Chapter XIX: Part 19

At length, in consequence of the remonstrances of the English, and a promise made by al-Alfi of 1500 purses, the Porte consented to reinstate the twenty-four beys and to place al-Alfi at their head; but this measure met with the opposition of Mehemet Ali and the determined resistance of the majority of the Mamelukes, who, rather than have al-Alfi at their head, preferred their present condition; for the enmity of al-Bardisi had not subsided, and he commanded the voice of most of the other beys. In pursuance of the above plan, a squadron under Salih Pasha, shortly before appointed high admiral, arrived at Alexandria on the 1st of July 1806 with 3000 regular troops and a successor to Mehemet Ali, who was to receive the pashalik of Salonica. This wily chief professed his willingness to obey the commands of the Porte, but stated that his troops, to whom he owed a vast sum of money, opposed his departure. He induced the ulema to sign a letter, praying the sultan to revoke the command for reinstating the beys, persuaded the chiefs of the Albanian troops to swear allegiance to him, and sent 2000 purses contributed by them to Constantinople. Al-Alfi was at that time besieging Damanhur, and he gained a signal victory over the pasha's troops; but the dissensions of the beys destroyed their last chance of a return to power. Al-Alfi and his partisans were unable to pay the sum promised to the Porte; Salih Pasha received plenipotentiary powers from Constantinople, in consequence of the letter from the ulema; and, on the condition of Mehemet Ali's paying 4000 purses to the Porte, it was decided that he should continue in his post, and the reinstatement of the beys was abandoned. Fortune continued to favour the pasha. In the following month al-Bardisi died, aged forty-eight years; and soon after, a scarcity of provisions excited the troops of al-Alfi to revolt. That bey very reluctantly raised the siege of Damanhur, being in daily expectation of the arrival of an English army; and at the village of Shubra-ment he was attacked by a sudden illness, and died on the 30th of January 1807, at the age of fifty-five. Thus was the pasha relieved of his two most formidable enemies; and shortly after he defeated Shahin Bey, with the loss to the latter of his artillery and baggage and 300 men killed or taken prisoners.

The British expedition of 1807.

On the 17th of March 1807 a British fleet appeared off Alexandria, having on board nearly 5000 troops, under the command of General A. Mackenzie Fraser; and the place, being disaffected towards Mehemet Ali, opened its gates to them. Here they first heard of the death of al-Alfi, upon whose co-operation they had founded their chief hopes of success; and they immediately despatched messengers to his successor and to the other beys, inviting them to Alexandria. The British resident, Major Missett, having represented the importance of taking Rosetta and Rahmanieh, to secure supplies for Alexandria, General Fraser, with the concurrence of the admiral, Sir John Duckworth, detached the 31st regiment and the Chasseurs Britanniques, accompanied by some field artillery under Major-General Wauchope and Brigadier-General Meade, on this service; and these troops entered Rosetta without encountering any opposition; but as soon as they had dispersed among the narrow streets, the garrison opened a deadly fire on them from the latticed windows and the roofs of the houses. They effected a retreat on Aboukir and Alexandria, after a very heavy loss of 185 killed and 281 wounded, General Wauchope and three officers being among the former, and General Meade and nineteen officers among the latter. The heads of the slain were fixed on stakes on each side of the road crossing the Ezbekia in Cairo.

Mehemet Ali, meanwhile, was conducting an expedition against the beys in Upper Egypt, and he had defeated them near Assiut, when he heard of the arrival of the British. In great alarm lest the beys should join them, especially as they were far north of his position, he immediately sent messengers to his rivals, promising to comply with all their demands if they should join in expelling the invaders; and this proposal being agreed to, both armies marched towards Cairo on opposite sides of the river.

To return to the unfortunate British expedition. The possession of Rosetta being deemed indispensable, Brigadier-Generals Sir William Stewart and Oswald were despatched thither with 2500 men. For thirteen days a cannonade of the town was continued without effect; and on the 20th of April, news having come in from the advanced guard at Hamad of large reinforcements to the besieged, General Stewart was compelled to retreat; and a dragoon was despatched to Lieutenant-colonel Macleod, commanding at Hamad, with orders to fall back. The messenger, however, was unable to penetrate to the spot; and the advanced guard, consisting of a detachment of the 31st, two companies of the 78th, one of the 35th, and De Roll's regiment, with a picquet of dragoons, the whole mustering 733 men, was surrounded, and, after a gallant resistance, the survivors, who had expended all their ammunition, became prisoners of war. General Stewart regained Alexandria with the remainder of his force, having lost, in killed, wounded and missing, nearly 900 men. Some hundreds of British heads were now exposed on stakes in Cairo, and the prisoners were marched between these mutilated remains of their countrymen.

Final massacre of the Mamelukes.

