Chapter II: Sir Evelyn Baring Arrives at Cairo (2)

The news of Khalil’s death distressed me much, as it was that of my earliest friend at the Azhar, Mohammed Abdu’s most devoted disciple. Poor man! as I afterwards learnt, he had been driven out of the Azhar on the Khedive’s restoration on account of his connection with me, and had wandered about afterwards with a heart broken over the misfortunes of his country. He was of the salt of the earth, and his persecution shows how relentlessly the best men of the Liberal Party were tracked and punished by the reactionaries whom we had replaced in power.

“We found our garden undamaged, and gathered a dozen large pomegranates to take to Arabi. During the war the Mudir of the district had had the house broken into and had taken some of our things, including 17 rifles, some pistols, and the small brass cannon I had bought two years ago for Ibn Rashid (the Emir of Hail), an act which formed the basis of the French fiction of my having bought a house and stored it as a ‘veritable arsenal’ before the war. The things were taken to the citadel.[12] We returned at half-past twelve, entertained Moore at breakfast, and afterwards went with him to the Boulac Museum. After dinner Gerouais came with old Salim Basalim and his son. From the old man we learnt a good deal about the feeling of the people at Cairo. All classes, high and low, hate Tewfik, but are in terror of their lives. His spies are everywhere, but, where two or three are gathered together, they long for the return of the exiles. I asked him what the people thought about me, and he said: ‘Out of four two would be delighted to see you, and would say so, one would be delighted but would not say so, and one would not care.’ At first, after the war, people said: ‘What has Mr. Blunt been doing that we hear nothing of him,’ and they were angry, saying he had deserted them, but when Napier and Broadley came they knew that he was still their friend. I explained the political situation in England as far as it affected Egypt, the difference of ideas between the two parties, the one which would annex, the other which would leave Egypt, Lord Granville’s illiberal ideas, and Mr. Gladstone’s character. I bade him tell his friends not to lose heart, that it was impossible the present _régime_ could last, that with patience they would see the exiles back, and the party of liberty restored. He promised to spread this opinion everywhere, and said: ‘There are many in this town who, if they knew you had passed down the street, would kiss the dust of your footsteps.’ Then he looked about him in a frightened way, and said he must go. They are all in terror of their lives.

“_30th Sept._—In the morning came Ali, our head gardener, who finished his narrative of the seizure of our property. I told him the people were donkeys, seeing I was the only friend they had had in England during the war. He said they did not know what they were doing. They had wanted to cut the water and take the coals of the engine, but fortunately were prevented, or the garden would have been ruined.

“Next came a nephew of Arabi’s, who had been living on what was left of the family estate near Zagazig. I asked him about the elections. He said the fellahin were frightened at being put down on the register, and understood it as a device for enlisting them in the army, but he was afraid of talking. He was followed by Suliman Nashaat, a brother of Abd- el-Aal’s, who was more courageous. He confirmed what the other had told about the elections. In the towns the Governor or the Prefect of police had sent round privately to tell the people who they were expected to choose, and there was no opposition possible. Dufferin’s Constitution would be well enough if they had an honest ruler, one who desired liberty, but under Tewfik it was quite useless. There had never been such tyranny in Egypt before, not even under Ismaïl Pasha. Ismaïl had taken people’s money, but they were not molested as now by the police. They were imprisoned now, and put to death on false charges, so that there were many who wished Ismaïl back. Many of the Circassians were now of the party of liberty, and wished a return of the exiles. The party of liberty did not wish ill to the Europeans, and were at one with the Copts and the Coptic Patriarch, while Boutros[13] and other rich Copts were on the side of Tewfik. As soon as the English troops went the people would rise against Tewfik and kill him. The soldiers would kill their English officers—they were all ready. I told him that would be very foolish. He reproached Arabi with having run away from Tel-el- Kebir; Arabi, he said, used to take three hours saying his prayers instead of attending to his business. It was not the place of a commander to pray so much and run away so soon, and many complained that he had thus lost his honour. Still the people liked him because he was good, but he was more of an _alem_ than a soldier. His own brother, Abd- el-Aal, would not have run away. Abd-el-Aal had written over and over again to ask to be sent to Tel-el-Kebir, and he had been the last to surrender. This is quite true. He then gave a touching picture of the death of Yusuf Abu Diab, his brother’s aide-de-camp, who was hanged at Tantah by the Khedive for saving the lives of Christians. Anne has written the account down in full. He, Suliman Nashaat was in prison with Yusuf, and afterwards went with him to the gallows, and received his last words. Suliman Sami he had known well. It was true that Suliman had burned Alexandria against Arabi’s orders, but he was hanged because he would not give up certain papers. Kandil had had papers, and he was promised his life if he would hold his tongue about the riots of June. There were plenty of people who would give witness if the case was gone into against the Khedive. In the Azhar every one was frightened. El Abbasi, the new Sheykh El Islam, hated liberty. El Edwi, one of the most courageous Sheykhs, had been exiled to his village, but the Khedive thought now of sending him to the Mahdi to find out what his views were. Suliman evidently sympathizes with the Mahdi, and half believes in him. He said the issue would show whether he was sent by God. Anne has gone to see Princess Inja Hanum.

