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THE 
 CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST 
 
 IN 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ELIOT BOWEN, Ph.D. 
 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 ®^e JmichcrbochEr ^res« 
 1887 
 
^lO" 
 
 ■^^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 JOHN ELIOT BOWEN 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York 
 
This work is inscribed to the Faculty of the 
 School of Political Science, Columbia College, to 
 whom it was presented, in its original form, as a 
 "dissertation in part fulfillment of the conditions 
 necessary for the attainment of the degree of doctor 
 of philosophy." 
 
 269463 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I — From Mehemet Ali to Ismail i 
 
 II — Ismail's Ambitious Designs i8 
 
 III — The Road to Ruin 33 
 
 IV — Mehemet Tewfik, Khedive 67 
 
 V — Egypt for the Egyptians 91 
 
 VI — Arabi's Rebellion and the Reforms that Followed . 113 
 
 VII — The St>DAN and the Mahdi 135 
 
 VIII — The Mission of Gordon — Operations in the Eastern 151 
 
 SCtdan . 
 
 IX — Gordon at KhartOm and the Government in London, 163 
 
 X — Wolseley's Expedition. — Conclusion . , . .177 
 
 Books and Periodicals Consulted 203 
 
THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST 
 IN EGYPT. 
 
 I. 
 
 FROM MEHEMET ALI TO ISMAIL. 
 
 IT was not until the purchase of the Suez canal 
 shares by Great Britain, in 1875, that the con- 
 flict to be described was waged with spirit. The 
 influences and interests of the East and West, 
 however, had clashed for many years. Long be- 
 fore the dawn of the nineteenth century the atten- 
 tion of England had been directed through Egypt 
 to the far away Indian empire, that El Dorado that 
 lured the British merchant-men to brave the storms 
 of the southern seas. But the voyage around the 
 Cape was a hazardous one and a long one ; and 
 the growth of commerce demanded that the East- 
 ern empire should be made more accessible. Eng- 
 land knew, and the world knew, that the direct 
 route to India lay through the land of the ancient 
 Pharaohs. England thought the way through 
 Egypt should be overland ; but Trance thought it 
 
2'^tkE CdNP^LlCT^OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 should be by a canal that would one day connect 
 the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. 
 
 France was interested in the valley of the Nile. 
 She had put her foot there before England. The 
 great Napoleon knew the value of Egypt. '' By 
 seizing and holding Egypt," he said, '' I retain and 
 command the destinies of the civilized world." 
 And so, in i 798, he seized Egypt ; but he did not 
 hold it. The English, under Abercrombie, com- 
 pelled the French to retire by the battle of Alex- 
 andria, in 1 80 1. And now, for a short time, the 
 influence of England was felt in Egypt. But it did 
 not last long ; for, after the accession of Mehemet 
 Ali in 1805, Egypt was able to stand by herself. 
 This event marks the starting-point from which it 
 will be necessary to trace in brief the history and 
 development of Egypt, in order to appreciate the 
 government and condition of the country a decade 
 ago, when England purchased the canal shares. 
 
 When the firman of the Sublime Porte made Me- 
 hemet Ali the governor of Egypt, in 1805, the coun- 
 try was in a state of feudalism. The pasha appointed 
 by the Porte had been only the nominal ruler, the 
 real government of the country being in the hands 
 of the petty lords, or beys, known as the memliiks. 
 They had deference neither for pasha nor for 
 sultan. It is true that a small tribute was promised 
 the Porte every time a new pasha was appointed ; 
 
FROM MEHEMET ALI TO ISMAIL, 3 
 
 but it was almost never paid. The governors had 
 been many since the beginning of the century. 
 '* Indeed," says Mr. Patton, in his history of the 
 Egyptian Revolution, "■ all the pashas that inter- 
 vene between the French rule and that of Mehemet 
 AH are a will-o'-the wisp to the historian. A pasha 
 of some sort flies before the eyes, but when we 
 attempt to grasp him he is gone. . . . Thus 
 successively rose and fell Mehemet Khusuf Pasha, 
 Tahir Pasha, Ali Pasha Gezairli, and Khurshid 
 Pasha. Mehemet Ali alone stands out the distinct 
 historical figure in the foreground." ' 
 
 The obscure Albanian owed his elevation to the 
 pashalic to his success, while a Turkish commander, 
 in quelling the dissensions among the memluk beys. 
 Once at the head of the government, he set to 
 work in earnest to deprive them of their power, 
 knowing full well that his position as the sultan's 
 pasha would be at best both insignificant and inse- 
 cure, so long as these feudal lords played fast and 
 loose with the resources of the land. Until 1811, 
 therefore, Mehemet Ali devoted himself to the 
 suppression of the memluks. Against this grasping 
 for power England entered a feeble protest ; not 
 indeed because she sympathized with Egyptian 
 feudalism, but because she happened, at that time, 
 
 1 A. A. Patton, F.R.G.S., A History of Egyptian Revolution to the 
 Death of Mehemet Ali, vol, ii., p. 14. 
 
4 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 to fall out with the Porte, and desired, therefore, 
 to help the sultan's enemies. She even sent troops 
 to Egypt and took possession of Alexandria. But 
 the occupation was brief ; for Mehemet Ali de- 
 scended from Upper Egypt, where he had been 
 administering such correction to the memluks as 
 few absolute monarchs ever dared employ, and, 
 proclaiming himself the champion of Islamism, he 
 forced the infidels to retire to Sicily. It now re- 
 mained for the vigorous pasha to perform the two 
 acts that consolidated his power throughout the 
 valley of the Nile : the first was the revolutionary 
 transfer to his own possession of the landed 
 property of the entire country, and the second was 
 the total extinction of the memluks by massacre in 
 the citadel of Cairo. The period of destruction 
 was succeeded by one of development. The abso- 
 lute ruler introduced modern military tactics and 
 established a naval arsenal in Alexandria ; he built 
 canals ; he introduced the culture of cotton, a 
 product that was destined one day to become the 
 source of enormous revenues ; he imported also 
 indigo, forest trees, fruits, spices, etc, for repro- 
 duction ; he founded medical and educational insti- 
 tutions ; he improved the police and rendered tra- 
 vel safe, so that now, for the first time, passengers 
 and letters bound for India were conveyed with 
 perfect safety through Egypt overland to Suez. 
 
FROM MEHEMET A LI TO ISMAIL. 5 
 
 But Mehemet Ali was not content with these 
 undertakings and improvements, important and 
 difficult as they were ; he longed for greater power. 
 He made war against the Wahabees of Arabia and 
 he conquered the peoples of the Sudan. And all 
 the time he chafed under his subjection to the 
 Porte. Finally he sent his warlike son, Ibrahim, to 
 pick a quarrel in Syria ; and Ibrahim captured 
 Acre and was soon fighting against the troops of 
 his father's suzerain and carrying all before him. 
 It seemed as if Mehemet Ali was about to become 
 the sultan of Egypt and Syria. 
 
 This was in 1832, a time when England was 
 keeping a very watchful and a very jealous eye on 
 Russia, ready at any moment to claim a foothold 
 in Turkey. England thought that Egypt, being 
 against Turkey, must be for Russia. From self- 
 interest England could not allow her " ancient 
 ally " to remain between two such fires ; this Syrian 
 flame must be quenched. England hesitated, 
 however, to act, and in 1833 the Porte recognized 
 the feudal sovereignty of Mehemet Ali over 
 Egypt, Crete, Syria, and Adana, exacting only a 
 small tribute. The peace did not last long, and in 
 1839 ^he Turks were again fleeing before the vic- 
 torious Ibrahim. It seemed as if Asia Minor and 
 Constantinople must soon succumb to him. But 
 now England intervened with an energy that was 
 
6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 wanting in 1832. Her fleet joined those of Turkey 
 and Austria off the coast of Syria, and confronted 
 by British commanders on land and sea the troops 
 of Ibrahim were forced to yield. The hopes of 
 Mehemet Ali were blasted. His son had been 
 overcome by England and he had been duped by 
 France. Thiers promised an assistance that was 
 never rendered. 
 
 The war at an end, the Powers endeavored to 
 negotiate a treaty. After the usual diplomatic 
 formalities and delays it was finally agreed that 
 Mehemet Ali should evacuate Syria, Arabia, and 
 Candia, and should receive the hereditary govern- 
 ment of Egypt, acknowledging the sultan as his 
 suzerain. The terms of this agreement were em- 
 bodied in a firman issued by the Sublime Porte 
 in 1841. 
 
 Mehemet Ali was now an old man, and during 
 the remainder of his life the influences of his youth 
 and early manhood, as is usually the case with 
 those who have witnessed and participated in great 
 governmental and social revolutions, predominated 
 over the progressive spirit of his most vigorous 
 and potent years. He became more of a despot 
 than ever ; and his severity had few of its former 
 excuses. He did, however, permit an association 
 of British merchants to organize a transportation 
 service to India, through Egypt, via Cairo and 
 
FROM MEHEMET A LI TO ISMAIL, 7 
 
 Suez, by means of which communication with 
 India was made in weeks instead of months.' 
 
 In 1847 Mehemet AH's intellect began to weaken, 
 and within a year his dotage had so increased that 
 his son Ibrahim was installed pasha of Egypt in his 
 place. But Ibrahim's rule was cut short by death 
 two months later, and in December of 1848 Abbas 
 was invested with the pashalic. In the summer of 
 1849 Mehemet AH died, spent in mind and body. 
 A good idea of the character and work of this 
 *' Napoleon of Egypt," as he has so often been 
 called, may be gathered from the following quota- 
 tion from Mr. Patton's history : 
 
 There is much to be said in abatement of his merits. 
 Although superior to a thirst for blood, from mere ven- 
 geance and resentment, and an easy pardoner of those who 
 were no longer able to injure him, no compunction ever 
 deterred him from removing the obstacles to his lawless 
 ambition by fraud or force — most frequently by a com- 
 pound of both. Nor was he able, with all his perseverance, 
 to conquer his aboriginal want of education. Anxious to 
 introduce European civilization into Egypt, he remained 
 to the end of his life in utter ignorance of the economical 
 principles upon which the prosperity of a state reposes. 
 Greedy of the praise of Europeans, and, in the latter part 
 of his career, anxious to count for something in the bal- 
 ance of military power, his allusions on this head showed 
 
 ^ William Holt Yates, M.D., The Modern History and Condition of 
 Egypt, from i8oi to 1846. 
 
8 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 to himself and to others the wide interval that separates 
 the scientific organization of European military and polit- 
 ical establishments from the Egyption imitations which 
 cost him efforts so lengthened and persevering. But 
 although unable to resist the dictation of any European 
 power, he was — within Egypt — all-potent in establishing 
 an order that had never existed before, so as to afford 
 those facilities that have proved so valuable to the Indian 
 transit. He found Egypt in anarchy : and long before he 
 had terminated his career the journey from the Mediter- 
 ranean to Nubia was as secure as that from London to 
 Liverpool. He learned to read, and attempted to write, 
 after he had attained his fortieth year ; and when we add 
 that the practical result of his efforts was to leave his 
 family in the hereditary government of Egypt, Mehemet 
 Ali must be admitted to have been, without exception, 
 the most remarkable character in the modern history of 
 the Ottoman Empire.' 
 
 Abbas Pasha succeeded Mehemet Ali. He pre 
 ceded his uncle Said ; for, by the then existing law 
 of succession, the reins of government fell to the 
 ''eldest male of the blood of Mehemet Ali." Abbas 
 possessed neither the warlike impetuosity of his 
 father Ibrahim, nor the ambition of his grandfather 
 Mehemet Ali. He did not look beyond the bounds 
 of Egypt for territory to acquire or for customs to 
 imitate. It was enough for him that he was a good 
 Mohammedan ; that the wheat and millet fields 
 throughout the valley of the Nile yielded their 
 
 ^ Patton, vol. ii., pp. 17 and 19. 
 
FROM ME HE MET A LI TO ISMAIL. 9 
 
 yearly increase ; that the fallahin prospered and 
 paid their taxes without the application of kurbash 
 and bastinado, and that there was peace among 
 the people who acknowledged him their master. 
 Though he did not court the favor of foreigners, he 
 allowed an English company to begin the construc- 
 tion of a railway from Alexandria to Cairo, which 
 was to be continued across the desert to Suez. But 
 he himself undertook no great works, built no new 
 canals, and did not even carry out the schemes and 
 plans of his predecessors. Abbas has been called a 
 bigot and a miser. He certainly was neither liberal 
 in mind nor lavish with money.' It is not surpris- 
 
 * Abbas has had few defenders. Henry C. Kay, in The Contemporary 
 Reviezv for March, 1883, says of him : " It is not my purpose to attempt 
 the impossible task of justifying every act of his government. But, as a 
 matter of justice and a fact of history, it ought to be stated that he was 
 probably, though without the advantage of European education, the most 
 able and the most efficient administrator the country has seen since the death 
 of Mehemet AH. He has met with the misfortune of having his reputation 
 sacrificed for political reasons. French influence was supreme and practi- 
 cally unchallenged throughout the reign of Mehemet Ali. Abbas Pasha, on 
 his accession, manifested a disposition to seek some measure of support 
 from England, He added an Englishman to the French officials employed 
 at his Foreign Office. He set about the construction, under the superintend- 
 ence of English engineers, of a railway destined to connect Alexandria with 
 Suez, an undertaking until then successfully opposed by France. He, 
 moreover, placed his son under the care of an English tutor. The conse- 
 quences may easily be understood. But the curious part of the matter is, that 
 English writers, by constant repetition, one after the other, have done more 
 to propagate erroneous views of Abbas Pasha's reign than those of any other 
 nation, the French probably included. It is not my object to defend Abbas 
 Pasha's private character, further than by adding that the generality of the 
 stories told about him rest upon no better foundation than the merest gossip." 
 
lO THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ing, therefore, that at his death he left a large sum 
 of ready money in the Egyptian treasury. Perhaps 
 this was known to those who are said to have 
 strangled him. At all events, the money and the 
 government passed to Said in 1854. 
 
 Said Pasha was a very different man from his 
 nephew Abbas. Their tastes, their habits, their 
 dispositions, their lives, and, consequently, their 
 governments, were diametrically opposite. In fact, 
 Said was everything that his predecessor was not. 
 Sociable, witty, extravagant, sensual, and fond of 
 all the delights of life, he seemed rather the gay 
 French courtier than the imperturbable Moslem 
 ruler. He set up a court not unlike that of Louis 
 XIV. He welcomed foreigners and entertained 
 most lavishly. He forgot the sobriety enjoined by 
 the Prophet, so that his dinners and his wines be- 
 came famed for their richness and excellence. He 
 accepted the suggestions of his foreign parasites, 
 and hastened to adopt this scheme or that scheme, 
 according as the whim of the hour or the per- 
 suasive agreeableness of the schemer might move 
 him. 
 
 Among the foreigners attracted to Egypt at the 
 beginning of Said's reign was a man of larger and 
 nobler purpose than these grasping tricksters knew. 
 Ferdinand de Lesseps had formed an early friend- 
 ship with Said, while acting as diplomatic attache 
 
FROM ME HE MET A LI TO ISMAIL. II 
 
 in Egypt years before. At that time, also, he had 
 conceived a plan destined to revolutionize the 
 commerce of the world. It was not a new plan, 
 however. The scheme of constructing a waterway 
 between the Mediterranean and Red Seas had 
 been suggested to all the great rulers of Egypt, 
 the Pharaohs, the Persian, Greek, and Roman con- 
 querors, and the Arab caliphs. Also, according to 
 recent discoveries in the archives of Venice, it 
 seems that the project of cutting the isthmus was 
 considered by the mariners of the fifteenth century.' 
 A canal between the two seas via the river Nile 
 actually existed for an unknown period in the 
 dynasties of the Pharaohs, and again for a period 
 of more than four hundred years under the 
 Romans, and lastly for a period of more than a 
 century after the Arab conquest. But Mehemet 
 Ali, though he had considered, had not favored the 
 great canal scheme, and Ferdinand de Lesseps was 
 obliged, therefore, to await a more opportune time 
 for broaching his plan. He brooded over his idea 
 of a waterway while England secured the construc- 
 tion of a railway. 
 
 With the accession, now, of his old friend Said, 
 the cherished hopes of de Lesseps were kindled to 
 expectation. Nor was he deceived in believing 
 
 ' Robert Routledge, Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth 
 Century, p. 163. 
 
12 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 that the opportune time had arrived. He went 
 at once to Egypt and laid his plan before the 
 viceroy. It was accepted by him on the 15th of 
 November, 1854, in these words: "I am con- 
 vinced. I accept your plan. We will talk about 
 the means of its execution during the rest of 
 the journey. [They were taking a Nile trip 
 together.] Consider the matter settled. You 
 may rely on me." ' 
 
 The concession had no sooner been announced 
 than English influence was brought to bear against 
 the canal scheme. Mr. Bruce, the English consul 
 in Egypt, told the viceroy that he was acting too 
 hastily in the matter. At Constantinople Lord 
 Stratford de Redcliffe threw obstacles in the way 
 of the scheme, while in England the general atti- 
 tude toward the canal was unfavorable, and even 
 hostile. In January, 1855, the London Times de- 
 clared against the proposed canal as an absolute 
 impossibility. Lord Palmerston opposed the 
 scheme from first to last. He held that the Porte 
 must give its consent before the viceroy could 
 allow the canal, forgetting that the English gov- 
 ernment had informed a former viceroy that he 
 might construct a railway from Alexandria to Suez 
 without the consent of his suzerain. 
 
 In February the sultan's cxauncil was on the point 
 
 ' Ferdinand de Lesseps, The Suez Canal, p. 13. 
 
FROM MEHEMET A LI TO ISMAIL, 1 3 
 
 of granting the necessary permission, when Lord 
 Stratford interposed his influence to produce delay. 
 His lordship urged that the railway ought to be 
 enough without any canal. He hinted to the Porte 
 that a canal might so increase the importance of 
 Egypt that the child would break with its parental 
 authority. An influence also was brought to bear 
 upon the viceroy, but probably not of so intense a 
 kind as de Lesseps imagined ; for he wrote at the 
 time : *' He [the viceroy] is even threatened with 
 the displeasure of England, whose fleets might 
 attack him when the business on the Black Sea is 
 ended." 
 
 The whole matter had by this time assumed an 
 international importance, with France at the head 
 of the nations who favored the canal, and with 
 England leading the opposition. Lord Clarendon, 
 in communication with the French government, 
 said that Her Majesty foresaw inconvenience in 
 leaving the matter to be decided between the sul- 
 tan and his viceroy. He submitted the following 
 objections to the scheme : i. The canal is physi- 
 cally impossible. 2. The project would require a 
 long time for completion ; it would therefore retard 
 the projected railway and injure Indian interests. 
 3. Her Majesty's ministers consider the scheme 
 to be founded on an antagonistical policy on the 
 part of France toward Egypt. The same objec- 
 
14 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 tions and arguments were repeated by Lord 
 Palmerston.' 
 
 All this time Said Pasha was harassed by doubts 
 and fears ; but at last, without receivinor the author- 
 ity of the Porte, and disregarding the attitude of 
 England, he signed the final concession for the 
 canal on January 5, 1856. It is said that he was 
 influenced by the assurance that the canal would 
 redound to his immortal honor and glory. Be that 
 as it may, it is, in a measure, a monument to the 
 generosity of the good-natured viceroy, whose 
 name, at least, is perpetuated by the port at the 
 Mediterranean terminus. 
 
 In 1858 de Lesseps launched his Compagnie 
 
 ' The whole policy of opposition, as manifested by England, is thus 
 humorously, but faithfully summed up by Mr. D. Mackenzie Wallace, in 
 his Egypt and the Egyptian Question : " The consular representative of 
 England does not approve the scheme, and warns his Highness against the 
 insidious counsels of the plausible Frenchman. The cutting of a canal may 
 be advantageous for humanity, or rather for that portion of humanity which 
 happens to have a commercial fleet and seaports on the northern shores of 
 the Mediterranean ; but it would be ruinous for Egypt, because it would 
 entirely destroy the lucrative transit trade, which might, on the contrary, be 
 increased by continuing to Suez the Alexandria-Cairo railway. Then his 
 Highness must remember that Lord Palmerston — terrible name in those 
 days ! — is opposed to the scheme, not from selfish motives, but because he 
 fears that it is merely a first step to a French occupation, by which, of 
 course, his Highness would be the principal loser. Lastly, there is the little 
 matter of physical impossibility. The most competent English engineers — 
 and his Highness is too well-informed a man not to know that English 
 engineers are much more practical and trustworthy than French ones — have 
 declared with one accord that the proposed canal, if ever made, will remain 
 merely a dry ditch."— (P. 308.) 
 
FROM MEHEMET A LI TO ISMAIL. 1 5 
 
 Universelle du Canal Maritifne de Suez, with a 
 capital of ^8,000,000. More than half of this 
 amount was subscribed for — the greater part being 
 taken in France — and in i860 Said took up the re- 
 mainder, amounting to ;^3, 500,000. De Lesseps 
 began the work in the spring of 1859, although the 
 consent of the Porte was not given until 1866. 
 
 The attitude of England toward the canal re- 
 mained unfriendly. When the engineering ques- 
 tion had been settled, and the feasibility of 
 constructing the canal proved, the English began 
 to assert that it could not be made to pay. The 
 policy of opposition has been kept up even to the 
 present day. As the question of the canal is to be 
 dismissed now, and to be taken up again only inci- 
 dentally, as in its financial bearings upon the rela- 
 tion of England to Egypt, it may be well to notice 
 how England has persisted in what appears a jeal- 
 ous opposition toward the Compagnie Universelle. 
 A single quotation will show how the London 
 papers sought to bring the canal into discredit at 
 a time when its success was still a matter of doubt : 
 *'The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamer 
 ' Poonah,' with the Indian and China mails, which 
 arrived at Southampton yesterday, experienced, 
 while in the Suez canal, a severe sand-storm^ which 
 coTumenced at sunrise and continued^ more or less 
 furious, until Jive in the afternoon. During the 
 
1 6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 storm she laid [!] right across the canal powerless. 
 Tons of sand were thrown on the deck ^ and the masts 
 and gear were covered with a thick coating." ^ 
 
 Of late years the British ship-owners have come 
 to wish for a canal of their own, and they are in- 
 clined to dispute the claim of the Compagnie Unt- 
 verselle that it has the sole right to control the 
 canal question until the ninety-nine years of the 
 concession are up. The British government, how- 
 ever, advised by the lord chancellor and the law 
 officers of the crown, has been forced to declare 
 that the company's claim Is well grounded. It is 
 to England's credit that the opinions of such men 
 as R. T. Reid, Q. C, M. R, prevailed. This 
 honorable gentleman said : 
 
 The claim of M. de Lesseps and his company to equita- 
 ble treatment is well known, and is more creditable to him 
 than to the intelligence of our past rulers. The Suez canal 
 is the work of his lifetime. He undertook it under circum- 
 stances of great discouragement. He completed it in spite 
 of the disapproval of the British government. And when 
 it has proved an immense success, and the navies of the 
 world are reaping the benefit of his speculation, we are 
 invited to find a flaw in his title, to chop logic as to the 
 meaning of his concession, and to creep out of a dif^culty 
 which is a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, by 
 refining upon words in defiance of the intention. Such 
 conduct would be unworthy of the British government. 
 
 ^ Quoted from the London papers of May i, 1876, by Edward De Leon, 
 in his The Khedive's Egypt, p. 36. 
 
FROM MEHEMET A LI TO ISMAIL. 1/ 
 
 . . . The canal is of enormous value to our shipping 
 interests. It has saved us millions upon millions of 
 pounds by halving or nearly halving the route to India, 
 and greatly reducing the distance by water between us 
 and our entire Eastern dominions. It is admittedly of 
 the utmost political advantage to us with reference to 
 India. This vast profit, infinitely exceeding anything 
 gained by the canal company, has been acquired without 
 risk of any kind to the British government, and, indeed, 
 has been forced upon us against our will by the enterprise 
 of M. de Lesseps. When the company who bore the 
 brunt of the outlay ask for an infinitesimal part of the 
 profit conferred upon England, and ask it in the form of 
 dues stipulated before the outlay was incurred, we are in- 
 vited to beat them down by the threat of a rival canal. 
 This would not be creditable in an individual. It would 
 be wholly unworthy of a great nation. * 
 
 And so the great nation decided. 
 
 But to return to Said Pasha. Having described 
 his relations to the Suez canal, it only remains to 
 record that he died in 1863. But, in passing, it 
 must be noticed that a financial cloud, that was 
 destined to blacken the Egyptian sky, and to let 
 loose its bolts of distress and bankruptcy on the 
 land of the Nile, was already discernible on the 
 horizon. Said had exhausted the surplus accumu- 
 lated by Abbas, and had left a debt of more than 
 three millions sterling. How this was doubled, 
 quadrupled, and doubled again under his successor, 
 the sequel will show. 
 
 ' The Cojitemporary Review, August, 1883. 
 
II. 
 
 ISMAIL S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS. 
 
 ISMAIL, the son of Ibrahim, the son of Mehemet 
 Ali, succeeded Said. It is said that Abbas, long 
 before, had been very jealous of him. He must, at 
 least, have disliked him heartily ; for the two men 
 had nothing in common, and everything that the 
 one shunned the other courted. While Abbas 
 was ruling Egypt with a rigorous economy, Ismail 
 sought the more congenial atmosphere of Paris. 
 He obtained, in one capital and another, an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the civilization of the 
 West, and stored his mind with all those pictures 
 of European development that, though the result 
 of centuries in Europe, he thought might be 
 reproduced in Egypt within his lifetime. Having 
 secured thus *' a European education," Ismail re- 
 turned to Egypt, after the accession of Said, and 
 received from him a governmental portfolio. He 
 seems to have had the entire confidence of the 
 viceroy, for twice he acted as regent. He com- 
 manded, also, the year before Said's death, an 
 
 i8 
 
ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS, I9 
 
 expedition to the Sudan. On his accession in 
 1863, therefore, Ismail was a man of experience — 
 such experience as should have given him excep- 
 tional qualification for a ruler. But greater than 
 all the wisdom, was the ambition that his observa- 
 tion had begotten. 
 
 It seemed as if Ismail's dreams of wealth and 
 power were to be realized immediately upon his 
 accession. Our Civil War was to furnish the 
 means to this end. Europe had depended upon 
 our Southern States for cotton, and when, by the 
 war, the supply was cut off, there followed through- 
 out Europe what has been called '' a cotton 
 famine." Especially in England the want threat- 
 ened to become a great distress. The factories 
 were closing, and legislators and economists were 
 puzzled to find a way out of the danger. The 
 shrewd Ismail, at this juncture, was not slow to 
 perceive that the seed introduced into Egypt by 
 his grandfather might bring him the coveted 
 wealth, and he bent his entire energies to the pro- 
 duction of cotton, borrowing money to buy the 
 implements and tools, to secure the proper irriga- 
 tion, and planning for work on a grander scale 
 than the fellah at his shaduf had ever dreamed of. 
 Ismail's success was greater than he could have ex- 
 pected in his most visionary moments. The soil 
 of the Nile valley seemed admirably suited to the 
 
20 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 , new industry, and every yield was enormous. The 
 fellahin, the most conservative people under the 
 sun, forsook their lentils, their millet, and their 
 wheat, and hastened, in their humble way, to 
 acquire wealth after the manner of their lord and 
 ruler. And they prospered as their race has never 
 been known to prosper from the time when their 
 remote ancestors were the pyramid-builders of the 
 Pharaohs, down to the present day. It was the 
 Golden Age of modern Egypt. In three years 
 the exports rose from four and a half millions to 
 more than thirteen millions sterling. As is usually 
 the case with those who enjoy unaccustomed and 
 unexpected affluence, neither the viceroy, nor the 
 great pashas, nor the lowly fellahin, made wise 
 use of their prosperity. Their extravagances in- 
 creased with their wealth. The viceroy thought 
 that the influx of gold would be permanent, and he 
 spent and wasted accordingly ; the pashas believed 
 that the vast estates that favoritism had bestowed 
 upon them would continue to produce in luxuriance 
 the white flower that was so easily convertible into 
 yellow gold, and they lived their voluptuous life of 
 
 pParisian and Oriental excess in their daira palaces ; 
 and the fellahin thought not and cared not, so long 
 as their burdens were light and they could enjoy 
 the sensual life that the Prophet Mohammed 
 allowed them. 
 
ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS. 21 
 
 They all counted in vain. Our Civil War had 
 come to an end, and the Southern states were 
 again supplying the markets of Europe ; the natu- 
 rally fertile valley of the Nile, denied the necessary 
 rotation of crops or the chemical fertilizers that the 
 agricultural science of to-day substitutes, had been 
 ruinously exhausted ; and as a consequence the 
 CGolden Age^ was ended. All the extravagances 
 reacted upon the fellahin. The viceroy could not 
 or w^ould not contract his expenses, and, of neces- 
 sity, he turned to the money-lenders and the task- 
 masters. The latter ground down the fellahin to 
 a life that was nothing more than existence. Ex- 
 orbitant taxes were forced from them with the aid 
 of the kurbash, and their condition was more misera- 
 ble than before their recent prosperity. At this time 
 the cattle murrain made its appearance in the Nile 
 valley, and the loss was overwhelming, and, of it- 
 self, sufficient to impoverish the people for a time. 
 The Egyptian government, slow usually to give 
 such assistance, was ob'^ged to expend ;^5, 000,000 
 to aid the suffering fSlJaft^n. But, to offset the gift 
 and in lieu of unpaid taxes, the land of the unfortu- 
 nates was appropriated, not by the government, but 
 by the viceroy himself. In the years that followed 
 he became master, in this fraudulent manner, of one- 
 fifth of the cultivable land of Egypt. 
 
 As the condition of the fellahin grew worse, the 
 
22 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 extravagances of Ismail seemed to Increase. In 
 1866, at a time when he should have economized 
 to the last degree, not only to relieve his country 
 but to pay his own debts, which were already of a 
 threatening size, Ismail, yielding, as ever, to his 
 inordinate ambition, purchased the title and rank 
 of khediv-el-misr (king of Egypt) from the sultan. 
 The firman that granted these honors and raised 
 the limit of the Egyptian army from eighteen thou- 
 sand to thirty thousand men, cost Egypt the in- 
 crease from three hundred and seventy-six thousand 
 to six hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds of 
 yearly tribute to the Porte. From this time on the 
 Khedive Ismail, through the most prodigal use of 
 money-bribes and presents, secured a succession of 
 firmans from the Porte. A firman of 1867 empow- 
 ered him *' to_^make laws for the internal govern- 
 ment of Egypt, and to conclude conventions with 
 foreign powers as to customs, duties, and the 
 police, postal, and transit services. A firman of 
 1872 conceded to the khedive the power of con- 
 tracting loans without the sultan's authorization " ' 
 — a power how used and abused ! — and established 
 the law of primogeniture in his family. "^ A firman 
 
 ^ John Westlake, Q.C., LL.D.. England's Duty in Egypt, The Con- 
 temporary Review, December, 1882. 
 
 ^ This part of the firman, as it reads, " establishes the line of succession 
 by order of primogeniture in Ismail's family — his eldest living brother, or 
 this brother's eldest son, succeeding in case of failure of direct male issue, 
 
ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS, 23 
 
 of 1873, '' which Ismail obtained by bribery at Con- 
 stantinople on a more than ordinary scale, removed 
 all limit from the numbers of his army, and empow- 
 ered him to conclude conventions with foreign states 
 concerning all internal and other affairs of Egypt in 
 which foreigners might be concerned." ' So much 
 for Ismail's expensive relations with his suzerain. 
 They had brought him, it is true, a power such as 
 Mehemet Ali had dreamed of after the fall of 
 Acre, but they had helped drag him deeper 
 into the meshes of a financial snare, from which 
 he was destined to escape only with the loss of 
 all the powers he had inherited or so dearly 
 purchased. 
 
 to the exclusion always of the female line. In the case of the heir being a 
 minor {i. e., under eighteen) on the khedive's death, he is at once to assume 
 the vice-regal title under a council of regency. If, in his v/ill, the late 
 khedive have not nominated this council, the ministers of the interior, of 
 v/ar, of foreign affairs, of justice, the commander-in-chief of the army, the 
 inspector-general of the provinces, in power at his death, will form the 
 council of regency, and v/ill elect a regent from their body. Should the 
 votes be equally divided in favor of two names, the regency falls to the 
 minister holding the more important department, who will govern v/ith the 
 council of his colleagues, when their pov/ers have been confirmed at Con- 
 stantinople by an imperial firman. The regent and the council of regency 
 are immovable before the legal expiration of their powers, i. e. , before the 
 majority of the khedive. Should one of the council die, the survivors have 
 power to elect a successor. Should the regent die, the council will elect 
 another from their body and a successor to the place he will leave vacant 
 in the council." (Egypt under Ismail Pasha, edited by Bianchard Jerrold, 
 PP- 71. 72.) This law reads well, and remains unchanged to-day. It did 
 not provide, however, for such a forced abdication as occurred in 1879. 
 
 ' Westlake, England's Duty in Egypt, The Contemporary Review^ De- 
 cember, 1882. 
 
24 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Ismail's extravagances at home were equally 
 enormous. When cotton was no longer recog- 
 nized as king in the Nile valley, the khedive 
 quickly proposed to substitute the culture of sugar. 
 Not only did he proceed to cultivate the cane, but 
 
 |he planned to manufacture the sugar. For this 
 
 (purpose he built nineteen factories and refineries, 
 'and imported the best of machinery from Europe. 
 This attempt to convert agricultural Egypt into a 
 manufacturing country must always be regarded as 
 
 J:he crowning farce of Ismail's reign. The country 
 may be said to be absolutely without fuel ; for 
 there are no coal mines, and the tax-paying trees 
 are too few and far too valuable to serve as 
 fire-wood. With all his advanced ideas, the khe- 
 dive seems not to have learned the first principles 
 of political economy. Besides the building of the 
 factories, a railroad was required to make them 
 accessible. This was constructed from Cairo to 
 Assiut at vast expense. Canals, also, were needed 
 for the proper irrigation ; and they, of course, in- 
 volved another great outlay. But there was never 
 any hesitancy on account of expense ; and, the 
 
 i money being borrowed, the works were pushed 
 
 ' ahead. 
 
