The lead ships stopped at the viewing stands at El-Guisr, north of Ismailia and Lake Timsah. Just behind were the yachts of Ismail, the British ambassador, and the emperor of Austria, after which came other ships carrying everyone from Voisin Bey and his engineers, to the company’s board of directors, to the Dutch consul general, Ruyssenaers, to the thousands of guests and tourists in the remaining vessels. Eugénie took a brief tour of the heights of El-Guisr, and was then led back to her yacht, escorted by a carriage pulled by white camels. L’Aigle docked at Ismailia late that evening. The convoy had safely reached the halfway point. It had cleared the narrowest part, and nothing now stood in the way of finishing the trip.
The next day, Ismailia was a carnival. Every public building was given over to the festivities. The khedival palace was closed in preparation for the evening, but Lesseps, Voisin, and Lavalley and dozens of company officials opened their homes and gardens for visitors. Hundreds of tents and pavilions were erected, some devoted to cooking meals, others to entertainment. As many as ten thousand fellahin and Bedouins camped around the town, to pay their respects both to Ismail and to the French empress, and to enjoy the party. They brought with them some of the atmosphere of Tanta, and Ismailia teemed with tribesmen on camels and men on horses from the deserts of Arabia preparing for a tournament that afternoon.
There were riding exhibitions, tilting with bamboo lances, and a rifle competition. The town, wrote Sir Frederick Arrow, was a whirlwind of “Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics, armed with every variety of weapon. Here a native acrobat, walking the tight-rope, with a baby lashed to each of his ankles—the heads of the poor little couple getting swiftly knocked about. Further on an Armenian trotting out a dancing bear; then comes an Italian with a hurdy-gurdy; then an Arab sword-dance; then a Greek festa. Triumphal arches were in plenty; and as to the illuminations at night, they really made it fairy-land; it was Arabian Nights without the genii.”
Cafés were set up to provide an endless supply of demitasse coffee, and pipe boys were kept busy throughout the day and night. Musicians who had traveled for hundreds of miles to perform on the streets competed with glassblowers, flame eaters, snake charmers, and jugglers for attention. Dervishes also arrived, to entertain the Arabs and Egyptians with their dances, and they in turn competed with belly dancers and prostitutes. Koran reciters marked out their turf, and people gathered around fires to listen to mellifluous ballads of Arabic poetry. Everything was paid for by the khedive. No restaurant charged money, and everyone had a place to sleep, though except for the very important persons, it was a challenge for Europeans to find an actual bed to their liking. Food, at least, was not a problem, and there was ample European cuisine, abundant ale, passable wine, good champagne, and even soda water.
On November 18, there was a ball at the palace, which all tried to attend whether they had been invited or not. There was a shortage of carriages in town, and many people simply walked the mile to the chalet in their starched uniforms or tulle dresses. The area was illuminated by Chinese lanterns hung from the palm trees that lined the streets. Arriving at the palace, most attendees found that the number of guests far surpassed the capacity of the rooms. People were crammed into every corner, and the men noticed that there were precious few women. Given the mad crush, a few who showed up were able to take advantage of the rest, and some guests left the ball missing a pocket watch or piece of jewelry. The buffet included sorbets, fruit, and a copious amount of wine, but the line for it was so long that many gave up and found food elsewhere. The khedive and the royals, however, had a separate supper in a formal dining room closed to the public, and their meal included “Fish of the reunion of the two seas,” “Beef tongue in the English style, with Nerac aspic, and Suez shrimp salad accompanied by watercress.” The nobles finally appeared in the public rooms toward midnight, just after a fireworks display lit up the northern end of the lake and then rained down on the ships moored in the canal. There were formal dances, with Lesseps leading Eugénie, who wore a diamond necklace for the occasion.
