Part 23

to clear the English from all their Oriental possessions which he will be able to reach, and notably to destroy all their stations in the Red Sea; to cut through the Isthmus of Suez and to take the necessary measures to assure the free and exclusive possession of that sea to the French Republic.

The destination of this great fleet and army was unknown to the British Government. But there was a strong British fleet at the entrance of the Mediterranean, under Lord St. Vincent, who detached a large part of it, under command of Nelson, to watch the issue of the French fleet from Toulon. It was composed of an equal number of battleships to that of the French fleet, but of inferior size, and with fewer guns. It was very deficient in frigates.

On June 10th, three weeks after escaping from Toulon, the French fleet arrived at Malta. The Knights of St. John, who had made so valiant and successful a defence of the island against the Ottomans in 1565, now offered a very feeble resistance to the French. The knightly monks had become licentious and corrupt. They very soon capitulated. Bonaparte annexed the island to France, and the ancient Order came to an ignominious end.

Leaving four thousand men at Malta, the fleet sailed for the island of Crete, and hearing there that Nelson was in pursuit, Bonaparte at once decided to sail to Alexandria. He then for the first time announced to the army its destination.

Soldiers [he said in a proclamation], you go to undertake a conquest of which the effects upon the civilization and the commerce of the world will be incalculable. You will strike at England the most certain and the most acute blow, while waiting to give her the death-blow.... The Mamelukes, who favour exclusively English commerce, some days after your arrival will exist no more.

Nelson meanwhile, when he discovered the departure of the French fleet from Toulon, shrewdly guessed that it was bound to Egypt, and bent his course there, hoping to find the enemy’s ships at Alexandria. He arrived there on June 28th, before the French fleet, and, hearing nothing of it, he doubled back to Sicily. The two fleets crossed one another not far from Crete, and within sight of one another if the weather had been bright; but a dense haze and the want of frigates to act as scouts prevented Nelson discovering the proximity of his enemy. But for this it is certain that the French fleet, encumbered as it was with two hundred transports, would have been totally destroyed and the whole armada would have met with unparalleled disaster. It is interesting matter for speculation what effect this would have had on the career of the Corsican general and on the history of Europe. As it was, the French fleet and army, favoured by their extraordinary good luck, arrived safely at Alexandria on July 1st. The army disembarked there. The battleships, not being able to get into the harbour, were anchored in Aboukir Bay. Alexandria was captured, after a slight resistance by its small garrison—though Bonaparte himself was slightly wounded in the attack. A week later the army commenced its march to Cairo.

Bonaparte issued one of his bombastic and mendacious proclamations to the Egyptian people, explaining that he was making war against the Mamelukes, and not against them or the Sultan.

For a long time [it said] the crowd of slaves bought in Georgia and the Caucasus have tyrannized the most beautiful place in the world; but God, on whom all depends, has ordained that their empire is finished. People of Egypt, they have told you that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe them. Answer that I am come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect more than the Mamelukes, God, his Prophet, and the Koran.... Thrice happy are those who will be on our side. They will prosper in their fortune and their rank.... But woe threefold to those who arm themselves for the Mamelukes and fight against us.... Each man will thank God for the destruction of the Mamelukes and will cry “Glory to the Sultan! Glory to the French army, his friend! Malediction to the Mamelukes and good luck to the people of Egypt.”

The army suffered greatly on its march to Cairo from the heat and the sand. The soldiers murmured and asked for what purpose they were brought to such a country, where they saw no evidence of wealth, and where there was nothing to loot. But they fought two battles on the way against the Mamelukes and easily defeated them. The armies against them on both occasions consisted of no more than twelve thousand men, of whom only five thousand were Mamelukes and the others ill-trained fellaheen. These were of no avail against thirty thousand veterans of the French. The city of Cairo, on the approach of Bonaparte, was sacked by the retreating Egyptians. He presented himself rather as the saviour of life and property. He had no difficulty in restoring order there.

Meanwhile Nelson, on the arrival of his fleet at Naples, heard definite accounts of the destination of the French armada. He retraced his course to Egypt. On the memorable 1st of August, 1798, he came in sight of the enemy’s fleet, anchored in Aboukir Bay. The oft-told story of the decisive and glorious battle need not be repeated. The French fleet, under Admiral Brueys, was annihilated by the British fleet, much inferior in number of men and guns. The admiral was killed. His flagship was blown up. Only two of his ships escaped for a time, and later were captured before reaching France. As a result, the communications of the French army with France were thenceforth completely severed. It was hopelessly stranded in Egypt. Bonaparte did not hear of the disaster till August 19th, on his return from an expedition, in which he defeated and chased from the country a force of Mamelukes, under Ibrahim Pasha. His sole remark was: “Eh bien! It will be necessary to remain in these countries or to make a grand exit like the ancients. The English will compel us to do greater things than we intended.”

