The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
by Winston Churchill · English · Gutenberg #4943 · 771,697 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
Author: Winston Churchill
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #4943]
Most recently updated: November 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4943
Credits: Ronald J. Goodden and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER WAR: AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECONQUEST OF THE SUDAN ***
THE RIVER WAR
An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
(1902 edition)
By Winston S. Churchill
CONTENTS:
Chapter
I. The Rebellion of the Mahdi
II. The Fate of the Envoy
III. The Dervish Empire
IV. The Years of Preparation
V. The Beginning of War
VI. Firket
VII. The Recovery of the Dongola Province
VIII. The Desert Railway
IX. Abu Hamed
X. Berber
XI. Reconnaissance
XII. The Battle of the Atbara
XIII. The Grand Advance
XIV. The Operations of the First of September
XV. The Battle of Omdurman
XVI. The Fall of the City
XVII. 'The Fashoda Incident'
XVIII On the Blue Nile
XIX. The End of the Khalifa
APPENDIX B
____________________________________________________________________
THE SOUDAN
>>> to illustrate the military operations <<<
1896-1898
|* Wady Halfa
/
(The Nile) /
_/
|
\_
/
| __* Abu Hamed
| _/ \
Dongola *\ _/ \ Suakin *
\ Merawi / \
\ */ \
\_ _ / \ Berber
\*
/\__ (The Atbara River)
_/ \_
Metemma */ \
/
|
Omdurman */
Khartoum /*\_
| \_
| \_ (The Blue Nile)
\ \
KORDOFAN \
|
(The White Nile)
____________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER I: THE REBELLION OF THE MAHDI
The north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and
watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries
of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian
Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions
are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of
mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of
growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that
their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can
penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile,
as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it
there is only suffocation. Aut Nilus, aut nihil!
The town of Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, is
the point on which the trade of the south must inevitably converge. It
is the great spout through which the merchandise collected from a wide
area streams northwards to the Mediterranean shore. It marks the extreme
northern limit of the fertile Soudan. Between Khartoum and Assuan the
river flows for twelve hundred miles through deserts of surpassing
desolation. At last the wilderness recedes and the living world broadens
out again into Egypt and the Delta. It is with events that have occurred
in the intervening waste that these pages are concerned.
The real Soudan, known to the statesman and the explorer, lies far
to the south--moist, undulating, and exuberant. But there is another
Soudan, which some mistake for the true, whose solitudes oppress the
Nile from the Egyptian frontier to Omdurman. This is the Soudan of the
soldier. Destitute of wealth or future, it is rich in history. The names
of its squalid villages are familiar to distant and enlightened peoples.
The barrenness of its scenery has been drawn by skilful pen and pencil.
Its ample deserts have tasted the blood of brave men. Its hot, black
rocks have witnessed famous tragedies. It is the scene of the war.
This great tract, which may conveniently be called 'The Military
Soudan,' stretches with apparent indefiniteness over the face of the
continent. Level plains of smooth sand--a little rosier than buff, a
little paler than salmon--are interrupted only by occasional peaks of
rock--black, stark, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over
the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the wind,
gathers into deep drifts, and silts among the dark rocks of the hills,
exactly as snow hangs about an Alpine summit; only it is a fiery snow,
such as might fall in hell. The earth burns with the quenchless thirst
of ages, and in the steel-blue sky scarcely a cloud obstructs the
unrelenting triumph of the sun.
Through the desert flows the river--a thread of blue silk drawn across
an enormous brown drugget; and even this thread is brown for half the
year. Where the water laps the sand and soaks into the banks there grows
an avenue of vegetation which seems very beautiful and luxuriant by
contrast with what lies beyond. The Nile, through all the three thousand
miles of its course vital to everything that lives beside it, is never
so precious as here. The traveller clings to the strong river as to an
old friend, staunch in the hour of need. All the world blazes, but
here is shade. The deserts are hot, but the Nile is cool. The land is
parched, but here is abundant water. The picture painted in burnt sienna
is relieved by a grateful flash of green.
Yet he who had not seen the desert or felt the sun heavily on his
shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub.
Unnourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water's
edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and
granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the
vegetation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs
and thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly
tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are
kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards their
bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yellow glint
of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and protests
that Nature is not always mischievous and cruel.
The banks of the Nile, except by contrast with the desert, display
an abundance of barrenness. Their characteristic is monotony. Their
attraction is their sadness. Yet there is one hour when all is changed.
Just before the sun sets towards the western cliffs a delicious flush
brightens and enlivens the landscape. It is as though some Titanic
artist in an hour of inspiration were retouching the picture, painting
in dark purple shadows among the rocks, strengthening the lights on the
sands, gilding and beautifying everything, and making the whole scene
live. The river, whose windings make it look like a lake, turns from
muddy brown to silver-grey. The sky from a dull blue deepens into violet
in the west. Everything under that magic touch becomes vivid and alive.
And then the sun sinks altogether behind the rocks, the colors fade out
of the sky, the flush off the sands, and gradually everything darkens
and grows grey--like a man's cheek when he is bleeding to death. We are
left sad and sorrowful in the dark, until the stars light up and remind
us that there is always something beyond.
In a land whose beauty is the beauty of a moment, whose face is
desolate, and whose character is strangely stern, the curse of war
was hardly needed to produce a melancholy effect. Why should there be
caustic plants where everything is hot and burning? In deserts where
thirst is enthroned, and where the rocks and sand appeal to a pitiless
sky for moisture, it was a savage trick to add the mockery of mirage.
The area multiplies the desolation. There is life only by the Nile. If a
man were to leave the river, he might journey westward and find no human
habitation, nor the smoke of a cooking fire, except the lonely tent of a
Kabbabish Arab or the encampment of a trader's caravan, till he reached
the coast-line of America. Or he might go east and find nothing but sand
and sea and sun until Bombay rose above the horizon. The thread of
fresh water is itself solitary in regions where all living things lack
company.
In the account of the River War the Nile is naturally supreme. It is
the great melody that recurs throughout the whole opera. The general
purposing military operations, the statesman who would decide upon grave
policies, and the reader desirous of studying the course and results
of either, must think of the Nile. It is the life of the lands through
which it flows. It is the cause of the war: the means by which we fight;
the end at which we aim. Imagination should paint the river through
every page in the story. It glitters between the palm-trees during the
actions. It is the explanation of nearly every military movement. By
its banks the armies camp at night. Backed or flanked on its unfordable
stream they offer or accept battle by day. To its brink, morning and
evening, long lines of camels, horses, mules, and slaughter cattle hurry
eagerly. Emir and Dervish, officer and soldier, friend and foe, kneel
alike to this god of ancient Egypt and draw each day their daily water
in goatskin or canteen. Without the river none would have started.
Without it none might have continued. Without it none could ever have
returned.
All who journey on the Nile, whether in commerce or war, will pay their
tribute of respect and gratitude; for the great river has befriended
all races and every age. Through all the centuries it has performed
the annual miracle of its flood. Every year when the rains fall and the
mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the head-streams become
torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. A vast expanse of
low, swampy lands, crossed by secondary channels and flooded for many
miles, regulates the flow, and by a sponge-like action prevents the
excess of one year from causing the deficiency of the next. Far away
in Egypt, prince, priest, and peasant look southwards with anxious
attention for the fluctuating yet certain rise. Gradually the flood
begins. The Bahr-el-Ghazal from a channel of stagnant pools and marshes
becomes a broad and navigable stream. The Sobat and the Atbara from dry
watercourses with occasional pools, in which the fish and crocodiles
are crowded, turn to rushing rivers. But all this is remote from Egypt.
