FACHODA AND AFTER
"Marchand is at Fachoda."
Day and night, night and day since the great fight at Omdurman the
telegraph had been busy sending and receiving messages of all kinds: a
wondrous medley of tidings, congratulations, lamentations, inquiries,
hopes, fears, rejoicings; almost all the emotions that stir the hearts
of men, going to and fro over the wires mingled with dry, official
reports, prosaic details of army and commissariat work, and now and
then the flowing periods of some war correspondent still at the front.
But of all the telegrams that went down to the city of the Khedives in
those days, there was none other that had a message to move, not only
the people of the town and country, but those of the whole civilised
world, such as that which went, not in simple English words, but
wrapped in the mystery of an official code, as the confirmation of the
rumour for the verification or contradiction of which all the
news-reading, news-hearing world was anxiously waiting.
"Marchand is at Fachoda."
That was the purport, though not the words of the message, and never
since the day on which the English troops had entered Cairo, just
sixteen years before, had there been in the town or country anything
like the excitement this intelligence induced. Everywhere, among all
classes and nationalities, the words "Marchand" and "Fachoda" were on
the lips of all.
It was natural enough that it should be so.
Over two years had passed away since news had been received in Cairo
that a French expedition, under the command of a certain Captain
Marchand, had started from Loango, on the West Coast of Africa, bound
for the interior of the continent. Nothing was known as to the
ultimate object or destination of this expedition, but as, from time
to time, rumours of its progress reached the outer world, the
suspicion that it was aiming at the Nile began to spread. When,
therefore, the report that there were white men at Fachoda went down
to Cairo, all Egypt jumped to the conclusion that these white men must
be Marchand and his companions.
Only those in close touch with the life of the country at the time can
form any idea of the intense eagerness with which the confirmation or
contradiction of this rumour was awaited. That eagerness arose from
the recognition of the fact that if Marchand were indeed at Fachoda,
his presence there must inevitably bring France and England face to
face for a struggle which, whether it should be carried on by force of
arms or by might of words, must decide once for all which of the two
Powers was thereafter to be pre-eminent in Egypt. The reactionary
party was jubilant. Now, at last, the French would have to assert
their rights and privileges, defend their honour and justify their
claims; and how could they do aught of these things otherwise than by
maintaining the position the gallant Marchand had gained? And how
could they maintain that position without driving the English out of
Egypt? And if some of the party were less confident than others in
their anticipations of the answer that France would give to these
questions, they were not less hopeful of the coming early discomfiture
of the hated English. So hopeful were they, indeed, that the veriest
stranger might have picked them out in the streets by the joyous air
they wore.
By the Englishmen in Egypt, as by those elsewhere, the news was
received as news of the greatest gravity. It was impossible to ignore
the fact that the position was one of the most serious nature, and one
from the difficulties of which there was no possible escape except by
war or a happy and scarcely to be hoped for combination of diplomatic
skill and generous consideration on the part of each of the two
rivals. For Marchand himself the greatest sympathy was felt. His
presence at Fachoda was the practical realisation of a daring and
almost hopeless ambition, proving that he possessed in the highest
degree those lofty qualities of the best of his race, the courage,
vigour, enterprise, that in spite of all obstacles have always kept
alive among us something of a spirit of comradeship for our oft-time
ally and oft-time foe. We laugh, now and then, freely enough at our
neighbour across the Channel, but we respect him all the same, for no
one knows better--nor, indeed, so well as we--the sterling qualities
of his race. And Marchand's feat was one that placed him in the
foremost rank of men of fearless heart and daring action, and entitled
him to a place beside our own Stanley as a dashing and heroic pioneer.
Gladly, however, as we should have seen Marchand reap the full fruit
of his long, toilsome, and perilous journey, we could not, with
justice to either Egypt or ourselves, yield it to him. Our aims were
alike. His magnificent march through the unknown dangers of some of
the wildest parts of Africa, the campaign we had just brought to a
successful and triumphant conclusion, were alike efforts to win the
same prize--the possession of the Egyptian Soudan. We could not both
have it. We could not share it. It must go to either France or Egypt.
