part in the battle. Early the next morning, however, the two armies were drawn up in battle array, and the Mamelux, with the fearless and impetuous bravery which had always been characteristic of them, lost no time in opening the attack and charged right up to the French line. Their accustomed dash and reckless courage proved, however, of no avail, and they were speedily repulsed by the veterans to whom they were opposed, who kept their ranks unbroken and waited for the near approach of their foes to pour upon them a galling and destructive fire. Baffled by the stalled calmness of the French, and puzzled by the impotency of their own wild charge, the Mamelux hastily withdrew beyond the French line of fire and halted, apparently uncertain what course to pursue. In the pause that followed, an incident occurred, curiously illustrating the widely different ideas and spirit by which the two armies were animated. One of the Mamelux bays rode unaccompanied toward the French line, and boldly challenged his foes to single combat. But for the French at all events, as the French historian cynically remarks, the time for such frivolous exploits was passed, and to the disgrace of the French, the daring Mamelux was shot down on the spot. Discomfitted by the repulse they had sustained, and with a whole of their forces thrown into disorder, the Mamelux chiefs decided to abandon the field, and turning their horse's heads, retreated precipitately towards Cairo. Once forth, the expedition continued its advance without further opposition, until within sight of Cairo, always keeping close to the river, not only for the sake of the water, but for that of the more abundant supplies obtainable in its vicinity, and for the mutual support of the army and the flotilla. To carry out these later objects more effectively, a strong detachment was sent across the river to guard the east bank, and a forage in the villages of the Delta. On both sides of the river, the troops continued to be harassed by small parties of the Bedouins, who, following all their movements, availed themselves of every opportunity of cutting off stragglers. One of these raiding parties having surprised a junior officer, whom, from his uniform and appearance, they mistakenly supposed to be a man of high rank, carried him into their camp with the view to holding him for ransom. On a part at once sent a messenger to offer a few guineas for his release. Thereupon a dispute arose among his captors, as to which of them should receive the ransom, and was continued so heatedly that the chief of the party, enraged at their obstinacy, declared that none of them should have it, shot the unfortunate prisoner and sent the ransom back. As the force moved onwards towards Cairo, the heat became daily, more and more oppressive, and innovating to the troops. To whom, fresh from the genial spring climate of southern Europe, the fierce and dazzling glare of the sun in the shelterless lands through which their route lay, was little short of an agonizing misery. To add to their sufferings the food obtainable was, as before, neither adequate nor adapted to their needs. It was not until the 20th of July that the army caught its first sight of the pyramids, and of the macadam hills overhanging the city of Cairo. As they had drawn nearer the capital, the evidence of a greatly increased density of population, and the greater abundance and variety of the supplies they had been able to secure, gave the jaded troops fresh energy and hope. They were still much more than a day's march from the pyramids when Bonaparte received intelligence that the Mamaluk army was encamped at Imbaba, a village on the west bank of the river, at the spot where it is now crossed by the railway bridge. As it was then evening, the army was halted and vivou act for the night at the hamlet of Am-Al-Denar, but only to rise in resume its march before the first dawn of day. Animated by the prospect of the combat, now but a few hours before them, and which, as they confidently expected, was to gain them a fair reward for all the hardships they had been enduring, the troops pressed onward eager for battle, but it was not until two o'clock in the afternoon that at the end of twelve hours march they found themselves in touch with the enemy. Knowing that the Mamaluk had entrenched themselves in front of the village of Imbaba, and had planted a battery of forty guns in position behind their trenches, Bonaparte decided that it would be necessary to advance in such a way as to be able to attack the enemy's position upon its flanks. And he therefore so disposed his forces that, each division marching in the form of a hollow square, the whole would approach the enemy's position in the form of a crescent. And so that, while the right and left wings would threaten the Mamaluk's flanks, the center would be prepared to repulse the front attack he expected them to make, according to their custom. Murad Bay, who, with his long white beard covering his breast, was in personal command with the Mamaluk's, was not slow to detect the aim of the French General, and quickly ordered Ayub Bay, one of the best and bravest of the Mamaluk commanders, to advance and attack the divisions of General Dissé, who was moving round towards the west with a view to outflanking the left wing of the Egyptian position. Ayub, who had under him a large and fearless but wholly undisciplined body of cavalry, at once bore straight down on the French, without seeking cover of any kind, and, when within charging distance, dashed upon the French square with the wild cries, brandishing of arms, and tumultuous crowding customary to all oriental warfare of that day. Faithful to the orders they had received, the French withheld their fire until the enemy were close upon them, so close that the ruthless rending of the ranks of the Mamaluk's by the fierce hail of shot poured upon them, was all insufficient to stay their headlong charge, which bearing down the resistance of their foes, carried them into the center of the broken square. But the French veterans, always cool and prompt, turned about, and the Mamaluk's, finding themselves encircled by their enemy's fire, fought their way back and out of the square. But only to bring themselves under a heavy crossfire from the square and the division of General Cleber, who was moving up to its support. Aeub's party being thus routed, the French made a direct attack in force upon the entrenched position in front of the village of Vimbaba, and carried it at the bayonets point, while the divisions forming the left wing of the attack pushed on between the village and the river. The Mamaluk's were thus caught between the horns of a crescent that was threatening to close and entirely surround them. Seeing the danger, Murad Bay at once withdrew his men, and sought the scanty shelter of a grove of dataries at a little distance from the village. When doing this he was compelled to leave behind him some hundreds of the Mamaluk troops, who, caught between the French and the river, utterly unable to defend themselves or to fly, were deliberately shot down by the French, or perished in an attempt to escape across the river. As one historian says, "It was no longer a fight, but a massacre," and thus ingloriously ended what is termed by the Egyptians, the Battle of Vimbaba, and by the French, the Battle of the Pyramids, a battle by which the power of the Mamaluk's was shattered, and Bonaparte was left for the moment, master of Egypt, a battle in which the state-ebe discipline of modern warfare proved once and for all its immeasurable superiority over the wild chivalry of the past, a battle which, apart from this and the vast consequences that have resulted from its issue, is scarcely worthy of remembrance. The whole combat had lasted rather less than an hour, and when it was over the French soldiers, forgetting their fatigues and weariness, turned the field into a vast mart, bartering and selling the spoils of rich armor, weapons, and apparel, and other things they were able to reap from the bodies of their vanquished foes. Murad Bay, finding it impossible to recover his position, and that his forces were too disorganized and dismayed by a system of warfare so strange and incomprehensible to them to make any further effort, abandoned the field, and hastened away to his summer palace at Giza, once after collecting his most portable valuables, he set out for Upper Egypt. The justice that never fails had thus overtaken the iniquities of the Mamalooks. For centuries they had desolated the land, sacrificing all else to their own ambitious greed, and now they were shattered and broken, never again to recover. For a short time they were distruggled and hoped vainly for a return to power. But it was not to be. The Theod of Heaven itself was against them, and the decree of their doom went forth as infinitely more inexorable than the laws of the Meeds and the Persians, as omnipotence is to impotency. Some years afterwards, when the British were encamped upon the banks of the Nile near Benis Aweep, a poor, half-blind, holy destitute fugitive sought protection and a pittance at their hands. It was Ibrahim, the last of the great Mamalook bays, a man by no means typical of the baser of his class, with many faults, yet with some good points, one who under happier circumstances might have left an honorable record of service for the welfare of his fellow-man. As it was, his fate was but a part of the answer of that wrath that had at last heard the cry of the distressed, and avenged the wrongs of the widow and the orphan. End of Chapter 6, Along March and a Short Battle. According by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California. Chapter 7 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. Brown. Chapter 7, After the Battle. Before leaving Cairo to meet and oppose the French advance, Murad Bay had arranged that a large chain was to be stretched as a boom across the river, and batteries erected upon the adjacent shore to play upon the enemy and the confusion he anticipated would arise from their meeting with this obstacle. It was not, however, until the news of the defeat of the Mamalooks at Shabris had thrown the capital into the utmost confusion, that any serious efforts were made to prepare the defenses of the city. When that news came to the people, who had been looking forward to receiving tidings of the destruction of the French, then Ibrahim Bay and Becare Pasha, filled with alarm at this first note of disaster, jointly called upon the whole population to take up arms and hasten to the riverside for the defense of their homes and families. Weapons and ammunition were served out as long as they could be got to all comers, and when the supply of deadlier arms ran short, the deficiency was made good in intention, if not in fact, by the distribution of Nabuts. Longstaffs of Hardwood, which the Egyptians of the lower classes are accustomed to use, much as our distant forebears used their quarterstaffs. Other impromptu weapons were provided by the people themselves, such as knives lashed to the end of long sticks. This primitive arm which could either be wielded as a lance or thrown as a javelin, being destined a later date to deprive the French of one of their ablest generals. The arrow was at that time separated from the river by an open stretch of ground, now covered by the avenues lined by the villas and mansions that form the Khazir al-Ani and Ismaili quarters of the town. At the north end of this base was a small town of Boulac, which served as the port of the city then as it still does. This was the spot chosen by Ibrahim Bay as the headquarters for the defense of the town. And here around the people were gathered, and quantities of stores and ammunition of every kind collected, whatever was needed or desired, if not found in the magazines of the state being seized without ceremony wherever it could be God. For several days the space between the two towns was covered with the crowds coming and going engaged in the transport of the various materials required, and so great was the haste to finish the work and the desire to help it on that met of almost all degrees assisted in the task. As it was impossible to find accommodation for everybody at Boulac, a large number of the people returned to their homes in the city to pass the night and gain well-earned repose, but only to return at the first dawn of day. Unwanted and severe as was the labor they had to undergo all worked not only willingly, but with the greatest enthusiasm, and with all the needless noise and tumult that is a never-failing part of any exertion the Egyptian worker is called upon to make. Not unnaturally the workers encouraged each other by vaunting cries of contempt and derision for the enemy they were expecting, and thus incurred the censure of the Egyptian historian Gabridi, who condemned such conduct as lacking in the dignity that should distinguish the defense of Islam. The Olima, who like the druids of old, have always been exempt from military service and taxation. We're like them. Not backward in encouraging others in their toil or in assisting in such ways and manners as befitted their character. Very properly, they envisaged themselves especially in prayer, and at all the state of hours of worship offered up fervent supplications to the deity for protection and victory, and the children of all the schools being under their charge, they gathered these and led them in processions reciting invocations suited to the occasion. The dervishes, or as they were often incorrectly termed "the monks of Islam," who were in reality simply members of lay confraternities, such as those of the Catholic Church, also assembled themselves and paraded the streets flying their banners and accompanied by the weird Arab music of pipes and drums that, unwelcome to European ears, has a strange fascination for the Arab in Egyptian. And like the Caiara or Marcellet in the streets of Paris, fills its hearers with a fierce longing for action and excitement, a wild craving to be up and doing they know not what, or why. Some of the wealthier citizens left the town to seek refuge in the neighboring villages. Others simply sent their families and valuables away and joined the gathering at Boulac, and the town being thus practically deserted. Even the Sheiksel-Hara, petty officials appointed in all the quarters of the town to look after public order, being engaged at Boulac. The streets, which in ordinary times were swept in water daily, were neglected, and business of every kind being of necessity at a standstill, the poorer classes who lived from hand to mouth on their daily earnings, no longer finding any employment were driven by sheer starvation to seek in robbery and crime, a means of living. The Dewons having been broken up by the departure of Murad Bay and others of the Mamelok chiefs. No regular council could be held, but Baykir Pasha, with some of the Eulima and leading men who remained, held frequent consultations and were in constant communication with Ibrahim Bay, who remained at Boulac day and night to supervise the work there, and along the river, by the side of which batteries were being erected for a distance of nearly three miles north of Boulac. Ibrahim Bay appears to the last to have preserved his confidence in the certainty of the Mamelok's proving victorious. But Baykir Pasha, when the news of the near approach of the French was received, decided in conjunction with some of the Eulima to make an attempt to treat with the enemy. With this object in view they sent for a Monsour bandouf, who was regarded as the leader of the French colony, and begged him to tell them candidly what he thought was the object of the invasion. He, of course, was no better informed upon this point than they were themselves, but he could at least form an idea, and his reply was that he believed that most likely the French desired nothing more than a free passage through the country to enable them to proceed to India, and join their countrymen there in their struggle with the English. Accepting this as, at least, a possibly true explanation of the invasion, they proposed to Monsour bandouf that he should go as an envoy from them to Bonaparte, and assure him of their willingness to facilitate him in every way if such were his object. Not without some hesitation occasioned by his fear that it would not be possible for him to reach the French camp in safety, Monsour bandouf consented to do this, and was preparing to set out with an escort of the Mamalox of Ibrahim Bay for his protection, when the reverberations of the cannon at Imbaba were heard, and they realized that it was