The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers 427
that kings are “human beings like us”.92 The historian Câbî Ömer Efendi gives
a rather distorted view of Napoleon executing the French king and declaring
that93
kings did not descend from the skies with the angels. I will work and
make them recognize me as their Emperor.Closer to the source, Moralı Ali Efendi, the Ottoman ambassador to Paris from
1797 to 1802, describes in some detail and rather neutrally the function of the
Directoire (müdirân-ı hamse) and of the Council of Five Hundred (beşyüz
vükela, beşyüz meclisi); interestingly, he seems to have been more impressed
by the new solar calendar and its holidays, which he describes in great detail.94
Another memorandum, composed in 1798 by the reisülküttâb Atıf Efendi,
stresses the atheist aspect of the revolution: followers of the well-known
atheists (zındık) Voltaire and Rousseau, Atıf Efendi writes, introduced to the
common people ideas such as the abolition of religions and the sweetness of
equality and democracy (müsavât ve cumhuriyet), drawing all the people to
their cause; thus, they succeeded in persuading the commoners (avam-ı nas)
that “this equality and freedom” (serbestiyet) was the sure means for total
worldly happiness. He notes repeatedly that they intend to turn all states into
“democracies, i.e. interregna” (cumhuriyete ya ’ni fitret suretine) and to impose
members of the Jacobin sect, known for its tendency to execute and confis-
cate. As shown by the example of the Ionian islands, which were put “under
the regime of freedom” (serbestiyet sureti), this could threaten Ottoman lands
as well.95
It is true that concepts such as “fatherland” (vatan), “nation” (millet), and
“freedom” (serbestiyyet, hürriyet) acquired their modern meaning via a gradual
process throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, eventually losing
92 Yeşil 2007. Similar observations were made by Vasıf, who wrote that the French rabble
“unscrupulously discussed the advantages of independence (serbestlik) and being with-
out a ruler”, while he also stressed the poor financial situation of pre-revolutionary
France: Menchinger 2014a, 210–212.
93 Cabi – Beyhan 2003, 18–19 (kral olanlar gökden melâike ile inmedi. Ben kendüme imparato-
rumuzsun [dedirtince] bu maddede çalışırum), 503, 831–833.
94 Moralı Ali Efendi – Refik 1911. On Moralı Ali Efendi see Soysal 1999, 338–339.
95 Cevdet 1891/1892, 6:394–401; Arıkan 1990, 88–90. On Âtıf Efendi’s biography see Soysal
1999, 339–340; cf. ibid., 206–207 and Lewis 1953, 121–122. The attribution of the Revolution
to Voltaire and Rousseau’s atheistic ideas also featured in Ratıb Efendi’s dispatches: Yeşil
2007, 293. On Ottoman historiography of the French Revolution see also Arıkan 1990; on
Vasıf Efendi’s account see Menchinger 2017, 191–192.