“_1st Oct._—Last night a young man looked in who explained that he was a friend of Wahby Bey’s, and that he had been arrested with twenty-five others on a charge of having been connected with a Frenchman who went by the name of Mohammed Said, and had formed or pretended to form a society against the English called ‘Les Vengeurs.’ His only connection with him was that the Frenchman had come to lodge in his house, and would not go away. They had all been brought before a mixed commission, on which two Belgians had sat, and their release was ordered. But Osman Pasha Ghaleb, the Prefect of police, had detained most of them by superior orders from the Palace on suspicion. The man Husseyn Bey brought me a letter from one of them, Abd el Razak Bey, F.R.G.S., ex-director of the Naval College, written in very good English, and asking me to come and see him in the Zaptieh prison. Accordingly I wrote this morning to Sir E. Baring, asking permission to pay the visit, but as no answer came, and as we are going away to-morrow, I went with Husseyn Bey to try and get in. The discipline of the prison is so lax that this was easy enough. The man at the door brought a key for the asking, but they only let us stay a few minutes. I got out of Razak, however, a most valuable piece of information. He was in prison with Kandil, and knows he had papers connecting the Khedive with the riots of June. Omar Lutfi got them from Kandil on a promise of saving his life, but they meant all the same to hang him, as they did Suliman Sami, who also had compromising documents. I found with Abd el Razak in the prison four others, Mohammed Effendi Fenni, late chief interpreter of the Council of Ministers, Mustafa Bey Sidki, a brother of Husseyn Bey, a landed proprietor at Shubra, Huseyn Sagr, and Saad-el-Zagloul, assistant editor of the ‘Wakaya’ under Mohammed Abdu.[14] All these gave me messages to Arabi, and begged me to look after their interests. Then we were hurried away.

“Went with Suliman to pay some visits to distinguished members of the Party of Liberty as the National Party is now called. The first house we called at was Emin Bey Shemsi’s, late deputy for Zagazig, and chairman of a section; he had with him three friends, one whom he introduced as a philosopher, another a tall vigorous young fellow, and a third, an old fellah Notable from his own town. Shemsi used to be a country neighbour and personal friend of Arabi’s. He is a very intelligent man, and of some courage too, or he would not have received us, for he was only let out of prison a few months ago, and is still watched by spies. I asked him to tell the history of the two crises in which the Notables were concerned last year. In the first, that which resulted in Sherif’s fall, there was, he told us, very little difference of opinion. Sultan Pasha alone supported Sherif. In the second, when Mahmud Sami summoned the Chamber, they were more divided. They met at Sultan Pasha’s house before the whole of their number had arrived at Cairo, and Sultan at first got thirty to side with him, leaving forty-five in favour of the Ministry. But on the occasion of the second meeting, when the windows were broken by the mob and Arabi made his famous speech after the receipt of my telegram, Sultan was left alone. There was no doubt in the world that all Cairo, deputies, Ulema, merchants, and mob, insisted on Arabi’s return to power.

