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nydus/Secret History of the English Occupation of EgyptPublic
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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XVI THE CAMPAIGN OF TEL-EL-KEBIR

him in his work, and this under the able presidency of Yakub Pasha Sami, the Under-Secretary for War, continued throughout the campaign to organize the details of recruitment, provisioning and the supply of military material. Similarly, with regard to the civil administration of the country it was resolved that in the absence of Ragheb and the other Ministers at Alexandria—for these had been detained more or less under compulsion by the Khedive and his English guard—the business of government should be carried on by the separate departments without any change in the ordinary routine, nor did this lead to the smallest confusion, seeing that the Ragheb Ministry had never been a working one. Indeed, the Administration gained considerable in efficiency, and it may safely be said that no Egyptian Government was ever better managed in its details than was the National one during the campaign. The Ministry of the Interior fell to the charge of the Under-Secretary, Ibrahim Bey Fawsi, and the police, in its most important section, to Ismaïl Eff. Jawdat, both very able administrators, who, in spite of the excitement of the time, succeeded in maintaining perfect order throughout the country. Two or three Circassian Mudirs, who had sought to ingratiate themselves with Tewfik by imitating Omar Lutfi and inciting to disturbance, were by them arrested and detained in prison to the end of the war, and after this no further rioting occurred. Such Europeans as remained at Cairo were carefully protected, and all who wished to leave were forwarded under police escort to Port Saïd.

Nothing could have been more untrue than Lord Dufferin's repeated assertions at the Conference at Constantinople that massacres of Christians were occurring daily in Egypt. And so, too, with the other departments. There was no interruption in the regular gathering in of the taxes, or in the regular distribution of civil expenditure. At the end of the war the Treasury showed a perfectly clean balance, without the smallest deficit, when its coffers were delivered over to the Khedive's officers after Tel-el-Kebir. No smallest sum had been extracted and the books were in their usual order. The ordinary course of justice had been

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