 It would not be right, however, to attribute all 
 the debts of Egypt, incurred during Ismail's reign, 
 to his inordinate extravagance. The cattle mur- 
 
ISM A IV S A MB I no US DESIGNS. 2 5 
 
 rain, for example, cost the government and people 
 dear, as has been seen, but not through any fault 
 of Ismail. In another matter the khedive laid 
 a heavy burden on the government, but at the 
 same time he won, and deservedly, the gratitude 
 of his people and the applause of civilized nations. 
 Said Pasha had promised to furnish the Suez canal 
 company with a large amount of labor each year 
 for the construction of the canal, and this labor 
 was to be provided by the c orvee , a system of forced 
 service, in use as far back certainly as the age of 
 the pyramid-builders. But it was disastrous to the 
 agriculture of the country to have twenty thousand 
 of the fellahin torn from their homes each month 
 and forced to work on the canal. Ismail recognized 
 this fact and abolished the corvee. It is generally 
 admitted that he was influenced by humanitarian 
 motives. And well he might have been ! Our 
 own most dreadful tales of slavery could be paral- 
 leled with the sufferings and tortures of those 
 miserable mortals who were wrested from what 
 little they had to make them happy in the fertile 
 valley to endure the privations and almost certain 
 death of that desert highway. Whatever the 
 motive here, Ismail must always be credited with 
 having performed a noble action. The canal com- 
 pany, deprived of the promised assistance, naturally 
 demurred. This and a few other disputed ques- 
 
26 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 tions were finally referred to the Emperor Napoleon 
 for arbitration, and he awarded the company the 
 somewhat exorbitant indemnity of ;^3, 360,000, 
 This was in 1864. In 1866 Egypt re-purchased 
 for the sum of ^400,000 a domain that had been 
 sold to the canal company five years before for 
 ;^74,ooo. It was a modest advance ! Of course 
 such extraordinary expenses as these necessitated 
 new loans. All the loans that Ismail raised are 
 themselves so extraordinary that their details must 
 be noticed as well as the methods that the khedive 
 employed in his endeavors to bear the burden of 
 his obligations. 
 
 Before proceeding to the loans it will be well to 
 form an idea of the revenue of Egypt under Ismail. 
 To do this it will be necessary to consider the 
 taxes somewhat in detail, although it is impossible, 
 as Mr, Cave and Messrs. Goschen and Joubert 
 found, to get perfectly accurate and trustworthy 
 statistics on the subject, owing to the unsystematic 
 and dishonest methods of a treasury system that 
 was nothing more nor less than a hierarchy of 
 swindlers, in which each officer got as much from 
 the one below him and gave as little to the one 
 above as was possible. What the amount of the 
 taxes was before Ismail's time, one can only guess ; 
 but we may be sure that they never varied much 
 from the utmost that kurbash and extortion could 
 
ISM Airs AMBITIOUS DESIGNS. 2'J 
 
 raise.' The land tax, immediately after his acces- 
 sion, was increased by twenty-five per cent. This 
 tax was again and again increased, until, in 1871, 
 the famous mickabala'' was invented. This was a 
 voluntary additional tax of fifty per cent, for six 
 years, which, being paid, would free the land of the 
 one assuming the self-imposed obligation from half 
 the grain tax in perpetuity. The mukabala was 
 found to yield so readily to the demands of the 
 moment — and Ismail lived in the present, borrow- 
 ing no trouble from the thought of obligations to 
 be met in the future — that it was enforced m 1876, 
 and the period, at the end of which exemption 
 should take place, was increased to twelve years. 
 No tax ever met with such bitter denunciation as 
 the mukabala did from its inception to the day 
 
 ^ That the condition of the tax-payer has not changed much in three 
 thousand years may be gathered from a papyrus in the British Museum, 
 containing a part of the correspondence between Ameneman, the chief 
 librarian of Rameses the Great, and the poet Pentaur. Ameneman writes : 
 " Have you ever represented to yourself, in imagination, the estate of the 
 rustic who tills the ground ? Before he has put the sickle to his crop, the 
 locusts have blasted part thereof ; then come the rats and birds. If he is 
 slack in housing his crops, the thieves are on him. The horse dies 
 of weariness as it drags the wain. The tax-collector arrives ; his agents are 
 armed with clubs ; he has negroes with him who carry whips of palm- 
 branches. They all cry ; * Give us your grain ! ' and he has no way 
 of avoiding their extortionate demands. Next, the wretch is caught, 
 bound, and sent off to work, without wage, at the canals ; his wife is taken 
 and chained, his children are stripped and plundered." — Quoted by 
 Blan chard Jerrold, Egypt Under Ismail Pasha, p. 164. 
 ' Mdkabala = compensation. 
 
28 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 of its abolition. It was bad for the payer and bad 
 for the payee. '' A ruinous financial device," says 
 Blanchard Jerrold, '' seeing that for a sum of in all 
 less than twenty-seven million pounds, spread over 
 a dozen years, is thence afterward surrendered for 
 all time nearly two million five hundred thousand 
 pounds of its [Egypt's] surest and most easily 
 collected revenue." ' 
 
 In order to form an idea of what the yearly 
 revenue of Egypt was from 1870 to 1875, i^ is 
 necessary to consult the reports that were made 
 after that time ; for up to 1875 there had been no 
 attempt to estimate the revenue in detail. As the 
 agricultural conditions did not vary much from 
 year to year, the revenue during 1877, for example, 
 would be approximately equal to the revenue 
 during 1872 or 1873. This analogical reasoning 
 is allowable, but not very satisfactory ; for, unfor- 
 tunately, even the official estimates of Europeans 
 appointed for the purpose are found to vary 
 greatly. The official estimate of Mr. Goschen, 
 made in December, 1876, placed the year's revenue 
 at ;^ 1 0,804, 300. Mr. Cave's estimate for the same 
 year was a little over ten and a half millions. Mr. 
 Romaine gives the official revenue, month by 
 month, for 1877, reaching a total of ^9,350, 2 74 for 
 the year. The Cairene committee, in 1878, placed 
 
 ' Egypt Under Ismail Pasha. 
 
ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS. 29 
 
 the total income of the khedive's government at 
 about eleven and a half millions ; but they consid- 
 ered this estimate low, and thought that, if it had 
 been possible to count all revenues, the sum total 
 would not have been less than thirteen millions 
 sterling. This may readily be believed, if we may 
 trust, approximately, the statement of Ismail Sadyk 
 (the muffetisJi, or " lord high treasurer " of the 
 khedive, and one of the most notorious rascals 
 that ever plundered a state and people), that he 
 had raised by taxation in one year the sum of 
 fifteen million pounds. But some estimates varied 
 as widely in the other direction, and placed the 
 revenue even as low as seven and a half millions. 
 The extremes are far apart. 
 
 It will be interesting to separate one of the total 
 estimates into its constituent parts ; and for this 
 purpose we may take the report of the Cairene 
 committee. They placed 
 
 The land tax . 
 
 at 
 
 . ;^£"7,346,2i9 
 
 The date palm tax . 
 
 ii. 
 
 211,046 
 
 The house, shop, and mill taxes 
 
 n 
 
 28,195 
 
 The poll tax ^ . 
 
 u 
 
 630,204 
 
 Licenses and patents "^ 
 
 ii 
 
 798,253 
 
 ' This tax was divided into three classes : viz., 40, 30, and 15 piasters. 
 The collectors, however, were instructed to produce an average of 30 
 piasters ($1.50) a head. 
 
 ' These were imposed on all servants, operatives, tradesmen, and mer- 
 chants. 
 
30 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 Miscellaneous Taxes. 
 
 1. Succession or transfer duties on legacies, 
 
 mortgages, etc. . 
 
 2. Stamp tax (no statistics) 
 
 3. Salt tax ' 
 
 4. Octroi and road duties on produce, fodder, 
 
 and building materials "... 
 
 5. Customs 
 
 6. Navigation dues . 
 
 7. Duties on fisheries 
 8.. Law taxes 
 9. Tobacco tax . 
 
 10. Tax on cattle sales 
 
 11. Sheep slaughtered for food . 
 
 12. Animal tax ..... 
 
 13. Stamp tax on manufactured goods 
 
 14. Payments of railways into Public Debt De- 
 
 partment 
 
 Total 
 
 ;£io3,685 
 
 400,000 
 
 328,872 
 
 639,000 
 
 110,185 
 
 33,548 
 
 44,392 
 
 106,777 
 
 45,402 
 
 14,769 
 
 8,479 
 18,000 
 
 602,990 
 
 ^af 11,470,016 
 
 From the foregoing notes and figures It will be 
 seen that It Is almost Impossible to exaggerate the 
 extortionate character of taxation in Egypt a dec- 
 
 ' Nine piasters imposed on every man, woman, and child over seven years 
 of age, 
 
 " This figure the committee considered small, since irregular government 
 expenses were taken out of the octroi receipts, as, for example, the salaries 
 of a corps de ballet ! When, later, Egypt came under European control, 
 the comptroller general encountered much opposition by his refusal to pay 
 such salaries from such a fund. 
 
 ^ Other taxes, as on fire engines, ferries, jewelry, burials, marriages, tolls 
 on bridges, and exemption from military service, were not counted, owing 
 to absence of trustworthy statistics. 
 
ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS. 3 1 
 
 ade ago. But it should be noticed in passing that 
 the land of the natives only was taxed ; by a mon- 
 strous injustice — an injustice that continues to the 
 present day, though there is just now a prospect of 
 its being remedied — the European property-holders 
 have never paid so much as a brass farthing into 
 the state treasury on the land they have held. 
 
 Whether, now, we place the yearly revenue at 
 the lowest estimate, seven millions sterling, or at 
 the highest, thirteen millions, or midway between 
 the two, the fact always remain^ the same — that 
 Ismail was unable to live within his income. With 
 the same revenue Mehemet AH would have made 
 Egypt independent of Turkey, and himself the 
 champion of all Islam. Even the gay Said would 
 have been at a loss for ways to squander such un- 
 dreamed-of means. But with Ismail it was different. 
 As we have seen, he could not forget the splendors 
 of European courts, nor cease to envy the civiliza- 
 tion of western countries ; nor could he contract 
 the extravagances he had learned in the days when 
 '* cotton was king" in Egypt. If he could not live 
 and flourish and build and spend on the strength 
 of his internal resources, he knew that there were 
 bankers and money-lenders in Europe who would 
 consider the yearly overflow of the Nile the best of 
 security. The story of his transactions with these 
 unbelievers forms the most important chapter in 
 
32 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 the modern history of Egypt ; but the story is de- 
 void of romance ; it is as bold and bald and true as 
 the working of a natural law. For the state, as 
 for the individual, when debts are contracted to 
 pay other debts, when further sums are borrowed 
 to pay those, and when this system of discharging 
 obligations is continued, the end is ruin. In the 
 case of Egypt, the ever impending ruin has been 
 long averted, owing as much (or more) to the po- 
 litical importance of the country as to its inherent 
 wealth ; but the burning question of that land to- 
 day is the question of finance ; for the debts that 
 are due to the follies of Ismail still stand, an 
 unmanageable burden. And this is how the first 
 khedive brought about the financial disaster, and 
 his own downfall. 
 
III. 
 
 THE ROAD TO RUIN. 
 
 IT will be remembered that Said left a debt of 
 about three millions sterling. To be exact, he 
 had effected in 1862 a seven per cent, loan in the 
 European market of ^3,292,800.' Of course he 
 
 ' For facts and figures I depend chiefly upon J. C. McCoan's Egypt As 
 It Is, and upon Mr. Cave's Report of 1876, from which the following 
 concise table is taken : 
 
 
 T3 
 
 p 
 
 Nominal 
 
 amount of 
 
 loan, but real 
 
 debt of state. 
 
 Charge on 
 nominal amount. 
 
 Amount 
 realized. 
 
 Real charges on 
 amount realized. 
 
 LOAN OF 
 
 Int. 
 
 Sink- 
 ing 
 fund. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Int. 
 
 Sink- 
 ing 
 fund. 
 
 Total. 
 
 1862 
 . iL--l864 
 ^ —1866 
 
 " Daira taken 
 
 1892 
 
 1879 
 1874 
 1898 
 1903 
 
 I88I 
 I88I 
 
 1890 
 
 £ 
 
 3,292,800 
 
 5,704,200 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 11,890,000 
 
 32,000,000 
 
 pr. C. 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 7 
 7 
 
 9 
 9 
 
 7 
 
 pr. c. 
 3.87 
 I 
 
 3-27 
 3.4 
 
 2.35 
 
 P..C. 
 
 10.87 
 
 V ' 
 
 8 
 
 12.27 
 12.4 
 
 9.35 
 
 4,864,063 
 2,640,000 (d) 
 
 7,193,334 
 20,740,077 
 
 pr. C. 
 
 '8!2 
 
 8 
 11.56 
 10.8 
 
 10 
 
 pr. c. 
 
 4-5 
 18.9 
 1.68 
 1.56 
 
 • • • 
 
 3.36 
 
 pr. c. 
 
 12.7 
 26.9 
 13.24 
 12.36 
 
 55,887,000 
 
 35,437,474 
 
 
 over by the 
 state. 
 
 / 1866 
 
 V 1867 
 
 3,000,000 
 2,080,000 
 
 7,142,860 
 
 3,000,000 (c) 
 
 2,080,000 (V) 
 
 12.27 
 17.04 
 
 Daira loan 
 
 5,080,000 
 
 
 of Ismail. 
 1870 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 13-36 
 
 (a) No particulars of amount realized. 
 
 (d) Railway loan repaid by six annual payments of ;£5oo,ooo, equivalent to a sinking fund of 
 18.9 per cent. 
 
 (c) No particulars of amounts realized, but probably the whole. 
 
 33 
 
34 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 did not receive this amount entire, for the commis- 
 sion rate of issue, etc., .reduced the sum paid into 
 the Egyptian treasury to ^2,500,000. But this 
 loan did not prevent Said from leaving a further 
 legacy of liabilities, which necessitated a second 
 loan within a year after his death. The amount 
 of this one, which was raised in England, was 
 ;^5,704,200. It yielded to the treasury only 
 ;^4,864,o63. And still the indebtedness was not 
 covered. Up to this time the financial troubles 
 had come through no fault of Ismail's. But in 
 1866 he had begun to push the sugar industry; 
 and, not having laid by any of the enormous reve- 
 nues from cotton, he was forced, in order to carry 
 out his railroad scheme, to contract a seven per 
 cent, loan of ^3,000,000, which netted him £2,- 
 640,000. The cattle murrain, the abolition of the 
 corvee, and his extravagances called for another 
 loan only two years later. The nominal amount 
 of this loan was ^11,890,000; but heavier terms 
 had to be made ; for, though a seven per cent, 
 stock, it was issued at seventy-five, and yielded, 
 after the usual deductions, only ;^7, 193,334. In 
 other words, the total annual cost of this loan was 
 more than thirteen per cent. *' The khedive, by 
 this time," as Mr. McCoan remarks,' ''was fairly 
 on the road to ruin." But the national credit was 
 
 ' McCoan, Egypt As It Is, p. 142. 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 35 
 
 Still good, since the floating debt had been covered 
 by this last loan. 
 
 Ismail seems not to have suspected the perils 
 ahead. It was his aim to make a civilized country 
 even out of uncivilized materials, and to develop 
 trade even where natural resources were wanting, 
 let the cost be what it might. It certainly was 
 great ; it was enormous. The outlay, even if the 
 revenue of the country had permitted it, would 
 have been foolish extravagance ; but in view of 
 Egypt's financial condition, it was nothing less 
 than reckless robbery. The fellahin — the people 
 of Egypt — were the sufferers. The kurbash ex- 
 acted more extortionate payments than ever ; but 
 all to no purpose. By 1873 the floating liabilities, 
 paying nearly fourteen per cent, interest, amounted 
 to about ^26,000,000. The Messrs. Oppenheim, 
 who had secured the loan of 1868, now proposed 
 to fund the entire mass of debts in a seven per cent. 
 loan of ;^3 2,000,000. This offer, disastrous in its 
 results, was accepted. The Egyptian government 
 received in cash only ^11,740,077, the remainder 
 of the amount realized, ^9,000,000, being paid in 
 bonds of the floating debt, which the contractors 
 bought up at a heavy discount and gave over to 
 the Egyptian government at 93. There was, to 
 say the least, a good deal of Shylockism shown by 
 the money-lenders of the West in their financial 
 
36 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 relations with Egypt. But if they were knavish, 
 Ismail was not altogether simple. Looking at the 
 figures that tell the story of '' this wicked waste 
 of a country's resources," as Mr. McCoan calls 
 it, we see that from loans amounting to ^58,887,- 
 000, the Egyptian government received only 
 /^35'437'474- At the end of 1875 the treasury had 
 repaid ^^29, 5 70,995 in interest and in sinking 
 fund. Was so much money ever paid for so little 
 gain ? 
 
 There were other loans than those above men- 
 tioned. The daira, the immense personal estate 
 of the khedive, afforded excellent security for sup- 
 plementary loans. The first of these was nego- 
 tiated in 1866, its amount being ^3,387,000. The 
 following year the khedive compelled his uncle 
 Halim to sell to him his inherited estate ; and to 
 pay for the property obtained by his enforced sale, 
 the so-called '' Mustapha Pasha loan " of ^2,080,000 
 was negotiated. Still another daira loan of more 
 than seven millions sterling was raised in 1870 at 
 seven per cent, the stock being issued at 75. Only 
 ;^5, 000,000 was handed over to the borrower. Thus 
 the same story is told with the private as with the 
 public loans. 
 
 The question now was : How long could the 
 ruinous rate of interest be paid on these enormous 
 debts ? Up to 1875 it was regularly paid, and the 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 37 
 
 credit of Egypt was good. But the crisis was now 
 near at hand. The stock of the great loan of 1873 
 was quoted at 53 in the London market, and the 
 Cairene treasury was almost empty. Even Ismail 
 Sadyk, the muffetish, with all his tortures and 
 threats, could not get piasters enough from the 
 fellahin to meet the demands that were measured 
 by hundreds of thousands of pounds. And yet he_^ 
 was ordered to find money to pay the December 
 dividend. At this juncture the khedive appealed 
 to England to rescue Egypt from ruin ; and pro- 
 duced, as his last card, the 176,000 Suez canal 1 
 shares, held by his government. The muffetish \ 
 was offering the same securities in negotiations 
 with the bankers of Paris and Alexandria, and 
 with the Credit Fonder of France, in his attempt A 
 to fo rce upon them new treasury bonds^Tor ;^i6,- I 
 000,000 at fifteen per cent, interest. After a series 
 of advances and retreats on the part of the English 
 and the French governments, Disraeli's government^ 
 finally telegraphed to the khedive, in December, I 
 1875, ^hat England would give four millions ster- T 
 ling for the shares in drafts on Rothschild. The 4 
 offer was eagerly accepted, and the crisis was tid«i 
 over. The shares of the '73 loan in London rose 
 twenty points at a jump, but after a few days they 
 were quoted at 61, midway between the points of 
 utmost depression and inflation. A more vital 
 
38 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 interest in the affairs of Egypt was now given to 
 England than she had before possessed. She had 
 gone thither, in the first place, to further the de- 
 mands of her commerce ; she had then manoeuvred 
 for the protection of the interests of the British 
 bondholders ; and now, in addition to these under- 
 takings, she was to guard the rights that this pur- 
 chase gave her, and increase the obligations that it 
 heaped upon Egypt. 
 
 Four million pounds, as Ismail soon found, could 
 not stem the tide of disaster for long. Everything 
 w worth it had been mortgaged, and the muffetish was 
 offering treasury bonds to the extent of two hundred 
 thousand and three hundred thousand and even four 
 hundred thousand pounds in return for cash advances 
 of one hundred thousand at twenty per cent. A few 
 were taken, and by heavy sales of daira sugar and 
 corn the demands were satisfied for a time. The 
 pchedive now invited England to investigate the 
 \financial condition of his country, and Mr. Stephen 
 Cave, M.P., was sent out for this purpose. Nubar 
 Pasha, the foremost of Egyptian statesmen, was 
 called to the cabinet, and at the beginning of 1876 
 everything had a reassuring aspect. But within 
 three months Nubar had resigned, and Disraeli, to 
 the consternation of bondholders, had announced 
 in Parliament that the khedive requested that Mr. 
 Cave's report be not published for fear of its effect 
 
THE ROAD TO KUIN. 39 
 
 upon Egyptian finances. But this request was dis- 
 regarded. The effect of the report, however, was 
 more favorable to the khedive than he expected, 
 owing to the somewhat rose-colored view Mr. Cave 
 took of the financial outlook. 
 
 Egypt [he wrote] may be said to be in a transition 
 state, and she suffers from the defects of the system out 
 of which she is passing- as well as from those of the system 
 into which she is attempting to enter. She suffers from 
 the ignorance, dishonesty, waste, and extravagance of the 
 East, such as have brought her suzerain to the verge of 
 ruin, and at the same time from the vast expense caused 
 by hasty and inconsiderate endeavor to adopt the civihza- 
 tion of the West. 
 
 He read the causes of Egyptian dif^culty aright. 
 But he was wrong in estimating that the yearly 
 revenue from 1876 to 1885 would be more than 
 double the cost of the administration. To meet 
 the necessities of the government, he proposed 
 another unification of all debts, exclusive of three 
 of the earliest and smallest loans which were to be 
 paid off by the operation of the mukabala. The 
 consolidated debt, amounting to ;^75, 000,000, was 
 to bear interest at seven per cent., and to be re- 
 deemable in 1926. The project, however, was not 
 carried out. 
 
 ^he Khedive Ismail, in the meantime, had suc- 
 ceeded in getting the greater part of his floating 
 
40 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 debt taken up In France. That the holders had 
 been duped was evident before the end of March 
 (1876), for there was no money in the Egyptian 
 treasury to meet the April dividends, and the 
 khedive was appealing for aid to the English and 
 French governments. His overtures were flatly 
 refused by England ; but when France realized 
 that the Credit Fonder, the second financial in- 
 stitution of the land, was in a strait in consequence 
 of its relations with Egypt, a cabinet council was 
 surnmoned in Paris, and on March 31 the April 
 dividend was dispatched to London. And again 
 the Impending disaster was averted. 
 
 Mr. Cave's scheme for the unification of the 
 debt fell through, as above noticed, although 
 coupled with certain measures of reform, which 
 provided for a regular control of the revenue under 
 the administration of Europeans and natives, and 
 for the establishment of debt and audit officers. 
 The cause of failure was that nominations were 
 left in the hands of the khedive, who was himself 
 controlled by the corrupt muffetish, Ismail Sadyk. 
 France now proposed a financial scheme ; but this 
 also failed of adoption. In November, 1876, how- 
 ever, the English and French bondholders united 
 in sending to Egypt a joint commission, consisting 
 of Mr. Goschen, M.P., and M. Joubert, to solve 
 the financial problem. Their labor resulted in the 
 
THE ROAD rO RUIN. 4 1 
 
 khedive's Issuing a decree, November i8, 1876, 
 that remodelled the debt on the following basis : ' 
 
 Title. 
 
 Amount. 
 
 Interest, etc. 
 
 Security. 
 
 Unified, 
 
 ;^^59,ooo,ooo 
 
 ^4,130,000 
 
 General revenues. 
 
 Preference, 
 
 17,000,000 
 
 886,000 
 
 Railways, etc. 
 
 Daira, 
 
 8,825,000 
 
 450,000 
 
 Khedive's estates. 
 
 ^^84,825,000 ^5,466,000 
 
 The reforms of November 18 secured a sub- 
 stantial power to European comptrollers, and the 
 downfall of Ismail Sadyk, who now disappeared 
 from the face of the earth in the mysterious way 
 common to the Orient. He left an immense prop- 
 erty, which included three hundred women in his 
 harem, two hundred and fifty men-servants, ^600,- 
 000 in money, and 30,000 feddans ^ of land. The 
 mukabala, which would have been abolished if the 
 unification proposed in May had been accepted, 
 was retained by the Messrs. Goschen and Joubert 
 in a slightly modified form. 
 
 Those who fancied that plain sailing was now in 
 store for the khedive and the bondholders were 
 again doomed to disappointment. Within a few 
 months it was apparent that the financial state of 
 affairs was as bad as ever. The ordinary expenses 
 were augmented by a special tax of two shillings 
 
 ' M. G. Mulhall, Egyptian Finance, The Contemporary Review, October, 
 1882. 
 
 ' A feddan is about equal to an acre. 
 
42 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 an acre to assist Turkey in the war against Russia. 
 Egypt, backed by England and France, whose in- 
 terest it was to have all revenues applied to the 
 public debt, for a time resisted the pecuniary de- 
 mands of the Porte, though she told the Turkish 
 envoys that she would forward troops to the seat 
 of war if the Porte would bear the expenses of 
 transport and maintenance. The new Egyptian 
 parliament, however, at last voted the special war 
 tax, and ten thousand troops were sent at the ex- 
 pense of Egypt. 
 
 During 1877 the interest on the loans was raised 
 by collecting the taxes with all the old-time cruelty 
 (Mr. Mulhall says " the fellahin were bastinadoed 
 even more than before " ; but that was not pos- 
 sible) and as much as nine months in advance. 
 This ruinous system, of course, brought greater 
 difficulties with each pay-day ; and at the begin- 
 ning of 1878 the outlook, to say the least, was 
 most doleful. It was at this time that the exiled 
 Prince Halim, the uncle of Ismail and the most 
 enlightened, perhaps, of the descent of Mehemet 
 Ali, wrote a letter of advice to Ismail from Con- 
 stantinople. The letter, which bears the date of 
 March 4, 1878, is worth quoting, at least in part. 
 He wrote : 
 
 I. Place the financial administration of the country in 
 the hands of Europeans chosen by the interested powers; 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN, 43 
 
 such administration alone having the power to appoint 
 and dismiss all officials connected with the finance of the 
 country. 
 
 2. The financial administration thus constituted, and all 
 its dealings being carried on in broad daylight, you must 
 appoint a special inquiry commission, chosen by the 
 high officials, to establish an equitable repartition of 
 taxes, which are now arbitrarily distributed and levied. 
 
 3. All property belonging to the princes and princesses 
 shall be made over to the state, so as to be used in pay- 
 ment of all debts. 
 
 4. The revenue of all the dairas, the kh^dive's and his 
 family's, being thus devoted to the paying off of public 
 and private debts, the civil list, the amount of which shall 
 be agreed upon by the interested powers, will support the 
 khedive and his family. 
 
 5. The reform tribunals, having over them a sovereign 
 free from all personal interests, and by whose care all the 
 judgments ^hich they pronounce shall be carried out, will 
 be empowered, over and above their present jurisdiction, 
 to try causes between natives, if the latter shall so 
 choose it. 
 
 These five articles, says Mr. Jerrold,' "became 
 the basis on which the discussion of Egyptian 
 affairs turned." The first article of reform had 
 already met with Ismail's apparent approval, the 
 state revenues having been placed in the hands of 
 two '' comptrollers-general," one English and the 
 other French. They were appointed for five years, 
 
 * Egypt Under Ismail Pasha, p. 256. 
 
44 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 with almost unlimited powers in the domain of 
 finance. But the step was taken reluctantly ; for 
 the khedive realized that, to quote the words of 
 Mr. Justin McCarthy/ "when a country has once 
 accepted an investigation of its finances by foreign 
 powers, and given the practical control of its 
 treasury into the hands of foreign representatives, 
 its claim to independence can hardly fail to be 
 regarded as signally diminished." Still more re- 
 luctantly, we may w^ell believe, did the khedive 
 yield to the demand of the commission to hand 
 over his vast private estates to meet the daira 
 coupons. But he had been forced into both of 
 these actions by the troubles of 1877. Early in 
 1878 the khedive made a bold effort to secure 
 foreign favor and quiet the discontent among the 
 money-lenders of Alexandria. The Egyptian gov- 
 ernment had announced, in 1877, ^hat it could not 
 pay the existing high rate of interest on the public 
 debt ; but before the bondholders would consent to 
 any reduction, they demanded the appointment of 
 a commission to examine into the receipts and 
 expenses of the government. The . khedive, in 
 January, 1878, allowed an investigation of receipts, 
 but would permit no examination of expenditures. 
 Two months later, however, he issued the follow- 
 ing decree : 
 
 ^ England Under Gladstone, ch. xili. 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIX. 45 
 
 We, Khedive of Egypt — with respect to our decree of 
 the 27th of January, 1878, instituting a superior Commis- 
 sion of Inquiry, considering that it is the duty of that 
 Commission to prepare and submit for our sanction regu- 
 lations to secure the regular working of the pubHc ser- 
 vices, and to give a just satisfaction to the interests of the 
 country, and to the public creditors — have decreed and do 
 decree : 
 
 Article i. The widest powers are given to the Com- 
 mission we establish. 
 
 Art. 2. The investigation of the Commission of 
 Inquiry will embrace all the elements of the financial 
 situation, always respecting the legitimate rights of the 
 Government. 
 
 Art. 3. The ministers and officials of our Govern- 
 ment will be bound to furnish directly to the Commission, 
 at its request and without delay, all information required 
 from them. 
 
 Art. 4. There are named as members of the superior 
 Commission of Inquiry : President, M. Ferdinand de 
 Lesseps ; Vice-President, Mr. Rivers Wilson ; Vice-Presi- 
 dent, his Excellency, Riaz Pasha ; M. Baravelli ; Mr. 
 Baring; M. de Blignieres; M. de Kremer. 
 
 Art. 5. A credit necessary for the expenses of the 
 Commission will be opened on the budget of 1878, in 
 accordance with the report which the President will pre- 
 sent us. 
 
 Ismail. 
 
 Cairo, March 30, 1878. 
 
 On August 20, Mr. Rivers Wilson presented the 7 
 report of the commission of inquiry. The report 
 considered first the system of accounts employed 
 
46 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 by the Egyptian government. It then explained 
 the system of taxation, and discussed the corvee, 
 the miHtary conscription, and the water laws. The 
 second part of the report was taken up with the 
 estimate of the non-consolidated liabilities. The 
 amount of floatingf debt to be settled was found to 
 be ;^6, 276,000. The gross expenditure for 1878 
 was estimated at ^10,405,665, and the gross re- 
 ceipts at ^7,819,000. Adding the difference be- 
 tween receipts and expenditures, ;^2, 586,665, to 
 the amount of floating debt, the total deficit for 
 1878 would appear to be ^8,862,665 ; but this sum 
 was reduced to a little more than six millions 
 sterling by deductions for security against partially 
 guaranteed debts, and for amounts nominally due 
 to the dairas, but before that time surrendered. 
 There was immediate need, therefore, for about six 
 millions. The report closed with the following 
 suggestions of reform : 
 
 That no taxes shall be imposed or gathered without a 
 
 Claw, authorizing them, being promulgated ; that future 
 legislation may extend the taxation to foreigners ; that 
 there shall be an efficient control over tax-collectors ; that 
 there shall be a reserve fund to provide against the con- 
 tingency of a bad rising of the Nile; that there shall be 
 a special jurisdiction for complaints on the subject of the 
 collection and assessment of taxes for the special protec- 
 tion of the natives ; that existing vexatious taxes shall be 
 abolished, except for works of public utility ; that the 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 4/ 
 
 obligation to military service shall be placed under restric- 
 tions; and that all the immovable property of the differ- 
 ent dairas, shall be independently managed by a special 
 administration for the benefit of the creditors both of 
 the state and the dairas. 
 
 These were excellent recommendations, though 
 there was something very naive in the suggestion 
 that '' there shall be a reserve fund to provide 
 against the contingency of a bad rising of the Nile." 
 It would have been as easy to resolve that, if the 
 river failed to rise, copious rains should fall ; for 
 reserve funds are as rare in Egypt as rain-storms in 
 the desert. Not the least good of the recommenda- 
 tions was that providing that foreigners should be 
 taxed ; a measure that the Westerners have always 
 been shamefully slow to encourage. The reforms 
 contained also a plan for the cadastral survey of 
 Egypt, which was recognized in England, in France, 
 and in Egypt, as just to the fellahin and as the 
 treasury's only safeguard against fraud and corrup- 
 tion. The khedive accepted the report on August 
 23 in a speech expressing entire approval of the 
 work of the commission, appreciation of their ser- 
 vices, and determination to carry out the reforms. 
 To show how thoroughly in earnest he was, so he 
 said, he had recalled Nubar Pasha from exile and 
 would entrust him with the formation of a new 
 ministry. The new ministry was composed of the 
 
48 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 following persons : Nubar Pasha, president of the 
 council, minister of foreign affairs and of justice ; Riaz 
 Pasha, minister of interior ; Ratif Pasha, minister 
 of war ; AH Mubarek Pasha, minister of public 
 instruction, agriculture, and public works. The 
 portfolio of finance was left vacant, but it was soon 
 offered to Mr. Rivers Wilson, Avho accepted the 
 office with the consent of the British government. 
 This excited the jealousy of France, to appease 
 which the comparatively unimportant office of pub- 
 lic works was offered to M. de Blignieres. Italy 
 then put in the claim that she should be consulted 
 in Egyptian affairs ; but her voice was ignored. 
 
 Before any active steps had been taken toward 
 inaugurating the proposed reforms, Mr. Wilson 
 urged the necessity of another loan to meet imme- 
 diate demands, and this, although the total debt 
 already amounted to ninety-two millions sterling. 
 But he had no choice in the matter ; the loan was 
 imperative. The only unmortgaged property on 
 which a loan could be raised consisted of the daira 
 estates belonging to the khedive's family. These, 
 now, with a rent-roll of ^430,000 a year, were 
 handed over to the state, in consequence, not of 
 the advice of Prince Halim, but of the utter neces- 
 sity of the time. The loan was concluded with the 
 Messrs. Rothschild of Paris, In November, 1878, at 
 the rate of ']'^. The nominal amount of the loan was 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 49 
 
 ;^8, 500,000, but with the discount of twenty-seven 
 per cent, and the commission of two and a half per 
 cent, the net product was only ^5,992,000. Think- 
 ing that financial affairs could rest for the moment, 
 Mr. Wilson now made a tour of inspection through 
 Lower Egypt. The people met him with petitions, 
 which he received with promises of redress. He 
 believed, and they had every reason to believe, the 
 words he uttered in a speech at Tanta. 
 
 A new era [he said] has begun for Egypt. Reforms are 
 already initiated, and if you will only have patience, you 
 can count on their completion. If you have grievances, 
 make them known to us, and you shall be righted. We 
 wish to establish equality and legality in the country, and 
 the law shall no longer be for the rich alone ; it shall work 
 for rich and poor alike. 
 
 The fellahin might well have been happy ; they 
 had never in their ages of oppression received such 
 assurances before. 
 
