Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt

As the responsibility for this affair, so unfortunate for the National cause in Egypt, was afterwards laid upon the person it had most injured, Arabi, and as the incident was made use of by our Foreign Office and Admiralty, with other excuses not less unjust, to bring about the bombardment of Alexandria and the war that followed, the plea being that Egypt was in a "proved state of anarchy," it will be well here, before we go any further, to place upon the right shoulders what criminality there was in the whole incident. When I heard of it in London my first instinct was that, if not the accident the papers said it was, it was part of the plot I knew to have been designed through Dervish Pasha at the Foreign Office to entrap and betray Arabi, but it was not till after the war that I came into possession of the full particulars concerning it, or had it in my power to refute the false accusations made a little later against the Nationalists of having themselves devised and brought it about. The very contrary to this was then shown to be truth. As we now all know, who are in the secrets of that time, the riot, though perhaps accidental in its immediate origin, had for some weeks previously been in the designs of the Court party as a means at the proper moment to discredit Arabi as one capable of preserving order in the country.

The position of things at Alexandria was this: Alexandria, more than any other town in Egypt, was in large part a European city, inhabited, besides the Moslem population, by Greek, Italian and Maltese colonists, all engaged in trade and many of them money-lenders. At no time had there been much love between the two classes and the arrival of the fleets, avowedly with the intention of protecting European interests, greatly increased the ill-feeling. It needed much loyalty, firmness, and tact on the part of the Governor of the town to preserve order, and great discretion on the part of the fleet. Unfortunately the Governor, Omar Pasha Lutfi, was a man entirely opposed to the Nationalist Ministry. He was a Circassian, a member of the Court party, and a partisan of the ex-Khedive Ismaïl's, and at the time of the Circassian plot had done service to Tewfik by entering into communication with the Western Bedouins to gain them to the Khedive's side. He had, therefore, rather encouraged than repressed the element of disorder in the Mohammedan population. The Greeks, on the other hand, had proceeded to arm themselves, with the assistance of the head of their community, Ambroise Sinadino, a rich banker, who was also agent of the Rothschilds in Egypt; and the Maltese, a numerous community, did likewise through the connivance of Cookson, the English Consul. Things, therefore, were all it may be said, prepared for a riot as early as the last week of May, in expectation of that "civil war" which, it will be remembered, the "Pall Mall Gazette" foresaw as an approved alternative, should the Nationalist Ministry refuse to resign and Arabi to accept suppression.

There is no doubt that disturbance, as a proof of anarchy, was a thing looked forward to by our diplomacy at Cairo as probable, and even not undesirable in the interests of their "bottle-holding" policy. That Omar Lutfi had a personal interest in the suppression of Arabi is also easily proved. In the telegrams of the day, when the Ultimatum was about to be launched, a list is given of the purely Circassian and Khedivial Ministry which it was intended should succeed that of Mahmud Sami, and Omar Lutfi is named in it as the probable successor of Arabi at the War Office. Nor was this announcement unfounded, for a few days later we know that Omar Lutfi was, in fact, sent for by the Khedive to the Ismaïlia Palace and offered the post.16 The Ultimatum was delivered on the 1st of June, and the Ministers resigned on the 2nd, having waited a day because the Khedive had told them he would first telegraph for advice to Constantinople, though on the following morning, when they again came to him, he informed them that his mind was made up to accept the Ultimatum notwithstanding that he had received no answer. When, therefore, on the 3rd the Khedive had been obliged, through the popular demonstration in Arabi's favour, backed by the German and Austrian Consuls, who saw in Arabi the man best capable in Egypt of maintaining order, to rename Arabi Minister of War, the disappointment to Omar Lutfi is easily understood, and the temptation he was under of creating practical proof that the German Consuls were wrong. We have, besides this, evidence that on the 5th of June the Khedive, who, no less than Omar Lutfi, had received a great rebuff, sent him a telegram in the following words: "Arabi has guaranteed public order, and published it in the newspapers, and has made himself responsible to the Consuls; and if he succeeds in his guarantee the Powers will trust him, and our consideration will be lost. Also the fleets of the Powers are in Alexandrian waters, and men's minds are excited, and quarrels are not far off between Europeans and others. Now, therefore, choose for yourself whether you will serve Arabi in his guarantee or whether you will serve us." On this hint Omar Lutfi immediately took his measures. As civil governor he was in command of the Mustafezzin, the semi-military police of Alexandria, and through them directed that quarterstaves, (nabuts) should be collected at the police stations to be served out at the proper moment, and other preparations made for an intended disturbance. Ample proof may be found in the evidence printed in the Blue Books of the complicity of the police in the affair, though a confusion is constantly made by those who give the evidence between these and the regular soldiers by speaking of the police, as is often loosely done in Egypt, as soldiers. The regulars were not under the civil, but the military governors, and took no part in the affair until called in at a late hour by Omar Lutfi when he found the riot had assumed proportions he could not otherwise control. It is to be noted that the chief of the Mustafezzin, Seyd Kandil, a timid adherent of Arabi's, refused to take part in the day's proceedings, excusing himself to Omar Lutfi on the ground of illness.

