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MOHAMMED ALI.

Ir war, negotiation, and the eyes of all Europe turned upon an individual, can make him conspicuous, the Pasha of Egypt is among the most memorable men of his time. His ultimate fate is, like that of every other man, in the hands of fortune. His present rank may be dependent on the will of sovereigns; but let what will come of the future, he has secured the past. He has achieved an eminent station by talent, has sustained it by talent, and, whatever may happen to his sovereignty, is secure of his fame. Among his countrymen, he has had but one rival for these hundred years. That rival was Mahmoud, the late Sultan. But the intrepidity of Mahmoud was rashness, as his spirit of reform was innovation, compared to the steady courage and solid improvements of Mahommed Ali. In the dubious chances of all human things, the fortunes of the Pasha may perish, as those of so many other brave and sagacious men have perished; but when the convulsions of the waters shall have gone by, and the remnants of his wreck rise again to the surface, we shall acknowledge a power of genius, of personal daring, and of political dignity, which entitle his remains to rest even in the temple of Euro

pean renown.

Mohammed Ali is an Albanian, and of no mean extraction. The common reports, which represent him as a beggar, a slave, or a porter at Salonica, are erroneous. He was the son of an officer, chief of the patrols that scoured the roads of the country. He was born in 1769, and educated by the governor of the district, who seems to have taken upon him the office of his father, who was dead, and who gave him a wife with some considerable portion. The governor then appointed him a collector of taxes, a situation which in the Turkish dominions is always connected with soldiership, the taxes being generally raised by the sword. For a while the young soldier combined trade with his profession; and, as tobacco is always a saleable commodity among the Moslem, he became a trader in tobacco; but he still felt his natural impulse, and, following it, he was sent with the Albanian conVOL. XLIX, NO. CCCIII.

tingent of his district, in 1799, to join the troops of the Sultan. The invasion of Egypt by the French, under Napoleon, one of the most iniquitous and altogether the most absurd extravagances of that famous man, by arousing all the terrors, had called out all the resources of Turkey; and glorious to England as was the capture of the French army, it might have been more salutary for the Sultan if they had remained in Egypt. The neighbourhood of so restless an enemy would have kept Turkish vigilance alive. The necessity of being prepared to meet it in the field would have summoned the whole armed strength of Islamism; and the practice of a few campaigns would have taught them that dexterity which makes courage secure of triumph, and, in all probability, would have restored the ancient valour of the Turk, and reestablished his empire.

The command soon fell into the hands of Mohammed. The son of the governor of Cavalla, a youth who had been put at the head of the detachment, had grown already tired of the campaigning, and retired to Albania. Mohammed now called himself Bimbashi, (Captain.) As the Turks were always beaten, Mohammed shared the natural fate, and in the first engagement lost the greater part of his men. But the gallantry of the soldier displayed itself; and, even in defeat, he attracted the notice of the Commander-in-Chief. Some subsequent services raised him to higher distinction; and in an expedition sent against the remnant of the Mamelukes, who, after the capture of the French, had ventured again towards Lower Egypt, he commanded a corps. His superior officer being either a dastard or a fool, suffered himself to be beaten, and then threw the blame of the defeat upon Mohammed. The Pasha, governor of Egypt, determined to execute Turkish justice upon him, which consists in cutting off the head first, and examining into the crime after; but Mohammed, on finding that the order was to attend him at night, and knowing how few returned from such 111terviews, sent to the Pasha, saying, that there was no hurry in the busi

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ness-that he would visit him next
day—and that, "as his troops had not
been paid for the last three months, he
intended to take them with him, for
the
of receiving it in person."
purpose
However the viceroy might be exas-
perated at this evidence of knowledge
of the world, he had no farther time to
show his displeasure, for the Alba.
nians in Cairo raised an insurrection,
and drove him out of the city. Those
were times when power was peculi-
arly coquettish; for in a few days the
governor, who had been set up by the
Albanians, and was therefore unpo-
pular with the Turks, died by a shot
from a carbine. Mohammed was now
on the first step of his throne. His
birth made him popular with the Al-
banians; his bravery with the Turks;
and a certain rude love of justice,
which appeared astonishing to the
people in any man with a scimitar by
his side, rendered him, if not popular,
at least not hated by the Egyptians.

