Arabi had been misled by the lying reports of his Bedouin scouts, who informed him that they had cut the communication between Ismailia and Kassasin, and that the latter was held by a small force, whereas as a matter of fact the railway from Ismailia to the front was in working order; Kassasin was occupied by about 8000 men under General Willis, and the brigade of Guards, a battery, and a regiment of cavalry were all within reinforcing distance. Acting on this false information, he determined to take the offensive, and at dawn on the 9th he put his troops in motion and pushed from Tel-el-Kebir towards Kassasin with several squadrons of cavalry, thirty or thirty-one guns, and seventeen battalions of infantry. His cavalry advance-guard greatly outnumbered our mounted troops, who however succeeded in holding back the Egyptian horsemen, until the infantry had taken up a position astride the canal to meet the attack now threatening from the west and north. Covered by a vigorous but comparatively harmless cannonade, the enemy’s infantry, a large part of which had been brought by train, advanced towards the camp, the uniforms of the regular soldiers contrasting strongly with the white robes of the Bedouins as they moved over the low sandy hummocks of the desert. For a time General Willis stood on the defensive, and the Royal Irish were detailed as the escort to the field-guns. Then he gave orders for a general advance, and the battalion was placed in echelon on the right rear of the first line of Graham’s brigade, ready to form front to the right, and face the flank attack which for a moment was anticipated. At first the battalion moved in quarter column, and then in line; at no time during the 9th was it extended for attack, for the British guns played so rapidly upon the Egyptians that they fell back in disorder, giving Graham’s brigade no opportunity to close with them; and by half-past ten the enemy had retired to his works at Tel-el-Kebir, leaving four field-pieces in our hands. From his entrenchments Arabi opened an angry but harmless artillery fire upon the troops, who by General Willis’s directions halted out of range. In ceasing his pursuit at a moment when it seemed that a vigorous, though necessarily costly attack might have made him master of the entrenchments, General Willis was acting in perfect accord with the spirit of Lord Wolseley’s strategy, for Alison’s brigade of infantry had only just arrived from Alexandria at Kassasin, and the Commander-in-Chief was not yet ready to advance across the desert. Had the Egyptians been attacked and beaten on the 9th, Wolseley could not have followed up the victory, and therefore their defeat would not have been the absolutely crushing blow that he hoped to inflict (and did actually inflict) upon them a few days later. The British troops remained facing Tel-el-Kebir for about three hours, and thus secured time for a careful reconnaissance of Arabi’s position; then they were ordered back to camp.