The next morning, November 19, was Ferdinand de Lesseps’s sixty-fourth birthday. The flotilla departed for the south. Already, under the supervision of Nubar Pasha, the tents were being struck, and a long caravan of camels and donkeys started to make the trip back to Cairo. Some people noted that Ismailia by day was a much less enchanting place than it had been the night before. Some had also had too much to drink. The air was calm, and the currents were gentler than usual. There was confusion, however, about which ships were supposed to go when, and craft of different nationalities competed for position. The plan had been for the entire convoy to reach the Bitter Lakes by late that evening, but, given the chaos and the competition, some ships didn’t leave Lake Timsah until the morning of November 20. Even so, with fewer concerns about grounding, the lead ships went more quickly. Though they had to exercise caution in order to pass through the Serapeum, once they reached the Bitter Lakes they spread out and raced one another.
The final test was the narrow channel through the Chalufa ridge, which had until a few weeks before been impassable. From there, it was easy sailing to the port of Suez, which like its sister cities to the north was decorated for the reception. The day was exceptionally beautiful. Writers remarked on the crystal-clear air, which made the Gebel Attaka, at the southern end of the canal, that much more dramatic. The town of Suez, however, didn’t impress. “Suez,” said one writer, “in spite of its holiday finery, can only be described as a horrible place.” Here as well, Ismail had made sure that there were large crowds. An honor guard stood at the point where the canal opened out into the Red Sea, and they fired their guns to salute L’Aigle as it approached. The khedive had arrived earlier, and he met the empress’s yacht. For the sake of theater, he was rowed by a dozen oarsmen in his state barge from the railway terminus at the water’s edge to the side of L’Aigle so that he could welcome Eugénie in full view of the crowds. That evening, the town was lit from every house, and the strains of “La Vie parisienne” could be heard in the streets. A final fireworks display greeted the ships still straggling into port. Fifteen years after Lesseps gained the concession from Said Pasha, a decade after the furtive beginning at Port Said, the desert had been parted, and the canal was open.
Everywhere he went during the days, Lesseps was hailed as a hero. Songs and ballads were composed in his honor. But his greatest moment may have come a short while later. There were more festivities in Cairo on November 21 and 22. The khedive sponsored another ball, and then hosted races at the Pyramids. The royals and special guests were taken from Suez to Cairo by train, but others found that the road back was more difficult than the trip going. There weren’t enough trains scheduled, and those who tried to make the canal journey north to Ismailia and Port Said found the process chaotic and slow. Surprisingly, though the company had not yet developed an adequate system for guiding ships through the canal, none got stuck except for the Egyptian frigate on the eve of the opening day. By train, by ship, or by camel and on foot, the visitors left the isthmus and headed home, some to Europe, some to their villages along the Nile, and some to the deserts of Sinai and Arabia. As for Lesseps, on November 25 he did something he had done only once before in his life: he became a husband.
The opening had been a success, and the work that had consumed his life for the past fifteen years was complete. Lesseps had become a larger-than-life figure, but he was still just a man who had conceived of the canal only after the death of his wife. For all of its grandeur, the canal had given him something to do, and with its completion, there was the prospect of being alone once again. In a small ceremony in Ismailia, he wed Hélène Autard de Bragard. She was twenty-one years old, the creole daughter of a well-to-do family from the island of Mauritius. Lesseps was three times her age. They would be together for the remaining twenty-five years of his life, and she bore him twelve children. News of the wedding was briefly reported in Le Figaro: “M. de Lesseps, after having married the Mediterranea
n and the Red Sea, then got married himself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE LEGACY
THE CANAL HAD been successfully navigated by a large flotilla of ships from a number of different countries. News of that success was widely disseminated, and almost no one questioned the technical achievement. Though a fair amount of dredging and widening was still needed, the canal had met or surpassed expectations. “Of this… we may feel certain,” pronounced one English writer, “the Canal is an established fact. It will disappear no more.” Less clear was whether it would draw traffic, and many wondered if the company would survive. Ten francs a ton seemed quite steep if the company wanted the route to be competitive, yet if it charged much less it could not meet its expenses or satisfy shareholder expectations for dividends. The skeptics were right. In the first years of its operation, the Suez Canal was a commercial disaster.
