During 1881, and the first part of 1882, many communications on the subject of Egypt had passed between the governments of England and France and the other European Powers.[238] All were agreed that order should be restored on the banks of the Nile, but, save England and France, none seemed disposed to undertake the task. At first France was much more inclined to a military intervention than Britain, for England in 1882 no more desired to annex Egypt than in 1857, when she rejected the French Emperor’s schemes for the partition of northern Africa. But she remembered that, even before the time of the great Napoleon, France had cast covetous eyes upon Egypt, and as it was impossible for England to allow Egypt to be occupied by any Continental nation, her obvious policy was to co-operate with France, and by re-establishing order and good government in the country to render the Egyptians capable of managing their own affairs without European guidance. To this policy England loyally adhered until France refused to advance further in the matter. As tangible evidence that the Western Powers really intended to support the Khedive, an Anglo-French squadron was sent to Alexandria, where it lay for several weeks, until our Admiral, Lord Alcester (then Sir Beauchamp Seymour), discovered that in direct defiance of the Khedive’s orders, Arabi was preparing to make good his threat to attack any European troops landing in Egypt. Not only was he mounting guns on the fortifications, but he was also attempting to prevent the British fleet from leaving the port by secretly throwing great blocks of stone into the entrance of the harbour. Through Lord Alcester, the British government informed Arabi that unless he at once desisted the forts would be shelled. Arabi promised compliance, but when the search-lights from the ships were turned on, it was seen that under cover of night the work was being pressed forward.[239] The danger to the fleet soon grew too serious to be ignored, and after repeated but equally fruitless warnings, notice was given to Arabi that on the 11th of July the forts would be bombarded. Thereupon the French Admiral announced that his instructions did not permit him to take part in such an operation, and on the 10th he steamed out of Alexandria, leaving his British colleague in the lurch. The forts were bombarded with complete success, and Arabi, retiring inland for a few miles, threatened Alexandria from a position at Kafr-el-Dauar, astride the railway to Cairo. To save the town from pillage by its mob, and to defend it against attack by the Egyptian army, a large number of British sailors and soldiers were landed. The troops had just arrived from Cyprus, where, under Lieutenant-General Sir A. Alison, a brigade, supplied by the Mediterranean garrisons, had been assembled with secret orders to seize and protect the Suez canal against Arabi, who had openly expressed his determination to destroy it.
Meanwhile preparations for an expedition were on foot in England. An army corps drawn from the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean garrisons, and India was to be sent to Egypt under command of Lord Wolseley (then Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley) with the temporary rank of General. It consisted of a cavalry division, two infantry divisions, artillery, engineers, and a strong contingent of British and native soldiers from India. In the first division, under Lieutenant-General G. H. S. Willis, were the 1st, or brigade of Guards, commanded by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, and the 2nd brigade (in which was the 2nd battalion of the Royal Irish), under Major-General G. Graham. The second division, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir E. Hamley, was composed of the brigades of Major-General Sir A. Alison and Major-General Sir E. Wood. The Indian contingent, which was to join Lord Wolseley in Egypt, was led by Major-General Sir H. T. Macpherson. The total number of troops who embarked as part of the original army corps were 25,309.[240] The units selected for the war were mobilised; the reserve, or to be strictly accurate, those of its members who had left the Colours within two years were called out; transports were engaged and fitted up for troops, and the House of Commons voted the necessary money. Suddenly the policy of France completely veered round, and on the 29th of July, only nine days after the French Ministry had formally engaged to take part in the expedition, the Chamber by an enormous majority refused to spend a penny upon the restoration of law and order in Egypt. This remarkable change of front, which not only threw the whole expense, but the whole conduct of the expedition upon the British, was doubtless annoying to our statesmen, but agreeable to our generals, many of whom knew from personal experience in China and the Crimea how difficult co-operation with our French allies had proved in those campaigns. The defection of the French caused no alteration in Lord Wolseley’s plans. To crush the Khedive’s mutinous army and to restore order among his subjects it was essential that Cairo, the hot-bed of disaffection, should be occupied as speedily as possible by British troops, and this he proposed to do by landing, not at Alexandria, but at Ismailia, a town on the canal half-way between Suez and Port Said. From Ismailia to Cairo is about seventy-five miles, while from Alexandria to the capital is nearly double that distance. By the former route the track would lie alongside a canal of drinkable water, over hard sand which made a fair surface for marching. In the latter route, i.e. through the Delta of the Nile, there were practically no roads fit for wheeled vehicles, the local traffic being carried on by railway, by pack animals, and by boats on the innumerable canals by which the country is irrigated. Moreover, during the months of August, September, and October—the time of “high Nile,” which was rapidly approaching—the whole of the Delta is under water. Thus, of the two lines of advance, that through the desert was obviously the better one, and it possessed the additional advantage that the preparations for undertaking it served to protect the Suez canal from attack, and to secure possession of the canals by which Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said are supplied with drinking water. It was of the first importance that Arabi should remain in complete ignorance of the British plans; and thus the bombardment of Alexandria and the landing of Alison’s brigade, neither of which had formed part of Lord Wolseley’s original scheme, turned to our advantage, for the arrival of Alison’s troops confirmed the Egyptian General in his opinion that the invading army would disembark at Alexandria. Wolseley seized every opportunity to strengthen him in this belief; Alison was ordered to keep Arabi constantly in fear of an attack, and succeeded in doing so by a series of demonstrations against the works which the rebel army had thrown up.