The disturbance was therefore prepared already for execution when Dervish and his fellow Commissioner landed on the 8th at Alexandria. It was probably intended to synchronize with the plot of Arabi's arrest, and to prove to the Sultan's Commissioner, more than to any one else, that Arabi had not the power to keep order in the country that he claimed. I am not, however, at all convinced that Dervish was in ignorance of what was intended, and I think there is a very great probability that he had learned it before his interview with Arabi, and that if he had succeeded in getting Arabi to resign his responsibility the riot would have been countermanded. As it is, there is some evidence that the outbreak took place earlier than was intended. It is almost certain that the immediate occasion of it, the quarrel between the donkey boy and the Maltese, was accidental, but probably the police had received no counter-orders, and so the thing was allowed to go on according to the program. What is certain is that the Khedive and Omar Lutfi, the one at Cairo, the other at Alexandria, monopolized telegraphic communication between the two cities, that Omar Lutfi put off on one and another pretext, from hour to hour, calling in the military, who could not act without his orders as civil governor in a case of riot, and that the occurrence was regarded at the Palace as a subject of rejoicing and by Arabi and the Nationalists as one to be regretted and minimized. Also, and this is a very important matter, the committee named to inquire into the causes of the affair by the Khedive was composed almost entirely of his own partisans, while he secured its being of no effective value as throwing light on the true authors, by appointing Omar Lutfi himself to be its president. The connection of Omar Lutfi and the Khedive, moreover, is demonstrated in the fact that, while given leave of absence when suspicion was too strong against him among the Consuls, he nevertheless reappeared after the bombardment and, joining the Khedive, obtained the post he coveted of Minister of War, a post which he held until May, 1883, when Lord Randolph Churchill having brought the case against him and the Khedive forward in Parliament, he at the end of the year retired into private life. Fuller proof of their complicity will be found in the Appendix.

One point only in this sinister affair is still a matter for me of much perplexity, and that is to determine the exact amount of responsibility assignable in it to our agent at Cairo and Alexandria. There are passages in Malet's despatches which seem to show that he was looking forward, about the time when the disturbance was first contemplated, to some violent solution of his diplomatic difficulties, and there is no doubt that it had been for some time past part of his argument against the Nationalist Government that it was producing anarchy. Also it is certain that Cookson had connived at the arming of the Maltese British subjects at Alexandria. Still, from that to complicity in a design to create a special riot there is a wide difference, and everything that I know of Malet's character and subsequent conduct in regard to the riot convinces me that he did not know this one at Alexandria was intended. Malet honestly believed in Tewfik as a trustworthy and amiable prince, and accepted whatever tales he told, and his undeception about him after the war I know to have been painfully complete. With regard to Colvin much the same may be said. He was probably as ignorant of the exact plan as he had been of the Khedive's true action the year before at Abdin, though it is difficult to understand that either he or Malet should not have soon afterwards guessed the truth. They had both allied themselves to the party of disorder, and when disorder came they accepted the Khedive's story without any close inquiry because it suited them to accept it, and they made use of it as an argument for what they wanted, the ruin of Nationalist Egypt and armed intervention. That is all the connection with the crime I personally lay at their doors.

