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“That ‘Horrible’ Pasha”
Gen. Sir Garnet Wolseley, G.G.B, G.C.M.G., "I say, I think its inconsistent with traditions for an officer and a gentleman in the Queen's Army to break his word, you know. I promised to dine in London on the 15th of September, you know. You can't be SO horrible as to keep me HERE fooling, you know."
Throughout
much of the nineteenth century, the British and French had competed for control of Egypt. In
the 1870s, after years of suffering from a poor economy, Egypt's massive
debt problem became the focus of international concern. In 1876, a
commission of European powers placed Egypt's finances under the dual
control of Britain and France. In June 1882, Egyptian nationalists
led by Urabi Pasha (pictured on the left), angered by the European
intervention, rioted in Alexandria. Sir Garnet Wolseley (pictured
on the right) was the British adjutant general in Egypt, who put down
the uprising by mid-September (shortly after this post-dated cartoon was
published).
Ahmad Urabi Pasha Al-misri was born
in 1839 into an Egyptian peasant family. He studied at Cairo's al-Azhar,
the most prestigious school in the Middle East at the time. After
being drafted into the Egyptian Army, he attained the rank of colonel,
serving as a commissary officer during the Egypt's war with Ethiopia in
1875-1876. Urabi joined a nationalist revolt in 1881 to oust
officers from Turkey and Circassia (bordering southern Russia).
The next year, he became minister of war in a nationalist Egyptian
ministry and promoted "Egypt for Egyptians." When
British and French ships docked in Alexandria's harbor, nationalists
took to the streets in protest, provoking the British to bombard the
city (the French left). Urabi commanded Egyptian military forces
against the British, but was defeated and captured on September 13,
1882. He was court-martialed, but his death sentence was soon
commuted to exile in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Urabi Pasha was allowed
to return to Egypt in 1901, and died in Cairo in 1911.
Born in 1833, Wolseley joined
the British Army in 1852 at the rank of second lieutenant, and earned
distinction fighting in the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852), the Crimean
War (1854-1856), and the Indian Mutiny (1857-1858). During the
latter conflict, a battle wound caused him to lose sight in one eye
(notice his use of an eye-piece in the cartoon), and promotion made him the British Army's youngest lieutenant colonel. In 1860, Wolseley
transferred to China, where his participation in the last months of the
Second Opium War (1856-1860) was recounted in his Narrative of the
War with China (1862). Over the next decade, he served in
Canada, published the Soldiers Pocket-Book for Field Service
(1869), and was promoted to assistant adjutant general in the British
War Office (1871).
As one of the British Army's
best commanders, Wolseley was sent to various trouble spots in the
British Empire. In 1873-1874, he led an expeditionary force
against the Ashanti in West Africa, who were threatening territory
claimed by the British. Wolseley captured the Ashanti capital, and
the southern provinces of the Ashanti kingdom were established as the
British colony of the Gold Coast (today, Ghana). In
the late 1870s, he worked to bring southern Africa under British
control, forcing colonists in Natal to join a South African federation
and participating in the Zulu War (1879). In 1880, Wolseley became
quartermaster general in the British War Office, and adjutant general
two years later.
When the nationalist revolt
erupted in Egypt in 1882, Wolseley quickly secured the Suez Canal, and
then defeated Urabi Pasha on September 13, two days before the date he
had boasted to the press he would be dining in London. For
the next forty years, Egypt existed as part of the British Empire.
In gratitude for Wolseley's military success, British Prime
Minister William Gladstone made him a baron. In 1885, he was
elevated to viscount after heroically but unsuccessfully trying to save
General Charles "Chinese" Gordon from Sudanese rebels.
In the 1890s, Wolseley served as commander in Ireland (1890-1894) and
commander in chief of the British Army (1895-1901), winning praise for
mobilizing the army during the Boer War (1899-1901). Wolseley died
in 1913 in France.
Robert C. Kennedy
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