The beys became divided in their wishes, one party being desirous of co-operating with the British, the other with the pasha. These delays proved ruinous to their cause; and General Fraser, despairing of their assistance, evacuated Alexandria on the 14th of September. From that date to the spring of 1811 the beys from time to time relinquished certain of their demands; the pasha on his part granted them what before had been withheld; the province of the Fayum, and part of those of Giza and Beni-Suef, were ceded to Shahin; and a great portion of the Sa'id, on the condition of paying the land-tax, to the others. Many of them took up their abode in Cairo, but tranquillity was not secured; several times they met the pasha's forces in battle and once gained a signal victory. Early in the year 1811, the preparations for an expedition against the Wahhabis in Arabia being complete, all the Mameluke beys then in Cairo were invited to the ceremony of investing Mehemet Ali's favourite son, Tusun, with a pelisse and the command of the army. As on the former occasion, the unfortunate Mamelukes fell into the snare. On the 1st of March, Shahin Bey and the other chiefs (one only excepted) repaired with their retinues to the citadel, and were courteously received by the pasha. Having taken coffee, they formed in procession, and, preceded and followed by the pasha's troops, slowly descended the steep and narrow road leading to the great gate of the citadel; but as soon as the Mamelukes arrived at the gate it was suddenly closed before them. The last of those to leave before the gate was shut were Albanians under Salih Kush. To these troops their chief now made known the pasha's orders to massacre all the Mamelukes within the citadel; therefore, having returned by another way, they gained the summits of the walls and houses that hem in the road in which the Mamelukes were confined, and some stationed themselves upon the eminences of the rock through which that road is partly cut. Thus securely placed, they began a heavy fire on their victims; and immediately the troops who closed the procession, and who had the advantage of higher ground, followed their example. Of the betrayed chiefs, many were laid low in a few moments; some, dismounting, and throwing off their outer robes, vainly sought, sword in hand, to return, and escape by some other gate. The few who regained the summit of the citadel experienced the same fate as the rest, for no quarter was given. Four hundred and seventy Mamelukes entered the citadel; and of these very few, if any, escaped. One of these is said to have been a bey. According to some, he leapt his horse from the ramparts, and alighted uninjured, though the horse was killed by the fall; others say that he was prevented from joining his comrades, and discovered the treachery while waiting without the gate. He fled and made his way to Syria. This massacre was the signal for an indiscriminate slaughter of the Mamelukes throughout Egypt, orders to this effect being transmitted to every governor; and in Cairo itself the houses of the beys were given over to the soldiery. During the two following days the pasha and his son Tusun rode about the streets and tried to stop the atrocities; but order was not restored until 500 houses had been completely pillaged. The heads of the beys were sent to Constantinople.

A remnant of the Mamelukes fled to Nubia, and a tranquillity was restored to Egypt to which it had long been unaccustomed. In the year following the massacre the unfortunate exiles were attacked by Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest son of Mehemet Ali, in the fortified town of Ibrim, in Nubia. Here the want of provisions forced them to evacuate the place; a few who surrendered were beheaded, and the rest went farther south and built the town of New Dongola (correctly Dunkulah), where the venerable Ibrahim Bey died in 1816, at the age of eighty. As their numbers thinned, they endeavoured to maintain their little power by training some hundreds of blacks; but again, on the approach of Ismail, another son of the pasha of Egypt, sent with an army in 1820 to subdue Nubia and Sennar, some returned to Egypt and settled in Cairo, while the rest, amounting to about 100 persons, fled in dispersed parties to the countries adjacent to Sennar.

See A. A Paton, _History of the Egyptian Revolution_ (2 vols., 2nd
ed., enlarged 1870); and FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.
(E. S. P.; S. L.-P.; D. S. M.*)

3. _Modern History._

Wars in Arabia.

(1) _Rule of Mehemet Ali._--Mehemet Ali was now undisputed master of Egypt, and his efforts henceforth were directed primarily to the maintenance of his practical independence. The suzerainty of the sultan he acknowledged, and at the reiterated commands of the Porte he despatched in 1811 an army of 8000 men, including 2000 horse, under the command of his son Tusun, a youth of sixteen, against the Wahhabis (q.v.). After a successful advance, this force met with a serious repulse at the pass of Jedeida, near Safra, and retreated to Yembo' (Yambu). In the following year Tusun, having received reinforcements, again assumed the offensive, and captured Medina after a prolonged siege. He next took Jidda and Mecca, defeating the Wahhabis beyond the latter place and capturing their general. But some mishaps followed, and Mehemet Ali, who had determined to conduct the war in person, left Egypt for that purpose in the summer of 1813. In Arabia he encountered serious obstacles from the nature of the country and the harassing mode of warfare adopted by his adversaries. His arms met with various fortunes; but on the whole his forces proved superior to those of the enemy. He deposed and exiled the sharif of Mecca, and after the death of the Wahhabi leader Saud II. he concluded in 1815 a treaty with Saud's son and successor, Abdullah. Hearing of the escape of Napoleon from Elba--and fearing danger to Egypt from the plans of France or Great Britain--Mehemet Ali returned to Cairo by way of Kosseir and Kena. He reached the capital on the day of the battle of Waterloo. His return was hastened by reports that the Turks, whose cause he was upholding in Arabia, were treacherously planning an invasion of Egypt.

During Mehemet Ali's absence in Arabia his representative at Cairo had completed the confiscation, begun in 1808, of almost all the lands belonging to private individuals, who were forced to accept instead inadequate pensions. By this revolutionary method of land "nationalization" Mehemet Ali became proprietor of nearly all the soil of Egypt, an iniquitous measure against which the Egyptians had no remedy. The attempt which in this year (1815) the pasha made to reorganize his troops on European lines led, however, to a formidable mutiny in Cairo. Mehemet Ali's life was endangered, and he sought refuge by night in the citadel, while the soldiery committed many acts of plunder. The revolt was reduced by presents to the chiefs of the insurgents, and Mehemet Ali ordered that the sufferers by the disturbances should receive compensation from the treasury. The project of the _Nizam Gedid_ (New System), as the European system was called, was, in consequence of this mutiny, abandoned for a time.