After its confluence with the Atbara no drop of water reaches the Nile,
and it flows for seven hundred miles through the sands or rushes in
cataracts among the rocks of the Nubian desert. Nevertheless, in spite
of the tremendous diminution in volume caused by the dryness of the
earth and air and the heat of the sun--all of which drink greedily--the
river below Assuan is sufficiently great to supply nine millions of
people with as much water as their utmost science and energies can draw,
and yet to pour into the Mediterranean a low-water surplus current of
61,500 cubic feet per second. Nor is its water its only gift. As the
Nile rises its complexion is changed. The clear blue river becomes thick
and red, laden with the magic mud that can raise cities from the desert
sand and make the wilderness a garden. The geographer may still in
the arrogance of science describe the Nile as 'a great, steady-flowing
river, fed by the rains of the tropics, controlled by the existence of a
vast head reservoir and several areas of repose, and annually flooded
by the accession of a great body of water with which its eastern
tributaries are flushed' [ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA]; but all who have
drunk deeply of its soft yet fateful waters--fateful, since they give
both life and death--will understand why the old Egyptians worshipped
the river, nor will they even in modern days easily dissociate from
their minds a feeling of mystic reverence.
South of Khartoum and of 'The Military Soudan' the land becomes more
fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian
fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is
approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and
consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish and
unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks of its climate.
Nevertheless it is by no means valueless. On the east the province of
Sennar used to produce abundant grain, and might easily produce no less
abundant cotton. Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur
afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of
livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also
pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still
fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract of
country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further south
and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant with
tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green.
Amid groves of gigantic trees and through plains of high waving grass
the stately elephant roams in herds which occasionally number four
hundred, hardly ever disturbed by a well-armed hunter. The ivory of
their tusks constitutes the wealth of the Equatorial Province. So
greatly they abound that Emin Pasha is provoked to complain of a pest of
these valuable pachyderms [LIFE OF EMIN PASHA, vol.i chapter ix.]: and
although they are only assailed by the natives with spear and gun, no
less than twelve thousand hundredweight of ivory has been exported in a
single year [Ibid.] All other kinds of large beasts known to man inhabit
these obscure retreats. The fierce rhinoceros crashes through the
undergrowth. Among the reeds of melancholy swamps huge hippopotami,
crocodiles, and buffaloes prosper and increase. Antelope of every known
and many unclassified species; serpents of peculiar venom; countless
millions of birds, butterflies, and beetles are among the offspring
of prolific Nature. And the daring sportsman who should survive his
expedition would not fail to add to the achievements of science and the
extent of natural history as well as to his own reputation.
The human inhabitants of the Soudan would not, but for their vices and
misfortunes, be disproportioned in numbers to the fauna or less happy.
War, slavery, and oppression have, however, afflicted them until the
total population of the whole country does not exceed at the most
liberal estimate three million souls. The huge area contains many
differences of climate and conditions, and these have produced peculiar
and diverse breeds of men. The Soudanese are of many tribes, but two
main races can be clearly distinguished: the aboriginal natives, and the
Arab settlers. The indigenous inhabitants of the country were negroes as
black as coal. Strong, virile, and simple-minded savages, they lived as
we may imagine prehistoric men--hunting, fighting, marrying, and dying,
with no ideas beyond the gratification of their physical desires, and
no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of
ancestors, and other forms of superstition common among peoples of low
development. They displayed the virtues of barbarism. They were brave
and honest. The smallness of their intelligence excused the degradation
of their habits. Their ignorance secured their innocence. Yet their
eulogy must be short, for though their customs, language, and appearance
vary with the districts they inhabit and the subdivisions to which they
belong, the history of all is a confused legend of strife and misery,
their natures are uniformly cruel and thriftless, and their condition is
one of equal squalor and want.
Although the negroes are the more numerous, the Arabs exceed in power.
The bravery of the aboriginals is outweighed by the intelligence of
the invaders and their superior force of character. During the second
century of the Mohammedan era, when the inhabitants of Arabia went
forth to conquer the world, one adventurous army struck south. The first
pioneers were followed at intervals by continual immigrations of Arabs
not only from Arabia but also across the deserts from Egypt and Marocco.
The element thus introduced has spread and is spreading throughout the
Soudan, as water soaks into a dry sponge. The aboriginals absorbed the
invaders they could not repel. The stronger race imposed its customs and
language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the
facial appearance of the Soudanese. For more than a thousand years
the influence of Mohammedanism, which appears to possess a strange
fascination for negroid races, has been permeating the Soudan, and,
although ignorance and natural obstacles impede the progress of new
ideas, the whole of the black race is gradually adopting the new
religion and developing Arab characteristics. In the districts of the
north, where the original invaders settled, the evolution is complete,
and the Arabs of the Soudan are a race formed by the interbreeding
of negro and Arab, and yet distinct from both. In the more remote and
inaccessible regions which lie to the south and west the negro race
remains as yet unchanged by the Arab influence. And between these
extremes every degree of mixture is to be found. In some tribes pure
Arabic is spoken, and prior to the rise of the Mahdi the orthodox Moslem
faith was practised. In others Arabic has merely modified the ancient
dialects, and the Mohammedan religion has been adapted to the older
superstitions; but although the gap between the Arab-negro and the
negro-pure is thus filled by every intermediate blend, the two races
were at an early date quite distinct.
The qualities of mongrels are rarely admirable, and the mixture of
the Arab and negro types has produced a debased and cruel breed, more
shocking because they are more intelligent than the primitive savages.
The stronger race soon began to prey upon the simple aboriginals; some
of the Arab tribes were camel-breeders; some were goat-herds; some were
Baggaras or cow-herds. But all, without exception, were hunters of men.
To the great slave-market at Jedda a continual stream of negro captives
has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder and the
adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic by placing the
ignorant negroes at a further disadvantage. Thus the situation in the
Soudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows: The dominant
race of Arab invaders was unceasingly spreading its blood, religion,
customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the
same time it harried and enslaved them.
The state of society that arose out of this may be easily imagined. The
warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless
feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or
rose locally against their oppressors. Occasionally an important Sheikh
would effect the combination of many tribes, and a kingdom came into
existence--a community consisting of a military class armed with
guns and of multitudes of slaves, at once their servants and their
merchandise, and sometimes trained as soldiers. The dominion might
prosper viciously till it was overthrown by some more powerful league.
All this was unheeded by the outer world, from which the Soudan is
separated by the deserts, and it seemed that the slow, painful course
of development would be unaided and uninterrupted. But at last the
populations of Europe changed. Another civilisation reared itself above
the ruins of Roman triumph and Mohammedan aspiration--a civilisation
more powerful, more glorious, but no less aggressive. The impulse of
conquest which hurried the French and English to Canada and the Indies,
which sent the Dutch to the Cape and the Spaniards to Peru, spread to
Africa and led the Egyptians to the Soudan. In the year 1819 Mohammed
Ali, availing himself of the disorders alike as an excuse and an
opportunity, sent his son Ismail up the Nile with a great army. The Arab
tribes, torn by dissension, exhausted by thirty years of general war,
and no longer inspired by their neglected religion, offered a weak
resistance. Their slaves, having known the worst of life, were
apathetic. The black aboriginals were silent and afraid. The whole vast
territory was conquered with very little fighting, and the victorious
army, leaving garrisons, returned in triumph to the Delta.
