brought Egypt to anarchy, England invited France and Italy
to act with her in putting the rebellion down. France and Italy declined.
England still urged the Porte to send troops, insisting only on such
conditions as were indispensable to secure united action. The Porte again
held back, and before it carried out an agreement to sign a military
convention, events had moved too fast.(52) Thus, by the Sultan's
perversities and the fluctuations of purpose and temper in France,
single-handed intervention was inexorably forced upon the one Power that
had most consistently striven to avoid it. Bismarck, it is true, judged
that Arabi was now a power to be reckoned with; the Austrian
representatives used language of like purport; and Freycinet also inclined
to coming to terms with Arabi. The British cabinet had persuaded
themselves that the overthrow of the military (M32) party was an
indispensable precedent to any return of decently stable order.

The situation in Egypt can hardly be adequately understood without a
multiplicity of details for which this is no place, and in such cases
details are everything. Diplomacy in which the Sultan of Turkey plays a
part is always complicated, and at the Conference of Constantinople the
cobwebs were spun and brushed away and spun again with diligence
unexampled. The proceedings were without any effect upon the course of
events. The Egyptian revolution ran its course. The moral support of
Turkish commissioners sent by the Sultan to Cairo came to nothing, and the
moral influence of the Anglo-French squadron at Alexandria came to
nothing, and in truth it did more harm than good. The Khedive's throne and
life were alike in danger. The Christians flocked down from the interior.
The residents in Alexandria were trembling for their lives. At the end of
May our agent at Cairo informed his government that a collision between
Moslems and Christians might occur at any moment. On June 11 some fifty
Europeans were massacred by a riotous mob at Alexandria. The British
consul was severely wounded, and some sailors of the French fleet were
among the killed. Greeks and Jews were murdered in other places. At last a
decisive blow was struck. For several weeks the Egyptians had been at work
upon the fortifications of Alexandria, and upon batteries commanding the
British fleet. The British admiral was instructed (July 3) that if this
operation were continued, he should immediately destroy the earthworks and
sile