Tusun returned to Egypt on hearing of the military revolt at Cairo, but died in 1816 at the early age of twenty. Mehemet Ali, dissatisfied with the treaty concluded with the Wahhabis, and with the non-fulfilment of certain of its clauses, determined to send another army to Arabia, and to include in it the soldiers who had recently proved unruly. This expedition, under his eldest son Ibrahim Pasha, left in the autumn of 1816. The war was long and arduous, but in 1818 Ibrahim captured the Wahhabi capital of Deraiya. Abdullah, their chief, was made prisoner, and with his treasurer and secretary was sent to Constantinople, where, in spite of Ibrahim's promise of safety, and of Mehemet Ali's intercession in their favour, they were put to death. At the close of the year 1819, Ibrahim returned to Cairo, having subdued all present opposition in Arabia.

Meanwhile the pasha had turned his attention to the improvement of the manufactures of Egypt, and engaged very largely in commerce. He created for himself a monopoly in the chief products of the country, to the further impoverishment of the people, and set up and kept going for years factories which never paid. But some of his projects were sound. The work of digging (1819-1820) the new canal of Alexandria, called the Mahmudiya (after the reigning sultan of Turkey), was specially important. The old canal had long fallen into decay, and the necessity of a safe channel between Alexandria and the Nile was much felt. Such was the object of the canal then excavated, and it answered its purpose; but the sacrifice of life was enormous (fully 20,000 workmen perished), and the labour of the unhappy fellahin was forced. Another notable fact in the economic progress of the country was the development of the cultivation of cotton in the Delta in 1822 and onwards. The cotton grown had been brought from the Sudan by Maho Bey, and the organization of the new industry--from which in a few years Mehemet Ali was enabled to extract considerable revenues--was entrusted to a Frenchman named Jumel.

Conquest of the Sudan begun.

In 1820 Mehemet Ali ordered the conquest of the eastern Sudan to be undertaken. He first sent an expedition westward (Feb. 1820) which conquered and annexed the oasis of Siwa. Among the pasha's reasons for wishing to extend his rule southward were the desire to capture the valuable caravan trade then going towards the Red Sea, and to secure the rich gold mines which he believed to exist in Sennar. He also saw in the campaign a means of getting rid of the disaffected troops, and of obtaining a sufficient number of captives to form the nucleus of the new army. The forces destined for this service were led by Ismail, then the youngest son of Mehemet Ali; they consisted of between 4000 and 5000 men, Turks and Arabs, and left Cairo in July 1820. Nubia at once submitted, the Shagia Arabs immediately beyond the province of Dongola were worsted, the remnant of the Mamelukes dispersed, and Sennar reduced without a battle. Mahommed Bey, the defterdar, with another force of about the same strength, was then sent by Mehemet Ali against Kordofan with a like result, but not without a hard-fought engagement. In October 1822 Ismail was, with his retinue, burnt to death by Nimr, the _mek_ (king) of Shendi; and the defterdar, a man infamous for his cruelty, assumed the command of those provinces, and exacted terrible retribution from the innocent inhabitants. Khartum was founded at this time, and in the following years the rule of the Egyptians was largely extended and control obtained of the Red Sea ports of Suakin and Massawa (see SUDAN: _History_).

In 1824 a native rebellion of a religious character broke out in Upper Egypt headed by one Ahmad, an inhabitant of Es-Salimiya, a village situated a few miles above Thebes. He proclaimed himself a prophet, and was soon followed by between 20,000 and 30,000 insurgents, mostly peasants, but some of them deserters from the "Nizam Gedid," for that force was yet in a half-organized state, and in part declared for the impostor. The insurrection was crushed by Mehemet Ali, and about one-fourth of Ahmad's followers perished, but he himself escaped and was never after heard of. Few of these unfortunates possessed any other weapon than the long staff (_nebbut_) of the Egyptian peasant; still they offered an obstinate resistance, and the combat in which they were defeated resembled a massacre. This movement was the last internal attempt to destroy the pasha's authority.

Sufferings of the fellahin.

The fellahin, a patient, long-suffering race save when stirred by religious fanaticism, submitted to the kurbash, freely used by the Turkish and Bashi Bazuk tax-gatherers employed by Mehemet Ali to enforce his system of taxation, monopolies, corvee and conscription. Under this regime the resources of the country were impoverished, while the finances fell into complete and incomprehensible chaos.

A vivid picture of the condition to which Egypt was reduced is painted in the report drawn up in 1838 by the British consul-general, Colonel Campbell:--

"The government (he wrote), possessing itself of the necessaries of
life at prices fixed by itself, disposes of them at arbitrary prices.
The fellah is thus deprived of his harvest and falls into arrears with
his taxes, and is harassed and bastinadoed to force him to pay his
debts. This leads to deterioration of agriculture and lessens the
production. The pasha having imposed high taxes has caused the high
prices of the necessaries of life. It would be difficult for a
foreigner now coming to Egypt to form a just idea of the actual state
of the country as compared with its former state. In regard to the
general rise in prices, all the ground cultivated under the Mamelukes
was employed for producing food--wheat, barley, beans, &c.--in immense
quantities. The people reared fowls, sheep, goats, &c., and the prices
were one-sixth, or even one-tenth, of those at present. This continued
until Mehemet Ali became viceroy in 1805. From that period until the
establishment of monopolies prices have gradually increased; but the
great increase has chiefly taken place since 1824, when the pasha
established his regular army, navy and factories."

