himself virtual ruler of Egypt. He used his power in the most extravagant manner. Fresh battalions were raised, in the main with the object of giving employment to the numerous officers who supported his cause. Pay was increased all round, in spite of the desperate financial state of the country. Hundreds of officers were promoted; and when the Khedive remarked that there should be some sort of examination before promotion, Arabi replied, firstly, that the officers were of such well-known capacity that examination was unnecessary, and secondly, that they refused to be examined. He declared openly at this time that he did not see why a hereditary Khedivate was necessary, and that if the dynasty were abolished £300,000 a-year would be economised.

Arabi's quarrel with the Khedive was now made more bitter by the following occurrence. Nineteen Circassian and Egyptian officers, desiring to rid themselves of the colonels of their regiments, Abd' el 'Al and Arabi, were said to have plotted to disgrace the one and to murder the other. Into this charge an official inquiry had to be made. Abd' el 'Al was, as we have seen, one of the three ringleaders in the mutiny, and his disgrace was, therefore, a matter which closely touched Arabi. The evidence was heard by a court of Egyptian officers on 2nd April 1882; and, considering the rivalry and enmity between the Circassians and Egyptians, the result was,

VOL. CXCI.—NO. MCLV.

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of course, a foregone conclusion. Abd' el 'Al was shown to be entirely innocent in the opinion of the court, and the plot to murder Arabi was proved. The nineteen officers, together with twenty-one other persons, mostly Turkish Circassian, including the late Minister of War, Osman Rifki, were sentenced to banishment for life to the remotest part of the Sudan, a sentence practically equivalent to that of death. This flagrant injustice was deeply resented by the Khedive, who, very rightly, refused to confirm the sentence. By his orders the officers were removed temporarily from the active list of the army, and after a short time had elapsed were reinstated.

The fight between the Khedive and the army led to the utmost disorder in the country, and the position of Europeans became far from safe. The maintenance of law and order under the circumstances was impossible, and throughout Egypt, murder, robbery, and crime of all kinds were rife. This being so, the English and French ConsulsGeneral advised their respective Governments to interfere, and, on 15th May 1882, after prolonged discussion as to whether the duty of restoring order should be left to Turkey (a solution of the difficulty strongly advocated by England), the Egyptian Government was advised that Anglo-French fleet had sailed for Alexandria. Arabi at once circulated a statement that if the English and French were

E

an

allowed to interfere, it would mean the disbanding of the army, the dismissal of the Ministry, and all manner of other troubles. In reply to this the Consuls - General on May 25 demanded the forcible retirement of Arabi from Egypt for one year; but the only effect of the note was that Arabi and the entire Ministry resigned. On May 28 the chiefs of the various religions, Moslem, Coptic, Jewish, &c., waited on the Khedive and begged him to reinstate Arabi as the Minister of War, for Arabi had threatened them all with death unless they persuaded His Highness to do so. The colonel of the palace guard, meanwhile, stated that he had received orders to keep His Highness a prisoner in the palace, and to shoot him if he attempted to escape. Under these circumstances the Khedive was obliged to reinstate the rebellious colonel.

In the opinion of the masses his return to office meant the expulsion of all foreigners from Egypt, and the triumph of the Egyptian national party; and consequently a number of outrages against Christians were perpetrated. The ill-temper of the people was increased by the arrival of the AngloFrench fleets, which assembled at Alexandria during the first week in June. A further complication ensued. The Sultan, as suzerain of Egypt, sent over a Commissioner, Dervish Pasha, with orders to assert Turkish authority. He was received royally at Alexandria on June 7, but on his arrival in Cairo he was much annoyed by the

mob of Egyptians who surrounded his carriage and shouted the praises of Arabi in his ears. Upon the next day the Ministers, all of the Arabi party, came to call upon him in a body, but the Turk received them with marked discourtesy, remaining seated upon the divan in conversation with his secretary, whilst the Egyptians stood awkwardly before him. Every now and then Dervish would smile pleasantly at them, but he made no attempt to treat them as intelligent beings. Presently he asked his secretary to repeat to him the tale of how Muhamed Ali, the first Khedive, a TurkishAlbanian by nationality, had rid himself of the Egyptian mamlukes who had annoyed him. The secretary thereupon related how they had all been beguiled into the Citadel and there set upon and massacred, only one escaping by jumping his horse from the ramparts into the street below. said Dervish, turning a benign face to the Ministers, "the man who escaped was a lucky dog;" and, with a brief remark on the weather, he dismissed them.

"Ah,"

On 10th June Arabi, acting through the Ulema of Cairo, sent a deputation to the Commissioner, and a certain wellknown rebel delivered a speech in praise of Arabi. But this was too much for the Turk, who, briefly remarking that he had come to give instructions and not to listen to sermons, ordered the orator to be thrown out of the room.

Having received this snub,

support the Khedive against him, Arabi felt that the time had come to set Egypt in a blaze, so that all men might turn to him for protection, and thus his power might become absolute.

What drastic step he contemplated is not known, for on the next day, June 11, a terrible event occurred which brought matters at once to a definite issue.

