FROM EL-TEB TO OMDURMAN
(1884-1898)
Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave,
He perished with the folk he could not save.
And though none surely told us he is dead,
And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave, when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the secret Nile,
Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know
Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more—
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
The White Pasha, Andrew Lang.

Considerably before the events of the last chapter, Sir Samuel Baker, the English explorer, had travelled through the unknown regions of the Upper Nile, and found that the country was almost entirely devoted to the slave-trade. An effort was made to improve conditions there. The Khedive for a time asserted his authority over these regions, two Englishmen being appointed in succession as his governors, the first Sir Samuel Baker himself, and the second Charles Gordon. For many years Gordon, who had come fresh from China, struggled to free the natives from the slave-traders, but his labours were rendered useless by the accession of a worthless Khedive. Shortly afterwards he returned to England, and the Soudan relapsed into its old corruption. Then, in 1882, appeared one of those strange dramatic figures that in the East spring into prominence and disappear as abruptly—a fanatic named Mohammed Ahmed, proclaiming himself as Mahdi, and calling to his standard all true Mahommedans.

The Arabs have ever been ready to follow the sword, and very soon 6000 troops under Yusef Pasha were almost annihilated. Swiftly one Egyptian garrison fell after another. The Mahdi advanced towards the north, and cut to pieces an Egyptian army under Colonel Hicks. The word passed from village to village, from mosque to mosque, from one solitary encampment to another that the Mahdi had indeed come at last, and with the defeat of Hicks’s army not only was Khartoum in hourly peril, but Cairo itself was threatened.

Fortunately, the Arab—like the Highlander of old—is satisfied with the booty in hand, and very much prefers to see it safely put away before he takes to the field again in search of more. Such practical considerations were a check to the Mahdi’s religious zeal, and permitted England to collect her strength—or one should say such strength as lay to her hand; for at this time public interest in Egypt was very luke-warm. The result was the tragic page in history that closed with the death of Gordon in Khartoum. There was one man in Egypt who was later on both to avenge Gordon and to subdue the Soudan, but he as yet was unknown. The name of this young man was Kitchener, and the war correspondent, Mr. John Macdonald, has given the following little sketch of the future victor of Omdurman as he was in the year 1883—the year in which the Mahdi renewed his activities. It is not without interest at the present time.

“Taylor,” he writes, “had invited me the night before to accompany him and his friend and witness the operation which they were both to supervise. A tall, slim, thin-faced, slightly stooping figure in long boots, ‘cut-away’ dark morning-coat and Egyptian fez, somewhat tilted over his eyes—such, as I remember him, was the young soldier who was destined to fulfil Gordon’s task of ‘smashing the Mahdi.’ ‘He’s quiet,’ Taylor whispered to me as we were getting ready; ‘that’s his way.’ And, again, with characteristic jerk of the head, ‘He’s clever.’ And so, in the raw, greyish early morning of January 8, 1883, the three of us drove in our dingy rattle-trap over the white dusty road Nilewards to meet the fellah cavaliers. Taylor did most of the talking. Kitchener expressed himself in an occasional nod or monosyllable.

“At the barracks we found some forty men waiting. I remember Kitchener’s gaze at the awkward, slipshod group as he took his position in the centre of a circular space round which the riders were to show their paces. ‘We begin with the officers,’ said Taylor turning to me; ‘we shall train them first, then put them to drill the troopers. We have no troopers just yet, though we have 440 horses ready for them.’

“And now began the selection of the fellah officers. They were to be tested in horsemanship. The first batch were ordered to mount. Round they went, Indian file, Kitchener, like a circus-master standing in the centre. Had he flourished a long whip he might have passed for a show-master at a rehearsal. Neither audible nor visible sign did he give of any feeling roused in him by a performance most disappointing and sometimes ridiculous. His hands buried in his trousers pockets, he quietly watched the emergence of the least unfit. In half an hour or so the first native officers of the fellah cavalry were chosen. It was then that Kitchener made his longest speech, ‘We’ll have to drive it into those fellows,’ he muttered, as if thinking aloud.”

The importance of this extract is the glimpse it gives of the material that was the hope of Egypt.

That was the type of man that Kitchener took in hand, and that was the type of man who was to uphold the supremacy of the British arms against the fanatic forces of the Mahdi.