What enterprise that an enlightened community may attempt is more noble
and more profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of fertile
regions and large populations? To give peace to warring tribes, to
administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the
slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to plant the earliest seeds
of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities
for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain--what more beautiful
ideal or more valuable reward can inspire human effort? The act is
virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often extremely
profitable. Yet as the mind turns from the wonderful cloudland of
aspiration to the ugly scaffolding of attempt and achievement, a
succession of opposite ideas arises. Industrious races are displayed
stinted and starved for the sake of an expensive Imperialism which they
can only enjoy if they are well fed. Wild peoples, ignorant of their
barbarism, callous of suffering, careless of life but tenacious of
liberty, are seen to resist with fury the philanthropic invaders, and
to perish in thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The
inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the
figures of the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious
soldier, and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the
conquered and excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors. And as
the eye of thought rests on these sinister features, it hardly seems
possible for us to believe that any fair prospect is approached by so
foul a path.
From 1819 to 1883 Egypt ruled the Soudan. Her rule was not kindly,
wise, or profitable. Its aim was to exploit, not to improve the local
population. The miseries of the people were aggravated rather than
lessened: but they were concealed. For the rough injustice of the
sword there were substituted the intricacies of corruption and bribery.
Violence and plunder were more hideous, since they were cloaked with
legality and armed with authority. The land was undeveloped and poor.
It barely sustained its inhabitants. The additional burden of a
considerable foreign garrison and a crowd of rapacious officials
increased the severity of the economic conditions. Scarcity
was frequent. Famines were periodical. Corrupt and incapable
Governors-General succeeded each other at Khartoum with bewildering
rapidity. The constant changes, while they prevented the continuity
of any wise policy, did not interrupt the misrule. With hardly any
exceptions, the Pashas were consistent in oppression. The success of
their administration was measured by the Ministries in Egypt by the
amount of money they could extort from the natives; among the officials
in the Soudan, by the number of useless offices they could create. There
were a few bright examples of honest men, but these, by providing a
contrast, only increased the discontents.
The rule of Egypt was iniquitous: yet it preserved the magnificent
appearance of Imperial dominion. The Egyptian Pro-consul lived in state
at the confluence of the Niles. The representatives of foreign Powers
established themselves in the city. The trade of the south converged
upon Khartoum. Thither the subordinate governors, Beys and Mudirs,
repaired at intervals to report the state of their provinces and to
receive instructions. Thither were sent the ivory of Equatoria, the
ostrich feathers of Kordofan, gum from Darfur, grain from Sennar, and
taxes collected from all the regions. Strange beasts, entrapped in the
swamps and forests, passed through the capital on their journey to Cairo
and Europe. Complex and imposing reports of revenue and expenditure
were annually compiled. An elaborate and dignified correspondence was
maintained between Egypt and its great dependency. The casual observer,
astonished at the unusual capacity for government displayed by an
Oriental people, was tempted to accept the famous assertion which Nubar
Pasha put into the mouth of the Khedive Ismail: 'We are no longer in
Africa, but in Europe.' Yet all was a hateful sham ['The government
of the Egyptians in these far-off countries is nothing else but one of
brigandage of the very worst description.'--COLONEL GORDON IN CENTRAL
AFRICA, April 11, 1879.] The arbitrary and excessive taxes were
collected only at the point of the bayonet. If a petty chief fell into
arrears, his neighbours were raised against him. If an Arab tribe
were recalcitrant, a military expedition was despatched. Moreover, the
ability of the Arabs to pay depended on their success as slave-hunters.
When there had been a good catch, the revenue profited. The Egyptian
Government had joined the International League against the slave trade.
They combined, however, indirectly but deliberately, to make money out
of it. [EGYPT, No.11, 1883.]
In the miserable, harassing warfare that accompanied the collection of
taxes the Viceregal commanders gained more from fraud than force. No
subterfuge, no treachery, was too mean for them to adopt: no oath or
treaty was too sacred for them to break. Their methods were cruel, and
if honour did not impede the achievement, mercy did not restrict the
effects of their inglorious successes; and the effete administrators
delighted to order their timid soldiery to carry out the most
savage executions. The political methods and social style of the
Governors-General were imitated more or less exactly by the subordinate
officials according to their degree in the provinces. Since they were
completely hidden from the eye of civilisation, they enjoyed a greater
licence in their administration. As their education was inferior, so
their habits became more gross. Meanwhile the volcano on which they
disported themselves was ominously silent. The Arab tribes obeyed, and
the black population cowered.
The authority of a tyrannical Government was supported by the presence
of a worthless army. Nearly forty thousand men were distributed among
eight main and numerous minor garrisons. Isolated in a roadless country
by enormous distances and natural obstacles, and living in the midst
of large savage populations of fanatical character and warlike habits,
whose exasperation was yearly growing with their miseries, the Viceregal
forces might depend for their safety only on the skill of their
officers, the excellence of their discipline, and the superiority of
their weapons. But the Egyptian officers were at that time distinguished
for nothing but their public incapacity and private misbehaviour. The
evil reputation of the Soudan and its climate deterred the more educated
or more wealthy from serving in such distant regions, and none went
south who could avoid it. The army which the Khedives maintained in the
Delta was, judged by European standards, only a rabble. It was badly
trained, rarely paid, and very cowardly; and the scum of the army of the
Delta was the cream of the army of the Soudan. The officers remained
for long periods, many all their lives, in the obscurity of the remote
provinces. Some had been sent there in disgrace, others in disfavour.
Some had been forced to serve out of Egypt by extreme poverty, others
were drawn to the Soudan by the hopes of gratifying peculiar tastes. The
majority had harems of the women of the country, which were limited only
by the amount of money they could lay their hands on by any method. Many
were hopeless and habitual drunkards. Nearly all were dishonest. All
were indolent and incapable.
Under such leadership the finest soldiery would have soon degenerated.
The Egyptians in the Soudan were not fine soldiers. Like their officers,
they were the worst part of the Khedivial army. Like them, they had been
driven to the south. Like them, they were slothful and effete. Their
training was imperfect; their discipline was lax; their courage was
low. Nor was even this all the weakness and peril of their position; for
while the regular troops were thus demoralised, there existed a powerful
local irregular force of Bazingers (Soudanese riflemen), as well armed
as the soldiers, more numerous, more courageous, and who regarded the
alien garrisons with fear that continually diminished and hate that
continually grew. And behind regulars and irregulars alike the wild
Arab tribes of the desert and the hardy blacks of the forests, goaded by
suffering and injustice, thought the foreigners the cause of all their
woes, and were delayed only by their inability to combine from sweeping
them off the face of the earth. Never was there such a house of cards
as the Egyptian dominion in the Soudan. The marvel is that it stood so
long, not that it fell so soon.
The names of two men of character and fame are forever connected with
the actual outburst. One was an English general, the other an Arab
priest; yet, in spite of the great gulf and vivid contrast between
their conditions, they resembled each other in many respects. Both were
earnest and enthusiastic men of keen sympathies and passionate emotions.
Both were powerfully swayed by religious fervour. Both exerted great
personal influence on all who came in contact with them. Both were
reformers. The Arab was an African reproduction of the Englishman; the
Englishman a superior and civilised development of the Arab. In the end
they fought to the death, but for an important part of their lives
their influence on the fortunes of the Soudan was exerted in the same
direction. Mohammed Ahmed, 'The Mahdi,' will be discussed in his own
place. Charles Gordon needs little introduction. Long before this tale
begins his reputation was European, and the fame of the 'Ever-victorious
Army' had spread far beyond the Great Wall of China.
The misgovernment of the Egyptians and the misery of the Soudanese
reached their greatest extreme in the seventh decade of the present
century. From such a situation there seemed to be no issue other than
by force of arms. The Arab tribes lacked no provocation. Yet they were
destitute of two moral forces essential to all rebellions. The first
was the knowledge that better things existed. The second was a spirit
of combination. General Gordon showed them the first. The Mahdi provided
the second.
