On January 26th an event happened which destroyed the chances of joint intervention. Gambetta fell. The policy of joint intervention in support of any menace to the established order in Egypt, to which both Powers were committed by the Joint Note of January 6th, now passed into the hands of Lord Granville and of M. de Freycinet, concerning whom Sir Charles wrote on March 9th, 1882:
'I noted that Freycinet had begun his official career by doing what he had done when in office before—namely, asking Bismarck's consent to every act. He was so anxious to stop the Turks from going to Egypt that he was willing at this moment to agree even to Italian intervention in the name of Europe; and he was personally anxious for reconciliation with Italy.'
Meanwhile in Egypt there had been a new ministerial crisis. Cherif Pasha was deposed from the Presidency of the Council, and Arabi was made the Minister for War. The control, according to Sir Edward Malet, "existed only in name." In the provinces there was anarchy. Either the order of things established in Egypt must disappear, or intervention in some shape was inevitable.
'On February 1st there was a Cabinet upon the Egyptian Question. Lord Granville wrote to me before it met to say that the Cabinet had complained that we had not told them anything about Egypt, to which he had replied that they had received the telegrams if they had not read them…. At this day's Cabinet Hartington alone was in favour of Anglo-French intervention, and he fell out with Lord Granville over it, and they were on bad terms for some time. Some of the Cabinet wanted English intervention, and some wanted Anglo-French-Turkish intervention….
'On March 4th there was a Cabinet, at which Hartington made a great fight against all his colleagues, who were unanimous against him upon the question of Anglo-French intervention in Egypt.
'On March 20th the new French Ambassador Tissot came. I had previously known him when he was the Agent of the Government of National Defence inhabiting the London Embassy, virtually as Ambassador but without a staff. On this occasion he immediately startled us out of our senses by proposing that we should depose the Khedive and set up Prince Halim. He had converted Freycinet to this madcap view.'
Halim, the heir by Mohammedan law, was Arabi's candidate for sovereignty. During Sir Charles's visit to France in the middle of April this suggestion became fully official, as he learnt on returning.
'France had proposed to us to depose the Khedive and set up Halim, and we had refused on the ground of breach of faith. On April 20th the Cabinet decided absolutely and unanimously against any suggestion with regard to Halim.'
Since the policy of united intervention in the name of Europe, to which Sir Charles had sought to fix the Powers, had no longer any support in France, and since the French proposal of a new Khedive had been rejected, the plan of Turkish intervention which Lord Granville had always preferred, as being the least bad, was now formally put forward.
'On April 23rd Lord Granville invented a plan of sending three
Generals to Egypt, because the French had told him that we had refused
their plan without having one of our own. The idea was that a Turkish
General should go with full powers, and accompanied by a French and an
English General, the full powers not to be used by the Turk unless his
French and English colleagues should agree.