 But tranquillity was not yet. A number of credi- 
 tors at Alexandria had put an end to the financial 
 negotiations in a most unexpected manner. These 
 creditors had been watching their opportunity. They 
 had tried some months before to seize the furniture 
 of the palace at Ramleh, but had been foiled by the 
 bailiffs. They had succeeded, however, in obtaining 
 a lien on the very estates that were offered as security 
 for the new loan. It was not surprising, therefore, 
 
50 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 that Baron Rothschild withheld the amount of the 
 loan. To add to the khedive's troubles, the unpaid 
 officers of the army in Cairo were urging their 
 claims. The delay of Baron Rothschild precipi- 
 tated matters ; and on February i8, 1879, a "^i^^" 
 tary uprising occurred in Cairo, which nearly cost 
 Mr. Rivers Wilson and Nubar Pasha their lives. 
 While driving from a council of ministers their car- 
 riage was beset by a throng of officers, estimated 
 at from four to twelve hundred; their driver was 
 wounded, and they were insulted and forced back 
 into the court-yard of the palace. The khedive 
 attempted to pacify the mob, but they were only 
 dispersed by the force of arms. Nubar Pasha, the 
 next day, offered his resignation. It was at once 
 accepted by the khedive, and again the foremost 
 statesman of Egypt, and the only one worthy the 
 name, according to the Western conception of the 
 term, went into exile. It was immediately claimed 
 in England and France that Ismail had sought to 
 bring about this result by instigating or conniving 
 at the insurrection among the officers. It was gen- 
 erally known that Ismail had a pet aversion to Nu- 
 bar. They were as different as an honest man and 
 a cunning diplomat could well be, and it is certain 
 that the khedive would not have entrusted Nubar 
 with the new ministry if the influence of England 
 and France had not seemed to demand it. Confi- 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN, 5 I 
 
 dence having been secured, Ismail was ready, and 
 probably only too glad, to break with his prime- 
 minister. Nubar appreciated the desperate state of 
 affairs that prevailed in Egypt. He had written to 
 a friend on January 20 : 
 
 The everlasting political comedy, or tragedy, is being 
 played on the little stage here, just as it is everywhere 
 else : a lost power sought to be regained, persons inter- 
 ested in not letting it be regained, who yet aid it for 
 personal motives, or to give themselves importance — and 
 not a sou in the Treasury withal. What a situation for 
 the country, for the interested countries, and for your 
 friend ! ' 
 
 England and France were naturally displeased 
 with the dismissal — for such it was — of Nubar 
 Pasha ; and while the commander-in-chief of the 
 Egyptian army was apologizing to Mr. Rivers Wil- 
 son for the insult he had received at the hands of 
 the officers, the two powers were preparing a protest 
 to submit to the khedive. Notwithstanding their 
 demand, Nubar was not reinstated ; but some of 
 the conditions they imposed upon the khedive were 
 followed in his attitude toward the new cabinet. 
 Ismail's eldest son, Prince Tewfik, was appointed 
 president of the council, Zulfikar Pasha minister of 
 foreign affairs, and Mr. Wilson and M. de Bligni- 
 eres were retained in their former ofifices. The 
 
 ' Quoted from Appleton's Annual Cydopadia, 1879. 
 
52 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 important condition that was imposed upon Ismail 
 was embraced by him in a letter to Tewfik, in which 
 he said : '' As the native ministers now form a ma- 
 jority in the cabinet, it is right, in order to restore 
 the balance of power and lend to the intervention 
 of our European ministers all the usefulness possi- 
 ble, that they should be entitled to a veto on all 
 measures they agree in disapproving." This sop 
 thrown to the great powers was soon counteracted. 
 Egyptian and European influence clashed on the 
 financial question, and Egypt came out first best. 
 It was in this wise : Mr. Wilson, M. de Blignieres, 
 Mr. Baring, and the debt commissioners submitted 
 a plan for the equitable reduction of the claims of 
 all creditors. The khedive opposed this with an- 
 other plan, giving the bondholders better terms ; 
 and he was supported by the native parliament, the 
 pashas, the ulemas, and all the high dignitaries of 
 the land. The counter projects were pushed so hard 
 that, on April 7, Prince Tewfik resigned the pres- 
 idency of the council, and the khedive dismissed 
 Mr. Wilson and M. de Blignieres. 
 
 If, now, there was ever a ship of state that sailed 
 between Scylla and Charybdis, it was the unsteady 
 craft that Ismail was trying to guide. If he avoided 
 the rocks on one side, it was only to meet destruc- 
 tion on the other. The wrath of the Egyptians had 
 been averted by the dismissal of the foreigners, and 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 53 
 
 by the same act the wrath of the great powers had 
 been incurred. The French government was in 
 high dudgeon at the offence, and threatened to rein- 
 state her representative by force of arms, and asked 
 England to join her. But England would not agree 
 to any such decisive step. Even had she cared to, 
 she would have found it difficult to spare more 
 troops than were needed at that time to oppose the 
 Boers in South Africa. She preferred, therefore, 
 while waiting for the blood of France to cool, to 
 send dispatches to the khedive, demanding a recon- 
 sideration of his hasty and unwarranted action. But 
 the khedive was now running things with a high 
 hand. If England would not allow France to send 
 an armed force to Egypt, and did not do so herself, 
 he could laugh at the demands and threats of dis- 
 patches. His people said that the unbelievers had 
 brought all the trouble and the ruin upon the fair 
 valley of the Nile, and he decided to cut loose from 
 the Western influence and defy its power. He vir- 
 tually repudiated the debts and responsibilities of 
 his country in a way that would put our own Vir- 
 ginia to shame, by issuing a decree, April 22, in 
 which he declared that, for the future, he would 
 himself control the finances and regulate the dis- 
 charge of liabilities. He seemed to be riding on 
 the wave of triumph. The people thought that the 
 day of Mehemet Ali was come again. 
 
54 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 But at this moment an unexpected voice of 
 authority was heard. England and France were 
 passing the time in an unavaiHng effort Hke that of 
 two horses who cannot pull their load because the 
 one holds back while the other starts, when, sud- 
 denly, the German chancellor made a protest that 
 cost Ismail his throne. The German consul at 
 Cairo, on the 17th of May, simply informed the 
 khedive that the interests of German subjects must 
 be protected, let come what might, and that any 
 arbitrary change of system at that time would be 
 considered prejudicial to their interests. What led 
 the astute Bismarck to take the lead at this junc- 
 ture is, and will probably remain, an enigma.' 
 
 ^ Of this action and its consequences, Mr, Edward Dicey, writing in 
 The Nineteenth Century of February, 1880, says : " How this action came 
 about has never, so far as I know, been clearly ascertained. Germany had 
 a comparatively insignificant interest in the affairs of Egypt. A verj' small 
 portion of the floating debt was due to German creditors. It is not easy to 
 believe that Germany ever really contemplated any intervention in Egypt, 
 and it is still less easy to understand how she could practically have inter- 
 vened even if she had been so minded. But the prestige of Germany — her 
 repute of strength, which is to a nation what credit is to an individual — 
 stood her in good stead. The mere fact that Prince Bismarck had declared 
 the khedive could not be allowed to play fast and loose with the interests of 
 German subjects produced more effect than all the dispatches indited from 
 London and Paris ; and from the day when Germany pronounced against 
 the khe'dive it was obvious that the end had come. Meanwhile, the initia- 
 tive taken by Germany had a result which might easily have been foreseen, 
 and which doubtless was foreseen by those, whoever they may have been, 
 who suggested to Prince Bismarck the advisability of his coming forward as 
 the champion of the Egyptian creditors. It was felt at once in Paris that the 
 time for vacillation had passed. The Republic could not allow it to be said 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 55 
 
 Doubtless he wished France still to be occupied 
 with foreign affairs, so that her internal develop- 
 ment might not be commensurate with Germany's ; 
 for at that day, more than now, there seemed a 
 plausible possibility that the grievances and hatred 
 that did not die with Napoleon Third might seek 
 again a settlement by the sword. Certain it is that 
 the very reasons that have led England to oppose 
 French aggrandizement abroad, have led Germany 
 to favor the same, or, at least, to view with satisfac- 
 tion the foreign complications that require the 
 exportation of troops and treasure. Against France, 
 England has had to protect only her interests 
 abroad, and Germany her interests at home. This 
 may or may not account for the chancellor's un- 
 expected though timely interference ; but the fact 
 remains the same that his voice settled the khe- 
 dive's fate, ' England, France, Austria, Russia, and 
 Italy followed the lead of Germany, and protested 
 against any interference with the commission of 
 control and the non-execution of the tribunal judg- 
 ments. At this juncture the proposal to depose 
 
 that France was unable or unwilling to protect the interests of her subjects 
 in Egypt, while the insignificant interests of the German creditors were 
 safeguarded by the mere expression of Prince Bismarck's will ; and the 
 English government recognized, on the one hand, that France could not be 
 held back any longer, and, on the other, that we could not allow Ger- 
 many to take into her own hands the forcible solution of the Egyptian 
 question." 
 
56 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 the khedive, which the Porte had made to England 
 and France in April, was renewed. This time it 
 was accepted. In place, however, of the sultan's 
 nominee for the succession — Prince Halim, the 
 uncle of Ismail — England and France insisted upon 
 raising Prince Tewfik, the son of Ismail, to the 
 throne. The diplomatic correspondence in discus- 
 sion of this difference consumed a week or more in 
 June ; but on the 26th of that month the sultan at 
 last yielded and signed the firman deposing Ismail 
 in favor of Prince Mehemet Tewfik. Four days 
 afterward the ex-khedive left the shores and 
 troubles of Egypt behind him for an Italian life of 
 luxury. If he had been a pasha in the feudal days 
 of Egypt, he would have forfeited his treasure and 
 his life. As it was, he escaped with the latter, and 
 was given an annual allowance of ;^5o,ooo. 
 
 The character of Ismail Pasha has been variously 
 depicted. He has been painted with all the virtues, 
 on the one hand, and all the vices, on the other, that 
 a monarch can be heir to. Of course neither ex- 
 treme gives the true picture ; and yet there is so 
 much ground for each conception, that one inclines, 
 at first thought, to declare that Ismail was both the 
 blessing and the curse of his country. We think of 
 the development of Egypt during the sixteen years 
 of his reign, of the public works, schools, railways, 
 telegraphs, founded and fostered, and we bless his 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 57 
 
 name ; but then we think of the cost, and the curse 
 follows. We cannot aeree with those who would 
 shield Ismail by regarding him as the dupe of his 
 wicked miiffetish. He may have been deceived and 
 cheated by the latter, but he could not have been alto- 
 gether ignorant of the financial schemes of his treas- 
 urer. They worked in the same groove and to the 
 same end. They were both ambitious, but were 
 not equally extravagant ; for the muffetish grew 
 rich correspondingly as the khedive grew poor, al- 
 though the money poured into the hands of the two 
 alike. The muffetish hoarded while the khedive 
 wasted ; but the desire of the miser was no greater 
 than that of the spendthrift, and he must not bear 
 the blame for both. For the financial woes of 
 Egypt under Ismail some blame, undoubtedly, at- 
 taches to the European money-lenders, whose bar- 
 gains were so disastrou^^o the khedive. Their 
 rates were often merci]^^^ To prove that all the 
 blame is theirs, Mr. Ke^B^Us A Tale of Shame, ^ 
 from the British blue books, in which he supports 
 his arguments with many italics, small capitals, and 
 exclamation points. But they are not conclusive. 
 They do not obliterate the fact of Ismail's ex- 
 travagance. 
 
 If we could wholly lose sight of the different acts 
 
 ' J. Seymour Keay, Spoiling the Egyptians; A Tale of Shame. Told 
 from the Blue Books. 
 
5 8 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WES T IN EG YP T. 
 
 of the financial tragedy, the glory of Ismail's reign 
 would still be marred by the means and measures 
 he employed in carrying out his designs of develop- 
 ment. No obstacle could turn him from his plan, 
 and the teachings of economic science were ignored 
 or misunderstood. We have seen how he bent his 
 energies upon the senseless attempt to refine sugar, 
 when his country furnished no fuel to run his dearly 
 boueht machines. Western civilization was Ismail's 
 model in all things. It was his ambition, from the 
 start, to implant in Egypt European arts and ideas. 
 He thought he could declare into existence what 
 had been the slow development of centuries in more 
 enlightened lands. Even when he must have known 
 that his country was on the verge of ruin, he boasted 
 that Egypt was no longer a part of Africa, but of 
 Europe.' Nothing could be more ridiculous than 
 the story of Ismail's attempt to give his people gov- 
 ernmental representation. He did not propose to 
 establish even a paper constitution ; and he had no 
 idea of giving up any of his prerogatives, when, in 
 1866, he summoned the first Egyptian parliament 
 that had assembled since the day of Mehemet Ali.* 
 
 ' In an interview with Mr. Rivers Wilson, August 23, 1877, Ismail said : 
 " My country is no longer African ; M^e now form part of Europe." From 
 Annual Cycloptzdia for 1877. 
 
 ' Mr. McCoan, in Egypt As It Is, page 117, thus describes the func- 
 tions of the assembly : " In 1866, the Khedive revived the defunct Assembly 
 of Delegates, one of the inchoate reforms projected by Mehemet Ali, but 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 59 
 
 The members of the new parHament had not the 
 faintest Idea of their duties and powers. When the 
 first bill was submitted to them by the khedlve, and 
 they were asked to signify their approval or disap- 
 proval, there was not a dissenting vote against the 
 measure. For, they said, his Highness is the rep- 
 resentative of Allah ; and his will, like that of Allah 
 and the Prophet, is our law. But this political sim- 
 plicity vanished before the end of Ismail's reign, 
 though the voice of the parliament was still recog- 
 nized as the khedive's voice. 
 
 It is only fair to Ismail that a somewhat detailed 
 statement should be made of the amounts expended 
 by him in public works ; for, having seen how one 
 loan after another was received, the question natu- 
 rally arises : Where did the money go ? There was 
 a considerable sum that the greed of money-lenders 
 did not absorb in commissions and interest, and a 
 large part of this went into public works. Mr. Mul- 
 hall gives the following table of works established 
 between 1863 and 1879, i^ his article on ''Egyptian 
 Finance ":' 
 
 which had not met since his death. This germ of an Egyptian Parliament 
 consists of village sheikhs and other provincial notables, elected by the com- 
 munes, and assembles once a year to receive from the Privy Council a re- 
 port on the administration during the twelvemonth. Its function is also to 
 consider and advise on all proposed fiscal changes, new public works, and 
 other matters of national concern that may be laid before it. It has, of 
 course, no legislative power ; but in practice iis recommendations are re- 
 ceived not merely with respect, but are often acted on by the Government." 
 ' Contemporary Review,, Octobox, 1882.. 
 
6o 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 r 
 
 V 
 
 Work. 
 
 Amount. < 
 
 Suez canal . . . 
 
 ;^6,77o,ooo| 
 
 Nile canals . . . 
 
 12, 600, coo 
 
 Bridges .... 
 
 2,150,000 
 
 Sugar-mills . 
 
 6v 100,000 
 
 Harbor Alexandria 
 
 2,542.000 
 
 Suez docks . . . 
 
 1,400,000 
 
 Alex, water-works 
 
 300,000 
 
 Railways . . . 
 
 13,361,000 
 
 Telegraphs . 
 
 853,000 
 
 Lighthouses . 
 
 188,000 
 
 Observation. 
 After deducting value of shares sold. 
 Made 8,400 miles at ^^1,500 per mile. 
 Built 430 at ^5,000 per bridge. 
 Built 64, with machinery, eU. 
 Greenfield and Elliot, contract. 
 Dussaud Bros. 
 
 Price agreed by Paris Syndicate. 
 Length 910 miles, new. 
 Length 5,200 miles, new. 
 Built 15 on Red Sea and Mediterranean. 
 
 ^46,264,000 
 
 We see thus that Ismail expended on works of 
 public utility not less than forty-six millions sterling. 
 Now, as the loans contracted by him netted only 
 <C about forty-five millions, his admirers and defenders 
 say at once that he did not squander, but that he 
 spent all for the public weal. But there Is the item 
 of revenue, which these writers do not consider, and 
 which yielded the government. In the sixteen years 
 of Ismail's reign, not far from one hundred and 
 fifty millions. How large a part of this was wasted 
 by Ismail we can only guess ; but we may be sure 
 that all those millions did not go toward defraying 
 necessary governmental expenses. The canals, rail- 
 ways, bridges, docks, eU,, were the best work of 
 Ismail's reign If the financial side of the question be 
 left out of consideration. They brought in, it is 
 true, a certain revenue, but this was by no means 
 equal to the interest on the debts incurred to make 
 the improvements. Where national development is 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN, 6 1 
 
 only secured by contracting with each change a 
 counterbalancing debt, it is doubtful if the changes 
 can be considered beneficial. There were, however, 
 certain other outlays by Ismail that were of unques- 
 tionable advantage to the land, even though they 
 produced no revenue. He established 4,632 public ^ 
 schools, with 5,850 teachers, drawing salaries that 
 ranged from £2\ to ^84 a year, and. expended in 
 the sixteen years of his reign no less than ^3,600,000 
 for this purpose. He organized village banks — we 
 will say with philanthropic intent to protect the fel- 
 lahin from the money-lenders^and lost ^900,000 
 by the experiment. And he lost largely on the 
 shares he took in the Nile Steam Navigation Com- 
 pany. On the other hand, just at the time of the 
 financial difficulties of 1873, ^^ embarked upon a 
 war with Abyssinia which despoiled the Egyptian 
 treasury of not less than ^3,000,000. He squan- 
 dered a vast sum in building palaces and theatres 
 and in the entertainment of distinguished foreigners. 
 His expenditures at the time of the opening of the 
 Suez canal were simply enormous. He gave bribes 
 and presents at all times with true Oriental prodi- 
 gality. Even if he could have afforded these out- 
 lays, they would have been foolish ; as it was, they 
 were wicked. And yet, as Mr. Mulhall says, 
 "■ whatever the faults, he raised Egypt in the scale 
 of nations " ; for there was an actual progress be- 
 
62 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 tween the death of Said and the accession of Tewfik. 
 It may be measured in the following table, prepared 
 by Mr. Mulhall : ' 
 
 Progress of Egypt in Seventeen Years. 
 
 
 Last Year of 
 
 Last Year of 
 
 
 Said Pasha. 
 
 Ismail Pasha. 
 
 
 1862. 
 
 1879. 
 
 Acres tilled 
 
 4,052,000 
 
 5,425,000 
 
 Value of imports 
 
 ^1,991,000 
 
 ^5,410,000 
 
 Value of exports 
 
 ;^4,454,ooo 
 
 ;£ 13,8 10,000 
 
 Revenue .... 
 
 ^4,937,000 
 
 ;£'8,562,000 
 
 Public debt 
 
 ;£'3,3oo,ooo 
 
 ^98,540,000 
 
 Number of public schools . 
 
 185 
 
 4,817 
 
 Railways — miles . 
 
 275 
 
 1,185 
 
 Telegraphs '' . . . 
 
 630 
 
 5,820 
 
 Canals "... 
 
 44,000 
 
 52,400 
 
 Population " . 
 
 . 4,883,000 
 
 5,518,000 
 
 If from this table could be excluded that decided- 
 ly negative item of progress denoted by the public 
 debt in 1879, there would remain a good showing 
 for Ismail ; but that one item cancels all the others, 
 even as it was the primal cause of Ismail's over- 
 throw. 
 
 There was another reform, which has not yet 
 been noticed because bearing no direct relation to 
 finances, that was accomplished during Ismail's 
 reign, and for which he must, at least indirectly, 
 be credited — the reform in judicial procedure. 
 There had come to be a very pernicious Increase 
 
 * Contemporary Review, October, 1S82, 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 63 
 
 of consular jurisdiction in Egypt after the death of 
 Mehemet Ali. The native had to bring a suit 
 against a foreigner in the foreigner's consulate, 
 where he was almost sure to be denied justice. 
 With as little chance of justice, also, the for- 
 eign plaintiff had to sue the foreign debtor in 
 the latter s consulate. Some consuls even claimed 
 the right to sit in judgment of cases in which 
 the natives were defendants. The government 
 suffered too. It was estimated, says Mr. McCoan,' 
 that, in the four years preceding 1868, consular 
 influence extorted from the government ;^2,88o,- 
 000 in satisfaction of claims, without judicial 
 sanction of any kind. '' The whole system,'* he 
 goes on to say, ''was, in fact, a scandal and a 
 denial of justice all around." It was, if anything, 
 worse in criminal than in civil matters. The abuses 
 were so flagrant that Nubar Pasha, in 1867, pro- 
 posed a scheme of reform to the khedive. It was 
 submitted to France, but was unfavorably received. 
 England, however, when approached on the subject, 
 promised to give the reform her hearty support, 
 provided the other powers would concur. They 
 did so in the fall of 1869. Negotiations, however, 
 were interrupted for a time by the war between 
 France and Germany ; and when they were re- 
 newed, in 1 87 1, the sultan entered his veto against 
 
 ' Egypt As It Is, p. 276. 
 
64 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 the scheme, though he afterward withdrew it at the 
 demand of England and Russia. France now 
 offered objections once more, and the negotiations 
 dragged. Some of her amendments were accepted ; 
 but it was not until December, 1875, ^^^^ ^^ scheme 
 was finally agreed to. 
 
 The reform was inaugurated in February, 1876, 
 to continue in force for five years. It is thus de- 
 scribed by Mr. McCoan :^ 
 
 As now constituted the new system includes three tri- 
 bunals of first instance — one at Alexandria, a second at 
 Cairo, and a third ... at Zagazig — and a Court of 
 Appeal, which also sits at Alexandria. Of the inferior 
 courts, that at Alexandria — divided into two chambers, 
 with equal jurisdiction — consists of fourteen judges, of 
 whom six are natives and eight Europeans ; that at Cairo, 
 of three natives and five foreigners ; and that at Zagazig, 
 of three natives and four foreigners. The nominal chiefs 
 of all three are natives, but foreign vice-presidents actually 
 direct their proceedings. In the Court of Appeal the alien 
 element is still more preponderant, the bench of eleven 
 judges there consisting of seven foreigners and only four 
 natives. . . . The judicial and other personnel is thus 
 complete, and the jurisdiction exercised includes all civil 
 disputes between the government and natives on the one 
 hand and foreigners on the other, as also those between 
 foreigners of different nationalities ; and all suits and regis- 
 trations of sale and mortgage whatsoever of real property. 
 
 ^ Egypt As It Is, p. 280. 
 
THE ROAD TO RUIN. 65 
 
 Such was the reform inaugurated ; and a most 
 excellent one it was. Not forgetting that Nubar 
 was its author, we give the credit of it to Ismail's 
 reign, just as we lay the blame of the muffetish's 
 villany at his door. If all his changes had been as 
 wisely carried out, his ambitious designs of raising 
 Egypt to the plane of European civilization would 
 not have failed so utterly of realization. In this 
 connection we must refer to Ismail's appointment, 
 first of Sir Samuel Baker and then of Colonel Gor- 
 don, as governors-general of the Sudan and of his 
 apparently earnest attempts to suppress the slave 
 trade. He gave Gordon unlimited power to '' pun- 
 ish, change, and dismiss " officials, and assured him 
 that Egypt would loyally support England in this 
 "• measure of humanity and civilization." We shall 
 see later how Baker and Gordon succeeded in their 
 missions. 
 
 Long before his collapse the shrewd Ismail must 
 have known that his reign was doomed ; but he kept 
 on his high-handed course to the end. The discharge 
 of the European administrators and the virtual repu- 
 diation of debts were his last acts of bravado. Pow- 
 erless and empty-handed, he made no protest against 
 the firman of deposition. But "■ it would be a mis- 
 l take," writes Mr. Edward Dicey '' to attribute 
 \ Ismail Pasha's collapse to lack of personal courage. 
 
 ' The Nineteenth Century, February, 1880. 
 
(i6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 I should doubt his possessing any exceptional physi- 
 cal bravery ; but he had to a remarkable degree the 
 gambler's instinct and the gambler's boldness. He 
 was not the man to forfeit his stakes while there was 
 a chance, however remote, of holding on to his win- 
 nings. He threw up the game simply and solely 
 because he knew better than any one else that he 
 had absolutely no cards in his hand." His people 
 suffered him to depart into exile without a protest 
 or a murmur. It is true that '' the resident European 
 community" — to quote Mr. Dicey's words once more 
 — '' to whom he had always been friendly, and who 
 had partaken freely of his lavish hospitality, stood 
 by him in his disgrace, and his departure into exile 
 was accompanied by sincere expressions of regret 
 on the part of the court circle and the European 
 embassy, but without one solitary manifestation of 
 sympathy on the part of the Egyptian population." 
 
IV. 
 
 MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 
 
 PRINCE MEHEMET TEWFIK was not yet 
 twenty-seven years old when he ascended the 
 vice-royal throne of Egypt. He was a very differ- 
 ent man from his father. He had not his inordinate 
 ambition, and lacked, consequently, some of the 
 energy as well as the crafty diplomacy of Ismail. 
 He had not, like his father, served an apprentice- 
 ship of experience in the gay capitals of Europe ; 
 but he was not without the culture that European 
 masters can inspire. He had a good knowledge of 
 French and English, speaking both languages 
 fluently. It may be doubted if he was as enlight- 
 ened a prince as his great uncle, Prince Halim, the 
 exile of Constantinople, who was the choice of the 
 sultan for successor to Ismail ; but under the law of 
 succession in Egypt, established by the firman of 
 1866, England could not well have supported Halim, 
 even if she had preferred him, which she did not. 
 The Porte had to yield. Its eagerness to depose 
 Ismail is not to be attributed to any over-sensitive- 
 
68 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ness at the scandal of his financial follies, but rather 
 to the fact — which the sultan foresaw — that if the 
 Porte did not depose the khedive, England and 
 France would. Making, thus, a concession to the 
 inevitable, the sultan would have still maintained 
 the semblance of his suzerain authority if he could 
 have named the successor. But this was not per- 
 mitted by England and France, who, by their dicta- 
 tion at this time, showed that they possessed the 
 virtual control of affairs in Egypt. 
 
 And yet, after the deposition, England at least 
 was loth to put her power further to the test. The 
 opposition at home was to be feared and a definite 
 policy was not outlined ; and the new khedive was 
 left to follow his own whim largely in the formation 
 of his government. France did not relish this inac- 
 tion on the part of England, and, for herself, insisted 
 that M. de Blignieres should continue to act as 
 representative. Germany and the other Powers 
 having retired from participation in the discussion 
 of Egyptian affairs, England and France at last 
 came to a compromise. They agreed not to insist 
 upon the reinstatement of their representatives in 
 the khedive's cabinet, but, instead, upon the appoint- 
 ment by the khedive of two comptrollers, one of 
 whom should be nominated by France and the 
 other by England. France named M. de Bli- 
 gnieres, who was accepted by Tewfik with much 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 69 
 
 dissatisfaction. England did not insist upon the 
 appointment of Mr. Rivers Wilson, though losing 
 thereby some prestige, but named Major Baring 
 instead. Their powers were not defined ; but it 
 was understood that they would be as unlimited as 
 France and England might choose to make them. 
 In the meantime there had been several ministe- 
 rial changes since Tewfik's accession. He had 
 placed the ministry under the leadership of Sherif 
 Pasha. None but natives received portfolios. The 
 ministry thus formed indicated a reactionary spirit, 
 and was totally out of sympathy with the reform 
 movement instigated by Nubar Pasha. Tewfik 
 I feared to depart at once from the ways of Ismail ; 
 for he regarded his position as somewhat insecure 
 so long as Ismail's covert overtures to the Porte 
 were received. The ex-khedive sought to obtain 
 permission of the sultan to live in Cairo. ^ This 
 could not have been allowed without prejudicing 
 the stability of the Egyptian government ; but all 
 fear of the possibility was ended when, on August 
 14, the firman of investiture was presented to 
 Tewfik. Four days after, the Sherif ministry was 
 dismissed and a new one formed, of which the khe- 
 dive himself assumed the presidency. But this was 
 short-lived ; for, on September 2 1 , Tewfik gave up 
 his position of minister and appointed Riaz Pasha 
 to the presidency in his place. Riaz had been min- 
 
^0 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ister of the interior under Nubar, with whom he 
 was in complete sympathy. It would seem, how- 
 ever, as if the ministry should have been intrusted 
 to Nubar, the most enlightened man of Egypt ; but 
 Riaz was preferred by France and England because, 
 in case of differences arising, he would hardly have 
 the courage or strength to oppose the Dual Control, 
 which was a consideration of some moment now that 
 the Powers had no representatives in the cabinet. 
 Then, too, Nubar was not popular among the 
 natives, being an Armenian and a Christian. At 
 the same time that the khedive's government was 
 placed upon an apparently stable footing, the bur- 
 dens of the fellahin were materially lightened by 
 unusually abundant crops. They were also less 
 harassed than formerly by the tax-gatherers, who no 
 longer forced money from them a year or more be- 
 fore it was due, but were content merely to collect 
 arrearages. There seemed thus to be a brighter 
 sky above Egypt than in the days of Ismail Pasha. 
 But there was the great question of finance still 
 remaining to be solved. To this the comptrollers 
 turned their first attention. The difficulty that met 
 them at the outset was of an international charac- 
 ter. It will be remembered that Baron Rothschild 
 had withheld a part of his loan at the beginning of 
 the year, because individual creditors had obtained 
 liens against the daira domains, which Ismail and 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 7 1 
 
 his family had ceded to the state. The domains 
 could not be mortgaged to the Rothschilds until the 
 liens had been satisfied ; for their legality had been 
 upheld by the International Courts, whose law was 
 that of a code based upon French law. This code, 
 now, could not be deviated from or modified in the 
 least degree except with the consent of all the Pow- 
 ers represented in the International Courts. But it 
 was evidently a matter of right and necessity that 
 funds borrowed to lighten certain burdens of the 
 state should be expended to that end and not in the 
 payment of the claims of individuals. An indepen- 
 dent Power would have so decided at once ; but 
 Egypt had to abide by the code, while the comptrol- 
 lers proceeded to try to secure the consent of the 
 Powers concerned. This was a difficult task. Some 
 of the lesser Powers were jealous of the Anglo-French 
 control, and had no desire to act upon its bidding. 
 Italy and Austria declined to sanction any change 
 in the international code. Major Baring and M. de 
 Blignieres themselves went to Vienna to expostulate, 
 and with the strong influence of the nations they 
 represented they were at last able, in November, to 
 effect a compromise, by which all the liens on the 
 domains, obtained before their mortgage to the 
 Rothschilds on February 3, 1879, were to be satis- 
 fied from the unpaid balance of the loan ; while, with 
 respect to all other debts, the Rothschilds were to 
 
72 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 have the first mortgage on the lands. This was ac- 
 comphshed only by tedious negotiations. In the 
 month of November, also, the khedive issued the 
 following decree concerning the powers of the comp- 
 trollers-general : 
 
 Article i. The Comptrollers-General shall have in 
 financial matters the most complete powers of investigation 
 into all the public services, including those whose receipts 
 have a special destination by virtue of decrees and con- 
 tracts. Ministers and functionaries of every rank shall be 
 bound to give every information and to furnish every 
 document required by the Comptrollers and their agents. 
 The Minister of Finance especially shall furnish the Con- 
 trol every week with a detailed statement of all receipts 
 and expenditures at his Ministry. Every other Adminis- 
 tration shall every month furnish a similar statement of 
 receipts and expenditures. 
 
 Art. 2. The Comptrollers shall agree upon the public 
 services over which they shall exercise the rights of super- 
 vision and control conferred by this decree. 
 
 Art. 3. The Governments of France and Great Brit- 
 ain having consented, for the moment, that the Comptrol- 
 lers shall take no part in the management of the Adminis- 
 tration and financial services, the Comptrollers shall for 
 the present confine themselves to the communication to 
 us or to our Ministers of such observations as their inves- 
 tigations give rise to. They shall also communicate to 
 the Commission of the Debt all facts of a nature to inter- 
 est the creditors of the consolidated Debt. They may 
 also, on account of such facts, convene the Commissioners 
 
MEHEME TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 73 
 
 of Public Debt to examine such questions as the Comp- 
 trollers or the Commissioners of Public Debt may think 
 advisable to discuss in common. 
 
 Art. 4. The Comptrollers shall have the rank of 
 Ministers at the Council [of Ministers], and shall have a 
 seat and a consultive voice there. 
 
 Art. 5. At the end of each year, and more frequently 
 if necessary, the Comptrollers shall communicate to us 
 their work in a report, which shall be published by them 
 and inserted in the Monitciir Egyptien. 
 
 Art. 6. The Comptrollers can only be removed from 
 their posts with the consent of their respective Govern- 
 ments. They shall name their own officials and fix their 
 salaries. 
 
 Art. 7. The expenses of the department of the Con- 
 trol shall be fixed by the Comptrollers and approved by 
 the Ministers. 
 
 Art. 8. The amount required by them shall be paid 
 to them monthly. 
 
 Art. 9. Our Ministers are charged with the execu- 
 tion of this decree. 
 
 [Signed] Mehemet Tewfik, 
 
 RiAZ Pasha. 
 
 November 15, 1879. 
 
 The remainder of the year 1879 was consumed by 
 the comptrollers in drafting a plan for the settlement 
 of the financial question. Their report was pre- 
 sented to the khedive in January, 1880. Its most 
 important suggestion was that a line of demarcation 
 should be drawn at December 31, 1879; and that 
 all debts contracted before that date should be set- 
 
74 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 tied by a law of liquidation, which should protect 
 the Egyptian government from all suits based on 
 claims of earlier date than 1880. It had been un- 
 derstood, when the comptrollers were appointed the 
 previous summer, that a committee of liquidation 
 should be instituted to draft such a law as the comp- 
 trollers now suggested and, further, to devise some 
 such scheme for the final settlement of financial 
 difficulties as was outlined in the report of the 
 comptrollers. The commission was now appointed 
 with the approval of England, France, Italy, Austria, 
 Germany, and Egypt, and Sir Rivers Wilson was 
 chosen its president. The khedive, in a decree 
 issued in March, outlined the duties of the commis- 
 sion. It was to investigate thoroughly the finances 
 of the country, to draw up a law of liquidation be- 
 tween Egypt and her creditors which should be 
 binding on all concerned, and to make general pro- 
 vision to ease Egypt of her burdens. The govern- 
 ments represented in the commission agreed to 
 accept its decisions as binding on the International 
 Courts, and to request jointly, after having given 
 their own approval, that the other Powers represent- 
 ed in the International Courts should also consent 
 to the new law. 
 
 The work of the commission was completed by 
 the middle of July, and the khedive at once signed 
 the law of liquidation. It provided for the payment 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 75 
 
 of the floating debt by giving thirty per cent, cash 
 and seventy per cent, in the bonds of a new pref- 
 erence debt. The national debt was converted into 
 unified and preference stock, the former bearing in- 
 terest at four per cent, and the latter at five per cent. 
 The unified stock, amounting to ^57,776,340, was 
 secured by the land tax, and the preference stock, 
 amounting to ^22,587,800, was secured by the rail- 
 ways, telegraphs, etc. The daira debt of ^9,5 1 2,870, 
 and the domain debt of ;^8,499,620 were secured 
 respectively by the khedive's estates and his family's 
 estates. The mukabala amounted to ^7,500,000. 
 The entire indebtedness was thus placed at over 
 one hundred and five millions sterling-. The 
 mukabala tax was abolished, and a source of revenue 
 cut off; but it was thought that the daira, being 
 freed now from debt, could be made to yield a 
 revenue enough larger to counterbalance the loss of 
 the mukabala tax. The khedive had previously 
 signed decrees abolishing this tax and certain others 
 that had been declared by the commissioners of in- 
 quiry to be annoying to the tax-payer and of little 
 profit to the state. The relief to Egypt by the new 
 law was to be found in the reduction of the interest 
 on the unified debt to four per cent. That would 
 at once bring the expenses of the government below 
 the sum of the revenues and furnish a surplus that 
 could be applied to the service of the debt. The 
 
J 6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 practical working of the law secured this very result. 
 In t88i, after the discharge of all obligations, there 
 remained a surplus of ^321,265, which enabled the 
 government to cancel nearly half a million of the 
 funded debt. ''The Liquidation Law of 1880," 
 says Mr. Mulhall/ '' first put the finances on a 
 sound footing and ... its effects have been 
 just and beneficial." 
 
