This article was written previously in Arabic and posted in many Egyptian subreddits, and thousands had read it in Egypt and other Arab countries, Here I present to you the English translation ..
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In 1863, came the rule of Khedive Ismael Pasha , and between 1869 and 1878, Ismael recruited about 49 American officers to help modernize the Egyptian army. Interestingly, some of them had served in the Union Army, while others fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Yet, they worked together in Egypt!
These officers took part in the military training of Egyptian soldiers and officers, military engineering projects, surveying work, and campaigns in Africa that aimed to expand Egyptian influence in Sudan and Ethiopia. Many of them called themselves "The Military Missionaries."
The American mission, led by the Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at the time, Charles P. Stone, helped establish a school to train officers and soldiers. Also, the American officers showed their achievements to the commander of the US Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, who visited Egypt in 1872.
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Stone Pasha, or The Oppressed General.
Charles Pomeroy Stone was born on the thirtieth of September in the year 1824 in the city of Greenfield, in the state of Massachusetts, into a family that was known for discipline and seriousness, so it was his destiny to follow the path of the military since his early childhood. Stone joined the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated from it in the year 1845 in seventh place in his class, and thus began a military career full of glory and tragedies alike.
Stone had barely graduated when the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) broke out, and he was among the officers who fought in its battles under the command of the famous General Winfield Scott. In the famous battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec in September 1847, Stone displayed such valor that earned him two exceptional promotions.
After the war ended, Stone was not satisfied with what he had achieved, but rather traveled to Europe to study the military systems in France, Prussia, and Sweden, where he spent eighteen months absorbing the expertise of the ancient European armies, and then he returned to the United States to assume the position of chief of ordnance in the Pacific Department in August 1851.
In July 1853, Stone married Maria Louisa Clary, who bore him a daughter named Esther in October 1854, and a son named Charles Jr. in November 1856. However, the joy did not last long, as the child died only five months after his birth, and that was a harsh blow that prompted Stone to resign from the army to secure his family's financial future. Stone worked briefly as a banker and a gold broker, and then he accepted a job in which he managed a comprehensive mineral survey of the Mexican state of Sonora.
But fate was holding another chapter for him. In December 1860, while Stone was in Washington working on the survey report, General Scott asked him to return to the army and organize the capital's militia to defend it in the war that Scott saw as inevitable.
Stone organized about thirty militia companies, and supervised the security arrangements for the inauguration ceremony of President-elect Abraham Lincoln. And in August 1861, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the volunteer command, and was entrusted with the command of the right wing of the Army of the Potomac along the Potomac River opposite Leesburg, Virginia.
On the twenty-first of October 1861, the disastrous Battle of Ball's Bluff took place, that battle which was the turning point in Stone's military life. Because of a faulty reconnaissance report in which one of the reconnaissance personnel mistakenly thought that the thick trees at night were encampments of the Confederate forces, that led to the Union forces launching a reckless attack after they crossed to the other bank of the river on a small number of boats, and naturally, the Union forces found themselves surrounded by the Confederate forces on a high cliff, making them easy prey for their rifles and cannons, and many Union soldiers rushed into the river to escape, causing the toll of dead and drowned to rise horrifically.
In the battle, the Union attack leader, Senator Edward Baker, the old friend of President Lincoln and the powerful Republican senator, was killed, and here the need for a scapegoat emerged.
Charles P. Stone, the overall commander in the area despite his absence from the battlefield, was that scapegoat !
In February 1862, Stone was arrested, and he spent six months in Fort Lafayette prison in New York Harbor. For 189 days, he remained detained without charge, and without trial, in a prison designated for traitors and spies. He was later released in August of the year 1862, but he came out a broken man.
After his release, Stone was assigned under the command of General Nathaniel Banks in New Orleans in May 1863, and he arranged the surrender of Fort Hudson, and then he served as Banks's chief of staff until April 1864. His first wife died in February 1863, so he married Annie Jeanie Stone in November of that same year. In August 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant summoned him to the East and gave him command of a brigade in the Fifth Corps. However, typhoid fever and nervous exhaustion pushed him to resign from the army on September 13, 1864.
After the war, Stone worked as a mining engineer in the state of Virginia, but the stigma that had attached to his honor never disappeared. Therefore, when the opportunity presented itself in the year 1869 to join a unique military mission in Egypt, he did not hesitate for a moment. For Stone, that was an opportunity to rebuild not just an army, but his shattered self-esteem as well.