During this period he dexterously kept up a correspondence with the Porte; and having the advantage of telling his own story, and the still higher advantage of being able to tell it well, he contrived to be regarded as the chief defender of the Sultan's supremacy on the Nile. The Porte rewarded him with the title of Pasha. In Turkey viceroys are easily found, and a new viceroy was dispatched to complete the work of peace; but his first act in Egypt was to lay on new taxes. No act could be more fatal to popularity. He might have flogged one half of the inhabitants at the cart's tail, decimated the Turks, and sent the Albanians to feed camels in Nubia, with less chance of a murmur, than have made the multitude pay the arrears of their old taxes, much less advance new. An universal clamour arose around the unlucky viceroy. A shower of threats, denunciations, and curses rained upon his head. The multitude swore by their heads, that the only man who knew how to do his duty, or who had any bowels of compassion for the people, or any common sense in his brains, was the general of the Albanians-Mohammed the Merciful! The clamour at length arose to the height of demanding that Mohammed himself should expel the obnoxious viceroy, a process which the gallant Al

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banian immediately commenced, by driving the viceroy into the castle of Cairo, and besieging him there. succession of intrigues followed, during which the Turkish fleet anchored before Alexandria, the viceroy was ordered on board, and ultimately disappeared, whether by the course of nature, or that more probable course by which Sultans relieve themselves of obnoxious subjects. Mohammed himself fell under suspicion. Men of genius in Turkey must look to their own heads as well as those of others, and one of the Mameluke Beys was stimulated by the Divan to expel Mohammed from the government, if he could.

But those were hard times

for the Porte: Russia, always ready to plunge her fangs into the naked frame of the Usmanli, was evidently menacing war. The question now

arose whether Mohammed the rebel or Mohammed the ally would be the more useful personage. The Sultan hated the usurper; but the difficulties of the state required the auxiliary. The result was, that an imperial firman arrived, appointing Mohammed Ali Pasha Viceroy of Egypt.

The expedition sent out by the Whigs in 1807, and failing, as all their expeditions were destined to fail, raised the Pasha a new step. The English put Alexandria into his hands, and treated him in some degree as an independent sovereign. The feebleness of the Turkish government had long left its remote dependencies either in a state of helplessness, or in a state approaching to separation. Egypt, in the hands of a sot or a slave, might have resisted the general tendency to revolt; but the ambition of its present governor took a different course, and Egypt rapidly assumed the appearance of an independent kingdom. It must be admitted that his intelligence as much as his vigour entitled him to success; his intercourse with Europeans had taught him the means of national wealth, and he had too much sagacity to despise them because they were European. He changed the old arbitrary mode of collecting the revenue, and substituted regular taxes for the uncertain rapacity of the Pasha. He restrained the insolence of the soldiery, while he improved their discipline; and, by a still more singular superiority to Turkish prejudice, openly disdain

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ing the barbarism of his countrymen, he cultivated the intercourse, the manners, and the alliance of the Christian nations.

But the Turk loves blood, and he loves it connected with perfidy. Like the lion or the panther, no sense of his strength prevents his loving to watch his prey in ambush, or to seize it by a spring. There was still one enemy which rendered his throne anxious, though scarcely insecure. The Mamelukes still existed, though few and feeble; the French invasion had shattered their sovereignty into fragments, but, to the jealous eye of Mohammed, even the fragments were formidable. He determined to extinguish even the last remnant of that once redoubted and brilliant chivalry. His contrivance for this purpose united the extremes of ferocity and treachery; but it was therefore only the more national.

In 1811, the Porte had conferred the rank of a Pasha upon his son Toussoun. The customary rejoicings on this occasion were made the pretext for a general reconciliation with the Mamelukes. They were invited to Cairo, where, on the 1st of March, the viceroy received them with the highest honours. After a short period spent in confidence, the Mamelukes remounted their horses to proceed to the banquet. A portion of the Pasha's cavalry headed the procession, which passed from the citadel towards the gates of the city; but as soon as the last horseman of this splendid corps, which consisted of 470 warriors, had left the citadel, the gate was closed upon them, and a heavy fire was opened in all directions upon their heads. The Mamelukes instantly galloped forward to the gate at the end of the narrow road in which they were enclosed. To their astonishment and horror, they found that it too was shut. They were now utterly without resource; many had fallen by the first fire of the troops, posted on the ramparts above. The rest vainly galloped backwards and forwards, firing their pistols, and attempting to reach the soldiers with their scimitars, challenging them to come down and fight like brave men, and cursing the perfidy of the Pasha. The scene is described as being dreadful. A few who had surrendered themselves in