It is impossible to study any part of Charles Gordon's career without
being drawn to all the rest. As his wild and varied fortunes lead him
from Sebastopol to Pekin, from Gravesend to South Africa, from Mauritius
to the Soudan, the reader follows fascinated. Every scene is strange,
terrible, or dramatic. Yet, remarkable as are the scenes, the actor is
the more extraordinary; a type without comparison in modern times
and with few likenesses in history. Rare and precious is the truly
disinterested man. Potentates of many lands and different degree--the
Emperor of China, the King of the Belgians, the Premier of Cape Colony,
the Khedive of Egypt--competed to secure his services. The importance of
his offices varied no less than their nature. One day he was a subaltern
of sappers; on another he commanded the Chinese army; the next he
directed an orphanage; or was Governor-General of the Soudan, with
supreme powers of life and death and peace and war; or served as private
secretary to Lord Ripon. But in whatever capacity he laboured he was
true to his reputation. Whether he is portrayed bitterly criticising to
Graham the tactics of the assault on the Redan; or pulling the head
of Lar Wang from under his bedstead and waving it in paroxysms of
indignation before the astonished eyes of Sir Halliday Macartney;
or riding alone into the camp of the rebel Suliman and receiving the
respectful salutes of those who had meant to kill him; or telling
the Khedive Ismail that he 'must have the whole Soudan to govern'; or
reducing his salary to half the regulation amount because 'he thought
it was too much'; or ruling a country as large as Europe; or collecting
facts for Lord Ripon's rhetorical efforts--we perceive a man careless
alike of the frowns of men or the smiles of women, of life or comfort,
wealth or fame.
It was a pity that one, thus gloriously free from the ordinary
restraining influences of human society, should have found in his
own character so little mental ballast. His moods were capricious and
uncertain, his passions violent, his impulses sudden and inconsistent.
The mortal enemy of the morning had become a trusted ally before the
night. The friend he loved to-day he loathed to-morrow. Scheme after
scheme formed in his fertile brain, and jostled confusingly together.
All in succession were pressed with enthusiasm. All at times were
rejected with disdain. A temperament naturally neurotic had been
aggravated by an acquired habit of smoking; and the General carried this
to so great an extreme that he was rarely seen without a cigarette. His
virtues are famous among men; his daring and resource might turn
the tide or war; his energy would have animated a whole people; his
achievements are upon record; but it must also be set down that few more
uncertain and impracticable forces than Gordon have ever been introduced
into administration and diplomacy.
Although the Egyptian Government might loudly proclaim their detestation
of slavery, their behaviour in the Soudan was viewed with suspicion by
the European Powers, and particularly by Great Britain. To vindicate his
sincerity the Khedive Ismail in 1874 appointed Gordon to be Governor of
the Equatorial Province in succession to Sir Samuel Baker. The name of
the General was a sufficient guarantee that the slave trade was being
earnestly attacked. The Khedive would gladly have stopped at the
guarantee, and satisfied the world without disturbing 'vested
interests.' But the mission, which may have been originally instituted
as a pretence, soon became in Gordon's energetic hands very real.
Circumstances, moreover, soon enlisted the sympathies of the Egyptian
Government on the side of their zealous agent. The slave dealers had
committed every variety of atrocity for which the most odious traffic
in the world afforded occasion; but when, under the leadership of Zubehr
Rahamna, they refused to pay their annual tribute, it was felt in Cairo
that their crimes had cried aloud for chastisement.
Zubehr is sufficiently described when it has been said that he was the
most notorious slave dealer Africa has ever produced. His infamy had
spread beyond the limits of the continent which was the scene of his
exploits to the distant nations of the north and west. In reality, his
rule was a distinct advance on the anarchy which had preceded it, and
certainly he was no worse than others of his vile trade. His scale
of business was, however, more extended. What William Whiteley was in
respect of goods and chattels, that was Zubehr in respect of slaves--a
universal provider. Magnitude lends a certain grandeur to crime; and
Zubehr in the height of his power, at the head of the slave merchants'
confederacy, might boast the retinue of a king and exercise authority
over wide regions and a powerful army.
As early as 1869 he was practically the independent ruler of the
Bahr-el-Ghazal. The Khedive resolved to assert his rights. A small
Egyptian force was sent to subdue the rebel slaver who not only
disgraced humanity but refused to pay tribute. Like most of the
Khedivial expeditions the troops under Bellal Bey met with ill-fortune.
They came, they saw, they ran away. Some, less speedy than the rest,
fell on the field of dishonour. The rebellion was open. Nevertheless it
was the Khedive who sought peace. Zubehr apologised for defeating the
Viceregal soldiers and remained supreme in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Thence he
planned the conquest of Darfur, at that time an independent kingdom. The
Egyptian Government were glad to join with him in the enterprise. The
man they had been unable to conquer, they found it expedient to
assist. The operations were successful. The King of Darfur, who was
distinguished no less for his valour than for his folly, was killed.
The whole country was subdued. The whole population available after
the battles became slaves. Zubehr thus wielded a formidable power. The
Khedivial Government, thinking to ensure his loyalty, created him a
Pasha--a rank which he could scarcely disgrace; and the authority of
the rebel was thus unwillingly recognised by the ruler. Such was the
situation when Gordon first came to the Soudan.
It was beyond the power of the new Governor of the Equatorial Province
at once to destroy the slave-hunting confederacy. Yet he struck heavy
blows at the slave trade, and when in 1877, after a short visit to
England, he returned to the Soudan as Governor-General and with absolute
power, he assailed it with redoubled energy. Fortune assisted his
efforts, for the able Zubehr was enticed to Cairo, and, once there, the
Government refused to allow their faithful ally and distinguished guest
to go back to his happy-hunting grounds. Although the slave dealers were
thus robbed of their great leader, they were still strong, and Zubehr's
son, the brave Suliman, found a considerable following. Furious at his
father's captivity, and alarmed lest his own should follow, he meditated
revolt. But the Governor-General, mounted on a swift camel and attired
in full uniform, rode alone into the rebel camp and compelled the
submission of its chiefs before they could recover from their amazement.
The confederacy was severely shaken, and when, in the following year,
Suliman again revolted, the Egyptian troops under Gessi Pasha were able
to disperse his forces and induce him to surrender on terms. The terms
were broken, and Suliman and ten of his companions suffered death by
shooting [von Slatin, Baron Rudolf Karl. FIRE AND SWORD IN THE SOUDAN,
p.28.] The league of the slave dealers was thus destroyed.
Towards the end of 1879 Gordon left the Soudan. With short intervals he
had spent five busy years in its provinces. His energy had stirred the
country. He had struck at the root of the slave trade, he had attacked
the system of slavery, and, as slavery was the greatest institution in
the land, he had undermined the whole social system. Indignation had
stimulated his activity to an extraordinary degree. In a climate usually
fatal to Europeans he discharged the work of five officers. Careless
of his methods, he bought slaves himself, drilled them, and with the
soldiers thus formed pounced on the caravans of the hunters. Traversing
the country on a fleet dromedary--on which in a single year he is said
to have covered 3,840 miles--he scattered justice and freedom among the
astonished natives. He fed the infirm, protected the weak, executed the
wicked. To some he gave actual help, to many freedom, to all new hopes
and aspirations. Nor were the tribes ungrateful. The fiercest savages
and cannibals respected the life of the strange white man. The women
blessed him. He could ride unarmed and alone where a brigade of soldiers
dared not venture. But he was, as he knew himself, the herald of the
storm. Oppressed yet ferocious races had learned that they had rights;
the misery of the Soudanese was lessened, but their knowledge had
increased. The whole population was unsettled, and the wheels of change
began slowly to revolve; nor did they stop until they had accomplished
an enormous revolution.