The signal victory of the British fleet had far-reaching results. The Sultan of Turkey, who had hitherto been undecided as to his policy, now felt that he might safely take up arms against the French and reassert his sovereignty in Egypt. He well knew that Bonaparte could receive no reinforcements from France and that the invading army must gradually melt away. He declared war against France, and entered into alliances, offensive and defensive, with Russia and England. His alliance with the former led to strange results. A combined fleet of Russia and Turkey, hitherto the most deadly foes to one another, issued from the Dardanelles, and attacked and drove the French from the Ionian Islands, so recently acquired by them, and from their fortresses on the mainland.

The Porte also collected two armies for the reconquest of Egypt, the one in Syria, the other in the island of Rhodes. Bonaparte decided to anticipate attack by the invasion of Syria. He spent at Cairo the winter of 1798-9, the least reputable period of his amazing career. His private life there was most scandalous, far more so than that, bad enough, of his wife, Josephine, whom he had left at Paris. His public life was little better. In the hopes of conciliating the Egyptian people and facilitating the further conquests in the East, of which he dreamt, he professed unbounded admiration for the Moslem religion. He feigned to be a convert to that faith. His vaunting proclamations were headed: “In the name of Allah. There is no God but God. He has no son and reigns without a partner.” He did his best to induce his soldiers to become Moslems, but in vain. No one was taken in by these fooleries. He gained no respect from Egyptians of any creed. There were many outbreaks in different parts of the country, and a most serious one in Cairo. They were put down with ruthless severity. He followed the Turkish practice of decapitating the prisoners and great numbers of suspects, and exhibiting their bleeding heads in public places as a warning to others.

Bonaparte left Egypt in January, 1799, with an army of twenty-five thousand, made up in part by sailors of his sunken fleet, and in part by recruits from the Mamelukes. He crossed the Isthmus of Suez, and reached Gaza on February 25th and Jaffa on March 7th. This last city was held by five thousand Turks. After a brave defence they capitulated on terms that they should be treated as prisoners of war. In disregard of this they were marched down to the beach and, by order of Bonaparte, were slaughtered in cold blood because it was inconvenient to encumber his army with prisoners. No worse deed of Turkish atrocity has been recorded in these pages. Leaving Jaffa, his army arrived before Acre in a few days. “When I have captured Acre,” he said to his generals, “I shall arm the tribes. I shall be in a position to threaten Constantinople. I shall turn the British Empire upside down.”

But he reached at Acre the end of his tether in the East. He had sent his heavy guns by sea to meet him there. They were captured on the way by the British fleet, and were now mounted on the mud ramparts of the fortress and used against him. A British fleet, under command of Sir Sidney Smith, was lying in the roadstead and kept the communications open with Constantinople. The admiral and his sailors assisted in the defence of the city, the garrison of which consisted of only three thousand men. Its weak fortifications had been strengthened by Colonel Philippeaux, a distinguished French royalist. Against these defences Bonaparte hurled his army in vain. In the sixty days of siege there were forty assaults and twenty sorties of the garrison. “In that miserable fort,” said Bonaparte, “lay the fate of the East.”

On May 7th large reinforcements arrived from the Turkish army at Rhodes. A last and desperate assault, led by General Kléber, was unsuccessful. Bonaparte was compelled to admit his failure. His dream of an Eastern Empire was dissipated for ever. On May 20th he commenced a retreat, after a loss by death of four thousand men and eight generals. The army suffered most severely in passing through the desert.

Shortly after the return of the French troops to Egypt on July 14th, an army of fifteen thousand Turks, convoyed by the British fleet, was landed at Aboukir. Bonaparte attacked on the 25th and utterly defeated it. Thousands of the Turks were driven into the sea and drowned. This victory of the veterans of the French army over the ill-trained Turkish levies, without guns or cavalry, was a godsend to Bonaparte. It shed a gleam of glory over the terrible failure of the whole expedition. His dispatches made the most of it. At this stage news from France showed the necessity for his return there. He decided to abandon the army to its fate. With the utmost secrecy arrangements were made for the embarkation of the general and his staff on board two frigates. They rode down to the shore and got into boats, leaving their horses behind them. The return of the riderless horses was the first intimation to those left behind that they were abandoned by their general. The two frigates left Egypt on August 22nd and, by hugging the African coast, they escaped the British cruisers, and after a most hazardous voyage of six weeks they landed their passengers in France, where Bonaparte posed as a conqueror. Nor did his failure in Egypt interfere with his subsequent triumphant career.