What followed may be briefly sketched here before I return to my journal. The immediate effect of the riot was not exactly that which the Khedive and his friends intended. It had been allowed to go much farther than was in their plan, so much farther that the regular army had been obliged to be called in, and instead of discrediting Arabi it so seriously frightened the Levantine population of Alexandria, who were a chicken-hearted community, that they began to look to him as their only protector. Even the Foreign Consuls, all but the English, came round to this view of the case, and the perfect order which the army from this time on succeeded in maintaining, both there and at Cairo, largely increased his prestige. I believe that then, late though it was in the day, Arabi, if he had been really a strong ruler, which unfortunately he was not, and if he had been a better judge of men and judge of opportunity – in a word, if he had been a man of action and not what he was, a dreamer, he might have won the diplomatic game against his unscrupulous opponents. For this, however, it was necessary that he should denounce and punish the true authors of the riot; and that he should have proved with a strong arm that in Egypt he was really master, and that any one who dared disturb the peace should feel the weight of it. Then he would have appealed to Europe and to the Sultan in the words of a strong man and they would not have been disregarded; nor would our Government in England, who, after all, were no paladins, have stood out against the rest. Unfortunately for liberty Arabi was no such strong man, only, as I have said, a humanitarian dreamer, and with little more than a certain basis of obstinacy for the achievement of his ideals. He was absolutely ignorant of Europe, or of the common arts and crafts of its diplomacy. Thus he missed the opportune moment, and presently the Europeans, frightened by Malet and Colvin, who were playing a double game with him, getting him to preserve order while they were preparing the bombardment, lost confidence in him and his chance was over. From that moment there was no longer any hope of a peaceful solution. A wolf and a lamb quarrel was picked with him by Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who had sworn to be revenged on the Alexandrians for the death of his body-servant, a man of the name of Strackett, who had been killed in the riot; and the bombardment followed. A greater man than Arabi might, I say, have possibly pulled it through. But Arabi was only a kind of superior fellah, inspired with a few fine ideas, and he failed. He does not however, for that deserve the blame he has received at the hands of his countrymen. Not one of them even attempted to do better.17

Now to return to London and my journal:

"June 3.– To Lady Granville's party at the Foreign Office. All the political people there. Everybody connected with the Foreign Office ostentatiously cordial. Talked about the situation to Wolseley, Rawlinson, the American Minister (Lowell) and others. Also had a long talk with Sir Alexander and Lady Malet, who were very kind in spite of my political quarrel with their son. People seem relieved at the crisis in Egypt being postponed. But Wolseley tells me the Sultan has refused the Conference. The Khedive's cousin, the fat Osman Pasha, was there, and the Princes of Wales and Edinburgh and Prince Leopold and the Duke of Cambridge and other bigwigs. I was surprised to find Henry Stanley, too, quite cordial. He said he had a great admiration for Arabi as champion of the Faith, and that they would promote him, and both he and Tewfik remain at Cairo. So, as he represents Constantinople views, I conclude there is no danger from that quarter. The game seems won now, barring new accidents."

This last reference, which is to Lord Stanley of Alderley, is of importance. He was a very old and close friend of mine, but we had hitherto differed about Egypt, and on this ground. He had been many years before, in the time of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Attaché to our Embassy at Constantinople, and had imbibed there the extreme philo-Turkish views then in fashion with Englishmen. In 1860, while travelling in the East Indies, he had become a Mohammedan, and I had first made his acquaintance in a rather singular way. I was on my way in the autumn of that year from Athens and Constantinople to England, and was travelling up the Danube when there came on board our steamer at one of the Roumanian ports the family of an ex-hospodar, and with them an Englishman of no very distinguished appearance, and of rather plain, brusque manners, whom I took to be their tutor or secretary. As our journey lasted several days, I made friends with my fellow traveller, and found him interesting from his great knowledge of the East, but he did not tell me his name. On our arrival, however, at Vienna, he proposed to go with me to the Embassy, and I then discovered who he was, and we travelled on together to Munich, where his younger brother, Lyulph Stanley, a Balliol undergraduate, was learning German, and in this way I became acquainted little by little with all his family. I came to know him very well, and I take this opportunity of saying that, though he was undoubtedly eccentric in his ideas, he remained through life one of the sincerest and least selfish men I have known. As a Moslem he was entirely in earnest, and in many ways he sympathized with my views, but he would not hear of my preference of the Arabs to the Turks, whom he considered the natural leaders of Islam. In London he was always in close relations with the Ottoman Embassy, and his view of the position as between the Sultan and Arabi – the Dervish mission was already in the air – has on this account considerable historical value.

