CHAPTER XII INTRIGUES AND COUNTER INTRIGUES

The history of the next six weeks in Egypt, from the arrival of the English and French fleets at Alexandria to the bombardment of the city is that of a desperate attempt by our diplomacy one way or another to regain its lost footing of influence, and failing that to bring about a conflict; and of a no less desperate and unscrupulous attempt by the Foreign Office at home to force Gladstone's hand to an act of violence. In all this there was far less of statemanship, or even financial intrigue, than of personal pique. The tone neither in the Chancelleries of Europe nor of the Stock Exchange was so urgent as to make a peaceful treatment of the case impossible. France, under Freycinet, had withdrawn entirely from Gambetta's aggressive designs, and would readily have made the best at any moment of a political situation by no means hopeless at Cairo, while Germany and Austria, representing the financial interests, especially of the Rothschilds, were for a repetition of the remedy found efficacious in 1879, the Sultan's intervention in the form of a new firman, substituting Halim for Tewfik. This would have been an easy solution of the quarrel which had arisen between Tewfik and his Ministers, and though not the ideal to which the Nationalist leaders looked, would have been accepted by all parties as an ending of the crisis. The other countries of Europe were for the most part in sympathy with the National movement, Switzerland and Belgium strongly so, while Italy was so enthusiastic that at one time, in spite of the Government, which supported English policy, a corps of volunteers was being enrolled under Menotti Garibaldi to help Arabi. It was only in England that public opinion, worked upon systematically through the Press primed by our diplomacy, was at all excited or called for vigorous action.