too late for such an embassy as they had proposed. As soon as Ibrahim Bay heard the commencement of the battle, he began to take such steps as he could to forward assistance to Murad Bay, but long before any effective move in that direction could be made, the battle was over, and Ibrahim Bay, hearing of the flight of Murad, hastened back to Cairo with Baker Pasha to take their families and valuables and flee. Words fail to describe the panic that overwhelmed the people. Outerly helpless and unaccustomed to think or act for themselves, unarmed and without any possible means of defense. They saw themselves deserted by their leaders at the mercy of a foe from whom, as they thought, they could expect no quarter and no pity, while the military force in the protection of which they felt such unbounded confidence was in full flight, leaving them to their fate. To any unwarlike and helpless people to be thus suddenly abandoned as a prey to an unknown foe must have seemed an appalling disaster. But in this case, no circumstance seems to have been wanting that could by any possibility add to the natural terror of the people at the calamity that had so suddenly befallen them. In less than an hour they were plunged from an exulting ecstasy of triumphant anticipation to the crushing despondency of the direst despair. The consternation that had been occasioned by the first news of the defeat of the Mamalox at Shabrice had been largely, not holy, dissipated by the representations of the Mamalox. And so loud and blatant were the bounties of the people at Gabriety, whose era blood had but little sympathy for any open expression of the emotions, speaks in the most contemptuous terms of their conduct as holy and worthy of a people deserving of any esteem. Nor had the Mamalox, knowing well how little love the people bore them, neglected to contribute all they could to their fear of the French, by attributing to these the lust of Rapin and bloodthirsty cruelty. And with the news of the defeat and flight of Murad Bay came the tale of the slaughter of the Mamalox by the Riverside to confirm and augment the worst fears of the people. Later on reports were spread that the French were still busy slaying and destroying all before them, and Eberhem Bay having ordered the burning of all the boats to prevent the French using them to cross the river. The people, ignorant of this, took the dense columns of smoke arising from the Riverside, as confirmation of the ruthless ravage the French were said to be wrecking. In the dire madness of the despair that seized them, no room was left for any other thoughts than those of self-preservation. And, as the evening closed in, and night fell, the whole population, laden with all he could carry of their goods or wealth, streamed out of the city gates. In the maddened rush for safety, all the claims of blood and friendship were forgotten, and men and women alike, frantic from their fears, fought their way through the fleeing crowds, heedless of parents, wives, brothers, sisters. More than one writer has taken this wild exodus as a text to accuse the people of cowardice. Nothing could be more unjust. They were flying from what to them was a very real and immediate danger, and for the most part on foot from mounted foes. They could see no other choice but fly or die. And on the darkness of the night the suddenness of the danger, everything helped towards them onward. Not more sure was Christian that he was fleeing from the city of destruction than were they. It was a panic such as seizes of people with all the more uncontrollable force in that it comes as a sudden revulsion from peaceful ease. One such as that in our own days in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco have turned laughing joyous crowds of pleasure-seekers into mobs of frenzied fugitives. When in the days of the dynamite scare in London the crash of the Scotland yard explosion was heard in the strand, men dashed here and there for safety from the danger that had passed. Not long after I saw a room full of men hurl themselves headlong down a narrow flight of starrows, fleeing madly from the report of a detonating cigar. I have seen panic seize a thousand immigrants on board a German ship in mid-ocean. Another, the pilgrims for Mecca on an Austrian ship in Bombay Harbor. Another, the coulies working on the herniy railway, in Baluchistan. In these cases the panic creating danger was an imaginary one, and yet in real danger these same victims of panic remained calm and collected. It was so, as we shall have occasioned to see with the unhappy kairines. I have spoken already of the fears that the coming of the French had awakened in the hearts of the people. And to the kairines it must have seemed on that most miserable of nights as if the realization of all the worst of those fears was by the question of a few moments. As the evening had fallen had they not seen the columns of flame emblazoned smoke that to them were a proof of the ferocious fury of the foe. Had they not seen the mammalic chiefs, the bravest of the brave, fleeing for life with breathless haste, with no arms, no leader, nothing but instant flight as the only means of safety they could conceive. Surely a people who had not been panicked stricken in such a dire peril would have been a nation of heroes such as the world has never yet seen. But if safety for them lay outside the city, it was not beneath its walls, for there the Bedouin tribesmen, whom Ibrahim Bay had summoned to assist him in the defense of the town, disappointed of the plunder of the French army to which they had looked forward as their only inducement to take part in the contest, with untroubled consciences turned to the pillage of the unhappy fugitives, as the heaven sent compensation for their unrealized hopes. Nor were they content with the rich plunder that thus easily fell into their hands, but with wanton savagery, murdered the man and outraged and slew the women. Thus finding at the hands of their co-religionists, who had been summoned for their defense, no better mercy than the unrestrained cruelty they feared from the French, the unhappy people, or at least so many of them as escaped from the Bedouins, returned to their homes, while the mammal luck chiefs and their followers rode away through the desert, indifferent to the fate of all they had left behind them. Meanwhile, the French army, after a short rest, had advanced along the left bank of the river as far as Giza, a village lying in the line between the city and the pyramids, or Bonaparte decided to encamp. On their way from Embaba, the troops had an opportunity of seeing across the river the town of Cairo, and the nearly mile-wide stretch of open land lying between, studded with the gardens and summer residences of some of the wealthier of the bays. Elated by their victory, and perhaps still more so by the rich loot they had gleaned from the dead bodies of their fallen foes, they forgot the fatigues of their long advance, and set themselves to enjoy the rest they so much needed. and the comparatively luxurious fair they expected to compensate them for all the hardships they had endured. Many were the castles that rose in the air as they sat around the Bivouac fires, and joked and gested, until, weird by the labors of the day, nature's soft nurse lulled them to the repose she withheld from their vanquished enemies. But the coming of daylight on the moral of the battle brought to the horror-welmed citizens some small gleam of comfort. This from the west bank of the river told them how the French had settled peacefully down at Giza, and the people coming into the town from Boulac explained the fires that had added so much to the terror of the night. With the calmer mood thus induced came the remembrance of what they had heard of the mildness and humanity of the French at Alexandria and Rosetta, and along the line of their advance, and though the mourners were wailing for their dead and missing in every street and corner of the town, and their homes had been dismantled or disordered by the flight of the night before, and swept by the thieves of the city of whatever had been left behind. The people still, as ever, impulsive and hopeful, began with the truest of courage to repair as best they might the havoc that awful night had wrought, and to face the fears and dangers yet before them with the spirit little short of heroism. Early in the morning, Yuleema and the few leading men who remained in the town gathered together to consult as to what course it would be best for them to follow. They had not much scope for discussion, for they recognized from the first that the only question left for them to deal with was how best to conciliate the conquerors. Eventually it was agreed to send a deputation to the French camp to announce their submission and crave the forbearance and protection of the French general, and thus to ascertain as far as possible what they had to hope and what to fear. Tachless as he is in a moment of emergency, when he stays to take thought with himself in calm and serious mood, the Egyptian not unfrequently shows a wisdom that his critics seldom accord him. Thus wholly inexperienced as they were in such diplomatic matters, they wisely judged that to send as the representatives of the town men who could claim to be neutrals would tend to further the objects of their mission. Two Magrabean sheiks, that is members of the Uleema from the Barbary states, were therefore selected, and with many injunctions and entreaties counseled to plead the cause of the town in the most earnest manner they could achieve. Accompanied by the prayers and blessings of the whole population, the deputation, not without some small lingering doubt as to the nature of the reception that might await it, set out for Guiza. Bonaparte, to whom their coming was not so unexpected as they themselves thought it to be, received them with the affability he so well knew how to show, and which throughout his stay in Egypt did much to lessen the friction between the two peoples. One of the sheiks was able to speak French, and had had some experience of French manners, and he, acting as spokesman, discharged his task well and discreetly, and concluded his address by an appeal for clemency. Bonaparte replied that he was the friend of the Egyptians, not their enemy, and that he came to the country to release them from the tyranny of the Mamelux, and in short gave them a verbal restatement of the proclamation, with many fine flourishes, about the high aims and noble ideals by which the French were actuated. So with many fair words, the deputation was dismissed, but with the request that the chief man remaining in the town should wait in person upon the general to hear from him the arrangement he proposed to make. All the town was awaiting the return of the deputation with an eagerness and suppressed excitement that made their short absence seem an age, and great was the relief when they were seen once more approaching the landing, and great the joy with which the news they bore was received throughout the town. No time was lost in responding to Bonaparte's invitation, and, taking with them the keys of the city, all the chief men set out for Guise, anxious at once to gain renewed assurance of the fair hopes awakened by the report of the deputation, and at the same time give the French general a proof of the readiness to comply with his desires. Bonaparte was, if possible, more gracious than before, and again dilated upon the purely friendly and beneficent intentions of the invasion, of his sympathy for Islam, and his desire to make his coming, the opening of a new era in the history of the people, who were then forth to enjoy all the blessings that the establishment of the republic had already conferred upon the French themselves. He was listened to with the emotionless solidity of the oriental, but not without occasional exclamations of approval. Yet as he went on, his listeners removed by steadily growing wonder at the distrust of a speech so utterly unlike anything they had ever heard of, or conceived as possible, from the lips of a conqueror. They had, indeed, read the proclamation, copies of which had been sent to Cairo, but it had failed with them, as with the people of Alexandria, to convey any intelligible conception of the ideas it was intended to impart, and the little corporals' discourse reaching them through the mouth of an interpreter helped them nothing at all to grasp the real ames and object of the French. All that they could comprehend was that they were expected to accept the French as their rulers, that their lives, property, and religion would be respected, and that the French were as eager to reward their friends as to annihilate their enemies. But loyalty to the French and loyalty to the Sultan were so mixed up in the proclamation and in Bonaparte's speech, and were in themselves in the eyes of the Egyptians, two such absolutely irreconcilable things, that the sheiks were completely bewildered by the attempt to solve the enigma thus presented to them. So they were content for the moment to accept the French assurance that they were to be treated as friends, and for the rest God was great, and they put the trust in Him. But if the speech of Bonaparte thus made upon them but little impression of a definite kind, the courtesy shown them by all the French with whom they came in contact was not so baron. Acustum, as they were to the hollow insincereity of court life under the bays, the sheiks could not fail to appreciate the genuine character of the politeness with which they had been received by the French. It was due rather to this appreciation than to the plausible promises of the general that they returned to the city somewhat, though not wholly, reassured as to the immediate future. On their part, the French were sufficiently pleased with the docileity of the deputation, and from the dignity, self-possession, and courtesy of its members, awkward well for the realization of their own views. As a consequence of the good understanding thus arrived at, boats were sent over to Guise to convey the advance guard of the army to Cairo, and returning after sunset with the detachment of the troops escorted through the town by some of the leading men, and lighted by torches led to the citadel of which it took possession. The following day the bulk of the army was moved across the river, and historians record with some disgust the revolting glee with which the soldiers fished out of the stream they hideously swollen and disfigured bodies of the Mamelok's, and of the horses that had perished in the attempt to escape from Embaba, that they might dispoil the miserable carcasses of whatever remained upon them of value. We must remember, however, that in those days the armies of Europe were recruited from classes that it scarcely has yet been touched by the advance of civilization. No where was human life then regarded with the sanctity a more enlightened age accords it. To his superiors the soldier was of no value but as food for powder, and it is not surprising that the little value placed upon his life by others should lead him to look upon the lives of his foes at a still lower rate and deprive him of all feelings of humanity towards them. As to the people of the town released from the fears that had plunged him in such disastrous despair, and as responsive as always to the impulse of the moment and the play of their surroundings, these received the French, if not with the open arms that Bonaparte had looked for, at least with a toleration and absence of hostile demonstrations, that feedily put the French at their ease. Everything thus bidding fair for the realization of all his hopes, Bonaparte himself crossed over the river on the 27th of July, and took up his quarters in a new palace that Alfie Bay, one of the wealthiest of the Mamelok chiefs, had only just completed and furnished in a magnificent manner, on the bank of the small lake to the northwest of the city, the site of which is now occupied by the garden and buildings of the Isbequia, quarter of the new town. End of chapter 7, After the Battle, Recording by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California Chapter 8 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, Recording by Graham McMillan. Brown, chapter 8, victors and vanquished. Bonaparte having thus accomplished the first, and, though he did not think so, last step, on the way towards the building of the great Eastern Empire that he had dreamed was to take Europe in reverse. Dispatched a portion of the army in pursuit of the fugitive Mamelok's, and settled down in his new quarters to scheme and