How was he able to induce Italy to join her old enemy, Austria? What was the effect of the formation of the Triple Alliance on France and Russia? What result had the formation of the two alliances on the gun-industry? How was England brought into the race for war equipment? Chapter XIV. The “Entente Cordiale” Ancient enemies.—England and France in Africa.—A collision at Fashoda.—Germany offers to help France.—Delcassé the peacemaker.—A French-English agreement.—Friendship takes the place of hostility.—England’s relations with Italy, Russia, and Germany.—Germans cultivate the friendship and trade of Turkey.—The Morocco-Algeciras incident.—The question of Bosnia and Herzegovina.—England joins France and Russia to form the “Triple Entente.”—The Agadir incident. England and France had never been friendly. There had been wars between them, off and on, for five hundred years. The only time that they had fought on the same side was in the campaign against Russia in 1855, but even then there was no real sympathy between them. In the year 1882, events happened in Egypt which gave England an excuse for interfering with the government of that country. Egypt was a part of the Turkish empire, but so long as it paid a certain amount of money to Constantinople, the Turks did not care very much how it was governed. But now a wild chief of the desert had announced himself as the prophet Mohammed come to earth again, and a great many of the desert tribesmen had joined him. They cut to pieces one or two English armies in Egypt, and killed General Gordon, a famous English soldier. It was 1898 before the English were able to defeat this horde. Lord Kitchener finally beat them and extended the English power to the city of Khartoom on the Nile. [Illustration: An Arab Sheik and His Staff] In the meantime, the English millionaire, Cecil Rhodes, had formed a plan for a railroad which should run the entire length of Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo. It was England’s ambition to control all the territory through which this road should run. But the French, too, were spreading out over Africa. Their expeditions through the Sahara Desert had joined their colonies of Algeria and Tunis to those on the west coast of Africa and others along the Gulf of Guinea. In this same year, 1898, while Lord Kitchener was still fighting the Arabs, a French expedition under Major Marchand struggled across the Sahara and reached the Nile at Fashoda, several miles above Khartoom. Marchand planted the French flag and announced that he took possession of this territory for the republic of France.