A man without learning and surrounded by barbarian soldiers, Mehemet Ali appears before the world as nature made him. Dissimulation, diplomacy, and deceit, coupled with capability, great courage, genius, and much perseverance, brought him to the head of the government of Egypt. To gain his ends he flattered the powerful Ulemas who were the nation’s representatives to the sultan, but, once having obtained his object, he dismissed them.

Though a clever politician, he was a bad administrator. Being alternately blindly confident and extremely suspicious, he did not choose well the men he employed as his auxiliaries, and, being a Turk and a devout Mussulman, Mehemet Ali wished to give back to the Turks the power they had lost. He only took account of the results of any undertaking, without paying any attention to the difficulties surmounted in its execution, and this characteristic made him commit many injustices. It was his habit to treat men as levers, which he put aside when he had no further use for them. He was quick of apprehension, and of very superior intelligence, and his whole character was a mixture of generosity and meanness, of greatness and littleness.

Mehemet Ali was an affable, an easy business man, and dominated by a desire to talk. He enjoyed relating the incidents of his past life, and, when not preoccupied by affairs of importance, his conversation was full of charm. The foreigners who visited him were always much impressed with his superiority, while his lively humour, his freedom, and that air of good nature he knew so well how to adopt, all captivated his visitors. The expression of his face was exceedingly mobile, and quickly communicated itself to the men who surrounded him, who were in constant observation of his moods, so that one could judge of the state of mind of the viceroy by the calm or disturbed appearance of his servants.

When Mehemet Ali was anxious, his look became fierce, his forehead wrinkled, and his eyes shone with anger, while his speech was broken and his manner brusque and imperious. As regards those in his service, Mehemet Ali was by turns severe or gentle, tolerant or impatient, irascible, and surprisingly forbearing. He was jealous of the glory of others, and desired all honours for himself. He was an enemy of all that was slow. He liked to do everything, to decide everything, and worked night and day. All letters, notices, and memoranda that referred to his government, he read himself or had them read to him. Picked men translated French and English political newspapers into Turkish, and he encouraged discussion on all subjects of high interest, although generally imposing his own opinion. He did not always keep strictly to his word. He was a stoic, and great pain could not destroy his habitual gaiety, and when very ill he would still speak affably to those around him; but illnesses with him were rare, for his health was, as a rule, excellent. He was very careful about his appearance, and was fond of women without being their slave; in his youth his life had been dissolute. He was above the prejudices of his nation, and prayed very often, although a fatalist.

At the age of forty-five he learned to read, and he held European learning in great esteem, confessing it superior to that of Turkey; but he continued to regard European scientists and artists only as salaried foreigners, whom he hastened to replace by natives as soon as he considered the latter sufficiently enlightened. Mehemet Ali made one great mistake, with which his nearest servants reproach him, and that is with not having introduced into his family learned men from Europe, picked men devoted to his cause, and well versed in the special things of which his country was in need.

Had they been brought into a close contact with the viceroy, and admitted unreservedly to all the privileges the Turks enjoyed, these men would have adopted Egypt as their country. They would have spoken the language and have become the’ sentinels and safeguards necessary for the maintenance of useful institutions which the Turks either refused or did not understand.

During the administration of Mehemet Ali, public hygiene was not neglected, and a sanitary council watched over the health of the country. Measures were taken to increase the cleanliness and sanitation of the towns; military hospitals were built, and a lazarette was established at Alexandria, whilst vaccine was widely used. In the country the planting of many trees helped the atmosphere, and Egypt, which Europeans had hitherto regarded as the seat of a permanent plague epidemic, became more and more a healthy and pleasurable resort. Mehemet, whose aims were always for the furthering of Egyptian prosperity, profited by the leisure of peace to look after the industrial works. Two great projects that occupied his attention were the Nile dams and the construction of a railway from Suez to Cairo.

The actual condition of the canalisation of Egypt, while vastly improved by the viceroy, was still far from complete. Canals, partial dams, and embankments were attempted; fifty thousand draw-wells carried the water up to a considerable height, but the system of irrigation was insufficient.

The railway from Cairo to Suez was an easier, though not less important, work. The road crossed neither mountain, river, nor forest, while a series of little plains afforded a firm foundation, requiring very few earthworks. Its two iron arms stretched out into the desert, and steam-engines could traverse the distance from the Nile to the Red Sea in three hours.

Suez would thus become a suburb of Cairo, and thus, being brought closer to Egypt, would regain her trade. This enterprise, just as the former one, gave promise of bringing to Egypt the two sources of national wealth and prosperity: agriculture and trade.

The agricultural unity which Mehemet Ali constituted enabled him to bring about improvements which with private proprietorship would have been impossible. The fellah, careless of to-morrow, did not sow for future reaping, and made no progress, but when Mehemet Ali undertook the control of agricultural labour in Egypt, the general aspect of the country changed, though, in truth, the individual condition of the fellah was not improved. Besides the work of irrigation by means of canals, dykes, and banks, and the introduction of the cultivation of indigo, cotton, opium, and silk, the viceroy had also planted thousands of trees of various kinds, including 100,000 walnut-trees; he ordered the maimours, or prefects, to open up the roads between the villages, and to plant trees. He wished the villages, towns, and hamlets to be ornamented, as in Europe, with large trees, under whose shelter the tired traveller could rest.

In the various districts were vast tracts of land which for a long time the plough had not touched. Concessions of these lands were made to Franks, Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, which concessions were free, and for a term of seven or eight years, while the guarantees were exempt from taxes.

