ight to intervene than the British Government had in virtue of
its close connection with the Khedive. As a matter of fact, both Powers
lacked an authoritative mandate and acted in accordance with their own
interests. It is therefore futile to appeal to law, as M. de
Freycinet has done.

[Footnote 421: _Ibid_. p. 18.]

It remained to see which of the two would act the more efficiently. M.
Marchand states that his plan of action was approved by the French
Minister for the Colonies, M. Berthelot, on November 16, 1895; but
little came of it until the news of the preparations for the
Anglo-Egyptian Expedition reached Paris. It would be interesting to hear
what Lord Rosebery and Sir Edward Grey would say to this. For the
present we may affirm with some confidence that the tidings of the
Franco-Congolese compact of August 1894 and of expeditions sent under
Monteil and Liotard towards the Nile basin must have furnished the real
motive for the despatch of the Sirdar's army on the expedition to
Dongola. That event in its turn aroused angry feelings at Paris, and M.
Berthelot went so far as to inform Lord Salisbury that he would not hold
himself responsible for events that might occur if the expedition up the
Nile were persisted in. After giving this brusque but useful warning of
the importance which France attached to the Upper Nile, M. Berthelot
quitted office, and M. Bourgeois, the Prime Minister, took the portfolio
for foreign affairs. He pushed on the Marchand expedition; so also did
his successor, M. Hanotaux, in the Meline Cabinet which speedily
supervened.

Marchand left Marseilles on June 25, 1896, to join his expeditionary
force, then being prepared in the French Congo. It is needless to detail
the struggles of the gallant band. After battling for two years with the
rapids, swamps, forests, and mountains of Eastern Congoland and the
Bahr-el-Ghazal, he brought his flotilla down to the White Nile, thence
up its course to Fashoda, where he hoisted the tricolour (July 12,
1898). His men strengthened the old Egyptian fort, and beat off an
attack of the Dervishes.

Nevertheless they had only half succeeded, for they relied on the
approach of a French Mission from the east by way of Abyssinia. A Prince
of the House of Orleans had been working hard to this end, but owing to
the hostility of the natives of Southern Abyssinia that expedition had
to fall back on Kukong. A Russian officer, Colonel Artomoroff, had
struggled on d