The conclusion in 1838 of a commercial treaty with Turkey, negotiated by Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling), struck a death-blow to the system of monopolies, though the application of the treaty to Egypt was delayed for some years. The picture of Egypt under Mehemet Ali is nevertheless not complete without regard being had to the beneficent side of his rule. Public order was rendered perfect; the Nile and the highways were secure to all travellers, Christian or Moslem; the Bedouin tribes were won over to peaceful pursuits, and genuine efforts were made to promote education and the study of medicine. To European merchants, on whom he was dependent for the sale of his exports, Mehemet Ali showed much favour, and under his influence the port of Alexandria again rose into importance. It was also under Mehemet Ali's encouragement that the overland transit of goods from Europe to India via Egypt was resumed.

Ibrahim in the Morea.

Mehemet Ali was fully conscious that the empire which he had so laboriously built up might at any time have to be defended by force of arms against his master Sultan Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to curbing the power of his too ambitious valis, and who was under the influence of the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, notably of Khosrev, the grand vizier, who had never forgiven his humiliation in Egypt in 1803. Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of observing the superiority of European methods of warfare, was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet and an army on modern lines, partly as a measure of precaution, partly as an instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes of ambition. Before the outbreak of the War of Greek Independence in 1821 he had already expended much time and energy in organizing a fleet and in training, under the supervision of French instructors, native officers and artificers; though it was not till 1829 that the opening of a dockyard and arsenal at Alexandria enabled him to build and equip his own vessels. By 1823, moreover, he had succeeded in carrying out the reorganization of his army on European lines, the turbulent Turkish and Albanian elements being replaced by negroes and fellahin.[23] His foresight was rewarded by the invitation of the sultan to help him in the task of subduing the Greek insurgents, offering as reward the pashaliks of the Morea and of Syria. Mehemet Ali had already, in 1821, been appointed governor of Crete, which he had occupied with a small Egyptian force. In the autumn of 1824 a fleet of sixty Egyptian war-ships carrying a large force of disciplined troops concentrated in Suda Bay, and, in the following March, Ibrahim as commander-in-chief landed in the Morea. But for the action of European powers the intervention of Mehemet Ali would have been decisive. His naval superiority wrested from the Greeks the command of the sea, on which the fate of the insurrection ultimately depended, while on land the Greek irregular bands were everywhere routed by Ibrahim's disciplined troops. The history of the events that led up to the battle of Navarino and the liberation of Greece is told elsewhere (see NAVARINO and GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF); the withdrawal of the Egyptians from the Morea was ultimately due to the action of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who early in August 1828 appeared before Alexandria and induced the pasha, by no means sorry to have a reasonable excuse, by a threat of bombardment, to sign a convention undertaking to recall Ibrahim and his army.

The Syrian campaigns.

Before the final establishment of the new kingdom of Greece, the Eastern question had late in 1831 entered into a new and more perilous phase, owing to the revolt of Mehemet Ali against the sultan on pretext of chastising the ex-slave Abdullah, pasha of Acre, for refusing to send back Egyptian fugitives from the effects of Mehemet Ali's "reforms." The true reason was the refusal of Sultan Mahmud to hand over Syria according to agreement, and Mehemet Ali's determination to obtain at all hazards what had been from time immemorial an object of ambition to the rulers of Egypt. For ten years from this date the relations of sultan and pasha remained in the forefront of the questions which agitated the diplomatic world. It was not only the very existence of the Ottoman empire that seemed to be at stake, but Egypt itself had become more than ever an object of attention, to British statesmen especially, and in the issue of the struggle were involved the interests of Great Britain in the two routes to India by the Isthmus of Suez and the valley of the Euphrates. The diplomatic and military history of this period will be found sketched in the article on Mehemet Ali. Here it will suffice to say that the victorious career of Ibrahim, who once more commanded in his father's name, beginning with the storming of Acre on the 27th of May 1832, and culminating in the rout and capture of Reshid Pasha at Konia on the 21st of December, was arrested by the intervention of Russia. As the result of endless discussions between the representatives of the powers, the Porte and the pasha, the convention of Kutaya was signed on the 14th of May 1833, by which the sultan agreed to bestow on Mehemet Ali the pashaliks of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo and Itcheli, together with the district of Adana. The announcement of the pasha's appointment had already been made in the usual way in the annual firman issued on the 3rd of May. Adana, reserved for the moment, was bestowed on Ibrahim under the style of _muhassil_, or collector of the crown revenues, a few days later.

Mehemet Ali now ruled over a virtually independent empire, subject only to a moderate tribute, stretching from the Sudan to the Taurus Mountains. But though he was hailed, especially in France, as the pioneer of European civilization in the East, the unsound foundations of his authority were not long in revealing themselves. Scarcely a year from the signing of the convention of Kutaya the application by Ibrahim of Egyptian methods of government, notably of the monopolies and conscription, had driven Syrians, Druses and Arabs, who had welcomed him as a deliverer, into revolt. The unrest was suppressed by Mehemet Ali in person, and the Syrians were terrorized and disarmed. But their discontent encouraged Sultan Mahmud to hope for revenge, and a renewal of the conflict was only staved off by the anxious efforts of the powers. At last, in the spring of 1839, the sultan ordered his army, concentrated under Reshid in the border district of Bir on the Euphrates, to advance over the Syrian frontier. Ibrahim, seeing his flank menaced, attacked it at Nezib on the 24th of June. Once more the Ottomans were utterly routed. Six days later, before the news reached Constantinople, Mahmud died. Once more the Ottoman empire lay at the feet of Mehemet Ali; but the powers were now more prepared to meet a contingency which had been long foreseen. Their intervention was prompt; and the dubious attitude of France, which led to her exclusion from the concert and encouraged Mehemet Ali to resist, only led to his obtaining less favourable terms. (See MEHEMET ALI.)