One or the other must surrender the prize so nearly within its
unquestioned grasp. We could only be generous to Marchand and France
by being disloyal to Egypt and ourselves.
There is no need to repeat here the story of the negotiations that
followed. That belongs, indeed, not to the story of Egypt, but to that
of England or France; for Egypt by itself could no more have contended
with France for the possession of the Soudan than it could have
regained it without the aid of England. The question, therefore, was
one between England and France; and, happily for all, the mutual
goodwill of the two nations so tempered their discussion of the
interests and claims involved, that war was averted and the French
consented to withdraw from the Soudan. But the course of the
negotiations was necessarily slow. It demanded little less than heroic
fortitude on the part of the French Government to give a decision that
it well knew could not fail to be extremely unpopular, and some weeks
therefore elapsed before the decision could be announced and the order
issued to Marchand for his retirement from Fachoda.
Meanwhile it was quite natural that to the amateur politicians of
Egypt the problem should seem to be unsolvable save by an appeal to
the sword. To the educated Egyptian especially this appeared the one
possible solution. Unable to comprehend rivalry without enmity, or to
see in an open opponent anything but a foe to be crushed at any cost,
they never dreamed that England and France could both approach the
subject in a conciliatory spirit, and it is a striking illustration of
the attitude they took that they discussed the question solely and
entirely as one between England and France. Scarcely anywhere was a
word to be heard from the natives as to the claims of their own
country, or the least recognition of the fact that it was Egyptian and
not English interests that were at stake. The truth is that at the
moment the only question in which the Egyptian took the smallest
interest was the one whether England or France was in the future to
control the destiny of the country. There was much talk of liberty, of
independence, but it is doubtful if even the most sincere looked upon
all this as anything more than a phase of the anti-English agitation.
Assuredly there was not a man in the country who did not know and
believe, however reluctant he might be to admit it, that Egypt had,
and could have, no other future before it than one dominated by some
foreign Power or Powers. That the independence they talked of, and
that of which they were as unceasingly dreaming, were very different
things no one more thoroughly recognised than they themselves. And
though the "Patriot" politicians never said so, and probably never
realised that it was so, the one real objection they had to the
presence of the English in the country was the fact that they
themselves were out of power and hopelessly incapable of attaining it
so long as English influence should prevail. This was particularly the
case of the so-called "Turkish" party, which was in much the same
position as that of the Protestant Ascendancy party in Ireland after
the Union. Unlike that party, however, they had one hope--that the
rivalry of the European Powers might afford them an opportunity of
regaining something, if not all, of their lost prestige and power;
and, unlike that party, being bound by no ties of loyalty or blood to
the Power that wounded their susceptibilities, or to the people of the
country, they cared for nothing but the gratification of their own
ambitions. Towards the English, therefore, their feeling was one of
invincible hatred; towards Egypt and the Egyptians of utter
indifference; towards France one of hopefulness, such as the Irish
insurgents had turned towards the same country while yet Bonaparte was
on his way to Alexandria. Fachoda was consequently to these what
Killala had been to the Irish, and Marchand another Humbert. The
parallel is completed by the entire lack of support the two daring
adventurers met with, and by the absolute frustration of all their
hopes. It is a curious coincidence that of the two events thus
compared, the former, which cannot now be regarded as anything but the
knell of French influence in Egypt, should find its parallel in an
event taking place in the very year and month in which Bonaparte had
struck the first blow in favour of French ascendancy in the land of
the Pharaohs. Had the members of the anti-English party been skilled
in history, the parallel might have seemed to them an omen of
disaster. As it was they had but the single fact of Marchand's
presence at Fachoda to consider, and most earnestly they prayed that
it might prove the downfall of English influence in Egypt.