During the closing years of his life, between 1841 and 1849, Mehemet occupied himself with improvements in Egypt. He continued to prosecute his commercial speculations, and manufacturing, educational, and other schemes. The barrage of the Nile, which has only been finished during the British occupation, was begun under his direction. In 1847 he visited Constantinople, and was received with the rank of a vizier. In the year 1848 symptoms of imbecility appeared, and his son Ibrahim was declared his successor. After a reign of only two months he died. Mehemet Ali’s death occurred on the 3rd of August, 1849. His direct successor was his grandson, Abbas Pasha, who held the sceptre of Egypt as the direct heir of Ibrahim Pasha. This prince took but little interest in the welfare of his country. He had in him no spark of the noble ambition of his predecessor, and no trace of his genius, and he showed no desire for progress or reforms. He was a real prince of the ancient East, suspicious, sombre, and careless of the destiny of the country entrusted to his care. He liked to withdraw to the privacy of his palace, and, isolated in the midst of his guards, to live that life of the distrustful and voluptuous despots of the East. The palace of Bar-el-Beda, which he had built on the road to Suez in the open desert, a palace without water, lifting its head in the solitude like a silent witness of a useless life and tragic death, impresses the traveller with astonishment and fear.

Abbas Pasha was weak in his negotiations with the European Powers, and this was well for Egypt, as their representative was able to hold in check his silent hostility to Western civilisation. Such guardianship is useful when exercised over a prince like Abbas Pasha, but it tends to become troublesome and baneful when it attempts to interfere with the government of an active and enlightened sovereign animated by just and generous intentions.

Muhammed Said, the successor of Abbas Pasha, was born in 1822, nine years later than his nephew Abbas. He was brought up in Europe by French professors, and M. Kornig, a distinguished Orientalist, remained with his pupil and became his secretary. He not only instructed him in all branches of knowledge becoming to his rank, but also developed in him a love of European civilisation and noble sentiments, of which he gave proof from the moment of his accession. He was imbued with liberal principles, which in an Eastern potentate give proof of great moral superiority, and in this respect Muhammed Said wras second to no prince in Europe. He worked for the emancipation of his subjects and the civilisation of Egypt, and was not content to produce that superficial civilisation which consists in transplanting institutions that the mass of the people could not understand. Said Pasha endeavoured to pursue his father’s policy and to carry out his high aims. He had not, however, the strength of character nor the health necessary to meet the serious difficulties involved in such a task, and he will be chiefly remembered by his abolition of the more grinding government monopolies, and for the concession of the Suez Canal.

After his death Said Pasha was succeeded in the vice-royalty by his nephew, Ismail Pasha, who was proclaimed viceroy without opposition early in the year 1863. Ismail, the first who accepted the title of khédive from the sultan, was born on December 31, 1830, being the second of the three sons of Ibrahim, and grandson of Mehemet Ali. He had been educated at the Ecole d’Etat Major at Paris, and when Ahmed, the eldest son of Ibrahim, died in 1858, Ismail became the heir to his uncle Said. He had been employed, after his return to Egypt, on missions to the sovereign pontiff; the emperor, Napoleon III.; and the Sultan of Turkey. In the year 1861 he was despatched with an army of 18,000 men to quell an insurrection in the Sudan, which undertaking he brought to a successful conclusion. On ascending the throne he was much gratified to find that, on account of the scarcity of cotton, resulting from the Civil War in America, the revenues had very considerably increased from the export of the Egyptian cotton. At this date the cotton crop was worth $125,000,000, instead of $25,000,000, which was the normal value of the Egyptian output. It was a very serious misfortune to Egypt that during his sojourn abroad Ismail had learned many luxurious ways, and had also discovered that European nations were accustomed to make free use of their credit in raising sums of money for their immediate advantage. From this moment Ismail started upon a career which gave to Egypt, in the eyes of the world, a fictitious grandeur, and which made him one of the most talked-of rulers among the cabinets and peoples of the European countries. He began by transferring his own private debts to the state, and thereafter looked upon Egypt merely as his private estate, and himself as the sovereign landholder. Without any sense of his responsibility to the Egyptians themselves, he increased his own fame throughout Europe in the sumptuous fashion of a spendthrift millionaire. He deemed it necessary for his fame that Egypt should possess institutions modelled upon those of European countries, and he applied himself with energy to achieve this, and without any stint of expense. By burdening posterity for centuries to come, Ismail, during the two decades subsequent to his accession, always had a supply of ready money with which to dazzle European guests. During his entire reign Egypt swarmed with financiers and schemers of every description, to whom the complacent Ismail lent an only too willing ear.

In the year 1866, in return for an increase of tribute, he obtained from the sultan a firman giving him the title of khédive (Turkish, khidewi, a king), and changing the law of succession to that of direct descent from father to-son; and in 1873 he obtained a new firman, purchased again at an immense cost to his subjects, which rendered him practically independent of the sultan. Ismail projected vast schemes of internal reform. He remodelled the system of customs and the post-office, stimulated commercial progress, and created the Egyptian sugar industry. He introduced European improvements into Cairo and Alexandria; he built vast palaces, entertained visitors with lavish generosity, and maintained an opera and a theatre. By his order the distinguished composer, Verdi, produced the famous opera “Aïda” for the entertainment of his illustrious guests on the occasion of their visit to Egypt during the festivities connected with the opening of the Suez Canal. On this occasion Mariette Bey ransacked the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings in order to reproduce in a lifelike manner the costumes and scenery appropriate for the occasion.