prepare for the future. The troops remaining in Cairo, in the best of humor at the agreeable change the city gave them, from the hardships of the advance, began with the rough, good humor of the soldier to fraternize with the people. At first, diffident and distrustful of the French, the lower classes, seeing that these went about unarmed, and that not only were their own lives and property respected, but that even the common soldiers, paid liberally and promptly for all they needed, were not slow in adapting themselves to the position. They were still depressed by the loss of kin and property that had resulted from the panic, but believing, as all Muslims do, in Pope's doctrine that, whatever is, is right. They rapidly recovered their wanted cheerfulness, and wherever the French went in the town, they, like Rasselas, met Gadi and Kindness, and heard the song of joy or the laugh of the careless, almost untamed. ranged by the dread of reflection, Imlach, so dolefully attributed to the Marius. That the people should have thus readily accepted the rule of an alien army, as often enough been the subject of cynical criticism on the part of authors compiling the history of the country, from such documents as fell in their way. But from their ignorance of the people and of humanity in general, incapable of reading a right, the true meaning of the records they perused. Let us avoid their error, and try to grasp the real meaning of this off-condemned levity of the Egyptians. And let us do so with the more seriousness of purpose, that, in learning what we can of the real attitude of the people toward the French in 1798, we shall be learning much that will help us to understand their attitude toward the English in more recent years. To begin with, let us note that in fraternizing with the French, the kairians were true to their natural instinct; for they are, and always have been, of volatile, light-hearted people, fond of just and pleasure, enjoying the present with no heed for the moral, and the rank and file of the invaders being of the same temperament, these traits supplied a ready bond of good feeling between the two bodies. And in yielding to the spirit of fellowship thus engendered, the Egyptians betrayed no trust, and were guilty of no treachery or disloyalty. To the Mamelux they owed no more loyalty than did the Saxon English, or the Celtic Irish, to the Normans, and no more love than the French revolutionists had had for the aristocrats. Whatever of loyalty they had was given to the Sultan, and since Bonaparte professed to respect his authority and to be acting in his interest, this loyalty was not outraged by the present of the French. Nor did the flight of Bacier Pasha, the Sultan's representative, impeached the good faith of the French; for it was no uncommon sight to see a Turkish governor in arms against, or fleeing from, his sovereign. Two things only separated the victors from the vanquished, the want of a common language, and the religion, or rather, irreligion, of the French. The former was too trivial a matter to sway either the French or the Egyptians, and the latter, though it was an effectual barrier to any deep friendship between the two peoples, was scarcely any restraint upon such purely social intercourse as was possible between them. Finally, the Egyptians had but one of two courses open to them; they must either frankly accept friendly relations, or offer a sullen and unavailing opposition. This was so because there were as little anxious for, as incapable of, self- government, or self-protection. Without some governing body to direct the affairs of the country, they would have been like a flock without its bell-weather. Of this they were conscious, and though it is not probable that, day for a moment looked at the question before them with regard to this fact, it was chiefly this that prevented their seeing in the alternative to the acceptance of the French. To the present day many of the peoples of India are influenced by the same sense of their own incapacity, and it is therefore one of the strongest of the elements tending to the consolidation of the empire under its British rulers. As this incapacity, and the belief that it is an erratic defect of the peoples concerned, has largely affected public opinion in Europe as to the present and future of the Egyptians, it will be well for us to see here to what causes it is due. Remembering how little we can see beyond the surface of the lives, not only of our own countrymen, but even of our own most intimate friends, we need not wonder that in seeking to gauge the character of a people so altogether apart from us as are the Egyptians. We are apt to wander widely from the truth in our efforts to understand the ideas by which they are guided, and to be misled by giving undue weight to some feature that seems to mark them out as different from ourselves. It is thus we find the Egyptians so commonly spoken of as "fatalists." A term perhaps not unfairly applied as a reproach to them, but one that is too often most wrongly taken as a sufficient explanation of all of their real or alleged incapacity. It is this we are told that has rendered them incapable of controlling their own affairs. This that has made them the "survile slaves of foreign masters." The truth is that the fatalism of the Egyptians not only plays a very small part in the framing of their characters or the guidance of their lives, but it is a fatalism of a kind not commonly understood or implied by the term. We must look elsewhere, therefore, for the explanation we need, and a slight knowledge of their history is enough to point us to the innervation caused by the system of government under which they have lived for so many centuries, as at least a powerful factor in the limitation of their aptitudes. From generation to generation, deprived of all right or power of initiative, we, without voice or influence in the affairs of the country, and habitually treated as slaves, having no other duty and owning no other privilege than that of the most perfect submission to all representing the governing power of the moment. They were of necessity entirely unaccustomed to think of or discuss any other subjects than the poultry matters of their daily lives. Yet it must not be supposed that they were de-barred the liberty of speech or of comment and criticism, or that they were, in any sense, wholly passive victims of the tyranny from which they suffered. Under the bays they, from time to time, demonstrated as loudly, if not as effectively, as our own people are want to do. Thus as a protest against a new impost, or as the tutors and stewards would have termed it, benevolence, laid upon them in the year 1794, with common consent all the business of the town was suspended. And the people went in a mass to the Cadi or Chief Justice, and the leading Olima, and through their intermediation obtained the revocation of the impost, for the moment, but for the moment only, for the wily bays, though they stormed and fumed, felt it wiser to submit and to annull the impost, but a little later substituted for it a whole series of imposts, which being demanded at intervals and only from one or two sections of the people at a time. Finally proved more profitable to the bays and more berthensome to the people than it would have been in its first form. It is clear, however, from this incident that the people had a fair conception of the power of United Action. But the mob that marched to the Cadi's, while it was, like those of the French Revolution, leaderless, could not like those march in column, but pressed forward in a mass, a mere throng of man stirred by a common impulse. When the bays, to adopt a military phrase, attacked them in detail, this want of leadership was fatal to their cause, and this want of leaders was due to the conditions under which the people were living. For the man who had dared to act as leader would have paid the penalty of his folly with his life. And the people would have been helpless to avenge his death, hence anything in the nature of effective organization or combination was impossible. Unlike their critics, the Egyptians saw then, as they do now, that without the power and opportunity of arming themselves, they were, and must remain, helpless to combat the tyranny of their rulers, otherwise then by such passive means as the suspension of all trade and business. It will be seen then, that the condition of the Egyptians at the time of the French invasion was, in a broad way, similar to that of the Saxons under the Normans. But we need not go back to the time when Gworth bewailed the condition of his countrymen to find the masses of the English people but little better off in this respect than where the Egyptians under the Mamelokes. When in 1795, Bishop Horsley, speaking in the House of Lords, said he, "Did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but to obey them." And the chief justice, in sentencing Muir, cried, "As for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation on them? They might both have been speaking for the Mameloke rulers of Egypt, and yet they spoke nothing more than the sentiment of their class. In many other ways the condition of the English people at the close of the 18th century was not only not better than that of the Egyptians, but absolutely worse. In Egypt the people suffered from the Corvei, that is to say their liability to forced labor. In England the press gangs dragged them from their homes for foreign service. In Egypt the people were liable to be flagged or executed on the least pretext at the whim of their rulers. In England they were subject to the same penalties by "just process of law", interpreted by such humane and benevolent persons as the two men whom I have just quoted. Let anyone who will study the records of the time with regard to the condition of the people of England, those of France and those of Egypt, and they cannot fail to see that the advantage lay with the Egyptians. I have elsewhere tried to show just how the Egyptians looked upon the evils from which they suffered. And it must be obvious from what I have there said that this people had but little inducement to revolt. Could they have arisen and annihilated the Mamelokes, the only result would have been the immediate invasion of the country by a Turkish army, that they could not possibly withstand, and which would not fail to exact a terrible penalty from them for their temporary success. In Egypt then the people had to endure much, but the ills that afflicted them were intermittent, coming upon them only now and then, after longer or shorter intervals, are at least comparative, peace and comfort, reminding one indeed of the hurricanes that ravaged a South Sea Islands with death and destruction. But swiftly passing, leave the people once more to the enjoyment of the indolent, carefree life they ordinarily live. How different had it been in France just before the revolution? In Egypt the people always had the Elyma to plead their cause, and if these commonly urged them to the exercise of patience and submission, they did so with a sympathy that was real. In France priest and politician alike were aloof from the people, and the evils that were crushing these were growing steadily day by day with increasing force, with no intermission, and with no possibility for a hope of better days. No possibility but one. One that found its expression in the cry of "down with the aristocrats." There was no such agony of want and misery for the people of Cairo, as there was for the people of Paris in those bitter days, when the revolution, unseen but with many warning mutterings, was gathering to itself. the hearts of men, that these might form its army of vengeance upon that cream of civilization that had grown so exquisitely fine and sensitive, that it had lost its natural sympathies and ceased to be conscious of its fellowship with any humanity not fitted to adorn its salons. To the Egyptian, the cry of "down with the bays" would have but meant "up with the Turks." To the French, the cry of "down with the aristocrats" meant "up with myself." And so justice robed in the crimson garb of vengeance swept over the land, and, like another Frankenstein, aristocratic brutality fled from its own creation. In England, bad as was the condition of the people, the circumstances that determined their action were very different from those that controlled the French or the Egyptians. In Egypt, everything tended to discourage the people from any attempt to permanently better their condition. In France, everything drove them to desperate, but victorious, struggle. In England, the people had every incentive to action of another type. There, the principle of constitutional government was recognized, and if the laws were the most savage that ever disgraced a statute book, it was within the bounds of possibility to hope for their improvement. The right of the people to govern themselves was not yet admitted, but their right to be heard was only denied by a class which was not beyond attack or defeat by legal means. And in the last resort, rebellion was possible, and by no means foretoomed to failure. The English were in the same position as the Egyptians in one respect, namely that it was not a change in the form of government or the normal and proper condition of the people that they needed, but simply the abolition of evils that were accidental and not essential to that form or those conditions. To the French, reform had become virtually impossible. No making or mending of laws or regulations will mend the hearts of men. The bays of Egypt, the governing class in England, and the aristocrats in France, were all heartlessly tyrannical, but the bays were so through capricious selfishness, the English through distorted views of justice and right, and the French through callous, persistent in humanity. The difference in character of the tyranny under which each of these three people were groaning was, therefore, not less than that of their hopes for its mitigation. The mere fact that the oppression from which he suffered was consistent with the laws of the land stirred the Englishman to hope for better things. For, if he could, by any means, bring about a change of the laws, he could not fail to benefit from it. And that such changes, as he desired, could be brought about, he was convinced. French and Egyptians suffered not from the laws, but from the abuse of such legal authority as existed. The English, too, might and did, hoped benefit from the mutual rivalries of the parties and classes that jointly oppressed them, the others had no such resource. And the Englishman's belief in his ability to rebel, and to rebel successfully, gave him a self-reliance and determination that everything denied to the Egyptian, in which the French could only employ in the extermination of their tyrants. Other influences were in favor of the peaceful realization of the Englishman's hopes. He had friends in the classes above him. There were men like Howard and Wilberforce to plead the cause of the prisoner and the slave, like Comet, Paine, and Wilkes, to stir the people up to effort, like Burke and Pitt to preach reform, and yet more potent than all these, like Lindsay and Rakes, the founders of Sunday schools, who, by teaching the people the value of education, laid the real foundations of the England of today. In Egypt there were not, and could not be, such men as these. The Egyptians had, as we have seen, friends and protectors in the Ulyma, but friends whose ability to aid them was altogether out of proportion to their willingness, and whose narrow training and insufficient culture unfitted them to cope with the evils they had to face, in which many of them would have honestly labored to a man, could they but have found a way to do so. Thus all conditions and circumstances in the three countries tended in different directions, in one to move the people to peaceful action, in another to drive them to destructive wrath, and in the third to lead them to patient submission. For the Englishmen in the French then there were ways to progress, ways encumbered with difficulties and dangers, but with something more than a mere possibility of success to draw them onward, while the Egyptian was on all sides hemmed in by the impossible. Nor have we yet seen all the causes that have helped to determine the present character of the English and that of the Egyptians. Then as now the Muhammadan peoples were taught by the Ulyma, as were and are the people of England by the Church Catechism, that it is their bound and duty to submit themselves to all their governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters, and