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.

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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. 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. There was no "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

was done at Tel-el-Kebir. Catch an Oriental firmly by the collar at the first outbreak and he yields at once. The detachment afterwards told off to guard Alexandria would have sufficed; a few thousand men would have held the town at first, as they did later. But one could not plead for a landing of troops in Alexandria, because there was no sufficient information about the state of things on both sides of the Suez Canal; for the English, in spite of the many ways and means at their command, had treated the scouts in a very stepmotherly fashion. That Arabi did not use the length of time given him by favouring fortune to make the Canal incapable of carrying traffic for a long time, and so to protect his flank, is only to be explained by his thorough incapacity for effective initiative. The taking of the Suez Canal as a basis of operations could not, in my opinion, have been done too soon. That in spite of this sin of omission things afterwards went on so smoothly, is not the effect of the operations themselves so much as of the passivity of an enemy, who, by cutting the dams of the Nile or destroying the Suez Canal, might have laid down the law to the English.

If England's military condition were more suitable to our times, Sir Beauchamp Seymour would have found no difficulty in bringing timeously from Cyprus or Malta at least as many troops as were required for the occupation of Alexandria after the bombardment ; and if the mobilization of the small army destined for the Egyptian expedition had proceeded on sound principles it would have reached its destination earlier, and not piecemeal. As to the commissariat transport service I have already spoken, but I will add here, what will be heard with surprise, that to this hour the English army has no organized transport service. The whole organization of the Army Train is a terra incognita in Great Britain, in spite of bitter experience in different wars. In the Crimea the regimental horses had to carry the baggage, and in Afghanistan thousands of hastily collected camels fell a sacrifice to this unaccustomed service and the cold climate. And it is well known that no other army carries such an amount of baggage to the field with it as the British. So in Egypt, after the landing at Ismailia the greatest confusion prevailed, and from there, for the first time, orders were sent to buy mules in the Mediterranean countries for this service. Not to speak of the mishaps. and delays that occurred in the embarkation of the troops in England, it seems scarcely credible, but it is true, that the transports which called at Gibraltar to receive there the ammunition for the war, had to put to sea without receiving it. Proud Gibraltar, first link in the chain to India, has neither arsenal nor powder magazine. How, on earth, should this army, proceeding from the richest country in the world, still want its chief necessaries? Where is the celebrated practical sense of Old England? How should it be unable in eight

weeks to fit out so small an army with the necessary equipment of work-horses, provisious, medicine, and ammunition? The answer is a simple one, and has already been indicated. England's people and army are too little one, mingle too little with one another, and know too little of one another.

Sir Garnet's change of the basis of operations from Alexandria to the Canal shows his military sagacity. He acquired thereby a secure basis for aggressive operations. And as to his following up of the victory of Tel-el-Kebir, there is but one opinion in military circles, and that is, that it was truly admirable, and worthy of being placed side by side with the pursuit of the French after Waterloo. The march of the English cavalry on Cairo and its result will form for all time one of the most splendid feats of arms. Only this march saved the charming city of the Caliphs, the pearl of the East, from the fate of Alexandria. Tel-el-Kebir fell on the morning of the 13th September, and already, on the afternoon of the 14th, Sir Drury Lowe stood before Cairo with the Cavalry Brigade. That is, after the night march of the 12th-13th to Tel-el-Kebir, and the battle of the morning, they rode 100 miles in less than two days. Truly an achievement that could only be accomplished by troops furnished with English horses and led by officers, every one of whom was a gentleman and sportsman. By luck and chance Sir Garnet's bold words were fulfilled: he had Cairo at his feet on the 15th of September.

Though the desert sand makes poor entrenchments, there was nonecessity for Arabi's troops offering so brief a resistance. Orientals are credited with skill in fighting behind entrenchments. But Arabi over-estimated the defensive value of the natural difficulties of the country, and he over-estimated the quality of his own troops, which are not for a moment to be compared with the Turks. And even after the fall of Tel-el-Kebir, infinite difficulties might have been made for the enemy by means of the numerous streams and canals in the Delta, which would have rendered the employment of cavalry impossible, and would have confined the movements of the rest of the army to existing railway lines, had Arabi been the man to fan the fanaticism of the inhabitants into a flame, or possessed the energy, along with his superior officers, to continue the resistance. Nothing of all this happened, but the commander of the strong position of Kafr-el-Dauar capitulated immediately at the head of 6,000 men; the commanders of Aboukir and Damietta followed suit; and the disbanded soldiers overran the unhappy country, plundering and murdering as they went. Cairo (with 300,000 inhabitants) surrendered unconditionally, with its citadel occupied by 10,000 well-equipped soldiers, as soon as the first British horseman appeared on the horizon. The Egyptian troops thus showed themselves still worse than in the Russo-Turkish and Abyssinian wars.