Ibrahim blamed the prolonged Acre siege on untrained officers not soldiers

Evidence

When the siege of Acre was prolonged and the city did not fall immediately as expected, Mehmed Ali wrote to Ibrahim suggesting that he should offer the besieged some money so as not to waste time and proceed to fight the Ottomans before they amassed their troops against him. Ibrahim answered by saying that he had yet to learn that cities were taken by money and that he intended to reduce it to a heap of rubble until it surrendered. The problem he was facing, he insisted, was not lack of money or soldiers, but of trained officers. This was the reason he gave for the prolonged siege of the city. Finally when the city did fall Ibrahim could not but admire the courage and fortitude of the soldiers attacking the city and said that he had yet to see other soldiers who could match them. He had no such complimentary words for his officers. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 926

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s goal of assessing the army’s actual performance — competence gap between rank and file and officers.

Related

• Ibrahim court-martialed officers who circumvented his command authority (similarity 0.79)
• Ibrahim Pasha’s officers failed to control troops after the fall of Acre (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian commanders punished desertion and fear harshly at Acre (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Officers lacked esprit de corps and Ibrahim held them in contempt #corroborates (0.70) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 928
• Ibrahim’s personal presence held the unreliable officer corps together #corroborates (0.55) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 929
• Army performance depended on officer-men relations more than on Ibrahim’s leadership #complicates (0.50) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1323
• Egyptian commanders punished desertion and fear harshly at Acre #corroborates (0.40) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1098