the hope of saving their lives, were instantly sent to the executioners, who strangled them, and cut off their heads; the rest were shot down in succession, till the narrow road streamed with blood. Of the 470, but one was said to have escaped, and he by little less than miracle, leaping his horse from a height of thirty or forty feet from the rampart, by which he escaped across the plain. The rich dresses and arms of the Mamelukes amply repaid the soldiery for their share in the catastrophe: their heads were destined for Constantinople, and Mohammed Ali obtained at once the grand object of his ambition, and got rid of the grand object of his fears. The Porte acknowledged the act as one entitling him to its highest confidence; and now, reigning without a rival, he saw before him the full prospect of sovereignty. We have termed the act perfidious and cruel, and that it deserves both characters is undoubted; but it is equally undoubted, that the existence of the Mamelukes was wholly incompatible with the peace of the country.

This singular power formed the only complete instance of a military government in all history. The Asiatic empires were the despotisms of the sword: the Mameluke government was the republic of the sword. On the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, the Caliph surrounded himself with a guard; and, as he dared not trust the people, the guard was formed of strangers. It gradually increased, and finally usurped the government. It has been compared to the Prætorian guards of Rome-but the Prætorians were Roman citizens; and to the Janizaries-but they, though originally recruited from Christian slaves, transmitted their privileges to their children. The Mamelukes were always purchased slaves, chiefly from the regions of the Caucasus, brought into Egypt when children, adopted by some of the Beys, and trained to martial exercises. It was the law, which seems to have been seldom dispensed with, that the Beys should not regard succession in their own families; but that, every Mameluke being regarded as virtually the son of of his chieftain, the inheritance should fall to the most distinguished soldier of the household. The Beys were twenty-four, each ru

ling over one of the twenty-four provinces into which they had divided Egypt. This opening to ambition must have naturally excited all the talent of the young soldiery, and been a prodigious stimulant to their zeal, skill, and intrepidity. But as the nature of military domination is severity to the humble, as much as submission to a superior, the rule of the Mamelukes was the most violent, lawless, and iron tyranny of the world. In the advance of the Turkish arms, the Mamelukes were overwhelmed in the general rush of the waves; and the corpse of their principal chieftain, suspended from a gallows in Cairo, was the expressive emblem of Turkish conquest. But the Turkish polity, always fonder of conquest than of government, and rude as it is, yet knowing the hazard of altogether changing the accustomed forms of a country, left the Mameluke chieftains in possession of considerable power; appointed twenty-four of them, as has been already observed, to govern twenty-four districts of Egypt; and, on condition of their sending a contingent of 10,000 men to join the Turkish army in case of war, they were suffered to regard themselves as the actual masters of Egypt-levying taxes, coining money, and exercising all the general rights of sovereignty, yet under the central control of a Bey elected by themselves as governor of Cairo-the whole being finally under the government of a Pasha appoint ed by the Porte.

But a more powerful operator of change was to follow in the person of Napoleon. France had long fixed her eyes on Egypt as a colony, which was to give her the command of the Mediterranean, to counterbalance the commercial wealth of England in her West Indian empire-to throw into her possession the highway between Europe and India-and to make the seizure the first step to the dominion of the world.

The French expedition to Egypt was as unequivocal an act of villany as any in the history of aggression. It was simple robbery, but on the largest scale; and never was violence more rapidly or more completely brought to shame. In little more than a twelvemonth, it was totally ruined. The first stroke of venge

ance fell in the loss of the finest fleet of France, destroyed before Napoleon's eyes; the second came in the disgraceful repulse from Acre, when Napoleon himself commanded at the siege; the third was the loss of Malta; and the fourth the successive defeats of the army by the British, their capture, and the loss of the whole country to an inferior force. Of the whole French army which landed in Egypt, amounting to 40,000, the élite of France, flushed with their Italian victories, not a single soldier ever returned to his country, except as a fugitive with his fugitive general, or as a captive. In the interval, a still heavier infliction had been laid on France herself, in the loss of Italy and the havoc of her armies. In a single campaign her losses by the Russian bayonet were probably not less than 100,000 men.

