The Birth of Modern Egypt 47
classes had to be filled by conscription with weeping
youths torn from indignant parents, and what happened
to them when they left school is not clear. Possibly, how-
ever, the swifter pace of political development in Egypt,
as compared with that of other African provinces of the
Ottoman Empire, may be in part attributed to these
educational experiments of Mehemet Ali.
It was, however, by way of the army that this despotic
revolution did its best service for the development of an
Egyptian nation. Egypt had remained throughout the
Middle Ages a mere province because the Egyptian never
had fought, nor, in his own or anyone else's opinion,
ever would fight. Yet the first essential for the establish-
ment of the new regime was an army on the European
model. This Mehemet Ali, at first, set about fashioning
out of the most military material at hand, his own
Albanians. But drilling Albanian bashi-bozouks proved a
different matter from disciplining Coptic schoolboys. The
attempt to form these mercenaries into regular troops
ended as disastrously as did the first attempt of
Mahmoud II. at enlisting Janissaries. Mehemet Ali only
mastered the mutiny by cutting the dykes and flooding
Cairo. Having dispersed the Albanians in country garri-
sons and decimated them in desert campaigns, he then
tried again, after diluting them with survivors of the
Mamelukes. From these some regular regiments were
formed; but even the presence in the ranks of the
Pasha's sons as privates did not prevent bullets from
constantly whistling past the ears of the French drill
sergeants. As a possible substitute Sudanese were
swept up in thousands by Ibrahim and shut up in bar-
racks, whereupon they simply died like caged wild
animals. Of twenty thousand, only three thousand found
life in the army worth living. Then only did Mehemet