to order themselves locally and reverently to all their bettors. But the reception accorded to this teaching by the two peoples was and is vastly different, and that it was and is so as mainly due to the conditions under which they are placed. The blood of the English is largely tinged with that of the restless, adventurous people whose early invasions of their island filled so many pages of its early history, and by descent the influence of climate and the whole course of their history they have become possessed of a spirit of independence, energy and self-reliance that instinctively leads them to a broad and healthy interpretation of this doctrine. But this spirit was altogether foreign and unknown to the Egyptian, and that it should be so was an almost inevitable result of the peculiar conditions affecting their country, as contrasted with those prevailing in England. Thus in our Seagirt home, with its uncertain weather, the success of the farmer's labor was always in a great measure dependent upon his own skill and energy. Through all the changes of the season of the year, each day brought to him its round of duties to be performed. Duties exacting not only toils some labor, but thoughtful care and wise foresight in adjusting that labor to the ever-varien conditions he had to meet. It was not so in Egypt. There the measure of the farmer's success was mainly the result of the operations of nature; for the richness or poverty of his harvest was proportioned not to his efforts, but to the abundance or scarcity of the inundation of the Nile. With a bountiful flood he had little to think of, but the purely routine labor of his field, with a scanty stream no labor, no energy of his could save him from the disaster of an impoverished harvest. In England, therefore, were constant foresight, thought, and well-arranged labor were needed to win subsistence from an ungenerous soil, the farmer learned to think and act for himself; whereas in Egypt, where he was at the mercy of the Nile, he drifted on from day to day undisturbed by ought but the mechanically performed labor of the fields. In both countries the bent thus given to the minds of the agricultural classes with respect to their daily labor naturally affected their manner of regarding other matters. Thus the Englishman brought to all matters that he had to deal with at least something of the care and thought he gave to his daily work, and weighed in balanced probabilities and possibilities in his political and social affairs, just as he did in the choosing of a crop; while the Egyptian left almost all things to shape their own course, even as he of necessity accepted his harvest as it came. The character which the agricultural classes in the two countries thus acquired, reacted upon the people generally, for it is the character of the great mass of the people that in general finally decides the character and fate of a nation, and other causes contributed to increase the difference in the character of the two peoples. In England, taxation was excessive and crushing and its effect upon all but the wealthy, but it was systematic and did not prohibit or prevent the accumulation of wealth. Whereas in Egypt, while the nominal taxation was lighter, it was an effect far worse, and the more so that its arbitrary assessment and irregular collection, coupled with the atrocious tyranny and cruelty by which these were accompanied, and the oft-recurring inflection of illegal taxes and impositions, effectively deprived the people of all opportunity of or desire for, improving their position. In England, too, labor of some kind was indispensable. Life was a constant struggle, and he who did not work was ever in imminent danger of starving. It was quite otherwise in Egypt. The grinding, hopeless poverty that not only then, but still exists, though happily we may hope in a never-lessening degree in England, was and is unknown in the East. There are so few and simpler the needs of the people, that the humblest can always afford to share the little he has, and the absolute destitution, but too common in England, is there practically impossible. Moreover, the Englishman, though enjoying the benefit of a temperate climate, if he would not perish from inenition from the inclement of its winter, was compelled to find by some means or other food of a more nourishing and stimulating quality than that which the Egyptian needed. He had also to provide himself with an amount of clothing and artificial warmth which the genial, though innervading air of his native land rendered altogether unnecessary to the Egyptian. Of necessity, therefore, the Englishman's needs stirred him to an activity and energy to which the conditions of life in Egypt supplied no such inducement. Lastly, the Englishman who could acquire wealth was assured of the peaceful enjoyment of it, whereas the Egyptian knew but too well that the mirrorst rumor of his possessing ought more than the bare necessities of life could but subject him to tyranny and torture, until he had surrendered his last coin or seizeable penny-worth of value. From this diversity in the conditions and circumstances of the two people, we can see why to the one the instruction to be content with that state of life in which he found himself, was as unpalatable as to the other, it was a mirror summing up of the whole philosophy of life. However hard the condition of the Englishman's lot might be, he could always look to improve it. In fact, for him, the one hope of happiness lay in the possibility of bettering his condition. while that of the Egyptian lay in passive submission to the chains that bound him. That of the two people the Egyptian was in some respects, for the time, the happiest, is at least possible. Like the Englishman, the Egyptian prizes more than all else his individual freedom, the mere liberty to come and go, to work or idle as the impulse of the moment dictates, and detests constraint and compulsion of every kind. This freedom he enjoyed with no other bar than the recurring fear of the tax collector, the Corvei, or the Corbag, to which he was liable. These, however, were evils that inflicted him only at intervals, and the Corvei, one that he always hopefully looked to escape from. While as to the Corbag, the long strip of hippopotamus hide, which was the common instrument of punishment and extortion, even in the hands of his oppressors, though too often used with the murderous brutality to which the Negro slaves of America were then and long after subject, this would seem in general to have been to the fellow-heen, not much more terrible than was the cane of a flogging master to the boys of an English-dothbees school of the time. Hence his personal wants being too few and too easily supplied to give him any serious thought. The Egyptian sontered through life on the whole contentedly enough, while the Englishman was ever ceaselessly engaged in a struggle for the bare necessities of life, and it was natural, therefore, for the Egyptian to accept with passive acquiescence the submission taught him by his guides, as it was inevitable that the Englishman should criticize or ignore that preached to him. Thus it was their circumstances of their lives, and not, as has so often been said, their religion, or their fatalism, that caused the Egyptians to lack so absolutely the energy and self-reliance so dominant in the character of the Englishman, and this lack that rendered them so incapable of self-government. That this is the correct deduction from the facts we may see by comparing the Egyptian Muslims with the cops. For these are of the same race, inhabit the same country, and are subject to most of the conditions of life affecting the Muslim Egyptians, and yet are essentially different from them in character and aptitude. So great and so marked is this difference that it is referred to and commented upon by everyone who has undertaken to write of Egypt in its peoples. Although, apparently incapable of discovering the true origin of the contrast, those who have discussed it have either dismissed it as a problem admittedly beyond their comprehension, or have claimed that the cops superiority and intelligence and energy is the product of his religion. But save the matters of doctrine and dogma, the religious teaching that the copd receives is almost exactly the same as that given to the Egyptian Muslim, with this important difference, namely that the cops have always considered that obedience given to a non-Christian government is but a duty of expediency, one exacted by force and not by right, and binding upon them only so far as submission is essential to their self-preservation. It was a matter of life and death to the copd that he should court the forbearance and favor of his superiors. That he should do this, he was bound to acquire all that he could of wealth and influence, and his relations with the rulers of the country as an indispensable servant, enabled him to do this in a manner, and to an extent wholly impossible to his Muslim countrymen. Thus political conditions acted upon the copd, as climate and social conditions upon the Englishmen, forcing him to bestur himself with energy on his own behalf, to cultivate and exercise his natural ingenuity, and trust solely in his own ability. The comparatively easygoing life of the peasant was not for him, as much as he was not permitted to own land, and therefore like the Englishmen, he must either work or starve. And in doing this he had not only to compete against his fellows, but to make his way against the open hostility of the governing classes and of the people generally. Hence it is not to his religion, but to the circumstances surrounding his profession of that religion, that the copd is indebted for both the good and bad characteristics by which he is distinguished. For it was those that gave him the energy, intelligence, self-reliance he undoubtedly possesses, while at the same time they too often rendered him surre-bile, false, bigoted, and fanatical. It should now be clear that it is neither the fatalism nor the religion of the Egyptian Muslim that unfits him to govern his country. If any further evidence be wanted to justify this conclusion, it is to be found in the Mamalux and the Jews. The former, although they were Muhammadans, were by race, training, and all the circumstances of their lives, exactly opposed to the Egyptian Muslims and all their characteristics. Their restless activity was strenuously employed in promoting their own interests, and in the acquisition of wealth, and in seeking these they were recklessly indifferent to the baseness of the treacheries and brutal tyranny that served their ends. And yet their religion and fatalism were the same as those of the Egyptians. As to the Jews, these were a people suffering grave political and social disabilities than those that burdened the cops, and wholly foreign to the Egyptian Muslim were copped in race, habits, and aptitudes. Yet, under the same conditions we see them developing, not in Egypt only, but in all parts of the world, the same qualities as those of the cops, and developing them in greater or less degree, precisely as the exigencies of their surroundings control them. And as the inhabitants of towns and cities in which the struggle for existence is always keener than it is in rural districts that are invariably intellectually superior to the people of those districts. So it is in Cairo, the Muslim traders and artisans who formed the bulk of the population there, approaching the cops in the intelligence and energy, so lacking in those employed in the cultivation of the land. I have now, I hope, shown with sufficient clearness and detail how the character and actions of the Egyptians in 1798 corresponded to the circumstances of their lives. We have been told that men should rise above their surroundings. But as I have already said, the very existence of the Egyptian depended upon his submission. The swimmer, caught in the fierce rush of a cataract, has no hope of safety, but in submitting to the current and devoting all his energies to guarding himself from the rocks and eddies that are the most pressing of the dangers of his position. Such was the case with the Egyptian. To have struggled against the stream, would have been to waste his strength in futile and fatal effort, and although it was probably unconsciously that he did so, he acted in the only way to ensure the continuance of his own existence. 8. VIKTORS AND VANKWISHED. 9. Chapter 9 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. For more information or to volunteer, please visit thebravox.org. By Haji A. Brown. 9. The Gathering of a Storm. Cairo in 1798, as a city we're into wander, was much safer for the wanderer than was London in that year of grace. It had no al-Sasha, such as white friars had been in the days of Nigel, nor holy land, such as the seven dials was, down almost to our own day. It had no criminal class, and its mendicants were then, as now, few, and almost all strangers from elsewhere. The peaceful citizen or stranger could walk through any part of the town by day or night. Free from the danger he would even today encounter if he ventured through some of the slums of the world's metropolis. Cairo is today unchanged from what it was in this respect, saving the infamous quarter of the town devoted to the nightly carnival of vice that European civilization demands, and, under the August protection of Consul's general and all the pomp and glory of diplomatic dignity, obtains. Mavolni has drawn a sufficiently deplorable picture of the visible poverty of the kairians as he saw them in 1783. But it is highly probable that this glaring poverty was to a large extent of the same self-launting type so common in India, where certain sufficiently well-to-do classes of the people seem by their outward showing to no no mean between ostentatious prodigality and a pretense of poverty. But there was then, in Cairo, a class that gained its uncertain meals from still more uncertain employment, or from the hospitality or charity that in the east so seldom fails. There were two some waifs and wasterals, as there will always be in all great cities and towns, until civilization shall have passed its present hobbledy hoi-hood. These two classes suffered much from the total suspension of business in the town, and rendered desperate by the complete failure of all their ordinary means of livelihood, and emboldened by the absence of all authority resulting from the flight of the Mamolux, and almost all the officials and leading men of the town, broke out in lawless disorder, and joined by many of those whom the panicked stampede had reduced to poverty, began pillaging the deserted houses and mansions of all that was left in them. Bonaparte, being informed of this, had once sent parties of soldiers into the town, with the double object of suppressing outrage and robbery, and of seizing everything of value that the Mamolux and other fugitives had been forced by the haste of their departure to leave behind them. Proclamation was also made that whatever had been taken by any person from any of the deserted houses should at once be surrendered to the French. And as a warning to those who might be inclined to disobey this command, several men who were caught either in the act of stealing, or in the possession of stolen property were summarily executed. Not content with these measures for the recovery and protection of what he know that regarded as his lawful booty. Bonaparte is said to have countenanced, if he did not actually order, the inflection of torture was a view to forcing the disclosure of hidden wealth. The prompt and energetic steps taken by the French quickly restored order in the town, and this having been done, Bonaparte began to take in hand the work of introducing civilization, as it was then understood in France, like the common type of reformer and philanthropist, in doing this he effectively barred the way to the success of his efforts by coupling his professions of friendship for the people with conditions. It was a case of, "Be my brother, or I will slay you." He was going to render the people forever happy and content beyond their dreams, but they, on their part, must yield the most implicit obedience to all that seemed necessary or advisable to him. They were to have cake and apples like the good children in the nursery tale, but, like them, they must all sit in a row and behave nicely in the French fashion, which at least was appropriate since the cakes and apples they were promised were all of the latest fashion from Paris itself. It is rather a pitiful picture that the little