The Birth of Modern Egypt 27
Crusaders. Even in the days of pikes and firelocks the
Mamelukes were magnificent, but no longer war. And
we who still to-day maintain our costly cavalry regiments
and still model our warfare on the Battle of Balaklava
may have some fellow-feeling for the dashing and decora-
tive Mamelukes charging against Napoleon.
The Mamelukes were undoubtedly the most expensive
and least efficient of the many foreign rulers that have
reigned in Egypt. Everyone of the twelve to fifteen
thousand Mameluke cavaliers cost at an estimate and on
an average about a thousand a year. Their invasion of
Syria under Ali Bey in 1769 cost Egypt about twenty-six
millions sterling. Ali Bey's dagger handle was valued at
two hundred thousand pounds. The population of Egypt
was then between two and three millions, and it is clear
that the whole wealth they won from the mud of
Egypt was absorbed by those gorgeous dragon-flies, the
Mameluke Multezim or manorial lords. Moreover, the
arrogance and ignorance of these gentry were proof
against any pacific pressure from the eastward march of
industrial civilisation. Owing to their extortions, Egypt
had ceased to be a trade route between Asia and Europe,
and Alexandria had sunk to a fishing town of eight
thousand inhabitants. Yet they would accept no alien
assistance. They stopped the British attempt to reopen
the overland route between the Mediterranean and Red
Sea, and expelled the French colony, which was keeping
the local commerce going (1779).
France had long had a watchful eye on the oppor-
tunities offered by the overland route in the contest
between French and British for Indian empire* The
German Leibnitz had urged the occupation of Egypt on
Louis XIV. with a view to diverting him from expansion
on the Rhine (Die Werke von Leibnitz, voL iL), Volney