Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt

15

Sabunji remained in my employment till the end of 1883. Then he left me and visited India, where he had relations, and after many vicissitudes of fortune drifted to that common haven of Oriental revolutionists, Yildiz Kiosk, where he obtained the confidential post with Sultan Abdul Hamid of translator for the Sultan's private eye of the European Press, a post which I believe he still holds, 1907.

16

The "Pall Mall" of 28th May, has the following: "Cairo, 27th May, Omar Pasha Lutfi, Sherif Pasha, Ragheb Pasha, and Sultan Pasha, President of the Chamber of Notables, assembled at noon to-day at the Ismaïlia Palace… The Presidency of the Council will probably be held by Sherif Pasha or Omar Pasha Lutfi… Omar Pasha Lutfi will be Minister of War."

17

Arabi was probably deterred from taking open action against Omar Lutfi, in part by the strong solidarity there is among Moslems in all quarrels with non-Moslems, in part by his suspicion of the Khedive's complicity, which at first was a suspicion only. He was extremely loath to quarrel with Tewfik at that moment, as he had just been reconciled to him, and only a few days before had sworn to protect his life as he would his own. He preferred therefore, in his language at the time, to attribute the chief blame to Cookson and Sinadino, who truly on their side were not without blame. This will be seen in Sabunji's letters and other documents concerning the riot printed in the Appendix (#pgepubid00044).

18

My diary of 1888 records: "Dec. 22, Cairo. To breakfast with Zebehr Pasha… He spoke highly of Arabi, and said that he had been present at a conversation, between him and Dervish Pasha, in which Dervish had offered Arabi E£250 a month if he would go to Constantinople. But Arabi had said that, even if he were willing, there were 10,000 men would stand between him and the sea."

19

Arabi, in answer to a question of mine as to this matter, told me many years afterwards that he had never heard of any offer of a pension as made him by the Rothschilds. He said, however, that soon after the ultimatum of 26th May, he received a visit from the French Consul, who, having asked what was the amount of his then pay, had offered him the double – that is to say, E£500 a month – from the French Government, if he would consent to leave Egypt and go to Paris to be treated there as Abd-el-Kader had been treated. He refused, however, to have anything to do with it, telling him that it was his business if necessary to fight and die for his country, not to abandon it. I have a note of this conversation but without date. Compare also the "Pall Mall" of 18th May: "Ourabi is said to be thinking of visiting Europe to recruit his health – a commendable intention, and no harm would be done if he were alotted a handsome travelling allowance on condition that he did not return."

20

I met Bright more than once in later years, and his language was strong to me as to the way he had been misled into complicity with the bombardment of Alexandria. I find the following in my journal of 1885:

"June 9.– To the Howards. She (Mrs. Howard) dined last night with Hartington and Granville and Bright… Bright told her that he was at the Cabinet which decided on the bombardment of Alexandria, but Lord Granville had assured him it would not really take place, and it had long ago been settled that he was to leave the Cabinet on the first shot fired in any war. It had been a cause of grief and tears to him to watch the slaughter which had since occurred, but he had not had the heart to stand up and denounce his former friends. He had, however, written to Mr. Gladstone after the war to say that if he allowed Arabi to be tried by the Egyptian Government it would be a lasting infamy."

"March 16.– At night to dine with the Howards. It was a very interesting dinner, John Bright, John Morley, Frederick Leveson, and Mr. Wright, etc… At first we were all rather stiff… However, Wright broke it up by asking Bright á propos of boots, who it was that caused the bombardment of Alexandria. Whereupon Bright broke in denouncing the war strongly and the injustice of keeping Arabi a prisoner in Ceylon. He also explained that Beauchamp Seymour had telegraphed to ask permission to bombard some time before but had been refused. At last it was Chamberlain who had insisted on his being allowed to do it… Hartington, Bright said, had not urged it."

21

The allusions to an expected Mohammedan rising in India, here and elsewhere quoted from my diary, seem now, in the light of events, somewhat exaggerated. They were, however, justified by the ideas prevalent at the time; and the dread of a general conflagration in the East is perhaps the best excuse that can be made for our Government's action in pressing on in July an immediate violent solution of its difficulty in Egypt.

