“Hear the Argument of the Other Side”
Being Free and Independent Reflections on the History of International Law and Relations, including Israel and Anti-Semitism
Audi Alteram Partem skip to main | skip to sidebar Audi Alteram Partem "Hear the Argument of the Other Side" Being Free and Independent Reflections on the History of International Law and Relations, including Israel and Anti-Semitism Saturday, January 29, 2022 Jews, Napoleon, and the Ottoman Empire: the 1797-9 Proclamations to the Jews (2023 edition), Part 2 This is the second part of a two-part monograph on Napoleon's connection to the theme of Jewish peoplehood and the right of Jews to self-determination in their aboriginal homeland. Part 1 is available at: http://www.allenzhertz.com/2018/05/jews-napoleon-and-ottoman-empire-1797-9.htmlWhile fighting in Israel in 1799 did Napoleon write one or more proclamations to the Jews? In our own century, historians are divided. But, the deeper story is not simply whether he did so in Israel. Before 1798, Napoleon was already known as a champion of Jewish emancipation in Europe. There was also his support for Jewish statehood in the Mideast, as expressed in his propaganda against the Ottomans. Thus, an important Ottoman-Turkish source says there was, in the Muslim year 1212 (1797-8), a revolutionary proclamation inviting Jews to "establish a Jewish government in Jerusalem" (قدس شريفده بر يهود حكومتى تشكيل). Napoleon's intention to make Jerusalem capital of a restored "Jewish Republic" (Еврейская Республика) is also affirmed in an August 1798 letter from the Russian Emperor Paul. April 1799 reports from Constantinople caused at least twenty European newspapers in May 1799 to describe Napoleon's proclamation inviting Jews to return to Jerusalem. His evocation of aboriginal restoration echoed for decades, about an age-old People that for millennia kept demographic and cultural ties to its ancestral home. For Napoleon, restoring the Jews was initially linked to his plan to soon start digging a deep ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez—in 1798, the clear strategic rationale for launching his Mideast campaign. Much evidence suggests that he wrote the anonymous June 1798 "Letter from a Jew to His Brothers." This calls on world Jewry to organize itself to ask France to negotiate with Turkey, so that the Jews could return to their native land. Finally, revealed only in 1940 was a 1799 translation, from Hebrew into German, of his letter (April 20, 1799) recognizing the hereditary right of the "Israelites" to "Palestine."Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).The "proclamation" in the European pressThe world seems to have known little or nothing about Napoleon's appeal to the "Israelites" in the letter of April 20, 1799. But most certainly way too soon to have then originated from distant Ottoman Syria came repeated, May 1799, European tidings about—an apparently earlier, undated, and likely unrelated—Napoleon "proclamation to the Jews."To be sure, it was then impossible for an account of an April 20th Napoleon letter in Ottoman Syria to reach European cities quickly enough to appear in their newspapers before June of that same year. For example, consider the speedy reporting about the first French assault (March 28, 1799) on Acre, where fast British warships were exceptionally present. This particular Acre story features in an April 19th Constantinople report, first published in the Wiener Zeitung on May 7th, and in the Journal Politique de l'Europe of Mannheim on May 19th. Inclusive of the dates of occurrence and European printing, it takes no fewer than 41 days for this specific Acre story to hit the streets of Vienna, and a total of 53 days for Mannheim. About 51 days are needed for London to print similar Acre news, as in Lloyd's Evening-Post (May 17, 1799).From perhaps around May 12th until the 22nd, accounts about Napoleon's proclamation, inviting Jews to return to Jerusalem, feature in at least twenty newspapers in Germany, England and France. At the end of May, the same story appears in the London Lady's Magazine and, in Paris, in La Décade philosophique (May 29, 1799). The relatively slow speed of contemporary travel dictates that these printed news items cannot possibly reflect reports of Holy Land events, occurring after March 1799.To the point, we have already noted Gichon's reasonable conjecture that Napoleon perhaps wrote such a "Jewish" document, some time in the week after his conquest of Jaffa (March 7, 1799). If indeed Napoleon then wrote something specifically for the Jews, the office copy kept for the record was probably purposely destroyed, in the 19th century, exactly as described in the preface.What is the stipulated source for the—no fewer than twenty-two—May 1799 European articles telling the proclamation story? Most of the contemporary accounts