CHAPTER VII TRIUMPH OF THE REFORMERS IN EGYPT

The crisis came about in this way. In the month of August Riaz Pasha, who up to then had despised the fellah movement too completely to think it at all dangerous, became for the first time alarmed. The part in it played by the soldiers he had thought to be able to cope with by some of those irregular methods which are the time-honoured tradition of Turkish Government. He had beset Arabi and his fellow colonels with spies and had sought constantly to involve them through the police in some personal quarrel or street disturbance which should put them in his power, but always in vain. The soldiers invariably received warning of any serious design through their friend at the War Office, Mahmud Sami, and were constantly on their guard. It had been arranged, too, between Mahmud Sami and Arabi that if ever the Minister should be forced to retire from the War Office, it would be a sign to the fellah officers that they must expect the worst, even if they should hear nothing of it from himself. When, therefore, in August Riaz, losing patience, quarrelled with the War Minister and it was announced that Mahmud Sami had resigned, the officers saw that the moment for action, as far as they were themselves concerned, could not long be delayed. Riaz had insisted with Mahmud Sami on the banishment of the two leading colonels with their regiments from Cairo and had got the Khedive, in one of his fits of jealousy at Arabi's popularity, to go with him in ordering it, and when Mahmud Sami demurred, his dismissal had been summarily announced to him. The Khedive and Riaz were at the time away still for the summer season at Alexandria, and Mahmud Sami, in his disgrace, had been ordered by letter to leave Cairo at once for his village, and so had not had time to communicate with his military friends. These, nevertheless, knew that trouble was in store for them, and it was the more apparent because Mahmud Sami's successor was no other than a certain Circassian general of the worst reactionary type, Daoud Pasha Yeghen, the Khedive's brother-in-law, whom they knew to be especially their enemy.