The opening of this canal gave Ismail much prominence in the courts of Europe. He was made a Grand Commander of the Bath, and the same year visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the lord mayor. In 1869 he again visited London. By his great power of fascination and lavish expenditure he was ever able to make a striking impression upon the foreign courts. During the opening of the canal, when Ismail gave and received royal honours, treating monarchs as equals, and being treated by them in like manner, the jealousy of the sultan was aroused. Ismail, however, contrived judiciously to appease the suspicions of his overlord, Abdul Aziz.

In the year 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners was abolished, and the system of mixed courts was introduced, by which European and native judges sat together to try all civil cases, without respect to nationality.

In the year 1874 Darfur, a province in the Sudan west of Kordofan, was annexed by Ismail. He also engaged in a disastrous war against the Abyssinians, who had ever shown themselves capable of resisting the inroads of Egyptians, Muhammedans, Arabs, and even of European invaders, as was proven by the annihilation of a large Italian army of invasion, and the abandonment of the campaign against Abyssinia by the Italians in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

It was true that Ismail had attempted to carry out the great schemes of his grandfather for the regeneration of the Orient, and it is possible that, if the jealousy of European Powers had not prevented the army of Ibrahim Bej from controlling immense territories in Syria and Anatolia, which they had won by conquest, that the regeneration of the Orient might have been accomplished at least a century earlier. No people would have benefited more by the success of Mehemet Ali’s policy than the Christian people who to-day are under the rule of the barbarous Turks. With the regeneration of the Orient, the trade of European nations in the East would have been very largely increased.

The policy of regeneration, wisely begun by Mehemet Ali, was resumed within Egypt itself in a spendthrift manner by his grandson Ismail. Every act of his reign, with its ephemeral and hollow magnificence, moved towards the one inevitable result of foreign intervention. The price of all the transient splendour was the surrender by slow degrees of the sovereignty and independence of Egypt itself. The European Powers of late have withdrawn their interest in the betterment of the native populations in the Asiatic dominions of the sultan, and have concerned themselves exclusively with the immediate interests of commerce and the enforcement of debts contracted to European bondholders. All progress in the later history of Egypt has originated in the desire of the European Powers to see Egypt in a position capable of meeting her indebtedness to foreign bondholders.

In so far as the cry raised of “Egypt for the Egyptians” was a protest against forcing the Egyptians to pay for an assumed indebtedness which was at least four times greater than anything they had actually received, no movement was ever more just and righteous than the protest of the fellaheen against foreign control, a movement which has been chiefly associated with the name of Arabi Pasha. The issue of Ismail’s financial troubles was most ignominious and disastrous to Egypt, after nearly a hundred years of heroic struggles to keep pace with the progress of modern Europe. Had Ismail modelled his career upon that of his illustrious grandfather, rather than that of Napoleon III., with which it shows many striking parallels, it is probable that the advantage secured to Egypt through the British occupation might have resulted in political and financial independence. When the crash came, and the order for his deposition was sent by the sultan, Ismail resigned the khedivate in complete submission; and, taking away with him a large private fortune and a portion of the royal harem, he spent the remainder of his life in retirement at Naples and Constantinople, and was buried with solemn pomp in the royal cemetery at Cairo.

CHAPTER IV—THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

Ismail deposed: Tewfik Pasha: Revolt of Arabi Pasha: Lord Wolseley and the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir: The Mahdist Rising: General Gordon in the Sudan: Death of Gordon: The Sudan abandoned and re-conquered: Battle of Onidurman: Khartum College: Financial Stability: Abbas II.: Education, Law, and the improved condition of the Fellaheen: The Caisse de la Dette

The official deposition of Ismail Pasha by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, occurred on June 26, in the year 1879, and his son Tewfik assumed the khedivate, becoming practically the protégé of England and Egypt. To understand how this came to pass, it is necessary to review the account of the financial embarrassments of Ismail. In twelve years he had extracted more than $400,000,000 from the fellaheen in taxes. He had borrowed another $400,000,000 from Europe at the same time, of which nominal sum he probably received $250,000,000 in cash. The loans were ostensibly contracted for public works. Possibly ten per cent, of the borrowed money was profitably laid out. The railways were extended; Upper Egypt was studded with sugar factories,—most of them doomed to failure,—and certain roads and gardens were made about the city of Cairo.

The remainder of this enormous sum of money was spent in purchasing a change in the law of succession, and the new title of khédive; in disastrous Abyssinian campaigns; in multiplying shoddy palaces, and in personal extravagance, which combined Oriental profusion with the worst taste of the Second Empire. Useless works engaged the corvee; the fellaheen were evicted from vast tracts, which became ill-managed estates; and their crops, cattle, and even seed were taken from them by the tax-gatherers, so that they died by hundreds when a low Nile afflicted the land. The only persons who flourished in Ismail’s time were foreign speculators and adventurers of the lowest type. As these conditions became more serious, the khédive attempted to find some means of protection against the concession-monger. He adopted a suggestion of the wise Nubar Pasha, and instituted the mixed tribunals for adjudging civil cases between natives and foreigners.