refer to an April 1799 report, whether dated the 10th, 12th, 17th or 22nd. Each one of these April source reports is specifically described as from Constantinople. This geographical point is key. Already noted is The London Chronicle of March 30-April 2, 1799. Apart from anything else, this newspaper says Napoleon's printed writings and dispatches kept on turning up in Constantinople, after being secretly infiltrated, by "itinerant Syrians, Jews, etc."It is also possible that some or all of the May 1799 articles in the European press were triggered, not by news of a 1799 document written by Napoleon in the Holy Land, but rather by one or more of his earlier invitations to the Jews. For example, there could conceivably have been deferred disclosure in Constantinople of information about the revolutionary beyanname (بياننامه) that, according to Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, the Turks had first heard about in the period before the Sultan's declaration of war against France (September 10, 1798). This possibility is supported by the letter which the Emperor Paul wrote on August 18, 1798.We have already seen contemporary evidence that the Turks were sharing, with friendly foreign governments, details of France's anti-Ottoman propaganda. Moreover, The London Chronicle explicitly reveals that, in 1798-9, intercepted French communications were, in Constantinople, regularly passed on to foreigners, representing allied and neutral States (March 30-April 2, 1799):It appears that, with the exception of such packets as were on board the Généreux, and which might reach Paris by way of Ancona, the Directory have not received a single original dispatch from the Army of the East, since the capture of Malta [June 10, 1798]. The first dispatches of Buonaparte and [General Louis-Alexandre] Berthier were taken by the Turks, and sent to Constantinople. There the Porte permitted them to be copied by the different Ambassadors; and those who are acquainted with the politics of one [Sweden] of the Northern Courts, who know that the French have an active agent in every one of its Ministers, will not be at a loss for the manner in which they reached the Directory. Private letters (that is to say, copies of them) have found their way to France through the same channel; for most of the originals are in this country.This newspaper article gains credibility and added weight from recent scholarship. This confirms the 18th-century allegations that famed turcologist Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohsson—Sweden's Minister in Constantinople—consistently kept overly intimate ties with Revolutionary France. For this reason, Sultan Selim III wanted Ibrahim Afif Efendi, his Ambassador in Vienna, to write to Stockholm to request d'Ohsson's recall. Sweden cancelled d'Ohsson's diplomatic appointment in April 1799. Initially Selim III had placed great confidence in d'Ohsson. However, the imperial archives in Istanbul preserve a June 3, 1799 Ottoman rescript, wherein the Sultan angrily denounces him as "an Armenian, a French spy, and an intriguer." On August 12, 1799, d'Ohsson finally left the Ottoman capital for France, where he spent the rest of his life.Story breaks in Hamburg and BerlinMaintaining diplomatic ties with the important European powers, Hamburg was an autonomous city that was neutral during the War of the Second Coalition. It was the commercial capital of northern Germany and an important communications center for all northern Europe, including London. At home, Hamburg was divided between the friends of Great Britain and those of France. The city was also a hotbed of espionage and an ideological cockpit in the struggle between revolution and reaction.April 1799 news from Constantinople, about a Napoleon proclamation to the Jews, seems to have been initially published circa Sunday, May 12th, most likely in the French-language Gazette de Hambourg. If so, verification can only be indirect, because the spring 1799 numbers of the Gazette de Hambourg are extremely rare or no longer exist. I have been unable to find them.But, let us turn our attention to the press of Berlin, the capital of another neutral power, Prussia. An alleged April 22nd Constantinople report features as the very last, foreign-news item on page five of the Vossische Zeitung, Number 58 (May 14, 1799):Konstantinopel, den 22. April. Buonaparte hat, wie es heißt, eine Proklamation an die Juden in mehreren Afrikanischen und Asiatischen Gegenden erlassen, um das Reich von Jerusalem wieder herzustellen. Auch soll er eine beträchtliche Anzahl Juden bewaffnet, in Bataillons formirt haben, und jetzt Aleppo bedrohen. Die Einwohner in der Gegend von Damascus sollen gegen die Pforte in Insurrektion zu seyn. — Mit der Großvezier sollen auch viele Janitscharen nach Syrien abgehen. Der Großherr hatte erst selbst nach Syrien abgehen