might with activity and the necessary circumspection gather in the fruits of the bombardment: for it may now be regarded as proved that no great detachment would have been needed to convert the hasty retreat of the defenders of the forts into a complete route. On military, financial, and humanitarian considerations alike, the bombardment began too soon, because it began before it was possible to follow up its results advantageously; otherwise the unhappy fate of this great commercial city and of so many of its European inhabitants might have been spared. Two heavy guns burst at Alexandria, and that fact, which does not stand alone (Thunderer!), supplies a fresh admonition that it is time to break with the Woolwich system, and to adopt the breechloading system. Nevertheless, the artillery fight was an unequal one, for the Egyptian forts had, except some Krupp guns, few cannon of the heaviest calibre whose projectiles could reach the hostile fleet; and so the well-found material of the English accomplished its work of destruction almost unmolested. Many of the huge English cannon. balls, made for assailing armour-plate, penetrated right through the soft sandstone walls of the forts without breaking them down. It is remarkable that not many projectiles were fired at the Egyptian earth-works. The want of sufficient landing-troops in the fleet before Alexandria proves that there was no great well-laid plan, and it merely repeats what has been so often shown before, that England is not prepared for war. Although it is true that every war Britain conducts is in some respects unique, and the campaigns in Afghanistan, the Cape, New Zealand, &c., were all conditioned by different circumstances from a war on the Nile; although the distance of the theatre of operations, the climatic, ethnographic, and other conditions, supply features which are not to be underrated, yet it leaves a bad impression in my mind that it was not till the 25th of July, fully fourteen days after the bombardment, that General Alison with 4,000 men could in any measure guarantee the security of the town and the immediate neighbourhood, and even then only for the reason that the enemy had lost all its higher initiative, and did not understand how to profit by the favourable situation of the moment. The despatch of troops from England was only finally ended on the 9th of August, when the last transport ship sailed from Portsmouth. In the beginning of the campaign one could see no military system in those purposeless little skirmishes, those resultless reconnaissance fights, and that useless dispersion of the already, in all truth, small enough forces of England; and if the previous bombardment of Alexandria must be described as a strategical blunder, other tactical errors were now committed in abundance at the very spot before which the fleet lay at anchor. Among these I reckon which have to be laid to the charge of the fleet-the overhasty spiking of the guns in the forts of Alexandria, and the destruction of their great powder magazines. It could not then be known whether this great store of material might not be made to render good service against its former possessors. That on the morning of the 3rd of August a British outpost encampment was attacked by Egyptians and had to be timeously evacuated, is a circumstance that finds its explanation in English character; for from all time the Briton seems to have considered the irritating, rest-disturbing, and yet infinitely important watch-service as being almost beneath his dignity. Graver results than those of the 3rd of August might have been produced by the surprise, as General Havelock calls it, of the English vanguard by a more numerous body of Egyptian troops at Kassassin. It is due solely to the timely and gallant interposition of the cavalry under Sir Drury Lowe that this fight did not constitute one of the dark passages in English military history. The protection afforded by Nature to their own island home has made the nation almost feel too secure and easy-minded, but this easy-mindedness, carried to immobility, want of military alertness, and negligence in the matter of sentries and watchfulness, might cost the sacrifice of many lives in the field, especially in action with a mobile and enterprising enemy. Since the Englishman seems everywhere a man of experience, it might be thought that he would know how to turn every experience of war to his advantage. But that is not so, for the cool calculation, the higher intellectual activity by which men, in a true business-like fashion, reckon transactions according to profit and loss, or supply and demand,—all this habitual and everyday life is in flat contradiction to the rapid and incessant changes of war, and to the extreme mobility demanded by them. The purely mercantile turn of the English nation goes with them into military affairs, and is a hindrance