“They then asked me to explain how it had come about, that with Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Party in power, there had been a war against liberty, and I explained to them the financial conditions on which the matter hinged, and the divergence between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville. They were full of gratitude to me for the attempt I had made to get them justice, and asked me what they were to do now to get themselves out of the hands of their tyrants. I said it was first necessary to prove to the world that they detested Tewfik, and desired the return of Arabi, and I asked Shemsi about the possibility of electing Arabi for the Chamber at Cairo. They laughed lugubriously, and explained how the elections were managed. The voting took place in the police station, under the superintendence of the police, and at each station there were men in plain clothes to watch the voting and direct the election on the part of the Government. A man who should have the courage to write Arabi’s name on his paper would at once be hustled away, and he and his family would be ruined. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, ‘how these things are done with us. It would be impossible that any one should so much as speak of Arabi. If the election were free, every one in Cairo would vote for him.’ I said: ‘If this is so, you have nothing to do but to make a new revolt; the English troops are to be withdrawn in the spring, and you must then get the Egyptian army on your side. People must be ready to revolt once and twice and thrice for liberty. Then they obtain it.’ There was a division of opinion as to the probability of the soldiers joining. But they seemed to think the English officers had them under their thumbs, and they next proposed to go as a committee to London to lay their distress before the English Government. I said I would do what I could to help them in this. But if things are thus, their case is nearly hopeless. The revolt, to be of any use, should be immediately on the departure of our troops, for with Lord Salisbury in power it would only serve as a pretext for annexation. Shemsi and the philosopher seemed to dread the departure of the English troops. As long as Lord Dufferin had been here there was a check, but Malet aided and encouraged Tewfik in his vengeance. We were to have met at their house the telegraph clerk, Mustafa Bey, who sent the message from Tewfik to Omar Lutfi ordering the riot at Alexandria, but he was too frightened to come.

“Our next visit was to an ex-Mudir, a man of superior education and good manners. We asked him about the reception recently given to Tewfik in the provinces. His answer was, ‘If Riaz Pasha, who is my worst enemy, were to come to see me, what should I do? I should meet him with a band of music at the door. When we fear a man we meet him with a smile; dark looks would bring endless trouble on our heads.’ He seemed less timorous, however, than Shemsi, though he too had been in prison, and came in the evening to repay our visit.

“Sabunji has got tired of being at Matarieh, and has come into the town. This is foolish of him as he may get into trouble, but I have told him we must all be off back to Suez to-morrow. Husseyn Bey came again at nightfall to say that my visit to the prison is known, and that the sentries have been put under arrest. He wants me to write to Baring to ask his protection. If I do, I must of course tell Baring that I went without his permission. It is curious that of all the people I have seen not one will hear of English annexation, even as an escape from imprisonment and persecution. They all declare they would then revolt against any odds.

“_2nd Oct._—This morning Baring’s answer has come. He regrets that he ‘cannot give me the order asked for to visit the prison, such matters being settled by the Egyptian Government, etc.’ Rot! I shall write and tell him I have seen the prisoners, and recommend them to his protection.” I did so in a letter dated 3rd October, with the speedy and satisfactory result that on the 6th October Sir Evelyn Baring wrote the following short dispatch to Lord Granville:

“I have the honour to inclose a copy of an important circular issued to the Mudirs of the several provinces by the Minister of the Interior. It is to be hoped that the issue of this circular will have the effect of clearing the gaols of all persons who are improperly or unnecessarily detained in prison.” And again 10th October: “I have the honour to inclose herewith, extracted from the ‘Moniteur Egyptien’ of the 9th inst., a decree granting a general amnesty to all offenders accused of crimes connected with the rebellion, except to those accused of murder or rape.”