wollen, wogegen aber die nachdrücklichstens Vorstellungen gemacht wurden. Unter den Französ. Truppen in Aegypten sollen fortdauernd ansteckende Krankheiten herrschen. Man erwartet hier ehestens aus der Krimm eine zweite nach dem Mittelländischen Meere bestimmte Russische Flotte. — Der Bruder des hiesigen Französischen Schiffbaumeisters, Le Brun, der sich sehr demokratisch zeigte, ist aus dem Türkischen Dienste entlassen worden. Für den Schiffbaumeister selbst besorgt man noch ein schlimmeres Schicksal. [Constantinople, April 22nd. Buonaparte has reportedly issued a proclamation to the Jews in several African and Asian places, to rebuild the Empire of Jerusalem. He is also said to have armed a considerable number of Jews, formed them into battalions, and to be now threatening Aleppo. The inhabitants in the area of Damascus are said to be in rebellion against the Sublime Porte. — Many janissaries are expected to go to Syria with the Grand Vizier. The Sultan at first wanted to go to Syria himself, but the most emphatic representations were made against this idea. Persistently contagious diseases are said to prevail among the French troops in Egypt. Expected here any time now, from the Crimea, is a second Russian fleet bound for the Mediterranean Sea. — The brother of the local French shipwright, Le Brun, who showed himself to be very democratic, has been dismissed from the Turkish service. For the shipwright himself, an even worse fate is feared.]Berlin, Vossische Zeitung, Number 58,Tuesday, May 14, 1799, page 5.Only 23 days for Constantinople news to get printed in Berlin? The distance was 1,364 miles, over mostly bad roads. Given the slow pace of 18th-century travel, is it likely that a Constantinople report sent out on April 22nd could arrive in Berlin fast enough for inclusion in the May 14th edition? Twenty-three days from Constantinople to Berlin was physically possible, but impressively prompt transmission, for that era.As reported by Le Propagateur (October 15, 1798), there were on occasion official couriers ("tartars") rushing urgent dispatches between the Ottoman and Prussian capitals, via Habsburg Semlin. (There were also such postal tartars on other routes. For example, visiting the Rastadt Congress, on July 14, 1798, was the imperial Ottoman courier Ali Osman Mehmet. He was traveling from Constantinople to Paris.)Nonetheless, the question remains: Is the initial digit in the April 22nd date perhaps a typographical or similar error? If so, the true Vossische Zeitung source could perhaps be either an April 12th letter reaching Berlin directly from Constantinople or a recently published newspaper report about such an April 12th letter from Constantinople. In the latter case, just before going to press, the Vossische Zeitung editors maybe rushed to add a final, foreign-news item—perhaps drawn partly from the Gazette de Hambourg, if previously printed. Such a postulated prior publication in Hamburg could conceivably have reached Berlin by stagecoach within 48 hours.The phrase "several African and Asian places" in the German-language text of the Vossische Zeitung can conceivably be understood as referring either to the sites of issuance of the Napoleon proclamation or to the places of residence of the recipient Jews. But, no matter which translation option is chosen, those "places" certainly refer to the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Repeated references to the Jews of Africa and Asia will be further discussed below.The hypothesis that the Vossische Zeitung's story about the Napoleon proclamation to the Jews might have originated from an issuance, perhaps made before 1799, is supported by careful analysis of the background of each one of the seven other news items in the April 22nd Constantinople report. External evidence suggests that, of the seven companion topics, no fewer than six describe events that can be shown to have occurred, in whole or in part, before 1799:The tale that Napoleon had "armed a considerable number of Jews" was already, in the summer of 1798, a persistent rumor in Ottoman Syria, as specifically affirmed by the aforementioned two Hebrew letters from Jerusalem.Dovetailing with 1798 events was news that inhabitants of Damascus region were in revolt against the Sublime Porte.Epidemics among French soldiers in Alexandria, Damietta and Mansoura began in December 1798.As early as October 24, 1798, the Wiener Zeitung announced that a second Russian fleet would be coming from the Crimea to the Mediterranean.Long gone were fears for the fate of the Le Brun brothers in Constantinople, because those two French shipwrights were, by January 1, 1799, safe in Saint Petersburg, where they soon agreed to serve the Imperial Russian Navy.Originating in late 1798 (or way too early in 1799) is the alleged intelligence that the Sultan's ministers dissuaded him from