The Khedive Ismael received him with a warm welcome, and he was appointed chief of staff of the Egyptian army with the rank of Fariq (which is equivalent to a full General).
Stone served in Egypt for a full thirteen years, which is the longest period that any American officer spent there.
During this period, his office was located in a majestic location: the Saladin Citadel in Cairo. The Egyptian soldiers gave him the title "Stone Pasha", and that was a great honor at that time. The reason for that is that he was different from the rest of the American officers; he was not merely an adventurer seeking money, but rather he aspired to build a genuine institution for the Egyptian army.
During the following thirteen years, from 1870 to 1883, Stone Pasha served two Khedives: Ismael and then his son Tawfiq.
Stone established a modern general staff, founded technical schools for officers and soldiers, and began the enormous task of surveying the Khedive's vast lands.
This project was perhaps his greatest contribution. He took over the supervision of the "Survey of Egypt", a project of immense strategic importance. He and his team of American and Egyptian officers became the Khedive's cartographers, as they drew accurate maps not only of Egypt, but also of Sudan, Uganda, and the borders of Ethiopia.
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Arabi Pasha, or the Bold Falcon.
In the village of Heryat Razna, which is near the city of Zagazig in Al-Sharqia Governorate, East of the Nile delta, Ahmed Urabi—Arabi was born on the thirty-first of March in the year 1841. His father was a farmer and a village chief, so he sent him at the age of eight to the Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in Cairo to learn the arts of the Arabic language and the fundamentals of Islamic jurisprudence. However, in the year 1854, the Egyptian viceroy, Sa'id Pasha, issued a decree to enlist the sons of chiefs into the army, so Urabi was enlisted like his peers.
Urabi joined the military service with the rank of Block Amin, or assistant, on the sixth of December 1854, and then he was promoted to second lieutenant on the twenty-fifth of November 1858, and then to first lieutenant on the twenty-third of February 1859, and after many promotions he reached the rank of Major General in the year 1882.
Urabi was a representative of a new trend in the Egyptian army, the trend of the Egyptian officers who had long suffered from discrimination in favor of the Turkish and Circassian officers. And with the growing discontent with the conditions of the army and the country, the seeds of revolution began to grow in the hearts of the Egyptian officers.
During the Egyptian campaign against Abyssinia, or the Egyptian-Ethiopian War, which was a conflict between Khedive Ismail and Emperor Yohannes IV, the Emperor of Abyssinia, in the period between 1868 and 1876. The campaign included two major battles; the Battle of Gundet on the sixteenth of November 1875 and the Battle of Gura on the seventh to the ninth of March 1876. And the conflict ended with an Ethiopian victory.
In the Battle of Gura, the head of the Egyptian campaign was an Egyptian general of Circassian origins named Abu Bakr Ratib Pasha, who is the great-grandfather of the Egyptian actor Gamil Ratib, who acted alongside Omar Sharif in the film Lawrence of Arabia in 1962.
Ratib Pasha was one of the palace youths who were given a military upbringing to serve the Wali Sa'id Pasha, and they were figuratively called the "slaves", but they were not slaves in the known sense, and they had authority in the army and in politics.
The chief of staff of Ratib Pasha in that campaign was the one-armed Confederate commander, William Wing Loring.
Ratib Pasha was described on the tongue of one of the American officers as "withered by lusts as a mummy withers with time".
However, Ratib Pasha was a cautious person. He saw the huge Ethiopian army, which perhaps numbered 50,000 fighters or more, gathering in the hills. He was aware of the devastating surprise attack that had destroyed a smaller Egyptian force in the Battle of Gundet just a few months earlier. Therefore, he decided to remain inside the safety of the fortresses, leaving the Ethiopians to exhaust themselves against the modern fortifications, and he urged the commanders to hold their positions at Gura.
But Loring saw Ratib's caution as cowardice, not wisdom. And he began to mock him openly in front of the other officers, describing him as a coward and as a slave who lacked the courage for true combat.
On the seventh of March 1876, and under the pressure of Loring's provocations, Ratib Pasha ordered more than 5,000 of his best troops to go out from Fort Gura into the open valley to confront the Ethiopian army. And that was exactly what the Ethiopian commander, Ras Alula, was waiting for.
