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"During the 500 or 600 years," says Volney, "that there have been Mamlouks in Egypt, not one of them has left subsisting issue; there does not exist one single family of them in the second generation; all their children perish in the first and second descent. The means therefore by which they are perpetuated and multiplied were of necessity the same by which they were first established."
The walls, accordingly, after having been several times lost and won, were at length finally occupied by the Tartars and Mamlouks, who obeyed the sovereign of Egypt, and the crescent was at that moment elevated to a place which it has continued to occupy during the greater part of five centuries.
This corps has constituted the main portion of the infantry of the Ottoman armies for a period of nearly five hundred years; till, in our own day, on account of its repeated turbulence, it was annihilated, as the Mamlouks before it, by means of a barbarous massacre.
The repose which succeeded this treaty was interrupted by the murder of the sultan, who fell a victim to the jealousy, of the Mamlouks; but after a few acts of hostility too insignificant to be recorded, the emirs renewed, with a few modifications, the basis of the agreement on which the peace was established.
The business of Wodgate is carried on by master workmen in their own houses, each of whom possesses an unlimited number of what they call apprentices, by whom their affairs are principally conducted, and whom they treat as the Mamlouks treated the Egyptians. These master workmen indeed form a powerful aristocracy, nor is it possible to conceive one apparently more oppressive.
The Orientals are famous for their massacres: that of the Mamlouks by the present Pacha of Egypt, and of the Janissaries of the Sultan, are notorious. But one of the most terrible, and effected under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, was the massacre of the Albanian Beys by the Grand Vizir, in the autumn of 1830. The minarets were illumined.
The command was offered to the Grand Master of the Templars, who, being prevailed upon to accept, discharged its duties with firmness and military skill. But the Mamlouks were not inferior in valour, and their numbers were irresistible.
After a time, these Mamlouks took matters into their own hands, and became a self-elective body, or sort of large corporation. They were masters of the country, and of its nominal ruler, and they recruited their ranks continually, and perpetuated their power, by means of the natives of the Caucasus, slaves like themselves, and of their own race.
A reinforcement of unprincipled Italians only added to the disorder which already prevailed in the town, and increased the number of offences by which they were daily accumulating upon their heads the vengeance of the fanatical Mamlouks, who longed for an opportunity to attack them.
The Mamlouks even condescended to solicit the cooperation of Louis, and agreed to purchase it by remitting one-half of the ransom which still remained unpaid. They further consented to deliver up Jerusalem itself, and also the youthful captives taken on the banks of the Nile, whom they had compelled to embrace the Mussulman faith.
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