his determination to personally command against Napoleon. Explicitly referring to "Bonaparte in Egypt," this particular news features in l'Ami des Lois, as early as March 6, 1799.Thus, there is no reason to reject the possibility that the Vossische Zeitung story about the proclamation to the Jews perhaps reflects a document issued by Napoleon before 1799, and maybe even before the Sultan's declaration of war against France (September 10, 1798). This hypothesis, pointing to some time before 1799, dovetails with the striking political references to "Jerusalem" in the June 8, 1798 Lettre d'un Juif; the Russian Emperor Paul's letter of August 18, 1798; and the mid-19th-century account in the official Ottoman history by Ahmet Cevdet Pasha.Story spreads quickly across EuropeProbably too soon to be copied from the Vossische Zeitung, but perhaps derived in part from prior publication in the Gazette de Hambourg is the same story in London's The True Briton (Friday, May 17th). The Berlin and London content is fairly close. So, we must leave open the two possibilities that the latter is partly derived from the former or that—unknown to us—there are one or more earlier common sources, instead of (or in addition to) the Gazette de Hambourg, which perhaps lacked the range of companion stories covered in both the Vossische Zeitung and The True Briton.The True Briton alleges an April 12th Constantinople report, news of which had arrived late on Thursday evening, in the mails from Hamburg. That same Friday, London articles, identical to the one in The True Briton, appear verbatim in The Star and Lloyd's Evening-Post; and on Wednesday, May 22nd, in The Caledonian Mercury of Edinburgh.Buonaparte, it is said, has published a Proclamation to the Jews dispersed in Africa and Asia, inviting them to restore the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He has armed a great number of Jews, and formed them into Battalions; and now threatens Aleppo. The Pacha of that district has received from the Porte 220,000 piasters for extraordinary expenses. The Inhabitants in the vicinity of Damascus are in Insurrection against the Porte. A second Russian fleet is soon expected here from the Crimea, destined for the Mediterranean. The Grand Signior had declared his intention of leading the Army in Syria; but strong remonstrances have been made against this measure. An epidemic sickness still prevails among the French troops in Egypt.London, The True Briton, Number 1997, Friday, May 17, 1799.Also relying on news from "the Hamburgh Mail" are three 1799 London articles that allege as source an April 10th Constantinople report, wherein Napoleon's proclamation is limited to "the Jews in Africa." This is a virtually identical text which appears almost verbatim in The London Chronicle (May 16-18), The Times (May 17), and the Evening Mail (May 15-17, 1799):Constantinople, April 10. — Buonaparte, it is said, has published a Proclamation to the Jews in Africa, inviting them to restore the kingdom of Jerusalem. He has armed a great number of Jews, and formed them into battalions; and now threatens Aleppo. The Pacha of that district has received from the Porte 220,000 piastres for extraordinary expenses. The inhabitants in the vicinity of Damascus are in insurrection against the Porte. A second Russian fleet is soon expected here from the Crimea, destined for the Mediterranean. The Grand Signior has declared his intention of heading himself the army in Syria; but strong remonstrances have been made against this measure. An epidemic sickness still prevails among the French troops in Egypt. London, Evening Mail, Postscript,Friday Afternoon, May 17th, page 4,Wednesday, May 15 to Friday, May 17, 1799.Virtually the same text as the foregoing appears once again in London in The Selector or Say's Sunday Reporter (Sunday, May 19, 1799). But, The Selector says this news is "From the Hamburgh Mails"; the source is the April 12th Constantinople report; and "the Jews dispersed in Africa and Asia" are named as the recipients of the proclamation published by "Buonaparte."Based on a number of the Gazette de Hambourg that had reached the "Banks of the Main" river on May 16th, the Journal de Francfort ran the proclamation story as a direct quotation (May 17, 1799):La gazette de Hambourg rapporte une lettre de Constantinople du 12 avril, où il est dit: "Buonaparte a adressé une proclamation aux juifs de l'Afrique & de l'Asie, dans laquelle il annonce le projet de rétablir le royaume de Jérusalem, & les invite à y concourir. Ce général a déjà armé, dit-on, un nombre considérable de juifs, & les a organisés en bataillons. L'on attend incessamment ici (à Constantinople) de la Crimée, une seconde flotte Russe, destinée pour la Méditerranée."[The gazette of Hambourg reports from Constantinople a letter of… truncated (180,954 more characters in archive)