How, apart from the classes I have spoken of, the great body of the
people thought was not so evident, but it is none the less certain.
This vast, patient mass of humanity had for years been hearing, and
was still daily hearing, that the English had no other object and no
other ambition in Egypt than that of self-aggrandisement. They were
taught by the Press, the Pachas, and the Ulema that they were being
despoiled and downtrodden by the hated feringhee, but if they listened
silently and apparently approvingly, they could not but feel that it
was not so. Of what the English were doing or not doing they really
knew almost nothing. Everything that was done was done in the name of
the Khedive. When it was good, he, and he alone, got the credit; when
it was bad, or such as they could be persuaded to believe was bad, it
was invariably attributed to the "tyranny" of Lord Cromer and the
"malice" of the English. All that the peasantry and the people
generally knew for certain was that on the whole they were satisfied
with things as they were. The English might be ruining the country and
enslaving the people, but each man felt and knew that whatever they
were doing, he himself, the individual, was personally better off than
he had ever been before. Almost all the evils that had most oppressed
him, the corvee, the korbag, the endless fear of the tax-collector, of
the officials of all grades, and the perpetual uncertainty as to what
new trials another day might bring him--all these and other evils had
either disappeared or had been mitigated in a degree, of which he was
fully conscious. He could not understand it, and felt indeed as the
man who fell among thieves must have felt towards the Good Samaritan.
The one he had been taught to despise and revile as an incarnation of
evil had come to him as a benefactor. And against the solid and
invaluable advantages that the people were conscious of there was no
set-off save their rooted aversion to non-Moslem control, while this
again was counterbalanced by the fear that any further change might,
and most probably would, be a change for the worse. But ages of
oppression have engrafted upon these people a habit of the utmost
reticence in the expression of their thoughts--a reticence so deep, so
perfect, that no man among them ever wholly unburthens his soul to
another, not to his nearest kin, much less to a stranger. Whatever
thoughts they uttered were consequently but the echoes of those which,
so far as they could judge, were most likely to keep them in favour
with those immediately around and above them. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the English in Egypt could learn nothing of their real
thoughts or that they regarded the people as ungrateful and
unappreciative. But if, of necessity, the English failed, as in the
East they ever do fail, to understand the people, those who were
working in the districts in close daily touch with them could see by
incontestable and constantly growing signs that they were developing
an absolute confidence in the Englishman's love of justice and in the
reality of his desire to benefit the people, and clear-minded
Anglo-Egyptians were beginning to see, as the wisest Anglo-Indians
have long since seen in India, that these two characteristics are the
battalions that best buttress the might of England in the East, for
from Cairo to Calcutta the peoples sum up what they regard as the
typical Englishman almost in the words of the Eton boy--"He is a
beast, but he is a just beast."
Nor was it only among the peasantry and those classes of the people
who derived most benefit from the presence of the English that this
feeling prevailed. Of all classes in the country the "effendis," the
small officials, were those who gained the least and suffered the most
from the English occupation. From petty tyrants they had been
degraded to mere quill-drivers. Their service no longer opened to
them vistas of possible elevation to high places, no longer brought
them the servile submission they had in the old days been able to
extort from the people in general. They could no longer, more or less
openly, enhance their incomes by selling their favour or by other
means that had formerly made their posts valuable, nor could they
practise or benefit from the nepotism and favouritism that had been
their prerogative. They, of all classes, had in the past been the
least prejudicially affected by the rise or fall of Governments or
rulers, and suffered least of all from the tyranny and cruelty that
wrecked the lives of others, and they, of all, gained almost
absolutely nothing from the benefits that under the English were
already enriching the classes above and below them. But of all classes
of the people probably none has been more misunderstood or more
misjudged than this. Amidst all that has been written of Egypt and its
peoples nowhere do we once find a suggestion that this class has ever
been anything but a greedy, grasping, servile pack of bribe-seeking,
torture-using, petty tyrants. That such a description was too often
and too generally a just one cannot be denied, but we must remember