corporal makes, thus playing the part of a glorified bumble with civilization and other fallacious figments for his parochial board, and the porch bowl of the house filled with liberty, equality, and fraternity, to be doled out in duly measured spoonfuls to the hungry and needy. Poor kairines. Like the hungry Oliver, they were to take what they got and be thankful, and not mutinously set up a standard of their own. They were not only to be fed, but feasted. They were to remain good mohamadons, be free in all respects, and be most happy and prosperous, but. They must wear the Caucasade, and showed Viva la Republic in such French or Arabic as they could. So as a foretaste of banquet to which they were invited, fair words and fine promises were lavishly scattered among them, but not without a liberal seasoning of orders, warnings, and threats. For a short time all went well, but it was not very long before the people began to think that the seasoning was somewhat out of proportion to the rest of the dish. In the time of the bays, which within a week seemed to the kairines to have grown old and distant, the streets of the town had been swept and watered by day and lit by night. But, like everything else good and useful in those days, these things had been done in a manner that left much to be desired, as the town settled slowly back to its old round of life. If left to themselves the people would undoubtedly have renewed these and others of their ancient customs, but these were matters in which French propriety could brook no delay, and orders were therefore issued that sweeping, watering, and lighting should at once be brought into play. To this no objection would have been taken had the order stopped there. Unfortunately, it is a virtuous vice of the French to love precision, a quality which the Egyptian appreciates only when applied to the attainment of grammatical purity in the use of the Arabic language, but which, being otherwise repugnant to his spirit, is not to be found in his native dialect, or everyday speech, or thought, and still less in more important matters. Hence, when the French, in obedience to their natural impulse, fixed times and methods and degrees for the sweepings and waterings and lightings they demanded from the people, and enforce the orders by the proclamation of pains and penalties to be inflicted upon defaulters, and more over did all this without consulting anyone as to the native customs and recognized conventions applicable to such matters, there was much grumbling. Thus the lighting of the streets by night was ordered on a scale that made it a real grievance, for each and every house was commanded to hang out upon its outer wall, not a banner, but a lamp. A prodigality of elimination that the kairin looked upon as utterly unprofitable. Very primitive were the lamps available in those days. In London itself, ladies returning in their chairs at night from balls and routes, and not improbably bemoaning the damage done to their attire by drippings from the spluttering candles of the ballroom they had left, were lighted on their way by link-man carrying torches. And since even the bow brumels of those days had to put up with such primitive forerunners of the incandescent lights that today seem to us as indispensable for comfort, it is not surprising that the honest citizen of kairin, when delayed from home until after dark, was content to be accompanied by a servant, carrying a small, rudely-made lamp, and had a lantern of paper, a custom that survives to the present day in the hurrah's or back streets of the native town, though now the lamps used are lit by Russian oil and sheltered from the wind in lanterns of Austrian glass. But when every reputable man who went through the town at night had his lantern bearer with him, there was not much need for the lighting of the streets in a more general way. And so the kairin's had been satisfied to consider a street well-lighted if it had a lamp hung out here and there at longer or shorter intervals to serve rather as a beacon than as a light. A lamp to every house was to them, therefore, an absurd extravagance, and when householders were further made responsible under penalty of a fine, not only for the placing and lighting of the lamps, but also for seeing that they were kept a light throughout the night, this to the French idea, most judicious measure, became to the kairin's of very real grievance and one that worried and annoyed all classes. To provide for the administration of the affairs of the town generally, and to act as an intermediary between the French and the people, a D1 was constituted similar to that which had already been established at Alexandria. This consisted of ten sheiks who appeared to have been chosen principally as being those most openly opposed to the Mamelux. But on the urgent representations of the leading men, that the Turks are Mamelux were the only men in the country accustomed to, or capable of, exercising efficient authority, Blunapart very unwillingly appointed 304 Mamelux officials who had remained in the town to different posts, and several Frenchmen were added, nominally, to cooperate with, but in reality, to control, the native members of the D1. Notwithstanding the assurances thus given to the people that it was the intention of the French to carry on the government with all respect to their religion and customs, the merchants and the dealers showed some reluctance to reopening their shops and stores. When, however, the troops, mixing freely with the people as we have seen, and abstaining from the violence and injustice that it had always been the experience of the townsmen to receive at the hands of the followers of the bays, confidence was restored. Not only was the former trade of the town resumed, but shops, especially intended for the benefit and service of the French, were started. Meanwhile, the expedition having been accompanied by a body of scientific experts, who had been instructed to prepare the most detailed and elaborate accounts of everything that could throw light upon the state of the country and its people, and the capacity of each for development, these men were set to work, each with a definite task to fulfill, furnished with quarters in the deserted mansions of the fugitive bays, they at once commenced the labors which were to give to the world the vast, though unhappily incomplete, description of Egypt, which is unquestionably the most marvelous work of the kind ever undertaken. Of these men, it may be said that they represented all that is best and noblest in the French nation and the higher aspirations of the revolution. But however eager Bonaparte was to restore order in Cairo and to promote the scientific, commercial, and colonizing objects of the expedition, his strongest desires and ambitions lay in another direction, and he began therefore to prepare for further action. That he might do this with the greater ease, he resolved upon two steps, which tended not a little to diminish the contentment of the people with his rule. The first of these was a demand for money presented to the D.I., which was instructed to collect the stipulated amount from the whole community, Christian and Jewish, as well as Muslim. To this, though not without demur, the D.I. consented, but the announcement of the impose that was to be raised was to the people the betrayal of the Clovenhoof, and although it was a measure they had been fearing, and which, had it been imposed upon them immediately after the arrival of the French in the city, would have been accepted as a natural exercise of the prerogative of a conqueror, was now looked upon as a breach of faith, and as such completely destroyed confidence in the fair words and promises of the French. The discontent and uneasiness thus occasioned gave birth to open and evident dismay in agitation, when the second measure taken by Bonaparte was announced. From its first building, the town had been divided into Haraz or quarters, districts separated from each other by the run of the streets, and by walls and gates. These gates it was the custom to close soon after sunset, and thereafter no one was allowed to pass from one quarter to another without the permission of the watchmen charged with the care of the gates. In thus dividing the town its founders had two main objects in view, one by the separation of the inhabitants into a number of clearly defined groups to be able to fix responsibility for crime on a particular group, and the other that, in the event of a mutiny or rebellion, the closing of the gates might serve to isolate the various groups from each other, and thus facilitate the work of the government in dealing with them. Bonaparte, however, far from thinking the existence of the Haraz as contributing to the maintenance of order, regarded them as affording dangerous shelter to milk contents, and resolved to abolish them. Parties of soldiers were therefore set to work to remove the gates. As soon as the people became aware of this, the most alarming rumors were circulated, such as that this was being done to enable the French to carry out a wholesale massacre of the people, either by night or when they should be assembled in the mosques for the special prayers of the Friday noon, which at that time it was the pride, as it still is the duty of all Muslims to attend. So great was the alarm of the people at this idea that the newly-open shops were closed once more, and business, which had been growing as brisk as it was profitable, was again suspended. But nothing occurring to justify their fears, the alarm passed, and the bazaars that for the moment had been more or less deserted, again began to fill with life and animation. As was but natural, the arrival of the French, head from the first, been hailed with delight by the Christian population. Under the Mamalux, these, whether native or foreign, had suffered from many disabilities, and they're rarely openly molested by the Muslims, were at all time subject to the insults and rudeness of the lower classes. Now, under the protection of the French, they threw off the restraints to which they had so long submitted, and excited the anger of the Muslims by appearing in public in the silk and golden-broided costumes that had been forbidden to them under the Mamalux. Cafés, restaurants, and wine shops were opened by the Greeks and others, and wine was sold in drunken public, to the great indignation of the Yulema and all the better class of the Muslims. These and other things, of little moment in themselves, became important factors in modifying the feelings of the people towards the French, by marking the change in the relative of standing of the followers of the two religions, and by largely discounting the professions of friendship for the Muslim faith, with which Bonaparte endeavored to conciliate the good will of the Muhammadins. Many other causes helped to keep the people from settling down quietly under the French. Among these was the constant searching of houses for arms or valuables belonging to the Mamaluks, and the arrest and imprisonment of those suspected or accused of concealing wealth or property of any kind on their behalf. One of these who suffered directly in this way was the wife of Radwan Kachaf, who had fled with Ibrahim Bey. This lady had paid a sum of $1300 to the French as reconciliation money, in consideration of which she had been granted the right to remain in Cairo under French protection. A few days afterwards, a report having reached Bonaparte that her husband had left a quantity of arms and money in her care, a search was made, and some clothing, arms, and other things being found, all the women in the house were arrested, and a fine of $4,000 imposed upon the lady as the condition of their release. Had the French been content to seize the arms, no objection would have been taken to their action, but the fine was, in the eyes of all the people, a breach of faith. If thus rigorous with the Muhammadin population, Bonaparte made it plain that he had no intention of unduly favoring the Christians. On the second of August, Nelson, having returned to Alexandria, had in the famous battle of the Nile, destroyed the French fleet, and the army in Egypt was thus cut off from all communication with Europe and left entirely dependent upon itself. News of this event having been brought to Cairo, the Muslims were as elated as the French and Christians were depressed. Bonaparte at once instituted a search for the persons who had first made the ill news known, and these proving to be two Syrian Christians and a Muslim, all three were condemned to have their tongues cut out or pay a heavy fine. This was in every way a foolish measure. It had the effect of checking the open discussion of reports unfavorable to the French. Who, by adopting this ostrich-like policy, deprived themselves of the only method they had of gauging the tendency of public opinion, and, while they could not thus prevent the dissemination of news or rumors, gave the people a fresh and reasonable grievance. For, under even the most tyrannical of the rulers they had previously known, they had been allowed a liberty of speech that it was clear was now to be denied them. And the distrust of the fair words that Bonaparte was so lavish in offering them was still further increased. Nor did the punishment of the Christians impress the Muhammadans with any sense of the impartiality that Bonaparte intended it to convey. For it was regarded as nothing more than the reeking of his anger, at the bad news received, upon those who, Christian or not, were, according to public opinion, guiltless of any real offense. It was thus an act such as they were accustomed to expect from the Mamma-lux, and in the eyes of the Kairins, placed the boasted justice and humanity of the French, on the same level as those of the Bays. As time went on, almost every day brought some fresh incident to swell a stream of ill-feeling towards the French, that Bonaparte, in his self-sufficient direction of affairs, was creating. Had he but acted with some little consideration for the wishes of the people, and consulted their prejudices, it is certain that the storm that was now rapidly approaching would never have arisen. But Bonaparte was never able to get beyond the nursery policy of cake or cane. There was no worse policy open to him. Neither with cake nor with cane was it possible to persuade or drive the Kairins to adopt his views. By a ceaseless play of petty tyranny, he was able to force from them an unwilling compliance with his demands. But every little victory thus gained, served to widen the gulf between the two peoples, and thus to defeat that which any man of real ability would have seen was the aim, that of all others it was the interest of the French to pursue, the conciliation of the Egyptians. While thus blundering along, baffling his own desires, Bonaparte, always believing in his own tact and good judgment, decided to give his patronage to the annual ceremony of the cutting of the Caligue, or canal, that from the time of the pharaohs had been held in Cairo in celebration of the flooding of the Nile. In the old heathen days, this had been essentially a festival of thanksgiving to the gods, but as the greatest and most popular feast of the year, it had survived the conversion of the people to Christianity and Islam, and was kept as a day of merry-making upon which the people gave unrestricted play to their tireless love of Gaidi. But the Muslims were in no mood to join in revelry when Bonaparte summoned them to do so, and though the French have recorded the occasion as one of unbounded success, the fact is that it was far otherwise. It was the same with the celebration of the Moliid, or birthday of the Prophet, that occurred soon after. This being in its first inception a religious feast, head, like the wakes and feasts of the saints of Christendom, long been accompanied by revelries and rejoicings of a most unsan'tly character, and was, to the Muslim population of Cairo, the great event of the year, the pious celebrating it with prayer and praise and the zekers, that would seem to be an Islamic adaptation of the ancient worship of the Israelites when they sang songs unto the Lord with timbrels and harps. While others less piously inclined, spent the night in crowdsings and sports. But whether pious or otherwise, the Muslims of Cairo had no desire to hold the feast of their prophet under the auspices of the Christian invader, and the anniversary would have been allowed to pass unnoticed, but that the shakes had had. The recognized head of the family of the descendants of the Prophet living in Egypt, fearing that