THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP. 277 would be forfeited. The pressure was too strong to be resisted, and before night had arrived Arabi was reinstated in office. Great excuse must be made for the vacillation displayed on this and other occasions by Tewfik Pasha. In the early days of the mutiny, he might have crushed it by appealing to the popular dread still attaching to the name of the Effendina. But after this dread had been dispelled, and the army had gone over to the side of the mutineers,") he had nothing to fall back upon. The Consuls-3 General were always calling on him to assert himself, but they could only offer him the benefit of their moral support. It is all very well to say he ought to have placed himself at the head of his troops.

But when you know beforehand your troops will decline to follow you into action, the advantage of placing yourself at their head is by no means obvious.

For a few days there was an interval of comparative tranquillity, but the air was still full of reports of impending attacks on the Christian population of Egypt. Even when these reports were most rife, the British Admiral declined to take any steps for the protection of his fellow-countrymen in Egypt, except stating his readiness to protect the embarkation of Europeans who might wish to take refuge on the British ships lying in the harbour of Alexandria.

As a last resource, Tewfik Pasha adopted a course' which must have been bitterly distasteful to him, as a descendant of Mahomet Ali, and besought the Sultan to send an Imperial Commissioner to Egypt to assist