io8 Egypt
of reforms such as were subsequently realised, including
abolition of the corvee, restrictions on usury, regulation
of water rights, etc. Which programme was the work
of Mahmoud Bey Sami el Baroudi, so called after his
powder-mills. He was a typical Georgian Mameluke,
with all the artistic, literary, and political talents of his
race. He had served Ismail in somewhat dubious
capacities, and had been implicated in the murder of
the Mufettish. But his political ability and knowledge
of foreign affairs were invaluable to the Nationalists, and
his official capacity as Minister enabled him to warn the
Colonels of intrigues against their lives.
Though the Colonels had temporarily made peace
with the Khedive, yet they did not trust him, " There
was no doubt, in the mind of Arabi, that he was to be
murdered/' writes Sir E. Malet (Modern Egypt,
p. 183). Any doubts that he might have had were re-
moved when Tewfik, instead of taking the obvious course
of restoring Sh'erif and the Constitutionalists to power,
suddenly replaced Mahmoud Sami as Minister of War
by Daoud Pasha Yeghen, the Khedive's brother-in-law
and a reactionary Circassian of the most violent type.
This happened, moreover, when the foreign protectors
of the Colonel were absent, de Ring having been re-
called and Malet being on leave. So when Arabi and
Abd-el-Aal were ordered to remove their regiments from
Cairo they believed their hour was come. What there-
after passed through go-betweens is obscure, but
eventually the Colonels marched their regiments to the
Abdin Palace (September 10, 1881), sending a message
to Tewfik to meet them there, as they did not want to
go to his residence "so as not to frighten the ladies/'
The account most generally followed of the dramatic
scene in the court of the Abdin Palace is that of Colvin,