In 1870, its initial year, slightly fewer than five hundred ships made the passage, carrying a total of slightly more than four hundred thousand tons. That was a pittance compared to the five million tons that the company had promised. Great Britain was responsible for three-quarters of what trade there was. The next year was better, with the total rising to 750,000 tons, but this was so far below projections that the company faced insolvency. Shareholders watched as their equity shriveled to two hundred francs a share. Dividends failed to materialize. A pamphlet was published in Paris entitled The Agony of the Suez Canal. Zero results. Next comes ruin! To placate angry and restive investors, the company negotiated new loans to meet operating expenses and lowered its rates. Lesseps, accustomed to being greeted at annual shareholder meetings with standing ovations, found himself booed and criticized.
Stung by the rebukes and disappointed by the financial returns, Lesseps still commanded immense respect. He had received the cross of the Legion of Honor from the empress; he had been decorated and lionized throughout Europe after the opening; and his shares in the Canal Company made him a very rich man. The canal zone continued to prosper, and there was speculation that Ismailia would eventually supplant Cairo as the capital of the khedive’s new Egypt. Lesseps settled into the life of a grand patrician, dividing his time between Ismailia, Paris, and a French country estate. He was a celebrity wherever he went, and in spite of his age, he retained the same energy and will that had driven him for the past fifteen years. He socialized with the leading citizens of Paris and the world, and within a few years of the canal’s completion, he was looking for another venture.
Events in France enhanced his standing. In the summer of 1870, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia. This conflict, which both sides sought, resulted in one of France’s most humiliating defeats. Prussia had gone from a second-tier state to a first-rank power, thanks in no small measure to the tactics of Otto von Bismarck. The Second Empire of Napoleon had gone in the opposite direction. Though his government became less and less autocratic, the economy had stagnated. The army had deteriorated, and political dissent had grown acrimonious. Convinced that he would do justice to the name of Bonaparte, Napoleon led his troops into battle at Sedan that September. Surrounded by the Prussians, he was forced to surrender, and Paris was besieged.
With the emperor a prisoner, the Second Empire collapsed. A new government kept the Prussians from occupying the city and then sued for peace. Soon it was fighting a second front against domestic opponents, and Paris erupted into civil war between the conservative bourgeois government and the radical, utopian leaders of the Paris Commune. Not until the end of 1870 was the Commune defeated, and then only after tens of thousands had died on Haussmann’s elegant boulevards. The new government wrote a new constitution, and the Third Republic, with a weak presidency and a powerful Assembly, began. Napoleon III, who had come to power so improbably, lost it almost as dramatically. He died in England in 1873. Eugénie lived for nearly half a century more, until 1920, and Queen Victoria, another longtime widow, became her close confidante. The opening of the Suez Canal proved to be the apogee of her years as empress. The Second Empire became a national question mark for the French, who have never been able to decide whether it was a product of collective folly and corruption, or a necessary period of peace and stasis in an otherwise tumultuous century.
The Third Republic was dominated not by a king and court, but by an assembly of representatives, most of them younger than Lesseps. They were adamant champions of business, industry, and empire, and they tended to view the Suez Canal and the Suez Canal Company as two of France’s greatest achievements and Lesseps as a national treasure. After the company decreased its rates, the canal began to attract more freight, and the stock price recovered. Lesseps, who had never flagged, felt vindicated. His advice was sought on numerous projects, and along with his son Charles, he became involved in a new scheme that followed logically from the first but was, in truth, much more complicated and much less feasible: carving a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and doing for North and South America what he had done for Asia, Africa, and Europe.
At almost the same time that Lesseps announced his goal to construct a Panama Canal, the Suez Canal returned to the center of international politics. After 1869, Ismail went even deeper into debt. In 1873 alone, he borrowed more than thirty million pounds, which was double the cost of building the entire Suez Canal; of that thirty, he received barely twenty million, with the rest due in interest.1 By some accounts, he spent as much as ten million pounds on bribes to the Ottoman Empire. The rest was used for the ongoing modernization of the country. His public-works projects, though expensive, were altering Egypt, and state revenues increased.
