Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt / Being a Personal Narrative of Events

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; Ahmad Urabi

The party, however, was foredoomed to disaster. The Bedouin escort, men of the Haiwat and Howeytat, got scent of the gold they were carrying, and were determined to be beforehand with the Teyyaha, for whom it was intended—the Egyptian governor of Nakhl, an isolated fort halfway between Suez and Akabah, there is good reason to believe, being their accomplice and instigator. They had hardly therefore, got more than a few miles on their way before they were attacked, made prisoners, despoiled, stripped and bound, and finally shot at the edge of a ravine in the Wady Sudr. And so poor Palmer's dreams of fortune ended. The catastrophe was too conspicuous a one to save the Government from questions asked in Parliament, and that worthy gentleman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as Under-Secretary, was put up in the House of Commons to give answer and to deny roundly the whole affair of Palmer's secret mission, or of any dealings on his part with the Bedouins, except as buyer of camels.

Nor does Professor Palmer's journal stand alone as documentary evidence. Captain Gill also left a diary amply confirming the main facts. His business under the Intelligence Department was of the same nature west of the Suez Canal as Palmer's had been east of it. The diary begins at Alexandria and the writer speaks of having gone to see Sir Frederick Goldsmid, the head of his department, and he expresses his hope to be soon at work among the Bedouins west of the Canal. He describes having received, in the Khedive's own handwriting, a list of the principal Sheykhs between the Canal and the cultivation, of whom he mentions two by name, Saoud el Tihawi at Salahieh, and Mohammed el Baghli at Wady Tumeylat. He understood the Bedouins to be waiting to side with whomever they found it their best interest to follow. At Port Saïd Gill hears from the ex-Governor that these Bedouins can be bought at from £2 to £3 per man. On 4th August he mentions reading Palmer's report to Sir B. Seymour. He says, "Had I known the report would go direct to the Admiral, I would have asked Hoskyns whether he had the money for Palmer." He adds, "Palmer says he can buy fifty thousand Bedouins for £25,000, and I shall certainly urge that the money be given him." He mentions a report of his own as to blocking the Canal, which he says could only be effectively done by the Egyptians at one point, which he names, and gives as his reason the want of stones elsewhere to sink the barges with. He talks of Lesseps as having it in his power to do real mischief, as he has all the dredges and boats belong to the Canal at his disposal. August 5th: Gill goes down the Canal with another officer to Suez, taking with them £20,000 in gold for Palmer. They stop at Ismaïlia, and he sees there Mr. Pickard, with whom he discusses the best route to choose for cutting the telegraph. He says there are three ways: (1) from the coast near el Arish, which both agree would be dangerous, (2) from Gisr or Kantara, objectionable as violating the neutrality of the Canal, and (3) from Suez, the only practicable route. He does not seem to trust Pickard, and decides to cut the wire himself from Suez. August 6th: He mentions the fact that he is glad to get rid of the £20,000 on its being made over to Palmer. He talks of going with Palmer to a great meeting of Shekyhs he is to attend at Nakhul, and remarks that if he goes so far with him he shall be able to judge how far "Palmer's rather rose-coloured expectations" are justified. These two documents between them amply prove the reality of the bribery resorted to before Tel-el-Kebir.

I was much connected with this affair at the time it occurred, as I was applied to by members of the families of all the three victims of it, to aid in their researches, and to make the matter public and in one instance to obtain from the Government a proper recognition of services rendered and as yet unacknowledged. The case, after being denied in the House of Commons, was at my instance brought on by my brother-in-law, Lord Wentworth, in the House of Lords, and was the occasion of much anger among the Ministerial peers, and an astonishing display of untruth. Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and their colleagues, got up one after the other and roundly denied the whole story of Palmer's mission, and of his having received any money for the purpose of bribery among the Arabs. It is a curious fact that Lord Salisbury, to whom I went just before the debate to try to enlist his aid in opposition to the Government, excused them in some measure to me on the ground that in cases where secret service money was concerned, it was conventionally permitted to Ministers to lie. He nevertheless aided Lord Wentworth to the extent of securing him a fair hearing, which the others would have prevented.