Mehemet Ali's authority confined to Egypt.

The end was reached early in 1841. New firmans were issued which confined the pasha's authority to Egypt, the Sinai peninsula and certain places on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, and to the Sudan. The most important of these documents are dated the 13th of February 1841. The government of the pashalik of Egypt was made hereditary in the family of Mehemet Ali.[24] A map showing the boundaries of Egypt accompanied the firman granting Mehemet Ali the pashalik, a duplicate copy being retained by the Porte. The Egyptian copy is supposed to have been lost in a fire which destroyed a great part of the Egyptian archives. The Turkish copy has never been produced and its existence now appears doubtful. The point is of importance, as in 1892 and again in 1906 boundary disputes arose between Turkey and Egypt (see below). Various restrictions were laid upon Mehemet Ali, emphasizing his position of vassalage. He was forbidden to maintain a fleet, and his army was not to exceed 18,000 men. The pasha was no longer a figure in European politics, but he continued to occupy himself with his improvements, real or imaginary, in Egypt. The condition of the country was deplorable; in 1842 a murrain of cattle was followed by a destructive Nile flood; in 1843 there was a plague of locusts, whole villages were depopulated. Meantime the uttermost farthing was wrung from the wretched fellahin, while they were forced to the building of magnificent public works by unpaid labour. In 1844-1845 there was some improvement in the condition of the country as a result of financial reforms the pasha was compelled to execute. Mehemet Ali, who had been granted the honorary rank of grand vizier in 1842, paid a visit to Stamboul in 1846, where he became reconciled to his old enemy Khosrev Pasha, whom he had not seen since he spared his life at Cairo in 1803. In 1847 Mehemet Ali laid the foundation stone of the great barrage across the Nile at the beginning of the Delta. He was barely persuaded from ordering the barrage to be built with stone from the pyramids! Towards the end of 1847 the aged pasha's mind began to give way, and by the following June he was no longer capable of administering the government. In September 1848 Ibrahim was acknowledged by the Porte as ruler of the pashalik, but he died in the November following. Mehemet Ali survived another eight months, dying on the 2nd of August 1849, aged eighty. He had done a great work in Egypt; the most permanent being the weakening of the tie binding the country to Turkey, the starting of the great cotton industry, the recognition of the advantages of European science, and the conquest of the Sudan. (F. R. C.)

Abbas I. and Said Pasha.

(2) _From the Death of Mehemet Ali to the British Occupation._--On Ibrahim's death in November 1848 the government of Egypt fell to his nephew Abbas I (q.v.), the son of Tusun. Abbas put an end to the system of commercial monopolies, and during his reign the railway from Alexandria to Cairo was begun at the instigation of the British government. Opposed to European ways, Abbas lived in great seclusion, and after a reign of less than six years he was murdered (July 1854) by two of his slaves. He was succeeded by his uncle Said Pasha, the favourite son of Mehemet Ali, who lacked the strength of mind or physical health needed to execute the beneficent projects which he conceived. His endeavour, for instance, to put a stop to the slave raiding which devastated the Sudan provinces was wholly ineffectual. He had a genuine regard for the welfare of the fellahin, and a land law of 1858 secured to them an acknowledgment of freehold as against the crown. The pasha was much under French influence, and in 1856 was induced to grant to Ferdinand de Lesseps a concession for the construction of the Suez Canal. Lord Palmerston was opposed to this project, and the British opposition delayed the ratification of the concession by the Porte for two years. To the British Said also made concessions--one to the Eastern Telegraph Company, and another (1854) allowing the establishment of the Bank of Egypt. He also began the national debt by borrowing L3,293,000 from Messrs Fruhling & Goschen, the actual amount received by the pasha being L2,640,000. In January 1863 Said Pasha died and was succeeded by his nephew Ismail, a son of Ibrahim Pasha.

Ismail's megalomania

The reign of Ismail (q.v.), from 1863 to 1879, was for a while hailed as introducing a new era into modern Egypt. In spite of his vast schemes of reform and the _eclat_ of his Europeanizing innovations, his oriental extravagance led to bankruptcy, and his reign is historically important simply for its compelling European intervention in the internal affairs of Egypt. Yet in its earlier years much was done which seemed likely to give Ismail a more important place in history. In 1866 he was granted by the sultan a firman--obtained on condition of the increase of the tribute from L376,000 to L720,000--by which the succession to the throne of Egypt was made to descend "to the eldest of thy male children and in the same manner to the eldest sons of thy successors," instead of, after Turkish law, to the eldest male of the family. In the following year another firman bestowed upon him the title of _khedive_ in lieu of that of _vali_, borne by Mehemet Ali and his immediate successors. In 1873 a further firman placed the khedive in many respects in the position of an independent sovereign. Ismail re-established and improved the administrative system organized by Mehemet Ali, and which had fallen into decay under Abbas's indolent rule; he caused a thorough remodelling of the customs system, which was in an anarchic state, to be made by English officials; in 1865 he established the Egyptian post office; he reorganized the military schools of his grandfather, and gave some support to the cause of education. Railways, telegraphs, lighthouses, the harbour works at Suez, the breakwater at Alexandria, were carried out by some of the best contractors of Europe. Most important of all, the Suez Canal was opened in 1869. But the funds required for these public works, as well as the actual labour, were remorselessly extorted from a poverty-stricken population.

