University of Southampton Special Collections

This week we continue our P-A-L-M-E-R-S-T-O-N places series with ‘E’ for Egypt. We will be looking at some intriguing correspondence under the third Viscount Palmerston’s memoranda relating to foreign affairs, specifically a folder of papers on Egyptian affairs, with the archival reference MS62/PP/MM/EG.

The first documents in this folder were written in the early 1800s, in the context of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the struggle between Britain and France for influence in Egypt. France invaded Egypt in August 1798 and scored a number of early victories against the Ottoman and Egyptian armies, but the French were weakened by a combined British and Ottoman attack at the Battle of the Nile and the French campaign ultimately ended in failure in 1801.

The first four items under this folder are copies of letters discussing the British army’s Egyptian expedition of 1801-02 as well as descriptions of the massacre of the Beys (governors of districts in the Ottoman Empire) and allegations on the involvement of the Grand Vizier (essentially the prime minister of the Ottoman Empire under the Sultan) and the Pasha, or governor, of Egypt. At the time the earliest of these letters were being written in 1801, a young Henry John Temple (from 17 April 1802 he would become third Viscount Palmerston), was studying political economy at the University of Edinburgh.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/1 is a copy of a letter, dated October 1801, from the commander of British forces in Egypt, Sir John Hely-Hutchinson, second Earl of Donoughmore (1757–1832), to the Grand Vizier at Cairo. Hely-Hutchinson complains to the Grand Vizier about the arrest of Beys and Mamelukes. The Beys were the governors of districts in the Ottoman Empire and the Mamelukes were a knightly caste of powerful lords, originally descended from slave soldiers, who had ruled Egypt from the thirteenth century until 1517, when control of Egypt passed to the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Hely-Hutchinson accuses the Grand Vizier of being responsible or culpable for the assassination of some of the Beys, who were under the protection of the British government:

I have just heard with the greatest astonishment that notwithstanding your most sacred promises you have caused the Beys to be arrested, that one of them has been assassinated, and that the others are your prisoners. I have frequently notified to your Highness that the Mamelukes were under the protection of the English government and that I had given them the strongest assurances of their persons and their lives being in safety. You know then what honor and the rights of nations require of me – you have left me the choice to avenge an assassination, or to become an accomplice in it. As I will not dishonour my nation in the face of the universe, nor bathe my hands in the blood of the unfortunate, I have formed my determination. I declare to you then in the most explicit manner, that you must deliver up all the Beys and Mameluke with their families, effects, baggage etc. and send them without the least delay to Giza, and place them under the orders of Colonel Ramsay, who will have the disposal of them until he receives further instructions from me.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/1

Hely-Hutchinson continues this letter by promising that there will be repercussions if his words go unheeded:

[…] you have heaped words upon words, promises upon promises, oaths upon oaths – you have violated them all. I supplicate God to pardon me my credulity […] you have deceived the English, and massacred the Beys. Give me up the Mameluke, respect the rights of nations adhere faithfully to your oaths or you will be responsible for all those unhappy events which must be the inevitable result of your obstinately persevering in a system of conduct which has already covered you with shame and approbation.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/1

Hely-Hutchinson’s strongly worded letter of October 1801 seems to have preceded his departure from Egypt, although this was ostensibly on the grounds of his severe ill health (he lived until 1832). Hely-Hutchinson’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes how in 1801 he came into command of the first division of Abercromby’s army, which landed in Egypt on 10 March that year. Abercromby was killed in the Battle of Alexandria and Hely-Huthcinson succeeded him by seniority. Henry Addington’s government and the commander-in-chief, the duke of York, favoured Hely-Hutchinson retaining command until the arrival in Egypt of General Fox, but officers at the British camp near Alexandria attempted to deprive him of his command: “The reasons for Hely-Hutchinson’s unpopularity are obscure but may have been an unkempt appearance and unattractive personality. Accounts differ, however, with one author describing him as gentlemanlike, with agreeable manners.”[1]

Whatever his reputation with local officers, Hely-Hutchinson was successful in a range of actions against the French: he led the blockade of Menou’s army in Alexandria, forced the French in Cairo to surrender, and then besieged Alexandria until the French there surrendered on 2 September 1801. In late October Hely-Hutchinson returned to England and was created Baron Hutchinson of Alexandria and of Knocklofty, co. Tipperary, with a pension of £2000 a year. He also received the new Turkish order of the Crescent in brilliants.

