To this M. Hanotaux replied:—
"In any case the French Government cannot, under present circumstances, refrain from repeating the reservations which it has never failed to express every time that questions relating to the Valley of the Nile have been brought forward. Thus, in particular, the declarations of Sir Edward Grey, to which the British Government has referred, gave rise to an immediate protest by our representative in London, the terms of which he repeated and developed in the further conversations which he had at the Foreign Office on the subject. I myself had occasion, in the sitting of the Senate on April 5, 1895, to make, in the name of the Government, declarations to which I consider that I am all the more justified in referring from the fact that they have called forth no reply from the British Government."
The speech to which M. Hanotaux refers is published at length in an appendix, and, so far from being a reply to Sir Edward Grey, it gives the French position completely away.
"I now come, gentlemen," he said, "to the question of the Upper Nile. I will explain the situation to the Senate in a few words; for I think it will be useful to complete the explanations which M. de Lamarzelle has already given on this subject. Between the country of the lakes and the point of Wady Halfa, on the Nile, extends a vast region, measuring twenty degrees of latitude, or 2000 kilometres, that is, more than the breadth of Western Europe from Gibraltar to Dunkirk. In this region there is at this moment, perhaps, not a single European; in any case, there does not exist any power derived, by any title, from a European authority. It is the country of the Mahdi! Now, gentlemen, it is the future of this country which fills with an uneasiness, which we may describe as at least premature, the minds of a certain number of persons interested in Africa. The Egyptians who occupied this vast domain for a considerable time have moved to the north. Emin Pasha himself was compelled to withdraw. The rights of the Sultan and the Khedive alone continue to exist over the regions of the Soudan and of Equatorial Africa."
That is to say, after the Mahdi, who was the de facto ruler, the authority over the whole basin of the Upper Nile reverted to the Khedive and the Sultan as his suzerain, which is exactly the position taken up by Lord Salisbury in his despatch of September 9, 1898.
Major Marchand has had various titles conferred upon him, and in the penultimate despatch contained in the papers he is described by Lord Salisbury as "a French explorer who is on the Upper Nile in a difficult position." To M. Delcassé, however, is reserved the honour of giving him an official designation. On September 7 the French Foreign Minister, in an interview with Sir E. Monson, after handsomely complimenting the British Government on the victory of Omdurman, expressed his anxiety about a possible meeting of the Sirdar and M. Marchand.
"Should he (M. Marchand) be met with, his Excellency said that he had received instructions to be most careful to abstain from all action which might cause local difficulties, and that he had been enjoined to consider himself as an 'emissary of civilisation' without any authority whatever to decide upon questions of right, which must properly form the subject of discussion between Her Majesty's Government and that of the French Republic.
"M. Delcassé therefore begged me to inform your lordship of this fact, and expressed the hope that the commander of Her Majesty's naval forces on the river might be instructed to take no steps which might lead to a local conflict with regard to such questions of right."
It may be remarked, in passing, that this view of the position of the emissary of civilisation does not tally with that which M. Marchand subsequently gave to the Sirdar, to whom he stated "that he had received precise orders for the occupation of the country and the hoisting of the French flag over the Government buildings at Fashoda, and added that, without the orders of his Government, which, however, he expected, would not be delayed, it was impossible for him to retire from the place."
The instructions given by Lord Salisbury, through Lord Cromer, to the Sirdar, have been given elsewhere in this chapter.