The Powers agreed to the establishment of these tribunals, and intended to enforce the decisions of the courts, even in case that Ismail himself were the delinquent. When later the khédive repudiated the mixed tribunals, this action precipitated his fall. It became increasingly difficult for the khédive to meet his accumulated obligations. The price of cotton had fallen after the close of the American war, and there was less response from the impoverished people to the Cour-bash, which in 1868 was still more strictly enforced; and soon this enforcement by the mixed tribunal of debts due to foreigners by an agricultural population, who lived by borrowing, and were accustomed to settle their debts by haggling, aggravated the misery of the fellaheen, and led to that universal despair which was to give strength and significance to the Arabist revolt. It was no uncommon procedure for the Levantine money-lender to accompany the tax-gatherer into the provinces with a chest of money. He paid the taxes of the assembled and destitute fellaheen, who in return were obliged to give mortgages on their crops or holdings.

The desperate state of Egyptian finance, which led to the sale of the precious Suez Canal shares, at last opened the eyes of the bondholders. Mr. G. T. Goschen (Viscount Goschen) and M. Joubert were deputed to Egypt on behalf of the foreign creditors. The accounts were found to be in a state of wild confusion, with little or no chance of learning the actual facts controlling the financial situation. The minister of finance, or “Mufet-tish,” Ismail Pasha Sadeck, was now arrested and banished to Dongola.

There was an immediate prospect of a dual control by England and France. Commissioners were appointed to constitute a caisse, or court, for receiving the interest due to the bondholders. The great mass of the debt was then unified, but the Goschen and Joubert arrangement was found to be too severe for the impoverished country. A low Nile and a famine resulted in a demand for an investigation into the administration, and the following year Ismail was obliged to authorise a commission of inquiry. The waste, extravagance, and wholesale extortion from the peasantry revealed by this report made a deep impression upon Europe, and Ismail was forced to disgorge the estates which he had received from the fellaheen.

In the meantime, the khédive was not inactive in taking measures to prevent the advent of a confirmed foreign control. He created a constitutional ministry, upon whom the responsibility rested for the different branches of the administration. He likewise fomented an outburst of feeling among the Moslems against the foreign element in the constitutional ministry. This was intended to strengthen the pro-Egyptian element in the government, and Ismail thus hoped to demonstrate to the European Powers the uselessness of attempting to subordinate the Egyptians to foreign methods of finance and control. Ismail subsequently dismissed the ministry, and soon afterwards the controllers themselves. Knowing well the jealousy which existed between England and France, he believed that there was a chance that he might successfully play off one Power against the other. If the Moslems had not been so severely oppressed by taxation, and Ismail had acted with courage and firmness, it is probable that he might have held his own, and Egypt might have refused to again accept the dual control.

Bismarck now intervened, and hinted to the sultan that he would receive the support of the Powers, and Abdul Hamid immediately sent a telegram to the Egyptian government that Ismail Pasha was deposed from the khedivate. At this moment his courage gave way, and Ismail surrendered his throne to his son Tewfik.

Tewfik had the misfortune to enter upon a doleful heritage of an empty treasury, a starving people, and an army ready to mutiny. There were now two parties in Egypt. The military movement was of the least importance. The superior posts in the army had been occupied by Circassians since the days of Mehemet Ali.

196 THE BRITISH INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

Slave boys were bought and trained as officers. The number and quality of the Circassians had deteriorated, but they still held the most important posts. The fellaheen officers, under Arabi, who had been brought to protest against reductions in the military establishment, now claimed that the Circassians should make way for the Egyptians. Together with this military dissatisfaction was also a strong civil movement towards national reform, which included a number of serious and sensible administrative reforms, which have since been carried out. Arabi Pasha was the leader of the National Party, and had hopes of convincing fair-minded people of the justice of their cause; but many influences, some good and some bad, were at work simultaneously to divert him from constitutional methods towards making his appeal to the violent and fanatical element.

Just at this time a divergence between English and French views in dealing with the situation had manifested itself, having its root in earlier history. France, now as in 1840, was aiming at the policy of detaching Egypt from the control of the unprogressive Turks; England aimed at the maintenance of the much talked of integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The French premier, Gambetta, was determined that there should be no intervention on the part of the Turks. He drafted the “Identic Note” in January, 1881, and induced Lord Granville, the English Foreign Secretary, to give his assent. This note contained the first distinct threat of foreign intervention. The result was a genuine and spontaneous outburst of Moslem feeling. All parties united to protest against foreign intervention, joined by the fellaheen, who now saw an opportunity of freeing themselves from foreign usurers, to whom they had become so unjustly indebted. Riots broke out in Alexandria in 1881. Gambetta was replaced by the hesitating Freycinet, who looked upon the intervention with alarm, and upon Germany with suspicion. England was thus at the last moment left to act alone. Past experience had taught her that the destiny of Egypt lay in the hands of the dominant sea-power of the Mediterranean, and that Egypt must not be neglected by the masters of India. After a vain attempt to bring about mediation through Dervish Pasha, the special commissioner of the Porte, it was discovered that the Nationalist Party was too little under control to be utilised in any further negotiations. Ahmed Arabi Pasha had greatly increased his influence, and had finally been appointed Minister of War. On the 11th of June there was serious rioting, in which many Greeks and Maltese, four Englishmen, and six Frenchmen were slain. Arabi now stepped forward to preserve order, being at this moment practically the dictator of Egypt. While endeavouring to maintain order, he also threw up earthworks to protect the harbour of Alexandria, and trained the guns upon the British fleet. The admiral in charge, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who was waiting for the arrival of the Channel Squadron, sent word to the Egyptians to cease the construction of fortifications. The request was not fully assented to, although it was reinforced by an order from the Porte. An ultimatum was presented on July 10, commanding Arabia to surrender the forts. The terms were refused, and eight ships and five gunboats prepared for action on the following day. At the same time the French fleet retired upon Port Said.

