to Italy met with a
similar refusal. England therefore, having to act alone, landed troops
at Ismailia under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and suppressed the revolt by the
battle of Tell-el-Kebir on the 13th of September 1882. The khedive, who
had taken refuge in Alexandria, returned to Cairo, and a ministry was
formed under Sherif Pasha, with Riaz Pasha as one of its leading
members. On assuming office, the first thing it had to do was to bring
to trial the chiefs of the rebellion. Had the khedive and Riaz been
allowed a free hand, Arabi and his colleagues would have found little
mercy. Thanks to the intervention of the British government, their lives
were spared. Arabi pleaded guilty, was sentenced to death, the sentence
being commuted by the khedive to banishment; and Riaz resigned in
disgust. This solution of the difficulty was brought about by Lord
Dufferin, then British ambassador at Constantinople, who had been sent
to Egypt as high commissioner to adjust affairs and report on the
situation. One of his first acts, after preventing the application of
capital punishment to the ringleaders of the revolt, was to veto the
project of protecting the khedive and his government by means of a
Praetorian guard recruited from Asia Minor, Epirus, Austria and
Switzerland, and to insist on the principle that Egypt must be governed
in a truly liberal spirit. Passing in review all the departments of the
administration, he laid down the general lines on which the country was
to be restored to order and prosperity, and endowed, if possible, with
the elements of self-government for future use.

Sir Evelyn Baring appointed consul-general, 1884.

The laborious task of putting these general indications into a practical
shape fell to Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), who arrived as
consul-general and diplomatic agent, in succession to Sir Edward Malet,
in January 1884. At that moment the situation was singularly like that
which had existed on two previous occasions: firstly, when Ismail was
deposed; and secondly, when the Dual Control had undermined the existing
authority without having any power to enforce its own. For the third
time in little more than three years the existing authority had been
destroyed and a new one had to be created. But there was one essential
difference: the power that had now to reorganize the country possessed
in the British army of occupation a support sufficient to command
respect. Without that support Sir Evely