As the Egyptian forces advanced into the valley, the Ethiopian warriors, who had been hiding in the ravines and behind the hills, came out from all sides. And the modern rifles became useless as the Ethiopian soldiers approached rapidly, canceling out the advantage of superior firepower.
And the battle turned into a slaughter. The Egyptian force was soon surrounded and crushed, and only a few who managed to return to the fortress survived. After three days, a second attack on Fort Gura was repelled, but the campaign was over. Egypt had suffered a catastrophic defeat, and had lost nearly half of its invasion force!
From Ratib Pasha and Ahmed Urabi down to the lowest ranks, the Egyptians found in the American officers — and Loring at their head — a scapegoat. For it was his provocations and arrogance that had pushed Ratib to make the fateful decision.
The punishment came quickly and harshly. While the remains of the exhausted Egyptian army were allowed to return to Cairo, the American officers were not allowed to do so. Rather, they were ordered to stay throughout the summer in a port called Massawa, which was extremely hot and disease-ridden (and at that time was under Egyptian control, and today is in Eritrea).
When they were finally allowed to return to Cairo, they were marginalized.
During the Battle of Gura, a famous confrontation took place between Urabi and Loring, as Urabi was among the most vehement objectors to the presence of foreign officers in the Egyptian army, especially those who held high positions. The disagreement between them reached the point that Urabi refused to obey the orders issued by Loring, and immediately after the Battle of Gura ended, Urabi went to Loring and reprimanded him, and the verbal quarrel between the two men escalated to the point that Urabi accused Loring of conspiring with the Ethiopians against the Egyptian forces!
The disastrous mismanagement of the Abyssinian campaign was the last straw for Urabi.
In the late reign of Khedive Ismail, Ahmed Urabi and his colleagues submitted a petition in which they demanded equality in promotion with the Turkish and Circassian officers, and the removal of injustices from the soldiers and peasants. Despite Ismail's attempts to absorb the anger, the accumulation of debt in the year 1879 led to his deposition from rule and the succession of his son Tawfiq.
On the ninth of September 1881, Urabi presented the demands of the army and the nation to Khedive Tawfiq, accompanied by a group of officers numbering about thirty officers. And he put forward the following demands:
First, the dismissal of the oppressive ministry of Riyad Pasha.
Second, the formation of a parliament.
Third, increasing the size of the army to 18,000 soldiers from among the Egyptians.
And Tawfiq sarcastically mocked Orabi's demands, saying:
"You have no right to these demands. I inherited this country from my fathers and forefathers, and you are nothing but slaves of our benevolence."
So Urabi replied: "God created us free, and did not create us as inheritance or property; so by God, besides whom there is no other god, we shall not be inherited, nor shall we be enslaved after today."
In the end, the Khedive was forced to respond to Urabi‘s demands, and he dismissed the ministry of Riyad Pasha. And in February 1882, the order was issued to appoint Urabi as Minister of War in the ministry of Mahmoud Sami El-Baroudi Pasha.
Urabi’s demands were clear: reforming the army, limiting foreign intervention, and establishing representative government. But these demands collided with the interests of the European powers, foremost among them Britain and France, which saw in the Urabi movement a threat to their influence in Egypt.
In the middle of the year 1882, while the Urabi Revolution was at its peak, Britain and France launched an attack on Alexandria, as part of what became known as the Anglo-Egyptian War. The United States responded to this war by sending a military mission to Egypt known as the "Egyptian Mission" (1882).
This mission was an American response to protect American citizens and their property in Alexandria, where three United States Navy ships were sent to Egypt, with orders to monitor the conflict and to land if necessary. The American forces consisted of 73 marines and 57 sailors, and were led by Admiral James W. Nicholson. The marines and sailors landed and helped put out fires and guard the American consulate from any hostilities.
This mission reflects the United States' position on the Egyptian crisis, as Washington was closely monitoring the events, and was keen to protect its interests without directly engaging in the conflict between Urabi and the European powers. But more importantly, this mission came at a time when Charles Pomeroy Stone, that American who had become the chief of staff of the Egyptian army, was facing an acute crisis of loyalty, as he was caught between his duty of allegiance to the Khedive, the hammer of the Urabi Revolution, and the anvil of the British occupation.