Saad Zagloul and the rest of those with him in prison were consequently released. I learned the news a few weeks later in Ceylon, and that it was due to my intervention, though I cannot remember that any of the prisoners wrote personally to thank me. My action on their behalf was, I believe, a chief reason for my exclusion from Egypt during the following three years, for Baring resented my interference with what ought to have been his sole business. There is a passage in his “Modern Egypt” which displays his displeasure and makes complaint of my correspondence with Mr. Gladstone through Hamilton. His representations, however, to the Foreign Office that it should be discontinued did not have the full effect he supposes, though it made Hamilton cautious. Gladstone’s answer to Granville, which Cromer with somewhat puerile malice quotes, proves nothing more than that the two Ministers were in different camps about Egypt, and that Gladstone was anxious to minimize to his colleague the attention he paid to my opinion. Granville never forgave my action in Egypt in 1882, but Gladstone knew that I had been right, though he did not dare avow it publicly. He allowed Hamilton still to remain in touch with me, as will be seen in the course of the present volume, as long as he was in office. All that Cromer was able to effect when he discovered that I had told the Prime Minister the truth, was that having shortly after assumed the _rôle_ of masterly Resident he decreed my exclusion from Egypt, and induced the Foreign Office to support him in continuing it till 1886. My relations, however, with the other side of Downing Street continued on a friendly footing as long as Gladstone remained in power, while Cromer himself some years afterwards came round to my views and tried to get up a native Egyptian Ministry favourable to England out of the _débris_ of the Nationalist Party, going even to the length of consulting me about those capable of composing it; but it was then too late, and English policy in Egypt has floundered ever since in a Serbonian bog of irreconcilable native hostility. He would have done better to have taken my advice in 1883.

“The ‘Phare d’Alexandrie’ has a long article describing the displeasure of the Khedive at my arrival, and at the visits paid me by relations of the exiles, and there is also rather a nice paragraph in an Arabic paper saying that I had returned to Cairo, and that feasts would have been prepared for me, but those who should have been my hosts were no longer there—strangers had come to eat up the banquet. We have left Cairo for Suez. Gerouais was at the station to see us off with Sabunji, who, thank God, has not been arrested.”

This is my last entry while in Egypt that year. From Cairo and again from Suez I wrote two long letters to Hamilton for Mr. Gladstone’s reading, one on 28th September, two days after I had seen Baring, and a second on 3rd October, immediately before embarking for Ceylon. These will be found in the Appendix.

The next six months, following on this brief visit to Cairo, were spent by me in Ceylon and India, an account of which will be found already published in my volume, “India under Ripon.” The only thing I did that winter of importance for Egypt more than is there recorded was to obtain from Arabi and his companions in exile at Colombo a clear statement of the policy they would recommend, drawn up more or less on the lines of Arabi’s memorandum of the year before, with such additions to it as the events of the intervening twelve months might have suggested, especially in regard to the Soudan and Dufferin’s unworkable charter. The document, embodied in a letter I sent to the “Times” on 5th November and published 13th December, is one of historical importance, and will be found in the Appendix.

It reiterates the truth which underlay the whole Egyptian position, namely, that the supposed necessity of maintaining Tewfik on the Khedivial throne at Cairo must, if persisted in, vitiate any attempt to restore self-government to the Egyptians, or to free England from the prolonged responsibility of protecting him with an occupying force. It suggests in what way Constitutional Government could be restored, and enumerates a variety of reforms, most of which have been subsequently made part of English policy. About the Soudan, too, the affairs of which were about to become a main subject of interest for those responsible for Egypt’s welfare, it contains a remarkable paragraph, which may be taken as the text of what will be found in the following few chapters of this volume. And be it noted that at the time it was written, 3rd November, no one at Cairo, still less in London, had begun to perceive the truth that other than military means were necessary to deal with the situation created by the Mahdi’s rebellion, if a great misfortune, both for Egypt and for the Soudan, was to be avoided. Arabi, who as Nationalist Minister of War in 1882, had been responsible for the appointment of Abd-el-Kader Pasha to the post of Governor-General at Khartoum, and who in the common interests of the two countries had put himself into communication with the Mahdi, and was to a certain point in sympathy with the cause Mohammed Ahmed represented as being that of a revolt against the Turco-Circassian tyranny they had alike suffered from, was in a far better position to understand how the difficulty should be dealt with than any of those in whose hands its solution now lay, and it is certain that, had he been able to maintain himself against Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir, no difficulty whatever would have arisen in regard to retaining Khartoum, or even eventually of recovering the lost provinces, had such been in the designs of nationalized Egypt. The passage is as follows:

“Although he (Arabi) is of opinion that a certain connection will always be necessary between the lower and upper waters of the Nile, he holds that in the present military and financial position of Egypt it is unwise to attempt the reconquest of all or, perhaps, of any of the lost provinces. He believes that the movement of the so-called Mahdi is not one merely of fanaticism, or that it is only a revolt of the slave- dealers. He thinks that Mohammed Ahmed commands the goodwill of the inhabitants, and that it would be far wiser for the Egyptian Government to come to terms with him than to continue their military operations against him. The Soudan brings nothing into the Cairo treasury, and if Egypt is to enjoy liberty at home she should avoid ideas of conquest abroad. The terms that could be made with the Mahdi Arabi has been too long out of Egypt to judge; but from the communications which reached him while in power he does not believe a friendly arrangement admitting Egypt’s suzerainty impossible. The suzerainty of Egypt the Soudanese would probably be glad to admit, for it would protect them against European aggression.”

This question of the Soudan was being already much discussed among the exiles while I was in Ceylon, though the defeat of Hicks was not yet known. And, as it was to become a main subject of interest to us all during the next two years, I may as well here present the general case of it as it appeared to Nationalist eyes, for it will enable readers better to understand both my own point of view and that prevalent at the time in Egypt. It will serve, too, as a corrective to the false light in which it is seen and described by nearly all European writers, who fail to understand that Europe itself was the sole responsible cause of the trouble. This is how I, looking at the matter, so to say, with Oriental eyes, saw and see it.

The revolt in the Soudan stood in close analogy with that in Lower Egypt. Both had a double character, beginning as the natural rebellion of a people against long misgovernment, and taking later a religious complexion when Christian Europe had intervened in support of the tyrannical ruler against the people. The only difference between the two cases lay in the fact that, whereas in Egypt the reformers were enlightened men, representing the humaner and more progressive side of Islam, the Soudanese reformers were reactionary and fanatical. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the great, the capital wrong committed by our English Government in 1882 was less the destruction of the hopes of free government in Egypt as a nation, than the treacherous blow its armed intervention struck everywhere at the aspirations of liberal Islam. Arabi, a devout but the least fanatical of Moslems, had come in 1882 to represent not Egypt only, but every Mohammedan land alarmed at the encroachment of Christendom and looking to constitutional reform as its surest safety. And it was just this leader of reform that constitutional and Liberal England chose to strike down. What wonder then that the defeat at Tel-el-Kebir should have been taken through all Mohammedan lands as a set back to reform, an impulse to reaction? At Constantinople it had the immediate effect of putting all power into the hands of the Sultan Abdul Hamid’s fanatical following, and of enabling him to crush what remained of the constitutional party and the party of religious liberalism. In Persia it had consequences of much the same reactionary nature, and throughout North Africa it determined the whole character of religious thought on lines of fiercely bitter hatred of Christendom. The French invasion of Tunis had been answered by the counter-move of the fighting fraternity of the Senussia. The English invasion of Egypt was answered by Mohammed Ahmed’s appearance in the Soudan as Mahdi. It made it therefore imperative in 1883, if the Soudan was not to be lost to the fanatics, that without delay a liberal Mohammedan Government should be restored at Cairo capable of attracting to it the humaner elements of Islam, and pitting them against the less humane. Had this been done by the end of the year 1882, and the English army withdrawn from Cairo, the situation at Khartoum could have been saved without recourse to arms. Otherwise an English occupation of Khartoum was the sole alternative to an immediate and complete abandonment of the whole of the Upper Nile.