the circumstances in which these men were placed. For the most part
younger and more or less penniless sons of fathers too poor or too
uninfluential to give them a fair position, they were invariably
crippled at their start in life by want of money and their complete
dependence upon the favour of their immediate superiors. The first
lesson taught them in their new career was to bend to the _esprit de
corps_ which ruled the official life of those days, that is to say, to
recognise the value of their positions as these were seen and valued
by their fellows, to look upon the superior officials as patterns to
be followed and imitated without question in all things. What wonder
if the young official bowed to the inevitable, and learning as his
second lesson that taught by Iago, "Put money in thy purse," and
knowing that resistance or remonstrance could only result in his being
thrown aside and plunged in want and misery, yielded, whatever
protests his better nature may have been inclined to make, and so
became such as he has so often been painted? And as time went on, with
every step he made onward in his official career he was plunged deeper
and deeper in the mire of the necessity that swamped every good or
honest aspiration he might have had, for as he progressed step by step
so the claims upon his purse rose steadily and the demands upon his
services increased. It was then, and still is, the custom of the
impecunious Egyptian to settle himself as a dependent upon some of his
well-to-do relations, and thus the rising official had, in general,
not only his own family to support but a troop of indigent relatives
of his own and of his wife or wives' families; and thus as he
advanced, if his increased influence enabled him to gain a larger
income from bribes and commissions, it doubled and redoubled his
expenses and compelled him, in his turn, to pay larger bribes. What
result could such a system bring about other than the corruption of
the whole service? Yet, atrocious as were the consequences, those who
have criticised this class have been unjust to them. It has invariably
been forgotten that the abominable corruption that existed in Egypt up
to the purification of the Government services by the English was not
only not of necessity the result of the true character of the people,
but that it might have existed in absolute opposition to that
character. None the less, I am convinced that this is the truth, and
that the fact that it is so has been one of the most potent influences
in facilitating the work of reform that has been and is being
accomplished, for as soon as this much-abused class had discovered
that under English control they might look for a fair wage according
to their rank, feel secure in the possession of their pay, and free
from the exactions and oppressions of their superiors, they began to
settle down contentedly under the new conditions, and accepted it as a
gain that they were no longer subject to the old necessity for
acquiring wealth as rapidly as possible that they might satisfy the
greed of those above by despoiling those beneath them. This release
from the never-ceasing cares and worries that were inseparable from
the old system was perhaps the one direction in which the small
officials felt themselves benefited by the English occupation. In the
main, therefore, they were content with their lot, and had no desire
for any change. The continuance of the occupation would ensure them
practically all the conditions that made life most enjoyable to them
and gave them all the liberty they cared for, and they could look for
no improvement as a likely or even possible result of any alteration.
They knew, too, how perfectly futile it was to hope that Egypt would
ever be able to free herself from European or Christian interference,
and though they, not less earnestly nor less sincerely than any of
their countrymen, deplored the fact, they had the sense to see that
whether that interference was exercised through a visible occupation
of the country, or simply through diplomatic channels, the eventual
result must be the same, so far as Moslem or Egyptian independence was
concerned.
Among the European colonists the presence of Marchand at Fachoda
produced a ferment compared to which the deep but publicly restrained
excitement of the Egyptians was indifference. With the single
exception of the Greeks, their sympathies were wholly anti-English, so
much so indeed that it might be said that among them the chief gauge
of a man's patriotism was the measure of his professed hatred to
England and everything English. But, as with the Egyptians, the
individuals of each race were, perhaps as often as not, moved rather
by self-interest and the Pickwickian desire to shout with the crowd
that is a characteristic of the Latin races, than by any real
hostility, and thus, though apparently solidly united in their enmity
to England, they, like the Egyptians, were in reality divided into two
camps, the one prepared to welcome almost any change and the other
quite content with the occupation.
