The British Occupation 121
Secret History, pp. 497-534). The culprit is now known
to have been Omar Lutfy, a Circassian who was Governor
of Alexandria. He had been offered by the Khedive
Arabi's place as Secretary of War just before the
ultimatum, a post which he later obtained and lost (May,
1883) when the case against him was published by Lord
Randolph Churchill. Certain it is that the riot could
serve neither Abdul Hamid nor Arabi; but could, and
did, save Tewfik, whose only hope now lay in immediate
foreign intervention.
Arabi and his advisers had not recognised that their
series of sensational successes over European diplomacy
was forcing the British to armed action. They believed
that Gladstone and Bright would be able to uphold their
political principles in spite of interventionist influences
in the Liberal Government, and that British financial
interests would prevent a war which, they were ingenuous
enough to believe, would, under international law, cancel
foreign pecuniary claims over Egypt. They could not,
however, fail to realise that the Alexandria riots had
created a crisis that called for concessions. So a peace
was patched up with Tewfik; and Mahmoud Sami, as
Secretary of War, gave way to Raghib, an anti-militarist.
Meantime, the Powers in the Conference at Constanti-
nople were making a last effort to arrange armed action
by the Sultan. This Conference met (June 23), and
eventually (July 6) invited the Sultan to send troops.
But at Alexandria matters had come to that point at
which guns go off by themselves. Arabi's work on the
batteries had been stopped by the Sultan. It was again
resumed, the Alexandria garrison was reinforced, and the
Nationalists called a levee en masse. The British admiral,
Sir Beauchamp Seymour, was then ordered {< to destroy
the earthworks and silence the batteries if they opened