The ringleaders were tried by a general Court-Martial, presided over by a Turkish General, assisted by English officers, and seven mutineers were sentenced to death. I examined the cases carefully, with a view of carrying out the sentences only in such cases as appeared to be absolutely necessary, and at once eliminated from the condemned soldiers a youth, seventeen years of age, whose father had fired at Major Grant. I saw the condemned men, and was satisfied in my own mind that one of them was practically unaccountable for his actions; and eventually, after a consultation with the members of the Court-Martial, decided that two only should suffer death.
Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stephenson,[266] knowing that all the trained soldiers for the Egyptian Army were at Suakin, or on the Nile, the Depot Companies in Cairo, consisting of men who had just been conscripted, kindly offered me assistance, but I determined to make the Egyptian recruits carry out the execution.
I asked for precedents in the Egyptian Army, and was told that at the last Military execution, the feet of the men condemned being tied, they were ordered to stand up at 400 yards distance, and a line of soldiers advanced on them firing, with the shocking results that can be readily understood. I had recently read the trial of a Neapolitan soldier, Misdea, who was shot while sitting in a chair, and arranged the execution on similar lines. The previous evening I sent the lad of seventeen away to a guard-room of the British Army of Occupation, as I did not wish him to hear the volley which was to kill his father, but, as will be seen later, my sympathetic consideration was unnecessary.
When I rode out next morning and met the procession marching to the place of execution, which was an incomplete barrack at Abbassieh, I was nearly ill from nervousness, but on arriving at the actual spot, when I had to give orders, the feeling passed off, the scene affecting me no more than any ordinary duty. Ten Egyptian recruit soldiers being told off for each of the condemned Turks, advanced close behind them, and at the word of command the mutineers ceased to exist.
I had some trouble after the sentence became known, for the Prime Minister sent for me, and said there was considerable feeling about Turks being executed by order of Christians. I pointed out that a Turkish General had presided over the Court-Martial, when the Minister said: “Well, do what you like; only, do not ask me or the Khedive to approve of it.”
A day later he called on me to say that the Persian Minister claimed one of the condemned men, and wished to know what answer was to be given to him. I said: “Excellency, tell him ‘Bukra’[267] (to-morrow).” And when that morrow came I wrote a note saying that the Persian Minister could now claim the man’s body. I was then assured that it was a matter of no consequence.
A few hours after the execution I sent for the son of the ringleader, and told him that his punishment had been commuted to imprisonment, but as he was so young, and it would distress him to serve under officers who had shot his father, I gave him £5 and told him to go back to Anatolia. The youth reappeared three days later, and said he much preferred to serve on; indeed, he thought less of the execution than I did.
The mutiny of the Turks was followed by that of two battalions which had been raised by Zebehr in the Delta for Baker Pasha, and some of these were condemned to death. I doubted their guilty intentions, although there was no doubt as to their overt acts, and commuted their sentence to service in the Eastern Sudan. I visited the men at their request a few days later, when the interpreter said: “They say, in olden times when soldiers went away for a long time, as is to be our case, they always had an advance of pay,—may we please have it?” This confirmed my impression that they had very little idea of how we regarded their conduct.