'On January 24th there was a regular Cabinet. The Queen had written that she would not allow Prince Leopold to go to Victoria.' On March 28th 'we heard of the death of Prince Leopold,' codicils to whose will Sir Charles had witnessed in the preceding year. 'All newspapers wrote of the pleasant boy as though he had been a man of literary genius.' But anxious as Sir Charles had been to further Prince Leopold's wishes, and in spite of his 'respect for his memory,' he could not allow a principle, for which he always fought, to be waived. 'The Queen wrote to Mr. Gladstone at this time (April 5th) with regard to provision for the child and possible posthumous child of the Duke of Albany, and I wrote to Mr. Gladstone that I could not possibly agree to any provision for them, for which there was no exact precedent, without the Select Committee which I had previously been promised as regarded any new application.' On April 22nd Mr. Gladstone alluded 'to a letter to the Queen, but he did not read it to us,' and Sir Charles again insisted 'upon inquiry before the proposal of any provision for which there was no direct precedent.' 'At the Cabinet of Monday, April 28th, we found that the Queen was indignant with us for our refusal to make further provision for the Duchess of Albany.... None of the precedents of the century warranted provision for children in infancy. It was agreed that Mr. Gladstone was to write to the Queen again, but "our negative answer is only applicable to the case where the children are in infancy." In other words, we did not wish to bind those who might come after us, but the phrase was not to commit us as to what we would do in five years' time.' CHAPTER XXXV EGYPT 1884 I. At the close of 1883 the destruction of Hicks's army had made clear to all that the Soudan was, for the time at least, lost to Egypt; and close upon this disaster in the central region had followed defeats on the Red Sea coast. But Egyptian garrisons were holding out at Sinkat, some fifty miles from the port of Suakim, and at Tokar, only twenty miles from the coast. In October, 1883, a small force sent to relieve Sinkat was cut up by the Dervishes under Osman Digna; in November, a larger column of 500, accompanied by the British Consul, was utterly routed in an attempt to reach Tokar. General Baker, with his newly formed gendarmerie, was then ordered to Suakim. He desired to enlist the services of Zebehr Pasha, a famous leader of men, but a former dealer in slaves. To this the British authorities objected, and Zebehr was not sent. Baker went, attempted with 3,500 troops to reach Tokar, and on February 2nd, 1884, lost 2,000 of them near the wells of El Teb. Both Tokar and Sinkat soon after fell into the hands of the Dervishes.