What was done, as we know, was to take neither one course nor the other. It was decided that Tewfik was to be maintained at Cairo, propped up by British bayonets; and at Khartoum that his authority was to be restored without any military propping whatever—the authority of Tewfik, who had come to be regarded as a renegade to Islam, almost as a _Kafr_, the docile servant of a Christian Power! Was it to be expected that the Soudanese, a fiercely Mohammedan population, proud of their Arab descent and of their anti-crusading ancestry, should accept the domination of one so contemptible, re-imposed on them by a Christian general and without a Christian army at his back? Naturally and inevitably, no! There was, besides, a special reason for anger against Tewfik, which I do not find recorded in any history of the time, but which largely contributed to the detestation in which he was held among the Soudanese. One of the first acts of the restored regime at Cairo had been to arrest the supreme head of the Malekite rite, which is that prevalent in the Soudan and throughout North Africa, Sheykh El Aleysh, a venerable and highly revered personage, who was treated with the utmost indignity, and, as was currently reported, was done to death in prison by the Khedive’s order. The news of this impiety was to the Soudanese a new proof of Tewfik’s apostate character, and made a reconciliation between him and them doubly impossible. Add to it the folly of recalling Abd-el- Kader, and replacing him with the corrupt and incapable Court favourite Ala-ed-Din Pasha, and giving him Hicks, an Englishman, but without an English military backing, as his Chief of the Staff, and we see the full madness from a Moslem point of view of the attempt made in the spring of 1883 to retain the Soudan; while perhaps the crowning folly of all was to reinforce the Khedivial garrison at Khartoum with the broken remnants of Arabi’s army disbanded after Tel-el-Kebir, and recruited afresh for Tewfik’s service. Colonel Stewart, who was sent by Dufferin that winter of 1882-83 to report on the condition of things in the Soudan, describes the army Hicks was about to command as a congregation of raw undisciplined recruits mixed with others on the point of mutiny. “The question,” he says, “is whether they will remain faithful or desert, knowing as they will that the Mahdi will not harm them. . . . At one of the late skirmishes they were heard complaining, ‘O Effendina Arabi! If you knew the position Tewfik has placed us in.’”

Certain historians have laid stress on the distinction to be drawn between the policy of sending Hicks to hold Khartoum and the insanity of sending him, with an army so disaffected and so ready to mutiny, against the Mahdi in Kordofan. Hicks, they say, might have held his own at Khartoum if the Egyptian Government had been content to leave him there. I see no warrant for believing this. Hicks did his best and was a gallant officer, but he was from the first a doomed man, as Gordon after him was doomed. The fact of their Christianity, and of their holding Tewfik’s commission, made it impossible for either of them to succeed in stemming the rebellion; and, though both were able to hold out for a while, nothing but a backing of European troops could have saved them from failure. Hicks, just as Gordon did, gained at the outset an ephemeral advantage, but only to be replied to by the revolt of the Eastern provinces in favour of the Madhi; and, left without English help, he would have been beleaguered at Khartoum, as Gordon was, and compelled, as Gordon was, to surrender. His advance into Kordofan only accelerated his ruin.

As to this expedition, for which Tewfik and his Ministers and Malet were jointly responsible, it has been the fashion to consider it an act of reckless folly on the part of the Egyptian Government, of lack of intelligent prescience on the part of Malet. It was in my opinion something more criminal than this. On the part of the Khedive and Sherif, and especially of Omar Lutfi, the Minister of War, it was a deliberate scheme to rid themselves of the last remnant of Arabi’s rebel army and of an English officer obnoxious to their plans. They wanted, or at least Tewfik wanted, a vengeance on the regiments which had headed the revolt against him in 1881, a vengeance which had been denied him by the amnesty after Tel-el-Kebir; while none of them wanted English interference in the affairs of the Soudan. Be it remembered that Hicks’s soldiers included Arabi’s own regiment of the Guard, or what was left of it, and that Omar Lutfi, who had contrived with Tewfik the Alexandria riots, had sent them to the Soudan in chains. Hicks and his regiments of old Arabists, we may be quite sure, were ordered deliberately to their death at Obeid. All Tewfik’s attitude towards Gordon later was in accordance with this reading of the Hicks expedition, and it is the only reading that explains what otherwise would remain an inexplicable act of madness. As to Malet, he was, in this, as in all else, the Khedive’s too facile dupe, his unconscious accomplice, just as he had been his dupe in the case of the Alexandria massacre. He believed what Tewfik told him, and did not look beyond. Nothing is more remarkable than the easy indifference displayed by Malet in his published correspondence of that summer as to all that was going on in the Soudan. Hicks saw the danger and everybody else saw it. Malet saw nothing or saw only what the Khedive told him. He did not care to see more.