Bonaparte would take the refusal to hold it in bad part, gave the order for its celebration, and invited the general and his staff to be present. So holy blind to the storm that was gathering, and flattering himself that what he deemed a wise combination of firmness and conciliation was gradually building up a strong tower of French influence in the country, Bonaparte went on from day to day holding out his cakes and cane, temptingly or threateningly, much as the silly old woman dangles a gaudy trinket, or calls for the bogeyman to coax or terrify a restless child. For the cakes, the Egyptians had no appetite whatever, and for the cane, since they could see no way to escape from its unwelcome favors. They were content to pray for an early deliverance from the French and all their abominations. Some days after the celebration of the Mollid, Bonaparte, having invited the leading shakes to visit him, prepared for them what he probably thought would prove an agreeable surprise. Receiving his guests with the affability he generally displayed, he retired to an adjoining room, and presently returned with a number of tricolor sashes and caucades. With a smile it was meant to be winning and gracious, he put one of these across the shoulder of the sheikahel's charcawe, the president of the day-wan. Flushing red with fury, the sheik flung the sash upon the ground. With hurried but soothing words, the interpreter sought to explain that the sash was intended as a mark of honor, that it was one of those worn by the general himself, and added that by wearing it, the sheik would gain increased respect from the army. Yes, replied the sheiks, but we should be dishonored in the eyes of God and of our co-religionists. Here was a sudden flood of mutiny indeed. The tricolor emblem of all that was honorable, sacred, flung to the ground as though it were an unclean and unholy thing, not to mention the rough discuracy to the general. What wonder of Bonaparte, as the histories tell us, was furious and enraged? Was it not exasperating to be taught in this rude manner that the everyday politeness and conciliating manner of those wretched Egyptian sheiks really had limits, and that there was a point beyond which they would not go, and the humiliation of having offered a favor only to have it rejected with scorn, and that by man whose very lives depended upon his forbearance. Poor Bonaparte. How many things there were in heaven and earth that were not dreamt of in his philosophy? And poor Sharkawi. Quick as was the ready-witted interpreter to interpose his well-manned explanation. I am well convinced that he was not quick enough to forestall the sheiks audible or inaudible cry for forgiveness, for such hasty and unseemly anger. But audible or inaudible, his cry was not to the general, but to the God to whom, as the Muslim believes, anger and hasty speech are abominations. The general, being restrained by no such considerations, and having, we may admit, much more reason to be enraged than the sheek, broke forth in an angry denunciation of the worthy president of the D. Wann, as one entirely unfitted for the high and honorable post he held, and had his wrath increased rather than soothed by the polite endeavors of the sheiks to pacify him, while at the same time begging him not to press sashes upon them. At length he yielded so far as to withdraw the sashes, but continued to demand the wearing of the Caucasade, believing no doubt, like young E. Z. N. N.R.S., that this, being such a little one, would be a more pardonable offense against outraged propriety. But the sheiks were as little willing to wear the Caucasade as they were to put on the sash, reasonably arguing that it was not the size of the emblem, but its meaning and purport that was objectionable. Finally, when the question had been discussed with much good sense and much folly on both sides, it was agreed that the sheiks should have some days graced were into consider and decide the issue. On the same day proclamation was made throughout the town, to the effect that all the people were to put on the Caucasade and wear it as a sign of submission and amity. A few only consented, but the opposition of the majority was so strong that later in the day the order was withdrawn, with the condition that all who should have any business with the French, or visited their houses or quarters, should done the despised decoration for the occasion. Here then the incident ended, but we must not wholly dismiss it without noticing that gabbertie and others of the sheiks, although they were not willing to wear the French colors, were quite clear in their opinion that doing so was no offense to Muslim law or sentiment. It was simply a silly fad of the French, without any real meaning or sense. Once it is obvious that what is spoken of as progressive or enlightened thought in Islam has not altogether resulted from the influence of European or Christian civilization, but is the natural product of the freedom of thought inherent in the teaching of the religion. nothing from the experience that would have taught an abler man. the weakness and strength of his position. Bonaparte was thus gradually, the holy unwittingly, driving the people to rebellion. Miss reading the pass of acceptance or mild protests, with which his rapidly succeeding mandates were received. He kept on, from day to day, more hopelessly and more completely widening the gulf already yawning between the two peoples. And while daily outraging the Egyptians' conception of liberty and happiness, never ceased to talk of the benefits he was conferring upon them, or to wonder at their failure to appreciate all the charm and beauty of the changes he was so anxious to promote. Under the mamalooks the people had ahead but three grievances to complain of, and one of these, the destruction of commerce and trade, they only partly, if at all, attributed to the fault of their rulers. The other two were the excess of taxation to which they were subjected, and the acts of more or less wanton, cruelty and oppression that classes as well as individuals were liable to. Apart from these things, their lives were as free as they could desire. They worked or idle, came and went, and in short, did all things as they listed, under no great restraint than that of the lenient opinion of their fellows, which even when most sensorious, was still prone to the Muslim virtue of forgiveness. Little by little, Bonaparte went on encroaching upon these liberties the people had always possessed and prized. Births, marriages and deaths had to be recorded, and fees had to be paid to the recording officers. Those entering the town had to give an account of themselves once they came, and why. Those who received visitors or strangers in their houses were responsible for them. Those who wished to travel or leave the town had to provide themselves with passports. These and a host of other regulations that, to the French, seemed but natural and proper parts of the organization of a state, were to the Egyptians intolerable outrage upon their personal liberty, and that nothing should be wanting to make these reforms unpopular, each was fitted with a fee of some sort to be paid upon demand, with dire pains and penalties for all emissions or defaults of any kind. It is difficult for the ordinary Englishman or European to form any intelligent or just conception of the feelings of irritation to which these measures gave rise. But those who have traveled in Russia and have their experience something of the wrath its passport regulations can arouse in the breast of a free-born Britain. May perhaps be able to imagine how the imposition of such restrictions by a foreign conqueror in his own house would affect him. If he can do this, the reader conformed some slight idea of the feelings with which the Egyptians regarded the reforms they were forced to accept and asked to admire and applaud. But it was not their personal grievances that wrangled most deeply in the hearts of the people, or most surely crushed all possibility of sympathy or friendship between them and their new rulers. Among the incidents that most strongly affected the people was the execution of Sayed Muhammad Kareem, the man whom as we have seen, Bonaparte had left as governor of Alexandria. Accused by the French of corresponding with the Mamalooks, he was sent up to Cairo for such trial as he was to have, and was promptly sentenced to pay a heavy fine, or in default, to suffer death. That he was guilty of the offense appears certain, and according to all known laws of war, he was therefore guilty of a breach of parole and liable to death. But the offense that Sayed Kareem had committed was in fact nothing more than a technical one, since it consisted in his having offered to admit the Mamalooks to Alexandria, while these, so far from being in a position to occupy that town, had abandoned all attempts to face the French. Bonaparte and his army were no doubt present in Egypt as conquerors, but the foe had not only been beaten, but cowed, the people in the country had made the fullest submission, and it was an abusive term to pretend that there was the slightest pretext to justify the application of the laws of war. The option of a fine granted to Sayed Kareem shows indeed that Bonaparte recognized this fact, and at the same time proves his utter incapacity to gauge the sentiments of the people, or realize their estimate of his actions. Moreover, according to the popular view, Sayed Kareem was guilty of no offense whatever, for his promise of fealty to the French was not made voluntarily, and therefore was not binding. Some looked upon his sentence as a proof that the French were afraid of the return of the Mamalooks. Others held that the charge had been brought simply to provide the French with an excuse for the seizure of the Sayed's property. All their sympathies were therefore with the prisoner, and they were enhanced a thousandfold by the fact that he was a descendant of the Prophet. But Bonaparte, for all whose fulsome speeches to the people, cared nothing for their wishes or desires, and it was in vain that the Ulyma and all who could obtain a hearing pleaded for at least a mitigation of the sentence. Bonaparte would hear no reason. The full fine must be paid at once, or the prisoner must die. But the Sayed was defiant. "Of what use," said he, "is it, that I should pay the fine. If it is my destiny to die, I must die, and no fine can save me. And if it is not my destiny to die, who can slay me?" So he died, as one expects such a man to die, openly defying his foes, and Bonaparte had his head carried throughout the town, with written and verbal proclamation, thus such was the fate that awaited all who conspired against the French. Little recking that the lesson he intended this gruesome performance to be was taken by the people in a very different manner to that which he desired, and so far from being a lesson of submission and obedience was one of hatred and vengeance. From the European point of view, it is, of course, impossible to censure Bonaparte for his treatment of Sayed Kareem. In matters of this kind, European civilization was in those days very little better than the East. It is true that in England, traders' heads no longer provided the public with an interesting spectacle on Tower Hill. But my Lord Tom Nady, and the smart set of that day, highly appreciated the entertainment afforded by the hanging of miserable prisoners sentenced to death for petty thefts, or even for attempting to steal, and the bones of high women still hung in chains on the heaths around London, startling unwary nightfarers with their unwelcome rattle. So Bonaparte went blundering on, failing entirely to grasp the situation, and fanciing that he was laying the foundations of that great Eastern Empire of which he dreamed, he was blindly ignorant of, and indifferent to, the one and only means whereby he could succeed. For if it had been possible for him to realize his dream, it could only have been by gaining the adhesion of the Egyptians as his first step. That he could have done this I do not believe, but it was absolutely the only possible road to success open to him, and it was the one that in the futile folly of his overweaning confidence in himself and his methods he would not or could not adopt. He might have gone far on the road. Had he left the people at rest, had he respected in fact indeed as in words he professed to do, their prejudices and desires, had he gained as he might have gained the passive, if not active, support of the Eulima, had he done these things, nothing but a greatly superior force could have dislodged him from Egypt. But these were the very things that he did not do. As we have seen, instead of giving the people the rest from tyranny and vexations for which they longed, he harassed them infinitely more than the worst of all the rulers that had preceded him. So with the Eulima, instead of seeking their friendship in the only way in which it was to be obtained, he mocked them with idle pretenses of respect that were never justified by deeds, and while loudly declaring his respect for Islam and its teaching, ignored both in the most offensive way, and thus not only offended the people, but completely barred himself from the support of the Eulima. So keeping his way with dogged will and unbroken faith in his own ability, he was blindly, though surely, swelling the tide of discontent, fast-rising around him, and soon to birth forth in stormy wrath. Chapter 10 of Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today. Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of today, Vahagyi A. Brown. Chapter 10, the bursting of the storm. Looking back now, we can see that as the month of September drew to a close, the gathering of clouds be tokening the growing storm, was becoming more and more evident. But the French were all together unconscious of anything being wrong. That the Egyptians were woefully wanting in gratitude, and most strangely incapable of appreciating the benefits that were being showered upon them, this they saw plainly enough. Nor were they blind to the fact that flaunt the tricolor as bravely as they would, the liberty, equality, and fraternity it symbolized were flouted by this people, whose whole history was a record of slavery and degradation. But they did not see that they themselves were hated and detested, that the cordiality with which, for a time, the people had fraternized with the soldiers had been but a passing reaction, and that, since here as it was for the moment, it could not continue. The French and Cairo were then, as Europeans in the east almost always are, quite content to see the surface of the life around them. Of its hidden depths, they knew nothing, and therefore judged the strangers amidst whom they were, wholly by their own standards. It is but little better today, in Egypt as in India, everything native is despised, not because it is native, nor yet that it is bad, but because it is not such as the critical European has been accustomed to, and is therefore not good form. To stop and ask whether the native may not have good sense and be acting with good reason in doing as he does, never occurs to the self-satisfied European. So having the power to do so, we thrust our misbegotten reforms upon the people, scorn these for not appreciating our absurdities, and despise them for not applauding our follies. We talk of the Egyptian as backward, bigoted, and A false charge could not be. we brought against any people. From highest to lowest, among the most fanatical, as among the most lax and liberal, the Egyptian takes and adapts as his own whatever he finds good in the ways of other peoples. No where is there a people of greater adaptability? No where are people more ready or more willing to accept innovations? Nor is there in all the east a people who has the same or anything like the same silly self-sufficiency as the typical Englishman in the east. Other Europeans are bad enough in this respect, but none fall near so low in the scale of common sense as does the Englishman. But if the Egyptian is willing to accept innovations, he is stubbornly insistent upon accepting them in his own manner. He is not willing to have them forced upon him, nor to accept those that clash with his cherished prejudices, nor those that do not commend themselves to him as beneficial. Any demands, further, that whatever change he has asked to adopt, is made smoothly and without any abrupt or violent alteration of old, established custom or habit. All these conditions were violated day after day by the French. The reforms they introduced were opposed to all the traditions of the