"June 4.– Sunday at Crabbet. The first day for weeks I have not thought about Egypt. I consider the whole matter settled now, and have played tennis all the afternoon with a light heart. The Wentworths, Noels, Frank Lascelles, Henry Cowper, Molony, and others came down from London. Lovely weather.

"June 5.– To London again… Lady Gregory tells me they are displeased now with Colvin – consider him not suited to his place in Egypt – this from Lord Northbrook. Lord Granville has sent to consult him (Sir William Gregory)." Lady Gregory, be it noted, had remained more staunch than had her husband to the National cause; and later they both rendered once more important services to Arabi, especially at the time of his trial. The London newspapers at this time were beginning to take a more intelligent interest in Egyptian affairs, most of them having sent special correspondents to Cairo or Alexandria, among them the "Daily Telegraph," whose correspondent became a strong Arabist.

"June 6.– The 'Daily News' is already preparing itself for a renewal of the status quo ante ultimatum, and the other papers seem likely to follow suit, – all but the 'Times' and 'Pall Mall," just the two papers which had the truth preached to them and which rejected it. English opinion, however, is hardly now a straw in the balance… I had another long talk with Lascelles, and hope that I have more or less converted him. In the evening I rode with Bertram Currie, who offers to wager Arabi will have been extinguished in a fortnight." (N. B.– Bertram was the elder brother of Philip Currie, a banker, and strong practical supporter of Gladstone, with whom he was personally intimate. His opinion, no doubt, reflects that of Downing Street at the moment.)

"June 7.– Lady Gregory came in and gave me news. She tells me that Lord Granville told her husband that all their hopes now rested on Dervish's mission from Constantinople. 'Dervish,' Lord Granville said, 'is quite unscrupulous, and he will get rid of Arabi one way or other.' I suppose this means by bribing;18 indeed, Lord Granville seems to have said as much, but it may also mean by 'coffee.' I do not, however, fear the latter. The Sultan's object will be to get Arabi to Constantinople, not to kill, but to keep him as a hostage. I am anxious all the same Sabunji should arrive. I cannot help fancying they may try and prevent his landing, knowing his connection with me. A note has come from him written in the train, with additions to our code of signals which are rather amusing… Later saw Gregory, who confirms all his wife told me of his interview with Granville. He thinks Colvin and Malet must be recalled… Pembroke writes to John Pollen that the Foreign Office is unbounded in its anger against me. Never mind… I met Austin Lee, Dilke's secretary, at the Club, and he asked me the latest news from Egypt. I said, 'I hear you are sending a barrel of salt to put on Arabi's tail.' 'No,' he answered with some readiness, 'the salt is to pickle him.' … Rode in the evening with Cyril Flower (who had married a Rothschild) advised him to sell his Egyptian Bonds… Dined with Bertram, whom I found much more humane. He believes in Gladstone, and the eventual independence of Ireland. 'Only,' he says, 'Gladstone has the misfortune of being a generation before his age. We shall all believe in attending to our own affairs in another twenty years.'

"Frederic Harrison has written to protest in the 'Pall Mall' against intervention in Egypt." This was a powerful article headed "Money, Sir, Money," which was followed by other letters. I have always regretted that I had not earlier become acquainted with the writer, the soundest and most courageous man on foreign policy then in the Liberal Party, and by far their most vigorous pamphleteer. Had we met a month or two before, I feel sure that he might have prevented the war, for though not in Parliament, he wielded great influence. The misfortune of the public position that Spring was that there was not a single man of great intellectual weight in the party, Harrison excepted, free from official bondage… "Party at Lady Salisbury's. Talked with Miltown, who was rather angry, I thought, at my handiwork in Egypt, and not quite polite about my telegrams. Also with old Strathnairn, who would like 'to go out with 10,000 men and hang Arabi.' Also with Osman and Kiamil Pashas, the Khedive's cousins, though not about politics… The Sultan's Commission has arrived in Egypt.