Palmer's and Gill's were nevertheless but crude dealings, and would by themselves, I think, have done little to further Wolseley's objects but for the far more efficacious intervention in support of them given by the Khedive. Saoud el Tihawi was the only Arab Sheykh who systematically or at all efficiently betrayed Arabi, and it was the Khedive who procured his defection. Saoud received in payment for his work as spy in Arabi's camp 5,000 Austrian crowns, and betrayed him throughout, from the date of the removal of the Egyptian headquarters from Kafr Dawar to Tel-el-Kebir. Saoud was an Arab of a naturally superior type, and with a good head on his shoulders, but he had long been perverted by his association with Lesseps and the French, having his land and permanent camp within a day's journey only of the Suez Canal, and had been accustomed to hunt the gazelle with them, and play the part of fine gentleman, which is the ruin of Bedouin morality. That he did indeed play the part of spy and traitor in the English interest I have his own half admission, for passing by Salahieh in the spring of 1887, I stopped a night at his tents, and he seeing me to be English, and knowing nothing of my political sympathies, spoke of his doings during the war in terms there was no mistaking. Acting as scout for Arabi, it was easy for his men to pass from camp to camp, and so convey intelligence. There was nothing specially to be ashamed of in this treachery, according to Bedouin morals, for to the Arab tribes Egyptians and Turks and Franks are equally outside the sphere of their allegiance, and in serving them it is merely a question of what suits their interest best. On the east of the Nile the Bedouins have exceedingly little religious feeling to prevent their siding with the infidel, if their advantage lies that way, and no love was ever yet lost between Bedouin and Fellah.

What did Arabi infinitely more harm than this and facilitated the rapidity of Wolseley's advance, was the tampering with his officers through the instrumentality of certain emissaries despatched in disguise to Cairo and Tel-el-Kebir, who, armed with money and promises of promotion and advancement when the "rebellion" should have been put down, succeeded in detaching not a few from their loyalty. This was not done directly by Wolseley or the English intelligence Department, though, perhaps the funds were furnished by them, but by the Khedive, who was far better aware whom to approach with success than any Englishman could be. His most intelligent and active agent in this work was his A. D. C., Osman Bey Rifaat, who knew well the temper of most of the officers, and the jealousies which inspired them. To these, especially to those of Circassian origin, he represented the futility of the National resistance and the advantage there would be for them in being beforehand in reconciling themselves to the Khedive instead of awaiting the punishment which would certainly follow. Wolseley and the English were only acting as the Khedive's servants and in concert with the Sultan, who also was about to send troops, having declared Arabi a rebel. With the Circassians this line of argument naturally had weight, and with the baser class of Egyptian officers the money argument was added. Arabi, for the reasons already stated, although enthusiastically followed by the rank and file of the army, had incurred no little jealousy among the superior officers, who judged themselves to be all better soldiers than he, and his procrastination in the matter of blocking the Canal had still further increased their dissatisfaction. All confidence in his military leadership was destroyed among them from the day of the landing of the English at Ismaïlia without the promised opposition of the French, and without adequate preparations to oppose them on that side having been made.