A striking picture of the condition of the people at this period is
given by Lady Duff Gordon in _Last Letters from Egypt_. Writing in
1867 she said: "I cannot describe the misery here now--every day some
new tax. Every beast, camel, cow, sheep, donkey and horse is made to
pay. The fellaheen can no longer eat bread; they are living on
barley-meal mixed with water, and raw green stuff, vetches, | &c. The
taxation makes life almost impossible: a tax on every crop, on every
animal first, and again when it is sold in the market; on every man,
on charcoal, on butter, on salt.... The people in Upper Egypt are
running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay the new taxes and do
the work exacted. Even here (Cairo) the beating for the year's taxes
is awful."

Steps leading to the deposition of Ismail.

In the years that followed the condition of things grew worse. Thousands of lives were lost and large sums expended in extending Ismail's dominions in the Sudan (q.v.) and in futile conflicts with Abyssinia. In 1875 the impoverishment of the fellah had reached such a point that the ordinary resources of the country no longer sufficed for the most urgent necessities of administration; and the khedive Ismail, having repeatedly broken faith with his creditors, could not raise any more loans on the European market. The taxes were habitually collected many months in advance, and the colossal floating debt was increasing rapidly. In these circumstances Ismail had to realize his remaining assets, and among them sold 176,602 Suez Canal shares to the British government for L3,976,582[25] (see BEACONSFIELD). This comparatively small financial operation brought about the long-delayed crisis and paved the way for the future prosperity of Egypt, for it induced the British government to inquire more carefully into the financial condition of the country. In December 1875 Mr Stephen Cave, M.P., and Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Stokes, R.E., were sent to Egypt to inquire into the financial situation; and Mr Cave's report, made public in April 1876, showed that under the existing administration national bankruptcy was inevitable. Other commissions of inquiry followed, and each one brought Ismail more under European control. The establishment of the Mixed Tribunals in 1876, in place of the system of consular jurisdiction in civil actions, made some of the courts of justice international. The Caisse de la Dette, instituted in May 1876 as a result of the Cave mission, led to international control over a large portion of the revenue. Next came (in November 1876) the mission of Mr (afterwards Lord) Goschen and M. Joubert on behalf of the British and French bondholders, one result being the establishment of Dual Control, i.e. an English official to superintend the revenue and a French official the expenditure of the country. Another result was the internationalization of the railways and the port of Alexandria. Then came (May 1878) a commission of inquiry of which the principal members were Sir Rivers Wilson, Major Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) and MM. Kremer-Baravelli and de Blignieres. One result of that inquiry was the extension of international control to the enormous landed property of the khedive. Driven to desperation, Ismail made a virtue of necessity and accepted, in September 1878, in lieu of the Dual Control, a constitutional ministry, under the presidency of Nubar Pasha (q.v.), with Rivers Wilson as minister of finance and de Blignieres as minister of public works. Professing to be quite satisfied with this arrangement, he pompously announced that Egypt was no longer in Africa, but a part of Europe; but before seven months had passed he found his constitutional position intolerable, got rid of his irksome cabinet by means of a secretly-organized military riot in Cairo, and reverted to his old autocratic methods of government. England and France could hardly sit still under this affront, and decided to administer chastisement by the hand of the suzerain power, which was delighted to have an opportunity of asserting its authority. On the 26th of June 1879 Ismail suddenly received from the sultan a curt telegram, addressed to him as ex-khedive of Egypt, informing him that his son Tewfik was appointed his successor. Taken unawares, he made no attempt at resistance, and Tewfik was at once proclaimed khedive.

Re-establishment of Dual Control.

Arabi and the revolt of 1882.

After a short period of inaction, when it seemed as if the change might be for the worse, England and France summoned up courage to look the situation boldly in the face, and, in November 1879, re-established the Dual Control in the persons of Major Baring and M. de Blignieres. For two years the Dual Control governed Egypt, and initiated the work of progress that England was to continue alone. Its essential defect was what might be called insecurity of tenure. Without any efficient means of self-protection and coercion at its disposal, it had to interfere with the power, privileges and perquisites of a class which had long misgoverned the country. This class, so far as its civilian members were concerned, was not very formidable, because these were not likely to go beyond the bounds of intrigue and passive resistance; but it contained a military element who had more courage, and who had learned their power when Ismail employed them for overturning his constitutional ministry. Among the mutinous soldiers on that occasion was a fellah officer calling himself Ahmed Arabi the Egyptian. He was not a man of exceptional intelligence or remarkable powers of organization, but he was a fluent speaker, and could exercise some influence over the masses by a rude kind of native eloquence. Behind him were a group of men, much abler than himself, who put him forward as the figurehead of a party professing to aim at protecting the Egyptians from the grasping tyranny of their Turkish and European oppressors. The movement began among the Arab officers, who complained of the preference shown to the officers of Turkish origin; it then expanded into an attack on the privileged position and predominant influence of foreigners, many of whom, it must be confessed, were of a by no means respectable type; finally, it was directed against all Christians, foreign and native.[26] The government, being too weak to suppress the agitation and disorder, had to make concessions, and each concession produced fresh demands. Arabi was first promoted, then made under-secretary for war, and ultimately a member of the cabinet. The danger of a serious rising brought the British and French fleets in May 1882 to Alexandria, and after a massacre (11th of June) had been perpetrated by the Arab mob in that city, the British admiral bombarded the forts (11th of July 1882). The leaders of the national movement prepared to resist further aggression by force. A conference of ambassadors was held in Constantinople, and the sultan was invited to quell the revolt; but he hesitated to employ his troops against Mussulmans who were professing merely to oppose Christian aggression.

