Note 27 — Chapter V

It is worth noticing that these four Ministers were precisely the four that had had most to do with the original armed intervention in Egypt in 1882. Northbrook’s name is especially ominous when we recollect that he was at the head of the Admiralty at the time of the bombardment of Alexandria, and that it was he who had dispatched Palmer, as he was now dispatching Gordon, on his fatal mission, a mission which, like Gordon’s, was to begin with an attempt to bribe Bedouin tribes, and was to lead to the betrayal of the missioner and his repudiation by those who sent him. There is extant a letter from Northbrook to Gordon (see Appendix), written just as he was starting, telling him that he had ordered a man-of-war to carry him to Souakin, and that there were £1,000 for his purposes which were being entrusted for him to Admiral Hewett at Souakin, the very same Admiral to whom Palmer had been sent, and from whom he had received the money for buying up the tribes east of the Suez Canal.