Military order treated men as manipulable lines and intervals

Evidence

On the face of it, the army offered a very impressive spectacle of order and discipline that is often said to have characterized Mehmed Ali’s entire reign. Its machine-like, disciplined and orderly appearance was not something that was discovered intuitively, or on closer inspection; rather, it was one of its essential components and its visual aspect was intended to be stunning and overwhelming. It was, literally, a spectacular thing. There is some evidence that this nature of the new army that clearly distinguished it from previous armies (e.g. the Mamluk army) was already apparent to Mehmed Ali and his senior officers. We have already seen in chapter 2 how impressed he was when he saw his assembled troops for the first time in the Banī ‘Adī camp in 1824. On a number of other occasions we see the Pasha using the army to impress the spectator, whether a foreign visitor or the local population of a conquered country. When in 1827, for example, the Pasha was visited by Süleyman Pasha, the vali of Crete, orders were issued to the Director of the War Department to chose 200 of the best officers, have them wear their “ceremonial uniforms” (kisvet-i divaniye) and stage a small parade for the visitor to watch. Shortly after the fall of Acre in May 1832, the fortress was visited by an English officer who had recently arrived from Egypt. To impress him, orders were issued to all officers and soldiers in the castle to put on their new uniforms and “to be in the most perfect order.” On victoriously entering cities in Syria the soldiers were ordered to put on their special uniforms and to march in an orderly way through the cities for the inhabitants to see them. (When a certain lieutenant refused to put on his ceremonial uniform he was sentenced to three days’ “light arrest”). … Beyond these spectacles of order and discipline, however, lay a different picture altogether. What one sees behind this spectacular façade is indicative of the problems that the Pasha encountered in building his new army: officials cheating him, corrupt officers abusing their power, inefficient bureaucrats trying only to appease the Pasha, and even the Pasha himself occasionally passing inconsistent and sometimes contradictory orders. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 912 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Thus it is difficult to cure leaders completely of “Cadornism” 184 or the conviction that a thing will be done because the leader considers it just and reasonable that it should be done: if it is not done, the blame is put on those who “ought to have …”, etc. Thus too it is hard to root out the criminal habit of permitting useless sacrifices through neglect. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 654 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Graphically, this way of recounting battles is represented in the way the maps of the battles are drawn. Regiments are represented by neat and tidy geometric shapes: cavalry regiments, for example, are represented by rectangles and infantry ones by squares; troop movements are shown by straight dashed, broken lines; new positions are referred to by adding markers to the letters denoting old locations, A to A′ to A′′, for example. This manner of graphically representing battles is characteristic not only of some military historians recounting certain events decades or centuries later, but is often the manner chosen by the commanders themselves in describing the same events. In representing the minor skirmish that took place between the vanguards of the Egyptian and Turkish armies two days before the battle of Konia, for example, Kani Bey, assistant to Osman Nureddin, the Chief of Staff, followed the same simplistic procedure: the Egyptian units were drawn in nice and neat squares, red rectangles for the infantry, and yellow ones for the cavalry. The Turkish troops were represented by rectangles that were scattered with no order all over the map. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 903 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Commands were divided and timed so troops moved in half-second unison; The army’s spectacular order was staged for spectators and masked deep corruption — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 912; Commanders drew their own battle maps to flatter their forces’ order — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 903 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The army’s spectacular order was staged for spectators and masked deep corruption #complicates (0.78) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 912
• Leaders chronically assume that declaring an order just makes it happen #complicates (0.73) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 654
• Commanders drew their own battle maps to flatter their forces’ order #complicates (0.72) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 903