The British Occupation 117
preparing an Indian mutiny and a British massacre.
Evidence for this was seen in his raising fresh battalions
in preparation for national resistance against intervention.
While his severe suppression of a rather shadowy plot
among the Circassian officers of the army, due, no doubt,
to his determination to eliminate all non-Egyptian
elements, was made the ground for a regular "atrocity "
campaign. Moreover, when the Khedive and Malet very
properly insisted on the penalties being mitigated, the
Nationalists interpreted their intervention as evidence of
their complicity in the plot (May 9). The Nationalists
thereafter decided to work for the deposition of the
Khedive and for alliance with the Sultan. The Chamber
was convoked without the Khedive's authority, and a very
confused crisis ensued. Some of the more pacifist and
progressive notables, under Sultan Pasha, President of
the Chamber, now followed Sherif into opposition to
militant nationalism, which secession, subsequently
bitterly regretted by its leaders, was represented abroad
as a complete breach between Constitutionalists and
militarists. Finally, the fears of a massacre in the foreign
colonies and the Christian communities, always easily
excited in the East, became acute in view of an agitation
headed by the local Sheikh-ul-Islain and by an incendiary
orator, Nadim.
The British Government, now renouncing all further
efforts at reconciliation with the Nationalists, began dis-
cussion with the French as to what form intervention
should take. The line of least resistance between the
personal opposition to intervention of Gladstone and
Bright and the pressure for it among their colleagues
and in the country, led to an attempt to organise an
Ottoman intervention under international sanction. The
French disliked any action at all, but agreed (May 21)