Early in March 1801 a British army of fifteen thousand men, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, landed in Egypt, and later another contingent, under General Baird, coming from India, also arrived there. The French army of occupation was badly handled. It was divided between Cairo and Alexandria. It was defeated in detail and ultimately surrendered. It was then said to number twenty-four thousand men and three hundred and twelve guns. On hearing of this disaster Bonaparte is said to have felt great anguish. “We have lost Egypt,” he said. “My projects have been destroyed by the British.” Egypt was restored to the Sultan, freed not only from the French but also from the Mamelukes, and for a time Turkish pashas, appointed by the Porte, ruled the country. There can be no doubt that the Sultan owed this wholly and solely to the British Government. It will be seen that he showed little gratitude, for in a very few years’ time he took the part of the French in the great war.

Meanwhile, in 1802, a peace was patched up for a time between England and France at Amiens. Concurrently with this terms of peace were agreed upon between France and the Porte, under which the sovereignty of the Sultan over Egypt was recognized. When, two years later, war again broke out between France and England and other Powers, Bonaparte, then First Consul, reversed his action as regards the Ottoman Empire, and made an alliance with it a cardinal point of his new policy.

After the conclusion of peace with France in 1802, Sultan Selim had a respite for a very few years before he was again involved in war. He directed his attention to serious internal reforms of his Empire. He fully recognized that the first and foremost of these must be the reorganization, if not the suppression, of the corps of Janissaries. Not only had the experience of late wars shown that they had become a most incompetent military force, quite unable to meet on equal terms the well-trained soldiers of Russia and France, but in every part of his Empire they were a danger to the State, endeavouring to monopolize power and to oust that of the pashas appointed by himself. They were also the main oppressors of the rayas. The task of suppressing them and of creating an army on the model of those of European Powers was a most difficult and dangerous one, for the Janissaries were, or pretended to be, the most devout of Moslems, and were supported by the fanatical part of the population. They had strong supporters in the Divan. The ulemas were almost unanimously in their favour. The Divan was divided into two parties, those who favoured reform and who gave support to the Sultan, and the reactionary party, who were opposed to all reform and championed the Janissaries. There was another serious division of the Divan—namely those who espoused the cause of Russia, not infrequently in the pay of that Power, and those who favoured France. After the conclusion of peace, France was represented at the Court of the Sultan by very able ministers, who soon regained the influence for that country which it had formerly enjoyed.

Nowhere throughout the Empire were the Janissaries more turbulent and dangerous or more oppressive to the rayas than in Serbia. They aimed at governing the province in the same way as the Mamelukes in Egypt and the military Begs in Algiers and Tunis, and if they had been allowed to have their way, Serbia would have achieved a virtual independence of the Porte, under a military and fanatical Moslem despotism. The Janissaries there were almost as hostile to the Spahis inhabiting the provinces as to the rayas. They aimed at ousting the Spahis from their feudal rights in the country districts and at an assumption of ownership of land, more oppressive to the peasant Christian cultivators of the soil than that of the Spahis. Both Spahis and rayas appealed to the Porte for protection against these ruffians. The rayas in their petition to the Sultan said that—

not only were they reduced to abject poverty by the Dahis (the leaders of the Janissaries), but they were attacked in their religion, their morality, and their honour. No husband was secure as to his wife, no father as to his daughter, no brother as to his sister. The Church, the cloister, the monks, the priests, all were violated. Art thou still our Czar? then come and free us from these evildoers, and if thou wilt not save us, at least tell us that we may decide whether to flee to the mountains and forests, or to seek in the rivers a termination of our miserable existence.[31]

The Sultan was willing to listen to these grave complaints, and to put down the turbulent Dahis and their attendant Janissaries, not so much out of sympathy for the rayas as in order to restore his own authority in the province and as a first step towards the reformation or suppression of the Janissaries elsewhere throughout his Empire. He began by threatening the Dahis. If they did not mend their ways, he would send an army against them. These ruffians, knowing that the Sultan could not venture to employ a Moslem force against them, came to the conclusion that he meant to arm the rayas of the province. They determined to anticipate this by a general massacre. If no resistance had been offered to this, the whole Christian population of Serbia would have been exterminated. The rayas, however, were no longer the submissive and patient people they had been reduced to by servitude for two hundred and fifty years under the Turks, during which no one of them had been allowed to carry about him a weapon of defence. As has been already stated, they had been invited to rebel by the Austrians in their last war with the Turks, had been armed by them, and had given valuable assistance. Great numbers of them had been trained as soldiers, and retained their arms when the Austrians retired from the country, after the peace of Sistova, which provided no adequate security for these unfortunate people.