 Other causes, also, worked to secure the pros- 
 perity of 1880. There was an abundant harvest, 
 and trade was vastly improved by the readjustment 
 of the land tax and by the abolition of taxes in 
 kind. In short, the condition of the fellah was sub- 
 stantially bettered ; and when the fellah is happy, 
 Egypt prospers. The improvement in the national 
 credit was the cause of a great influx of foreign 
 capital, chiefly from France, which was directed 
 toward the development of the agricultural resources 
 of the land and toward the erection of buildings 
 and the improvement of mechanical appliances. 
 Money was loaned at a lower rate of interest than 
 formerly, and as a consequence the price of land 
 rose rapidly. At the same time attention was 
 roused to secure the advancement of the people by 
 giving them better facilities for education. The 
 great Moslem university of Cairo instructed twelve 
 thousand students in the philosophy of the Koran, 
 
 ^ The Contejnporary Revietv, October, 1882. 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE, 77 
 
 but gave them no broader education than the word 
 of the Prophet required. This was not enough for 
 a country that was no longer isolated from the 
 laws and learning of unbelievers, as it had been for 
 the centuries preceding. The actual contact with 
 European nations now made it necessary to cul- 
 tivate the learning of the West. A commission 
 was appointed to secure this end. 
 
 But the reform and prosperity were not to be 
 without their hindrances. The Egyptians had had 
 little thought for themselves while their condition 
 seemed hopeless. Suffering, they were content to 
 exist. But now their prosperity seemed to arouse 
 the prejudices of race and religion and stirred the 
 people to complain of the foreign influence and in- 
 terference in Egypt. And though the prosperity 
 was, as we have seen, in large part due to the 
 foreign direction, there was some natural ground 
 for complaint. The people could not look without 
 envy and jealousy on the foreigners who were draw- 
 ing immense salaries from the Egyptian treasury. 
 Fifty thousand pounds a year was paid to European 
 officials in the national debt office alone/ There 
 
 ' The following salaries paid to foreign oflficials in the different depart- 
 ments were reported by Sir Edward Malet to his government on May i8, 
 1882 : Cabinet of the Khedive, ;^3,ooo (Egyptian pounds, ^i being about 
 equal to $5) ; Maieh Sanieh, £(i'^b ; Presidency of the Council of Ministers, 
 ;^452 ; Teft of Gizeh and Gizereh, ^436 ; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
 ;^2,o88 ; Ministry of Finance, ^17,200 ; General Control, ;^I4,I0I ; Di- 
 
'/?> THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 might not have been complaint if salaries had gone 
 solely to comptrollers, commissioners, and judges ; 
 but there were, besides, French or English officials 
 to direct the customs, the railways, the telegraphs, 
 the harbors of Alexandria, of Port Said, and of Suez, 
 the coast-guard, the light-houses, the post-office, the 
 finance department of the government, the public 
 works, and the administration of the domain and 
 daira lands. In all these offices, furthermore, the 
 subordinate positions were divided almost equally 
 between Frenchmen and natives. Major Baring 
 had been replaced by Mr. Colvin as English comp- 
 troller, and M. de Blignieres had assumed the lead 
 In control in consequence of his seniority and greater 
 experience in Egyptian affairs. In every way 
 
 rection of the Cadastral Survey, £26,']^'^ ; General Inspection of the 
 Octrois, £,i,TiQ>\ Light-House Service, ;^ 10, 239 ; Mint, ^^144; Ministry 
 of War, ;^8,35i ; Ministry of Marine, £i,(:)f^\ ; Ministry of Public In- 
 struction, ;^7,g05 ; Administration of the Wakfij, £i,0'})W Ministry of the 
 Interior, ;[^3,g78; Government of Alexandria, ^780 ; of Port Said, ;^870 ; 
 of Suez, ^163 ; of El Arish, £%^ ; Municipality of Alexandria, ;^540 ; 
 Cairo Police, ;^i,567 ; Alexandria Police, ;^2,793 ; Suppression of the 
 Slave Trade, _;^2,052 ; Marine Sanitary Council and Quarantine, ;^5,2go ; 
 Council of Public Health, ;^6,o84 ; Ministry of Justice, ;^6,848 ; Ministry 
 of Public Works, ;^26,2i6 ; Railroad Administration, £2(^,']b\ ; Telegraph 
 Administration, ;i^6,i93 ; Port of Alexandria, ;i^3,68i ; Administration of 
 Customs, _^i6,647 ; Administration of the Port, ;!^I9,509 ; Postal Steamer, 
 ;^i6,94i ; Salines, £\ti2 ; Administration of the Public Domain, ;^25,042 ; 
 Daira Sanieh, ;^I9,672 ; Public Debt, £\(i,ii'j ; Parquet Administration, 
 ;^3.o83 ; Court of Appeals, ;i^i4,97i ; Alexandria Court of the First In- 
 stance, ;^22,344; Court of the First Instance at Cairo, £ii\,2\'i ; Court of 
 the First Instance at Mansurah, ;,^8,869. Total, ^373, 491. 
 
ME HE MET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 79 
 
 France had been more aggressive than her ally, and 
 hers was now the leading influence in Egypt. It 
 was even whispered that the prophecy that the 
 Mediterranean would one day be " a French lake " 
 was destined to fulfillment. French accessions in 
 northern Africa encouraged this kind of talk. But 
 it mattered not to the Egyptians whether French 
 or English controlled : they were all alike foreign- 
 ers, and on that account hated. Both were bad, 
 and either was as bad as the other. That they were 
 apparently robbing the natives of the salaries that 
 seemed rightfully theirs was enough to make the 
 inborn hatred intense. 
 
 The khedive, however, had more tolerance for the 
 foreigners and more sympathy with the reforms 
 they suggested. He believed that the comptrollers 
 had the welfare of Egypt at heart, and he was ready 
 to show his confidence by awaiting the development 
 of the plans undertaken. This attitude, of course, 
 tended to alienate the khedive from his people. 
 Among them a national feeling had been aroused. 
 During 1881 this feeling was crystallized into a rec- 
 ognized national movement, which was to culmi- 
 nate, in 1882, in the cry of '' Egypt for the Egyp- 
 tians." There was only one place where this move- 
 ment could take form, and that was in the army. 
 Up to 1 88 1 this was still composed almost entirely 
 of Egyptians ; but with the accession of Tewfik, in 
 
80 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 1879, ^he army's grievances had begun. The sultan, 
 notwithstanding the firman that Ismail had so dearly 
 purchased, insisted upon enforcing military restric- 
 tions. The limit of enlistment was placed at 18,000 
 men. Next to the interference of France or Eng- 
 land, that of the Porte was most unpopular among 
 Egyptians. The curtailment of the army, however, 
 might have been endured ; but the innovations that 
 were beofun with 1881 were unbearable. The 
 special grievance was the replacement of native 
 officers by Turks. 
 
 The leading spirit among the disaffected troops 
 was Ahmed Arabi Bey. Like many another who 
 has moulded the destinies of kingdoms and peoples 
 in the East, Arabi was born in the humblest sur- 
 roundings. His parents were fellahin, who toiled in 
 the wheat-fields of Lower Egypt by day, and slept 
 by night in a squalid hut, built of mud and straw. 
 We may suppose that Arabi' s boyhood did not dif- 
 fer materially from that of others of his class. He 
 grew, however, to a stature and strength that made 
 him noticeable among his fellows ; and in his earliest 
 manhood he was drafted into the military service of 
 Said ; for the latter, like the great king of Prussia, 
 loved a man of fine form. But, like that king, he 
 also had a temper that sometimes got the better of 
 his love, and at one of those times he had Arabi, 
 for some slight fault, publicly bastinadoed and dis- 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 8 1 
 
 missed from the army. The latter now entered the uni- 
 versity at Cairo, where he devoted himself to the fanat- 
 ical studies enjoined by his religion and won for him- 
 self a reputation for learning, piety, and good morals. 
 Loring Pasha, who knew him at that time, writes : 
 
 He was a fanatic in his close attention to the duties of 
 his religion, rigidly following its superstitious customs, 
 never neglecting his numerous prayers and ablutions, or his 
 attendance at the mosque. Intimate with the sheiks and 
 ulemas, he was always looked upon as a pillar of the faith.' 
 
 Upon Ismail's accession to the throne, Arabi re- 
 entered the army, where the influence of his studies 
 brought him into prominence. Soon afterward he 
 married the daughter of a nurse to one of the 
 princes, and this connection gave him some acquaint- 
 ance with royal affairs. But his power and popu- 
 larity really had their beginning in a secret society 
 that was organized in Cairo after the close of the 
 Abyssinian campaign, in which Arabi had held the 
 rank of lieutenant-colonel. His chief coadjutor in 
 the formation of this society was Ali Pasha, and 
 their object was to encourage a feeling of opposi- 
 tion amonof the fellah officers to the condition of 
 affairs imposed on Egypt by the European control. 
 Arabi had always been the friend of the fellahin, 
 from whom he sprang ; and it was the desire of his 
 life to secure their rights. 
 
 ' W. W. Loring, A Confederate Soldier in Egypt, p. 193. 
 
82 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 When Tewfik ascended the throne, Arabi was 
 made colonel, and his influence steadily increased. 
 In 1 88 1, therefore, the disaffected troops looked to 
 him as their natural leader. His own experience 
 under Said gave Arabi a sympathy for those officers 
 who were removed without cause that Circassians 
 and Turks might be given places, and he now be- 
 came the champion of those who had been thus 
 wronged. In February, Arabi and the other colo- 
 nels demanded the dismissal of the minister of war, 
 a Circassian who favored the Turks and hated the 
 xAirabs. As soon as the minister heard of the de- 
 mand, he had Arabi and two colleagues arrested ; 
 but they were rescued from prison by Arabi's regi- 
 ment and borne off in triumph. The Circassian, 
 Osman, was removed, and Mahmud Sami was ap- 
 pointed to his place. For some months, now, the 
 distrust existing between the military party and the 
 khedive increased. The colonels feared assassina- 
 tion, and the khedive a revolution. The rupture 
 came on September 9, in the so-called " Insurrec- 
 tion of the Colonels." On the morning of that 
 day Arabi submitted a document to the khedive, 
 calling for the dismissal of the entire ministry, for 
 the drafting of a constitution, and for the increase 
 of the army to its limit, 18,000 men. On the after- 
 noon of the same day, with 4,000 troops and 
 eighteen cannon, the champion of the army marched 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHJ^DIVE. 83 
 
 to the palace to get the khedive's answer. Arabi 
 intimated that, if the demands were not met, Tew- 
 fik's successor would be forthcoming. And still the 
 khedive demurred ; but only for a time. He at 
 length named a ministry — which, however, was un- 
 satisfactory to Arabi. The latter demanded that 
 the formation of the cabinet be left to Sherif Pasha. 
 Sherif was second only to Nubar among Egyptian 
 statesmen ; but he utterly lacked the latter's firm- 
 ness of character. This was to Arabi's liking ; for 
 he wanted not a master, but a slave. Sherif was, 
 moreover, a good Mohammedan ; and he was there- 
 fore better liked by the people than Nubar, the Ar- 
 menian. The khedive gave way to the inevitable, 
 and on September 14 Sherif formed a new ministry. 
 The foreign Powers now awoke to the apparent 
 danger of a still more formidable insurrection. As 
 Mr. McCarthy rhetorically stated it : 
 
 A wondering world began to ask whether Arabi Bey 
 was the Cromwell of a great movement against an Egyp-' 
 tian Charles ; the Garibaldi of a struggle for national lib- 
 erty against a foreign rule ; a scheming political adven- 
 turer, fighting for his own hand like Hal of the Wynd, or 
 only a puppet, whose actions were guided by mysterious 
 unseen strings.^ 
 
 England was somewhat alarmed, but not to the ex- 
 tent of wishing to intervene herself. She wanted 
 
 ' Justin McCarthy, M.P., England Under Gladstone, ch. xiii. 
 
84 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Turkey to send troops to Egypt to overawe the 
 spirit of insurrection. But France would not con- 
 sent to any kind of Turkish intervention. The sul- 
 tan, however, was not to be baffled. The wily Abdul 
 Hamid did not propose to let Egypt drift away from 
 his suzerainty again to the length that it had under 
 Ismail. He may not have had any determined 
 policy. If he had, we are certainly ignorant of it. 
 We simply know that he kept a jealous guard of his 
 authority. From this time on there were intimations 
 of mysterious signs of secret correspondence, first 
 between the sultan and the khedive, and afterward 
 between the sultan and Arabi ; but the signs were 
 almost never supplemented with proofs. Abdul 
 Hamid did, however, take some steps openly that 
 indicated a considerable degree of independence. 
 He announced on September 20 that he had decided 
 to send an emissary to Cairo. Both France and 
 England protested ; but, notwithstanding this, he 
 dispatched two emissaries, October 3. Two days 
 after this Lord Granville, the English minister of 
 foreign affairs, proposed to M. St. Hilaire, who held 
 the same portfolio for France, that the khedive be 
 advised to receive the envoys, but '' firmly to oppose 
 any interference on their part in the internal admin- 
 istration of Egypt."' A joint note to this effect was 
 sent to the khedive. 
 
 ^ Quoted from William Stone, M. A., Shall We Annex Egypt ? 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHEDIVE. 85 
 
 No sooner had the envoys arrived in Egypt than 
 the feeHng against the unbeHevers began to show 
 itself more openly. It is thought that the sultan 
 sent secret messages to encourage a show of bitter- 
 ness on the part of the students of the university of 
 Cairo.' The foreign population became alarmed at 
 the evidences of hatred and hostility. To reassure 
 them, and to protect them if necessar}^ an English 
 and a French vessel were sent at once to Alexan- 
 dria. This move naturally excited the disapproval 
 of the sultan ; but Lord Granville said, through the 
 English ambassador at Constantinople, that the war- 
 ships must remain at Alexandria so long as the en- 
 voys remained in Egypt. The sultan hastily decided, 
 therefore, to recall the envoys, and they left Egypt 
 on October 19. Though their stay had been short, 
 they had succeeded in fomenting the ill-feeling 
 against England. 
 
 It was known that France was occupied with the 
 new acquisition of Tunis, and all attention was 
 turned to England with fear that she was bent on 
 
 ^ This great university has always been the hot-bed of Moslem fanati- 
 cism. When I arrived in Egypt, two months after the emissaries had been 
 recalled, it was considered almost dangerous for foreigners to visit the uni- 
 versity. A party of us went, however, and suffered no other indignity than 
 hisses from the students whenever our faces were turned away. Some friends 
 of mine were less fortunate in their visit a few weeks later. Not only were 
 they hissed, but missiles were thrown at them, and they were actually set 
 upon and driven from the place. The insult was prompted by the feeling 
 that found vent a few months later in the massacre of Alexandria. 
 
86 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 annexation. To allay this fear it became necessary 
 for the British government, in November, to instruct 
 Sir Edward Malet, her consular representative in 
 Egypt, to assure the khedive's government that the 
 British policy was opposed to intervention and for- 
 eign aggrandizement, and would not favor the sepa- 
 ration of Egypt from Turkey, nor contend for more 
 than the fulfillment of the sultan's firmans as already 
 promulgated. It was declared, however, that this 
 policy would not be maintained if disorders became 
 prevalent. This was a firm note for Mr. Gladstone's 
 government, which had not sought a control in the 
 affairs of Egypt, but had been compelled, rather, by 
 the circumstance of governmental inheritance, to ac- 
 cept what Disraeli bequeathed. The note had the 
 effect of averting for a time the dread of British occu- 
 pation. The feeling of security was still further 
 increased by a joint letter addressed to the khedive 
 by Lord Granville and M. Leon Gambetta, who 
 had been called to the presidency of the French 
 cabinet, November 14. Its purpose was less to 
 calm the nationalists than to strengthen the khe- 
 dive' s government against the military party. The 
 letter declared that England and France considered 
 the maintenance of the khedive's power the sole 
 guaranty of the present and future welfare of Egypt. 
 Soon after this, when all was apparently quiet in 
 Egypt, I visited that country, and was privileged to 
 
MEHEMET TEIVFIK, KHEDIVE. 87 
 
 have an Interview with the khedlve, January 2, 1882, 
 in which he dwek at some length upon the reforms 
 he was endeavoring to introduce. He desired and 
 was aiming at three great reforms, reHgious, poHt- 
 ical, and educational. On the last he rightly laid 
 the greatest stress. 
 
 For [said the kh^dive] while the people remain igno- 
 rant, reform in any direction is impossible ; but let learn- 
 ing be spread among the people and throughout the land, 
 and political and religious reform will follow as a natural 
 consequence in the path of educational advancement. 
 For this reason I am devoting my greatest energies to the 
 spread of learning. The people must know more than 
 the Koran ; they must know geography and arithmetic 
 and algebra and the sciences and the modern languages. 
 All these pursuits and studies are now being advanced ; 
 schools are being founded in all the large towns of Egypt, 
 both Upper and Lower, and now the numbers have in- 
 creased from the ten or fifteen thousand I found on my 
 accession to between eighty and ninety thousand students. 
 My own boys attend the common schools ; and, though 
 princes to the world, they are there boys with the other 
 boys and stand upon no different footing. Out of my own 
 purse I have given fifteen thousand pounds a year to the 
 schools since I came to the throne. Often, too, I go to 
 the schools myself, and, if I say anything, I point to the 
 United States for an example. I say that its greatness is 
 due to the education of the people, to their enterprise, to 
 their liberty of speech and freedom of thought ; and I 
 urge my people to become likewise educated, free, and 
 
88 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 great. Another reform that I am about to introduce is 
 the education of women. Heretofore they have always 
 been ignorant, more Hke slaves and animals than free 
 women ; but now they, too, shall have their schools, and, 
 being educated, they can be better mothers to their sons, 
 the coming children of a new Egypt. Soon, now, one of 
 these schools will be opened in Cairo, and I shall send 
 there my own little daughter and the daughters of the 
 nobility of Egypt, and then the others will come. The 
 women of enlightened countries are on an equal footing 
 with the men, and they must be here also ; and therefore 
 they must be educated. 
 
 When travelers come here, I do not wish them to look 
 upon us as barbarians, but as the most enlightened coun- 
 try of the Orient. We have been barbarous in some 
 things ; but of these I wish to remove the last vestige, 
 and I have already abolished some of the most atrocious 
 practices of our religion. Last year I put an end to that 
 barbarous ceremony of the Dosseh. Before then it was 
 the custom, when the yearly pilgrims had returned from 
 Mecca bearing the holy carpet, to have a great ceremony, 
 most revolting and barbarous. One hundred men would 
 lie prostrate at the door of the mosque, with head toward 
 Mecca, and over their bodies would ride upon a horse the 
 sheikh of the mosque. Always from eighteen to twenty 
 of this hundred were killed under the feet of the horse. 
 Europeans used to go in crowds to see this spectacle, and 
 then call it barbarous. It is true, it was barbarous, and 
 was without authority from the Bible, the Koran, or the 
 Prophet ; and so I abolished it. People said a revolution 
 would follow ; but we are better for the change. 
 
 Another change that I am working for is to make my 
 
MEHEMET TEWFIK, KHAdIVE. 89 
 
 people content with one wife. I have but one myself, 
 while my predecessor (my father) had many. I set the 
 example I wish my people to follow ; for, thank God, I 
 make my own personal desire second to the welfare of 
 Egypt and my people. When the people tell me the 
 Koran says a man may have four wives, I tell them to 
 read further on in the same book, where it says that the 
 man who is content with one wife will lead a better, 
 purer, and happier life. As it is now, family happiness is 
 impossible. The children of one mother are jealous of 
 those of another, and the man cannot be the same husband 
 to four wives that he would be to one. The man and 
 woman must be equal, and live their lives for each other and 
 their children. And this, I say, is not inconsistent with, 
 but the better interpretation of, our religion. 
 
 Further, I desire to make my people liberal in regard to 
 religious beliefs and respectful towards Christians, Jews, 
 and Mussulmans alike. They must not call the Christian 
 the Devil, as they have heretofore ; but must respect if 
 they do not believe. I myself am a Mussulman. I go to 
 the mosque once a week ; for although my father did not 
 do so before me, I nevertheless said, when I came into 
 power, that I would respect my religion and live up to its 
 teachings. But I encourage all religions. Here, in Cairo, 
 I gave land on which to build a Protestant mission, where 
 the young might be instructed ; also other land on which 
 to build a hospital, open to people of all religions ; and 
 just within a few days I have given land in Upper Egypt 
 for the erection of another Protestant mission. All this 
 I do without changing my own religion or asking others 
 to change theirs. In fact, when a person wrote me the 
 other day that he would like to change his religion for 
 
90 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 mine, I replied : Follow the teachings of your own reli- 
 gion and you will be good without any change. 
 
 It is difficult [the khedive went on, with a perceptible 
 sadness in his voice] for me to do all that I would like to, 
 or give my people all that I desire while other Powers 
 have their hands in my pockets. Still, I have decreased 
 the royal expenses greatly since I ascended the throne.' 
 My allowance is half a million dollars, and even out of 
 this I give considerable. My father before me spent be- 
 tween ten and fifteen millions yearly in supporting his 
 five or six hundred women and a palace and household 
 that rivaled the Vatican for size. But I have great hopes 
 for Egypt, and shall live and work for her prosperity.' 
 
 It will be admitted that these are views of an en- 
 lightened ruler, even though subsequent events may 
 have proved him a weak one. The khedive's prime 
 minister, Sherif Pasha, said at the same time : 
 
 Give us time for our reforms ; let us have ten years of 
 peaceful toiling, and Europe will be astonished at the 
 vitality of a long-suffering nation, at the prosperity and 
 wealth, the progress and rapid development of a country 
 so long misgoverned, and for ages kept in ignorance and 
 in the bondage of servitude." 
 
 But there were so many disturbing elements in 
 the condition of affairs in Egypt that the dream of 
 ''years of peaceful toiling" was as vain as it was 
 impossible of realization. 
 
 ' These utterances of the khedive were published in an article of mine in 
 The Independent, February 2, 1882. 
 
 • Quoted from The Belgium of the East, p. 138. 
 
V. 
 
 EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. 
 
 JANUARY 4, 1882, Arabi Bey was taken into 
 the cabinet as assistant minister of war. Just 
 before this the chamber of notables, strongly- 
 representative of the national party, had convened 
 on the summons of Sherif Pasha. Sherif at once 
 proposed a parliamentary reorganization, wishing to 
 introduce the principle of ministerial responsibility, 
 and gave the notables full constitutional preroga- 
 tives. They were to be no longer the mere consulta- 
 tive body that Ismail organized with his false show 
 of reform. The notables had outgrown their former 
 pious regard for the will of the khedive, and were 
 not only willing to accept all that Sherif offered, 
 but demanded in addition that the budget be sub- 
 mitted to them. This met with a quick opposition 
 on the part of the comptrollers-general. The two 
 Powers vetoed, January 7, the demand for con- 
 stitutional government. Arabi and the nationalists 
 were incensed. They longed for constitutional 
 liberty and knew not that it appears only as the 
 
 91 
 
92 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 result of a slow Internal growth, of which the germ 
 had as yet barely taken root in Egypt. Outside 
 of the Copts, the Christian Syrians, and the mer- 
 chants of Cairo and Alexandria, there were few men 
 in Egypt who had the faintest conception of what 
 was meant by constitutional liberty. The Porte, 
 however, not to neglect an opportunity to show its 
 suzerainty, protested against the veto and appealed 
 to the other Powers. Gambettawas eaeerto make 
 the most of the complications, and proposed to 
 England that they should dispatch a joint expedi- 
 tion to Egypt to re-establish order. England re- 
 fused, and Gambetta's aggressiveness was cut short 
 by the defeat of his ministry. He was succeeded 
 by de Freycinet, whose policy was diametrically 
 opposed to Gambetta's. The new minister was for 
 non-interference. He replaced the zealous de 
 Blignieres by M. Bredif, thus giving England's 
 representative in the control the predominance that 
 goes with seniority. 
 
 While now the western Powers were occupied 
 with diplomatic negotiations with the Porte, the 
 chamber of notables submitted an alternative to 
 Sherif Pasha : either he must accept their constitu- 
 tional demands or resign from the ministry. He 
 resigned, and Mahmud Barudi formed a new 
 cabinet with Arabi Bey as minister of war and 
 marine. The military party now took the lead. 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. 93 
 
 ArabI and six other colonels were promoted to the 
 rank of general, with the title of pasha. Some five 
 hundred promotions were made during three 
 months. At the same time many European clerks 
 were dismissed from their offices. Arabi's popu- 
 larity, meanwhile, was steadily increasing. In 
 April he claimed to have discovered a plot to as- 
 sassinate himself and other generals. Some fifty 
 officers, many of them the still unpopular Circas- 
 sians, and all of them believed to be loyal to the 
 khedive, were arrested and tried by court-martial, 
 and forty were sentenced to be banished for life 
 to the White Nile — a sentence considered equiva- 
 lent to death. This produced an agitation. The 
 foreign consuls protested ; the sultan was furious 
 that the Circassians whom he had himself deco- 
 rated with favors should be thus dishonored ; and 
 the khedive refused to give the sentence his sig- 
 nature. Finally, however, he commuted the sen- 
 tence to exile from Egypt. But this displeased 
 his nationalist ministry, who, on the 14th of May, 
 convoked the chamber of notables without the con- 
 sent of the khedive. The notables, however, re- 
 fused to sit. At this juncture England and France, 
 who had reconciled their differences, gave notice to 
 the Powers that they were about to send a joint 
 fleet to Alexandria to uphold the authority of the 
 khedive and preserve the status quo. And the 
 
94 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 sultan, who slyly sought to ride on the crest of 
 every wave, sent a note to the Egyptian ministry, 
 chiding them for summoning the chamber uncon- 
 stitutionally and rebuking them for their threat to 
 oppose with force the landing of Turkish troops in 
 Egypt. This was considered by the Powers an ir- 
 regular communication on the part of the Porte. 
 But the wily sultan was to be charged with still 
 more irregular notes. His alleged secret corre- 
 spondence from this time on is believed to have 
 concealed many plots and intrigues. 
 
 On the 20th of May the united English and 
 French squadrons appeared in the harbor of Alex- 
 andria. Five days later the English and French 
 consuls demanded the dismissal of the ministry and 
 the expatriation of Arabi. The ministers forthwith 
 handed in their resignations ; but Arabi declared 
 that he would remain at the head of the army. In 
 the meantime the fortifications about Alexandria 
 were increased and the harbor was put in a state of 
 defence. The guards at Cairo swore to oppose 
 with force any foreign intervention ; and the sheikhs 
 and Bedawin of the desert promised their support 
 against European, but not against Turkish, inter- 
 vention. Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador 
 at Constantinople, naively informed the sultan that, 
 as the Porte's authority had never been called into 
 question, it would not be necessary for Turkish 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. 95 
 
 troops to co-operate to quell the fractious spirit; 
 England and France would be quite equal to the 
 task. The poor khedive, from the day he dismissed 
 the ministry, was beset with trials and torments. 
 He could not form a new ministry, and the utmost in- 
 fluence was brought to bear to force him to reinstate 
 Arabi as minister of war. The commanders of the 
 Alexandria fortification said they would obey the 
 orders of no one but Arabi. Notables, sheikhs, 
 ulemas, officers, urged and even demanded the rein- 
 statement. At length Tewfik was forced to give 
 way. The sultan telegraphed that he would send a 
 commissioner to Egypt to investigate the troubles. 
 France objected strenuously to his coming, but 
 England and the other Powers thought that he 
 might avert the impending danger. England, how- 
 ever, continued to oppose any military expedition 
 from Turkey. De Freycinet felt that France had 
 been left in the lurch, and proposed that a confer- 
 ence of all the Powers be held at Constantinople to 
 settle the Egyptian question definitely. But in the 
 meantime the sultan had dispatched Dervish Pasha 
 to Egypt to lend support, as he announced, to the 
 khedive. 
 
 The commissioner arrived on the 8th of June. 
 His presence had no quieting effect. Arabi was 
 the only minister who had been appointed ; and he 
 was, in fact, the hero and the autocrat of the hour. 
 
96 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 But, through the influence of Dervish, a ministry- 
 was formed favorable to the khedive, with Ragheb 
 as president. It was, however, powerless to still 
 the tumult of passion that had been aroused in 
 Egypt during the past few months. Hatred of the 
 Christians was shouted through the streets.' The 
 people who had cowered before the kurbash during 
 all the woes of Ismail's reign, who had seen the 
 wealth of the Nile valley melt away before their 
 eyes year after year, who had abjectly begged for 
 backsheesh from every stranger in their land, now 
 sprang to a position of independence and defiance. 
 Fanaticism was burning to its utmost intensity. It 
 became a flame of fury on the nth of June, in the 
 massacre at Alexandria. 
 
 Just what the immediate cause of that outbreak 
 was, is a disputed point. It is claimed, on the one 
 hand, that it began by a Maltese stabbing an Arab ; 
 and, on the other, that the massacre was precon- 
 certed, being countenanced by Arabi himself. Colo- 
 nel Long, who was in Cairo at the time, says "" that a 
 secret council was held in that city on the evening 
 before the massacre, which Arabi and several of the 
 notables attended. One of the number, who had 
 openly preached the duty of massacre in the mosques 
 of Alexandria, arrived in that city before the hour 
 of the slaughter. The troops at Alexandria, who 
 
 ^ Col. thaille Long, The Three Prophets, p. 119. ' Ibid., p. 120. 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. 97 
 
 had proclaimed that they would obey the orders of 
 no one but ArabI, turned their bayonets against the 
 Europeans and aided the Arabs in the massacre. 
 The police joined the same mad throng. These 
 facts would seem to point toward complicity on the 
 part of Arabi. The massacre was as horrible in its 
 way as the massacre of the memluks in i8i i, or the 
 Syrian massacre of i860. The Oriental is frenzied 
 at the sight of blood and impelled to the m.ost atro- 
 cious crimes. His fury does not spend itself ; it is 
 only checked when the opportunity of bloodshed Is 
 exhausted or some force interposed. The Maltese, 
 the Greeks, and other Europeans banded together 
 and offered, at last, an effectual resistance ; but not 
 before about a hundred of their number had been 
 butchered, and some five hundred Arabs had been 
 killed. 
 
 Abuse was heaped upon the English and French 
 admirals, who had offered no assistance to the Euro- 
 peans of Alexandria, although they had witnessed 
 the outrages and had sufficient force on the ships, 
 within sight, to quell the disturbance. Their boats 
 were ready to land the marines, but the admirals 
 could not act without orders from their governments. 
 So they said, at least ; but they might as well have 
 claimed that they should not take In sail at the ap- 
 proach of a hurricane except by governmental sanc- 
 tion. As Colonel Long says : *' It is difficult to 
 
98 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 understand the hesitancy of an officer to assume re- 
 sponsibiHty, however great, in the presence of a 
 great crime Hke this committed against humanity." ' 
 The massacre created, naturally, a panic among 
 the Europeans in Egypt. They fled from Cairo to 
 Alexandria, and from Alexandria they took passage 
 in any craft that would bear them from the scene of 
 crime and the seat of danger. It was a stampede 
 for life, with no thought of the property forsaken. 
 The khedive, accompanied by Dervish Pasha, went 
 to Alexandria, June 13, to endeavor to restore quiet 
 by his presence. He formed a new ministry at the 
 dictation of the German and Austrian consuls, June 
 16, giving Arabi his old place as minister of war, 
 and retaining Ragheb as president of the council. 
 But England and France refused to recognize the 
 ministry. The khedive was in despair. His depart- 
 ure from Cairo had left Arabi virtual ruler there. 
 The latter was at the high tide of his power. The 
 sultan, immediately after the massacre, had conferred 
 a great honor upon him by investing him with the 
 order of the Medjidieh. Dervish Pasha, the sultan's 
 representative, was believed to be working in his be- 
 half, and to be fomenting rebellion. Arabi said him- 
 self when, months later, his power was gone : 
 
 The Sultan, the real sovereign of this country, also 
 sided with us and loaded us with marks of his approba- 
 
 ' The Three Prophets, p. 129. 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS, 99 
 
 tion. His representative concurred in our resistance, and 
 his trusted officers exhorted us to defend the country 
 from what they termed the rapacity of England. The 
 opening acts of the war were carried on in his name/ 
 
 So far back as February, the chaplain to the sul- 
 tan had written to Arabi : '' In a special and secret 
 manner I may tell you that the Sultan has no confi- 
 dence in Ismail, Halim, or Tewfik. ... His Majes- 
 ty has expressed his full confidence in you." ^ During 
 the flight of the Europeans, Arabi was sounding his 
 cry of '' Egypt for the Egyptians," and was exercis- 
 ing the utmost activity possible in military prepara- 
 tions. The warlike spirit had spread throughout the 
 country, and recruits and money were pouring in. 
 Work on the fortifications at Alexandria was pushed 
 with renewed vigor. 
 
 Meanwhile the conference of Powers had met at 
 Constantinople, June 23 ; but nothing had been 
 accomplished. The Porte would not commit itself 
 to policy or to action. It is probable, however, 
 that it contemplated the restoration of all its old 
 power in Egypt. England, at all events, feared 
 this. The possibility of such a thing was a menace 
 to the Indian empire. While, therefore, the con- 
 ference was slowly seeking a solution of difficulties, 
 
 ^ Ahmed Arabi, Instructions to my Counsel, in The Nineteenth Century^ 
 December, 1882. 
 
 ' Quoted from Arabi's papers in Broadley's How We Defended Arabi, 
 pp. 169 and 170. 
 
lOO THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 England resolved to take decisive action ; not so 
 much, as has been held by some, to mete out 
 punishment for the Alexandrian massacre as to 
 protect her interests in Egypt and the farther East. 
 But, whatever her motives, she acted in the service 
 of the world's civilization when she set her face 
 against the restoration of the sultan's power in 
 Egypt. 
 
 On the 6th of July, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, the 
 admiral of the British fleet at Alexandria, protested 
 against the continued work on the fortifications 
 about the harbor, and announced to the military 
 governor, Tulba, that unless the work ceased he 
 would open fire upon the fortresses. Tulba replied 
 that the admiral's assertions as to the work of 
 fortifying were unfounded. But electric lights 
 from the British vessels discovered the Egyptian 
 soldiers hard at work by night. July lo. Admiral 
 Seymour sent a second message : 
 
 I shall carry out the intention expressed to you in my 
 letter of the 6th inst., at sunrise to-morrow, the nth inst., 
 unless, previous to that hour, you shall have temporarily 
 surrendered to me, for the purpose of disarming the bat- 
 teries on the isthmus of Ras-el-Tin and the southern 
 shore of the harbor of Alexandria. 
 
