By Aram Arkun / The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
''Roustam stated clearly in his own words that he was an
Armenian from Karabagh''. Roustam Raza (1781-1845), kidnapped as a child in the
Caucasus and sold seven times, was trained in Egypt as a Mamluk but ended up as
Napoleon Bonaparte’s bodyguard, valet and confidant for some fifteen years. The
Memoirs of Roustam: Napoleon’s Mamluk Imperial Bodyguard (London: Bennet and
Bloom, 2014), translated into English for the first time by Catherine Carpenter
and edited with annotations and introduction by Ara Ghazarians, provides
glimpses into the exciting and complicated life of this unusual and largely
ignored figure. Roustam was made into a character in the works of many famous
writers like Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and was
painted by many artists.
Ghazarians, in a recent interview, declared that “because
of our history, the Armenians were scattered all over the world. We had people
serving different communities and countries at the highest levels, such as
emperors, military commanders and ministers. Keeping this in mind, Roustam is
one of the most unusual characters that I have come across. He was basically
just a slave boy. Yet, with no education, social status or social stature, he
became a confidante of the French emperor, Napoleon. Somehow he ended up in a
position where he was taken seriously by many people.” Ghazarians added that
there is some evidence that he helped his Armenian compatriots in Moscow and
Venice by influencing Napoleon’s decisions in a positive way concerning,
respectively, the Sourp Khatch Church and the Mekhitarist monastery of San
Lazzaro.
Recently, Ghazarians has encountered a number of
incorrect references to Roustam on social media on the internet which claim
that he is Georgian or even Azerbaijani, despite the fact that Roustam stated
clearly in his own words that he was an Armenian from Karabagh.
Born in Tbilisi, Roustam was kidnapped in Ganja and
eventually ended up in Cairo, circumcised with a Muslim name and trained as a
Mamluk. The Mamluks were slaves who formed a military caste in Islamic
societies, including in Egypt. Roustam rose quickly in the ranks and became the
bodyguard of the influential Sheikh El-Bekri, the head of the Cairo divan.
El-Bekri, in turn, gave him as a gift of friendship in August 1799 to Napoleon.
Eighteen-years old, Roustam became the latter’s bodyguard and valet, and
simultaneously served in the French Imperial Guard for five years. In 1806,
Roustam married the daughter of one of Empress Josephine’s two
valets-de-chambre, with Napoleon paying for the wedding.
Roustam declined to follow Napoleon into exile in Alba after
the latter abdicated in 1814 in order to avoid rumors about his involvement in
plots and also not to be separated from his family. After a brief period in
prison, Roustam lived a decade in Paris (1815-25), and soon moved to Dourdan,
where he was appointed by King Louis-Philippe as postmaster and lived a
peaceful life for the next two decades.
The French had varying opinions of Roustam. He fascinated
his contemporaries. Among other things, he was the only Mamluk in France
allowed to wear his traditional attire, and therefore stood out in any crowd.
French Academician Frédéric Masson wrote in the preface
to the French edition of the memoirs that Roustam was “an ignorant
brute…totally incapable of gratitude or devotion,” and at certain points, “is
induced to lie.” Yet, he concludes that the memoirs are valuable due to their
“savor, interest and oddity,” and said, “I have noticed that Roustam rarely
departed from the truth.”
As Ghazarians points out in the introduction to the
English edition, Roustam’s memoirs “anecdotally, highlights certain aspects of
the life of Europe’s most powerful political and military individual,”
Napoleon. Roustam was physically the closest individual to Napoleon for many
years and privy to many aspects of the latter’s private and public life,
including every major battle and campaign. As an outsider culturally who was
placed at the fulcrum of French imperial affairs, Roustam provides an unusual
perspective useful for Napoleonic studies. He is also an interesting source on
Mamluks of Armenian origin and French-Armenian relations
These memoirs were originally published posthumously in
1888 in French, which was not Roustam’s native language. The translator of the
present English edition surmises that Roustam dictated a large portion of the
work to an amanuensis, who may have been his French wife, though the initial
sections appear to have been written by Roustam directly. An Italian
translation was published in 1935, and Russian, Armenian and Georgian editions
have been made available in the last two decades.
This English translation of Roustam’s memoirs appears to
follow the French edition fairly closely. There is now a second translation
into English, by Jonathan North, which is available at present only digitally
(Napoleon’s Mameluke, New York: Enigma Books, 2015). The latter work contains
less extensive notes and appendices, and the editor did not have any access to
Armenian-language sources. The editor reorganized the latter part of the
memoirs to reflect a more chronologically accurate order than in the original
text.
Ghazarians, the translator and editor of a number of
other books on Armenian subjects, has provided useful elucidations and
references in the footnotes to the various parts of his work. There is some
repetition of information in various footnotes. The Appendices include useful
background such as information on the French Republican Calendar; documents on
the Mamluk Corps, including decrees on its formation, lists of Mamluks’ names
and information on their uniforms; Roustam’s death certificate; and a picture
of the tombstones of Roustam and his wife Alexandrine in Dourdan, France (south
of Paris). The 208-page work closes with a select bibliography on Roustam,
Napoleon and Armenia, and an index.
In recent years, French-Armenian military veterans have
held a ceremony at Roustam’s tomb, usually around the anniversary of his death
in December, with the participation of the ambassador of Armenia to France, the
mayor of Dourdan, and other notables, indicating a renewed interest in this
enigmatic figure. They placed a new plaque at the tomb in 2007, and one at his
home.
The present volume will hopefully be used by scholars as
well as read by lay readers curious about this unusual Mamluk Armenian
historical figure. Ghazarians declared that this work is just a first step
toward the exploration of Roustam’s life. He said, “My wish is for somebody to
take this project further and do a full biography of Roustam. I am convinced
that there is a great deal of material in French archives and institutions that
remains to be found.”
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