But between 1883 and Omdurman there was more than spade work—there was grim tragedy and humiliating defeat. In August 1883, when the Mahdi was again on the war-path, General Baker despatched native reinforcements from Cairo in the vain hope that they would be able to withstand the advance of the Arabs. On February 4, 1884, Baker’s poorly trained Egyptians encountered the Sudanese, and were practically annihilated. This disaster, following so quickly upon the rout of Hicks’s troops, awakened the Government at home to the fact that something must be done. Sir Gerald Graham was ordered to proceed with a force of 4000 British troops to Suakin. With his force were the 1st Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch. On the 29th of February the British troops set out upon the road over which Baker himself had passed, and came in touch with the enemy at El-Teb. The Arabs were defended to some extent with entrenchments, and for an hour maintained a steady fire. Then, having grown confident by their easily-won victories over Egyptian troops, the Sudanese hurled themselves at the Highlanders, shaking their long spears, and shouting their battle-cries. They were met by the solid unbreakable square of the 42nd. Checked and demoralised, their advance was quickly turned into a rout. No sooner did the enemy waver than the cavalry were let loose, and the engagement at El-Teb was turned into a signal success.

On the 13th of March 1884 was fought the battle of Tamai, in which the Black Watch took a leading part. The Highlanders were ordered to charge at the enemy in front, but did not perceive that on their right lay a deep nullah or piece of hidden ground. No sooner was their flank exposed than hosts of the enemy leapt to their feet and broke upon them. The 42nd were caught between two fires and surrounded. The Naval Brigade, forced back, were compelled to surrender their guns. It became a hand-to-hand struggle, each man fighting for himself.

In the words of Kipling:
We took our chanst among the Kyber ‘ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu impi dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ‘eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ‘oller.
Then ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ the missis an’ the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an’ of course we went an’ did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ‘ardly fair;
But for all the odds again’ you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.

For a moment it seemed as though Baker’s disaster was to be repeated. But the British regulars were very unlike the undisciplined Egyptians. “The spectacle,” wrote a war correspondent, “did not so much terrify as exercise a weird, terrible fascination. I do not suppose that either I or any one else who witnessed it will often again see its equal for magnificence. Though retreating, our men literally mowed down their assailants. In the smoke and dust of the battle, amid the bright gleam of their myriad spearheads, the semi-nude, brown-skinned, black, shaggy-haired warriors were falling down in scores. Of all the savage races of the world none are more desperately brave than the Soudan Arabs, who were breaking upon our ranks like a tempestuous sea. At last the pressure of the front upon the rear became so great that those of us who were mounted were for a few moments too tightly wedged together to be able to move; but we felt the collapse was only temporary.”

It was touch and go, but the undismayed veterans of the Black Watch and those other troops who formed the British force were bound, sooner or later, to enforce their superiority. Presently, shoulder to shoulder, forming where they could into squares, the 42nd and 65th began to advance. For a moment the conflict was in suspense, then the crisis had passed. The victory was won.

Unhappily, the British Government took no advantage of Graham’s successes, and decided upon the evacuation of the Soudan. Under these circumstances the only thing left to do was to ensure the safety of the civilians in the various towns more or less under European control. There was one man above all others who was competent to deal with the exigencies of the situation, and that was General Gordon. He was begged by the Government to leave for Egypt to carry out this mission. We must not overlook, in justice to the Government, that neither they nor probably Gordon himself appreciated the strength of the revolutionary movement in the Soudan, so that when he arrived at Khartoum in February 1884 he was dismayed to find it was exceedingly likely that he would be isolated there, if not actually besieged by the enemy. Accordingly, he advised the Government to make good the advantage gained by Sir Gerald Graham, and ensure a lasting peace in the Soudan. But the Government refused to be interested in the problem. Then Gordon communicated with the country, stating that he had provisions for only five months. Lord Granville, without dealing with the situation in any way, instructed him to leave Khartoum as best he could, and it was not until the end of March that the grave danger to Gordon was realised. Lord Wolseley, voicing the sympathies of the English people, begged the Government to do something to save a man whom they had sent out to represent the country.

Then and only then, Mr. Gladstone, who had placed every possible obstacle in the path of action, permitted the British troops to set out for Egypt, with Wolseley in command. And so there embarked that melancholy expedition, against which time and ill-luck waged a remorseless warfare—an expedition that was to reach Khartoum two days after the murder of Gordon.

Under Major-General Earle the Black Watch came up the Nile, while Sir Charles Wilson was heading for Khartoum. On the 10th of February Earle’s columns came into conflict with the enemy at Kirbekan, when, to quote Wolseley’s despatch, “The Black Watch advanced over rocks and broken ground upon the koppies, and af............