An additional proof of this, if any be needed besides that of the Blue Books, is supplied to me, though a negative one only, by my own talk with Baring at Cairo in September, and the record of it already given. I remember that in it, though our discussion ranged over the whole field of his Egyptian difficulties, he did not so much as allude to the Soudan as being one of those he had immediately to face—a remarkable omission when it is considered that he had just been spending ten days with Malet at his elbow, who must have had full time to bring his knowledge of every branch of the Egyptian question up to date. Like Malet, Lord Cromer’s lack of foresight during the whole of the first two months of his arrival is most noticeable in the Blue Books. These show that his sole anxiety in those last months before the storm broke in the Soudan was the financial difficulty. His only reference to danger in that quarter is where he records a conversation on 26th October with an unnamed gentleman, who described the finance of the Soudan to him as “_un trou inconnu_.” Of other than the financial danger there is not a word. In his “Modern Egypt,” Cromer excuses himself from all responsibility in regard to Hicks, by saying that Hicks had already started on his campaign three days before his, Cromer’s, arrival. But this is not strictly true.

Hicks, though he left Khartoum on the 8th September, remained on in camp on the Nile bank at Duem till the 26th, and could have been still recalled by telegraph had Cromer so insisted. What is true is that Cromer did not foresee the consequences, as Malet did not foresee them. Otherwise how is it possible to account for the optimism of his dispatch of 6th October, where, in complete ignorance of the perils threatening the restored regime, he wrote his confident dispatch reporting that order having been now completely restored “the British garrison of Cairo might with safety be withdrawn”? A small force of 3,000 men, to be retained at Alexandria not as an army any longer of occupation but of observation only, would, he assured Lord Granville, be “amply sufficient to maintain the honour of Her Majesty’s arms against any force that it may be supposed with any degree of probability it may have to encounter.” I, as a stranger spending a week at Cairo, had found out more than this; and Granville had hardly agreed to the evacuation before the storm broke, and it was already too late to apply any remedy short of the dispatch to Khartoum of a British army.

To bring my narrative back to the historical date at which I left it. The rapid sequence of events was startling. On the 1st November news reached Cairo that Captain Moncrieff, British Consul at Suakin, with 500 Egyptian troops in garrison there, having gone forth to give battle to the rebels at Tokar on the Red Sea littoral, had been surprised and slain. On the 19th November the first rumour of Hicks’s defeat was received, and two days later, the 21st, knowledge came of the full disaster. The whole of the Soudan west and south of Khartoum was reported to be in insurrection, as well as the Eastern provinces; and Colonel Coetlogon, the English officer left by Hicks in charge of the Khartoum garrison, was telegraphing that Khartoum itself could not be held “unless immediately succoured.” All then was for some weeks in confusion at the Cairo War Office, and hardly less in London. Cromer, on the very first news, one can hardly say otherwise than in a panic, had advised the abandonment of the whole Soudan, and by return of telegraph Lord Granville had agreed, and the necessary order of evacuation had been given to the Egyptian Government. Some more weeks had then been wasted in distracted counsels, and, on the 14th January 1884, Gordon was dispatched on his mission to Khartoum. It was in this brief order that I learned the events while travelling in India, and that the news about Gordon reached me at Delhi. It was then that I wrote him that too prophetic letter, the text of which is given in my “India under Ripon,” warning him of the treachery of those who were sending him on his mission and foretelling his defeat and death. For the convenience of my present readers, I reprint it here in the Appendix.