American Officers of Khedive Ismail

Abstract

K HEDIVE ISMAIL of Egypt was full of unexpected ideas. Perhaps because of them only about 10 per cent of his fabulous expenditure was spent on useful projects. Yet it would be unkind to subscribe without reservation to the irreverent obituary on him which was circulated the press when 1895 he died at the Emirghian Palace on the Bosphorus, virutally a state prisoner of the Sublime Porte. It said, more or less, that his greatest claim to remembrance history was the fact that his rule made European intervention Egypt compulsory. It should be recalled that he tried earnest to modernise his country, he tried to learn all sorts of things from all sorts of foreigners (only too eager to teach him their particular pieces of wisdom for outrageous remuneration); he tried to imitate deliberately Peter the Great, the giant reformer of Russia. For a time the Khedive even engaged a Russian, General Fadeev, as Commander Chief of his army. Fadeev, a brilliant and turbulent officer, had resigned his commission at that time because of a row with Vannovsk, the minister of war of the Russian Empire. Fadeev was an ardent Slavophile, an imperial Russian prefiguration of the Communist or rather Cominform agent of today. Fadeev stayed Cairo throughout 1875 and took an active part preparing the Egyptian army for a campaign. He refused to continue to serve only when he found out that it was being made ready for an expedition against Christian Ethiopia. Under Ismail the Egyptian capital was a happy hunting ground for concession seekers, cardsharps, dubious ballet dancers, peculiar inventors and downright shady characters of all kinds. One could meet almost anybody at Shepheard's. Not the least of the curiosities the bar of this famous hotel the seventies of the last century were tall Americans tarbooshes, wearing the uniforms of the Khedivial army. There was much of the international adventurer about them all and something of the Yankee guests at King Arthur's Court Their presence Egypt was due to a private enterprise. Captain Mott, sometime battery commander the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, and son of a well-known New York surgeon, conceived the idea of supplying Khedive Ismail with a number of highly skilled military who would be in no wise compromised by any of the political complications of Europe. The scheme was suggested to him by Blaque Bey, the Turkish minister to Washington and Mott's brother-in-law. Ismail was enthusiastic about it. Mott was promoted by him to the rank of Ferik Pasha--majorgeneral--and made his ADC. He was given a free hand to engage volunteers. Eventually he hired about twenty American officers. The Government of the United States gave a tacit blessing to the scheme: it was only too glad to get rid this way of turbulent spirits, of ex Confederate leaders and of vaguely disturbing officers on half pay who were