army]
EGYPT
began as an ardent soldier, but took to agriculture, and at his death (1863) 3000 men only were retained under arms. Ismail, the next Khedive, immediately added 27,000 men, and in seven years was able to put 100,000 men, well equipped, in the field. He sent 10,000 men to help suppress a rebellion in Crete, and conquered the greater part of the (Nile) Sudan; but an expedition of 11,000 men, sent to Abyssinia under Prince Hassan and Eateb Pasha, well equipped with guns and all essentials, was, in two successive disasters (1875 and 1876), practically destroyed. The education of Egyptians in Continental cities had not produced the class of leaders who led the fellaheen to victory at Konia. Ismail’s exactions from the peasantry in 1880-81 reacted . on the army, causing discontent; and when he was tottering on the throne he instigated military demonstrations against his own Government, and, by thus sapping the foundations of discipline, assisted Arabi’s revolution; the result was the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the British occupation, and the disbandment of the army, which at that time in Egypt Proper consisted of 18,000 men. Ismail had 500 field-guns, 200 Armstrong cannon, and factories of warlike and other stores. These latter were conducted extravagantly and badly administered. In January 1883, Major-General Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C., was given £200,000, and directed to spend it in raising a fellaheen force of 6000 men for the defence of Egypt. He was assisted at first by 26 officers, amongst whom were two who later became successively Sirdars— Colonel F. Grenfell, commanding a brigade, and Lieutenant H. Kitchener, K.E., second in command of the cavalry regiment. There were four batteries, eight battalions, and a camel company. Each battalion of the 1st Infantry Brigade had three British mounted officers, Turks izatum! an<l Egyptians holding the corresponding positions in the battalions of the 2nd Brigade. The Sirdar selected these native officers from those of Arabi’s followers who had been the least prominent in the recent mutiny; non-commissioned officers who had been drillinstructors in the old army were recalled temporarily, but all the privates were conscripted from their villages. The earlier merciless practice had been in theory abolished by a decree based on the German system, published in 1880; but owing to defective organization, and internal disturbances induced by Khedive Ismail’s follies, the law had not been applied, and the 6000 recruits collected at Cairo in January 1883 represented the biggest and strongest peasants who could not purchase exemption by bribing the officials concerned. The difficulties experienced in applying the 1880 decree were great, but the perseverance of British officers gave the oppressed peasants, in 1885, an equitable law, since improved and altered by the Decree of 1900. Financial requirements have in more recent years caused the Sirdar to allow exemption by paying (Badalia) £20 before ballot. The Recruiting Superintending Committee, travelling through districts, supervise every ballot, and work under stringent rules which render systematic bribery difficult. The recruits who draw unlucky numbers at 19 years of age are seldom called up till they are 23, when they are summoned by name and escorted by a policeman to Cairo. To prevent substitution on the journey each recruit wears a string girdle sealed in lead. The periods of service are: with the colours, 5 years ; in the reserve, 5 years, during which time they may be called up for police service, manoeuvres, &c. The pay is 30 piastres (one piastre being worth 2^d.) per month for all services, and the liberal scale of rations of meat, bread, and rice remained as before in theory, but in practice the value of pay and food received was greatly enhanced. So also with the pension and promotion regulations. They
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were sufficiently liberal on paper, but had never been carried into effect. The efforts of 48 American officers, who under General Stone zealously served Ismail, had entirely failed to overcome Egyptian venality and intrigue ; and in spite of the military schools, with a comprehensive syllabus, the only perceptible difference between the Egyptian officer and private in 1879 consisted, according to one of the Americans, in the fact that the first was the product of the harem, and the second of the field. Marshal Marmont, writing in 1839, mentions the capacity of the Egyptians for endurance; and it was tested in 1883, especially in the 2nd Brigade, since its officers (Turks and Egyptians), anxious to excel as drill-masters, worked their men not only from morn till eve, but also by lamplight in the corridors of the barracks. On the 31st March 1883, ten weeks after the arrival of the first draft of recruits, about 5600 men went through the ceremonial parade movements as practised by the British Guards in Hyde Park, with unusual precision. The British officers had acquired the words of command in Turkish, as used in the old army, an attempt to substitute Egyptian words having failed owing to lack of crisp, sharpsounding words. As the Egyptian brigadier, who had spent some years in Berlin, spoke German fluently, and it was also understood by the senior British officers, that language was used for all commands given by the Sirdar on that special parade. The British drill-book, minus about one-third of the least serviceable movements, was translated by an English officer, and by 1900 every necessary British official book had been published in English and Arabic, except the new Recruiting Law (1885) and a manufacturing manual, for which French and Arabic editions are in use. The discipline of the old army had been regulated by a translation of part of the Code Napoleon, which was inadequate for an Eastern army, and the Sirdar replaced it by the Army Act of 1881, slightly modified and printed in Arabic. The task undertaken by the small body of British officers was difficult. There was not one point in the former administration of the army acceptable to English gentlemen. That there had been no adequate auxiliary departments, without which an army cannot move or be efficient, was comparatively a minor difficulty. To succeed, it was essential that the fellah should be taught that discipline might be strict without being oppressive, that pay and rations would be fairly distributed, that brutal usage by superiors would be checked, that complaints would be thoroughly investigated, and impartial justice meted out to soldiers of all ranks. An epidemic of cholera in the summer of 1883 gave the British officers their first chance of acquiring the esteem and confidence of their men, and the opportunity was nobly utilized. While the patient fellah, resigned to the decrees of the Almighty, saw the ruling Egyptian class hurry away from Cairo, he saw also those of his comrades who were stricken tenderly nursed, soothed in death’s struggles, and in many cases actually washed, laid out, and interred by their new self-sacrificing and determined masters. The regeneration of the fellaheen army dates from that epidemic. When the Egyptian Army of the Delta was dispersed at Tel-el-Kebir, the Khedive had 40,000 troops in the Sudan, scattered from Massawa on the Red Sea to 1200 miles towards the west, and from Wadi Haifa, 1500 miles southward to Wadelai, near Albert Nyanza. These were composed of Turks, Albanians, Circassians, and some Sudanese. Ten thousand fellaheen, collected in March 1883, mainly from Arabi’s former forces, set out from Duem, 100 miles south of Khartum, in September 1883, under Hicks Pasha, a dauntless retired Indian Army officer, to vanquish the Mahdi. They disappeared in the deserts