By mid-1870, however, the treasury was nearly a hundred million pounds in debt, and the interest burden alone was crushing. Creditors in France and England became worried. They had lent the money on exorbitant terms, and now wondered if Ismail would be able to meet his obligations. In 1875, European bankers decided that Egypt was on the brink of insolvency. Ismail needed several million pounds in order to pay the next installment on the debt in December, and no lender was willing to extend him further credit. He was in danger of defaulting, and he had one attractive asset: his shares in the Suez Canal Company.
At first, it appeared that he would sell the shares to French bankers. The lead buyer was the Société Générale. Word of the impending transaction reached London. The British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, had already investigated the possibility of purchasing the khedive’s canal shares that past summer, and when he was informed that the French, who owned half of the canal, were about to buy the rest, he acted quickly. Some of his motivation was political. Though the Third Republic had replaced Napoleon, it embraced his imperialism. French foreign expansion in Africa and Southeast Asia competed directly with British expansion in those same regions. It was a game of global chess, played with real soldiers and actual countries. Having tried to prevent the canal from being built, the British were starting to rely on it, and that raised specters of dependency on French good will. If Parisian bankers allied with Lesseps bought the khedive’s shares, Disraeli later explained, “the whole of the Suez Canal would have belonged to the French, and they might have shut it up!” In order to prevent that unlikely occurrence, Disraeli moved swiftly to counter the French offer.
It was a brilliant move, executed deftly, and motivated by an acute reading of the strategic, political, and economic advantages. Had another man been in the same position, he might not have grasped the opportunity, even if he had shared Disraeli’s political acumen. Unnoticed at the time, and rarely remarked on thereafter, was the degree to which Disraeli acted not on political principle but on the same passion for the Orient that had animated the Saint-Simonians and Lesseps. Decades earlier, when Muhammad Ali was at the height of his power, Disraeli had made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt, after which he wrote several novels about the Orient. In Tancred, which was published in the late 1840s, Disraeli created a protagonist who goes east to find the missing element in his life. The young nobleman Tancred, consum
ed by “the fever of progress,” realizes that science and industrialization are not enough. In the Orient, Tancred discovers the solution: a fusion of East and West, of Asia and Europe, science and religion, that could make both whole. Thirty years after writing Tancred, Disraeli found himself in a position to fulfill his own literary prophecy.
He turned to the Cabinet, to the queen, and to Lionel Rothschild. The Conservatives had a majority, and as leader of the party, Disraeli could make an executive decision with a reasonable expectation that the Cabinet would support him. After several hours of debate, it did. Though the Liberals, led by Gladstone, grumbled, they could not stop Disraeli. Not only did he have a parliamentary majority, he also had a singular ability to communicate with Queen Victoria, and she gave him her blessing. She apparently viewed an English purchase of the canal shares as a blow not against the French but against Bismarck, who had made several very public statements questioning whether Britain was still up to the task of being a great empire.
The shares would cost four million pounds. Disraeli was prime minister, but he did not have that sum of money at his immediate disposal. Needing a quick infusion of cash, he approached Lionel Rothschild for a loan. Years before, Ferdinand de Lesseps had asked James Rothschild for help in capitalizing the Canal Company and then turned him down when told how much the aid of the Rothschilds would cost. Disraeli was able to negotiate far better terms and, on behalf of the British government, contracted a loan with Lionel for four million pounds at 5 percent interest and 2.5 percent commission. Four million pounds was slightly more than the French consortium had offered for the khedive’s 177,000 shares. The money would be transferred to Ismail by the Rothschilds, and Ismail would then physically deliver his share certificates to the British consulate. The transaction went smoothly, and at the end of November 1875, the British government owned 44 percent of the Suez Canal Company and became the largest single shareholder. Writing to Queen Victoria, Disraeli declared, “You have it, Madam.”
Parting the Desert Page 33