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

152 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTbut also in Istanbul, amid the intrigues within the Ottoman cabinet and theconspiracies hatched against one another by the European consulsThe Ottoman chronicler Ahmad Cevdet described (based on late eighteenthcentury notes of Ottoman scribes) the Sublime Porte’s shock at Frenchperfidy. He pointed out that most of the crowned heads of Europe had turnedagainst the French as a result of their revolution, but that the Ottomans hadsteadfastly maintained their long tradition of friendly relations with Paris. Theyhad continued to give French merchants freedom to pursue commerce in theempire. The Ottomans took this step at some cost, Cevdet maintained, giventhe enormous pressure applied to them by the British ambassador and the otherEuropean powers, which were demanding that the Ottomans treat the revolutionariesas pariahs. 16Although some conservative Ottoman gentlemen greeted the French Revolutionwith hostility, it should be underlined that the Ottoman state, unlike theAustrians and British, did not respond ideologically to the Revolution. StanfordShaw, the greatest historian of the Ottoman Empire in this period wrote,“While the ideas of the French Revolution were highly subversive to the entireOttoman social and political structure as well as to the position of the Sultanhimself, there was at no time any particular dread of them by the Sultan and hisofficials or a desire to join the movement to stop the contagion.” 17Ottoman sultans had been killed by their followers, some in popular uprisings,so that from Istanbul’s point of view the guillotining of the king and queen,however regrettable it might have been, was hardly unprecedented. The Ottomanelite saw the Revolution as an obscure and complicated political affair of far westernLatinate Christians. Indeed, that the Europeans seemed to be caught up insuch constant social turmoil was taken as a sign that it was much better to live in astable Muslim sultanate. The geopolitical dimensions of the longstanding allianceof France and the Ottomans, based on a common fear of Russia and Austria, hadnot changed. Shaw added, “Selim actually went so far as to welcome the advent ofthe Revolution because of the very conflicts which it spawned, all serving to diverthis enemies from his own empire while it lay weak and open to attack.”Although sympathetic to the French, Selim III also attempted to maintaingood relations with the anti-French First Coalition, of Austria, Prussia, Britain,and Spain (1792–1797). His primary concern in the 1790s remained to reform theOttoman military. He wanted to reorganize the Janissary Corps, and to create a“new army” (nizam-i cedid), with modern uniforms, drill, and equipment. He atfirst declined to allow a formal embassy from revolutionary France in Istanbul, toavoid enraging the other great powers. But he indulged the French by allowing his