country. They disturbed the habits of the people, interrupted the current of their old time routine, offended their prejudices, and were forced upon them suddenly and as per empty mandate demanding immediate and unquestioning obedience. Had they been allowed to criticize and discuss each new proposal, they might, being as fond as old Mr. E. Z. himself of arguing the question, had been won by patients and tacked to accept most of them. So as time went on, and the people had abundant scope for comparisons between French promises and French performances, they were not without reason in accusing them of the faithlessness that the Turks have stamped as their characteristic in the rhyming phrase "Francise, Emanseise." Still, though daily finding fresh cause of grievance against the French, the people were outwardly submissive, and it did not occur to the French that their Pacific attitude could be otherwise than willing. So far indeed they were right, it was willing, but the cause of its being so was very different to that which the French assumed it to be, for it is clear that these believed that this willingness was due partly to the people's acceptance of the professions of friendship and partly to their inability to resist. But the submissiveness of the Egyptians had a very different origin. They knew that news of the arrival of the French had been dispatched to Constantinople from Cairo almost as soon as it had been received there, and they were certain that the events that followed, the defeat of the Mamelok's and the seizure of Cairo by the French, had also been communicated to the Sultan, and they were therefore looking forward from day to day to the coming of a Turkish army, and never for a moment fancied that the French occupation would or could be other than a temporary one. These things were discussed freely and fully enough in the houses of the people, but the French, as we have seen, had deliberately closed the only door by which a knowledge of the real sentiments and feelings of the people could reach them. To speak of a French disaster or defeat was a punishable treason, and so the Cairoans, doing violence to their natural inculonations, held their tongues in public, only to talk them more and the more bitterly in their homes, nor did the Egyptians look upon the Mamelok's as having been finally and decisively beaten. French troops had now been in pursuit of the fugitive bays for some months, and though the French were careful to publish everything that could be made to redound to the glory and credit of their arms, they had not yet been able to record any success worthy of note, or which was not discounted by the facts reaching the people from other sources. Nor had the severity with which Bonaparte had punished those who were convicted of circulating the news of the destruction of the French fleet, failed to impress the Cairoans, with the great importance they attached to that event, or to increase their hopes of the early and utter destruction of the French army. To the Egyptians, therefore, the ultimate disappearance of the French was only a question of time, and situated as they were, it is not surprising that they bore the miseries the occupation was inflicting upon them, with the outward semblance of content that so misled the French. Towards the middle of September, a Turkish unit arrived from Constantinople, and the people, believing that he was the bearer of letters from the Sultan, flocked in thousands after him as he passed through the streets. Bonaparte happened just then to be in the town, whether he had gone to pay a visit to one of the leading shakes, and returning came inside of the crowd following the new arrival. Instantly, loud cries broke forth, maladictions on the French, mingled with shouts of "victory to the Sultan" and to Islam. Holy unable to comprehend the meaning of the demonstration, since it was the habit of the people to receive him in silence, he asked what it meant, and was told that the people were claiming his presence. It was, as Gabriety, a critical moment, and one that might have had grave consequence. One can but wonder that the incident passed as harmlessly as it did, for it is certain that in the temper the people were in, it needed but a word to have stirred them to action. Fortunately for Bonaparte, the dangerous moment passed, and he was left to return home, with no suspicion of how narrowly he had escaped an ignoble ending of his career. A few days later the French held high festival, in honor of the anniversary of the Republic. A great space in the Asbequia was chosen as the sight of the rejoicings, and this was encircled with Venetian poles, swavved in the colors so dear to French sentiment, and linked together with festooned flowers. A triumphal arch decorated with frescoes celebrating the defeat of the Mamelux was erected in the centre, and on all sides French and Turkish flags were displayed in profusion. The cap of liberty and the Turkish crescent, the rights of man and the Quran, the glory of the prophet and that of the French Republic, were inextricably mixed up in the decorations as emblents of the hopes of the French, but were in truth more aptly typical of the absolute irreconcilability of the two peoples assembled in their presence. In their evening there was a grand banquet, to which all the principal shakes and other leaders of the people were invited, and at which speeches of great length but light and witty, full of the spirit that the French seems always to have at command, were made, and the night was brought to a close with the display of fireworks, after which the French went home to sigh for the early coming of the day on which they could return to their beloved France, and the Egyptians to pray for the coming of the same day, but for very different reasons and with very different hopes. Needless to say that the fate was made an opportunity for the renewal of all the fine promises and a gorgeous repainting of all the brilliant prospects that Bonaparte was never weary of holding out to the Egyptians, but the fate, over, he pursued his policy of reform more vigorously and more recklessly than ever. A new scheme for the registration of property was introduced. Taxes were imposed upon the inheritance of property, on creditors claims, on highrings and lettings, and a host of other things. All the citizens living in the citadel were turned out, speaking of politics was forbidden, arrests, confiscations, and executions went on from day to day. The cemeteries within the city walls were closed, and the disinfecting of the houses and clothing of the dead was ordered. These and a host of other innovations, each in its way, reasonable enough, and according to modern European ideas, most commendable, came upon the Egyptians as ruthless invasions of their personal liberty and reviewed by them as tyrannical expedience for robbing them. And with these measures for the social organization of the town, Bonaparte was pressing forward others for its defense. For in spite of his suppression of speech among the people, he was becoming aware of the fact that they were looking for the coming of a foe to dispute possession of the country with him, and an infinitely more deadly foe than Turk or Mamelok was already within the walls of the city, and was not to be combatted or ousted by any means that he could command. A foe that mocked the might of generals and armies, and in the stillness of a knight might decimate the French troops. A foe, who's very name. The plague. Blanche the faces and hearts of every European who heard it. So, that the army as a whole, or whatever fraction of it the plague might spare, should be in a condition to defend itself from the assaults of Turks or Mamelok. The French put feverish haste in the building of defenses, and houses, mansions, tombs, and mosques were pulled down to make room for, and supply materials for forts and other works. Meanwhile the Duan had not answered Bonaparte's expectations, and as the almost necessary result, he was neglected. It met from time to time to disperse again without having had any affairs presented for its consideration, and the people drawing their own conclusions from all that was going on, adding this to other matters, with a steadily rising tide of anger in their hearts drew more and more apart from the French, and these apparently began to have some suspicion that all was not going on so well as they could wish. October came, and a new Duan was formed with delegates from Alexandria and other towns as members. Then a new law of succession was proposed, as though the French would determine to leave nothing undone that would serve to prove utterly blind they were in the folly with which they were pushing the people to desperation. The law of succession, that then, as now prevailed in Egypt, as in all Muslim lands and among all Muslim peoples, is based upon the expressed injunctions of the Qur'an, and being therefore, as all Muslims believe, conformable to the direct command of God himself, the mere suggestion to modify or alter it in any way whatsoever is an unpartenable offense. Yet that the madness with which the French were acting, should be still more infatically proved, not only was it proposed new law of succession absolutely and utterly rejected by the Muslims, but also by the Christians and Jews, who declared that sooner than have it they would prefer the Muslim law. Once more then, Bonaparte had to suffer the humiliation of withdrawing a hasty and ill-conceived measure. The people would no more have his law of succession than his cockades. But still hopelessly incapable of comprehending the real nature of the task he was so fortuitously pursuing, he only consented to abandon this scheme to introduce another, not less detestable to the whole population. This was a proposal for a house tax. And it was to the kairines, the spark that set aflame, the fiercely smoldering fires a hundred others had kindled. So far, the people had contented themselves with verbal protests. And even these have been so infrequent and so moderate in tone that the French may also be excused for misreading the submissive, all-bearing attitude with which the great majority of their innovations were accepted, and for believing that the people were incapable of any more effective resistance. They were now to learn, by evidence, that could not be gained said that it was no cowardly fear that a dick dictated their passiveness. It was not the first time that the kairians were to give a proof that they could act in their own defense when they chose to do so, but it was the first since the arrival of the French. And it served to show that, like that of a finally tempered spring when released from restraint, the pliancy of their temper but rendered its reaction sharper and stronger. A fiery, quarrelsome people would have broken out against the French a dozen times while yet the Egyptian was silently submitting to his wrongs, but their outbreaks would not have had the weight or force of that which was now to interrupt and change the whole relations of the vanquished and the vanquishers. According to custom, the newly proposed house-tax was made known to the people by printed copies of the decree concerning it being posted all over the town. On the whole, it was a moderate and most inoffensive measure, and one that trespassed less on the prejudices of the kairians than did many of those that had preceded it. The private houses and dwellings of the town were to be grouped in three classes according to their value. The first and highest class was to pay eight, the second six, the third, three dollars a year. Dwellings let at less than a dollar a month were to be exempt. Shops, public baths, cafes, and other buildings for the accommodation of the public were rated at from thirty to forty dollars. Many of the people accepted this fresh birthing without any special comment, looking upon it as but one straw more of the heavy load being laid upon them. But others grumbled, less at the tax itself than at the principal involved in its application. Some of the shakes lending their support to this latter party had quickly developed itself, and the angry milk-intense, without any very definite plan or accepted leader, began to arm themselves with the weapons that, in spite of all the efforts of the French to disarm the population, they had kept hidden away in their houses and elsewhere. It was a Sunday morning, but as neither the French nor the kairians at that time paid any respect to the day, the city-warrets every day aspect, until the discontented began to gather, and with loud cries of "victory for Islam," set out for the house of the Kadi. Alarmed at the approach of the turbulent mob and having no clear knowledge of its aims, the Kadi hastened to have his doors closed and refused admission to the rioters. In rage did the reception given them by the man who of all others they regarded as their natural and proper leader. The people, without a moment's hesitation, attacked the house, shattering its windows with stones picked up from the street. In this attack upon the Kadi's house we have a clear measure of the wrath that was stirring in the people. For the Kadi, the chief of the Eulima, chief justice of the country, and the local Supreme Orthodox authority of the Muslim faith and law, sent from Constantinople as the representative and exponent of the spiritual authority vested in the Sultan as the caliph of Islam, was and is to the Egyptian almost as a cardinal is to the followers of that most fascinating of all the superstitions, as McColley styled the Catholic Church. As the hustling, shouting, hordes of rioters approached the Kadi's house, the whole fate of the day was placed in his hands. For, as he must have known, they were approaching him that he might become their leader in mouthpiece, it being thus that they had been accustomed to make their protest against the tyrannies and exactions of the bays. A most ingenious and effective diplomatic while, for the people has presented themselves to the bays under the sheltering patronage of the Kadi, whose definite decision the hardiest of the bays would not dare to openly dispute, while the Kadi himself could plead that he was acting under compulsion and yet give the claims of the people such support as he deemed fit. A strong man might have used the power thus placed in his hands with potent effect upon the welfare of the country, but unhappily there is no instance of a Kadi who was done so. Like all other officials in the Turkish Empire, their tenure of office was always uncertain, and from the worldly point of view, the one and only wise course for them to pursue was to be, in politics, and all things outside district duty as interpreters and administrators of the law, as absolutely quayessent as might be. This was the conception that the man who held this post in Bonaparte's time had adopted. Had he been a strong man, man was some thought of duty and of right, with some desire to benefit the people, he might have accomplished much good. As it was, his influence was mostly that of inaction, that coming from his not doing rather than from his doing. And he was a man loving his own comfort and most anxious to get through life safely and with the least care, trouble, or vexation of any kind. Of the French he stood in most unwholesome fear, and, while executing them and all their ways with the most intense hatred, was studiously careful to tender them nothing but the most courteous and affable submission. In short, he was a miserable, time-serving poultryun, thinking of nothing but his most worthless self and the peril to his peace of mind. And possibly also to his bodily comfort, that any real or apparent connivance with hostility to the French might bring upon him from the hands of these enemies of God and man, as he esteemed them. So, closing his stores, he listened with trembling ears to the stones crashing through his windows, in deadly fear that the mob would break in and wreak their anger on himself. For some reason, however, the mob was content with the smashing of the windows. Which, having been done to its satisfaction, surging and shouting, it turned about and took a new direction. Before we follow the crowd, it is well that I should note how clearly this little incident vindicates the people from the charge of "slaveish" "servility" so often and unjustly brought against them. Let the reader recall what I have said of the power and influence of the Yuleema, and of the Cadi. And that to rebel against the Cadi was in the eyes of the people, almost the same thing as to rebel against the Sultan himself. And that's a crime that brought them perilously