By the end of July the troops began to leave the United Kingdom: and the second battalion of the Royal Irish regiment, almost the last corps to sail, embarked on August 8, 1882, at Plymouth, bound, as was then believed by all on board, for Alexandria. To enable the reader to appreciate the situation when the battalion reached the seat of war, it is necessary to give a short account of the events which took place while it was still at sea. On the 15th of August Lord Wolseley arrived at Alexandria, and with his naval colleague, Admiral Lord Alcester, settled the details of the combined operation by which the sailors in the men-of-war already stationed in the Suez canal were to seize and hold the towns upon its banks, until the soldiers could begin to land at Ismailia. A considerable portion of the expedition had already disembarked at Alexandria, and transports were daily, almost hourly, arriving from England. The question of how these troops were to be re-embarked and despatched to the canal without giving Arabi any clue to their destination now had to be solved. Throughout his career as a soldier, Wolseley had urged the necessity of deceiving your enemy in war: now he had a great opportunity to give the British army an object lesson in the art of mystifying an opponent, and right well did he avail himself of it. A strong believer in the truth of the axiom that whatever is rumoured in your camp to-day will be known to-morrow to the enemy, he determined to mislead, not only Arabi but the whole of the British army as to his intentions. Orders were accordingly issued for a combined naval and military attack from the sea upon the forts at Aboukir Bay, supported by the troops left to garrison Alexandria. Not even General Hamley, who was in command at Alexandria, was in the secret; and with the help of his brigadiers, Alison and Wood, he worked out elaborate details for co-operation in the advance of the main body after it had landed at Aboukir Bay; the scheme was submitted to Wolseley and gravely approved! At noon on the 19th of August all the troops, except those left to hold Alexandria, were on board their ships, and eight ironclads and seventeen transports steamed away towards Aboukir. Before his departure the Commander-in-Chief handed a sealed packet containing his real plan to General Hamley, with strict orders not to open it till early on the morning of the 20th. The fleet reached Aboukir in four hours, and anchored till nightfall, when the gunboats and other small naval craft stood inshore and engaged the forts, while the big ships slipped away unobserved and arrived at Port Said early next morning, to find that the navy had carried out their instructions admirably. The sailors had surprised the detachments of the enemy watching Port Said, Ismailia, and Suez; these places were in their hands. They were in possession of the whole of the Suez canal. They had prevented any vessels from entering it and, to clear the way for the transports, had ordered all steamers then in the canal to tie up at the gares or shunting-places, familiar to every soldier whose service has taken him east of Suez. The merchant ships complied with three exceptions. A French mail-boat claimed the right to pass, and was allowed to do so as a matter of international courtesy: two English master mariners of the baser sort disobeyed, and when the British gunboat that regulated the traffic was out of sight they followed in the Frenchman’s wake. This incident considerably delayed the entrance of the British fleet into the Canal, but by the evening of the 23rd, the day before the Royal Irish reached Lake Timsah, 9000 men and a few stores had been landed at Ismailia; the fresh-water canal and the whole line of railway between Suez and Ismailia had fallen into our hands, and communication by land had thus been secured with the Indian contingent, which had begun to disembark at Suez on the 20th. Thanks to Lord Wolseley’s ruse de guerre, these successes had been obtained almost without bloodshed.
The report that Aboukir was to be bombarded duly reached Arabi, who sent large reinforcements to the threatened forts. The Egyptians believed that the Delta was the object of the British attack, and consequently had concentrated the greater part of their army at the mouths of the Nile, with a body of 12,000 men at Tel-el-Kebir, a post in the eastern desert thirty-three miles to the westward of Ismailia. To this flank guard was allotted the duty of defending the Delta against an enemy based on the canal, and of guarding Zag-a-zig, the most important junction in the railway system of Egypt. By his successful feint upon Aboukir, Wolseley prevented the despatch of reinforcements from the Delta to Tel-el-Kebir, and thanks to the rapidity with which the naval landing-parties had seized the telegraph lines, news of the occupation of the Suez canal did not reach the garrison of Tel-el-Kebir in time to enable them to oppose our disembarkation at Ismailia. Very shortly after Arabi heard that Wolseley had landed on the bank of the canal he transferred his Headquarters to Tel-el-Kebir, where his Intelligence department must have been singularly inefficient, for, “strange as it may appear, it now seems to be certain that the great transfer of force on the 19th of August from Alexandria to Ismailia remained unknown to Arabi till he heard of it with evident astonishment about a year later in Ceylon,”[241] where, after the war was over, he was detained as a political prisoner. But though the British General had thus stolen a march upon his enemy, many difficulties still confronted him, well described in the following extract from the official history of the campaign.