 The khedive's prime minister replied to this, re- 
 fusing to comply with the admiral's demands ; 
 whereupon the latter sent a brief message contain- 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. lOI 
 
 ing the implication that his threat would be carried 
 out. These messages had not been exchanged 
 without creating great alarm among the Europeans 
 who still remained in Egypt. The consuls ap- 
 pealed to the admiral for delay and sought to 
 mediate, and the Porte, through its London am- 
 bassador, demanded that the bombardment be 
 interdicted ; but the admiral's determination re- 
 mained unaltered. Endeavors were now made to 
 put all remaining foreigners on shipboard. Many 
 had lingered in Cairo, loth to leave their posts or 
 their property. The notice given them was short 
 — so short that Admiral Seymour has been bitterly 
 blamed for his haste.' The impending bombard- 
 ment, it was known, would be avenged on any 
 unfortunate foreigners who might thereafter fall 
 into Arab hands. 
 
 Late on the afternoon of July lo, all the vessels 
 in the Alexandrian harbor, except the British fleet, 
 weighed anchor and passed out to sea, their decks 
 swarming with refugees of many nationalities. 
 The French fleet was among the departing ships. 
 If a Gambetta had been premier of the French 
 government. Admiral Conrad would have remained. 
 He would have insisted upon joint action or joint 
 inaction. But de Freycinet was weak. After see- 
 
 ^ Vide Stone Pasha's Introduction to Fanny Stone's Diary, in The 
 Century Magazine, June, 1884. 
 
102 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ing the disfavor with which France had suffered 
 intervention in Tunis, he feared to sanction inter- 
 vention in Egypt. And so Admiral Conrad and 
 his fleet sailed away ; and France, as the sequel 
 has shown, passed from a controlling power in 
 Egypt. 
 
 The story of the bombardment of Alexandria, 
 from a military point of view, is best told from the 
 official reports' of Admiral Seymour. Rewrote 
 the following from his flagship Invincible, July 20 : 
 
 At 7 A.M., on the nth, I signalled from the Invincible 
 to the Alexandria to fire a shell into the recently armed 
 earthworks, termed the Hospital Battery, and followed 
 this by a general signal to the fleet, '^ Attack the enemy's 
 batteries ! " when immediate action ensued between all 
 the ships in the positions assigned to them, and the whole 
 of the forts commanding the entrance to the harbor of 
 Alexandria. A steady fire was maintained on all sides 
 until 10.30 A.M., when the Sultan, Superb, and Alexa?idria, 
 which had been hitherto under way, anchored off the 
 Light-House Fort, and by their well-directed fire, assisted 
 by that of the Inflexible, which weighed and joined them 
 at 12.30 P.M., succeeded in silencing most of the guns in 
 the forts on Ras-el-Tin ; still some heavy guns in Fort 
 Ada kept up a desultory fire. About 1.30 P.M., a shell 
 from the Superb, whose practice in the afternoon was very 
 
 ' These official reports, as well as detailed descriptions of the defences 
 of Alexandria and of the attacking fleet, and statements of the effect of the 
 fight upon ships and fortifications, are given by Lieutenant-Commander 
 Casper F. Goodrich, of the U. S. Navy, in his Report of the British Naval 
 and Military Operations in Egypt. 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. IO3 
 
 good, blew up the magazine and caused the retreat of the 
 remaining garrison. These ships then directed their at- 
 tention to Fort Pharos, which was silenced with the 
 assistance of the Temeraire^ which joined them at 2.30 
 P.M., when a shot from the Inflexible dismounted one of 
 the heavy guns. The Hospital Battery was well fought 
 throughout ; and, although silenced for a time by a shell 
 from the Inflexible^ it was not until 5 P.M. that the artil- 
 lerymen were compelled to retire from their guns by the 
 fire of the off-shore squadron and the Inflexible. The In- 
 vifzcible, with my flag, supported by the Penelope, both 
 ships being at anchor, the latter on one occasion shifting 
 berth, and assisted by the Monarch, under way inside the 
 reefs, as well as by the Inflexible and Temeraire in the 
 Boghaz and Corvette Channels, succeeded, after an en- 
 gagement of some hours, in silencing and partially destroy- 
 ing the batteries and lines of Mex. Fort Marsa-el-Khanat 
 was destroyed by the explosion of the magazine after half 
 an hour's action with the Monarch. 
 
 About 2 P.M., seeing that the gunners of the western 
 lower battery of Mex had abandoned their guns, and that 
 the supporters had probably retired to the citadel, I called 
 in the gun-vessels and gun-boats, and under cover of their 
 fire landed a party of twelve volunteers, under the com- 
 mand of Lieut. B. R. Bradford, of the Invincible, accom- 
 panied by Lieut. Richard Poore, of that ship, . . . 
 [and three others] . . . who got on shore through the 
 surf, and destroyed, with charges of gun-cotton, two 10- 
 inch M. L. R. guns, and spiked six smooth-bore guns in 
 the right-hand water battery at Mex, and returned with- 
 out a casualty beyond the loss of one of their boats 
 {Bittern s dingy) on the rocks. This was a hazardous 
 
104 ^^^ CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 operation very well carried out. Previous to this, after 
 the action had become general, Commander Lord Charles 
 Beresford, of the Condor , stationed as repeating ship, see- 
 ing the accuracy with which two lo-inch rifled guns in 
 Fort Marabout were playing upon the ships engaged off 
 Fort Mex, steamed up to within range of his /-inch 90 
 cwt. gun, and by his excellent practice soon drew off the 
 fire. I then ordered him to be supported by the Beacon^ 
 Bittern, Cygnet, and Decoy, the Cygnet having been en- 
 gaged with the Ras-el-Tin forts during the early part of 
 the day. I am happy to say, during the action, no casu- 
 alties happened to those vessels, owing, in a great measure, 
 to the able manner in which they were manoeuvred, and 
 their light draught enabling them to take up their posi- 
 tions on the weakest point of the batteries. The action 
 generally terminated successfully at 5.30 P.M., when the 
 ships anchored for the night. 
 
 The force opposed to us would have been more formida- 
 ble had every gun mounted on the line of works been 
 brought into action ; but in the Ras-el-Tin batteries, few 
 of the large smooth-bores, and fewer still of the French 
 36-pounders, bought in the time of Mehemet Ali, were 
 manned, the Egyptians preferring to use the English 
 lO-inch, 9-inch, 8-inch, and smaller muzzle-loading rifled 
 guns. These guns are precisely the same as those which 
 her Majesty's ships carry, and no better muzzle-loading 
 guns can be found. They were abundantly, even lavishly, 
 supplied with projectiles of the latest description, chilled 
 shot, and the sighting of the guns was excellent. The 
 same may be said of the guns in the Mex Lines, except- 
 ing that in them the 36-pounders were more used, and that 
 one, if not two, 15-inch smooth-bores were brought into 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. I05 
 
 action, in addition to the lo-inch, 9.inch, and smaller 
 M. L. R. gu-ns fired. Fort Marabout brought two lo-inch 
 M. L. R. guns into action at long range, shell after shell 
 of which came up toward the in-shore squadron in an ex- 
 cellent line, falling from ten to thirty yards short. Not 
 one shell from the guns in the southern batteries burst on 
 board her Majesty's ships during the day. 
 
 Though the Arabs' shells failed, their other shot 
 took effect. The Alexandria was struck twenty- 
 five times, and the Inviiicible was pierced by six 
 shots. The shells from the ships burst, many of 
 them, over or in the city, destroying much property. 
 The English loss for the day was six killed and 
 twenty-seven wounded. The Arab loss was much 
 greater. At least one hundred, and fifty men In the 
 forts were killed ; but trustworthy Information as to 
 their casualties Is wanting. The Arabs stood by 
 their guns with an undreamed-of courage ; for the 
 forts were not silenced till the gunners had been 
 killed. On the 12th of July the firing was resumed. 
 Admiral Seymour said. In his dispatch : 
 
 On the morning of the 1 2th I ordered the Temeraire 
 and Inflexible to engage Fort Pharos, and after two or 
 three shots had been fired a flag of truce was hoisted on 
 Fort Ras-el-Tin, and I then sent my flag lieutenant, the 
 Honorable Hedworth Lambton, in to discover the reason, 
 and, from his report, there is no doubt it was simply a 
 ruse to gain time ; and, as negotiations failed, my demand 
 being to surrender the batteries commanding the Boghaz 
 Channel, one shot was fired into the Mex Barracks Bat- 
 
I06 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 tery earthwork, when a flag of truce was again hoisted, 
 I then sent Lieutenant and Commander Morrison into 
 the harbor, in the Helicon, and on his going on board the 
 kh^dive's yacht, the Mahrussa, he found she had been 
 deserted, and he reported, on his return after dark, his 
 behef that the town had been evacuated. 
 
 Such, indeed, was the fact. Arabi had gone, but 
 the khedive had remained. The khedive had pre- 
 sided at a cabinet council, held at Ras-el-Tin, on 
 the morning of the loth, and had given his sanc- 
 tion to the proposed defence of the city. That 
 evening, accompanied by Dervish Pasha and his 
 immediate household, he retired to the palace of 
 Ramleh, where he remained during the bombard- 
 ment. On the afternoon of the 12th he sent to 
 Admiral Seymour, imploring his protection. Arabi 
 claimed that by this act the khedive basely deserted 
 his people. But Tewfik feared for his life. A 
 band of soldiers had sought entrance to the palace, 
 asserting that they had Arabics instructions to 
 murder the khedive. Arabi is said to have coun- 
 termanded this order and to have stationed a guard 
 about the palace, when he determined to evacuate 
 the city. Another story states that Tewfik bought 
 his life with bribes and orders of distinction. At 
 all events the trembling Tewfik remained at Ramleh 
 while Arabi withdrew his forces and his followers 
 along the Mahmudieh canal. 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. \OJ 
 
 And now the fair city of Alexandria became 
 such a scene of pillage, massacre, and wanton de- 
 struction as to make the world shudder. It was 
 the old tale of horrors. Houses were plundered 
 and burned ; the European quarter, including the 
 stately buildings surrounding the Great Square of 
 Mehemet AH, was sacked and left a heap of smol- 
 dering ruins ; and more than two thousand Euro- 
 peans, for the most part Levantines, were massacred 
 with all the cruelty of oriental fanaticism. This 
 was on the afternoon of the 1 2th. It was the second 
 massacre that had occurred under the very eyes of 
 the British fleet. The admiral's failure to prevent 
 it has been called unfortunate by some and criminal 
 by others. It seems to have been wholly without 
 excuse. The most plausible palliation of the neglect 
 is found in Lieutenant-Commander Goodrich's 
 *' Report," but even that carries its blame. He 
 says (page 75) : 
 
 A few hundred men could have seized and held the 
 place on July 12th, so great was the fear on the part of 
 the Egyptians, both soldiers and citizens, caused by the 
 bombardment — a fear not known, at the time, to the 
 British Commander-in-chief. In consequence of the lack 
 of information, this memorable battle was followed by 
 one of the most shocking, wanton, and deplorable catas- 
 trophes of the century. 
 
 The blue-jackets were landed on the 13th, and 
 
I08 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 cleared the way before them with a GatHng gun. 
 The next day, more ships having arrived, a suffi- 
 cient force was landed to take possession of the 
 entire city. The khedive was escorted back to 
 Ras-el-Tin from Ramleh, and given a strong guard. 
 Summary justice was dealt out to all hostile Arabs 
 who had been captured in the city. In short, 
 English intervention was followed by English 
 occupation. 
 
 The bombardment of Alexandria had defined 
 clearly the respective positions of Arabi and the 
 khedive toward Egypt and the Egyptian people. 
 The soldiers and the sympathy of the land were 
 with Arabi. His cry was, " Egypt for the Egyp- 
 tians," and these words embodied everything that, 
 was held dear and sacred by the people. The khe- 
 dive was not only weak in the eyes of his people, 
 but he was regarded as the tool of England. He 
 had deserted his soldiers and fallen on his knees to 
 beg the protection of unbelievers. From the mo- 
 ment the first shot was fired upon Alexandria, 
 Arabi was the real ruler of the people. But Eng- 
 land could never suffer Egypt to exist solely ** for 
 the Egyptians." With France, she had placed 
 Tewfik on the throne to protect the interests of 
 her bondholders, and to secure her power in and 
 over the country alongside of which flowed the 
 chiefest artery of her commercial life. Her duty 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS, I09 
 
 and her interest compelled the re-establishment of 
 Tewfik's power. He was the nominal ruler, and 
 must once more be made so in fact. If Arabi 
 refused to end his preparations for war at the 
 bidding of the khedive, and persisted in opposing 
 the defenders of the khedive, then he was a rebel 
 and the leader of rebellion, and he must be com- 
 pelled by force to submit. Such was the reasoning 
 that led England to play the role of the khedive's 
 defender and to prepare for a war in Egypt. 
 
 The conference at Constantinople was stirred by 
 the news of the bombardment of Alexandria. It 
 presented a note to the Porte, July 15, requesting 
 the dispatch of Turkish troops to restore the status 
 quo in Egypt. But the sultan had no idea of taking 
 the part of the Christian in what all Islam regarded 
 as a contest between the Moslem and the unbe- 
 liever. Arabi had called himself the defender of 
 the faith. He and his followers were the soldiers of 
 the Prophet. The ulemas and dignitaries of the 
 mosques of Stambul advised the sultan not to risk 
 his caliphate by opposing the heroes of the Moham- 
 medan faith. And so Abdul-Hamid deliberated 
 and delayed. France was uneasy at the prospect 
 of war, and Gambetta, now the leader of the oppo- 
 sition, was furious at the prospect of being out of 
 the row. He appealed to the French chamber to 
 insist upon dual intervention, but in vain. Even 
 
no THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 the timid de Freycinet went farther than the cham- 
 ber would sanction. He proposed to confine opera- 
 tions to the protection of the Suez canal, and ap- 
 plied for a supplementary credit in order to under- 
 take the necessary military preparations. But the 
 credit was denied, and he resigned, July 24. A 
 ministry with a policy of positive inactivity was 
 formed by M. Duclerc. Contrasted to the strange 
 inertness of France was the attempt at interference 
 on the part of Russia, Austria, and Italy. Russia 
 would have given Egypt to England if she could 
 have won the Bosphorus as an offset ; but Prince 
 Bismarck did not approve of the contemplated an- 
 nexation by Russia, and his power over Austria and 
 Italy was such as to enable him to frustrate the 
 plan. The sultan appealed to Bismarck to support 
 the Porte against England as well ; but this the 
 German chancellor declined to do, telling the sultan 
 that he must yield to the inevitable in Egypt. And 
 thus the diplomatic contest was left to the chief 
 combatants, England and Turkey. 
 
 In Egypt, the khedive had been prevailed upon, 
 after some demur, to proclaim Arabi a rebel and 
 discharge him from his cabinet. Arabi had issued 
 a counter-proclamation, on the same day, declaring 
 Tewfik a traitor to his people and his religion. 
 Having received the news of the khedive's procla- 
 mation, Lord Dufferin, the British ambassador at 
 
EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS. Ill 
 
 Constantinople, announced to the conference that 
 England was about to send an expedition to Egypt 
 to suppress the rebellion and to restore the authority 
 of the khedive. Thereupon the sultan declared that 
 he had decided to send a Turkish expedition. Lord 
 Dufferin feigned to accept the sultan's co-operation, 
 but demanded that the Porte, as a preliminary step, 
 should declare Arabi a rebel. Again the sultan 
 was confronted with the danger of incurring the 
 wrath of the Moslem world. He could not declare 
 Arabi a rebel. He was manifestly in an uncomforta- 
 ble position. His sympathies were with Arabi. But 
 if he fought, he must fight against him ; for he 
 could not oppose England ; and if he kept out of 
 the fray, he must suffer the humiliation of seeing a 
 foreign force settle the affairs of his suzerainty. He 
 was between two fires. In his desperation he sent 
 a force of three thousand men to Suda bay with 
 orders to hold themselves in readiness to enter 
 Egypt at a moment's notice. Lord Dufferin now 
 submitted a proposal for co-operation, naming the 
 following conditions : 
 
 I. That the Turkish contingent should be restricted to 
 5,000 men. 2. That it should land at Abukir, Damietta, 
 or Rosetta. 3. That its movements and operations should 
 be regulated by a previous agreement between the Eng- 
 lish and Turkish commanders. 4. That a Turkish military 
 commissioner should be attached to the English head- 
 
112 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 quarters and an English commissioner to the Turkish 
 headquarters; and, 5. That the English and Turkish 
 troops should evacuate Egypt simultaneously.' 
 
 The representatives of the Porte in the confer- 
 ence would not accept these conditions, wishing 
 any Turkish expedition to act independently of 
 England. In the meantine, however, the English 
 expedition had arrived in Egypt and was proceed- 
 ing to crush the rebellion, regardless of the diplo- 
 matic delays and bickerings at Constantinople. 
 
 * Quoted from Appleton's Annual Cyclopcedia for 1882, p. 250. 
 
VL 
 
 ARABI'S REBELLION AND THE REFORMS THAT 
 FOLLOWED. 
 
 FOR a month after the bombardment, the British 
 army at Alexandria was satisfied simply to 
 hold its position. Lieutenant-Commander Goodrich 
 describes the role it played during this time as '' of a 
 negative character, in the main consisting in an 
 efficient if passive defence of the city against the 
 Egyptians encamped and intrenched at King 
 Osman and Kafr Dowar." ' Several sorties, how- 
 ever, were made on the armed railway trains ; but 
 there was scarcely an engagement worthy the name. 
 On the 2ist of July an army corps, under the com- 
 mand of General Sir Garnet Wolseley, had been 
 ordered to Egypt, and pending his arrival the arm)^ 
 of occupation preserved, for the most part, an at- 
 titude of defence, though making an occasional 
 reconnoissance. On the 28th of July the British 
 Parliament formally recognized the preparations 
 for war by a vote of two million three hundred 
 
 ^ Report, p. 87. 
 113 
 
114 ^^^ CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 thousand pounds for the expense of the expedition. 
 It was not until the 15th of August that Sir Gar- 
 net Wolseley arrived with his force ' in Egypt. 
 The EngHsh at that time held only two points, 
 Alexandria and Suez, while the entire Egyptian 
 interior, as well as Port Said and Ismailia, were 
 held by Arabi, whose force, it was estimated, now 
 amounted to about 70,000 men, of whom at least 
 50,000 were regulars. 
 
 The objective point of General Wolseley's ex- 
 pedition to crush Arabi was, of course, the city of 
 Cairo. There were two ways of approaching that 
 city, one from Alexandria, through the Delta, and 
 the other from the Suez canal. There were many 
 objections to the former route. The Delta was 
 intersected by a net-work of canals, dikes, ditches, 
 and railways, all of which were in Arabi's hands 
 and made the region easily defensible. In fact, the 
 banks of the canals and dikes were natural fortifica- 
 tions as they stood. On the other hand, the way 
 from Ismailia, the central station on the Suez canal, 
 to Cairo, was along an unobstructed and single rail- 
 way route. Then, too, the desert by the latter route 
 
 ^ Lieutenant-Commander Goodrich (Report, p. 104) gives the following 
 totals of the principal corps under General Wolseley's command : Infantry, 
 15,642 (officers and men) ; cavalry, 2,304 ; artillery, including siege trains, 
 2,435 ; engineers, I,i6i ; commissariat and transport corps, 1,298 ; army 
 hospital corps, 313 ; army medical department, 429. The Indian con- 
 tingent brought the total number of men up to about 35,000. 
 
ARABPS REBELLION, II5 
 
 was comparatively free from the pestilential diseases 
 of the Delta. Owing to the Sweet Water canal, the 
 question of water presented no difficulties. There 
 was, however, an obstacle to the choice of Ismailia 
 as a base of operations ; but it was a purely moral 
 one, and was easily overcome or rather disregarded. 
 The Suez canal was supposed to be neutral water. 
 Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, the president of the 
 Suez canal company, assured Arabi, whom he met 
 at Ismailia after the opening of hostilities, that 
 England would so regard it, and thus prevented 
 Arabi from establishing Egyptian fortifications 
 along the canal. But England felt no obligation 
 to recognize any neutrality. De Freycinet's 
 scheme to enforce the neutrality had cost him his 
 premiership, and there was little force in the orders 
 and threats of the president of the canal company. 
 England, therefore, consulted simply her own in- 
 terests, acting upon the principle, which is doubt- 
 less sound, that '' the neutrality of any canal joining 
 the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will 
 be maintained, if at all, by the nation which can 
 place and keep the strongest ships at each ex- 
 tremity." ' In other words. General Wolseley 
 decided to enter Cairo by way of the Suez canal 
 and Ismailia. 
 
 But he kept his plan a profound secret. Admiral 
 
 * Stated thus in Goodrich's Report, p. 125. 
 
Il6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Seymour alone knew his purpose. On the i8th of 
 August, all the orders for an attack on Abukir, 
 where Arabi's force was concentrated, were issued, 
 and concerning this plan rumors were purposely 
 allowed to reach the newspaper correspondents. 
 On the 19th, the transports moved eastward from 
 Alexandria, as if to attack Abukir ; but under the 
 cover of darkness that night, they were escorted on 
 to Port Said, where they learned that the entire 
 canal, owing to the preconcerted action of Admiral 
 Seymour, was in the hands of the British. On the 
 2 1st, the troops met Sir Henry McPherson's Indian 
 contingent at Ismailia. Two days were now con- 
 sumed in rest and preparation. The Egyptians 
 cut off the water supply, which came from the 
 Delta by the Sweet Water canal, by damming the 
 canal. A sortie to secure possession of the dam 
 was therefore deemed necessary, and was successfully 
 made on the 24th. Further advances were made, and 
 on the 26th, Kassassin, a station of some impor- 
 tance on the canal and railway, was occupied. 
 Here the British force was obliged to delay for 
 two weeks, while organizing a hospital and a trans- 
 port service. This gave Arabi opportunity to 
 concentrate his forces at Zagazig and Tel-el-Kebir. 
 But he knew it was for his interest to strike at 
 once before the British transports could come up 
 with the advance. He therefore made two at- 
 
ARABrS REBELLION. 11/ 
 
 tempts, one on August 28, and the other on Sep- 
 tember 9, to regain the position lost at Kassassin. 
 But he failed ' in both, though inflicting some loss 
 upon his opponents. 
 
 On the 1 2th of September preparations were 
 made by General Wolselev for a decisive battle. 
 
 ' Arabi could not recognize defeat. His despatches to the ministry of 
 war at Cairo concerning the engagement of September 9, are, to say the 
 least, amusing. In one he said {vide Goodrich's Report, p. 144) : "At 
 sunrise the enemy came out with infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and firing 
 began, and continued on both sides for about an hour. Then the Arabs 
 charged like lions, displaying a courage and bravery which enabled them to 
 drive back the enemy, who were much more numerous than ourselves. 
 Then they followed the enemy, driving them until they had killed about 
 100 of them [the British official report says two], and dispersed the rest, 
 driving them back into their tents. The Arabs captured their oxen, about 
 500 meters of torpedo-wire, and other military stores, and then returned to 
 their posts victorious. This engagement, including the attack and the 
 pursuit, lasted about six hours. . . . Thanks be to God, not one of 
 the Arabs nor of the soldiers was wounded. Give this news to those under 
 your administration." Three days after, he sent another despatch, with a 
 different statement as to casualties : "I give you good news, which will 
 cause you joy, and will delight each individual of the people— namely, that 
 the engagement of Saturday (gth of September) was the most serious battle 
 that has yet taken place between us and the English ; for the force of both 
 armies was very great, and the fighting lasted for twelve hours, with im- 
 petuosity and daring, while the cannonade and the discharge of musketry 
 were unceasing, pouring down like rain on the field of battle. Still we 
 lost only thirty-one men, martyrized, and 150 were slightly, not dangerously, 
 wounded, according to the official returns presented by the various regi- 
 ments with great exactness and precision. It had been thought that our 
 casualties would have been double that number, owing to the seriousness 
 of the engagement and its long duration. Moreover, from true observation, 
 it has been proved to us that the number of the enemy killed and remaining 
 on the field of battle is about 2,500, and their carts were insufficient for 
 carrying off the wounded," etc. 
 
Il8 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 He had become convinced ^ from daily reconnois- 
 sance and from the view obtained in the engage- 
 ment of September 9, that the fortifications at 
 Tel-el-Kebir were both extensive and formidable. 
 Against an enemy so strongly intrenched, and 
 whose force consisted of about 38,000 men and 
 fifty-nine siege-guns, it would have been folly to 
 advance across an open desert ; and it was there- 
 fore decided to make the approach under cover of 
 darkness. All possible precautions were taken to 
 guard against alarm. Bugle calls and fires were 
 prohibited after nightfall, and strict silence was en- 
 joined. The camp was struck as noiselessly as 
 possible, and at 1.30 on the morning of the 13th 
 General Wolseley gave the order for the advance, 
 his force consisting of about 11,000 infantry, 2,000 
 cavalrymen, and sixty field-guns. They had only 
 the stars to guide them, but so accurately was the 
 movement conducted that the leading brigades of 
 each division reached the enemy's outposts within 
 two minutes of each other. 
 
 The enemy [says General Wolseley] were completely 
 surprised, and it was not until one or two of their advanced 
 sentries fired their rifles that they realized our close prox- 
 imity to their works. These were, however, very quickly 
 lined with infantry, who opened a deafening musketry 
 fire, and their guns came into action immediately. Our 
 
 ' Vide his official report of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, dated Cairo, Sep- 
 tember 16, 1882. 
 
ARABrs REBELLION, Iig 
 
 troops advanced steadily without firing a shot, in obedi- 
 ence to the orders they had received ; and, when close to 
 the works, went straight for them, charging with a ringing 
 cheer/ 
 
 The intrenchments were not carried without a 
 severe struggle. The Egyptians fought with a des- 
 perate courage, and hundreds of them were bayo- 
 neted at their posts. *' More intelligence," declares 
 Lieutenant-Commander Goodrich,'' "■ and less down- 
 right cowardice in the upper grades might have 
 converted these men into a formidable army." But 
 what could the rank and file accomplish when " each 
 officer knew that he would run, but hoped his neigh- 
 bor would stay." 3 At the first shot Arabi and his 
 second in command took horse and galloped to 
 Belbeis, where they caught a train for Cairo. Most 
 of the other officers, as the reports of killed and 
 wounded show, did the same. 
 
 The Egyptians fired their first shot at 4.55 a.m., 
 and at 6.45 the English had possession of Arabi's 
 headquarters and the canal bridge. The British 
 loss was 57 killed, 380 wounded, and 22 missing. 
 The Egyptian army left about 2,000 dead in the 
 fortifications. There is no report of the number of 
 the Egyptian wounded ; but it probably was not 
 proportionate to the number killed ; for, if rumor 
 is to be trusted, the wounded were not spared by 
 
 * Ibid. " Goodrich's Report, p. 15. ^ Ibid. 
 
I20 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 the British saber and bayonet. There was, how- 
 ever, some excuse for the alleged cruelty on the 
 part of the attacking troops. An Egyptian, like 
 the wild beast of the jungle, gets an added ferocity 
 and desperation with each wound. ** So many cases 
 are authenticated," says Lieutenant-Commander 
 Goodrich,' "of the virulence displayed by the Egyp- 
 tian wounded, that it is demonstrated, beyond ques- 
 tion, that many of these fellows not only shot at 
 the stretchermen engaged in carrying off the in- 
 jured, but, in some cases, actually killed the very 
 Englishmen who had stopped to give them water 
 or to bind their wounds." The same author makes 
 the following observations upon the battle from a 
 military point of view : 
 
 In view of the decisiveness of the victory, comment 
 appears unnecessary. It may be alleged that the mode 
 of attack adopted was hazardous to the degree of impru- 
 dence ; that no commander would dare to employ such 
 tactics on European territory ; that a night march of nine 
 miles could only be followed by a properly disposed and 
 immediate assault under circumstances so exceptional as 
 to be providential. It must, however, be remembered 
 that General Wolseley understood his enemy, knew his 
 military habits and numbers, as well as the ground inter- 
 vening ; had a fairly good idea of his intrenchments, a 
 just appreciation of his morale^ a strong conviction as to 
 the proper manner of engaging him, and confidence in the 
 
 ^ Ibid. 
 
ARABICS REBELLION'. 121 
 
 officers and men of his own command. What he would 
 have done had the enemy been of a different character, 
 is another question, whose consideration does not come 
 within the province of this report. It seems a sufficient 
 answer to such criticisms as are briefly referred to above, 
 to remark that the means were adjusted to the end to be 
 reached, and that the justification (if any be needed) of 
 the risks incurred Hes in the success which attended them 
 — a success as rare as it was complete.' 
 
 A proof of the completeness of the success was 
 the entire dissipation of Arabl's army. Groups of 
 soldiers, It Is true, were scattered to different parts 
 of Egypt ; but the army organization was com- 
 pletely broken up with the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. 
 
 The movements that followed the decisive victory 
 were promptly begun and most effectively executed. 
 The best account Is given in the words of General 
 Wolseley's dispatch of September i6 
 
 The enemy were pursued to Zagazig, twenty-five miles 
 from our camp at Kassassin, by the Indian Contingent, 
 the leading detachment of which reached that place, 
 under Major-General Sir H. Macpherson, V. C, a little 
 after 4 P. M., and by the cavalry division, under General 
 Lowe, to Belbeis, which was occupied in the evening. 
 Major-General Lowe was ordered to push on with all 
 possible speed to Cairo, as I was most anxious to save 
 that city from the fate which befell Alexandria in July 
 last. 
 
 These orders were ably carried out. General Lowe reach- 
 
 * Goodrich's Report, p. 158. 
 
122 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ing the great barracks of Abbassieh, just outside of Cairo, 
 at 4.45 P. M., on the 14th instant. The cavalry marched 
 sixty-five miles in these two days. The garrison of about 
 10,000 men, summoned by Lieutenant-Colonel H. Stew- 
 art, assistant adjutant-general to the cavalry division, to 
 surrender, laid down their arms, and our troops took posses- 
 sion of the citadel. A message was sent to Arabi Pasha 
 through the prefect of the city, calling upon him to sur- 
 render forthwith, which he did unconditionally. He was 
 accompanied by Tulba Pasha, who was also one of the 
 leading rebels in arms against the Khedive. 
 
 The Guards, under His Royal Highness the Duke of 
 Connaught, reached Cairo early on the 15th instant. 
 
 With an energy, as remarkable as It was praise- 
 worthy. General Wolseley prevented the war ending 
 with horrors ' like those with which it began. Arabi's 
 
 * The death of the eminent oriental scholar, Professor Palmer, which 
 occurred on August 12, 1882, was one of the horrible tragedies for which the 
 Egyptian war was responsible. Justin McCarthy (England Under Glad- 
 stone, ch. xiii.) makes the following reference to the loss the world sus- 
 tained in his death : " Professor Edward Palmer was one of those rare men 
 who possess what appears to be an almost incredible facility for learning lan- 
 guages. He was well-nigh the ideal scholar, devoted to learning for learn- 
 ing's sake, yet never tainted by the faintest tinge of pedantry, pride, or 
 affectation. The story of his life has been told by his close friend, attached 
 admirer, and literary colleague, the well-knov/n novelist, Mr. Walter Besant. 
 It is a touching and thrilling record of marvellous accomplishments, of bril- 
 liant performance, of patient, determined struggle toward success, of success 
 achieved, of honors won, of firm friendship, and a peaceful, happy home — 
 and all ended by a sudden, terrible death in the Wady Sudr. In the sum- 
 mer of 1882, Professor Palmer agreed to go out for the Government to 
 Egypt to prevent any alliance between Arabi and the Bedawin tribes of the 
 desert. It seems strange that so precious a life should have been risked on 
 such an errand, though Professor Palmer's knowledge of the languages of 
 the East was proverbial. It is not very surprising that, when he and his 
 
ARABICS REBELLION, 1 23 
 
 revenge was forestalled by that rapid desert journey. 
 Before leaving England, Wolseley had predicted 
 that he would enter Cairo on the i6th of Septem- 
 ber ; but with still a day to spare the feat was ac- 
 complished, and Arabi's rebellion was completely 
 crushed. 
 
 England now stood alone. Victory had been 
 won without the aid of France or the intervention 
 of Turkey. In Constantinople negotiations re- 
 garding Turkish expeditions were still pending 
 when Lord Dufferin received the news of Wolse- 
 ley's success, and announced to the Porte that there 
 was now no need of a Turkish force in Egypt, as 
 the war was ended. France at once prepared to 
 resume her share in the control ; but England, 
 having borne the sole burden of the war, did not 
 propose now to share the influence her success had 
 given her. And it was for the interest of Egypt 
 that she should not. As in the campaign just 
 
 party were captured by hostile Arabs, their doom should be death. It is 
 certain that short work would have been made of any emissary from Arabi 
 ^vho was caught attempting to interfere with the relations existing between 
 some English general, and, say, an Indian regiment. We shall, perhaps, 
 never exactly know the story of the tragedy near Nakl. It is certain, how- 
 ever, that Palmer and his companions were captured through the treachery 
 of the Sheikh Meter Sofieh, who was their guide, and that Palmer, Captain 
 Gill, and Lieutenant Charrington were shot. Some thirteen of the Arabs 
 of the tribe that killed Palmer and his companions were afterward captured, 
 brought to trial, and five of them were hanged at Zagazig on February 28, 
 1883. The remains of Palmer, Gill, and Charrington were recovered, car- 
 ried to England, and interred in St. Paul's Church." 
 
124 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 ended England had been able to achieve a quicker 
 and more effectual success alone than would have 
 been possible with a joint command of jealous 
 Powers, so now, peace having been restored, a sin- 
 gle supervision and direction promised a steadfast- 
 ness to the government that could not have been 
 effected under a re-establishment of the joint con- 
 trol. While there was a general agreement in 
 England as to what other Powers should not do, 
 there was a wide difference of opinion as to the in- 
 dividual course to be pursued by the British gov- 
 ernment. Lord Derby, who became colonial sec- 
 retary soon after the end of the war, was in favor 
 of withdrawing from Egypt altogether, and leaving 
 the country to *' stew in her own juice " ; but the 
 judgment that declared that anarchy in Egypt 
 would mean injury to the world prevailed. Egypt 
 could not stand alone ; and Anglo-Saxon support, 
 with its civilizing influences, was the best to be found. 
 England's first duty, after quiet was assured, was 
 to send away all the British troops except a force 
 of about ii,ooo men, which it was deemed advisa- 
 ble to retain in Egypt until the khedive's authority 
 was placed on a safe footing throughout the land. 
 At the same time it was decided to reorganize the 
 military establishment of Egypt, and Baker Pasha, 
 an Englishman in the service of the sultan, was in- 
 vited to superintend this work. The khedive sum- 
 
ARABICS REBELLION. 1 2 5 
 
 moned a new cabinet, giving the leadership to 
 Sherif Pasha, as minister of foreign affairs. 
 
