238 



EGYPT. 



quence of these feelings. But there were suffi- 

 cient grounds for disaffection already in the 

 sudden revolution of the financial policy which 

 the bondholders put upon Egypt in order to 

 rescue their profits. The army was the first 

 and the most powerful class to feel the press- 

 ure. The fact that the officers had not been 

 paid for a long time, and the foreign creditors 

 allowed no provision to be made for their pay, 

 was the cause of the disturbances which fur- 

 nished the occasion for the dethronement of 

 Ismail Pasha. The disbandment of a large 

 portion of the army, reducing a great majority 

 of the officers to half-pay, caused a profound 

 and perpetual dissatisfaction among the influ- 

 ential military class. Ismail's army had num- 

 bered 200,000 men, so that there were as many 

 as 2,000 officers for the little army of 12,000 

 men. 



Then the ousting of the native officers by the 

 Turkish element, while complicating the situa- 

 tion, rendered the discontent more acute, gave 

 it a more national and patriotic character, and 

 brought it to an issue between the dissatisfied 

 native officers and the Khedive. The affair of 

 February 1, 1881, when the Khedive laid a 

 treacherous plot to seize the persons of the 

 protesting colonels, caused an open rupture. 

 The colonels were in constant fear of secret as- 

 sassination, and the Khedive of a military revo- 

 lution. At length the timid Mohammed Tev- 

 fik mustered up courage to attempt to remove 

 the incubus, but his order to one of the three 

 regiments to march to Alexandria was answered 

 by the rebellious demonstration of September 

 9, 1881. The mutinous colonels at the head of 

 the troops demanded : 1. The increase of the 

 army from 12,000 to its normal and maximum 

 legal strength of 18,000 men;* 2. The dis- 

 missal of Riaz, who they thought was aiming 

 at their lives, and the appointment as chief 

 minister of Sherif, whose known integrity pre- 

 cluded the suspicion of a design to destroy 

 them after their safety had been promised; 



* One of the principal demands of the military party, which 

 was repeated by the Chamber of Notables, was that the army 

 should be recruited up to its full lawful strength of 18,000 

 men. The dissatisfaction of the officers and men at the re- 

 duction of the army in 1879 was the first breath of the revo- 

 lutionary storm. The army had counted 50,000 men under 

 arms, with 200 guns, without the irregular troops. The fir- 

 man of Tevfik's investiture fixed the maximum strength at 

 18,000 men, and the pruning operations of the Controllers left 

 only 12.000 men under arms. The Khedive was given the 

 appointment of officers of the rank of colonel and under, but 

 the Sultan reserved the right of nominating the general offi- 

 cers. The practice of impressing recruits arbitrarily was done 

 away with, and the principle of universal military- service was 

 introduced by a law which went into force November 1, 1880. 

 This law fixes the length of service at twenty years, four 

 years of active service, six as Eedifs, and ten as veteran re- 

 serves. As the military budget was kept down to the figure 

 fixed by the Control, 878,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,840,000), no 

 attempt could be made to carry out the military law. The 

 military age commences with the twenty-first birthday. The 

 annual recruit has partly been chosen each January by lot, 

 but evasions by bribery have been frequent: partly it was ob- 

 tained by volunteer enlistment of fresh recruits, or soldiers 

 who had served out their term of active duty. The uniforms, 

 equipments, and arms of the Egyptian army were of Euro- 

 pean pattern. The infantry were armed with Remington 

 rifles, the artillery with Krupp breech-loaders, most of them 

 of2J-inchbore. 



3. The convocation of a Chamber of Notables 

 or National Parliament. The Khedive agreed 

 to the change of ministers, and Sherif Pasha 

 was prevailed upon to accept, with much re- 

 luctance, the duties of the trying position. After 

 coming to an agreement with the military party, 

 according to which he was to carry out the 

 recommendations of their military commis- 

 sion and they were to allow one regiment to be 

 sent away from Cairo, Tevfik would make no 

 promise to raise the strength of the troops, as 

 it was subject to the international engagements 

 by which the budget was limited. The matter 

 of convening a Chamber of Notables he agreed 

 to take into consideration ; and finally, on the 

 advice of Sherif, he decided to humor the 

 newly-awakened national and popular aspira- 

 tions which had been propagated by Arabi 

 Key and his adherents. The sudden enthusiasm 

 of the intelligent and patriotic Egyptians for 

 parliamentary institutions was due to the fact 

 that their constitutional ruler had sunk into 

 the position of a servile instrument of the 

 foreign emissaries, and they thought that the 

 Governments of England and France would not 

 refuse to restore the usurped national liberties 

 if a body of the most judicious and respectable 

 men who could be selected, fulfilling the con- 

 ditions of representative government, stood 

 ready to resume them. Arabi, after hesitating 

 for some time, obeyed the orders of the Khedive, 

 and retired to Wargla, near the canal. 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. At the pros- 

 pect that the Egyptians would take the man- 

 agement of their internal affairs out of the 

 hands of the Control, the two protecting and 

 the suzerain powers began to stir themselves. 



It became evident that harmony of action 

 was difficult. England was willing at this time 

 to have Turkey send a military force to Egypt 

 under proper guarantees. France set her face 

 against any action of Turkey; and England, 

 who had thus far followed the lead of France, 

 acquiesced in this also. The Sultan, in spite 

 of protests, sent two commissioners to Egypt 

 with " compliments and advice." They arrived 

 at Cairo October 6, 1881. As a counter-move, 

 at Lord Granville's suggestion, an English and 

 a French ironclad were stationed in Alexandria 

 Harbor, ostensibly to diminish the danger of a 

 panic among the foreign population. The Sul- 

 tan remonstrated, October llth, on the ground 

 that the menace of the ships would cause an 

 agitation among the Arab population which 

 would " not unlikely lead to a general revolu- 

 tion," while at the time, according to the re- 

 ports of the Turkish emissaries, perfect order 

 existed. Lord Granville replied that if disorder 

 was at an end the recall of the Turkish envoys 

 " would imply the termination of the incident, 

 and would naturally be followed by the with- 

 drawal of the ships." Hence the sudden re- 

 turn of the commissioners to Constantinople 

 on October 18th. The ironclads sailed away 

 two days later. In a dispatch of Lord Gran- 

 ville, dated November 4, 1881, in which " the 



