Foreign consuls judged Mehmed Ali’s new conscript army impressively trained by late 1823

Evidence

In November 1823, while waiting for news of these new troops to arrive, the Pasha went to Banī ‘Adī to oversee the process of training himself. He invited both the British and French Consuls-General to accompany him to the camp. The results were more than satisfactory and the new troops made a great spectacle that the Pasha was certainly pleased to watch. Both Consuls, moreover, were greatly impressed by the new troops. Drovetti, the French Consul-General, said that they had “reached such a degree of precision that gives honor to the French officers who were in charge of training them.” “Pride, pomp and circumstances of glorious war,” wrote Salt, the British Consul-General. “Every other day,” he adds, the Pasha “has a grand Review and four regiments are exercised in the plain [to the west of the camp] not as an ordinary Review but as a ‘petite guerre’ and it really is astonishing the figure they make.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 458

Categorization

• XREF: British and French consular reports on the Egyptian army’s drill directly bear on the reader’s question about British lordly perceptions of Egyptian military performance.