The part played by the second force is more obscure. Few facts are so
encouraging to the student of human development as the desire, which
most men and all communities manifest at all times, to associate with
their actions at least the appearance of moral right. However distorted
may be their conceptions of virtue, however feeble their efforts to
attain even to their own ideals, it is a pleasing feature and a hopeful
augury that they should wish to be justified. No community embarks on
a great enterprise without fortifying itself with the belief that from
some points of view its motives are lofty and disinterested. It is an
involuntary tribute, the humble tribute of imperfect beings, to the
eternal temples of Truth and Beauty. The sufferings of a people or a
class may be intolerable, but before they will take up arms and risk
their lives some unselfish and impersonal spirit must animate them. In
countries where there is education and mental activity or refinement,
this high motive is found in the pride of glorious traditions or in a
keen sympathy with surrounding misery. Ignorance deprives savage nations
of such incentives. Yet in the marvellous economy of nature this very
ignorance is a source of greater strength. It affords them the mighty
stimulus of fanaticism. The French Communists might plead that they
upheld the rights of man. The desert tribes proclaimed that they fought
for the glory of God. But although the force of fanatical passion is far
greater than that exerted by any philosophical belief, its sanction is
just the same. It gives men something which they think is sublime
to fight for, and this serves them as an excuse for wars which it is
desirable to begin for totally different reasons. Fanaticism is not a
cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is
the spirit which enables them to combine--the great common object before
which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the
horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan
faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan--a faculty of offence or defence.
It was all this and no more. It was not the reason of the revolt. It
strengthened, it characterised, but it did not cause. ['I do not believe
that fanaticism exists as it used to do in the world, judging from what
I have seen in this so-called fanatic land. It is far more a question
of property, and is more like Communism under the flag of
religion.'--GENERAL GORDON'S JOURNALS AT KHARTOUM, bk.i. p.13.] Those
whose practice it is to regard their own nation as possessing a
monopoly of virtue and common-sense, are wont to ascribe every military
enterprise of savage peoples to fanaticism. They calmly ignore obvious
and legitimate motives. The most rational conduct is considered mad. It
has therefore been freely stated, and is to some extent believed, that
the revolt in the Soudan was entirely religious. If the worst untruths
are those that have some appearance of veracity, this impression must be
very false indeed. It is, perhaps, an historical fact that the revolt
of a large population has never been caused solely or even mainly by
religious enthusiasm.
The reasons which forced the peoples of the Soudan to revolt were as
strong as the defence which their oppressors could offer was feeble.
Looking at the question from a purely political standpoint, we may
say that upon the whole there exists no record of a better case for
rebellion than presented itself to the Soudanese. Their country was
being ruined; their property was plundered; their women were ravished;
their liberties were curtailed; even their lives were threatened.
Aliens ruled the inhabitants; the few oppressed the many; brave men were
harried by cowards; the weak compelled the strong. Here were sufficient
reasons. Since any armed movement against an established Government can
be justified only by success, strength is an important revolutionary
virtue. It was a virtue that the Arabs might boast. They were indeed
far stronger than they, their persecutors, or the outside world had yet
learned. All were soon to be enlightened.
The storm gathered and the waters rose. Three great waves impelled the
living tide against the tottering house founded on the desert sand.
The Arab suffered acutely from poverty, misgovernment, and oppression.
Infuriated, he looked up and perceived that the cause of all his
miseries was a weak and cowardly foreigner, a despicable 'Turk.' The
antagonism of races increased the hatred sprung from social evils. The
moment was at hand. Then, and not till then, the third wave came--the
wave of fanaticism, which, catching up and surmounting the other waves,
covered all the flood with its white foam, and, bearing on with the
momentum of the waters, beat in thunder against the weak house so that
it fell; and great was the fall thereof.
Down to the year 1881 there was no fanatical movement in the Soudan.
In their utter misery the hopeless inhabitants had neglected even
the practices of religion. They were nevertheless prepared for any
enterprise, however desperate, which might free them from the Egyptian
yoke. All that delayed them was the want of some leader who could
combine the tribes and restore their broken spirits, and in the summer
of 1881 the leader appeared. His subsequent career is within the
limits of this account, and since his life throws a strong light on the
thoughts and habits of the Arabs of the Soudan it may be worth while to
trace it from the beginning.
The man who was the proximate cause of the River War was born by the
banks of the Nile, not very far from Dongola. His family were poor and
of no account in the province. But as the Prophet had claimed a royal
descent, and as a Sacred Example was sprung from David's line, Mohammed
Ahmed asserted that he was of the 'Ashraf,'(descendants of the Prophet)
and the assertion, since it cannot be disproved, may be accepted.
His father was a humble priest; yet he contrived to give his son some
education in the practices of religion, the principles of the Koran,
and the art of writing. Then he died at Kerreri while on a journey to
Khartoum, and left the future Mahdi, still a child, to the mercies of
the world. Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong; and a boy
deprived of a father's care often develops, if he escape the perils of
youth, an independence and vigour of thought which may restore in after
life the heavy loss of early days. It was so with Mohammed Ahmed. He
looked around for an occupation and subsistence. A large proportion
of the population of religious countries pass their lives at leisure,
supported by the patient labour of the devout. The young man determined
to follow the profession for which he felt his talents suited, and
which would afford him the widest scope. He became a priest. Many of
the religious teachers of heathen and other countries are devoid of
enthusiasm and turn their attention to the next world because doing so
affords them an easy living in this. Happily this is not true of all. It
was not true of Mohammed. Even at an early age he manifested a zeal for
God's service, and displayed a peculiar aptitude for learning the tenets
and dogmas of the Mohammedan belief. So promising a pupil did not
long lack a master in a country where intelligence and enthusiasm
were scarce. His aspirations growing with his years and knowledge, he
journeyed to Khartoum as soon as his religious education was completed,
and became a disciple of the renowned and holy Sheikh, Mohammed Sherif.
His devotion to his superior, to his studies and to the practice of
austerities, and a strange personal influence he was already beginning
to show, won him by degrees a few disciples of his own: and with them
he retired to the island of Abba. Here by the waters of the White Nile
Mohammed Ahmed lived for several years. His two brothers, who were
boat-builders in the neighbourhood, supported him by their industry. But
it must have been an easy burden, for we read that he 'hollowed out for
himself a cave in the mud bank, and lived in almost entire seclusion,
fasting often for days, and occasionally paying a visit to the head of
the order to assure him of his devotion and obedience.' [I take this
passage from FIRE AND SWORD IN THE SOUDAN, by Slatin. His account is the
most graphic and trustworthy of all known records of the Mahdi. He had
terrible opportunities of collecting information. I have followed his
version (chapter iv.) very closely on this subject.] Meanwhile his
sanctity increased, and the labour and charity of the brothers were
assisted by the alms of godly travellers on the river.
This virtuous and frugal existence was disturbed and terminated by an
untoward event. The renowned and holy Sheikh made a feast to celebrate
the circumcision of his sons. That the merriment of the auspicious
occasion and the entertainment of the guests might be increased, Sherif,
according to the lax practice of the time, granted a dispensation from
any sins committed during the festivities, and proclaimed in God's name
the suspension of the rules against singing and dancing by which the
religious orders were bound. The ascetic of Abba island did not join
in these seemingly innocent dissipations. With the recklessness of the
reformer he protested against the demoralisation of the age, and loudly
affirmed the doctrine that God alone could forgive sins. These things
were speedily brought to the ears of the renowned Sheikh, and in all the
righteous indignation that accompanies detected wrong-doing, he summoned
Mohammed Ahmed before him. The latter obeyed. He respected his superior.
He was under obligations to him. His ire had disappeared as soon as it
had been expressed. He submissively entreated forgiveness; but in vain.