22

"It is no exaggeration," Lord Dufferin asserted, "to say that during the last few months absolute anarchy has reigned in Egypt. We have seen a military faction, without even alleging those pretences to legality with which such persons are wont to cloak their designs, proceed from violence to violence, until insubordination has given place to mutiny, mutiny to revolt, and revolt to a usurpation of the supreme power. As a consequence the Administration of the country has been thrown into confusion; the ordinary operations of the merchant have come to a standstill; the fellahin, no longer finding purchasers for their produce, are unable to pay the land-tax, and the revenues of Egypt are failing. This state of things has placed in extreme jeopardy those commercial interests in which the subjects of all the Powers are so deeply concerned. Not only so, but those special engagements into which the Governments of France and England had entered with Egypt have been repudiated; the officers appointed to carry them into effect have been excluded from the control they were authorized to exercise, and the system which had begun to work so greatly to the advantage of the industrious cultivators of Egypt has been broken up and overthrown.

"But these effects form only a portion of the deplorable situation which has excited the anxiety of Europe. It is not merely the public creditor who has suffered extensive damage. The life and property of every individual European in the country have become insecure. Of this insecurity we have had a most melancholy and convincing proof in the brutal massacre by an insolent mob of a number of unoffending persons at Alexandria, and in the sudden flight from Cairo and the interior (a flight which implies loss to all and ruin to many) of thousands of our respective citizens.

"It is evident that such a condition of affairs requires a prompt and energetic remedy."

23

The following is from my journal of 1887: "January 31, Cairo. – Called on Princess Nazli. She is at least as clever as she is pretty. Her conversation would be brilliant in any society in the world. She told us a great deal that interested us about Arabi, for whom she had, and I am glad to see still has, a great culte, talking of his singleness of mind and lamenting his overthrow. 'He was not good enough a soldier,' she said, 'and has too good a heart. These were his faults. If he had been a violent man like my grandfather, Mehemet Ali, he would have taken Tewfik and all of us to the citadel and cut our heads off – and he would have been now happily reigning, or if he could have got the Khedive to go on honestly with him he would have made a great king of him. Arabi was the first Egyptian Minister who made the Europeans obey him. In his time at least the Mohammedans held up their heads, and the Greeks and Italians did not dare transgress the law. I have told Tewfik this more than once. Now there is nobody to keep order. The Egyptians alone are kept under by the police, and the Europeans do as they like.'"

24

See Appendix (#pgepubid00044).

25

I find the following in my diary of 1887: "February 13.– A visit from Abd-el-Salaam Moëlhy (one of the original Constitutionalists, and member of the Chamber of 1882). He told me that he had been an intimate friend and partisan of Sultan Pasha's, and had been one of those who joined Sultan in his quarrel with Arabi, but they were all very sorry now for not having held together; and he did not approve Sultan's conduct during the war. Sultan had been deceived by Malet, who induced him to act as he did on a distinct promise that the Egyptian Parliament should be respected in its rights. Malet gave this verbally, and Sultan asked to have it in writing, but was dissuaded from insisting by the Khedive, who assured him that the English Agent's word was as good as his bond. The old man, when he found out after the war how much he had been deceived, took it to heart and died expressing a hope that Arabi would forgive him, and that his name would not be handed down to posterity as the betrayer of his country. It was jealousy and anger at Arabi having become Minister that caused the quarrel."

26

I give this version of the capture as being that of Mahmud Fehmi himself, but some have recounted it otherwise, accusing him of desertion. This is, however, not credited by those who knew him personally.

27

In 1884 I received an account of Arabi's conduct at Tel-el-Kebir, almost identical with Sid Ahmed's, from his army doctor, Mustafa Bey, who was sleeping near him that night. His own account of his flight will be found in the Appendix (#pgepubid00044).