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But the commencement of her Egyptian campaign was successful against the irregular discipline of the Turks, and the naked bodies of the Arabs. The Mamelukes were more vigorous enemy; but they wanted numbers. Not amounting to more than 3000 cavalry, and having neither infantry nor guns, they were unable to make an impression on the solid columns of the French; and, at the battle of the Pyramids, they were almost totally destroyed by the musketry and cannon. The remnant escaping into Upper Egypt, and becoming formidable again, on the departure of the French in 1800, were finally reserved to be massacred by Mohammed Ali; the cruel execu tion which took place at Cairo being followed by similar murders in the various provinces, until the last of the once-famed Mamelukes was in the grave.

Mohammed's first exploit now was one which had for its object to please the Sultan, in his capacity of "Father of the Faithful." The Wahabees had seized Medina; and the Moslems were in universal consternation. The Pasha sent an army, under his son Toussoun, which recaptured the birth-place of the "prophet," and with it a large quantity of gold and jewels, a portion of which Mohammed had the good sense to send, accompanying the keys of the city, to Constantinople. He now took advantage of his triumph as

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a soldier, to exhibit as a saint. He under the hands of the sergeant, and marched to Mecca, did the honours of he fights like an automaton. the place with great pomp, restored thing can be more certain than that the reputation of his troops, which had neither Egyptian nor Turkish troops began to sink under the management can now face European battalions. of Toussoun, and fighting the battle Yet this was not so a century since, of Barille, an engagement in which he nor even half a century. The Turkish taught the Arabs the superiority of troops, who had never felt the rattan, either iron or gold in his hands, re- fought long and boldly, on the banks turned in new glory to Cairo-a hadgi. of the Pruth and the Danube, against the finest troops of Germany and Russia. The Spahis and Janizaries had neither French nor Italian masters, and yet they beat the picked battalions of Joseph and Catharine in many a furious fight; and even when defeated, they came to the field again with fresh ardour, and kept the enemy at bay, like lions before the hunter. In those days the German was happy if the Turk did not hunt him over the frontiers of Hungary, and no Russian ever dared to set his foot across the Danube.

The Upper Nile country had been the haunt of the fugitive Mamelukes; and Mohammed, determined to prove that none should resist him, had only put off the day of vengeance. He sent his son Ismael, at the head of an army, who swept the Ethiopians before him, took Lamaar, and was returning with his renown, when, unluckily quarrelling with a native chief, the bold barbarian resolved on revenge. The young pasha and his staff having gone to sleep in a house in the sheik's village, the chief and his followers surrounded it with combustibles at midnight, and set them on fire. Ismael and his officers rushed out, scymetar in hand, but they found the natives prepared: they were received on the points of pikes and swords, and of the whole number but one escaped. This act of desperate daring was revenged by a massacre, in which some thousand heads are said to have fallen.

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From the period of his possession of the pashalic, Mohammed had exhibited an extreme eagerness to have an army disciplined in the European style. This is the only Moslem mania which is not new. The sultans had been pondering on it for a century. But they had never succeeded. every instance the attempt had raised murmurs-in some, insurrections; and even the partial success of Selim and his brave vizier, Bairacter, had cost Selim his head, and blown the viceroy's limbs to all the winds of heaven. Both the Sultan Mohammed and the Viceroy of Egypt at last raised armies disciplined in the European style; and it is now discovered that neither of their armies is good for any thing but to be beaten by each other. It is perfectly probable that the genius of the Asiatic soldier is not fit for the European discipline; that nature has made him for a different style of tactics; and that, though he may march, and form, and fire, by hard drilling, in the manner of the West, his spirit deserts him

If the gallantry of our Indian army is to be brought against our theory, the answer is obvious. The sepoy has British officers. He is not left to Indian indolence or incapacity. His regiments are constructed on a British framework. He has British habits, British soldiership, and British pay, constantly to sustain him. But this is a wholly different condition of things from that of the Asiatic or African soldier knowing nothing of our system but the drill; from the officer knowing nothing of tactics but his book of French or Prussian manœuvres; and from the universal negligence, lassitude, and reluctance, with which active western habits are adopted by the man of the East when left to himself. But it is also forgotten that the discipline of Europe consists in much more than putting troops under arms on the parade, or moving them in line or column in the field. The regularity of the soldier's pay is the very first element of discipline; and narrow as is often the pay of the continental soldier, its regularity atones in a great degree for its narrowness. But the idea of regularity belongs not to the Oriental in any one transaction of his existence. The soldier's pay is constantly in arrear; when it comes it comes like a surprise; when it is withheld, no one can tell when, or whether it will ever come. This dispirits the soldier, dislocates all discipline, and turns an army, however disciplined,

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