The question now came to be, Who should step in to establish order? The Sultan of Turkey, who saw a chance of making his nominal suzerainty real, proposed to despatch troops, but confined himself to sending envoys. As a counter-demonstration, France and England each sent a warship to Alexandria; and Gambetta's accession to power in November meant a great reinforcement to the policy of joint intervention.
Sir Charles was then in Paris engaged in the commercial negotiations already described, and he chronicled in his diary a sporting suggestion:
"September 19th, 1881.—After the seventeenth sitting of the Treaty Joint Commission I had an interview with Delia Sala, the Italian who is an Egyptian General, and governs the Soudan. He is a great fencer, and has killed his man before now. He declares himself willing to put down insubordination in the Egyptian Army by calling out three of the Colonels in succession. A more practical but hardly less bold suggestion of his is that he should be allowed to increase his anti- slavery regiment of 600 men, and then to use it as a bodyguard for Malet instead of the putting down of slavery."
'On December 27th, 1881, Lord Granville asked me by letter to discuss with Gambetta all the possible alternatives, and especially joint occupation (to which Lord Granville saw objection), and a Turkish intervention under the control of England and France (to which French opinion was opposed): "The more you can get out of Gambetta without committing us the more grateful we shall be." I have no recollection of having discussed Egypt with Gambetta.'
Shortly afterwards
'Malet wrote from Cairo to Paris, telling me that he still had confidence in the moderation of the progressist party represented by Arabi and the Colonels, and that he was managing them through Wilfrid Blunt, who was acting as a go-between; but a little later on the relations between Blunt and Malet became such as to show that each had thought he was using the other as a tool.'
"Moderation" is an ambiguous term. When the Chamber of Notables met at the end of December, 1881, the army put forward through the Minister for War a demand for an increase of 18,000 men. This increase the European controllers refused to sanction, on the ground that the country could not afford it. Thus came to pass a conflict between the national movement and the joint European control upon an issue which united the interests of the military party with the aspirations of the parliamentarian Nationalists for the power of the purse. Gambetta, however, was now dominant in France, and Gambetta had no tolerance for the pretensions of what he called a "sham assembly." A Joint Note, dated January 6th, 1882, was issued by the two Powers, in which England and France declared their intention to "guard by their united efforts against all cause of complication, internal or external, which might menace the order of things established in Egypt." Another phrase in the Note attributed the exchange of views between the Powers to "recent circumstances, especially the meeting of the Chamber of Notables convoked by the Khedive," and this was naturally construed by Nationalists to mean that parliamentary institutions were internal causes of complication.
The issue of this Note is one of the marking-points of modern Egyptian history. It asserted the determination of the joint Powers to make their will obeyed in Egypt, by force if necessary. According to general admission, its issue was due to the overmastering influence of Gambetta. Dilke, whom everyone knew to be Gambetta's intimate, was in France almost continuously from the time when Gambetta became Prime Minister on November 10th, 1881, till the eve of the issue of the Joint Note. In 1878, while in Opposition, he had publicly advocated a policy of annexation in Egypt, and it was inevitable that critics should fasten upon him a special responsibility for the course pursued.
Yet, as the Memoir makes clear, in 'this weighty affair' Dilke had virtually no voice. He was not in the Cabinet, and he was absent from Paris for nearly the whole of December, taking a holiday in Provence from commercial negotiations. Only on his return, on December 27th, did he receive Lord Granville's letter—which was dated December 21st—asking him to discuss with Gambetta the possible alternatives. But although the two men met repeatedly between December 27th and January 2nd, when Dilke left Paris, Gambetta refrained from discussing Egypt. The Memoir says, under date January 7th, 1882:
'The Cabinet had before it the state of affairs in Egypt, and resolved upon agreeing on Gambetta's policy of a Joint Note on the part of England and of France in support of the Khedive against the revolutionary party. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, misled by the dates of interviews, has asserted from that time to this (1890) that the Joint Note was arranged in Paris between Gambetta and myself. I have repeatedly denied that statement, for curiously enough it so happens that the Joint Note was the only important matter relating to Foreign Affairs which happened while I was at the Foreign Office in which I was not consulted. Gambetta never broached the subject with me, and I knew nothing of it until it was done. As we talked a little about Egypt, I suppose that he had reasons for not wishing to speak of the Joint Note to me, but I do not know what they were.'