The first shot was fired on July 11th, at seven o’clock in the morning, by the Alexandrians, and in reply an iron hail rained upon the forts of the Egyptians from the guns of the British fleet. Arabi’s troops fought well and aimed correctly, but their missiles were incapable of penetrating the armour of the ironclads. One fort after another was silenced. Lord Charles Beresford, in command of the gunboat Condor, led a brilliant attack upon Fort Marabout. The firing re-opened on the next day, and a flag of truce was soon displayed. After some unsatisfactory parleying the bombardment was resumed, and when a second flag of truce was unfurled it was discovered that Arabi Pasha had retreated to Kefr-el-Dowar, fourteen miles away from Alexandria. On his departure the city was given over to plunder and destruction. The convicts escaped from the prison, and, joining forces with the Arabs, looted and burned the European quarters. Two thousand persons, mostly Greeks and Levantines, were slain, and an enormous quantity of property destroyed. Admiral Seymour then sent a body of sailors on land, who patrolled the streets and shot down the looters, and order was thus finally restored in Alexandria. The khédive, who was forced to fly for his life to an English steamer, was reinstated in the Ras-el-Tin Palace, under an escort of seven hundred marines. The British admiral was afterwards severely criticised for not having put a stop to the rioting before it assumed such serious proportions.

Arabi’s army of 6,000 was now increased by recruits flocking in from every port in Egypt. After considerable pressure had been brought to bear upon the khédive, Tewfik issued a proclamation dismissing Arabi from his service. To enforce the submission of the Arabists, an English army of 33,000 men was gradually landed in Egypt, under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, with an efficient staff, including Sir John Adye, Sir Archibald Alison, Sir Evelyn Wood, and General Hamley. An Indian contingent also arrived under General Macpherson.

Sir Garnet, after making a feint to land near Alexandria, steamed to Port Said and disembarked, moving up the Suez Canal in order to join forces with the Indian contingent, who were advancing from Suez. Fighting took place over the control of the canal at the Mahsameh and Kassassin Locks, and at the latter place the British cavalry won an important victory over the Egyptian advance-guard. Arabi’s stronghold was at Tel-el-Kebir, and the English were very anxious to win a decisive victory before the troops which the sultan was sending from Constantinople under Dervish and Baker Pasha should arrive. On September 12, 1882, preparations had been completed for an advance, and the army of 11,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, with sixty pieces of artillery, moved forward during the night to within a mile of Arabi’s lines. The Egyptians had 20,000 regulars, of which number 2,500 were cavalry, with seventy guns, and they were also aided by 6,000 Bedouins. Though well situated, the army of Arabi was taken by surprise, and the following day, in response to the various flanking movements of the British, directed by Wolseley, and the direct charge of the Highlanders, they made but a very indifferent defence. In a brief space of time the Egyptians were in full retreat, Arabi fleeing to Cairo. The Indian contingent occupied Zagazig, and General Drury-Lowe rode with his cavalry for thirty-nine miles, and entered Cairo on the evening of the 14th. Arabi made a dignified surrender, and with him 10,000 men also gave themselves up.

The Nationalist movement was now at an end, the various garrisons surrendering one after another, and the greater part of the British army left Egypt, 12,000 men remaining behind to maintain order. The Egyptian government wished to try Arabi as a rebel in a secret tribunal. It was generally believed that this would have meant a death sentence. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, a distinguished British Liberal and a friend of Arabi, who had often expressed his sympathy with the cause of the Nationalists in their endeavour to free Egypt from the slavery of the foreign bondholder, now raised a vigorous protest in favour of an open trial. He personally contributed to the defence of Arabi, and his efforts led to the commutation of the sentence of death to that of perpetual exile in Ceylon—a sentence which was subsequently very much modified. Arabi Pasha returned to Egypt in the year 1902, after an exile which had lasted about nine years.

The difficult task of readjusting the government of Egypt was then undertaken. Proposals were made to France for a modification of the dual control, in which France was offered the presidency of the Debt Commission. France, however, refused to accept the compromise, and the British government finally determined upon independent action. In place of the officials through whom the two governments had hitherto exercised the control, a single financial adviser was appointed, who was not allowed to take part in the direct administration of the country. The outline of this adjustment was given in a circular note addressed by Lord Granville to the Powers. He declared that an army would remain in Egypt as long as it was required; representative institutions were to be created; the Egyptian army and gendarmery were to be placed in the hands of Englishmen; the Diara estates were to be economically managed; foreigners were to be placed upon the same footing as natives in regard to taxation. The other Powers, including Turkey but excluding France, accepted the agreement. The office of financial adviser was given to Sir Edgar Vincent.

The important work of the reconstruction of Egypt now began in earnest. Sir Benson Maxwell set about establishing an effective means for the impartial administration of justice, and Colonel Moncrieff undertook the responsibility for the work of irrigation. Mr. Clifford Lloyd created a police system, reorganised the prisons and hospitals, and set free the untried prisoners. Baker Pasha formed a provincial gendarmery, and Sir Evelyn Wood organised an army of six thousand men.

In the year 1883, while this work of reconstruction was proceeding, a religious insurrection, which had originated two years previously, was forced upon the notice of the government. It has already been related that the Ismailian sect of the Muhammedans had introduced the doctrine of a coming Messiah, or Mahdi, who was to be the last of the imans, and the incarnation of the universal soul.

