Career
He was especially instrumental in inviting foreign experts, especially French ones, to the Ottoman Empire from 1784. As a result French missions were sent to the Ottoman Empire to train the Turks in naval warfare and fortification building. Up to the French revolution in 1789, about 300 French artillery officers and engineers were active in the Ottoman Empire to modernize and train artillery units.
From 1784, André-Joseph Lafitte-Clavé and Joseph-Monnier de Courtois instructed engineering drawings and techniques in the new Turkish engineering school Mühendishâne-i Hümâyûn established by Halil Hamid Pasha.
Mostly French textbooks were used on mathematics, astronomy, engineering, weapons, war techniques and navigation. Secret correspondence between Selim III and Louis XVI was discovered, and a plot against the current ruler was alleged.
Halil Hamid Pasha was beheaded, and the war party rose to power, leading the Ottoman Empire to war with Russia in the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). The French experts ultimately had to leave in 1788 with the start of the hostilities.
Some returned to Constantinople, but eventually all instructors had to leave with the end of the Franco-Ottoman alliance in 1798.
