Lord Granville's reply was in substance the same as the
replies given in the House of Commons, and mentioned below, but he explained some details of great interest. He showed that the Government had from the first been opposed to the re- tention of the Soudan, but had found the Egyptian Ministry invincibly opposed to its abandonment. It was not until the defeat of General Hicks showed that the retention was a "mathe- matical " impossibility, that the Government felt at liberty to insist on the appointment of a Ministry in Cairo which would consent to the evacuation. As regards Baker Pasha's expedi- tion, the Government could not forbid it, for they had a telegram from him expressing a full confidence of success. They could not have imagined, in the teeth of the General's message, that 4,000 men would give themselves up to be slaughtered by a fourth of their own number. After that defeat, it was impossible to relieve Sincat, but as soon as the Government were assured by General Gordon that the armed relief of Tokar would not clash with his wider plan for extricating the whole Egyptian Army from the Soudan, they resolved to relieve that place, and an expedition was already being organised.
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