90 Egypt
businesslike. But the French did not agree. They con-
sidered that Ismail still had large secret hoards, as he
undoubtedly had. Their representatives were more under
the thumb of their Government, and their Government
much under the heel of Egypt's creditors. The position
at the Congress of Berlin, especially after the divulgence
of Disraeli's secret Cyprus Convention, was such as to"
make opposition to French policy in Egypt impolitic.
Nothing could be done, therefore, but somehow to raise
revenue and reduce expenditure. And the only possibility
of this kind was to tax the Egyptian upper class and turn
off the army officers.
It would have been difficult for Ismail to support such
measures at the dictation of foreign officials dressed up
as Egyptian Ministers. But he had no intention of doing
so. He had quite enough Oriental statecraft to " let pigs
at sea cut their own throats." He at once began
intriguing with the Notables against any increase of the
ushuri tax and encouraging the officers to resist dis-
missals. Thus some two thousand officers under notice
were invited by the Minister of War to Cairo on a flimsy
pretext. These, with five hundred other similarly afflicted
comrades in Cairo, made a mob of malcontents more than
a match for the Cairo garrison. When these angry men,
mostly Circassians and similar spadassins, came to him
demanding their arrears of pay, Ismail referred them to
"his Ministers/' with the result that Nubar was
mobbed, and Wilson, coming to his rescue, both were
maltreated and made prisoners. Ismail then came down
and dramatically extricated them, both troops and
mutineers being wounded in the scuffle (February 18,
1879)-
Next day Ismail demanded the restoration of his
governmental authority and the dismissal of Nubar '' so