to success in the field, for the mind of the soldier ought to be no tabula rasa that can be of no use in the war till the fortunes of the war itself first write on it their bloody characters. The soldier's power lies not so much in resistance as in attack; it consists in the elasticity of his mind, which enables him to follow every new turn of the fight, to perceive its advantages and disadvantages, and to make profitable use of them before he can learn them by experience itself. It is a fundamental principle of strategy that "the instruments of war are a capital that must be actively spent in order to increase their value." The garrison of Alexandria gave itself little concern about this maxim. It did not take into consideration that indolence is, next to moral cowardice, the greatest fault in war. An enterprising spirit and restless activity are more demanded in war than anywhere else. The light Spanish wall Arabi erected had to be pushed aside, and then-what was not done-every possible damage had to be done to the enemy, and no rest left to him, so that he would be already more or less dispirited on till the day of decision. Opportunities for such activity would not be wanting, for everywhere in war, especially in a country where sympathy with the enemy exists, the saying is true, On trouve toujours l'ennemi, quand on veut. On the 15th of August General Sir Garnet Wolseley landed, and on the 19th a great part of the English forces left Alexandria in transports on an eastward course. The feint gave itself out for Aboukir; the thrust, however, was made for the Suez Canal in its fullest extent. With a well-prepared plan kept in profound mystery, not of bombarding Aboukir, but of taking Port Said, Ismailia, and Suez, to secure the Canal and make Cairo the basis of operations, Sir Garnet Wolseley has proved his generalship, as well as by the truly admirable execution of this change of front. This cleverly-conceived manœuvre was carried out to the letter, and all with English precision and seaman-like accuracy. Thanks to the fleet, the action came for execution in a way which, considering its rapidity and the relative number of troops, would have been almost impossible with a land army. In hardly twenty-four hours over half the troops of the expedition were wheeled round at a right angle and established on the enemy's flank. Since the Commander-in-Chief permitted no peep behind the veil, the English commissariat service were, like the rest of the world, completely taken by surprise by this fait accompli, and consequently a temporary suspension of further operations was necessitated. As things stood after the taking of the Canal, the English campaign was less an affair of strategy than of provisioning; for the reciprocal influence of capacity for action and commissariat efficiency are so close in an army on active service, that a consideration of the difficulties of regular commissariat service, &c., supplies the true criterion for judging of the quite extraordinary state of some sections of the English troops. In the Wâdy Tumulat—that is, in the valley from Ismailia towards the Nile Delta-there was no possibility of requisitions, on account of the sparseness of the population, and northwards and southwards there stretched only the deserts. Now, as is well known, the rations of English soldiers are much greater than those of the Germans, French, or Spaniards, which last were once contented with a few onions, and the suspension in active operations will be the more easily understood when I add that the use of waggons was found to be impossible on the line of operations along the Sweet Water Canal, and everything had to be conveyed by beasts of burden. But the British soldier can never starve; before this enemy he succumbs in a few days. Although English troops had now landed in Egypt, there was yet no trace of the fleshpots of the country, and they were condemned to sit still till the commissariat officers explained the mystery of their inactivity-the difficulty of transport-till, in fact, it had recovered from the wounds Sir Garnet's "clever diversion" had inflicted; for their whole system of commissariat, &c., was built on calculations of Alexandria being the basis of offensive operations. The desert march from Ismailia had never been taken into account, and hence the enormous list of deceived expectations and ever newly arising difficulties. If Sir Garnet had had a railway at his disposal, then, in spite of sand-winds and bad rolling stock, the route from Ismailia to Kassassin would have afforded advantages. Precious hours and days, however, passed away; with the rising of the Nile the power of the enemy was also rising; but the block in the commissariat arrangements still kept Sir Garnet from any forward movement, although he knew well that against Orientals the rapidity of the stroke decides, and that Arabi in particular