"MON CHER MONSIEUR,
"Vous avez été si aimable lorsque j'ai eu la bonne fortune de faire votre connaissance, que vous ne pouvez douter de l'intérêt sympathique avec lequel j'ai suivi le brillant développement de votre carrière politique. Aujourd'hui je tiens à sortir de mon adhésion muette et à vous exprimer combien j'admire et combien j'approuve la politique actuelle de votre gouvernement en Égypte. Commissaire du gouvernement égyptien auprès de la compagnie de Suez depuis près de vingt ans, j'ai étudié de près ce qui se passait sur le Nil, et je ne crois pas céder à un mouvement d'amitié pour le Khédive, en pensant que c'est de son côté que se trouvent le Droit, la justice, la civilisation. Après l'avoir intronisé, lui avoir promis de l'appui; l'avoir poussé contre Arabi, le laisser entre les mains d'une grossière soldatesque, ce serait une félonie doublée d'une sottise, car on perdrait ainsi ce qui a été gagné sur la barbarie par les efforts de plusieurs générations. Aucune paix ne vaut qu'on l'achète aussi cher. Votre pays s'honore et se grandit en le comprenant, et sa victoire sera celle de la civilisation autant que la sienne propre. En se séparant de vous, nos seuls amis, en ce moment, en abandonnant le Khédive malgré tant d'engagements répétés, les personnages qui nous gouvernent consomment la première des conséquences qu'il était dans la logique de leurs idées d'attirer sur nous—l'anéantissement à l'extérieur. Les autres suivront. Nous ferons une fois de plus la triste expérience qu'on ne supprime pas impunément de l'âme d'une nation l'idée de sacrifice, de dévouement, d'héroïsme, pour réduire son idéal aux jouissances de la vie matérielle et à l'amour bestial des gras pâturages. Vous êtes bien heureux de n'en être pas là.
"Je vous félicite chaleureusement de la part que vous avez prise aux mâles résolutions de votre gouvernement, et je vous prie de croire à mes sentiments les plus sincèrement cordiaux.
"Émile Ollivier.">[
'The French Government having ordered their ships to leave Alexandria in the event of a bombardment of the forts, I suggested that our sailors ought to pursue them with ironical cheers, such as those with which in the House of Commons we were given to pursue those who walked out to avoid a division.'
III.
From July 11th it was clear that France had decided to do nothing.
England's course of action was still undecided.
'Although reparation at Alexandria was being virtually exacted by the bombardment, in spite of this having been put only on the safety of the fleet and the defiance of Beauchamp Seymour's orders, yet it had not, on account of Mr. Gladstone's opposition, up to this time been settled that we should land troops. There was now no hope that the threat which the French had proposed to us, and which we had accepted in January, declaring that "the dangers to which the Government of the Khedive might be exposed … would certainly find England and France united to oppose them," would be acted upon; but there was still some idea that Turkish troops might be landed under strict safeguards for supervision. On July 11th Chamberlain suggested to Lord Granville that Lord Ampthill should be sent to Varzin to see Bismarck, and ask him what intervention would be best if Turkish failed. This suggestion was not accepted, but Lord Granville wrote to the German Ambassador to the same effect.
'Mr. Gladstone was in a fighting humour on the next day, July 12th. I have the notes on which he made his speech, which give all the heads, and are interesting to compare with the speech as it stands in Hansard. He put our defence upon "the safety of the fleet" and "safety of Europeans throughout the East." He was indignant, in reply to Gourley, about the bondholders, and, in reply to Lawson, about our "drifting into war," and he certainly believed, as I believed at that moment, that the Alexandria massacres had been the work of Arabi, for one of his notes is: "International atrocity. Wholesale massacre of the people, to overrule the people of that country." [Footnote: Sir Charles, as has been said, did not adhere to his view concerning Arabi's responsibility.]
'On July 13th the Foreign Office prepared a most elaborate despatch from Lord Granville to Lord Dufferin, explaining the whole position of affairs in Egypt. The despatch was much knocked about by Chamberlain and myself. It had recited how an officer and two men of our fleet had been killed, another officer wounded, the British Consul dragged out of his carriage and severely injured; six British-born subjects killed, and the Greek Consul-General beaten; but it had omitted the important fact that a French Consular-Dragoman, and one, if not two men of the French fleet, and several other French subjects had been killed. The chief alterations, however, which we made, or tried to make, in the despatch were in the direction of omitting all reference to the financial engagements of Egypt, which we were most unwilling to take upon ourselves in any manner. I actively pursued the question of the outrages upon British subjects at Alexandria and of compensation. We went into the case of Marshal Haynau, that of Don Pacifico, [Footnote: Both cases furnished precedents for dealing with an instance in which foreigners had been maltreated when visiting or residing in another country. Marshal Haynau, the Austrian General infamous for his brutalities in Italy (especially at Brescia) and in Hungary in 1848, came to England on a private visit in 1850, went to see Barclay and Perkins' brewery in Southwark, and was mobbed by the employees. The Queen, in response to indignant remonstrance by the Austrian Government, pressed the sending of a note of apology and regret for this maltreatment of "a distinguished foreigner." Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Minister in Lord John Russell's Ministry, sent the Note, but added a paragraph which indicated that, in his personal opinion, the brewery men were justified in their action, and that Haynau had acted improperly in coming to this country at all, knowing the feeling against him here.