Hely-Hutchinson’s accusation that the Grand Vizier was complicit in the assassination of Beys at Cairo may not have been entirely accurate, as alluded to rather briefly in the second item in our folder, an extract from a letter written at the officer’s camp near Rosetta, dated 17 December 1801:

The principal and most interesting occurrence that has taken place in Egypt since you left it is the massacre of some of the principal Beys and Mamelukes at Alexandria and the imprisonment of all the rest at Cairo. These two cruel events took place much about the same time[?] towards the latter end of October [1801], about a fortnight before Sir John Hutchinson was obliged to resign the command and quit the country in consequence of extreme ill health. As it is just possible tho by no means probable that no particular account of the massacre of the Beys may have been sent you by any of your other correspondents in Egypt. I do myself the pleasure of sending you herewith a narrative of that base and infamous transaction written by a friend of mine who was at Alexandria when the massacre took place, and which I believe is fully as correct an account of it as any that has been committed to writing.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/2

This letter goes on to commend Hely-Hutchinson for the actions he took but also notes the following:

There was a report at first that one of the Beys had been put to death by order of the Grand Vizier, which you will observe Sir John taxes him with; but it afterwards appeared that there was no ground for the report – none of the Beys at Cairo having been assassinated.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/2

Another account contained in this folder titled ‘Narrative respecting the massacre of the Beys’ describes the bloody scene that took place not far from Alexandria. This report is based on a letter written by Lachlan Macquarie (1761–1824), 77^th Regiment of Foot and Deputy Adjutant General to the forces under Major Gen. Earl Cavan, attached to the division of the Army under the immediate order of Major Gen Baird.

Macquarie’s report claims that on the 22^nd October [1801] the Captain Pacha and the Beys agreed to pay a visit of ceremony to Lord Cavan at Alexandria, who had just been announced as the successor to Sir J. Hutchinson in the command of the British army. The Beys and the Pasha were to travel together from Abu Qir (Aboukir) to Alexandria, just a few miles away. Initially this journey was to be made on horseback but the Pasha complained that he did not have sufficient numbers to carry all persons in his retinue, so it was agreed to travel by boat instead. The Pasha initially accompanied the Beys upon one of his own royal barges, but they had proceeded but a short distance from the shore, when a small boat which had hastily put off almost immediately after them, brought intelligence that a dispatch had that moment arrived from Constantinople. The Pasha expressed his regret that the circumstance obliged him to return instantly but he begged the Beys would pursue their journey and assured them he would join them again as soon as possible. Not long after the pasha had left them, the Beys were rowed up to another ship and asked to board it, in order to be taken to Constantinople. Some of the Beys refused, swords were drawn, and in the tumult some were killed and others wounded. The Pasha was blamed for this, as it appears that orders were given for the arrest of the Beys, if not the extreme measures taken upon their refusal to comply.  

Whatever the exact circumstances and culpability surrounding these killings in 1801, there were clearly lethal forces at play amidst a broader power struggle within Egypt. This all took place in the context of a declining Ottoman empire and the emergence of local Egyptian power. After the British evacuated Egypt in 1803 a power vacuum emerged. The Mamelukes would be assassinated at the Cairo citadel in March 1811 on the orders of Muhammad Ali – the governor and de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, who is considered the founder of modern Egypt. Ali saw the Mamelukes as a threat to him, as they had been a powerful class in Egypt for almost six hundred years. The letter above goes on to confirm that the Beys and Mamelukes at Cairo, referred to by Hely-Hutchinson in 1801, were later released on the orders of the Grand Vizier and delivered up to Brigadier General Stewart at Giza and put under his protection.

If we fast-forward a half-century to the 1850s, we find more letters on Egyptian affairs in the same file. These are contemporaneous to Palmerston’s time as Prime Minister, a position he held from 1855-8 and again from 1859-65.

In one such item dated December 1857 we have written answers to questions from Sir John Somerset Pakington (formerly Russell), first Baron Hampton (1799–1880), the Conservative MP for Droitwich, on the passage of British troops through Egypt on their way to India.

Questions are raised on the communications of the British diplomat Lord Canning Stratford, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe (1786–1880), relating to permissions for the passage of British troops through Egypt. Lord Stratford contacted the Grand Vizier in June and July 1857, asking for permission from the Sultan; when the Sultan’s permission was given Stratford would try to obtain letters from Mohamed Sa’id Pasha, the Wāli of Egypt and Sudan from 1854 until 1863. Sa’id Pasha was himself the fourth son of Muhammad Ali and effectively the ruler of Egypt at this time. Due to the impossibility of securing ships at Suez and the danger of sending troops on deck during the hot summer months however, the passage of British soldiers through Egypt was postponed until later in the autumn months.

In another letter, dated 1863, there are discussions on the abolition of forced labour in Egypt, where the authorities intended to keep forced labour for the clearing of irrigation channels – ensuring the fertility of farmland. The British are adamant that there should be no forced labour on the Suez Canal, which would officially open on 17 November 1869:

HM’s government, however, have recommended that compulsory labour should as soon as possible be universally abolished in Egypt and that as regards the periodical cleaning out of the irrigating channels, it might be made a duty enforced by the government on each district interested therein; and that assessments might be made by which if any district failed in performing this, it might be deemed simpler to statute labour on the highways in England, the work might be done by the government and the expense charged on the district.

MS62/PP/MM/EG/10

The letters in this file of Palmerston’s memoranda show the creeping influence of British power in the internal affairs of the Egyptians over the course of the nineteenth century. It was not until 1882 however, in the aftermath of the Anglo-Egyptian War, that Britain gained effective control of Egypt, eliminating the remnants of French and Ottoman influence as well as local Egyptian autonomy. The Egyptians would achieve nominal independence from the British Empire in 1922, although British influence remained until well into the twentieth century.

[1] https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-12883?rskey=d3uUuT&result=3