“There was only one small pier at Ismailia. Ships did not at first anchor nearer than about half a mile from the shore. Every man, every horse and every gun, as well as all the ammunition and stores for the supply of the army, had first to be transhipped from the transports into barges and small boats, rowed or tugged to shore, and then landed on the small pier.... In no sense were the conditions for the rapid landing of a large number of troops and of a vast quantity of stores in existence at Ismailia. It is true that this state of things could be ultimately changed by our engineers. But this would also be a question of time. Every tool, every scrap of material, all the bridging stores and all the means of constructing other piers, for laying down tramways and increasing the pier accommodation must, by an inexorable necessity, be first landed under the conditions actually existing. Materials for all these purposes, including landing-stages expressly made for Ismailia, had been prepared in England before the expedition sailed, but it would not be possible to send them forward in the most advanced vessels of the fleet, for those ships must be otherwise filled. In order to secure the all-important lines of communication—the railway and Sweet-water canal—for the advance from Ismailia, it was essential that the first vessels of the fleet should be occupied by the troops which would be sent forward to seize them. These troops, once sent forward, must be supplied with food and ammunition, so that a considerable force, with all its guns and equipment, tons of supplies, ordnance stores and ammunition and the means of local transport ... must be sent on in the most advanced ships before any engineering material for the improvement of the means of landing ... could be put on shore.”[242]
The Egyptians had dammed the “Sweet-water” canal at Magfar, a few miles west of Ismailia, and the water, the only supply for the towns on the Suez canal and for the army when it moved into the desert, was falling rapidly. While keeping every available man at work at Ismailia, Lord Wolseley sent Graham with a small force of all arms to Magfar, and after two days’ skirmishing, not only occupied that place, but Kassasin also, where an important lock, twenty miles up the canal from Ismailia, fell into our hands. Here Wolseley determined to establish an advanced base, where, under the protection of a comparatively small force, supplies could be accumulated in readiness for the campaign in the desert. Graham was left in charge of this post; among his troops were two of the units of his brigade (the 2nd), viz.: a battalion of Royal Marine Light Infantry and the 2nd battalion, York and Lancaster regiment; the remainder of his command, the 2nd battalion of the Royal Irish regiment and the 1st battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, though they landed on the night of the 24th, did not take part in these preliminary operations, being detained at Ismailia to help in unloading the store-ships and transports.
The Royal Irish arrived from England with a total strength of seven hundred and seventy-one, including a hundred and fifty non-commissioned officers and men from the reserve.[243] Among their fellow-passengers was a newspaper correspondent, Major Terry, a half-pay officer, who found the XVIIIth such good comrades that he attached himself to the battalion throughout the war. From his account the voyage was a pleasant one, the ship comfortable, and the troops well fed. The time passed quickly, for in addition to the ordinary routine of life on board a transport, the officers were hard at work reading the books on Egypt with which Colonel Gregorie had provided himself, and lecturing to the men about the country in which they were going to fight. The correspondent described the rank and file as “rather under height, but a very broad-shouldered and robust body of men, with quiet manners and pleasant to talk to. Intensely Irish, they easily brighten into excitement in their amusements, and when their own stirring national airs are played by the band.” At Malta the XVIIIth heard many rumours about Lord Wolseley’s plans, but the only definite information they received was the order to paint their helmets and belts mud-colour, and to dull the brass-work on their uniforms. To our modern ideas the red serge jumpers and blue serge trousers in which the expedition took the field was a kit singularly ill adapted for a campaign in Egypt. Spine-pads and spectacles with blue glasses were served out, but many men did not understand the value of these novel articles of equipment, and lost them, much to their sorrow when a few days later they found themselves in the desert exposed to the full blaze of a semi-tropical sun. On the 22nd the City of Paris reached Alexandria, and was immediately ordered on to Port Said, where the battalion found the navy in possession of the town, apparently quite as much at home there as in Portsmouth harbour. As the ship was steaming slowly along the canal, the Royal Irish were much entertained by a party of bluejackets, stationed at Kantara to protect the floating bridge. The guard of sailors turned out and presented arms in the most orthodox fashion; and then produced a concertina and played “Rule Britannia,” dancing on the sand and swinging their cutlasses round their heads with immense energy.