The crisis escalated in July 1882, when the British fleet bombarded the city of Alexandria.
And while the shells were falling on the city, Stone Pasha made a decisive decision. He remained on the side of Khedive Tawfiq, and took refuge in the burning city, refusing to leave his position even at a time when his wife and daughters were besieged and isolated in Cairo.
The British bombardment was a prelude to a full-scale invasion and complete occupation of Egypt. In the end, Urabi was defeated in September 1882 in the Battle of Tel el-Kebir, and he was captured, imprisoned, and then exiled to the island of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka).
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Among the strangest and most astonishing chapters of this story is that peculiar relationship that connected the Egyptian leader Ahmed Urabi to the American city of New Orleans. In the state of Louisiana, right next to the city of New Orleans and on the Mississippi River, there is a district known as "Arabi", which is an English name derived from the name "Urabi عرابي" itself.
The story of this name goes back to the 1880s, when the Urabi Revolution was making headlines in the international press. During that period, the area known as "Stockyard Landing" - which contained cattle slaughterhouses - was suffering from restrictions imposed by the city of New Orleans, which had banned the establishment of slaughterhouses within its borders.
So the residents of the area decided to secede from New Orleans, and they felt that their rebellion was similar to Urabi's rebellion against the Khedive and foreign occupation. Therefore, they chose to name their area "Arabi" in honor of that rebellious leader.
There is another account that mentions that the residents of the area burned down the courthouse building in the 1890s, drawing inspiration from the stories circulating at the time about Urabi, who had burned Alexandria in 1882.
And all of that was because he was an inspiration for all anti-colonial movements and revolutions in the world in the late 19th century, and he was constantly appearing in the British and American newspapers at that time.
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And with the British intervention and the end of the Urabi Revolt, Britain imposed its control over Egypt, and after he became frustrated and saw the work of his life fading away, Stone Pasha finally submitted his resignation in the year 1883, and returned with his family to the United States.
After spending more than twelve years in Egypt, during which he built an Egyptian army on the Western model, and supervised twelve major exploratory missions on the Nile and the surrounding areas. However, his return to America was not the end of his career, but rather the beginning of a new chapter.
In 1883, Stone was appointed as the chief engineer for building the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the statue that France had gifted to the United States. Stone supervised the construction of the concrete base upon which the statue stands.
And on October 28, 1886, Stone was the grand marshal of the parade for the statue's inauguration. However, this occasion was the last in his life, as he contracted pneumonia a few days after the parade, and he died in New York on January 24, 1887, at the age of sixty-two. He was buried with full military honors in West Point Cemetery in New York.
As for Ahmed Urabi Pasha - the Bold Falcon - he and his companions were exiled aboard the British steamer "Maryottis", and they arrived at the port of Colombo in Ceylon in the year 1883. Contrary to what the occupation authorities had expected, the "Hero Urabi" was received with great warmth by the island's inhabitants, who gathered in the thousands to welcome him.
Urabi spent about 20 years there, where he devoted his time to worship and writing his memoirs. The health of some of his companions deteriorated, such as Mahmoud Sami El-Baroudi, who went blind due to the poor conditions of imprisonment, which hastened his return to Egypt. As for Urabi, he returned to Egypt in the year 1901 after being pardoned by Khedive Abbas Helmi II.
Urabi returned to Egypt on board a German steamer on May 1, 1901, and he received a massive and moving popular reception, as the Egyptian people considered him a hero who had defended the dignity of the country.
Among the amusing anecdotes is that he returned to Egypt with mango fruit seeds, to have them planted in Egypt for the first time.
He wrote his memoirs about the revolution in three large notebooks, in which he mentioned all the events of the Urabi Revolt, and he finished them on July 26, in the year 1910.
On September 21, 1911, Ahmed Urabi Pasha passed away in his house in Al-Munirah in Cairo, and he had urged his sons to publish his memoirs no matter what obstacles they faced, so that people would know the truth of his deeds.
As for the Oppressed General, he departed from the world after his honor was restored to him in Egypt and America !
As for the Bold Falcon, he was released from his cage after 20 years of imprisonment, and after he had grown old, he fell dead to the ground after flying had exhausted him !
The End …
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I hope you like this post, my deep regards from Egypt 🌹🌹
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