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

THE CONSTANT TRIUMPH OF REASON155The grand vizier called Ruffin to a second meeting on 6 August, and let himknow in frank terms of the displeasure of the Sublime Porte and the public withthe French. He told Paris’s envoy, “You must stay inside the French palace. CitizenDantan [the dragoman, or interpreter] is not to present himself any longerat the Porte. He will come to me at night when necessary. The French mustavoid being found in public places, in promenades, and in side streets. You willremove the seal of the Republic that is placed on the exterior grill of the palaceand put it inside instead.” It was the considered view of the highest Ottoman authorities,in short, that Bonaparte’s campaign had put all the French merchantsand other residents of the sultan’s realm in danger of at any moment beingripped to shreds by furious Muslim mobs.Three days later, Sultan Selim III put the French in his realm under a sortof house arrest, forbidding them to go out. In a later letter to Paris, Ruffin gavean idea of the frustrations that were building in the Ottoman public. He saidthat in late August a fire had broken out in Istanbul, and, as was his custom,Izzet Mehmet Pasha had gone out to oversee its extinction. The landlady upbraidedhim, as she watched her building reduced to embers, saying that theywere being punished for the “slowness of the government in breaking with theinfidels who had stolen from them the countries neighboring Mecca.”Bonaparte, ever the optimist and confidence man, wrote Izzet MehmetPasha in mid-August to inform him that Talleyrand would be coming as a highlevelenvoy and would explain why it was necessary for the French to occupyEgypt in order to strengthen their friendship with the Ottoman Empire. Theinvasion was carried out so as to “procure for the Sublime Porte the support itneeds against its natural enemies who, at this moment, have begun to leaguethemselves against her.” 22 Bonaparte was intimating that the Georgian Mamlukshad begun a new and serious round of negotiations with the Russian Empire,a fear the Ottomans had entertained since the early 1770s.The pro-French party in the Ottoman cabinet, including the first minister,had dragged their feet on the issue of declaring war on France. These officials receivedsupport from the ambassadors of Spain (which had a peace treaty withFrance by then) and of French-dominated Holland, as well as from envoys ofstates that feared Russia would realize an overwhelming advantage from an Ottomanalliance, such as Sweden and Austria. 23 The antiwar party lost the argument.On 31 August, the sultan made his move, having Izzet Mehmet Pasha andseveral other pro-French politicians at his own court arrested. He appointedYusuf Ziya Pasha, a conservative champion of the Sunni clerics, grand vizier andmade his steadfast supporter Ashir Effendi the head of the clerical corps. The