they endeavoured to retake the camp. Bugeaud’s forces, which had originally faced S. when crossing the river, had now changed direction until they faced almost W. Near Kudiat-el-Khodra the Moors had rallied in considerable force, and prepared to retake their camp. The French, however, continued to attack in perfect combination, and after a stubborn resistance the Moors once more gave way. For this great victory, which was quickly followed by proposals of peace, Bugeaud was made duc d’Isly.
ISMAIL (1830–1895), khedive of Egypt, was born at Cairo
on the 31st of December 1830, being the second of the three sons
of Ibrahim and grandson of Mehemet Ali. After receiving a
European education at Paris, where he attended the École
d’État-Major, he returned home, and on the death of his elder
brother became heir to his uncle, Said Mohammed, the Vali of
Egypt. Said, who apparently conceived his own safety to lie in
ridding himself as much as possible of the presence of his nephew,
employed him in the next few years on missions abroad, notably
to the pope, the emperor Napoleon III. and the sultan of Turkey.
In 1861 he was despatched at the head of an army of 14,000 to
quell an insurrection in the Sudan, and this he successfully
accomplished. On the death of Said, on 18th January 1863,
Ismail was proclaimed viceroy without opposition. Being of an
Orientally extravagant disposition, he found with considerable
gratification that the Egyptian revenue was vastly increased by
the rise in the value of cotton which resulted from the American
Civil War, the Egyptian crop being worth about £25,000,000
instead of £5,000,000. Besides acquiring luxurious tastes in his
sojourns abroad, Ismail had discovered that the civilized nations
of Europe made a free use of their credit for raising loans. He
proceeded at once to apply this idea to his own country by
transferring his private debts to the state and launching out on
a grand scale of expenditure. Egypt was in his eyes the ruler’s
estate which was to be exploited for his benefit and his renown.
His own position had to be strengthened, and the country
provided with institutions after European models. To these
objects Ismail applied himself with energy and cleverness, but
without any stint of expense. During the ’sixties and ’seventies
Egypt became the happy hunting-ground of self-seeking financiers,
to whose schemes Ismail fell an easy and a willing prey. In
1866–1867 he obtained from the sultan of Turkey, in exchange
for an increase in the tribute, firmans giving him the title of
khedive, and changing the law of succession to direct descent
from father to son; and in 1873 he obtained a new firman
making him to a large extent independent. He projected vast
schemes of internal reform, remodelling the customs system
and the post office, stimulating commercial progress, creating
a sugar industry, introducing European improvements into
Cairo and Alexandria, building palaces, entertaining lavishly
and maintaining an opera and a theatre. It has been calculated
that, of the total amount of debt incurred by Ismail for his
projects, about 10% may have been sunk in works of permanent
utility—always excluding the Suez Canal. Meanwhile the
opening of the Canal had given him opportunities for asserting
himself in foreign courts. On his accession he refused to ratify
the concessions to the Canal company made by Said, and the
question was referred in 1864 to the arbitration of Napoleon III.,
who awarded £3,800,000 to the company as compensation for
the losses they would incur by the changes which Ismail insisted
upon in the original grant. Ismail then used every available
means, by his own undoubted powers of fascination and by
judicious expenditure, to bring his personality before the foreign
sovereigns and public, and he had no little success. He was made
G.C.B. in 1867, and in the same year visited Paris and London,
where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the
lord mayor; and in 1869 he again paid a visit to England.
The result was that the opening of the Canal in November 1869
enabled him to claim to rank among European sovereigns, and
to give and receive royal honours: this excited the jealousy of
the sultan, but Ismail was clever enough to pacify his overlord.
In 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners
was modified, and the system of mixed courts introduced, by
which European and native judges sat together to try all civil
cases without respect of nationality. In all these years Ismail
had governed with éclat and profusion, spending, borrowing,
raising the taxes on the fellahin and combining his policy of
independence with dazzling visions of Egyptian aggrandizement.
In 1874 he annexed Darfur, and was only prevented from
extending his dominion into Abyssinia by the superior fighting
power of the Abyssinians. But at length the inevitable financial
crisis came. A national debt of over one hundred millions
sterling (as opposed to three millions when he became viceroy)
had been incurred by the khedive, whose fundamental idea of
liquidating his borrowings was to borrow at increased interest.
The bond-holders became restive. Judgments were given
against the khedive in the international tribunals. When he
could raise no more loans he sold his Suez Canal shares (in 1875)
to Great Britain for £3,976,582; and this was immediately
followed by the beginning of foreign intervention. In December
1875 Mr Stephen Cave was sent out by the British government
to inquire into the finances of Egypt, and in April 1876 his report
was published, advising that in view of the waste and extravagance
it was necessary for foreign Powers to interfere in order to
restore credit. The result was the establishment of the Caisse
de la Dette. In October Mr (afterwards Lord) Goschen and M.
Joubert made a further investigation, which resulted in the
establishment of Anglo-French control. A further commission
of inquiry by Major Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) and others
in 1878 culminated in Ismail making over his estates to the
nation and accepting the position of a constitutional sovereign,
with Nubar as premier, Mr (afterwards Sir Charles) Rivers
Wilson as finance minister, and M. de Blignières as minister of
public works. Ismail professed to be quite pleased. “Egypt,”
he said, “is no longer in Africa; it is part of Europe.” The new
régime, however, only lasted six months, and then Ismail dismissed
his ministers, an occasion being deliberately prepared
by his getting Arabi (q.v.) to foment a military pronunciamiento.
England and France took the matter seriously, and insisted
(May 1879) on the reinstatement of the British and French
ministers; but the situation was no longer a possible one; the
tribunals were still giving judgments for debt against the government,
and when Germany and Austria showed signs of intending
to enforce execution, the governments of Great Britain and
France perceived that the only chance of setting matters straight
was to get rid of Ismail altogether. He was first advised to
abdicate, and a few days afterwards (26th June), as he did not
take the hint, he received a telegram from the sultan (who had
not forgotten the earlier history of Mehemet Ali’s dynasty),
addressed to him as ex-khedive, and informing him that his son
Tewfik was his successor. He at once left Egypt for Naples, but
eventually was permitted by the sultan to retire to his palace
of Emirghian on the Bosporus. There he remained, more or less
a state prisoner, till his death on the 2nd of March 1895. Ismail
was a man of undoubted ability and remarkable powers. But
beneath a veneer of French manners and education he remained
throughout a thorough Oriental, though without any of the
moral earnestness which characterizes the better side of Mahommedanism.
Some of his ambitions were not unworthy, and
though his attitude towards western civilization was essentially
cynical, he undoubtedly helped to make the Egyptian upper
classes realize the value of European education. Moreover,
spendthrift as he was, it needed—as is pointed out in Milner’s
England in Egypt—a series of unfortunate conditions to render
his personality as pernicious to his country as it actually became.
“It needed a nation of submissive slaves, not only bereft of any
vestige of liberal institutions, but devoid of the slightest spark
of the spirit of liberty. It needed a bureaucracy which it would
have been hard to equal for its combination of cowardice and
corruption. It needed the whole gang of swindlers—mostly
European—by whom Ismail was surrounded.” It was his early
encouragement of Arabi, and his introduction of swarms of
foreign concession-hunters, which precipitated the “national
movement” that led to British occupation. His greatest title to
remembrance in history must be that he made European intervention
in Egypt compulsory. (H. Ch.)