 What should be done with Arabi was the ques- 
 tion of paramount interest, when once the khedive's 
 authority was re-established and recognized. Tew- 
 fix and his ministers, if left to themselves, would 
 unquestionably have taken his life ; for in the Ori- 
 ent an unsuccessful revolutionist knows but one 
 fate. But England was determined that Arabi 
 should have a fair trial. To secure this, an irre- 
 sistible pressure had been brought to bear upon 
 Mr. Gladstone's government by the English press. 
 It was decided that the rebel leaders should appear 
 before a military tribunal, and they were given 
 English counsel to plead their cause. The pre- 
 liminary negotiations occupied several months, 
 during which time Mr. Broadley and Mr. Napier, 
 Arabi's counsel, became acquainted with the pecu- 
 liarities of Egyptian legal procedure,' and Arabi 
 wrote out his story of the rebellion.^ The general 
 tenor of his tale was to prove himself innocent of 
 the charge of rebellion. He declared that Tewfik 
 was the traitor ; for the sultan, the real sovereign 
 of Egypt, encouraged the resistance against Eng- 
 land that the khedive did not dare show. If Arabi 
 
 ' A. M. Broadley, How We Defended Arabi and His Friends : A Story of 
 Egypt and the Egyptians. 
 
 "^ Ahmed Arabi, Instructions to My Counsel, in The Nineteenth Century 
 October, 1882. 
 
126 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 obeyed his sovereign, how could he be a rebel ? 
 He vauntingly wrote : 
 
 But the truth is, I am no "rebel." I led the nation in 
 seeking the liberty of our country, and employed all 
 honorable means to this end, respecting the laws, not 
 thinking of self, as others say, but of the welfare of Egypt. 
 I became commander of the troops appointed to defend 
 the country in a lawful manner, and by the order of the 
 Sultan, the Khedive, the Chamber, and with the sanction 
 of the nation. As regards accusations of massacre and in- 
 cendiarism, I laugh them to scorn. 
 
 Such were the words that Arabi wrote in October, 
 when lying in prison in Cairo. If he had stood by 
 them, he would have had the respect of all who had 
 heard the cry of '' Egypt for the Egyptians," and to 
 many he would have posed as a hero and a martyr ; 
 but within two months he had acknowledged him- 
 self guilty of rebellion, and was cringing at the feet 
 of England and all Englishmen. 
 
 The trial was a farce. Everything was ''cut and 
 dried " beforehand. It was arranged that Arabi 
 was to plead guilty to rebellion, that he was forth- 
 with to be condemned to death by the court, and 
 that the khedive was immediately to commute the 
 sentence to perpetual exile. In fact, the necessary 
 papers were drawn up and signed before the court 
 met for Arabi's trial on December 3. First, the 
 following charge was read ' : 
 
 ^ The documents and articles here given are quoted from Mr. Broadley's 
 How We Defended Arabi, pp. 326, 332, 336^ and 341. 
 
ARABICS REBELLION, 12/ 
 
 Ahmed Arabi Pasha, you are charged before us, on the 
 report of the Commission of Inquiry, with the offence of 
 rebelHon against his Highness the Khedive, and thereby 
 committing offences against Article 96 ' of the Ottoman 
 MiHtary and Article 59 "" of the Ottoman Penal Code. 
 Are you guilty or not guilty? 
 
 Upon Arabi's saying that his counsel would answer 
 for him, Mr. Broadley read the following : 
 
 Of my own free will, and by the advice of my counsel, 
 I plead guilty of the charges now read over to me. 
 
 An adjournment of several hours was then taken, 
 as a matter of form, we must believe, for the de- 
 liberations were all held in advance. Upon reassem- 
 bling the clerk of the court read the following 
 sentence : 
 
 Whereas Ahmed Arabi Pasha has admitted having 
 committed the crime of rebellion in contravention of 
 Article 96 of the Ottoman Military Code and Article 59 
 of the Ottoman Penal Code ; and whereas, in face of this 
 admission, the court has only to apply the articles already 
 cited, which punish the crime of rebellion by the penalty 
 of death ; for these motives the court unanimously con- 
 
 ^ Art. g6. — All persons who to the number of eight or more revolt, using 
 their arms, and refuse to disperse, or do not cease the revolt on receiving 
 the orders of a superior authority, may be punished with death. 
 
 -Art. 59. — Whoever, without an order from the Government, or without 
 a legal motive, shall assume the command of a division, a fortified place, 
 or city, etc., and any commander who, without a legitimate motive, shall 
 persist in keeping his troops under arms after their disbandment has been 
 ordered by the Government, may be punished with death. 
 
128 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 demns Ahmed Arabi Pasha to death for the crime of re- 
 bellion against his Highness the Khedive by application of 
 the said articles and orders. That the said judgment be 
 submitted for the consideration of his Highness the 
 Khedive. 
 
 But the judgment had already been submitted, so 
 that the clerk was able to read the following decree 
 from the khedive at once : 
 
 We, Mehemet Tewfik, Khedive of Egypt : Whereas 
 Ahmed Arabi Pasha has been condemned to death by 
 judgment of Court Martial of this day's date, by ap- 
 plication of Articles 96 of the Military Code and 59 of the 
 Penal Code, and whereas we desire, for reasons of our own, 
 to exercise in reference to the said Ahmed Arabi Pasha 
 the right of pardon which appertains to us exclusively, 
 we have decreed and do decree as follows : The penalty 
 of death pronounced against Ahmed Arabi is commuted 
 to perpetual exile from Egypt and its dependencies. 
 This pardon will be of no effect, and the said Ahmed 
 Arabi will be liable to the penalty of death, if he enters 
 Egypt or its dependencies. Our Ministers of the Interior, 
 War, and Marine are charged with the execution of this 
 decree. 
 
 [Signed] MeheMET Tewfik. 
 
 Arabi was glad to escape with his life, if we may 
 judge from his profuse thanks. He thanked Mr. 
 Gladstone, Lord Granville, Lord Dufferin, Sir 
 Edward Malet, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Broadley, Mr. Napier, 
 the English people, the English press, and others 
 to whom he felt specially grateful. It is not report- 
 
ARABICS REBELLION. 1 29 
 
 ed that the khedive was among the number. On 
 the 26th of December Arabi and his six companions, 
 Mahmud Sami, Yakub Sami, Mahmud Fehmy, 
 Tulba Osmat, Ali Fehmy, and Abd-el-Al Hilmy, 
 upon whom the same sentence had been passed, left 
 Cairo for the Island of Ceylon, there to spend their 
 life of perpetual exile. 
 
 All this while France had been chafing under the 
 prospect of the abolition of the Dual Control. Eng- 
 land had proposed in its stead a public debt commis- 
 sion, of which she offered the presidency to France, 
 by way of a sop to appease any anger ; but Premier 
 Duclerc rejected the proposal. It therefore became 
 necessary for Lord Granville to define the position 
 of England in Egypt. This he did on January 25, 
 1883, in an identical note to the Powers. He recited 
 that the Anglo-French control had not been the re- 
 sult of international agreement, but of tripartite un- 
 derstanding between England, France, and Egypt ; 
 and that, France having withdrawn from Egypt at 
 the beginning of the war, England had to suppress 
 the rebellion without assistance. She now purposed 
 to keep an army of occupation in Egypt only so long 
 as to secure the permanency of the re-established 
 government. Lord Granville announced, further, 
 that England would favor new regulations to pro- 
 vide for the future neutrality and inviolability of the 
 Suez canal. He was careful to insert in his note 
 
130 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 that the protection of Egypt would be considered 
 the only justification for the military occupation of 
 the canal. He begged that the Powers would alter 
 the capitulations so that foreigners in Egypt might 
 be taxed, a plan, as we have seen, that is contem- 
 plated in every scheme of reform, but never carried 
 out. He also suggested the prolongation of the 
 mixed tribunals for another year.' 
 
 With regard to international matters in Egypt, 
 Lord Granville announced that certain reforms in 
 the army, in the police, and in political institutions 
 had been undertaken. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the appoint- 
 ment of Baker Pasha to supervise the reorganization 
 of the Egyptian army. At the beginning of 1883 
 he was superseded by Sir Evelyn Wood, who under- 
 took to introduce, so far as practicable, a discipline 
 and treatment similar to those employed in the British 
 army. Relieved from the supervision of the army 
 Baker organized a police force of 4,000 men, which 
 was divided into urban and rural constabulary and 
 officered by Englishmen. The reform in political 
 institutions was the work, largely, of Lord Dufferin. 
 He had been sent from Constantinople to Cairo, 
 early in November, w^ith the special mission of 
 bringing order out of governmental chaos. In 
 
 ' Their expiration had been fixed for i88i, but two yearly prolongations 
 had already been added to the original term of five years. 
 
ARABICS REBELLION-. I3I 
 
 two months he had prepared a scheme of legisla- 
 tive reorganization. This was, however, somewhat 
 altered; so that it was not until May, 1883, that 
 the plan in its improved form was accepted by the 
 decree of the khedive. 
 
 The new constitution provided for three classes 
 of assemblies : the '' Legislative Council," the " Gen- 
 eral Assembly," and the '' Provincial Councils," of 
 which there were to be fourteen, one for each 
 province. The legislative council was to consist 
 of thirty members, fourteen of whom were to be 
 nominated by the khedive, and sixteen of whom 
 were to be elective. Of the latter, one would rep- 
 resent Cairo, another the towns of Alexandria, 
 Damietta, Rosetta, Suez, Port Said, Ismailia, and 
 El-Azich, and the remaining fourteen would repre- 
 sent each one a province. The elective members 
 were to be chosen for terms of six years, and might 
 be indefinitely re-elected. The council was to meet 
 as often as once in two months. Its influence on 
 legislation was to be so great, says Mr. Amos,' that 
 "it is hardly conceivable that a law could be per- 
 sisted in, in the face of a determined remonstrance 
 of the legislative council." No law or decree of a 
 legislative character could be promulgated unless 
 the government had obtained the opinion of the 
 
 ' Sheldon Amos, The New Egj^tian Constitution, in The Contemporary 
 Review, June, 1883. 
 
132 THE CON FLIC T OF EAST A ND WES T IN EGYPT. 
 
 council. If it should dissent from that opinion, the 
 government must give its reasons. A special article 
 provided that the budget must be submitted, and that 
 the council might express its opinion and wishes on 
 each section thereof. The reasons for dissent must 
 be given as in other cases. The legislative council 
 was to have, further, the right to discuss freely the 
 condition of the country and to consider any needful 
 legislative reforms, and to call for the drafting of 
 measures, to be submitted to itself, which should 
 serve as the basis of legislation. 
 
 The general assembly was to consist of eighty- 
 four members : the eight ministers of state, the 
 thirty members of the legislative counsel, and forty- 
 six elected members. The latter were to be elected 
 for terms of six years and, like the members of the 
 legislative council, might be indefinitely re-elected. 
 The assembly must meet as often as once in two 
 years, and its functions were to be largely of a 
 financial character. No new tax could be levied 
 unless it should receive the vote of the assembly, 
 and no public loan could be contracted unless the 
 assembly should be consulted. The reasons of dis- 
 sent on the part of the government must be given 
 to the assembly, as to the legislative council. 
 
 The fourteen provincial councils were to consist 
 each one of from four to eight members, and were 
 to divide between them the representation of the six 
 
ARABrS REBELLION. I 33 
 
 thousand villages in Egypt. Considerable legisla- 
 tive power in local government was to be given 
 them, such as voting of extraordinary taxes for 
 local improvement, which were to take effect mere- 
 ly upon the sanction of the government. Every 
 Egyptian man, over twenty years of age, was to 
 vote (by ballot) for an '' elector-delegate " from the 
 villaofe in the neigfhborhood of which he lived, and 
 the '' electors-delegate " from all the villages in a 
 province were to form the constituency that should 
 elect the provincial council. The term and re-eligi- 
 bility of the members of the provincial council were 
 to be the same as those of members of the other 
 two bodies, except that at the end of three years 
 one-half of the provincial council was to be renewed 
 by lot. The *' electors-delegate " were also to elect 
 directly the forty-six elective members of the gen- 
 eral assembly ; but they were to have no share in 
 the election of members of the legislative council. 
 Each provincial council was to elect from its own 
 number one member of the legislative council. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the scheme that Lord Dufferin 
 proposed and the khedive sanctioned. It was well 
 received by many who thought that it promised a 
 brilliant future for Egypt. The idea, however, of 
 looking to the fellahin of Egypt for the exercise of 
 constitutional rights and duties strikes any one who 
 is acquainted with their abject condition and dispo- 
 
134 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 sition as almost absurd. It is well enough for the 
 Westerner to import the ideas that have been the 
 slow growth of centuries in the most highly civi- 
 lized lands ; they will have their influence ; and yet 
 it must always be borne in mind that the political 
 idea is the fruit only of internal growth. Lord 
 Dufferin framed the constitution ; but he knew that 
 the chiefest truth among his recommendations lay 
 in the following paragraph : 
 
 The chief requirement of Egypt is justice. A pure, 
 cheap, and simple system of justice will prove more bene- 
 ficial to the country than the largest constitutional privi- 
 leges. The structure of society in the East is so simple 
 that, provided the taxes are righteously assessed, it does 
 not require much law-making to make the people happy. 
 
 The scheme for reorganization was carried for- 
 ward to the extent of electing the '' electors-dele- 
 gate " in September ; but by that time Egypt was 
 again in a state of such disquietude that the British 
 advisers of the khedive considered it unwise to put 
 the new institutions into operation. In place of 
 legislative council and general assembly, the khedive 
 appointed a council of state, consisting of eleven 
 Egyptians, two Armenians, and ten Europeans. 
 The reforms were set aside for the time beinof in 
 view of impending troubles and dangers in the 
 Sudan. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. 
 
 THE Sudan comprises the vast region lying 
 between the equator and the southern boun- 
 dary of Egypt at the first cataract of the Nile, and 
 extending from the Red Sea and Abyssinia on the 
 east to a western indefiniteness — to the point, one 
 might say, from which a slave could be carried to 
 the Nile with some chance of profit to the slave- 
 hunter. Since the day of Mehemet Ali, the country 
 had been to Egypt very much what Egypt was to 
 Turkey before the day of the great pasha. Me- 
 hemet Ali appropriated the Sudan to himself with 
 that freehanded robbery that was characteristic of 
 power in the time of feudalism, and his successors, 
 excepting perhaps Said, did all they could to keep 
 up the system of robbery and spoliation that he had 
 begun. On the other hand, the chiefs of the native 
 tribes did all they could to resist the power of 
 Egypt, often even to the point of bloodshed and 
 murder ; or paid their enforced tributes unwillingly 
 and only after these had been diminished by all 
 
 135 
 
136 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 possible peculations. There was an extensive in- 
 land commerce in the Sudan that made it a valuable 
 province. The yield of ivory, ostrich feathers, 
 grains, and tropical fruits was very large ; but the 
 traffic in slaves was the great industry of the country. 
 The Sudan supplied the slave markets of the Eastern 
 world. It was this feature of commerce that first 
 attracted the attention of the West to the Sudan. 
 It was the motive of mercy that encouraged the in- 
 terference of civilized people. 
 
 Ismail, with all the ambition of Mehemet Ali, was 
 ready to listen to any plans for increasing his 
 authority, especially if they were suggested by 
 Europeans. He had long entertained a scheme 
 of aggrandizement in the Sudan ; and he fancied 
 that expeditions to suppress the slave-trade, if 
 organized in his name, would somehow secure the 
 extension of his power. It may be doubted if he 
 appreciated the humanitarian motives that suggested 
 to Englishmen the necessity of such an expedition 
 as Sir Samuel W. Baker was deputed to lead in 
 1 869 ; but he gave Sir Samuel his hearty co-opera- 
 tion, and appointed him governor-general of the 
 entire region south of Gondokoro. Several years 
 before that time Ismail had reasserted Egypt's 
 authority, which had been suffered to lapse through 
 the Inactivity of Said and the opposition of the 
 Sudanese, by an extension of his dominion to the 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. 1 37 
 
 west in the conquest of Darfur ; and now he was 
 glad to have his governor-general push on to the 
 south. The story of Sir Samuel's attempt to reach 
 his province, and of his success in abolishing the 
 slave-traffic only for the time that the slave-posts 
 were under his eye, is told in his own book, Ismailia, 
 It is enough to state here that, despite his strenuous 
 and most worthy efforts, he made no permanent 
 impression upon the trade he sought to wipe out ; 
 on the contrary, by his opposition to the most in- 
 fluential men of the Sudan, the slave-traders, he 
 brought Egypt into greater odium then before, and 
 increased the hatred that had always been felt for 
 Egyptian rule. 
 
 The successor of Sir Samuel Baker was Colonel 
 Charles George Gordon, familiarly known as "" Chi- 
 nese Gordon " from his remarkable career in the 
 suppression of the Tai-ping rebellion in China. He 
 was, perhaps, the most humane man in England ; 
 but his character was as firm as it was sweet, and 
 his courage was as great as his pity. Of the man 
 whose name has been for years a household word 
 among the civilized and the heathen, whose feats 
 have won the admiration of the world, and whose 
 charities have been the inspiration of the rich and 
 the comfort of the poor, further characterization is 
 needless. Suffice it to say that Gordon had the 
 qualities that fitted him pre-eminently for the work 
 
138 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 he undertook when, In 1874, he started upon his 
 mission to the Sudan. He did not give Ismail 
 credit for much philanthropy ; for, before he left 
 Cairo for Khartum, he wrote to England : 
 
 I think I can see the true motive of the expedition, and 
 believe it to be a sham to catch the attention of the 
 English people : and feel like a Gordon who has been 
 humbugged/ 
 
 Going to the Equatorial Province, however, solely 
 on the authority of Ismail, he did not question the 
 latter's motives too closely, but applied himself to 
 the work of the expedition. He was to establish a 
 series of posts between Khartum and Gondokoro 
 and to suppress the slave-trade. In eighteen months 
 Gordon returned to Cairo and resigned his commis- 
 sion under the khedive. This is what he had done 
 at that time : 
 
 He had mapped the White Nile from Khartum to within 
 a short distance of the Victoria Nyanza. He had given to 
 the slave-trade on the White Nile a deadly blow. He had 
 restored confidence and peace among the tribes of the 
 Nile valley, so that they now freely brought into the 
 stations their beef, corn, and ivory for sale. He had 
 opened up the water communication between Gondokoro 
 and the Lakes. He had established satisfactory relations 
 with King M'tesa. He had formed Government districts, 
 and established secure posts with safe communication be- 
 tween them. He had contributed a revenue to the Kh^- 
 ' Archibald Forbes, Chinese Gordon, p. 125. 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. 1 39 
 
 divial exchequer, and this without oppression. The Tai- 
 ping RebelHon established Gordon's genius as a military 
 commander ; the Equatorial Provinces, when he left them, 
 testified not less to his genius as a philanthropic and prac- 
 tical administrator/ 
 
 Gordon resigned because Ismail Yakub, the gov- 
 ernor-general of the Sudan, threw so many stumbling- 
 blocks in his way. While he was doing all he could 
 to suppress the slave-trade, Ismail Yakub was doing 
 all he could to foster it. At the beginning of 1877 
 the khedive removed the latter, and wrote the fol- 
 lowing to Gordon (February 1 7) : 
 
 Setting a just value on your honorable character, on 
 your zeal, and on the great services you have already 
 done me, I have resolved to bring the Sudan, Darfur, and 
 the provinces of the Equator, into one vast province, and 
 place it under you as Governor-General." 
 
 Gordon accepted the larger responsibilities and 
 duties of the office bestowed upon him. For two 
 years and more he worked with indomitable energy 
 in crushing the slave-traffic, in putting down insur- 
 rection, and in establishing his authority throughout 
 the vast provinces nominally under his control. In 
 spite of almost insuperable difficulties in the way of 
 inadequate resources, both military ^ and financial, 
 he accomplished wonders. If he had been content 
 
 * Ibid., p. 157. ^ Ibid., p. 159. 
 
 ' ' ' The Sudan had been well-nigh drained of troops for the support of the 
 sultan in his war with Russia." Ibid., p. 162. 
 
140 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 to remain at Khartum after the fall of Ismail, the 
 fame and fear of the False Prophet might never 
 have been known in Egypt ; but he was disgusted 
 with the abdication, and insisted upon resigning, to 
 the no small relief, probably, of the new khedive 
 and his ministers, who were glad to be rid of all the 
 servants of Ismail. 
 
 After Gordon left the Sudan, in 1879, ^^ Egyp- 
 tian pasha was appointed governor-general, and the 
 country relapsed into its former feeling of bitterness 
 toward Egyptian rule. It was not long before the 
 disaffection found its leader. He was no less a per- 
 son than the Mahdi, whose coming had been 
 foretold by the prophet Mohammed. He chose an 
 opportune moment to act as the champion of his 
 people. They had been incensed at the suppression 
 of the slave-trade, they hated the Egyptian rule, 
 and they believed that the fourteenth century of the 
 Hegira, which was close at hand, would, in accord- 
 ance with prophecy, usher in an era of unexampled 
 prosperity and happiness. 
 
 Mehemet Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi, 
 was an obscure carpenter s son, who had studied 
 religious creeds with one sect of dervishes in Khar- 
 tum and with another sect in Berber until 1870, 
 when he became a fakir, or dervish-chief, himself. 
 He then retired to the island of Abba, on the White 
 Nile, where he became famed for his piety. He 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. I4I 
 
 lived in a cave, and gave himself up to prayers, 
 fastings, and mortifications of the flesh. He won a 
 wide notoriety, and made many disciples. Rich 
 gifts were bestowed upon him, and the neighboring 
 sheikhs gladly gave him their daughters in marriage. 
 His brotherhood in Khartum heard of his devotion, 
 wealth, and influence, and sent to him, early in 
 1 88 1, a messenger to bid him arise, in answer to the 
 call of God, and lead a great army. Mehemet 
 Ahmed took up the sword at once, and in May de- 
 clared to the fakirs of the faith of the Shiites that 
 he was the Imam Mahdi, the new Messiah who had 
 come to lead new believers into the fold of Islam, 
 and to annihilate all the infldels on the face of the 
 earth. His declaration met with no denial among 
 the Shiites, whose religious order was confined 
 almost wholly to the Sudan ; but at Cairo, Con- 
 stantinople, and Mecca, the report of a Mahdi 
 was scoffed at. Where were the signs' and por- 
 tents that should herald his coming ? 
 
 ' The greater signs, among which the coming of the Mahdi is reckoned, 
 are seventeen in all, and it must be confessed that some at least among 
 these seem unlikely to be, for the present, literally fulfilled. The sun 
 must rise in the west ; the beast must emerge from the earth near Mecca ; 
 the walls of Stambul must fall by miracle before an invading foe ; the 
 Messih ed-Dejdl, or ' Lying Anointed One,' marked K F R on his fore- 
 head, one-eyed, and riding from Irak on an ass, must lay waste the earth. 
 The true Messiah (our Lord Jesus) must appear on the minaret at Damas- 
 cus, must reign in Jerusalem, and defeat Gog and Magog, and slay ed- 
 Dejal at the gate of Lydda. A massacre of the Jews, and invasion of Syria 
 by the great giants (Gog and Magog), who are to drink dry the sea of 
 
142 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 But the Mahdi set about the estabHshment of " a 
 universal equaHty, a universal law, a universal re- 
 ligion, and a community of goods," ' and swore that 
 he would visit with death all who did not believe in 
 and follow him. In August, Rauf Pasha, the 
 governor-general of the Sudan, became alarmed at 
 the growing power of the False Prophet, — for such 
 he had been declared by the ulemas of Constantino- 
 ple and Cairo and the Grand Sherif of Mecca, the 
 highest priest of Islam, — and he sent an army to 
 crush him. But the Mahdi easily repulsed the 
 Egyptian^ force, as he did also a stronger force 
 sent against him at the end of 1881. In June, 1882, 
 he fought his first great battle, and won a brilliant 
 victory. Abdel Kadir, who had succeeded Rauf 
 Pasha as governor-general, sent out the strongest 
 force he could muster; but it was overwelmingly 
 defeated by the Mahdi's fanatical followers. Not a 
 
 Galilee, a smoke which shall fill the world, a relapse of Arabia into pagan- 
 ism, the discovery of hid treasures in the Euphrates, the destruction of the 
 Kaaba by negroes, beasts and stones speaking with human voices, a fire of 
 Yemen, a man of the sons of Kahtan, wielding a rod, and an icy wind 
 from Damascus which shall sweep away the souls of all who have faith as 
 a grain of mustard-seed, and blow to heaven the Koran itself ; these are 
 the wonders which, together with the coming of the Mahdi, will prepare 
 the way for the tremendous Yossr ed Din, or final day of judgment." — 
 C. R. Conder, The Guide of Islam, in The Fortnightly Review. 
 
 'A. Egmont Hake, The Story of Chinese Gordon, vol, ii., p. 24. 
 
 " The government forces in the Sudan were in large part made up of 
 Egyptian soldiers, the Sudanese soldiers being sent to Egypt in at least 
 equal numbers. This exchange of military was held one of the chief 
 grievances against Egyptian rule. 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. I43 
 
 commander escaped with his life, and nearly every 
 Egyptian soldier perished. And now for a time the 
 False Prophet had things pretty much his own way. 
 Arabi's rebellion not only diverted attention from 
 the Sudan, but it drew largely upon the Sudanese 
 garrisons for troops to support the nationalist cause. 
 The Mahdi became more and more aggressive, and 
 his ranks and his coffers were continually filling. 
 But, in attacking El Obeid, he was repulsed with 
 heavy loss. He was beaten off only temporarily, 
 however ; for he soon returned and laid siege to the 
 garrison, which was finally compelled to yield, 
 January 15, 1883. The commander of the garrison 
 and many of his subordinates saved their lives by 
 taking service under the Mahdi's standard. 
 
 The news of the fall of Obeid reached Egypt 
 about the beginning of February. The insurrection 
 was sufficiently serious to demand the attention of 
 the khedive. Lord Dufferin, however, advised let- 
 ting the Mahdi alone so long as he remained In 
 Kordofan. But the Egyptian government de- 
 termined upon an expedition, and entrusted Its 
 command to Colonel Hicks, a retired English 
 officer. It was Impossible, so soon after Arabi's 
 rebellion, to send as strong a force as was desirable. 
 The expedition consisted of eight English officers, 
 6,000 infantry, 1,000 Irregulars, 500 cavalry, and a 
 small force of artillery. The English government 
 
144 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 in no way sanctioned the undertaking, nor did they 
 oppose it. Lord Granville gave Sir Edward Malet, 
 the British consul at Cairo, positive orders not to 
 offer any advice on the question. After the first 
 engagement between Hicks and the rebels, April 9, 
 in which the former achieved a brilliant success, 
 Hicks made many appeals to Malet for reinforce- 
 ments ; but the latter merely passed them on to the 
 Egyptian government without comment. As Mr. 
 McCarthy puts it, 
 
 Though England had interfered in Egypt by force of 
 arms to keep the kh^dive on his throne, though Cairo was 
 occupied by English soldiers, though it was clearly in 
 England's power, and in her right, to counsel the Egyp- 
 tian ministry as to the course they should pursue in the 
 most difficult of all Egyptian questions, the ministry still 
 affected to keep up the absurd pretense of exercising no 
 influence upon the councils of Egypt.' 
 
 England could not shirk her responsibility by keep- 
 ing silent. She was bound in all honor to give her 
 advice at least ; and refusing, she failed of her just 
 duty and obligations.^ 
 
 The summer and the rainy season of 1883 were 
 passed by Hicks Pasha in Khartum ; but on the 
 
 ' Justin McCarthy, England Under Gladstone, ch. xv. 
 
 "^ "Why, then, it may be asked, did not the Liberal Government use its 
 influence to prohibit General Hicks's useless expedition ? The question very 
 plausibly suggests English responsibility for the expedition, and the conse- 
 quences, or supposed consequences of its failure." English Policy in the ' 
 Sudan, British Quarterly Review, July, 1884. 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI. 1 45 
 
 9th of September he set out for El Obeid, the 
 stronghold of the Mahdi. The story of his march 
 and the details of the final tragedy will probably 
 never be authentically told. The last bits of news 
 were in the letters of Edmund O' Donovan to a 
 London newspaper. He seems to have appreciated 
 the dangers of the expedition. On September 23, 
 he wrote to a friend : 
 
 It would be odd if the next intelligence from this part 
 of the world told that I, too, had gone the way of all flesh. 
 However, to die even out here, with a lance-head as big as 
 a shovel through me, will meet my views better than the 
 slow, gradual sinking into the grave which is the lot of 
 so many. . . . You know I am by this time, after an 
 experience of many years, pretty well accustomed to dan- 
 gers of most kinds, even some extra. Yet I assure you I 
 feel it terrible to face deadly peril far away from civilized 
 ideas, and where no mercy is to be met with, in company 
 with cravens that you expect to see run at every moment, 
 and who will leave you behind to face the worst. 
 
 When this friend next heard of O' Donovan, he had 
 " gone the way of all flesh." 
 
 The accepted account of the slaughter of Hicks 
 Pasha's army of 11,000 men is that, having been 
 treacherously led into an ambuscade on the ist or 
 2d of November, they fought for three days with 
 the courage and hopelessness of that smaller band 
 under Leonidas at Thermopylae ; then, overcome 
 with heat, thirst, and fatigue, their ammunition 
 
146 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 gone, they fell where they had fought, before the 
 fury of the Mahdi's hordes. All the Egyptians 
 were massacred, and only one European is known 
 to have escaped. 
 
 It was more than two weeks before the terrible 
 news reached Khartum and was telegraphed to 
 Cairo. It would be difficult to say whether the 
 panic was greater in Egypt or in the Sudan. In 
 the Sudan, governors of provinces, at the report 
 of the Mahdi's victory, declared their allegiance to 
 the holy cause, and flocked to his capital with 
 troops and treasure. Nothing succeeds like suc- 
 cess. The vast region from Kordofan to the 
 equator was kindled to a fanatical zeal. The 
 route from Khartum to Suakim, on the Red Sea, 
 was intercepted by a lieutenant of the Mahdi's. 
 The grasp of the Mahdi seemed to be closing 
 about Khartum. Colonel de Coetlogen, with his 
 slender garrison of 4,000, could not hold that city 
 before the sweep of the rebel forces. In Cairo the 
 consternation was no greater over the defeat than 
 over England's opposition to an expedition to crush 
 the Mahdi. Lord Granville telegraphed to Sir 
 Evelyn Baring, who was now the British repre- 
 sentative in Egypt, that the government would 
 lend neither English nor Indian troops to assist 
 an expedition. He advised the abandonment of 
 the Sudan. But the khedive's ministers said that 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDI, I47 
 
 they could not give up the territory that belonged 
 to the sultan, and of which Egypt was simply the 
 guardian. While negotiations between England 
 and Egypt were pending, the khedive's government 
 decided to send a force to SClakim to relieve the be- 
 leaguered Egyptian garrisons at Sinkat and Tokar, 
 and open the route from the Red Sea to Berber, so 
 as to allow the Egyptians in Khartum a way of 
 escape. The expedition was placed under the com- 
 mand of Baker Pasha. 
 
 But now, January 4, 1884, Mr. Gladstone's gov- 
 ernment expressed its advice more forcibly than a 
 month before. 
 
 It is indispensable [wrote Lord Granville] that her 
 Majesty's Government should, as long as the provisional 
 occupation of the country by English troops continues, 
 be assured that the advice which, after full consideration 
 of the Egyptian Government, they may feel it their duty 
 to tender to the Khedive should be followed. It should 
 be made clear to the Egyptian ministers and governors of 
 the provinces that the responsibility which, for the time, 
 rests on England, obliges her Majesty's Government to 
 insist on the adoption of the policy which they recom- 
 mend ; and that it will be necessary that those ministers 
 and governors who do not follow this course should cease 
 to hold their offices. 
 
 This was what Mr. McCarthy calls " interference 
 with a vengeance." ' It was the decisive, if tardy, 
 
 ' England Under Gladstone, ch. xv. 
 
148 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 assertion of authority. The note was equivalent to 
 saying that, in future, England's will was to be the 
 law of Egypt. From Downing Street the order 
 was issued that the Sudan must be abandoned, 
 whereupon Sherif s ministry resigned. Nubar Pasha 
 was called to his place ; and he telegraphed at once, 
 of course at England's dictation, to Baker, at Suakim, 
 that he must prepare for evacuation. 
 
 But the question now presented itself : How 
 should the evacuation be effected ? The answer 
 was furnished by the Pall Mall Gazette, of Lon- 
 don. Its issue of January 9 contained the following 
 suggestion : 
 
 At present it is obviously out of the question to send 
 an army of relief to Colonel Coetlogen. Baker Pasha's 
 force seems inadequate even to relieve Sinkat. In com- 
 mon with the ex-Kh^dive, of whom he speaks with re- 
 markable cordiality, General Gordon deprecates the 
 despatch of either Indian or English troops to the 
 Sudan. But if we have not an Egyptian army to employ 
 in the service, and if we must not send an English force, 
 what are we to do ? There is only one thing that we can 
 do. We cannot send a regiment to Khartum, but we can 
 send a man who, on more than one occasion, has proved 
 himself more valuable in similar circumstances than an 
 entire army. Why not send Chinese Gordon with full 
 powers to Khartum, to assume absolute control of the 
 territory, to treat with the Mahdi, to relieve the garrisons, 
 and do what can be done to save what can be saved from 
 
THE SUDAN AND THE MAHDE 149 
 
 the wreck in the Sudan ? . . . No one can deny the 
 urgent need in the midst of that hideous welter of con- 
 fusion for the presence of such a man, with a born genius 
 for command, an unexampled capacity in organizing 
 " ever-victorious armies," and a perfect knowledge of 
 the Sudan and its people. Why not send him out with 
 carte blanche to do the best that can be done? He may 
 not be able single-handed to reduce that raging chaos to 
 order, but the attempt is worth making, and if it is to be 
 made, it will have to be made at once. 
 
 The popular feeling was found to be heartily in 
 accord with this suggestion, and a clamor was im- 
 mediately raised on all sides for the dispatch of 
 Gordon to the Sudan. The British government, 
 some weeks before, had offered to appoint an Eng- 
 lish officer to go to Khartum and organize the 
 evacuation ; but the Egyptian ministry had not 
 taken up the offer. Now, however, Nubar informed 
 Sir Evelyn Baring that such an appointment would 
 be accepted. The British government, therefore, 
 at once communicated with Gordon, recalling him 
 from Brussels on the 17th of January where he had 
 just arrived to receive the last instructions of the 
 king of Belgium, before proceeding on an anti- 
 slavery mission to the Congo. He returned to 
 London that same day, and on the morning of the 
 1 8th was closeted with members of the English 
 cabinet. On Saturday, the 19th the London Times 
 startled the world with the following announcement : 
 
I50 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 It will be a welcome surprise to the country to learn 
 that General Gordon started last night, not for the Congo, 
 but for Egypt. . . . He takes with him, as his mili- 
 tary secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart, who was on 
 duty at Khartum so late as last year, and whose knowledge 
 of the affairs of the Sudan is second only to that of 
 General Gordon himself. The immediate purpose of the 
 General's mission is, we understand, to report on the 
 military situation in the Sudan, to provide in the best 
 manner for the safety of the European population of 
 Khartum and of the Egyptian garrisons still in the coun- 
 tr>% as well as for the evacuation of the Sudan with the 
 exception of the seaboard. His appointment will be re- 
 ceived by the country with a certain sense of relief, as 
 showing that the Government has been willing to seek 
 the best advice and to select the most competent agent for 
 the development of its policy in the Sudan. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE MISSION OF GORDON. OPERATIONS IN THE 
 
 EASTERN SUDAN. 
 