Not a few impostors had exploited this doctrine to their own advantage, and some of the Arabian tribes were firmly convinced that the Mahdi had come, and that the Mahdis who had appeared to their kinsmen elsewhere were merely clever charlatans. In the year 1881 Muhammed Ahmet, a religious leader among the Moslem Arabs in the Central African provinces of Kordofan and Darfur, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi, and called upon the Muhammedans to initiate a holy war.

The Mahdi’s continued advances were rendered possible by the precarious state of affairs in Egypt. After a settlement was effected in 1883, Hicks Pasha, an officer of courage and ability, who had retired from the Indian army, gathered 11,000 men at Omdurman to quell the Mahdist insurrection. With this force he started up the Nile and struck across the desert to El-Obeid, where his troops were decoyed into a ravine, and after three days’ fighting his whole army was annihilated by the Mahdist army numbering about 300,000 men. The entire Sudan then revolted against Egypt. The redoubtable Osman Digna appeared with the Hadendowa Arabs off the coast of the Red Sea, and harassed the Egyptian garrison. Osman defeated Captain Moncrieff and an army of 3,000 Bashi-Bazouks led by Baker Pasha. Egypt, under the advisement of the British government, then attempted to withdraw from the Sudan. It was decided that the western provinces of Kordofan and Dafur should be abandoned, but that important centres like Khartum on the Nile should be preserved, at least for a time. Here all the Egyptian colonists were to congregate. If the revolting Arab tribes, called by the general name of Dervishes, would not come to friendly terms with the settlers, then, in time, it was decided that Khartum itself, and every other locality in the Sudan, should be entirely relinquished, except the ports of the Red Sea.

General Gordon was sent to Khartum to make terms with the Mahdi and prepare for eventualities. The evacuation of this place was almost immediately decided upon by the British Cabinet, and Gordon arrived on February 18, 1884, but, being unsupported by European troops, he found the position an exceedingly difficult one to maintain. The Mahdi scorned his overtures, and Osman Digna was daily closing in upon the Egyptian port of Suakin.

The British then determined to act with vigour. Sinkitat had fallen on February 8th, and to protect Tokar and Suakin they landed four thousand men and fought a fierce battle with nine thousand Hadendowas at El - Teb February 28, 1884. The Egyptian garrison of Tokar, when the British army arrived, was found to have compromised with the Mahdists. Later on was fought the battle of Tamai against Osman Digna, during which a body of Arabs rushed the British guns and broke up the formation of their square. The British were on the point of defeat, but they managed to recover the lost guns, and scatter the Hadendowas.

General Gordon’s situation was now extremely critical. It was hoped that an army might advance from Suakin across the desert to Berber, and then ascend the Nile to Khartum. In the meantime, Gordon urgently called for help, and, after interminable delays, in the autumn of 1884, an English army under Lord Wolseley started up the Nile to relieve him. The troops of Wolseley were aided by a camel corps of one thousand men, who were organised to make a rush across the desert. On the 16th of January, 1885, the camel troops came up with the enemy and fought the decisive battle of Matammeh. The Mahdist troops were mown down by rifles and Gatling-guns as soon as they were within short range. Immediately after the battle, Sir Charles Wilson determined to use the Egyptian flotilla to make an immediate advance. The steamers were protected, and a small relief force started on January 24th. They came in sight of Khartum on the 28th, but were fired upon from every side. At this moment, a native called from the bank that the city had fallen, and that the heroic Gordon had been killed.

A history of Egypt would be incomplete without some account of that leader whose bravery, humanitarian views, and understanding of the Oriental character have made him famous among the pioneers of Christian civilisation in Asia and Africa. Fresh from his laurels won in the service of the Chinese government in suppressing the Tai-peng rebellion, Gordon returned to England in 1871. In 1874 he accepted a position from Egypt, with the consent of the British government. He journeyed to Cairo and up the Nile to take up the command as governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel Baker. There he laboured with incessant energy to put down the slave-trade and to secure the welfare of the natives. He established a series of Egyptian outposts along the Abyssinian frontier and made a survey of Lake Albert Nyanza. Returning to Cairo in 1874, after some delay, he was appointed by Ismail Pasha as governor-general of the whole of the Egyptian Sudan. A war followed with Abyssinia, and, after the army, led by Egyptian officers, had been beaten twice, Gordon went to Massowah to negotiate with the Abyssinian monarch, Atti Johannes. He next proceeded to Khartum, and vigorously undertook the suppression of the slave-trade.

Gordon’s death at Khartum, in 1884, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. Supported neither by Egypt nor by the English army, of a different religion from all his followers, pressed on all sides by the Mah-dist forces, Gordon gallantly kept his few faithful followers at his side, and, with incessant activity and heroism, protected the remaining Egyptian colonists of the cities along the Nile, over which he still held control. He had called upon the British government to send aid across the desert from Suakin via Berber, but this request had been denied him. Berber then fell, and he was cut off to the north by many hundred miles of territory occupied by Mahdists. On January the 1st, nearly a month before the long-delayed succour approached the beleaguered city, the provisions had given out. He had written on December 14th that, with two hundred men, he could have successfully kept up the defence. As his army had been starving since the 5th of January, it is difficult to understand how he managed to hold out till January the 26th. On this date, two days before the relief expedition approached, the Mahdi’s troops attacked Khartum, and, finding Gordon’s men too weak to fight, the defences were cut down, and the heroic Gordon was killed by a shot at the head of the steps of the palace.

