“I did not pay him many gossiping visits, because he was deficient in the usual forms of Eastern courtesy, seldom offering coffee, never pipes; besides, having been so lately in arms against him, I felt I had no right to intrude myself excepting when required to do so in the execution of my duty. This he remarked, and sent his German physician to me to complain of my avoiding him, with some flattering compliments about me as a soldier, and the regard he had for the profession.
“I consequently waited on him next day with Lieutenant Loring, R.N.; he received us with loud expressions of joy, made us sit down, ordered coffee, and, asking if we liked music, sent for an Arab band, consisting of a violin, like a tenor, but with five strings, a dulcimer, and guitar, with two men who sang; the music itself was bearable, but when the men commenced singing at the top of their voices it was anything but harmonious. His Highness certainly has no very refined taste in music.
“He was, when we entered, surrounded by his generals playing vingt-un for handfuls of gazees (dollars); he showed his character here too, always ready to back his own play, and was loud in his expressions of delight when successful. He apologized for being found so employed, but said, they had nothing else to do there, but that when at Cairo they had their farms to attend to and plenty of business to occupy their time.”
The second day after the departure of Colonel Alderson, that good and gallant officer General Michell fell a sacrifice to the climate and the fatigue he suffered on the Gaza expedition, and Colonel Bridgeman succeeded to the command.
Colonel Alderson remarks, “The cold caught by General Michell, that wretched night of incessant rain, that followed the affair of Medjdel, under single canvass, acting on a delicate frame, arising from repeated wounds received in an hundred fights, together with, I firmly believe, the mortification he felt at the result of the movement on Gaza, brought on a fever, under which poor Michell sank in a few days. He died at Jaffa on the 24th of January, at noon.
“It falls to the lot of few soldiers to earn so high a reputation in the profession as Brigadier-General Michell had done; fewer still, who to these high military acquirements have united a mind so highly cultivated. He was too well known in the military world to enable me to add anything to his well-earned reputation. I may, however, be permitted, as a friend, to say that, having been his constant companion since we left Spain together, I deeply felt and deplored his loss; and that a life so valuable to his country should have been thus so prematurely cut off.
“His remains were deposited in a vault hastily constructed by the British sappers, in what is called the English, or South-Eastern Bastion, at Jaffa, for which a marble slab is now preparing at Malta, as a slight memorial of the great respect and esteem in which he was held by his brother officers.”
CHAPTER XIII.
Detail of the Retreat of the Egyptians—Treacherous Intentions of the Turkish Authorities—Decided Conduct of the British Officers—Guarantees exchanged—Fright of Rechid Pacha—Letter from Ibrahim to the Seraskier—The Author’s Letters to Lords Minto and Palmerston.
On the 22nd of January General Jochmus wrote to the Seraskier from Jerusalem[[61]] that as Ibrahim had passed to the south of the Dead Sea, with his disorganized army, there was no necessity for negociation, and that Baron Dumont corroborated the complete defeat of the Egyptians. (I suppose he means the taking of Maan, defended by twenty men, for we have had no account of any action, therefore there could not be a defeat.) The Baron appears to have been within gun-shot of Ibrahim’s columns and did not see the artillery; it was therefore concluded that the guns were buried in the Desert, but I believe it will be found that they all arrived safe at Cairo; at all events we have not heard of their having been dug up.