(3) _Egypt occupied by the British._--At last the British government determined to employ armed force, and invited France to co-operate. The French government declined, and a similar invitation to Italy met with a similar refusal. England therefore, having to act alone, landed troops at Ismailia under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and suppressed the revolt by the battle of Tell-el-Kebir on the 13th of September 1882. The khedive, who had taken refuge in Alexandria, returned to Cairo, and a ministry was formed under Sherif Pasha, with Riaz Pasha as one of its leading members. On assuming office, the first thing it had to do was to bring to trial the chiefs of the rebellion. Had the khedive and Riaz been allowed a free hand, Arabi and his colleagues would have found little mercy. Thanks to the intervention of the British government, their lives were spared. Arabi pleaded guilty, was sentenced to death, the sentence being commuted by the khedive to banishment; and Riaz resigned in disgust. This solution of the difficulty was brought about by Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador at Constantinople, who had been sent to Egypt as high commissioner to adjust affairs and report on the situation. One of his first acts, after preventing the application of capital punishment to the ringleaders of the revolt, was to veto the project of protecting the khedive and his government by means of a Praetorian guard recruited from Asia Minor, Epirus, Austria and Switzerland, and to insist on the principle that Egypt must be governed in a truly liberal spirit. Passing in review all the departments of the administration, he laid down the general lines on which the country was to be restored to order and prosperity, and endowed, if possible, with the elements of self-government for future use.

Sir Evelyn Baring appointed consul-general, 1884.

The laborious task of putting these general indications into a practical shape fell to Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), who arrived as consul-general and diplomatic agent, in succession to Sir Edward Malet, in January 1884. At that moment the situation was singularly like that which had existed on two previous occasions: firstly, when Ismail was deposed; and secondly, when the Dual Control had undermined the existing authority without having any power to enforce its own. For the third time in little more than three years the existing authority had been destroyed and a new one had to be created. But there was one essential difference: the power that had now to reorganize the country possessed in the British army of occupation a support sufficient to command respect. Without that support Sir Evelyn Baring could have done little or nothing; with it he did perhaps more than any other single man could have done. His method may be illustrated by an old story long current in Cairo. Mehemet Ali was said to have appointed as _mudir_ or governor in a turbulent district a young and inexperienced Turk, who asked, "But how am I to govern these people?" "Listen," replied the pasha; "buy the biggest and heaviest _kurbash_ you can find; hang it up in the centre of the _mudirieh_, well within your reach, and you will very seldom require to use it." The British army of occupation was Sir Evelyn's _kurbash_; it was well within his reach, as all the world knew, and its simple presence sufficed to prevent disorder and enforce obedience. He had one other advantage over previous English reformers in Egypt: his position towards France was more independent. The Dual Control had been abolished by a khedivial decree of 18th January 1883, and replaced by an English financial adviser. France naturally objected; but having refused to co-operate with England in suppressing the revolt, she could not reasonably complain that her offer of co-operation in the work of reorganization was declined. But though Dual Control was at an end, the Caisse de la Dette remained, and this body was to prove a constant clog on the financial measures of the Egyptian government.

The Policy of evacuation.

At first the intention of the British government was simply to restore the power of the khedive, to keep his highness for some time in the right path by friendly advice, and to withdraw the British troops as soon as possible. As Lord Granville explained in a circular to the powers, the position of England in Egypt imposed on her "the duty of giving advice with the object of securing that the order of things to be established shall be of a satisfactory character and possess the elements of stability and progress." But there was to be no embarking on a general scheme of reforms, which would increase unnecessarily the responsibilities of the protecting power and necessitate the indefinite prolongation of the military occupation. So far, therefore, as the British government had a definite policy in Egypt, it was a _politique de replatrage_. Even this policy was not strictly adhered to. Mr Gladstone's cabinet was as unstable as the public opinion it sought to conciliate. It had its hot fits and its cold fits, and it gave orders now to advance and now to retreat. In the long run circumstances proved too strong for it, and it had to undertake a great deal more than it originally intended. Each little change in the administration engendered a multitude of others, so that the modest attempts at reform were found to be like the letting out of water. A tiny rill gradually became a boisterous stream, and the boisterous stream grew into a great river, which spread to all sections of the administration and ended by inundating the whole country.

The Sudan question.

Of the numerous questions awaiting solution, the first to claim immediate attention was that of the Sudan. The British government had begun by excluding it from the problem, and by declaring that for events in these outlying territories it must not be held responsible. In that sphere of activity, therefore, the Egyptian government might do as it thought fit. The principle of limited liability which this attitude assumed was soon found to be utterly untenable. The Sudan was an integral part of the khedive's dominions, and caused, even in ordinary times, a deficit of L200,000 to the Egyptian treasury. At that moment it was in a state of open rebellion, stirred up by a religious fanatic who proclaimed himself a mahdi of Islam. An army of 10,000 men under an English officer, Colonel William Hicks, formerly of the Bombay army, otherwise Hicks Pasha, had been sent to suppress the revolt, and had been annihilated in a great battle fought on the 5th of November 1883, near Obeid. The Egyptian government wished to make a new attempt to recover the lost province, and the idea was certainly very popular among the governing class, but Sir Evelyn Baring vetoed the project on the ground that Egypt had neither soldiers nor money to carry it out. In vain the khedive and his prime minister, Sherif Pasha, threatened to resign, and the latter actually carried out his threat. The British representative remained firm, and it was decided that the Sudan should be, for the moment at least, abandoned to its fate. Nubar, though as strongly opposed to the abandonment policy as Sherif, consented to take his place and accepted somewhat reluctantly the new regime, which he defined as "the administration of Egypt under the government of Baring." By this time the Mahdi was master of the greater part of the Sudan, but Khartum and some other fortified points still held out. The efforts made to extricate the garrisons, including the mission of General Gordon, the fall of Khartum, and the Nile Expedition under Lord Wolseley, are described below separately in the section of this article dealing with the military operations. The practical result was that the khedive's authority was limited to the Nile valley north of Wadi Halfa.