Upon learning of the death of Gordon, the relief expedition retreated, finding that the object of their advance had proved to be a hopeless one. A general evacuation was begun, and Dongola and the whole country south of Wady Haifa surrendered. The Mahdi, soon after winning Khartum, died, and was succeeded by the Califa Abdulla at Taashi. This change facilitated the Anglo-Egyptian retreat. About the same time Slatin Bey surrendered in Darfur and embraced Muhammedan-ism, and Lupton Bey, following his example, also adopted the religion of Islam, and yielded in Bahr-el-Ghazel. Emin Pasha alone retained his authority, derived originally from Egypt, in the province of Equatoria. Sir H. M. Stanley afterwards made his famous journey “Through Darkest Africa” and rescued this famous pasha. This noted explorer died May 9, 1904.

In the autumn of 1885, the dervish Emir of Dongola, Muhammed el-Kheir, advanced upon the Egyptian frontier. On December 30th he was met by the Egyptian troops under Sir Frederick Stephenson. The Egyptian troops, unaided by Europeans, attacked the dervishes at Ginnis and totally defeated them, winning two guns and twenty banners. It was a source of much gratification that the Egyptian fellaheen had proved themselves so courageous and well disciplined in the encounter with the fierce hosts of the desert.

In October, 1886, Wad en Nejumi, the victor of El-Obeid, was sent by the califa to invade Egypt. The advance of this army was delayed by trouble within the Sudan; but the califa, having at length beaten his enemies, in the year 1889 sent large reinforcements northwards to carry on the campaign against Egypt with vigour. The Egyptian troops, with one squadron of hussars, fought a decisive engagement with Wad en Nejumi on August 3rd of the same year. The dervish leader, many of his emirs, and twelve hundred Arab warriors were slain; four thousand more were taken prisoners, and 147 dervish standards were captured.

The ever-increasing progress of Egypt during the next ten years, together with the accounts received from escaped prisoners of the reign of terror and inhumanity which obtained in the Sudan, brought the question of the reconquest of the lost provinces once more into prominence. The Italians had met with a fearful disaster in fighting against the Abyssinians at the battle of Adowa on March 1,1896. They were holding Kassala within the ex-Egyptian territory by invitation from England, and a reason was presented for attacking the dervishes elsewhere in order to draw off their army from Kassala. With the appointment of Sir Henry Kitchener, on March 11,1896, as sirdar of the Egyptian army, the final period of hostilities was entered upon between Egypt and the independent Arabs of the Central African Provinces.

General Kitchener was ordered to build a railroad up the Nile, and to push forward with a well-organised Egyptian army, whose chief officers were Englishmen. The whole scheme of the invasion was planned with consummate forethought and deliberation, the officials and advisers in charge of the enterprise being chosen from the most tried and able experts in their several provinces. Lieut.-Col. E. P. C. Girouard, a brilliant young Canadian, undertook the work of railroad reconstruction. Col. L. Bundle was chief of the staff, and Major R. Wingate head of the Intelligence Department, ably assisted by the ex-prisoner of the califa, Slatin Bey. The army consisted in the beginning almost entirely of Egyptian and Sudanese troops, together with one battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment. There were eight battalions of artillery, eight camel corps, and sixty-three gunboats which steamed up the Nile.

After some sharp skirmishing, the advance was made to Dongola, when the English battalion was sent home disabled, and in time was replaced by a strong English brigade under General Gatacre. Early in 1897, a railroad had been thrown across the desert from Wady Haifa towards Abu Hamed, obviating the need of making an immense detour around the bend of the Nile near Dongola. The califa had, by this time, organised his defence. The Jaalin tribe had revolted against him at Metammeh, and had sought for help from the Egyptians, but before the supply of rifles arrived, the dervishes under the Emir Mahmud stormed Metammeh and annihilated the whole tribe of the Jaalin Arabs.

The van of the army of invasion, both the flying corps and the flotilla of gunboats, advanced upon Abu Hamed towards the end of August. Major-General Hunter carried the place by storm. Berber was found to be deserted, and was occupied on September 5th. Hunter burned Adarama and reconnoitred on the Atbara. The gunboats bombarded Metammeh and reduced the place to ruins. The sirdar, General Kitchener, then went on a mission to Kassala, where he found the Italians anxious to evacuate. He thereupon made an agreement whereby the Egyptians should occupy the place, which was accordingly accomplished under Colonel Parsons on Christmas Day, 1897. Disagreements among the dervishes prevented them from making any concerted defence, and early in 1896 Kitchener renewed the advance and captured the dervish stores at Shendy on March 27th. The zeriba or camp of Mahmud was attacked and stormed with great loss to the dervishes on the 5th of April.

On the date scheduled beforehand by Lord Kitchener, just after the annual rains had refreshed the country, the Anglo-Egyptian army made its final advance upon Khartum. There were ten thousand British troops and fifteen thousand Egyptians. The forces were concentrated at Wady Hamed, sixty miles above Omdurman, from which point they bombarded the city with shells filled with deadly lyddite, and the mosque and tomb of the late Mahdi were destroyed. At length the entire army advanced to within four miles of Khartum. On September 2nd the cavalry and a horse battery reached Kasar Shanbal. From this point they saw the whole army of the califa, consisting of from forty to fifty thousand men, advancing to confront them from behind the hills. The Anglo-Egyptians advanced to meet the dervishes disposed in the form of a horseshoe, with either end resting upon the banks of the river. At intervals along the whole line of the army were field-pieces and Maxims, and the gunboats were within reach to aid in shelling the enemy. The British soldiers then built a square sand rampart called a zarilea, and their Egyptian allies dug defensive trenches.