 ENGLAND had now taken a firm stand. She 
 largely increased her responsibilities by en- 
 trusting Gordon with the Sudanese mission. She 
 had been niggardly even with advice in the case 
 of Hicks, but she was ready to hazard all with Gor- 
 don. Her unquestionable responsibility will be 
 proved by the following documents. The day that 
 Gordon left London, Lord Granville gave him this 
 note of instruction : 
 
 ' Foreign Office, Jan, i8th, 1884. 
 
 Sir : — Her Majesty's Government are desirous that you 
 should proceed at once to Egypt, to report to them on 
 the military situation in the Sudan and on the measures 
 which it may be advisable to take for the. security of the 
 Egyptian garrisons still holding possession in that coun- 
 try, and for the safety of the European population in 
 Khartum. You are also desired to consider and report 
 upon the best mode of effecting the evacuation of the in- 
 terior of the Sudan, and upon the manner in which the 
 safety and the good administration by the Egyptian 
 
 151 
 
152 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Government of the ports on the seacoast can best be se- 
 cured. In connection with this subject, you should pay 
 especial consideration to the question of the steps that 
 may usefully be taken to counteract the stimulus which 
 it is feared may possibly be given to the slave trade by 
 the present insurrectionary movement and by the with- 
 drawal of the Egyptian authority from the interior. 
 You will be under the instructions of her Majesty's 
 agent and Consul-General at Cairo, through whom your 
 reports to her Majesty's Government should be sent 
 under flying seal. You will consider yourself authorized 
 and instructed to perform such other duties as the 
 Egyptian Government may desire to entrust to you, and 
 as may be communicated to you by Sir E. Baring. You 
 will be accompanied by Colonel Stewart, who will assist 
 you in the duties thus confided to you. On your arrival 
 in Egypt you will at once communicate with Sir E. Bar- 
 ing, who will arrange to meet you, and will settle with 
 you whether you should proceed direct to Suakim, or 
 should go yourself or despatch Colonel Stewart to Khar- 
 tum, via the Nile. 
 
 I am, etc., Granville. 
 
 While Gordon was on his way to Egypt he 
 wrote the following notes, explanatory of the above 
 instructions, and developed in accordance with the 
 views expressed at the conference on January i8. 
 These notes were forwarded from Cairo to the 
 Foreign Office at London. 
 
 I. I understand that her Majesty's Government have 
 come to the irrevocable decision not to incur the very 
 
THE MISSION OF GORDON. I 53 
 
 onerous duty of securing to the peoples of the Sudan 
 a just future government. That, as a consequence, her 
 Majesty's Government have determined to restore to 
 these peoples their independence, and will no longer 
 suffer the Egyptian Government to interfere with their 
 affairs. 
 
 2. For this purpose her Majesty's Government have 
 decided to send me to the Sudan to arrange for the 
 evacuation of these countries, and the safe removal of 
 the Egyptian employes and troops. 
 
 3. Keeping paragraph I in view, viz., that the evacua- 
 tion of the Sudan is irrevocably decided on, it will depend 
 on circumstances in what way this is to be accomplished. 
 My idea is that the restoration of the country should be 
 made to the different petty Sultans who existed at the 
 time of Mehemet All's conquest, and whose famihes still 
 exist ; that the Mahdi should be left altogether out of 
 the calculation as regards the handing over the country ; 
 and that it should be optional with the Sultans to accept 
 his supremacy or not. As these Sultans would probably 
 not be likely to gain by accepting the Mahdi as their 
 sovereign, it is probable that they will hold to their in- 
 dependent positions. Thus we should have two factors 
 to deal with ; namely, the petty Sultans asserting their 
 several independence, and the Mahdi's party aiming at 
 supremacy over them. To hand, therefore, over to the 
 Mahdi the arsenals, etc., would, I consider, be a mistake. 
 They should be handed over to the Sultans of the states 
 in which they are placed. The most difficult question is 
 how and to whom to hand over the arsenals of Khartum, 
 Dongola, and Kassala, which towns have, so to say, no old 
 standing famiHes, Khartum and Kassala having sprung 
 
154 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 up since Mehemet Ali's conquest. Probably it would be 
 advisable to postpone any decision as to these towns till 
 such time as the inhabitants have made known their 
 opinion. 
 
 4. I have, in paragraph 3, postponed the transfer of 
 the lands to the local Sultans, and stated my opinion that 
 these will not accept the supremacy of the Mahdi. If 
 this is agreed to and my supposition is correct as to their 
 action, there can be but little doubt that, as far as he is 
 able, the Mahdi will endeavor to assert his rule over them, 
 and will be opposed to any evacuation of the Government 
 employes and troops. My opinion of the Mahdi's force 
 is, that the bulk of those who were with him at Obeid 
 will refuse to cross the Nile, and that those who do so 
 will not exceed 3000 or 4000 men ; and also, that these 
 will be composed principally of black troops who have 
 deserted, and who, if offered fair terms, would come over 
 to the Government side. In such a case, viz,^ " Sultans 
 accepting transfer of territory and refusing the supremacy 
 of the Mahdi, and Mahdi's troops coming over to the 
 Government," resulting weakness of the Mahdi, what 
 should be done should the Mahdi's adherents attack 
 the evacuating columns? It cannot be supposed that 
 these are to offer no resistance, and if in resisting they 
 should obtain a success, it would be but reasonable to 
 allow them to follow up the Mahdi to such a position as 
 would insure their future safe march. This is one of 
 those diflficult questions which our Government can hardly 
 be expected to answer, but which may arise, and to which 
 I would call attention. Paragraph i fixes irrevocably the 
 decision of the Government, viz., to evacuate the territory, 
 and, of course, as far as possible, involves the avoidance 
 
THE MISSION OF GORDON, 155 
 
 of any fighting. I can therefore only say, that having in 
 view paragraph I, and seeing the difficulty of asking her 
 Majesty's Government to give a decision or direction as 
 to what should be done in certain cases, that I will carry 
 out the evacuation as far as possible according to their 
 wish to the best of my ability, and with avoidance, as far 
 as possible, of all fighting. I would, however, hope that 
 her Majesty's Government will give me their support and 
 consideration, should I be unable to fulfill all their ex- 
 pectations. 
 
 5. Though it is out of my province to give any opinion 
 as to the action of her Majesty's Government in leaving 
 the Stldan, still, I must say it would be an iniquity to re- 
 conquer these peoples, and then hand them back to the 
 Egyptians without guaranties of future good government. 
 It is evident that this we cannot secure without an in- 
 ordinate expenditure of men and money. The Sudan is 
 a useless possession, ever was so, and ever will be so. 
 Larger than Germany, France, and Spain together, and 
 mostly barren, it cannot be governed except by a Dictator, 
 who may be good or bad. If bad, he will cause constant 
 revolts. No one who has ever lived in the Sudan can 
 escape the reflection : " What a useless possession is this 
 land." Few men can stand its fearful monotony and 
 deadly climate. 
 
 6. Said Pasha, the Viceroy before Ismail, went up to 
 the Sudan with Count F. de Lesseps. He was so dis- 
 couraged and horrified at the misery of the people, that 
 at Berber Count de Lesseps saw him throw his gun into 
 the river, declaring that he would be no party to such op- 
 pression. It was only after the urgent solicitation of 
 European consuls that he reconsidered his decision. 
 
156 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Therefore, I think her Majesty's Government are fully- 
 justified in recommending the evacuation, inasmuch as 
 the sacrifice necessary toward securing a good government 
 would be far too onerous to admit of such an attempt be- 
 ing made. Indeed, one may say it is impracticable at any 
 cost. Her Majesty's Government will now leave them as 
 God has placed them ; they are not forced to fight among 
 themselves, and they will no longer be oppressed by 
 men coming from lands so remote as Circassia, Kurdistan, 
 and Anatolia. 
 
 Colonel Stewart, also, while on the way to Cairo, 
 addressed some observations to the Foreign Office, 
 of which the following is of some importance as 
 showing Gordon's independence of Egypt and 
 direct dependence upon England as the authority 
 of his actions : 
 
 I, of course, understand that General Gordon is going 
 to the Sudan with full powers to make all arrangements 
 as to its evacuation, and that he is in no way to be inter- 
 fered with by the Cairo Ministers ; also, that any sugges- 
 tions or remarks that the Cairo Government would wish 
 to make are to be made directly to him and her Majesty's 
 Minister Plenipotentiary, and that no intrigues are to be 
 permitted against his authority. Any other course would, 
 I am persuaded, make his mission a failure. 
 
 While Gordon was in Cairo, Sir Evelyn Baring 
 communicated to him the following additional in- 
 structions : 
 
 Lord Granville '' authorized and instructed you to per- 
 
THE MISSION OF GORDON. 1 57 
 
 form such duties as the Egyptian Government may desire 
 to entrust to you, and as may be communicated to you by 
 Sir E. Baring." I have now to indicate to you the views 
 of the Egyptian Government on two of the points to 
 which your special attention was directed by Lord Gran- 
 ville. These are, (i) the measures which it may be ad- 
 visable to take for the security of the Egyptian garrisons 
 still holding positions in the Sudan, and for the safety of 
 the European population in Khartum ; (2) the best mode 
 of effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Sudan. 
 These two points are intimately connected, and may con- 
 veniently be considered together. It is believed that the 
 number of Europeans at Khartum is very small, but it has 
 been estimated by the local authorities that some 10,000 
 to 15,000 people will wish to move northward from Khar- 
 tum only when the Egyptian garrison is withdrawn. These 
 people are native Christians, Egyptian employes, their 
 wives and children, etc. The Government of his High- 
 ness the Khedive is earnestly solicitous that no effort 
 should be spared to insure the retreat both of these 
 people and of the Egyptian garrison without loss of life. 
 As regards the most opportune time and the best method 
 for effecting the retreat, whether of the garrison or of the 
 civil populations, it is neither necessary nor desirable that 
 you should receive detailed instructions. A short time 
 ago the local authorities pressed strongly on the Egyptian 
 Government the necessity for giving orders for an imme- 
 diate retreat. Orders were accordingly given to com- 
 mence at once the withdrawal of the civil population. 
 No sooner, however, had these orders been issued than a 
 telegram was received from the SOdan, strongly urging 
 that the orders for commencing the retreat should be 
 
158 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 delayed. Under these circumstances, and in view of the 
 fact that the position at Khartum is now represented as 
 being less critical for the moment than it was a short time 
 ago, it was thought desirable to modify the orders for the 
 immediate retreat of the civil population, and to await 
 your arrival. You will bear in mind that the main end 
 to be pursued is the evacuation of the Sudan. This policy 
 was adopted, after a very full discussion, by the Egyptian 
 Government, on the advice of her Majesty's Government. 
 It meets with the full approval of his Highness the Khe- 
 dive, and of the present Egyptian Ministry. I understand, 
 also, that you entirely concur in the desirability of adopt- 
 ing this policy, and that you think it should on no account 
 be changed. You consider that it may take a few months 
 to carry it out with safety. You are further of opinion 
 that " the restoration of the country should be made to 
 the different petty Sultans who existed at the time of 
 Mehemet Ali's conquest, and whose families still exist " ; 
 and that an endeavor should be made to form a confedera- 
 tion of those Sultans. In this view the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment entirely concurs. It will, of course, be fully under- 
 stood that the Egyptian troops are not to be kept in the 
 Sudan merely with the view to consolidating the power 
 of the new rulers of the country. But the Egyptian 
 Government has the fullest confidence in your judgment, 
 your knowledge of the country, and of your comprehen- 
 sion of the general line of policy to be pursued. You are, 
 therefore, given full discretionary power to retain the 
 troops for such reasonable period as you may think 
 necessary, in order that the abandonment of the country 
 may be accomplished with the least possible risk of life 
 and property. A credit of ;^ 100,000 has been opened for 
 
THE MISSION OF GORDON. 1 59 
 
 you at the Finance Department, and further funds will be 
 supplied to you on your requisition when this sum is ex- 
 hausted. In undertaking the difficult task which now lies 
 before you, you may feel assured that no effort will be 
 wanting- on the part of the Cairo authorities, whether 
 English or Egyptians, to afford you all the co-operation 
 and support in their power. 
 
 On the 26th of January, General Gordon, Colonel 
 Stewart, and the newly-appointed sultan of Darfur,' 
 with no escort beyond their personal attendants, left 
 Cairo for Khartum, by way of Siut, Assuan, Wady 
 Haifa, Abu Hamed, and Berber. 
 
 While this daring party was hastening toward 
 Khartum as swiftly as railway, steamer, and camel 
 could carry them, events of a portentous nature 
 were occurring elsewhere. On the 5th of February 
 the British Parliament was opened, and on the same 
 day the news was received in London that Baker 
 Pasha had been defeated near Tokar, with a loss 
 of 2,000 men, and had fallen back with the remain- 
 der of his army — some 1,200 — on Trinkitat, himself 
 escaping death by a reckless dash through the Arab 
 ranks. Osman Digna, the Mahdi's lieutenant, had 
 carried all before him. Trinkitat could not hold 
 out against him, and fears were entertained even 
 for Suakim, although Admiral Hewett had just 
 landed a force there. These were not favorable 
 
 ' The khedive had reinstated the heir to the sultanship, who was a cap- 
 tive in Cairo, as the first step toward carrying out Gordon's policy. 
 
l6o THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 auspices for the opening of Parliament. The cus- 
 tomary placid language of the Queen s speech was 
 strangely at variance with the feelings of those who 
 listened to it. A vote of censure upon the govern- 
 ment was at once moved, but it was rejectectin the 
 form offered, and the subject was postponed for a 
 few days. In the meantime public opinion on the 
 necessity of active interference and responsibility 
 had strengthened to the point of insistance. The 
 London Times voiced the widespread sentiment in 
 saying : 
 
 This fatuous effort to evade the grasp of facts must now 
 be abandoned, and even with respect to the past the 
 world will be obstinately incredulous. Not only in Eu- 
 rope, as may be seen from the strong language used by 
 the French press, but among the Mohammedan popula- 
 tions of the East, England is held to be responsible for 
 the expeditions of Hicks Pasha and Baker Pasha not less 
 than for the mission of General Gordon.* 
 
 The excitement caused by the news of Baker's 
 defeat was further increased by the report of the 
 slaughter of the Sinkat garrison. Baker's expedi- 
 tion had utterly failed in the offensive. The vote 
 of censure came on the 1 2th. The identical motion 
 was offered in the upper House by Lord Salisbury, 
 and in the lower House by Sir Stafford Northcote : 
 
 That this House, having read and considered the cor- 
 J The Times, Feb. 7, 1884. 
 
THE MISSION OF GORDON. l6l 
 
 respondence relating to Egypt, laid on the table by her 
 Majesty's command, is of opinion that the recent lamen- 
 table events in the Sudan are due, in a great measure, to 
 the vacillating and inconsistent policy pursued by her 
 Majesty's Government. 
 
 The motion was carried against the government 
 by one hundred majority in the House of Lords, 
 but it was lost in the House of Commons, where 
 Mr. Gladstone made an ingenious defence of his 
 policy of non-intervention, and of his claim of irre- 
 sponsibility for the slaughter of the Hicks and the 
 defeat of the Baker expedition. Relief had not been 
 sent to Sinkat, because it was believed that such a 
 move would endanger the lives of Gordon and 
 those whom he had been sent to rescue, and the 
 chief desire of her Majesty's government was to 
 secure the evacuation, the peaceful evacuation, of 
 the interior of the Sudan. England was the guar- 
 dian of Egyptian interests, and the welfare of the 
 land demanded that Gordon's mission should be 
 successfully executed. '* For," said Mr. Gladstone, 
 " I look upon the possession of the Sudan — I won't 
 say as a crime — that would be going a great deal 
 too far — but I look upon it as the calamity of 
 Egypt. It has been a drain on' her treasury, it has 
 been a drain on her men." The government was 
 saved in the Commons by a majority of forty-nine. 
 
 In spite, now, of the reasons assigned for not 
 
1 62 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 having rescued the garrison of Sinkat, the EngHsh 
 government authorized the dispatch of General 
 Graham for the reHef of Tokar, Admiral Hewett 
 having already, with English sanction, assumed the 
 general command of forces at Suakim. Before 
 Graham had landed his force at Trinkitat, however, 
 Tokar had succumbed, the greater part of the gar- 
 rison joining the standard of Osman Digna. On 
 the last day of February, Graham marched forth 
 and met and overcame the intrepid lieutenant of the 
 Mahdi on the field where Baker's force had been 
 defeated. This success was followed up by further 
 advances, and on March 13 a decisive victory was 
 won. The backbone of the Mahdi's power in the 
 eastern Sudan seemed broken. But at this juncture 
 General Graham was ordered to embark his troops 
 and leave the seat of war at once. This was a fatal 
 order. Then was the time, Osman' s forces having 
 been beaten and scattered, to open the route from 
 Suakim to Berber, and afford an egress for the gar- 
 risons of the interior. The opportunity was missed 
 and never was presented again. Osman gathered 
 together his forces, strengthened his power at his 
 leisure, and held himself in readiness to carry out 
 his old threat of sweeping Suakim and every soul it 
 contained into the Red Sea. 
 
IX. 
 
 GORDON AT KHARTUM, AND THE GOVERNMENT IN 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 WE left General Gordon on his way to Khar- 
 tum. He arrived there on February i8. At 
 Berber he had issued a proclamation declaring the 
 purpose and policy of his mission. He had come 
 to establish tranquillity and prevent the shedding 
 of Moslem blood ; to secure to the inhabitants 
 their rights of property, and to put an end to 
 injustice and oppression. He reduced the taxes 
 one-half, and wiped off all arrearages. He con- 
 ferred upon the people the right, of which they 
 had been deprived at the expense of time, treasure, 
 and blood, to hold slaves as property, with full 
 control over their services. He guaranteed them 
 the privileges they enjoyed under Said Pasha, and 
 promised prosperity and happiness. In consequence 
 of this proclamation Gordon's journey from Berber 
 to Khartum was a triumphal march. The natives 
 flocked to bless him as their king and deliverer, and 
 he was received at Khartum with cries of rejoicing. 
 
 163 
 
164 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 His proclamation had a very different effect in the 
 outside world. European nations stood aghast 
 Gordon, the arch enemy of the slave-trade, de- 
 clared himself its friend ! England received the 
 news with consternation and horror. Every Wilber- 
 force of the nation raised his voice of protest. The 
 clamor precipitated a second vote of censure, which 
 was offered by M. Labouchere on March 15, the 
 ground of censure, however, being nominally the 
 useless waste of life in the operations about Suakim. 
 The government barely escaped defeat, the majority 
 being only seventeen. The criticism on General 
 Gordon for his slave-trade proclamation was as 
 blind as his policy was far-sighted. He had been 
 sent to secure the evacuation of the Sudan, after 
 which every sane man knew the country would 
 return to its old traffic ; for Gordon could scarcely 
 be expected to say : We are to withdraw, but you 
 are to frown upon the slave-trade just as though we 
 were here to compel you. The peaceful evacuation, 
 Gordon well knew, could only be secured by con- 
 ciliation, and the best favors to grant were those 
 the people were bound to gain. The wisdom of 
 his proclamation needed no further proof than the 
 excessive friendliness of the greetings along his 
 march and of his reception at Khartum. 
 
 Gordon devoted his first day in Khartum to acts 
 of mercy. He said to the people : " I come with- 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT, 1 65 
 
 out soldiers, but with God on my side, to redress 
 the evils of this land. I will not fight with any 
 weapons but justice." He won the hearts of all at 
 once by burning the government books and all in- 
 struments of torment and torture, by releasing the 
 unjustly imprisoned, and by devoting himself per- 
 sonally to the sick and the wronged. That first 
 day, also, he sent a dispatch to Sir Evelyn Baring, 
 saying that it would be folly to leave the Sudan 
 unless some one were to take his place as governor- 
 general. Anarchy and misery would surely ensue. 
 He named Zubair Pasha ' as the one above all 
 others to select for the position. '' He alone," he 
 wrote, '' has the ability to rule the Sudan, and 
 would be universally accepted by the Sudan." Sir 
 Evelyn Baring forwarded the suggestion the next 
 day to Earl Granville, and heartily urged its adop- 
 tion, believing, as he said, that Zubair was the only 
 possible man. 
 
 It had been supposed, and, in fact. General Gor- 
 don himself had so understood it, that he was to 
 have the dictatorial power in the Sudan that the 
 crisis demanded. The English government, how- 
 ever, immediately repelled the notion of appointing 
 
 ^ Zubair had had great power in the Sudan, where he was king of the 
 slave-traders. He was, at this time, confined in Cairo, his captivity being 
 lightened by a liberal allowance. Zubair was supposed to bear an undying 
 grudge against Gordon, because Gordon had killed his (Zubair's) son in the 
 Sudan during a previous campaign. 
 
l66 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 old slave-trading Zubair governor-general. A long 
 series of telegrams passed between Gordon, Baring, 
 and Granville on the subject. Gordon besought 
 and Baring expostulated ; but the government was 
 blind to all reason — to everything but the fear of a 
 renewal of the slave-trade, which, in point of fact, 
 was assured the day the evacuation of the Sudan 
 was decided upon. General Gordon afterward re- 
 duced the government's reasoning on this point to 
 a simple form :^ '' I will not send up A., because he 
 will do this ; but I will leave the country to B., who 
 will do exactly the same." Baring telegraphed to 
 Granville (March 9) : 
 
 As regards slavery, it may certainly receive a stimulus 
 from the abandonment of the Sudan by Egypt ; but the 
 despatch of Zubair Pasha to Khartum will not affect the 
 question one way or the other. No middle course is 
 possible so far as the Sudan is concerned. We must 
 either virtually annex the country, which is out of the 
 question, or else we must accept the inevitable conse- 
 quences of abandoment. 
 
 But the British government wished to abandon 
 the Sudan, and yet avoid the '' inevitable con- 
 sequences." Gordon maintained that to prevent 
 anarchy it was necessary to ''smash up" the Mahdi, 
 and that Zubair was the only one who had enough 
 influence and prestige of family to do it. Gordon 
 
 * General Gordon's Journal, p. 42. (September 17.) 
 
GORDON- AND THE GOVERNMENT. 1 67 
 
 could not bear the thought of leaving the Sudan to 
 ruin. He sent, March 8, a further argument, that 
 should have had some weight with the government : 
 ''If you do not send Zubair, you have no chance of 
 getting the garrisons away ; this is a heavy argu- 
 ment in favor of sending him." 
 
 But it was of no use. On March 28, Earl Granville 
 sent a long note to Sir Evelyn Baring, in which he 
 reviewed the discussion at length, and even re- 
 hearsed the slavery antecedents of Zubair. It is 
 impossible, after all the months that have intervened 
 since that note was written, to read it dispassion- 
 ately. Granville wrote : 
 
 Her Majesty's Government, on the perusal of General 
 Gordon's advice, were under the impression that he gave 
 undue weight to the assumed necessity of an immediate 
 evacuation of Khartum, and they inquired whether it was 
 urgent to make an arrangement at once to provide for his 
 successor, expressing a hope that General Gordon would 
 remain for some time. 
 
 In other words, her Majesty's government thought 
 that the '' necessity of an immediate evacuation " 
 could be more judiciously determined in Downing 
 Street than in Khartum. The question could be 
 decided certainly more safely. It is not necessary 
 to go through Lord Granville's note in detail. The 
 vain desire is clearly manifest throughout, that 
 Gordon should not abandon the Sudan in evacuating. 
 
1 68 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Gordon said that he could pursue but one course ; 
 Granville denied him that, but suggested no alterna- 
 tive. *' Let Gordon stay a while : the government 
 will deliberate. So far as is known, he is not in any- 
 immediate danger at Khartum. We will not let 
 Zubair leave Cairo." That was the gist of the note. 
 A week later, Mr Gladstone naively remarked that 
 General Gordon could leave Khartum '' at any time 
 if he felt so disposed." Little did he know the fibre 
 of the man's honor if he thought he could, under 
 any conditions, '' feel disposed " to desert the gar- 
 risons he had been sent to rescue. He felt that the 
 lives of some 29,000 persons, composing the gar- 
 risons at Bahr Ghazelle, Sennar, Kassala, Khartum, 
 Shendy, Berber, Abti Hamed, and Dongola were In 
 his hands. He would not be false to his trust. 
 
 The story of Gordon's government at Khartum, 
 of his dealings with the people, of his sorties against 
 the threatening forces of the Mahdi, and of his un- 
 tiring zeal and dauntless personal courage, is told in 
 his own journals ' and dispatches to Sir Evelyn 
 Baring, and in the letters of Mr. Power, the cor- 
 respondent of the London Times. Our concern is 
 less with those details than with the relations exist- 
 
 ' A large and very valuable part of Gordon's journals was lost when 
 Colonel Stewart's party was massacred, in September, 1884. Gordon had 
 entrusted them to that officer, believing that they would be safer than if 
 kept by himself, in Khartum. Stewart's journals, which Gordon con- 
 sidered very valuable, were lost at the same time. Vide seq. 
 
GORDON- AND THE GOVERNMENT. 169 
 
 ing between Gordon and the British government. 
 The Egyptian government quite drops out of notice, 
 all negotiations proceeding independently of the 
 khedive. 
 
 From first to last, so long as communication was 
 kept up with Gordon, the British government pur- 
 sued a policy of opposition to his proposals. His 
 long-continued and persistent calls for Zubair were 
 disregarded. He desired permission to proceed to 
 El Obeid for a peaceful negotiation with the Mahdi, 
 whom he appointed sultan ' of Kordofan ; but he 
 was told to remain at Khartum. He said that Ber- 
 ber should be relieved, and that the route from 
 Suakim to Berber should be kept open ; instead of 
 this, the British troops were withdrawn from the 
 Red Sea littoral. He desired that Turkish troops 
 should be sent there ; but this proposal was vetoed, 
 presumably on diplomatic grounds. He wished to 
 go from Khartum to Bahr Ghazelle and the Equa- 
 torial Provinces ; but he was told again not to pro- 
 ceed beyond Khartum. He begged that troops be 
 sent to Wady Haifa and Assuan ; but the request 
 was refused. Later he oarged the necessity of a 
 British diversion at Berber ; but his plea was not 
 heeded. Was it not strange that the English gov- 
 ernment should have sent Gordon to the Sudan 
 
 ' The appointment was scornfully rejected by the Mahdi, who sent der- 
 vishes to Gordon, ordering him to embrace the Moslem faith. 
 
I/O THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 with the explicit understanding that his judgment 
 should determine the means and methods of evacua- 
 tion, and then never, in any essential particular, 
 follow his advice ? The world called it almost a 
 crime. Early In April, Gordon sent an undated 
 message to Sir Evelyn Baring, containing the follow- 
 ing words : 
 
 As far as I can understand, the situation is this: You 
 state your intention of not sending any relief up here or 
 to Berber, and you refuse me Zubair. I consider myself 
 free to act according to circumstances. I shall hold on 
 here as long as I can ; and if I can suppress the rebellion, 
 I shall do so. If I cannot, I shall retire to the Equator ; 
 and leave you the indelible disgrace of abandoning the 
 garrisons of Sennar, Kassala, Berber, and Dongola, with 
 the certainty that you will, eventually, be forced to smash 
 up the Mahdi under great difficulties, if you would retain 
 peace in Egypt. 
 
 As Mr. Hake says : ''The breach was complete 
 The great soldier declined to serve as an instrument 
 of dishonor." ' 
 
 In England the bitterest criticism was heaped 
 on Mr. Gladstone. The liberals In Parliament be- 
 came hostile to their own government. On the 
 1 2th of May a third vote of censure was proposed, 
 in which the government was charged with Indiffer- 
 ence to the success of Gordon's mission and the 
 
 * The Story of Chinese Gordon, vol. ii., p. i66. 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT. 17I 
 
 safety of his person. Again the government es- 
 caped, but with the small majority of 28 in 578 
 votes cast. The result would probably have been 
 fatal to Mr. Gladstone, if the vote had been post- 
 poned for a month. Then his government would 
 have been held responsible for the fall of Berber 
 and the terrible massacre that occurred there on 
 June 2. A fourth vote might have been proposed, 
 had not a different phase of the Egyptian trouble 
 been forced upon Parliament for consideration be- 
 fore the news was received. 
 
 As always, the finances of Egypt were in a bad 
 way. For three years the deficits of the treasury 
 had been accumulating, till they amounted to some- 
 thing over ^8,000,000. The indemnities for losses 
 sustained in the bombardment, burning, and pillage 
 of Alexandria made about half of this sum ; and the 
 expenditures for the military constituted the chief 
 item in the remaining half. The British govern- 
 ment desired to meet the deficit by a new loan ; but 
 as this could not be done without conflicting with 
 the law of liquidation, it was decided to sum- 
 mon to a conference those Powers that had 
 agreed to the establishment of the law. Accord- 
 ingly, on the 19th of April, Lord Granville sent an 
 identical note to the great Powers, inviting them to 
 a conference in London, to consider whether a 
 modification of the laws of liquidation would not be 
 
1/2 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 for the financial interest of Egypt. Germany, Aus- 
 tria, Russia, and Italy accepted the invitation at 
 once ; but France, with something of her old-time 
 jealousy, objected to a conference that could not 
 consider the political as well as the financial question. 
 Lord Granville, however, was firm in his insistance 
 upon the limitation, so far as the conference was 
 concerned ; but he entered into a diplomatic corre- 
 spondence with M. Waddington. The result of the 
 exchange of views, or, as it was called, '' the Anglo- 
 French agreement," was submitted to Parliament by 
 Mr. Gladstone before the conference met. France 
 resigned all claim of control in Egypt, and agreed 
 never to land troops in the Delta without the consent 
 of England. On the other hand, England agreed 
 to withdraw her military forces from Egypt before 
 the first day of January, 1888, unless the Powers 
 should request the contrary. In the meantime she 
 was to prepare a scheme for the neutralization of 
 Egypt, which should be submitted to the Powers. 
 The Caisse de la Dette Publiqtie, it was agreed, 
 should be placed under the multiple direction of the 
 Powers. But all these arrangements, as Mr. Glad- 
 stone said, were dependent upon the will of the 
 conference, which, in turn, should be binding upon 
 England, according as Parliament, by its votes, de- 
 termined. 
 
 England being thus carefully guarded behind two 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT. ly^ 
 
 big- zfsy the Conference met in London on June 28. 
 Its progress was slow, and as it failed of its pur- 
 pose ultimately, its details need not be given. The 
 Powers so hopelessly disagreed that the Conference 
 was dissolved on the 2d of August. France, the 
 leader of the opposition to England, could not 
 secure the formulation of a future policy. As a 
 last straw she endeavored to obtain an adjournment 
 of the Conference till October, but, instead, it w^as 
 adjourned sine die ; and thus, all participation in 
 the affairs of Egypt was lost to her. This was 
 practically accomplished by her withdrawal from a 
 joint supervision at the time of Arabi's rebellion ; 
 but now, for the first time, her position of looker-on 
 was determined. Germany seemed satisfied with 
 having egged on France to a point where the re- 
 fusal of her demands would only increase the grow- 
 ing coolness between the British and French gov- 
 ernments. Turkey, of course, had found no following 
 in urging her rights and ability to control Egypt 
 without the help of Eastern Powers. Italy, the 
 only pronounced ally of England in the Conference, 
 retired with the distinction that this alliance had 
 brought upon her, and accepted, as her share of 
 the '' spoils," the thanks which Sir John Saville 
 Lumley, British Minister to Italy, was instructed 
 to bestow upon her for the support which she gave 
 to the British proposals in the Conference. 
 
174 ^'^^^ CONFLICT OF FAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 The glory of the collapse of the Conference, if 
 there were any, fell to England. It was demon- 
 strated that the Powers could not control Egypt in 
 unison ; it was left to England to do the work alone 
 and to earn the praise or the blame. The financial 
 question remaining still unsettled, the government 
 commissioned Lord Northbrook to go to Egypt 
 and investigate the '' condition of affairs so as to 
 advise the English government as to what counsel 
 should be given to the Egyptian government in the 
 present circumstances." Of course it was under- 
 stood that the '* counsel " would be of a more 
 peremptory character than advice usually is ; for 
 counsel and command to the khedive have long 
 been regarded in England as one and the same 
 thing. The High Commission found the finances 
 of Egypt in such a muddle that one of two courses 
 seemed inevitable : to make a declaration of bank- 
 ruptcy with a reduction of the coupons, or to turn 
 the revenues temporarily from the sinking fund for 
 the redemption of the certified debt into the Egyp- 
 tian treasury. The latter alternative was chosen, 
 and wisely, as it seems, although it was a breach of 
 the law of liquidation. Lord Northbrook held that, 
 if the tribute to Turkey and the expenses of the 
 government could be met for a time, and if the 
 revenues should afterward revert to the sinking 
 fund, the coupon-holders would lose less than by 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT. 1 75 
 
 a declaration of bankruptcy. By a decree of the 
 khedive, September i8, the law of liquidation was 
 suspended for six weeks. This called forth the 
 united remonstrance of the Powers. The plan, 
 however, was persisted in. 
 
 General Gordon, meanwhile, seemed to have 
 dropped completely out of mind. No word had 
 been received from him since May. By the fall 
 of Berber telegraphic communications had been cut 
 off, and only the vaguest rumors from any point 
 south of Dongola made their way to Cairo. At the 
 eleventh hour there had been a pretence of opening 
 the route from Suakim to Berber by sending a rail- 
 way plant to Suakim. Desultory dispatches of the 
 progress in its construction and of skirmishes with 
 Osman Digna were received during the summer ; 
 but no one was surprised that the work was discon- 
 tinued before autumn. This railway scheme was 
 perhaps less of a farce than the Khedive Ismail's 
 projected railway from Wady Haifa south to Han- 
 neck ; for Ismail left his plant to be covered by the 
 sweeping sands of the Nubian desert, while the 
 English carried theirs off to India. In order to 
 divert attention from the Berber massacre, the suc- 
 cess of Admiral Hewett's mission to King John of 
 Abyssinia, the news of which had been received 
 at about the same time, was somewhat magni- 
 fied. He secured, by treaty, access to a third 
 
1/6 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 route to Khartum from Massowah through Abys- 
 sinia. The sequel has shown how valueless the 
 concession was. But the attention of England had 
 been very generally diverted from Egypt altogether. 
 The Franchise Bill at home had been the absorbing 
 topic during the early summer. There had, how- 
 ever, been many rumors afloat of an expedition to 
 be sent to the relief of General Gordon. But the 
 weeks had drifted by, and July, the month first 
 named for the dispatch of the expedition, was past 
 before any active preparations were made. These 
 were begun in August by the vote of a credit of 
 ;^300,ooo to defray expenses. It seemed, finally, as 
 if the conscience of the government were quickened. 
 