Sherif felt that some sort of discipline must be maintained among his
flock. He had connived at disobedience to the divine law. All the
more must he uphold his own authority. Rising in anger, he drove the
presumptuous disciple from his presence with bitter words, and expunged
his name from the order of the elect.
Mohammed went home. He was greatly distressed. Yet his fortunes were
not ruined. His sanctity was still a valuable and, unless he chose
otherwise, an inalienable asset. The renowned Sheikh had a rival--nearly
as holy and more enterprising than himself. From him the young priest
might expect a warm welcome. Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his
former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, clad in
sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he again returned to his spiritual
leader, and in this penitential guise implored pardon. He was
ignominiously ejected. Nor did he venture to revisit the unforgiving
Sheikh. But it happened that in a few weeks Sherif had occasion to
journey to the island of Abba. His former disciple appeared suddenly
before him, still clad in sackcloth and defiled by ashes. Careless
of his plain misery, and unmoved by his loyalty, which was the more
remarkable since it was disinterested, the implacable Sheikh poured
forth a stream of invective. Among many insults, one went home: 'Be off,
you wretched Dongolawi.'
Although the natives of the Dongola province were despised and disliked
in the Southern Soudan, it is not at first apparent why Mohammed should
have resented so bitterly the allusion to his birthplace. But abuse
by class is a dangerous though effective practice. A man will perhaps
tolerate an offensive word applied to himself, but will be infuriated if
his nation, his rank, or his profession is insulted.
Mohammed Ahmed rose. All that man could do to make amends he had done.
Now he had been publicly called 'a wretched Dongolawi.' Henceforth he
would afflict Sherif with his repentance no longer. Reaching his house,
he informed his disciples--for they had not abandoned him in all his
trouble--that the Sheikh had finally cast him off, and that he would
now take his discarded allegiance elsewhere. The rival, the Sheikh el
Koreishi, lived near Mesalamia. He was jealous of Sherif and envied him
his sanctimonious disciples. He was therefore delighted to receive
a letter from Mohammed Ahmed announcing his breach with his former
superior and offering his most devoted services. He returned a cordial
invitation, and the priest of Abba island made all preparation for the
journey.
This new development seems to have startled the unforgiving Sherif. It
was no part of his policy to alienate his followers, still less to add
to those of his rival. After all, the quality of mercy was high and
noble. He would at last graciously forgive the impulsive but repentant
disciple. He wrote him a letter to this effect. But it was now too late.
Mohammed replied with grave dignity that he had committed no crime,
that he sought no forgiveness, and that 'a wretched Dongolawi' would
not offend by his presence the renowned Sheikh el Sherif. After this
indulgence he departed to Mesalamia.
But the fame of his doings spread far and wide throughout the land.
'Even in distant Darfur it was the principal topic of conversation'
[Slatin, FIRE AND SWORD]. Rarely had a Fiki been known to offend his
superior; never to refuse his forgiveness. Mohammed did not hesitate to
declare that he had done what he had done as a protest against the decay
of religious fervour and the torpor of the times. Since his conduct had
actually caused his dismissal, it appears that he was quite justified
in making a virtue of necessity. At any rate he was believed, and the
people groaning under oppression looked from all the regions to the
figure that began to grow on the political horizon. His fame grew.
Rumour, loud-tongued, carried it about the land that a great Reformer
was come to purify the faith and break the stony apathy which paralysed
the hearts of Islam. Whisperings added that a man was found who should
break from off the necks of the tribes the hateful yoke of Egypt.
Mohammed now deliberately entered upon the path of ambition.
Throughout Nubia the Shukri belief prevails: some day, in a time of
shame and trouble, a second great Prophet will arise--a Mahdi who shall
lead the faithful nearer God and sustain the religion. The people of the
Soudan always look inquiringly to any ascetic who rises to fame, and the
question is often repeated, 'Art thou he that should come, or do we look
for another?' Of this powerful element of disturbance Mohammed Ahmed
resolved to avail himself. He requested and obtained the permission of
the Sheikh Koreishi to return to Abba, where he was well known, and with
which island village his name was connected, and so came back in triumph
to the scene of his disgrace. Thither many pilgrims began to resort.
He received valuable presents, which he distributed to the poor, who
acclaimed him as 'Zahed'--a renouncer of earthly pleasures. He journeyed
preaching through Kordofan, and received the respect of the priesthood
and the homage of the people. And while he spoke of the purification of
the religion, they thought that the burning words might be applied to
the freedom of the soil. He supported his sermons by writings, which
were widely read. When a few months later the Sheikh Koreishi died,
the priest of Abba proceeded forthwith to erect a tomb to his memory,
directing and controlling the voluntary labours of the reverent Arabs
who carried the stones.
While Mohammed was thus occupied he received the support of a man, less
virtuous than but nearly as famous as himself. Abdullah was one of four
brothers, the sons of an obscure priest; but he inherited no great
love of religion or devotion to its observances. He was a man of
determination and capacity. He set before himself two distinct
ambitions, both of which he accomplished: to free the Soudan of
foreigners, and to rule it himself. He seems to have had a queer
presentiment of his career. This much he knew: there would be a great
religious leader, and he would be his lieutenant and his successor.
When Zubehr conquered Darfur, Abdullah presented himself before him
and hailed him as 'the expected Mahdi.' Zubehr, however, protested with
superfluous energy that he was no saint, and the impulsive patriot was
compelled to accept his assurances. So soon as he saw Mohammed Ahmed
rising to fame and displaying qualities of courage and energy, he
hastened to throw himself at his feet and assure him of his devotion.
No part of Slatin Pasha's fascinating account of his perils and
sufferings is so entertaining as that in which Abdullah, then become
Khalifa of the whole Soudan, describes his early struggles and
adversity:
'Indeed it was a very troublesome journey. At that time my entire
property consisted of one donkey, and he had a gall on his back, so
that I could not ride him. But I made him carry my water-skin and bag of
corn, over which I spread my rough cotton garment, and drove him along
in front of me. At that time I wore the white cotton shirt, like the
rest of my tribe. My clothes and my dialect at once marked me out as a
stranger wherever I went; and when I crossed the Nile I was frequently
greeted with "What do you want? Go back to your own country. There is
nothing to steal here."'
What a life of ups and downs! It was a long stride from the ownership of
one saddle-galled donkey to the undisputed rule of an empire. The weary
wayfarer may have dreamed of this, for ambition stirs imagination nearly
as much as imagination excites ambition. But further he could not expect
or wish to see. Nor could he anticipate as, in the complacency of a
man who had done with evil days, he told the story of his rise to the
submissive Slatin, that the day would come when he would lead an army
of more than fifty thousand men to destruction, and that the night would
follow when, almost alone, his empire shrunk again to the saddle-galled
donkey, he would seek his home in distant Kordofan, while this same
Slatin who knelt so humbly before him would lay the fierce pursuing
squadrons on the trail.
Mohammed Ahmed received his new adherent kindly, but without enthusiasm.
For some months Abdullah carried stones to build the tomb of the Sheikh
el Koreishi. Gradually they got to know each other. 'But long before he
entrusted me with his secret,' said Abdullah to Slatin, 'I knew that he
was "the expected Guide."' [Slatin, FIRE AND SWORD, p.131.] And though
the world might think that the 'Messenger of God' was sent to lead men
to happiness in heaven, Abdullah attached to the phrase a significance
of his own, and knew that he should lead him to power on earth. The
two formed a strong combination. The Mahdi--for such Mohammed Ahmed
had already in secret announced himself--brought the wild enthusiasm
of religion, the glamour of a stainless life, and the influence of
superstition into the movement. But if he were the soul of the plot,
Abdullah was the brain. He was the man of the world, the practical
politician, the general.
There now commenced a great conspiracy against the Egyptian Government.