On the front and left the dervishes came on in great strength, but, when the Maxims, the field-guns, and the repeating rifles opened fire upon them, at a comparatively close range, a frightful havoc was the result. All who remained to fight were immediately shot down, and the whole field was cleared in fifteen minutes. The dervishes retreated behind the hills, and were joined by fresh forces. General MacDonald, in making a detour with a body of Lancers, was suddenly beset by two thousand dervish riflemen, who fiercely charged him on three sides. Quickly forming a square, he succeeded by desperate efforts in repelling the enemy, until he was reinforced by Kitchener, who perceived his desperate situation.

The calif then attacked the extreme left wing of the army, but was again driven off. The Anglo-Egyptians were now in a position to deliver the main attack upon the dervish defences. The troops of the califa fought with heroic bravery, fearlessly advancing within range of the Anglo-Egyptian fire, but each time they were mown down by the cross fire of the Maxims and rifles. Vast numbers were slain, and some divisions of the dervishes suffered complete annihilation. They left ten thousand dead upon the field, and ten thousand wounded. The rest fled in all directions, a scattered and straggling force, with the califa himself. The Anglo-Egyptians lost but two thousand men. Few prisoners were taken, for, in almost every instance, the dervishes refused to surrender, and even when wounded used their swords and spears against the rescuers of the ambulance corps. All the fighting was over by midday, and in the afternoon General Kitchener entered Omdurman, and the army encamped in the vicinity. Slatin Bey was duly installed as governor in the name of the Egyptian khédive. The European prisoners of the califa were now released, and on Sunday, the 4th of September, the sirdar and all his army held a solemn service in memory of General Gordon near the spot where he was killed.

Bodies of men were now sent out on all sides to pacify the country, and the sirdar, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartum, started on an expedition up the Nile in a gunboat, in order to settle the difficult question arising from the occupation of Pashoda by a French corps under Major Marchand. The ability and strategy of this French commander were of a very high order. The general plan of the expedition had been in accord with French military traditions, based upon former attempts in India and America to separate the British colonial dominions, or to block the way to their extension by establishing a series of military outposts or forts at certain strategic points chosen for this purpose. Had the French designs under Desaix in India, or of the army of occupation in the Mississippi Valley in the eighteenth century, been supported by a powerful fleet, there is no doubt that British colonisation would have suffered a severe setback. If Major Marchand remained in Fashoda, the route to all the upper regions of the Nile would be cut off from any English or Egyptian enterprise. Accordingly, Lord Kitchener ran the risk of grave international complications by advancing upon Fashoda to meet Major Marchand. Fortunately, a temporary agreement was entered upon that the home governments should decide the question at issue, and Lord Kitchener then hoisted the Anglo-Egyptian flag south of the French settlement, and the officers fraternised over glasses of champagne.

It is now believed that Russia would have aided France if it had come to a war, but the French government thought the affair not of sufficient importance to warrant an international struggle over the retention of Fashoda, and the respective spheres of influence of France and Great Britain were finally agreed upon early in the following year by the Niger Convention, which left the whole of the ex-Egyptian provinces under British protection, as far south as the Equatorial Lakes, and as far west as the border line between Darfur and Wadai.

The calif was subsequently pursued from place to place in the desert, and was at length overtaken by Colonel Wingate at Om Dubreikat. The dervish leader fought a desperate fight; and, refusing to fly, was slain with all his personal followers on November 26, 1899.

The total cost of these campaigns had been incredibly small, not amounting in all to the total of $12,000,000, and the railroad, the cost of which is here included in the expenditure, is of permanent value to Egypt.

After the re-occupation of Khartum, it was again, as in Gordon’s time, made the seat of government, the dervish capital having been located across the Nile at Omdurman. For a memorial to Gordon, $500,000 was enthusiastically raised in England. The memorial took the practical form of an educational establishment for the natives of the Sudan, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Lord Cromer in January, 1900. The school is intended to be exclusively for Muhammedans, and only the Moslem religion is to be taught within its walls.

Though the Mahdism, of which the late califa had been the leading spirit, had degenerated into a struggle of slave-traders versus civilisation, the calif at least showed conspicuous courage in the manner in which he faced his death. For the last twenty years, during which the revolts of the dervishes had troubled the outlying provinces of the Egyptian dominions, trade had been almost at a standstill; large numbers of blacks had been enslaved; an equal number probably had been slaughtered, and whole regions depopulated. The total population was cut down during these years to one-half of what it previously had been, and it was of vital importance to Egypt to reconquer all the lost provinces which lay upon the banks of the river Nile. If the prosperity of Egypt is to rest upon a sound basis, and not be subjected to periodic overthrow at the hands of the hostile inhabitants of the south, it is essential that the Upper Nile should be under the control of those who are responsible for the welfare of the country. Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and the entire population of Egypt is dependent upon this river. To secure prosperity for the country and to develop Egyptian resources to the fullest extent, the rulers of Egypt must also be the rulers of the Nile. When the Anglo-Egyptian expedition under Kitchener set out to reconquer the Sudan, the development of Egypt had been progressing in all directions at a rapid rate. Having greater interests to defend, less indebtedness to meet, and greater facilities for meeting the taxes due the home government, no less than the foreign bondholders, the time was ripe in which to take that great step towards securing the prosperity of Egypt in the future by finally destroying the community of slaveholders, which, under the sanction of Mahdism, brutally tyrannised over the non-Muhammedan population.