This had been effected by the French army in Tunis. It was to be repeated now exactly on the same lines by the English in Egypt. Egyptian patriotism, therefore, was not difficult to persuade that at last, with the dire alternative before them, it was a less ignoble fate to yield after a defeat than at once, at the first summons.
Arabi's voice was an important element in the decision arrived at on the 10th of July to reject the admiral's demands, but it had no need of his insistence and still less of being imposed by menace.
All the members of the general Council convened to consider the answer declared themselves equally of opinion that it was beyond the legal power of the Khedive to yield any portion of Egyptian territory to the demand of a foreign commander without striking a blow or at least without direct orders to that effect having been received from the Sultan. Nor was the Khedive himself of any other opinion.
It included many representative men besides the members of the Government—and the spectacle was witnessed of all alike pressing the view that the forts must be defended, and of the Khedive taking a specially prominent part in the patriotic talk and being supported in it by Sultan's representative, Dervish Pasha.
No Moslem present, not even Sultan Pasha, who had definitely thrown in his lot with the English, dared make the public declaration that another answer than refusal was possible to Seymour's demands.
Arabi, as the result of their unanimous decision, received from the Khedive precise orders as Minister of War and Marine to prepare the forts for action and to reply with their artillery as soon as the English fleet should have opened fire, while urgent instructions the same evening, of the 10th, were sent to the Under-Secretary of War at Cairo to proclaim throughout the provinces that war had been resolved on, and to hasten the calling in of the reserves and the formation of new battalions of recruits.