On August 24, the City of Paris arrived at Lake Timsah, and anchored in the midst of a great fleet of warships and transports, the latter surrounded by steam-launches, tugs, and lighters, all busily employed in landing at Ismailia the personnel and matériel of the expedition. This town, a creation of M. de Lesseps, is on the western shore of the lake, where, half-hidden in groves of palm and plane trees, it lies like a green oasis in a desert of yellow sand. Here the Royal Irish remained for the next four days, earning golden opinions by the sustained energy which they displayed in carrying out the irksome duty of moving stores from the water-side to the railway station. Then came the welcome order to join their brigade at Kassasin. They moved in detachments, constantly halting to help repair the railway and to clear obstructions from the Sweet-water canal. The march was a singularly unpleasant one: the heat was very great, the dust and flies were exasperating to a degree, the tents had gone astray, and the only water to be had was from the canal, which belied its name, as it was polluted by the dead bodies of Egyptian soldiers. Several of the stations on the railway showed traces of the recent presence of Arabi’s troops, who in their flight had abandoned their rifles and ammunition, and left their dead unburied behind them. There was so much work to be done on the line that it was not until late on the 8th of September that the last companies of the Royal Irish reached Kassasin.
Arabi had been misled by the lying reports of his Bedouin scouts, who informed him that they had cut the communication between Ismailia and Kassasin, and that the latter was held by a small force, whereas as a matter of fact the railway from Ismailia to the front was in working order; Kassasin was occupied by about 8000 men under General Willis, and the brigade of Guards, a battery, and a regiment of cavalry were all within reinforcing distance. Acting on this false information, he determined to take the offensive, and at dawn on the 9th he put his troops in motion and pushed from Tel-el-Kebir towards Kassasin with several squadrons of cavalry, thirty or thirty-one guns, and seventeen battalions of infantry. His cavalry advance-guard greatly outnumbered our mounted troops, who however succeeded in holding back the Egyptian horsemen, until the infantry had taken up a position astride the canal to meet the attack now threatening from the west and north. Covered by a vigorous but comparatively harmless cannonade, the enemy’s infantry, a large part of which had been brought by train, advanced towards the camp, the uniforms of the regular soldiers contrasting strongly with the white robes of the Bedouins as they moved over the low sandy hummocks of the desert. For a time General Willis stood on the defensive, and the Royal Irish were detailed as the escort to the field-guns. Then he gave orders for a general advance, and the battalion was placed in echelon on the right rear of the first line of Graham’s brigade, ready to form front to the right, and face the flank attack which for a moment was anticipated. At first the battalion moved in quarter column, and then in line; at no time during the 9th was it extended for attack, for the British guns played so rapidly upon the Egyptians that they fell back in disorder, giving Graham’s brigade no opportunity to close with them; and by half-past ten the enemy had retired to his works at Tel-el-Kebir, leaving four field-pieces in our hands. From his entrenchments Arabi opened an angry but harmless artillery fire upon the troops, who by General Willis’s directions halted out of range. In ceasing his pursuit at a moment when it seemed that a vigorous, though necessarily costly attack might have made him master of the entrenchments, General Willis was acting in perfect accord with the spirit of Lord Wolseley’s strategy, for Alison’s brigade of infantry had only just arrived from Alexandria at Kassasin, and the Commander-in-Chief was not yet ready to advance across the desert. Had the Egyptians been attacked and beaten on the 9th, Wolseley could not have followed up the victory, and therefore their defeat would not have been the absolutely crushing blow that he hoped to inflict (and did actually inflict) upon them a few days later. The British troops remained facing Tel-el-Kebir for about three hours, and thus secured time for a careful reconnaissance of Arabi’s position; then they were ordered back to camp. The Egyptian losses were severe, but the British casualties were only three men killed, two officers and seventy-five other ranks wounded. Among the wounded were Captain H. H. Edwards, Royal Welsh Fusiliers (attached to the XVIIIth) and two private soldiers of the battalion.[244] A subaltern in the Royal Irish thus recorded the experiences of the second battalion on this occasion: “Just as we were sitting down to breakfast the bugles sounded for us to fall in, and a minute or two later the enemy had got so close that they began lodging shell in our camp and made it so hot that the —— had to clear out sharp. We were out pretty quick, and were alongside some guns which opened on the enemy and of course drew their fire on us. For about an hour we were in a pretty warm corner; shells burst thickly around us, but no one was touched except two men slightly wounded. After a time we got the order to advance, and in doing so we got a few rifle-shots among us which did not do us any harm. Our men did not fire a shot. As we advanced the enemy retreated. We were left to cover the retirement of the battalions who had been in the firing line and were relieved at four o’clock in the afternoon.”
In a short time the Commander-in-Chief’s preparations were completed; the whole of the troops selected for the march across the desert were concentrated at Kassasin, and those appointed to hold the lines of communication were at their posts. Lord Wolseley had already formed his plan of attack, which he thus described in his despatch of the 16th of September—