close to infidelity, being, in fact, little short of rebellion against heaven itself. Yet, strange symptom of "servility" and curious evidence of the bigotry that is supposed to dominate this people, the shower of stones went smashing through the Cadi's windows as vigorously and as recklessly, as though the mob were in London and the Cadi an unpopular statesman. There is another point to be noted as to this incident that might help us to understand the people, and that point is the reason why the people thus fiercely testified their anger. As to this, there is no doubt. The reason was plain enough, though not perhaps obvious to the European unfamiliar with Islam and the East. It was well known that the Cadi stood in fear of the French, and that he was inclined to temporize and be somewhat too friendly in his relations with them, and much too willing to promote their views and aims. But all these were matters which, while they rendered him the subject of jest and ridicule, were very far from destroying his authority and were quite insufficient to produce the smashing of his windows. For the Egyptians, though, lacks themselves in obeying the duties and obligations of their religion, and often enough, like others, willing to compound for sins that are inclined to, by damning those they have no mind to. Yet are not given to prove their doctrine orthodox by apostolic blows and nox, unless indeed they be urged there to by some other and more pressing inducement, and would never carry their condemnation of such irregularities to the extent of breaking the windows of the offenders. It was not therefore that Cadi's alleged unorthodox submission to French influence that the Cairians so forcibly reprimanded. But what in their eyes was a much more serious fault. That shutting his doors in their faces he should refuse to hear their complaint. This was his offense. I have pointed out before that, in Egypt, as elsewhere in the East, the worst of tyrants, as a rule, poses from time to time as a benefactor of the people. And it is rare indeed to find an instance of their openly closing their ears to the cry of the distressed, or the plaint of the suffering. They would hear and reject the pleas offered to them, but they would at least hear them. That the Cadi should have done this, that he should have listened to what the people had to say, and that having done so he should have refused point blank to act or speak for them. Nay, that he should have roundly abused them and told them to submit. All this they would have borne, though it were with murmuring, grumbling, and unwilling patients and obedience. But that he should refuse to hear them. That they would not bear and would not forgive. That was an abdication of his right to their submission and obedience. And since he would not give them an opportunity of saying, by word of mouth what they had to say, they let another opinion of his conduct by the very audible and self-interpreting voice of the stones whistling through his windows, at voice admitting of no ambiguity as to the poor port of its message. Looking at the records of window-breaking in Europe and comparing those with this particular breakage, the incident seems but a small reason, scarcely worth chronicling. Yet, like the battle of the pyramids, it is noticeable for the consequence that followed it. For it was the pulchronary of the Cadi and his desire to avoid any personal conflict with the French that decided the issue of the day and turned the mob into the very path the Cadi would have diverted them from. It was, in fact, upon his reception of the mob that the question of peace or war depended. No one knew that it was to be so, but as we shall see it was the Cadi's refusal to hear the people that led to the bursting of the storm that had been so long gathering. Had the Cadi received the people, had he reasoned with them, warned them of the evils that might come from any rationalist, or had he taken a higher and bolder position and ordered them to accept the new decree and not to attempt to oppose the French without the sanction of himself and the rest of the Eulima, had he adopted either of these courses he would have stayed the evil that was at hand, at least for the time. Let us follow the mob and see what happened as it moved away from the Cadi's. Rumors of excitement in the town having reached the French head quarters, General Dupet took a small party of troops and set out to see what was the matter. He had not far to go, and as fate would have it, had scarcely entered the town when he met the angry mob returning from the Cadi's, with no very definite idea as to what it should do next. All doubts they had on this point were set at rest by the appearance of the general. Had once the cry went up, death to the French, and with the words went acts. The mob vastly outnumbering the little party of troops with the general and taking them by surprise routed them before they could do much more than assume a posture of defense. In the hurry scurry of this impromptu battle, one of the first to fall was the Galan General, who was fatally wounded in the neck by one of the primitive weapons with which many of the people were armed. a knife lashed to the end of a long staff. Thus the result of the Codys cowardly action was the Committee of the People to Overt Rebellion, and the sacrifice of a brave and gallant gentleman to the fury of an angry mob. Meanwhile, in other parts of the town, other parties of the people had assembled, and were apparently acting quite independently. The firing in the fight between General DuPais Man and the rebels, as we may now term them, quickly informed the whole town of what was happening, and the news that a French general had been slain, and the troops with him driven off spreading rapidly, practically the whole town rose to arms to follow up this, as they thought it, most auspicious opening of a campaign. At once the gates of the town were seized, the Mustabas, or Stone-built benches in front of the shops, turned up to find material for the barricading of the streets, and the people set themselves with a will to prepare for a stubborn fight, little realizing the long odds against them. The House of General Caffarelli, in the Barquette L. Phil, quarter of the town, formerly the residents of one of the bays, with ample gardens and spacious courtyards surrounded by luxurious apartments, was attacked, and some of the French who happened to be there were struck down before they had time to realize what was taking place. The General himself was absent, as well as several others of the French staff, who had decorders in the roomy buildings of the old bays Palace, and the few persons left managing to escape, the mob spent its energies in smashing a valuable collection of scientific instruments and engineering appliances. Elsewhere in the town, Frenchmen and Native Christians, wandering about as usual, quite unsuspicious of the danger they were incurring, were ruthlessly cut down, and while the bulk of the rioters were busy preparing to defend the town against the French, some of the lower classes set themselves to pillage the houses of the Christians, but in their anxiety for booty did not stop to spare the houses of Muslims dwelling in the Christian quarters. Entirely unprepared for the outbreak, it was some little time before the French troops appeared upon the scene, and then they approached the town just where it was defended by the barricades, the defensive which had been allotted to the Magribans, or Arabs from the Barbary States resident in Cairo, a much more warlike and combat of people than the Egyptians. These, attacked by the French, returned the fire of their assailants with such good effect that the French had to retire. Firing was, however, kept up on both sides all through the night with considerable loss to both parties. When morning broke, the French found themselves favored by several circumstances. Only a part of the town had been able to join in the revolt. The people of Boulac and of Old Cairo, as well as those of the Asbequia, and other quarters in which the French were established in force, being quite unable to offer their townsman any assistance, and the quarters in revolt being thus those in which there were few, if any, French residents, the French were able to bring up their artillery and concentrate its fire upon the rebels. So as the day went on, the unequal fight proceeded, and under the storm of Boul and shot by which they were assailed, the Cairians showed none of the cowardice or distrust of themselves that their critics would have us believe to be among their characteristics. They were, on that day, a people showing very different traits to those that the great panic at the first triumph of the French had seemed to stamp them with. All through the night, and the following day, these people, scantily provided with arms and patched up weapons, stood holding the barricades against the foe that but a few weeks before had scattered what they had regarded as the invincible army of the Mamalux. Truly a stubborn, stiff-necked people, when they took it into their heads to be so. A people, who, notwithstanding their everyday docily, could give their rulers no little trouble whenever they had a mind to do so. Midday passed, and the battle went on with no abatement of ardor on either side, and with no talk or thought of submission on the side of the rebels. But as the time of the afternoon prayer approached, the Eulima, who could, in spite of their pacific character, form a better and more reliable estimate of the probable final result of the struggle, appealed to the people, and went to general Bonaparte himself to intercede for peace, begging him to stop the bombardment that was making such havoc in the town, and was more harmful to the innocent and helpless than to those most in fault. Bonaparte, accusing the Eulima of being responsible for the outbreak, reproached them bitterly, but finally yielded to their entreaties, and ordering their batteries to be silenced, promised an amnesty for all who should at once lay down their arms. Evening was drawing near, as the sheaks returned from their self-appointed embassy. The people weared with the heavy strain of the long night and day of constant action, with their small stalk of munitions almost exhausted and finding their strength failing, with their women and children shrieking and weeping in terror, at the houses crumbled around them under the hail of shell from the French batteries, were compelled to accept the offered peace, and as the sun went down, the firing on both sides stopped, saved that the war-like Magrebenz, who thoroughly enjoyed the battle, kept up a fight upon their own account, for yet an hour or so longer, being most loath to abandon it at all. The storm that thus ended almost abruptly as it had broken out had caused the French one of their best generals, and not a few valuable lives of less degree in the service. The Egyptians too had lost heavily. Many peaceful citizens had been slain, and many houses more or less completely wrecked. For the kairians had been their baptism of fire, they had taken up arms to fight, scarcely knowing how to handle them, and to be under the fire of an enemy was a wholly new experience to them, scarce one of them having even seen a cannon fired, saved for the harmless purpose of a salude. Yet astounded as they were at the destruction, wrought by the French guns, they had held their ground staunchly all through that to them most terrible day, and in doing so learned something of their own strength, though almost nothing of how to use it. But whatever the people had learned, Bonaparte learned but little from the storm. It taught him, indeed, that the people were not quite so docile as he had thought them to be, and that they were still less friendly to the French and their ideas than he had imagined possible. But that was all. It taught him nothing of that which it would have been most serviceable for him to have learned, something of the real nature of the people and of the best and wisest way of dealing with them. Had he been a great man in any true sense of the phrase, had he been even a clever one, or still less nobly, even a cunning one, he might have turned the storm and its collapse very greatly indeed to his own advantage. Never from the day of his arrival had he had the people so completely at his mercy, so wholly under his own control, if he had only known how to exercise it. But knowing, no means of attaining his objects but through the brute force of his battalions and such terror as they could inspire, and no higher diplomacy than the yielding of minor points as to which he was in truth indifferent. He, most naturally for him, did exactly the things most calculated to strengthen the hatred of the people for the French, and thus to heap up difficulties in his own path. Whether done through thoughtless indifference, or from a wanton desire to outrage the feelings of the people, the French cavalry were stable in the mosque of the Azar, the great university, not only a vege of but of the whole Muslim world, and this venerated building to which students came from every land in which Islam had even a small group of followers, was desecrated and defiled, as well by the horses of the troops as by the troopers themselves in every possible way. If it had been the object of the French to humiliate and insult the people and their faith in the greatest conceivable degree, this was of all others the surest and simplest way of accomplishing it. Once more the Yuleema went to Bonaparte to plead with him for the exercise of a little humanity, and once more he ungratiously granted their request. The evacuation of the mosque was ordered, but as always the concession was marred so far as Bonaparte could marred, by the arrest of a number of the shakes accused of having fomented or encouraged the revolt, and by his refusal to hear any intercession on their behalf. The storm had come and gone. Like all storms it had left a trail of damage, but it had to some extent cleared the air. Frenchmen in Egyptians understood one another less than before, and yet better, and so, drawing daily more and more apart, both literally and figuratively. The French, many of whom had been living here and there in the town amidst the people, began to move and gather themselves more and more together. Whilst the Egyptians living in the Esbequia, and other parts that had been especially adopted by the French, were ordered to leave. To change his followed, the flood tide of reforms had reached its height and ceased to flow, to the vast relief of the people no longer driven hither and thither by its currents and eddies. The shakes accused of fomenting sedition having been executed, the daily streams of arrests and executions that had continued throughout the occupation was checked, and so the people sadly, but not solently, settled themselves down peacefully enough to wait for the early coming of the Turkish army. That, as they fondly believed, was to scatter the French as the Serracco scatters the sand heaps of the desert, so that the place should know them no more, and their very name be but the memory of a dream. Yet with all this, while the people had just caused to congratulate themselves that their outbreak was not altogether unfruitful in its effects, and to grieve over the long list of their dead and wounded, and the crumbled ruins of their dwellings. The truth is that they were repenting for their wild outburst. For now that the passionate wrath that adurged them on was gone, the philosophy that had carried them through so many centuries of woe reproached them for their faithfulness. They had fought a stout fight against long odds, and though beaten in form had proved victorious in substance, since, as I have said, the torrent of reform that had so exasperated them was stayed, and it was the French and not they, who had to abandon in every way the position they had occupied. But as reflection came, they asked themselves whether the gain was worth the cost, and finding less cause for exaltation than for regret, so far from rejoicing over what they had done, spoke only of the fight to ask God's forgiveness for their madness. But the French, knowing nothing of the true feelings of the people, and quite unable to fathom their thoughts, so far from thinking that they had never before been so safe from the anger of the people, began to take all sorts of needless precautions, and not only kept together in their walks and wanderings, but carried arms and shunned the native quarters of the town. Chapter 10 The Bursting of the Storm Recording by Graham McMillan, San Diego, California.