They now, in 1807, rose in arms against their oppressors, who were bent on exterminating them. They elected as their leader George Petrowitsch (Kara George, as he is known in history), a peasant like themselves, a most brave man, who had served in the Austrian army, and who soon showed great qualities as a general. Under his leadership the rayas succeeded in driving the Dahis and Janissaries out of the country districts.

The Sultan at the commencement of this servile war lent his assistance to the rayas. The Pasha of Bosnia was instructed to support them with an armed force. The local Spahis also, who were still in the country and had not been driven away by the Dahis, lent assistance. On the other hand, the Dahis received assistance from the fanatical part of the Moslems in the towns. They had also the sympathy and aid of Passhwan Oghlou, the mutinous Pasha of Widdin. It was, however, almost wholly due to the efforts of the Serbian rayas that the Dahis were completely defeated. Most of them were slaughtered, and the world was well rid of them. When this was achieved, the whole of Serbia was practically in the hands of the Christian rayas, with the exception of Belgrade and a few fortresses, which were garrisoned by the Sultan’s troops.

At this stage the Sultan, when all that he really aimed at was achieved—namely the suppression of the local Janissaries—summoned the insurgent rayas to lay down their arms and to resume their position as subjects of the Porte and as rayas under the yoke of the local Spahis as of yore. The war, however, had evoked a national spirit among the Christian population, which would not be content with the old condition of servitude. They sent a petition to the Russian Government claiming assistance on the ground that they were members of the Greek Church. The Czar, in reply, advised them to present their claims at Constantinople, and promised to give his support to them at the Porte. They then sent a deputation to the Sultan, and boldly claimed that Belgrade and the other fortresses should be given up to them, and asked that arrears of taxes and tribute should be remitted. The first of these was the most important, for it virtually meant a claim for autonomy under the suzerainty only of the Sultan.

These demands caused the greatest indignation among the Moslems of the capital, and the Sultan forthwith rejected them. He ordered the members of the deputation to be imprisoned. He directed the Pasha of Nisch to invade Serbia and reduce the contumacious rayas to their former condition. He threatened them with death or slavery. Kara George met this force on the frontier of Serbia and defeated it. He also defeated two other armies which the Sultan sent against him, and he was able, unaided by any external force, to capture Belgrade and the other fortresses and expel the Turkish garrisons. Thus it happened that the native Christians of Serbia, by their own heroic efforts, without any foreign assistance, achieved a virtual independence of Ottoman rule, an event of supreme importance in its effect on other Christian communities under servitude to the Turks.

Meanwhile important events were developing at Constantinople. It was the scene of a violent diplomatic struggle between Russia and England on the one hand, and France on the other, for the support of the Porte in the war then raging in Europe. The Emperor Napoleon sent as ambassador there General Sebastiani, formerly a priest, now a soldier and able diplomat. His demands were supported by the great victory of the French over the Austrians at Ulm. The recent acquisition by France of Dalmatia and a part of Croatia brought that Power into close relation with Turkey. Sebastiani pressed for the support of Turkey with great insistence.

On the other hand, Russia was equally cogent in its demands, and even more threatening. It insisted on an alliance, offensive and defensive. It demanded that the Sultan should recognize the Czar as the protector of all the Christians in Turkey professing the Greek religion, and that the Russian Ambassador should have the right of intervention on their behalf. The Sultan, conscious of the inferiority of his military force, could only temporize.

Moslem pride and fanaticism was greatly excited by the demands of Russia. Sebastiani, working on this, persuaded the Sultan, by way of retort to Russia, to depose the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, on the ground that they were suspected of being pensioners of Russia. The Czar treated this as a gross breach of the engagement entered into by the Porte, in 1802, under which the Hospodars of the two principalities were only to be removed from their posts with the consent of Russia. He thereupon ordered an army of thirty-five thousand men, under General Michelsen, to invade Moldavia. The army entered Jassy and, a little later, Bucharest before the Porte was able to make any resistance.

The British Government at the same time gave full support to Russia. Its Ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot, insisted on the Porte joining the alliance of England and Russia against France. The Sultan refused to do so. Mr. Arbuthnot thereupon sailed away in a frigate and joined the British fleet lying off the island of Tenedos, under the command of Admiral Duckworth, which consisted of seven battleships and two frigates. This fleet, favoured by a fair wind, then forced the Dardanelles against the Turkish batteries on February 19, 1807, with little damage, and made its appearance in the Sea of Marmora. It there destroyed a Turkish battleship and four corvettes.