"June 8.– A telegram from Sabunji at Alexandria announcing his arrival. Now I feel relieved from anxiety. He says the Turkish Commission has gone to Cairo… Harry Brand refuses to come to my lawn-tennis party at Crabbet till he sees how things go at Cairo. I fear he has much of his money in Egypt and will lose it.

"June 9.– There is another letter from Frederic Harrison in the 'Pall Mall.' Wrote to propose to show him my correspondence with Gladstone. Saw the Gregorys. The Commission is hailed with a great flourish of trumpets at Cairo, but we fancy this is only to herald a compromise. Sabunji telegraphs that Arabi has declared publicly he will resist the landing of Turkish troops. He is still at Alexandria, which disquiets me. He ought to be in Cairo. Dined at Wentworth House to meet Sir Bartle Frere, a soft-spoken, intelligent man.

"June 10.– Luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Green, very superior and sympathetic about Egypt." (N. B.– This was Green the historian. He was already in failing health. I have a clear recollection of his emotional sympathy with me and with the cause I was pleading. His loss to an honest understanding of statesmanship was a great one.) "I am anxious about things there for the first time for a fortnight. The evening papers announced that Dervish has won – bought over – a part of the army and has proclaimed himself Commander-in-Chief, summoning Arabi to submit. Unless he stands firm now all is lost. After much consideration I have sent the following telegram to Sabunji: '7 p. m. Arrest Commission. Fear not but God.' This partly in cipher. My trouble is lest Sabunji should not have gone to Cairo. Or why does he not telegraph? Can he have come to grief?.. Dinner at Lyulph Stanley's where, besides others, we met Bright. I found him most humane about Egypt, and spoke a few words with him, I hope, in season. I spoke my mind pretty freely. It is now a question of boldness on the part of the National Party. I fancy Dervish's orders have been to test this, and, if he finds them determined, to support them. He will crush them, if he can, through the Circassians. But I trust they may crush him, or at any rate frighten him. The Sultan dares not put them down by force.

"June 11, Sunday. – By early train to Crabbet. I was very nervous looking into the papers lest some coupe de main should have been made. But the 'Observer' shows that nothing has yet happened. There are the same stories of Dervish's swagger to the Ulema and the officers. But that is nothing… At 2 o'clock the Princes Osman and Kiamil and their cousin – and their alem Aarif Bey and an English bear-leader, one Lemprière, came down to see our horses. While we were showing them these a telegram came in cipher from Sabunji as follows: 'Cairo, 12 p. m., June 10. I have just had an interview with Arabi. He is supported by the Parliament, the University, and the Army, all except Sultan Pasha and the Sheykh el Islam. The nation is decided to depose the Khedive. The Porte dislikes the proposals of Europe. Arabi insists there will be no peace while Malet and Colvin are here. Arabi will resist a Turkish invasion. He will not go to Constantinople. Sheykh Aleysh has been made head of the Azhar. The Porte has decided to depose the Khedive. Malet has urged the proposals of Europe on the Commission. Abdallah Nadim at a public meeting of 10,000 spoke against these proposals and against the Khedive.' If the Khedive's cousins whom we were entertaining could have read it, it would have spoiled their appetites. We have talked the matter over and are going to telegraph them to proclaim a republic in case they depose Tewfik. I am relieved of all anxiety now that I know Sabunji is with them."

In what I here say of Princes Osman and Kiamil I do them less than justice. They had no love for Tewfik, their father Mustafa having been driven out of Egypt and despoiled of much of his possessions by Ismaïl, and they also had a considerable amount of patriotism. At least they gave proof of it during the war when they were among Arabi's strongest adherents. Their sister, Nazli Hanum, did much to help us at the time of the trial. Aarif Bey was a young man of great ability, a Kurd by birth but with Arab blood, well educated and of high distinction. He afterwards became Secretary to Mukhtar Pasha at Cairo, and edited a literary newspaper, but lost himself in intrigues of all kinds and has disappeared. The fourth person on this occasion was a Europeanized Turk and member of the Sultan's household, but his name in my diary is not recorded. We talked Eastern politics, though not Egyptian, freely at dinner, politics of a Pan-Islamic kind which included the hope that France as well as England would sooner or later be driven out of North Africa.