It was not, therefore, until Marchand had actually abandoned Fachoda
that the public regained its normal tranquillity. In the interval he
had passed through Cairo on his way to Paris, but though, as was but
just, he had a cordial reception, there was no demonstration of public
feeling. It was then an almost foregone conclusion that the French
Government would withdraw whatever claim it could have made, yet even
when Marchand had returned to the Soudan to put the final stamp of
failure on his brilliant success by hauling down the flag it had cost
such heroism to hoist, even then there were in Egypt some who were
still hopeful that, in spite of all, the wheel of fate might yet take
another turn. Fortunately the decision that the French should withdraw
by pushing on to the Red Sea avoided all risk of further incident, and
so with the news of the departure of the expedition from Fachoda the
last hope of the anti-English party left it and the public, Egyptian
and European, quietly and silently accepted the event as the seal of
British supremacy in Egypt.
Thus once more the irony of fate made sport of the strenuous efforts
of England's foes, and rendered their hostility contributory to her
strength. All that it could do to hamper and hinder the reconquest of
the Soudan had been done by the anti-English party with no greater
result than to strengthen, if not altogether to establish, England's
claim to an absolute share in the possession of the country. So
Marchand struggled onward on his magnificent march and succeeded in
his daring ambition to plant the tricolour on the banks of the Nile
only, in the end, to give English influence and authority in Egypt the
unchallenged supremacy England had not sought and that it had been his
chief aim to render for ever unattainable by her.
It is scarcely possible to overrate the service that it was thus the
destiny of the gallant captain so unintentionally to confer on England
and Egypt alike. From the commencement of the occupation down to his
departure from Fachoda, the most powerful influence for evil in Egypt
was the uncertainty that hung around the position of the English in
the country. With his retirement that uncertainty came to an end.
Thenceforth the people knew that they had to deal with England and
with England only, and the effect was immediate. Everywhere and in all
things the English were accepted as the masters, not only for the day
but for the future. That they should now evacuate the country was a
proposition at which the Egyptians and colonists alike scoffed, and
both alike abandoned as futile whatever hopes they may have had for
the realisation of some other solution of the problem. From that day
English influence continued to grow steadily, and almost all the
difficulties that had restricted the efficiency of the Anglo-Egyptian
administration steadily diminished. The Government of the country
ceased to be a house divided against itself, and the endless friction
that for many years had persistently hindered the efforts of Lord
Cromer and his colleagues for the advancement of the country's
interests was at an end.
That which of all things had been most needed to facilitate the
regeneration of the country that England had undertaken had been the
appreciative co-operation of the people. The vast benefits the
occupation had conferred and the reconquest of the Soudan had been all
insufficient to gain this co-operation, and had it not been for the
Fachoda incident forcing a solution of the problem of English
supremacy in Egypt it would still be lacking. As it is, however
defective the assistance now accorded may be, its deficiencies are due
to causes not arising from either hostility to English influence or
the fear of its cessation.
From the landing of Bonaparte in July, 1798, down to the departure of
the French expedition from Fachoda in December, 1898, just five months
more than a century later, no single occurrence in the history of the
country has had such deep and, as it will assuredly prove, lasting
influence as this latter, for it wrought in a day what all the might
of England and the devoted labours of the English in Egypt could never
have accomplished. The English occupation is and will for ever remain
the chief landmark in the story of modern Egypt. The happy conclusion
of the Fachoda incident was not only its ratification as such but the
birthday of a new era. Since that day the Egyptians have had new hopes
and ambitions. All their aspirations have been turned into new
channels. No longer harassed by hesitating doubts as to which of two
courses it were wiser for them to take, they now enjoy a degree of
political and social liberty such as was never before within their
reach, for, no longer dependent upon the uncertain favour of despotic
masters, the Egyptian of to-day is as free to pursue his individual
course as any native of the freest countries of the world. As,
therefore, the landing of Bonaparte in 1798 was the early dawn of the
new era in the history of the people, the evacuation of Fachoda has
been its sunburst.