With the civilian chiefs of the Nationalists another agent was employed, also not without effect. This was none other than the old leader of the fellah movement, Sultan Pasha, who, having thrown his lot in now wholly with the English, was not ashamed to lend himself to the work of spreading disunion among those who still retained their patriotism. To the new generation of the Egyptians it seems difficult to understand how a man of such initial high conduct as a lover of his country should have sunk to so mean a pass. But I think it is not really difficult to explain. Sultan was a proud man of great wealth and importance, and used to being given the first place everywhere—the "king," as he was called, of Upper Egypt, the first and foremost of the great fellah proprietors—and with what seemed to him a natural right to leadership in the fellah party. Arabi he had patronized as a younger man and one of no social standing, who might help him in his ambitions, but who should never have presumed to supplant him in the popular affections. He was disappointed on the formation of the Sherif Ministry in September, 1881, that he was given no place in it, and was only half consoled with the presidency assigned him of the new Parliament. Still less was he pleased when on the formation of the more purely fellah administration of February, 1882, he was again left out, and the lack of what he considered the due consideration shown him caused him to drift gradually into opposition. Then came the arrival of the fleets at Alexandria, and, as we know, he was partly cajoled, partly frightened by Malet into declaring himself in favour of the English demands, and threw in his lot finally with the Court party against his former associates. There is nothing difficult to understand, more than in the Khedive's case, in the downward grade he was obliged to follow. It became with him, I imagine, a matter of obstinacy rather than any longer of ambition, and his patriotic scruples had been allayed by the promise made him that the English intervention was intended only to restore the condition of things previous to the Mahmud Sami Ministry, and that Egypt should still have her claim to Constitutional government respected. In this sense he addressed letters to his numerous former friends at Cairo, putting forward the explanation that the alliance between the Khedive and the English was a merely temporary necessity, as the English troops would not stay in Egypt when once the Khedive's authority had been re-established; and that Arabi had lost the confidence of the Sultan, and that the continued resistance at Cairo was generally condemned by Moslems. These letters, distributed carefully, were not without their influence, and money again played its powerful part. Sultan indeed seems to have advanced the money out of his own pocket, for the very first financial act of the restored Khedivial Government after Tel-el-Kebir was to make him a public present of £10,000 under the title of an indemnity for losses sustained by him during the war, while he also received an order of English knighthood. The sums actually given away by Sultan were not, as far as I can learn, very large, being supplemented with more considerable promises, which after the war remained unfulfilled, and very likely the £10,000 more than covered the sums Sultan actually disbursed. Be this as it may, there is no question that with the Khedive's help Wolseley's path of victory was made a very easy one.[25]

In spite, however, of all these disadvantages of internal intrigue, the National defence might still have been prolonged, if the end could not be averted, but for the bad luck which from this point throughout attended the army. As soon as it was quite clear that Egypt would be attacked from the East, Mahmud Fehmi, the engineer, the ablest of all Arabi's lieutenants, was despatched to Tel-el-Kebir, to carry out and finish the lines there, which had never been more than lightly traced. Had they been finished as they ought to have been, they should have proved a formidable obstacle to the advance of the English army, but by an extraordinary fatality, which was hardly within the range of the common hazards of war, the General, within a few days of his arrival, was captured and made prisoner by a small party of English Life Guards, who, far in advance of the English position, happened to be passing near. The accident was a strange one. Mahmud Fehmi, attended only by an A. D. C., and having put off his uniform on account of the heat, had passed one evening to the other side of the Wady Tumeylat, and partly to get a breath of air, partly, too, for a better view of the desert in the direction of Ismaïlia, had climbed alone, on foot, a low sandhill, of which there are several, running into the cultivated land, when suddenly the small English party pounced on him. As Mahmud was not in uniform, Colonel Talbot, in command of the party, was doubtful how to treat him, and was near accepting his explanation that he was an Effendi with property in the neighbourhood, but finally decided to carry him off with them, which they accordingly did, the A. D. C., having remained in a village hard by not knowing what had happened, nor had Talbot any notion of the value of his capture until some time after the return of the party to the English headquarters. As a matter of fact, however, it was one of the greatest possible importance, and a blow to the defence of Tel-el-Kebir for which there was no remedy.[26]