It was fostered by the discontents and justified by the miseries of the
people of the Soudan. The Mahdi began to collect adherents and to extend
his influence in all parts of the country. He made a second journey
through Kordofan, and received everywhere promises of support from
all classes. The most distant tribes sent assurances of devotion and
reverence, and, what was of more importance, of armed assistance. The
secret could not be long confined to those who welcomed the movement. As
the ramifications of the plot spread they were perceived by the renowned
Sheikh Sherif, who still nursed his chagrin and thirsted for revenge. He
warned the Egyptian Government. They, knowing his envy and hatred of
his former disciple, discounted his evidence and for some time paid no
attention to the gathering of the storm. But presently more
trustworthy witnesses confirmed his statements, and Raouf Pasha, then
Governor-General, finding himself confronted with a growing agitation,
determined to act. He accordingly sent a messenger to the island of
Abba, to summon Mohammed Ahmed to Khartoum to justify his behaviour and
explain his intentions. The news of the despatch of the messenger was
swiftly carried to the Mahdi! He consulted with his trusty lieutenant.
They decided to risk everything, and without further delay to defy the
Government. When it is remembered how easily an organised army, even
though it be in a bad condition, can stamp out the beginnings of revolt
among a population, the courage of their resolve must be admired.
The messenger arrived. He was received with courtesy by Abdullah, and
forthwith conducted before the Mahdi. He delivered his message, and
urged Mohammed Ahmed to comply with the orders of the Governor-General.
The Mahdi listened for some time in silence, but with increasing
emotion; and when the messenger advised him, as he valued his own
safety, to journey to Khartoum, if only to justify himself, his passion
overcame him. 'What!' he shouted, rising suddenly and striking his
breast with his hand. 'By the grace of God and his Prophet I am master
of this country, and never shall I go to Khartoum to justify myself.'
[Slatin, FIRE AND SWORD, p.135.] The terrified messenger withdrew. The
rebellion of the Mahdi had begun.
Both the priest and the Governor-General prepared for military
enterprise. The Mahdi proclaimed a holy war against the foreigners,
alike the enemies of God and the scourge of men. He collected his
followers. He roused the local tribes. He wrote letters to all parts of
the Soudan, calling upon the people to fight for a purified religion,
the freedom of the soil, and God's holy prophet 'the expected Mahdi.'
He promised the honour of men to those who lived, the favour of God
to those who fell, and lastly that the land should be cleared of the
miserable 'Turk.' 'Better,' he said, and it became the watchword of
the revolt, 'thousands of graves than a dollar tax.' [Ohrwalder, TEN
YEARS' CAPTIVITY IN THE MAHDI'S CAMP.]
Nor was Raouf Pasha idle. He sent two companies of infantry with one gun
by steamer to Abba to arrest the fanatic who disturbed the public peace.
What followed is characteristically Egyptian. Each company was commanded
by a captain. To encourage their efforts, whichever officer captured the
Mahdi was promised promotion. At sunset on an August evening in 1881
the steamer arrived at Abba. The promise of the Governor-General had
provoked the strife, not the emulation of the officers. Both landed with
their companies and proceeded by different routes under the cover of
darkness to the village where the Mahdi dwelt. Arriving simultaneously
from opposite directions, they fired into each other, and, in the midst
of this mistaken combat, the Mahdi rushed upon them with his scanty
following and destroyed them impartially. A few soldiers succeeded in
reaching the bank of the river. But the captain of the steamer would run
no risks, and those who could not swim out to the vessel were left to
their fate. With such tidings the expedition returned to Khartoum.
Mohammed Ahmed had been himself wounded in the attack, but the faithful
Abdullah bound up the injury, so that none might know that God's Prophet
had been pierced by carnal weapons. The effect of the success was
electrical. The news spread throughout the Soudan. Men with sticks
had slain men with rifles. A priest had destroyed the soldiers of
the Government. Surely this was the Expected One. The Mahdi, however,
profited by his victory only to accomplish a retreat without loss of
prestige. Abdullah had no illusions. More troops would be sent. They
were too near to Khartoum. Prudence counselled flight to regions
more remote. But before this new Hegira the Mahdi appointed his four
Khalifas, in accordance with prophecy and precedent. The first was
Abdullah. Of the others it is only necessary at this moment to notice
Ali-Wad-Helu, the chief of one of the local tribes, and among the first
to rally to the standard of revolt.
Then the retreat began; but it was more like a triumphal progress.
Attended by a considerable following, and preceded by tales of the most
wonderful miracles and prodigies, the Mahdi retired to a mountain
in Kordofan to which he gave the name of Jebel Masa, that being the
mountain whence 'the expected Guide' is declared in the Koran sooner or
later to appear. He was now out of reach of Khartoum, but within reach
of Fashoda. The Egyptian Governor of that town, Rashid Bey, a man of
more enterprise and even less military knowledge than is usual in his
race, determined to make all attempt to seize the rebel and disperse his
following. Taking no precautions, he fell on the 9th of December into an
ambush, was attacked unprepared, and was himself, with fourteen hundred
men, slaughtered by the ill-armed but valiant Arabs.
The whole country stirred. The Government, thoroughly alarmed by the
serious aspect the revolt had assumed, organised a great expedition.
Four thousand troops under Yusef, a Pasha of distinguished reputation,
were sent against the rebels. Meanwhile the Mahdi and his followers
suffered the extremes of want. Their cause was as yet too perilous for
the rich to join. Only the poor flocked to the holy standard. All that
Mohammed possessed he gave away, keeping nothing for himself, excepting
only a horse to lead his followers in battle. Abdullah walked.
Nevertheless the rebels were half-famished, and armed with scarcely any
more deadly weapons than sticks and stones. The army of the Government
approached slowly. Their leaders anticipated an easy victory. Their
contempt for the enemy was supreme. They did not even trouble themselves
to post sentries by night, but slept calmly inside a slender thorn
fence, unwatched save by their tireless foes. And so it came to pass
that in the half-light of the early morning of the 7th of June the
Mahdi, his ragged Khalifas, and his almost naked army rushed upon them,
and slew them to a man.
The victory was decisive. Southern Kordofan was at the feet of the
priest of Abba. Stores of arms and ammunition had fallen into his hands.
Thousands of every class hastened to join his standard. No one
doubted that he was the divine messenger sent to free them from their
oppressors. The whole of the Arab tribes all over the Soudan rose at
once. The revolt broke out simultaneously in Sennar and Darfur, and
spread to provinces still more remote. The smaller Egyptian posts,
the tax-gatherers and local administrators, were massacred in every
district. Only the larger garrisons maintained themselves in the
principal towns. They were at once blockaded. All communications were
interrupted. All legal authority was defied. Only the Mahdi was obeyed.
It is now necessary to look for a moment to Egypt. The misgovernment
which in the Soudan had caused the rebellion of the Mahdi, in Egypt
produced the revolt of Arabi Pasha. As the people of the Soudan longed
to be rid of the foreign oppressors--the so-called 'Turks'--so those of
the Delta were eager to free themselves from the foreign regulators and
the real Turkish influence. While men who lived by the sources of the
Nile asserted that tribes did not exist for officials to harry, others
who dwelt at its mouth protested that nations were not made to be
exploited by creditors or aliens. The ignorant south found their leader
in a priest: the more educated north looked to a soldier. Mohammed Ahmed
broke the Egyptian yoke; Arabi gave expression to the hatred of the
Egyptians for the Turks. But although the hardy Arabs might scatter the
effete Egyptians, the effete Egyptians were not likely to disturb the
solid battalions of Europe. After much hesitation and many attempts at
compromise, the Liberal Administration of Mr. Gladstone sent a fleet
which reduced the forts of Alexandria to silence and the city to
anarchy. The bombardment of the fleet was followed by the invasion of
a powerful army. Twenty-five thousand men were landed in Egypt. The
campaign was conducted with celerity and skill. The Egyptian armies
were slaughtered or captured. Their patriotic but commonplace leader was
sentenced to death and condemned to exile, and Great Britain assumed the
direction of Egyptian affairs.
