expedient of attack, smoking out by fires kindled at the mouth, was inapplicable. The attempts of the Turks to force a passage were easily repulsed, and Dervish entered into negotiations, the result of which was a surrender on condition of the lives, liberty and property of the besieged being respected. The Turkish engagements were kept by the extermination of the entire family of the Voivode. The prisoners were marched off to Trebinji and thrown into the dungeon of the fortress, tied back to back, one of each couplet being killed and the survivor not released for a moment from the burden of his dead comrade.... Dervish's modus operandi during the late Albanian campaign is not generally understood. He went into Albania to enforce the conscription in which he utterly failed, though he had very slight military opposition, most of the battles he reported being purely mythical. But he was very successful in another plan of operation, which consisted in quartering himself on the Estates of the principal Beys, and extorting from them the last pound which could be squeezed out, when he moved on to the next one. He sent quantities of coin to Constantinople, but no recruits. If any prediction of the latest result of Dervish's mission may be based upon the history of those in which he was formerly engaged, we should say he would succeed with Arabi as he succeeded with the Lazis and Albanians.... Egyptians are less warlike than Albanians and Lazis, but even in Egypt the Gordian knot may have to be severed with the sword."
These are pretty sayings which, if he remembers them, should, I think, sometimes make John Morley a little ashamed of the part he was persuaded by his Foreign Office friends to play that summer as apologist of their iniquities. No wonder he has dismissed the whole Egyptian episode from his history in a few pages. Pretty doings, too, for Gladstone to explain to his non-professional or even his professional conscience! The shade of Disraeli may well have smiled!
The Sultan's new mission, nevertheless, was not, as arranged by Abdul Hamid, quite so simple a piece of villainy as our Foreign Office imagined.