8 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Cairo before daybreak, presented himself to the regi-

ments which had not overtly joined the conspirators, and induced them to march under his orders and sur-

round the citadel. The Mamelukes were caught unpre-

pared and unarmed. Orders were immediately given

to shoot them down, and close upon five hundred of their leading men were then and there done to death. Immediately upon the restoration of order in

Cairo, messengers were sent to the governors of the

; principal towns conveying the news of the massacre,

' and carrying commands to seize and kill all the

Mamelukes within reach. Nowhere is success obeyed more promptly or more unflinchingly than in the

East; and within a few days the Mamelukes, as a body, had ceased to exist.

The whole story of the rising and the massacre

is so imperfectly recorded, so mixed up with legend, so distorted one way or another by popular pas-

sions and prejudices, that it is impossible to feel any certainty as to the exact course of events, though, till a comparatively recent date, there must have been many men still living in Egypt who could

/ remember the fatal Ides of March, 1811, when the I j Mamelukes were swept off the face of the earth,

and when Mahomet Ali was enabled to carry out

a deed of violence, similar in character to the aspira-

tion ascribed to Caligula, to the effect that he wished all Rome had only one neck, so that he might cut it off by a single stroke. But as to the details of this coup dUtat, there is any amount of discrepancy.