The second misfortune was the disabling at Kassassin of the two generals, first and second in command, at a critical moment of that not altogether unequal combat. These were Ali Fehmi, Arabi's tried companion, and Rashid Pasha, two officers who were both good soldiers, with courage and some experience of war, and who took the initiative against Wolseley first by a reconnaissance, and then by a renewed attack on him in force at Kassassin. It was the best and last chance the Egyptians had of checking the English advance, and it was not very far from being successful. According to the Egyptian account of the affair, the enemy was taken by surprise, and for a long time the issue remained doubtful, the Duke of Connaught being at one moment near being made prisoner. Had this happened and had the Egyptians maintained their advantage, there is no knowing what terms might not have been granted them of recognition and peace, for already public opinion had veered round in England, and people were becoming ashamed of a war waged against peasants fighting for their freedom from an ancient tyranny. Two things, however, failed them in their plans, first Mahmud Sami was to have advanced from Salahieh with a couple of thousand men to join them in the morning and take the enemy on his right flank, but misled by Saoud's Bedouins in the night he missed the point of rendezvous; and secondly, it is certain that Arabi, if he had had any soldierly instincts, ought to have taken the field in person with them, if not in the front line of attack, at least as commanding a strong reserve. As it was, the whole force employable did not appear on the battlefield, and by a still further stroke of ill fortune both the commanders were wounded, and put for the rest of the campaign hors de combat. It is also certain that one of the Egyptian generals, Ali Bey Yusuf, purposely betrayed his comrades.

From this point all was confusion at Tel-el-Kebir, and the pitiful end became certain. Arabi had lost his best generals and knew not where to replace them. There were not many he could trust, and those men only of quite inferior ability. One man indeed there was who might still have given consistency to the defence, but for some inexplicable reason he was left away from the field of action. This was the third of the original "three colonels," Abd-el-Aal Helmi, a valiant fighting man as any in the army. For some time past he had been employed in what was at one moment the important duty of defending Damietta from a possible British landing, and he had with him some of the very best troops, notably the Soudanese regiment which had been Abd-el-Aal's own. Had these, with their commander, been brought at once to Tel-el-Kebir, they might have saved at least the honour of the army, for Abd-el-Aal was one who could be relied upon for forward action, and his troops were full of spirit and undiscouraged by defeat. It seems, however, still to have been thought that Damietta needed its garrison, for I cannot find that the Military Committee so much as suggested Abd-el-Aal as Ali Fehmi's successor. I have sometimes thought that Yakub Pasha Sami, the President of the Military Committee at Cairo, good service as he had done in organizing the war, had at this time been tampered with by the Khedive's agents. He was a Mussulman, of Greek origin, and so one of the ruling class, and there are documents in my possession which show him, though Arabi's right-hand man at the War Office, as always a Khedive's man rather than a Nationalist. The Khedive seems to have counted him as such, and as in other instances after the war, treated him for that reason with exceptional rigour, and he was one of the seven Pashas exiled to Ceylon, though the attitude he adopted before the Judges had been one of servile repentance and protestations of loyalty. Of his deep jealousy of Arabi the papers give ample evidence, and it is quite possible that after the disabling of Ali Fehmi, he did his best to isolate Arabi and hasten his ruin at Tel-el-Kebir. Instead of Abd-el-Aal the command was given to a very worthy but quite incompetent man, Ali Pasha Roubi, one of Arabi's old companions of the early days of the National movement, but who had no other qualification for so responsible a post.

Arabi himself meanwhile, in spite of the imminence of the English attack, remained stolidly on in camp surrounded, as always, by the country Notables, who still flocked to see him, and by religious men, with whom he passed the time in prayers and recitations. He relied implicitly on Saoud el Tihawi to give him news of any further advance by Wolseley, and Saoud always lured him into security. The army at Tel-el-Kebir was the most incoherent one imaginable. Of regular, well-disciplined troops, infantry of the line, there cannot have been more than 6,000 to 7,000, with, perhaps, 2,000 cavalry and a corresponding number of guns served by good artillerymen. This was all the really reliable force. The rest were a half-clothed and wholly undisciplined rabble of recruits and volunteers, good, honest fellahin, hardworking as labourers in the trenches, but of no fighting value whatever. Their total number may have been 20,000, but I have no accurate statistics to go by. Day and night they worked valiantly to complete the unfinished lines, but this was all the military service they possibly could render. Stone Pasha, the American, after the war stated it freely as his opinion that not one of the whole number had even as yet fired a ball cartridge, and this was probably true.