X. 
 
 WOLSELEY's expedition. — CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE command of the relief expedition was en- 
 trusted to Lord Wolseley, the Sir Garnet 
 Wolseley who had suppressed Arabi's rebelHon, and 
 thereby won for himself elevation to the peerage. At 
 first Lord Wolseley had been asked simply to draw 
 up the plans of the expedition ; but as General 
 Stephenson, the commander of the forces in Egypt, 
 had not approved the scheme, Wolseley was called 
 upon to assume the command himself. At his sug- 
 gestion the government had decided upon the Nile 
 route in opposition to the very generally expressed 
 advice of the most competent authorities, among 
 whom was General Stephenson. The latter favored 
 the route from Suakim to Berber as the most direct 
 and the shortest. If an advance of only ten miles a 
 day were made, this journey could be accomplished 
 within a month. The objections to this route were 
 the lack of water, and the certainty that Osman Digna 
 would dispute every inch of the way. They were 
 formidable objections certainly, but not insuperable. 
 
 177 
 
1/8 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 The route would have been far preferable to the one 
 decided upon, on account of the great saving in 
 time. 
 
 There was still another route than the one chosen 
 that seems never to have been considered, although 
 it has always been the beaten way from Cairo to 
 Khartnm. It coincides with the route Wolseley 
 preferred, except that instead of making the long 
 journey through the horse-shoe bend of the Nile, 
 south of Wady Haifa, where the river is impassable 
 to large craft on account of the cataracts, it strikes 
 off across the Nubian desert from Korosko to Abn 
 Hamed, the points that represent the heel of the 
 shoe. The desert journey is accomplished in about 
 six days, the distance being two hundred and thirty 
 miles, or somewhat less than the distance from 
 Snakim to Berber. The route is not altoo^ether 
 pleasant, as the line of skeletons of men and beasts 
 who have perished on the way testifies ; but there is 
 a well at the midway station, and a flying column 
 could have carried enough water along with it. In 
 spite, however, of the greater disadvantages of the 
 circuitous route, Wolseley decided to stick to the 
 river. 
 
 The commander arrived in Egypt on the 8th of 
 September, and began to make elaborate and 
 tedious preparations. His force was to consist of 
 ten thousand men. To transport them he had de- 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 1 79 
 
 termined to employ Canadian boatmen, and to use 
 small boats similar to those he had used in a Cana- 
 dian expedition which he had commanded on the 
 Red River some years before. The boats and 
 boatmen were not ready before the end of Septem- 
 ber, when more than a month of high water had 
 already been lost. If the expedition had started in 
 July, as originally suggested, even steamers of light 
 draft might have been towed up the cataracts, which, 
 it must be remembered, are nothing more than long 
 stretches of whirlpools and eddies that scarcely roar 
 or rush as they wind in and out and around the 
 thousand and one rocky islets. After the middle of 
 August, when the Nile began to fall, every day 
 passed was a precious day lost. 
 
 An impulse was given to the work at the end of 
 September. A voice from the desert was heard that 
 had been stilled for months. It had all of its old 
 ring. ''I am awaiting the British • forces," wrote 
 Gordon, '' in order to evacuate the Egyptian garri- 
 sons." His purpose had not changed since the day 
 he started for the Sudan. On the 29th of Septem- 
 ber, Mr. Power's journal of events in Khartum, 
 from the ist of May to the end of July, was given 
 in the London Times, It was a thrilling story. 
 The indignation that the following extract aroused 
 was intense : 
 
 Since the despatch which arrived the day before yester- 
 
l8o THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 day [July 29], all hope of relief by our government is 
 at an end ; so when our provisions, which we have at a 
 stretch for two months, are eaten, we must fall ; nor is 
 there any chance, with the so-ldiers we have, and the great 
 crowd of women, children, etc., of our being able to cut 
 our way through the Arabs. We have not steamers for 
 all, and it is only from the steamers we can meet the 
 rebels. 
 
 The tw^o months were past : had the garrison al- 
 ready fallen ? Early in October further news was 
 received contained in a series of dispatches sent by 
 General Gordon to Massowah. None of them, 
 however, bore a later date than Power's message to 
 the Times, In one of them (July 31) Gordon 
 writes : 
 
 Reading over your telegram of the 5th May, 1884, you 
 ask me to state cause and intention in staying at Khar- 
 tum, knowing Government means to abandon Sudan, and 
 in answer I say, I stay at Khartum because Arabs have 
 shut us up, and will not let us out. 
 
 Again and again Gordon referred in his journal to 
 the impertinence of the above request : State your 
 reasons ! '* The ' reasons' are those horribly plucky 
 Arabs." ^ 
 
 The immediate result of these dispatches was 
 that all eyes were turned upon Lord Wolseley. 
 The criticism of his movements was less than the 
 
 *Jouraal, p. 53. (September 19.) 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. l8l 
 
 impatience at his delays. In the government's let- 
 ter of instructions, dated October 8, he was in- 
 formed that the primary object of his expedition 
 was the rescue of General Gordon ' and Colonel 
 Stewart. He was not to go farther south than 
 Dongola, unless it became actually necessary ; and, 
 in no case, was he to proceed beyond Khartum, 
 not even to relieve the garrison at Sennar. Such 
 instructions were scarcely calculated to arouse Lord 
 Wolseley to the activity that the purpose of his ex- 
 pedition required. Gordon had said that he could 
 not leave Khartum, and yet the government talked 
 about rescuing him at a point midway between that 
 city and Wady Haifa. The general who had stilled 
 the cry of ''Egypt for the Egyptians" with a skill 
 and promptness that called forth the applause of the 
 world, seemed to have assumed now a character 
 quite in keeping with the desires of his government. 
 They had been slow and irresolute in all their re- 
 lations with the Sudan. Each step was taken only 
 when the irresistible force of public opinion com- 
 pelled. By keeping just behind the public demand 
 and the necessities of the moment, the government 
 
 ^ Gordon's view of the relief expedition is interesting in this connection. 
 He wrote in his journals (September 24) : "I altogether decline the imputa- 
 tion that the projected expedition has come to relieve me. It has come to 
 SAVE OUR NATIONAL HONOR in extricating the garrisons, etc., from a posi- 
 tion in which our action in Egypt has placed these garrisons. I was relief 
 expedition No i. They are relief expedition No. 2. . . . I am not 
 the rescued lamb, and I will not be." The italics are his. 
 
1 82 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 had acted always just too late. General Gordon 
 gives a good instance of this failing in his journals : 
 
 Take the Tokar business : had Baker been supported, 
 say, by 500 men, he would not have been defeated ; yet, 
 after he was defeated, you go and send a force to reheve 
 the town. Had Baker been supported by these 500 men, 
 he would, in all probability, have been victorious, and 
 would have pushed on to Berber ; and, once there, Berber 
 would not have fallen. What was right to do in Alarch, 
 was right to do in February. We sent an expedition in 
 March, so we ought to have sent it in February ; and then 
 the worst of it was that. Baker having been defeated, 
 when you did send your expedition to Zb^'^r, Baker's force 
 no longer existed, and his guns resist me at Berber. It is 
 truly deplorable, the waste of men and money, on account 
 of our indecision.* 
 
 The advance of the Nile force was lamentably 
 slow. By the 20th of November there were only 
 3,000 troops, out of some 16,000 in Egypt, that had 
 passed Wady Haifa. Within the next three weeks, 
 however, the 10,000 troops composing the ex- 
 peditionary force were all south of Korosko. It 
 seemed as though Lord Wolseley were preparing 
 to write a book on '' My Winter on the Nile." He 
 would have had the advantage of the thousand 
 and one tourists who have written under the 
 above title, in that he pushed beyond the usual limit 
 at the first cataract, and maintained a progress that 
 
 ^ Gordon's Journals, p. 151. (October 8.) 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 1 83 
 
 all might envy, who have enjoyed the motionless- 
 ness of the dahabieh. A description of a Nile 
 journey is nothing unless it dwells upon the lazi- 
 ness, the idleness, the donothingness of the life. 
 
 In the meantime the news of another horror had 
 been received from the Sudan. On the loth of 
 September, General Gordon had sent Colonel 
 Stewart down the Nile in command of an expedi- 
 tion against Berber. He considered it important 
 that the rebel fortifications there should be de- 
 stroyed, thus enabling Stewart to open communica- 
 tion with the expedition of relief, concerning whose 
 movements Gordon was very much in the dark. It 
 is also hinted that Gordon wished, by this method, 
 to save the life of his brave lieutenant' Before the 
 fall of Berber he had sent down into Egypt more 
 than six hundred soldiers and two thousand people ; 
 but this was the first attempt since then to add to 
 the number. Stewart succeeded in demolishing the 
 Berber fortifications, and then, with Power, the 
 Times correspondent, and about forty others, he 
 parted from the main force, which returned to 
 Khartum, and steamed on toward Dongola. After 
 passing Abu Hamed — where he might have met a 
 flying column from Korosko if that route had only 
 been selected — his steamer struck a rock and could 
 not be shoved off. He and his companions were 
 
 * A. Egmont Hake, The Story of Chinese Gordon, p. 180. 
 
1 84 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 now induced by promises of peace to accept the 
 hospitality of Suleiman Wad Gamr, in whose 
 country they were. Unarmed, they met him at 
 the house of a blind man to negotiate for the pur- 
 chase of camels to take them to Dongola ; but, 
 while there, they were basely set upon and mur- 
 dered. The bodies of Stewart and Power, the only 
 Englishmen besides Gordon south of Dongola, were 
 thrown into the river as food for the crocodiles. 
 The valuable journals of Gordon and Stewart fell 
 Into the hands of the rebels. Hussein, the stoker 
 of the steamer, escaped death, and after a servitude 
 of four months gave the first authoritative report of 
 the massacre. Undoubted rumors, however, had 
 reached the force advancing up the Nile early in 
 October. The news added fresh fuel to the fire of 
 English indignation. The government that had 
 shielded itself from the responsibility of Hicks s 
 death could find no way of escape from the blame 
 that now attached to it. Stewart had been appoint- 
 ed Gordon's first lieutenant, had been sent to the 
 Sudan for a specific purpose, and had then been 
 abandoned to the fate that befell him. Those who 
 had been wondering If the last act of the play were 
 to be comedy or tragedy, questioned no longer. 
 Alarming rumors were now circulated regarding 
 Gordon. It was said that he had been captured 
 by the Mahdi ; then that Khartum had fallen ; and 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 185 
 
 again that the mines had been exploded and had 
 blown Gordon into the air. On the 14th of No- 
 vember, however, Wolseley received from Gordon 
 a set of cipher dispatches, dated November 4. 
 Gordon lived ; but he was in imminent danger. 
 The Mahdi was within eight hours of Khartum, 
 which had provisions for about forty days. Five 
 steamers had gone from Khartum to Metemneh to 
 await the expected relief. These facts were kept 
 from the public, which only knew that Gordon was 
 alive. 
 
 The beginning of the new year found Lord 
 Wolseley still working his tedious way up the 
 Nile. The apathy that had followed long-con- 
 tinued impatience in England was dispelled, early 
 in January, by a very explicit telegram from Lord 
 Wolseley to the Prince of Wales. His lordship 
 announced, with something of a theatrical air, that 
 he would enter Khartum on the 24th of January. 
 The public confidence in Wolseley's promises was 
 great ; for he had always had a way of announcing 
 what he proposed to accomplish on a certain day, 
 and of proceeding forthwith to carry out his under- 
 taking to the letter. Since the battle of Tel-el- 
 Kebir, however, the public had been deluded by 
 so many vain plans, never carried to their execution, 
 that almost any promise must need go begging for 
 confidence. Still the general public was willing to 
 
1 86 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 trust for a last time, and the recent article in the 
 London Times was forgotten, that called upon Mr. 
 Gladstone to resign '' in order to enable a new 
 ministry, not crippled by personal engagements in- 
 jurious to the true interests of England, to adopt a 
 vigorous policy in Egypt, the colonies, and foreign 
 affairs generally." ' 
 
 While Wolseley was hurrying his troops forward 
 to Korti, which he had determined to make his base 
 of operations, there were perplexing rumors afloat 
 concerning the re-entrance of the Sublime Porte as 
 an active factor in the Egyptian question. The an- 
 nouncement soon followed that the sultan was pre- 
 paring to dispatch troops to Suakim in order to 
 overcome Osman Digna, who was still zealously 
 serving the Mahdi in that locality. Her Majesty's 
 government at once resolved that Turkish troops 
 should not be landed on the Red Sea littoral. But 
 on what ground could England prevent it ? It had 
 never claimed the power of a protectorate ; how, 
 then, could it exercise such power ? The answer 
 was easily found in the history of the preceding 
 years. The British government had never hesitated 
 to act as the dominant power ; it had only hesitated 
 to assume the responsibility that must necessarily 
 be associated with that power. It seemed now as if 
 England would be forced finally to acknowledge 
 
 '^The Times, January 5, 1885. 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 1 87 
 
 herself the positive protector of Egypt, when sud- 
 denly the attention of the government and the 
 people was diverted from diplomacy to the war 
 operations in the Sudan. 
 
 Having concentrated his forces at Korti, Lord 
 Wolseley, on the 4th of January, ordered General 
 Earle, with a force of about 2,500 men, to proceed 
 to Berber, by way of the long bend in the Nile. 
 He was to get possession of Abu Hamed and Ber- 
 ber, in order that the desert routes from those points 
 might be made use of in case of evacuation. On 
 the 8th of January, General Stewart, with a picked 
 force of about 1,500 men, was dispatched from 
 Korti straight across the desert to Metemneh, there 
 to meet the steamers that General Gordon had sent 
 out from Khartum. This desert route was only 
 about thirty miles shorter than the one from Ko- 
 rosko to Abu Hamed, which might have been taken 
 in September. Four precious months would thus 
 have been saved. All went well with General 
 Stewart's desert journey, till he neared the wells of 
 Abu Klea, less than twenty-five miles from Metem- 
 neh. He encamped near them on the i6th of 
 January, and on the 17th his force was attacked by 
 10,000 rebels. His troops fought as Englishmen 
 always fight ; and the rebels, with all their superior- 
 ity of numbers, were repulsed. The English loss 
 was sixty-five killed and nearly a hundred wounded. 
 
1 88 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Among the former was the famous Colonel Burnaby, 
 who made the wonderful '' Ride to Khiva." He is 
 said to have died '' like a true British bull-dog, with 
 his right hand clenched in death about the throat 
 of the Arab whose spear was thrust through the 
 Colonel's neck." On the 19th, a still more formi- 
 dable force was encountered ; but again the rebels 
 were repulsed. General Stewart had received a 
 wound which he would not admit was serious, but 
 pushed on to Gubat on the Nile, not attempting to 
 force Metemneh, which was in the hands of the 
 rebels. At Gubat were Gordon's steamers and the 
 inspiring message : ' All right at Khartum. Can 
 hold out for years." It seemed as if fortune served 
 the will of England. The enthusiasm that greeted 
 the news of Stewart's victories and of Gordon's 
 message was boundless. A confidence was begot- 
 ten that made final success seem already within 
 England's grasp. The world did not know then, as 
 we do now, that the message was written for the 
 enemy,' and that Gordon had sent word to Wolseley, 
 nearly two months before, that he had provisions 
 enough for about forty days. The Commander-in- 
 Chief had received a later dispatch, dated Decem- 
 ber 14, in which Gordon said: ''Our troops in 
 Khartum are suffering from lack of provisions . . . 
 We want you to come quickly." But Wolseley had 
 
 ' A. Egmont Hake, Story of Chinese Gordon, p. 600. 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION'. 1 89 
 
 kept Gordon's peril a secret, only using the utmost 
 haste — at the eleventh hour — to secure his release. 
 The world, therefore, rejoiced at the news. 
 
 Several days were now fatally misspent. It was 
 not till the 24th of January that Sir Charles Wilson 
 started on Gordon's steamers for Khartum. On 
 the 28th, after having been assailed all along his 
 journey by armed Arabs on the banks of the river, 
 Colonel Wilson appeared in sight of Khartum. In- 
 stead of the eager welcome he expected, he was met 
 with a furious fusilade from all sides, and before 
 him on the government house floated the Mahdi's 
 colors. Khartum had fallen, and Gordon was cap- 
 tured or killed. Assured of the terrible disaster, 
 Wilson hastily beat a retreat. He lost both his 
 steamers at the sixth cataract, and only reached 
 Gubat after a most perilous adventure, being res- 
 cued from his dangerous situation by Lord Charles 
 Beresford. But on the way down he had learned 
 from the natives that Khartum had fallen on the 
 the 26th. Gordon had been lost by two days. 
 With fateful instinct he had written, October 13 : 
 " It is, of course, on the cards that Khartum is 
 taken under the nose of the expeditionary force, 
 which will h^ just too late'' ' It probably never will 
 be known just how he died ; and it matters little 
 which story we believe. All agree that Faraz 
 
 ' Journals, p. 178. 
 
190 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 Pasha treacherously betrayed the city, and that the 
 martyr died Hke a hero. 
 
 To the western world the news of the fall of 
 Khartum was like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. 
 At the very moment of rejoicing, fortune and faith 
 were crushed. The calamity marked an epoch. 
 The press and the people demanded that from that 
 day the great statesman, whose policy had always 
 been peace, should bear the arms he was loath to 
 assume and slow to use in a strong and swift cam- 
 paign of revenge, or make way for a ministry of 
 war. The public patience and forbearance were 
 strained beyond their utmost tension. The final 
 catastrophe was the natural outcome of all the mis- 
 takes of England in Egypt. Since the suppression 
 of Arabi's rebellion there had been little to admire 
 in the British policy. Forced to remain and protect 
 her own interests, and guard with jealous care the 
 water-way to India, England hesitated to accept, 
 and endeavored to shirk at every step, the responsi- 
 bility that her power and position had forced upon 
 her. It may be true that the British interference in 
 Egypt was not of Mr. Gladstone's choosing ; but, 
 when he accepted the control of the government, he 
 accepted the situation in Egypt as it was, and not 
 as he might wish it to be. Since his accession, in 
 1880, it had never been possible or desirable for 
 England to withdraw her influence from Egypt ; 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 19 1 
 
 but Mr. Gladstone could not look that fact in the 
 face. After Arabi's downfall, in 1882, the British 
 Parliament, press, and public uFged their govern- 
 ment to declare its policy or intentions in Egypt ; 
 but they urged in vain. Nothing was ever decided 
 till the exigencies or the disasters of the moment 
 rendered action absolutely imperative. This halting 
 policy resulted in disaster, slaughter, and the final 
 tragedy. 
 
 Scarcely had the world recovered from the first 
 great shock of Gordon's death, when it was an- 
 nounced that General Earle had been killed in an 
 engagement with the rebels, February 9, while 
 pressing toward Abu Hamed ; and then came the 
 sad news that General Stewart's wound had proved 
 fatal, February 16. Perhaps Wolseley began to 
 nave some concern for his own life. At all events, 
 he lost no time in gathering together the outlying 
 portions of his army. The perilous desert journey 
 from Gubat to Korti was safely made ; and the 
 river expedition that General Earle had commanded 
 was recalled. With all possible expedition the army 
 retreated to Dongola, where it took up its quarters 
 for the summer. Such was the end of the lamenta- 
 ble failure to rescue Gordon. 
 
 The cry for vengeance with which England was 
 still ringing had to be recognized in some way. To 
 counteract the humiliation of Wolseley's retreat, 
 
192 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 active operations had been undertaken on the Red 
 Sea littoral. Troops were personally reviewed by 
 the queen, and then ordered to the seat of war In 
 the eastern Sudan. It was declared that the gov- 
 ernment had determined to open the route to Berber 
 and then to " smash '' the Mahdi. But the most 
 barren, desolate, and difficult of desert routes was 
 still guarded by Osman Digna, the lieutenant of the 
 Mahdl, whose forces had more than once carried 
 destruction Into the English camp. It was a dlfifi- 
 cult task the government set the English soldiers, 
 to accomplish that journey of two hundred and fifty 
 miles amid all the natural perils of the desert and 
 with hostile hordes ready to swoop down upon 
 them from every mountain along the way. But 
 the accomplishment was beyond the intention of 
 the government. A show of activity was made at 
 Snakim with soldiers and railway plant, until Mr. 
 Gladstone had recovered from the effect of the vote 
 of censure that so nearly ^ cost him his government 
 when Parliament reassembled at the end of Febru- 
 ary. The beleaguered garrison of Kassala was 
 sending piteous appeals for help that were like the 
 old cries from Khartum. But aside from this the 
 call for war was still Inspired of vengeance only. 
 Vengeance, however. Is a quality that Mr. Glad- 
 
 ' The vote was carried in the upper House by a large majority, but lost 
 in the lower House by the narrow majority of fourteen. 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION, 1 93 
 
 Stone's character — to his honor be It said — has 
 never known. Supported by a narrow majority, he 
 turned his thoughts from the stinging failures of his 
 poHcy abroad to the grand purposes of his Hfe-work 
 at home. The cry for vengeance never found an 
 echo in the sand hills of the desert, while at home 
 it had dwindled, within two months, to the murmur 
 of a jeering and deriding opposition. 
 
 The epilogue of the tragedy, however, might bet- 
 ter have been spoken after a farce. All the irony 
 of an eighteenth century comedy was contained in 
 Lord Wolseley's farewell address, in which he an- 
 nounced the withdrawal of the British troops from 
 the Sudan and highly praised '' the conduct of all 
 the departments of the service during the cam- 
 paign." One asks to whom and to what he issued 
 the farewell. Was it to the shades of Hicks Pasha, 
 of the Stewarts, of Earle, of Gordon, and of the 
 brave British soldiers whose whitening bones would 
 make the desert paths plainer to the caravans of war 
 or peace that should thereafter wind across the sands 
 of the Sudan ? Or was it to the rival Mahdis — for 
 since the death of Gordon the glory of Mehemet 
 Ahmed had been dimmed by the claims of a Falser 
 Prophet than himself — who were threatening a 
 greater destruction among believers than had been 
 accomplished by the trained troops of a superior 
 civilization ? Perhaps Osman Digna heard the ad- 
 
194 "^HE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 dress, or from the hills about Suakim, where he and 
 his band had so successfully harassed and hindered 
 the invaders, watched the withdrawal. He must 
 have smiled — for he was a European, and cannot be 
 supposed to have acquired the disposition of the 
 Mussulmans with their faith — as he looked down 
 upon the few miles of the incomplete and deserted 
 railway. 
 
 And yet the withdrawal from the Sudan in May, 
 1885, was the wisest act of Mr. Gladstone's Su- 
 danese policy. Gordon himself had said : '' If 
 Khartum falls, then go quietly back to Cairo, for 
 you will only lose men and spend money uselessly 
 in carrying on the campaign." ' The troops could 
 not go as far as Cairo, however, for the Egyptian 
 boundary needed to be guarded. The frontier gar- 
 rison was placed at Wady Haifa. This was the 
 proper limit ; for it brought Korosko, the terminus 
 of the desert route, under the protection of the Nile 
 patrol of steamers, and was itself within easy reach 
 of reinforcements from Assuan. The natural bar- 
 riers of protection, the long cataract south of Wady 
 Haifa, and the six days' desert guarding Korosko, 
 make the present Egyptian garrisons practically im- 
 pregnable. And so the Sudan was left to its inher- 
 ent anarchy. But first England offered naively to 
 let Turkey set up a government there. Turkey 
 
 ^ Journals, p, 179. (October 13.) 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. I95 
 
 declined with thanks. The Sudan pays no tribute. 
 The Porte cares Httle for the mere honor of being 
 acknowledged suzerain ; its solicitude is for some- 
 thing more tangible. So long as there is no inter- 
 ference with her tribute prerogatives, Turkey will 
 make no attempts to establish her claim of authority, 
 by sending troops or treasure to Egypt or the Sudan. 
 After Turkey refused to act the part of what seemed 
 cat's paw to England, Italy became clamorous for 
 the distinction. But her ambition never has ex- 
 tended beyond the Red Sea littoral. The Sudanese 
 have thus been left practically to themselves since 
 May, 1885. They have begun to prepare their 
 country for the ultimate reception of civilization 
 much more effectually than an external force could 
 have done. The Mahdi and Osman Digna are 
 dead. Intestine strifes among different factions 
 have so wasted the resources of the land that the 
 misery of the people is as great, probably, or greater 
 than in the days when an Egyptian pasha was gov- 
 ernor-general. Perhaps the people already look 
 back upon the time when Gordon first ruled them, 
 as the period of their happiest prosperity. It is not 
 an impossibility that the dreams of Sir Samuel Ba- 
 ker may yet come true, in which he pictures to him- 
 self the upper Nile region as freed from the curse 
 of the slave-traffic, as accessible to the outer world, 
 and as bringing forth the bounties of tropical ia- 
 
196 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 crease. Before this Utopian result is secured, how- 
 ever, the influence of the Anglo-Saxon will again 
 be needed. 
 
 We must now take a final look at Egypt proper. 
 The khedive's government played a small part in 
 the game that cost England so dearly. Their chief 
 concern was to keep their head above the ever-flow- 
 ing, never-ebbing tide of debts. It cannot be said 
 that they succeeded. It has been seen to what ex- 
 tremities Lord Northbrook was obliged to go in 
 order to relieve the financial embarrassments of 
 1884, and how the Powers were incensed at his 
 action. By way of conciliation, a financial scheme 
 was drawn up to which the Powers, in International 
 Convention, agreed, and which was presented to 
 Parliament in March, 1885. The agreement guar- 
 anteed a loan of ^9,000,000, to be used in lifting 
 the Egyptian debt, the loan to be liquidated by the 
 repayment of ^325,000 annually, and this sum to 
 be considered the first charge against the Egyptian 
 revenues until the entire loan is lifted. The admin- 
 istrative expenditure of the khedive's government 
 was limited to the sum of ^5,237,000. Any surplus 
 over the year's receipts was to be paid over to the 
 Commissioners of the Public Debt for the purpose 
 of making good an imposed deduction of five per 
 cent, from the interest on the loan and an imposed 
 reduction of one-half per cent from the interest on 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. I97 
 
 the Suez canal shares held by England. The cus- 
 tomary provision was included in the agreement, 
 that extends taxation to all foreigners resident in 
 Egypt. This provision had often enough been en- 
 dorsed ; it must now be executed. The Egyptians 
 would then believe that the Giaours were not with- 
 out a sense of honor. The agreement further pro- 
 vided, as always, for an '' exhaustive investigation 
 into the revenue-earning capacity of Egypt." The 
 final provision of importance was that if at the end 
 of two years it should be found that a continued 
 deduction from interest on the coupons is necessary, 
 the khedive should summon an international com- 
 mission like that of 1880, to make general inquiry 
 into Egyptian finances. The agreement seemed to 
 have been drawn up in the interest of Egypt. 
 
 The two years of probation are nearly ended. In 
 the interval Egypt has prospered and the financial 
 scheme has worked well. The Commissioners of 
 the Public Debt now announce ' that the surplus 
 after the payment of the November coupon of the 
 unified debt '' will suffice to make good any de- 
 ficiency in the unassigned revenues and to reimburse 
 the five per cent, coupon tax levied during the last 
 two years, besides leaving a balance, which under 
 the convention will be equally divided between the 
 Caisse and the Ministry of Finance." There will 
 
 ^ The London Times^ October 26, 1886. 
 
198 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT, 
 
 thus be no occasion for the khedlve to summon an 
 international commission. The comparative pros- 
 perity that has secured this result is due to the 
 peaceful state of affairs in Egypt and to the more 
 than ordinarily productive yield of the soil. The 
 cotton crop has of late recalled the days when 
 Ismail was khedive. Then, too, there has been a 
 discovery within the boundaries of Egypt that may 
 afford a better solution of the financial problem 
 than all the agreements and investigations of Euro- 
 pean Powers can ever secure. Egypt has been ab- 
 solutely unproductive of fuel ; but there is a promise 
 that the newly found petroleum will be made to 
 answer the purpose of the imported coal. The new 
 fuel has already been introduced by way of experi- 
 ment on the Alexandria and Cairo railway. 
 
 There is one step remaining to be taken in Egypt 
 that will do more than anything else toward securing 
 the final settlement of the conflict between East 
 and West. England must assume the burdens of 
 her authority. She can never loose her hold of the 
 country that guards the water-way to India. She is 
 jealous of her power. When her attention was con- 
 centrated on the Afghan imbroglio in May, 1885, 
 France thought it an opportune moment to regain 
 her lost prestige in Egypt. But if England's atten- 
 tion was diverted for the moment, her representa- 
 tives were not without power in Egypt. M. de 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 1 99 
 
 Freycinet failed as utterly then as he did in the day 
 of Arabi. The complications that have arisen 
 lately over the Bulgarian troubles have again 
 pushed France to the front as the opponent of 
 English domination in Egypt. Russia, of course, 
 with her grasp upon Bulgaria and her eye ever on 
 the Bosphorus, is inciting France to this opposition. 
 The French press is filled with stories of the mis- 
 rule that is prevalent in Egypt. But France will 
 circulate stories reflecting on the policy of England 
 in Egypt until she forgets the circumstances of her 
 own retirement from responsibility. England has 
 the single-handed control, and she means to main- 
 tain it. The welfare of Egypt rests on this resolu- 
 tion. Many people, who claim the divine right of 
 judging the motives of an action and who fail to see 
 so far as its results, urge that England is actuated 
 solely by selfishness and the greed of power in 
 asserting her control in Egypt, and that she is 
 merely fortifying herself against that certain day 
 when some protruding arm of Russian territory 
 shall reach a southern sea. They say she makes 
 the interest of Egypt secondary to her own ; there- 
 fore, the power of England in Egypt must be 
 resisted. Granting even that these are England's 
 motives, cannot the same wind blow good to both 
 countries ? Is it a sound principle that what bene- 
 fits one country must injure another ? The fact is, 
 
200 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT 
 
 that the extension of the dominion of Great Britain, 
 while bringing glory to the nation itself, is for the 
 interest of the civilized world The Anglo-Saxon 
 influences of Christianity and civilization are the 
 best known. As opposed to Russian influences 
 they are both iconoclastic and creative. The Rus- 
 sian empire extends its dominion, and there appears 
 no sign of assimilation ; the subjugated people pays 
 its tribute and its homage, but retains its language, 
 its religion, and its customs. England, on the other 
 hand, makes her furthermost territory British in 
 reality as well as in name ; ignorance, superstition, 
 and savagery melt away under contact with the 
 Anglo-Saxon influence. That England, in spite of 
 all her mistakes, has had a beneficent influence upon 
 Egypt, no one can doubt who compares the civili- 
 zation under Mehemet AH with that of to-day. This 
 would be the trite assertion of an accepted fact, were 
 it not for the stupendous financial follies of Ismail. 
 The storm raged in his day ; and the gloom still 
 hangs over Egypt. It can only be swept away by 
 the protecting arm of England. She has shrunk all 
 along from the final step of annexation ; but she 
 remains the virtual suzerain of Egypt. A truly 
 anomalous condition of affairs is presented to view. 
 England has the control ; Egypt bears the burdens ; 
 and Turkey reaps the profit. The role of Turkey 
 is quite superfluous. She has never yielded to 
 
WOLSELEY'S EXPEDITION. 20I 
 
 Egypt the slightest return for the tribute she has 
 regularly exacted and the troops she has occa- 
 sionally employed. It is true that she granted 
 Ismail the title of khedive for an enormous consid- 
 eration ; but if Mehemet AH had been supported in 
 his just struggle for independence in 1842, the ruler 
 in Egypt might call himself khedive, emperor, or 
 mikado, without the expenditure of a single piaster. 
 It is not yet too late for severance. The vast sum 
 of money paid by way of tribute to the Porte may 
 be considered duly to have purchased for Egypt her 
 independence of Turkey. This violation of con- 
 tract could not be effected without a struggle. But 
 with England's support it could result only in one 
 way. Once accomplished, Egypt might yet shake 
 off the shackles of debt, and the relations of the 
 great Power of the West to Egypt in the East 
 might be settled without conflict. 
 
BOOKS AND PERIODICALS CONSULTED. 
 
 About, Edmond. The Fellah. 
 
 Allen, Charles H., F.R.G.S. The Life of Chinese Gordon. 
 
 Baker, Sir Samuel W. Ismailia. 
 
 Broadley, C. M. How We Defended Arabi. 
 
 Dicey, Edward. The Morning Land. 
 
 Forbes, Archibald. Chinese Gordon. Succinct Record of his Life. 
 
 Goodrich, Lieutenant-Commander Casper F. (U. S. Navy.) Report of 
 
 the British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt, 1882. 
 Gordon, General C. G. Journals at Khartum. 
 Grant, Robert. History of the East India Company 
 Hake, A. Egmont. The Story of Chinese Gordon. 
 Jerrold, Blanchard. Egypt under Ismail Pasha. 
 
 The Belgium of the East. 
 
 Keay, J. Seymour. Spoiling the Egyptians. A Tale of Shame told from 
 
 the British Blue Books. 
 Leon, Edward de. The Khedive's Egypt. 
 
 Lesseps, Ferdinand de. The Suez Canal. Letters and Documents De- 
 scriptive of its Rise and Progress, 1854 to 1856. 
 Long, Colonel C. Chaille. The Three Prophets : Chinese Gordon, Me- 
 
 hemet Ahmed, Arabi Pasha. 
 LORING, W. W. A Confederate Soldier in Egypt. 
 McCarthy, Justin H., M.P. England under Gladstone, 1880-1885. 
 McCoAN, J. C. Egypt As It Is. 
 Patton, a. a., F.R.G.S. A History of the Egyptian Revolution to the 
 
 Death of Mehemet Ali. 
 Pepper, J. H. The Suez Canal. Published in Routledge's Discoveries 
 
 and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century. 
 Stone, Fanny. Diary of an American Girl in Cairo during the War of 
 
 1882. The Century, June, 1884. 
 Stone, William, M.A., F.L.S. Shall We Annex Egypt? 
 
 203 
 
204 THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT. 
 
 TowLE, George Makepeace. England in Egypt. 
 Wallace, D. Mackenzie. Egypt and the Egyptian Question. 
 Wilson, C. T., and Felkin, R. W. Uganda and the Egyptian Sudan. 
 Yates, William Holt, M.D. The Modern History and Condition of 
 
 Egypt, 1801 to 1843. 
 Anonymous. Egypt for the Egyptians : a Retrospect and a Prospect. 
 Plain Words on the Egyptian Question. 
 
 Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia has been of use, and files of the following 
 journals have been consulted : 
 
 The British Quarterly Review. The Independent. 
 
 The Contemporary Review. The London Times. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review. The Nineteenth Century. 
 
 The Fortnightly Review. The Quarterly Review. 
 
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