Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

THE FLIGHT OF IBRAHIM BEY101Bonaparte’s measures turned those of Hasan Pasha on their heads. He promotedChristians as a new elite, making the Greek Bartholomew al-Rumi headof the Egyptian police and installing Copts in high provincial office. He promotedthe Arabic-speaking clerics of al-Azhar as the new divan, demoting theOttoman Turkish-speaking military elite from the top of the administration. Heremoved restrictions on women. The content was very different. But were themethods? We see now, in any case, why Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey, despitetheir humiliating defeat, had no reason to surrender to despair. They had beenthis far down before, and had returned from it to pomp and opulence.As early as the twenty-seventh of July, Bonaparte first asked some associates forideas on reforming Egypt. How best to administer civil and criminal law, for instance?Not waiting for an answer, he issued orders about provincial administrationthe same day. There would be in each province a divan, an Ottoman termreferring to a bureau or government council, by which he apparently translatedthe concept of “directory.” Composed of seven persons, it would prevent feudingamong villages, keep bad subjects under surveillance, and punish them ifnecessary. It could call on French arms for this purpose and justify it to the people.Each province would likewise have a gendarmerie, headed by an aga of theOttoman Janissaries, with a guard of sixty local men charged with keepingorder. The governor of each province was an appointed French general, signalingthe odd combination of military occupation with local, “democratic” steeringcommittees that characterized republican empire.Bonaparte’s technique throughout his military career was to make theconquered pay for their conquest and to terrify them into submission. TheFrench Republic of Egypt now became acquainted with the Corsican general’svision of liberty. The vast majority of the 4.5 million Egyptians at thetime of the French invasion were peasants or fellahin, totaling around 3.5million persons. They farmed their plots in small villages up and down theNile, using sophisticated irrigation techniques and taking advantage of theannual overflow as a source of silt, which was a free natural fertilizer. Bonapartewas contemptuous of the fellahin. “In the villages, they are not even familiarwith a pair of scissors. Their houses are made from a bit of mud. Theyhave for all their furnishings only a bed of straw and two or three earthenpots. They eat and consume in general very little. They have no acquaintancewith mills, to the point where we constantly bivouacked on immense piles ofwheat without having flour. We nourished ourselves with vegetables and ani-