28

I find in my journal of 1884 that on the 29th October the Egyptian princes, Osman and Kiamyl, came to see me, and that they talked patriotically about the late war, and gave me much information. "Osman was not actually there. He was too fat a prince to do anything physically, but he sympathized with the cause, and behaved with some dignity after it was over. Kiamyl was a member of the provisional government, and saw a good deal of Arabi during the war, and while bearing testimony to his honest patriotism, blamed him for his too easy conduct of affairs. He ought, he said, to have shot Ali Yusuf after Kassassin, for it was perfectly well known he was a traitor, having received five thousand pounds before the battle, which was thus lost. At one moment there were 18,000 Egyptians close to 2,500 English, who had with them the Duke of Connaught. If Ali Yusuf, who commanded the centre, had advanced then, the English must have been crushed and the prince taken, but he left the field of battle, and allowed the wings to be broken. The money paid by the English was most of it false St. George sovereigns and Egyptian pounds with lead inside. Cairo was full of them after Tel-el-Kebir, but they were bought up for the Government by the bankers at five and ten francs apiece in a few days. The money orders were also mostly forgeries, but Ali Yusuf insisted upon having an order with a signature he knew. Abd-el-Ghaffar was paid in false St. George sovereigns, some of which his wife took to Ismaïl Jawdat's wife to change. Prince Kiamyl had himself broken open some of these pieces and found them to contain lead. The Bedouins would not be taken in thus, and Saoud el Tihawi had told him after the war that he had received – I forget the sum – in silver dollars from one of the English generals. The whole state of things was very disgraceful, and Kiamyl was under orders to go in three days to Tel-el-Kebir to arrest Ali Yusuf when the collapse came. Arabi was betrayed by all about him, some for gold, others for jealousy. Mahmud Sami was jealous of Arabi, and spoilt the second battle of Kassassin because he was not in chief command. He was to advance from Salahieh, and did not keep his rendezvous with Ali Fehmi – the latter was an honest and good soldier, but most of them were very worthless. Arabi would not put any Turk into high command, and the fellah officers were incapable and cowardly. Mahmud Sami was the only Turk, and he was playing a selfish game throughout. Kiamyl was present at the council at the Kasr-el-Nil when Arabi returned and when he explained the destruction of the army with floods of tears. He said he had fought till he was alone, which was hardly true, and that all was over. Kiamyl then reproached him, saying, 'A man who embarks in a great enterprise ought first to count the cost.' 'Arabi ought never,' he said, 'to have been at the head of the army. If he had hanged or shot a dozen men in the early part of the war, all would have gone well.' Prince Kiamyl would not hear of the campaign having been a complete walk over for the English."

According to Mohammed Sid Ahmed Arabi had with him a body of about 1,000 encamped near him at Tel-el-Kebir, most of whom were slain before his master left the field. But I do not attach full credit to this, at least as to numbers. There seem to have been some 10,000 Egyptians in all killed or wounded in the battle – mostly killed, for little quarter was given – but I do not pretend to answer for any of the figures named. The immense mounds of the buried dead tell their own tale perhaps best.

29

One of the matters principally laid to my charge was due to a Reuter's telegram announcing that my country house near Cairo had been broken open by Arabi's order, and that seventeen cases of firearms had been found in it. The foundation of this story was as follows: In 1881, when I was on my way, as I intended, to Arabia, I had brought with me some Winchester rifles and revolvers for the journey, amounting to seventeen rifles in all, as well as a small brass cannon of the kind used on yachts, as a present, if I could find a way to send it to him, to Ibn Rashid at Haïl. These were still stored in my house, and some one having announced the fact to the provincial authorities, they had taken possession of them, and removed them to the Cairo citadel. In the confusion after the war I could gain no intelligence of what had become of my property except the story which was afloat in London that my brass cannon had been taken there as a trophy of war, and was forming an ornament at the Admiralty. It was not till some ten years afterwards that having lunched one day with my cousin, Colonel Wyndham, at the citadel at Cairo, he took me afterwards to visit the arsenal, where I soon recognized my cannon and other property intact. As the box containing the rifles had my name on it, no difficulty was made in restoring all to me.

30

Telegram from Moberly Bell.

31

I have been recently asked to explain that the true reason why the "Times" so strongly supported us in our attempt at this critical juncture to obtain for Arabi a fair trial was the Machiavellian one of forcing the British Government to undertake responsibilities which would entail their assumption of full authority in Egypt. I heard, however, nothing of this at the time, and I prefer still to believe that it was a generous impulse more worthy of the "Times's" better tradition and of Chenery's excellent heart.

32

The fact of Tewfik's having sent his eunuchs to insult the Nationalist leaders in prison is attested by Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, who was among the earliest arrested, and was himself one of its victims. He recorded his prison experience in a declaration submitted to Sir Charles Wilson 29th October, but which is absent from the Blue Books.

33

A claim made recently in his name for a large indemnity in regard to these lands, and embodied in a petition addressed to our King Edward, is an entire illusion on Arabi's part, and marks the fact, otherwise very apparent to those who know him, that he has fallen into a condition of senile decay for which there is no remedy.

The worst oversight was that the promised general amnesty was not exactly defined. Hence the later prosecutions on so-called "criminal" charges.

34

This was written in 1904.