The Pashas, happy once
more in Cairo, pulling the old strings and growing fat over the
old flesh-pots, decided to give the world an unmistakable proof
of their renewed vigour. They would tolerate the insurrection in
the Sudan no longer; they would destroy the Mahdi, reduce his
followers to submission, and re-establish their own beneficent
rule over the whole country. To this end they collected together
an army of 10,000 men, and placed it under the command of Colonel
Hicks, a retired English officer. He was ordered to advance and
suppress the rebellion. In these proceedings the English
Government refused to take any part. Unable, or unwilling, to
realise that, so long as there was an English army in Egypt they
could not avoid the responsibilities of supreme power, they
declared that the domestic policy of the Egyptian administration
was no concern of theirs. It was a fatal error--an error which
they themselves, before many weeks were over, were to be forced
by the hard logic of events to admit. The Pashas, left to their
own devices, mismanaged the Hicks expedition to their hearts'
content. The miserable troops, swept together from the relics of
Arabi's disbanded army, were dispatched to Khartoum in chains.
After a month's drilling, they were pronounced to be fit to
attack
the fanatics of the Sudan.
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