Internal reorganization

With the internal difficulties Sir Evelyn Baring had been struggling bravely ever since his appointment, trying to evolve out of the ever-changing policy and contradictory orders of the British government some sort of coherent line of action, and to raise the administration to a higher standard. For two or three years it seemed doubtful whether he would succeed. All over Egypt there was a feeling of unrest, and the well-meant but not very successful efforts of the British to improve the state of things were making them very unpopular. The introduction of English officials and English influence into all the administrative departments was resented by the native officials, and the action of the irrigation officers in preventing the customary abuses of the distribution of water was resented by the great landowners, who had been, from time immemorial, in the habit of taking as much as they wanted, to the detriment of the fellahin. Even these latter, who gained most by the reforms, considered that they had good reason to complain, for the defeat of Arabi and the re-establishment of order had enabled the Christian money-lenders to return and insist on the payment of claims, which were supposed to have been extinguished by the rebellion. Worst of all, the government was drifting rapidly towards insolvency, being quite unable to fulfil its obligations to the bondholders and meet the expenses of administration. All departments were being starved, and even the salaries of poorly paid officials were in arrear. To free itself from its financial difficulties the government adopted a heroic remedy which only created fresh troubles. On the advice of Lord Northbrook, who was sent out to Cairo in September 1884 to examine the financial situation, certain revenues which should have been paid into the Caisse for the benefit of the bondholders were paid into the treasury for the ordinary needs of the administration. Immediately the powers protested against this infraction of the law of liquidation, and the Caisse applied for a writ to the Mixed Tribunals. In this way the heroic remedy failed, and to the internal difficulties were added international complications.

Fortunately for Egypt, the British government contrived to solve the international difficulty by timely concessions to the powers, and succeeded in negotiating the London Convention of March 1885, by which the Egyptian government was relieved from some of the most onerous stipulations of the law of liquidation, and was enabled to raise a loan of L9,000,000 for an annual payment of L135,000. After paying out of the capital the sums required for the indemnities due for the burning of Alexandria and the deficits of the years 1882 and 1883, it still had a million sterling, and boldly invested it in the improvement of irrigation. The investment proved most remunerative, and helped very materially to save the country from bankruptcy and internationalism. The danger of being again subjected to the evils of an international administration was very great, for the London Convention contained a stipulation to the effect that if Egypt could not pay her way at the end of two years, another international commission would be appointed.

To obviate this catastrophe the British reformers set to work most energetically. Already something in the way of retrenchment and reform had been accomplished. The public accounts had been put in order, and the abuses in the collection of the land tax removed. The constant drain of money and men for the Sudan had been stopped. A beginning had been made for creating a new army to replace the one that had been disbanded and to allow of a portion of the British garrison being withdrawn. In this work Sir Evelyn Wood had shown much sound judgment as well as great capacity for military organization, and had formed an efficient force out of very unpromising material (see the section above on the _Egyptian Army_). His colleague in the department of public works, Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, had been not less active. By mitigating the hardships of the _corvee_, and improving the irrigation system, on which the prosperity of the country mainly depends, he had conferred enormous benefits on the fellahin, and had laid the foundation of permanent budgetary equilibrium for the future. Not less active was Sir Edgar Vincent, the financial adviser, who kept a firm hold on the purse-strings and ruthlessly cut down expenditure in all departments except that of irrigation (see S Finance).

The activity of the British officials naturally produced a certain amount of discontent and resistance on the part of their Egyptian colleagues, and Lord Granville was obliged to declare very plainly that such resistance could not be tolerated. Writing (January 1884) to Sir Evelyn Baring, he said:

"It should be made clear to the Egyptian Ministers and Governors of
Provinces that the responsibility which for the time rests on England
obliges H.M. Government to insist on the adoption of the policy which
they recommend; and that it will be necessary that those Ministers and
Governors who do not follow this course should cease to hold their
offices."

Relations between British and native officials.

Nubar Pasha, who continued to be prime minister, resisted occasionally. What he chiefly objected to was direct interference in the provincial administration and the native tribunals, and he succeeded for a time in preventing such interference. Sir Benson Maxwell and Mr Clifford Lloyd, who had been sent out to reform the departments of justice and the interior, after coming into conflict with each other were both recalled, and the reforming activity was for a time restricted to the departments of war, public works and finance. Gradually the tension between natives and foreigners relaxed, and mutual confidence was established. Experience had evolved the working principle which was officially formulated at a much later period: "Our task is not to rule the Egyptians, but as far as possible to teach the Egyptians to rule themselves.... European initiative suggests measures to be executed by Egyptian agency, while European supervision controls the manner in which they are executed." If that principle had been firmly laid down and clearly understood at the beginning, a good deal of needless friction would have been avoided.

International problems.