For some days the natives resident in the low quarters of Alexandria had been showing signs of an intended attack upon Christians living in the same quarter. Several Greeks and Italians had received warnings, and the British Consul had taken some steps for the protection of British subjects. The foreign fleets lying in the harbour were, as has been said, a further cause of irritation to the natives, for the presence of the battleships made the Europeans somewhat confident, and, in certain cases, offensive. The morning of 11th June passed quietly, and, it being Sunday, the Europeans attended their churches in the customary manner. Early in the afternoon, however, a Maltese Greek and an Arab had a dispute about some money, and in the conflict which ensued the Arab was stabbed in the stomach. stantly a crowd collected, and a riot followed, which was fortunately confined to certain quarters of the town. About sixty Europeans of the lower classes were killed under circumstances of great brutality;

deaths. The British Consul escaped with his life by a miracle. The native Governor of Alexandria communicated with Cairo and asked what he should do, but there the utmost confusion reigned administratively, and the only man whose orders were listened to, Arabi, was sulking, owing to his treatment at the hands of the Turkish Commissioner. Arabi seems to have expressed his opinion that he could stop the riot by telegraph at any moment, but that Dervish Pasha must ask him to do so; and thus, at last, the haughty Turk was obliged to come to see Arabi and to beg him to issue the necessary orders. Arabi, quite unmoved by the loss of life which was momentarily occurring, and caring only for his personal prestige, loftily consented to put an end to the riot. telegraphed to the Governor to call out the troops, who had until now remained in barracks, and immediately the mob dispersed.

He

a

commenced by a foreigner. It was the papers, he declares, which worked it up into a "massacre." Mr Charles Royle, an English judge, however, is of a very different opinion; and his description of the fighting, or rather of the murders, in the streets is gruesome in the extreme. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the blame is to be attributed, indirectly if not directly, to Arabi. It was he who had instigated the natives to acts of lawlessness, and who had inculcated in them those anti-foreign sentiments which found vent in the riot. He must have known the trend of events in Alexandria, and it would seem that he had almost purposely refrained from instructing the Governor and the troops as to how to act in the event of trouble. Arabi here showed himself to be a stupid, ignorant peasant, without foresight and without magnanimity; and that he did not hang for his misdeeds was due only to the forbearance of the British public.

On the night following the riot many of the European residents collected in the consulates, where they passed the long hours in painful suspense. It was agreed that it would be most inadvisable to land any force from the battleships, for a general massacre might ensue, and the three or four hundred available bluejackets and marines would not be able to protect more than a limited number of the Christian population. The next morning, however, tranquillity was re

stored, and the Europeans, who immediately began to seek refuge on the ships in the harbour, were not molested as they made their way to the docks. The exodus both from Cairo and from Alexandria soon became very very general, although the peace of the former city had not been disturbed; and during the next three weeks or so the Alexandria sea-front is said to have presented a most lively spectacle. The men-o'-war lying in the harbour with flags flying, the steamers and sailing-ships of all nationalities surrounded by small craft, the rowing- and sailing-boats passing to and fro between the quays and this crowded fleet of vessels, presented in the brilliant June weather a most cheery and animated scene. The native boatmen haggled and bargained, jested and laughed, with the refugees, as though the events of 11th June had never occurred.

Meanwhile an attempt was made to bring the ringleaders of the riot to justice; but Arabi, choosing to believe that the fault lay as much on the one side as on the other, declared that he would not allow any Arab to be executed unless, for every one, a European was also hanged. Shortly after this the Sultan sent Arabi the grand cordon of the Order of the Medjidie, in recognition of the services he had rendered to Islam; and the Order had to be handed personally to him by the Khedive.

Egyptian hostility to foreigners had now reached a most dangerous pitch, and

Arabi was carried along by the wave of warlike enthusiasm which he himself had done so much to arouse. He was aware that the French and English Governments, mistrusting one another, were hesitating to decide upon a course of action, and that the proposal to introduce Turkish troops into Egypt was not likely to be put into execution. He felt a profound contempt for the European fleets, under whose very guns the Alexandria riots had taken place. Moreover, there were certain Englishmen of unbalanced mind who, posing as his friends, pretended that they had great influence with the British public, always ready as it was to support a patriotic movement. They had induced Arabi to write letters to the papers full of nationalist fervour, and had done their utmost to arouse in the rustic mind of the mutinous colonel those patriotic sentiments which were so foreign to his nature. Patriotism is an intellectual pursuit, unknown to those who lack education,-for the sentiment which so often passes as patriotism both in Egypt and elsewhere is simply ignorant dislike of the foreigner. Arabi was not a patriot; he was a hater of Europeans. He did not care a brass farthing about his country as a whole, he did not work to make better the lot of the masses. He blindly plotted and schemed and intrigued and mutinied in order to place in the hands of himself and his friends the power to act as he might choose. He had no definite schemes in view: he talked vaguely of

deposing the Khedive, of calling a parliament, of expelling all foreigners, and so forth; but he knew not, either by experience or by consecutive thought, what would be the result of his enterprises. Let him get power: that was all. Lord Cromer has recorded his belief that, during the first stages of the revolt, Arabi was impelled simply by fear for his personal safety; but now he was urged forward by sheer joy in the possession of power, a form of intoxication against which his simple mind was in no way proof.

Defying the fleets in the harbour, Arabi now prepared for war by strengthening the fortresses at Alexandria and by attempting to institute a general conscription for the army. The Sultan, acting in agreement with the British and French Governments, ordered Dervish Pasha to stay Arabi's hand; but on July 5, at a Council of Ministers, Arabi made a violent speech against the Turks, and commanded the officers of the Egyptian army to discontinue all communication with the Sultan's representative. Thus his quarrel now was not only with the Khedive and with the European Powers who wished, for the sake of law and order, to support His Highness, but also with the Porte. He had played his cards as badly as was to be expected of him, and with the army at his back he now turned blindly to face the consequences of his folly.

When Admiral Seymour, who was in command of the British fleet, became aware that the