would, by every day's delay, be made stronger in troops, guns, and positions. During this enforced delay, too, the English soldiers began their struggle with the heat and the bad drinking-water, and suffered much from dysentery and diarrhoea. The fine dust of the desert, too, entered their eyes and lungs. As a matter of course, the men and horses of the Indian division held out better than the others under these unfavourable conditions. Like an army of ghosts, whose soft footsteps died in the desert sand, did the English army, in the early morning of the 13th of September, while all yet lay in Egyptian darkness, move towards the dune of Tel-el-Kebir-which in Arabic means the "hill of fate”-in order to conquer this bulwark of sand, and with it all Egypt. If Sir Garnet Wolseley seemed from the day of his landing at Ismailia till now to have taken for his device the Turkish proverb, "Haste is the devil's work, delay is God's work," he changed it at Tel-el-Kebir for its exact contrary. Just as light was giving place to day the English approached the Egyptian camp, and were received with shouts and cannon-shot from the enemy. Still silent as before, and undaunted by the enemy's fire, which passed right over their head, they moved steadily forward to the prize before them. Modern history, and this very Egyptian campaign, contains many examples of the English being surprised, and few examples of them effecting a surprise. Tel-el-Kebir makes up for all. A few hundred yards in front of the enemy's entrenchments, within the extreme range of fire, the command sounds "Halt." The strictest order is quickly restored, and forward rush the gallant, true, and flesh-nurtured, steel-cold Highlanders to the harmonious (!) notes of the bagpipes, and never once stop for breath till they reach the well-placed and well-armed works of the enemy. The parole of the day was "Do or die," for with any kind of defeat, destruction would be the lot of all. The small garrison left at Kassassin would join the retreat, if retreat came; and even if Ismailia were reached, the unfavourable position of the Suez Canal would make escape by it impossible. "Back again." "Forward" was the one possibility. There was no middle place between victory and defeat. Every soldier knew that for him it was quite the same whether the transport ships still lay at anchor in the Canal or were burnt. The troops were broken behind them. Sir Garnet, after bold calculation, like a skilful player, staked all on Telel-Kebir, and retained no other trump. Fortes fortuna adjuvat. Before the English scaled the sand-works the day was already decided, and, as a natural consequence, the material victory followed the moral. "Onward" was the word, for once in Tel-el-Kebir the war would support the war; behind these works now to be attacked stretched out the fertile Delta, and so hunger and thirst conspired with the other motives of English bravery. Old Suwarow would have laughed with delight if he could have seen the bayonet charge that morning. Wolseley's troops, in storming these entrenchments, brought the bayonet back with honour, and fully justified the confidence he placed in it. Since with the last of the prophets, fanaticism means fatalism, this battle decided the fate of Egypt as by the judgment of God. The Arabs saw Kismet, the finger of Allah, in Tel-el-Kebir. Hence the sudden resolution in the mind of the inhabitants of Egypt. The country was paralyzed. During the fight, Arabi, the Napoleon of the Fellahs, showed himself a cowardly, unenergetic commander, since he never made a single attempt to drive the enemy out of the entrenchments again with the numerous reserves at his disposal. Had he fallen bravely fighting at the head of his troops, one could not have denied him a certain sympathy, but if the conduct of the Egyptian troops was lamentable, that of their leader was more pitifully lamentable still. When we consider the inefficiency of the Egyptian troops, the imperfection of their weapons, and the incapacity and want of energy in their leader, the British victory cannot appear in very brilliant colours, and certainly cannot be regarded as the result of English preparation for war. If we analyze the Egyptian campaign, we shall find in it several factors of very unequal value. In the first place I may be permitted to ask whether the war (in spite of its short duration) was concluded in the shortest possible time? This question must be answered in the negative, notwithstanding Sir Garnet's praise of the great work done in the twenty-five days before September 20. The war began not with the laying of the basis of operations at the Suez Canal (August 20), but with the bombardment of Alexandria (July 11). Had there been landing-troops on board the English fleet at the time of the bombardment, these would, under energetic lead, have routed Arabi's undisciplined crowd, as easily as |