The British soon restored law and order in Egypt, and the question
of the revolt in the Soudan came before the English advisers of the
Khedive. Notwithstanding the poverty and military misfortunes which
depressed the people of the Delta, the desire to hold their southern
provinces was evident. The British Government, which at that time was
determined to pursue a policy of non-interference in the Soudan, gave a
tacit consent, and another great expedition was prepared to suppress the
False Prophet, as the English and Egyptians deemed him--'the expected
Mahdi,' as the people of the Soudan believed.
A retired officer of the Indian Staff Corps and a few European officers
of various nationalities were sent to Khartoum to organise the new field
force. Meanwhile the Mahdi, having failed to take by storm, laid siege
to El Obeid, the chief town of Kordofan. During the summer of 1883 the
Egyptian troops gradually concentrated at Khartoum until a considerable
army was formed. It was perhaps the worst army that has ever marched to
war. One extract from General Hicks's letters will suffice. Writing on
the 8th of June, 1883, to Sir E. Wood, he says incidentally: 'Fifty-one
men of the Krupp battery deserted on the way here, although in chains.'
The officers and men who had been defeated fighting for their own
liberties at Tel-el-Kebir were sent to be destroyed, fighting to take
away the liberties of others in the Soudan. They had no spirit, no
discipline, hardly any training, and in a force of over eight thousand
men there were scarcely a dozen capable officers. The two who were the
most notable of these few--General Hicks, who commanded, and Colonel
Farquhar, the Chief of the Staff--must be remarked.
El Obeid had fallen before the ill-fated expedition left Khartoum; but
the fact that Slatin Bey, an Austrian officer in the Egyptian service,
was still maintaining himself in Darfur provided it with an object. On
the 9th of September Hicks and his army (the actual strength of
which was 7,000 infantry, 400 mounted Bashi Bazuks, 500 cavalry, 100
Circassians, 10 mounted guns, 4 Krupps, and 6 Nordenfeldt machine guns)
left Omdurman and marched to Duem. Although the actual command of the
expedition was vested in the English officer, Ala-ed-Din Pasha, the
Governor-General who had succeeded Raouf Pasha, exercised an uncertain
authority. Differences of opinion were frequent, though all the officers
were agreed in taking the darkest views of their chances. The miserable
host toiled slowly onward towards its destruction, marching in a
south-westerly direction through Shat and Rahad. Here the condition of
the force was so obviously demoralised that a German servant (Gustav
Klootz, the servant of Baron Seckendorf) actually deserted to the
Mahdi's camp. He was paraded in triumph as an English officer.
On the approach of the Government troops the Mahdi had marched out of
El Obeid and established himself in the open country, where he made his
followers live under military conditions and continually practised them
in warlike evolutions. More than forty thousand men collected round his
standard, and the Arabs were now armed with several thousand rifles and
a few cannon, as well as a great number of swords and spears. To these
proportions had the little band of followers who fought at Abba grown!
The disparity of the forces was apparent before the battle. The Mahdi
thereupon wrote to Hicks, calling on him to surrender and offering
terms. His proposals were treated with disdain, although the probable
result of an engagement was clear.
Until the expedition reached Rahad only a few cavalry patrols had
watched its slow advance. But on the 1st of November the Mahdi left
El Obeid and marched with his whole power to meet his adversary. The
collision took place on the 3rd of November. All through that day the
Egyptians struggled slowly forward, in great want of water, losing
continually from the fire of the Soudanese riflemen, and leaving several
guns behind them. On the next morning they were confronted by the
main body of the Arab army, and their attempts to advance further were
defeated with heavy loss. The force began to break up. Yet another day
was consumed before it was completely destroyed. Scarcely five hundred
Egyptians escaped death; hardly as many of the Arabs fell. The European
officers perished fighting to the end; and the general met his fate
sword in hand, at the head of the last formed body of his troops, his
personal valour and physical strength exciting the admiration even of
the fearless enemy, so that in chivalrous respect they buried his body
with barbaric honours. Mohammed Ahmed celebrated his victory with a
salute of one hundred guns; and well he might, for the Soudan was now
his, and his boast that, by God's grace and the favour of the Prophet,
he was the master of all the land had been made good by force of arms.
No further attempt was made to subdue the country. The people of the
Soudan had won their freedom by their valour and by the skill and
courage of their saintly leader. It only remained to evacuate the towns
and withdraw the garrisons safely. But what looked like the winding-up
of one story was really the beginning of another, much longer, just as
bloody, commencing in shame and disaster, but ending in triumph and, let
us hope, in peace.
I desire for a moment to take a more general view of the Mahdi's
movement than the narrative has allowed. The original causes were social
and racial. But, great as was the misery of the people, their spirit was
low, and they would not have taken up arms merely on material grounds.
Then came the Mahdi. He gave the tribes the enthusiasm they lacked. The
war broke out. It is customary to lay to the charge of Mohammed Ahmed
all the blood that was spilled. To my mind it seems that he may divide
the responsibility with the unjust rulers who oppressed the land, with
the incapable commanders who muddled away the lives of their men, with
the vacillating Ministers who aggravated the misfortunes. But, whatever
is set to the Mahdi's account, it should not be forgotten that he put
life and soul into the hearts of his countrymen, and freed his native
land of foreigners. The poor miserable natives, eating only a handful
of grain, toiling half-naked and without hope, found a new, if terrible
magnificence added to life. Within their humble breasts the spirit
of the Mahdi roused the fires of patriotism and religion. Life became
filled with thrilling, exhilarating terrors. They existed in a new and
wonderful world of imagination. While they lived there were great things
to be done; and when they died, whether it were slaying the Egyptians
or charging the British squares, a Paradise which they could understand
awaited them. There are many Christians who reverence the faith of Islam
and yet regard the Mahdi merely as a commonplace religious impostor whom
force of circumstances elevated to notoriety. In a certain sense, this
may be true. But I know not how a genuine may be distinguished from a
spurious Prophet, except by the measure of his success. The triumphs of
the Mahdi were in his lifetime far greater than those of the founder
of the Mohammedan faith; and the chief difference between orthodox
Mohammedanism and Mahdism was that the original impulse was opposed only
by decaying systems of government and society and the recent movement
came in contact with civilisation and the machinery of science.
Recognising this, I do not share the popular opinion, and I believe that
if in future years prosperity should come to the peoples of the Upper
Nile, and learning and happiness follow in its train, then the first
Arab historian who shall investigate the early annals of that new nation
will not forget, foremost among the heroes of his race, to write the
name of Mohammed Ahmed.
CHAPTER II: THE FATE OF THE ENVOY
All great movements, every vigorous impulse that a community may feel,
become perverted and distorted as time passes, and the atmosphere of
the earth seems fatal to the noble aspirations of its peoples. A wide
humanitarian sympathy in a nation easily degenerates into hysteria.
A military spirit tends towards brutality. Liberty leads to licence,
restraint to tyranny. The pride of race is distended to blustering
arrogance. The fear of God produces bigotry and superstition. There
appears no exception to the mournful rule, and the best efforts of men,
however glorious their early results, have dismal endings, like plants
which shoot and bud and put forth beautiful flowers, and then grow rank
and coarse and are withered by the winter. It is only when we reflect
that the decay gives birth to fresh life, and that new enthusiasms
spring up to take the places of those that die, as the acorn is
nourished by the dead leaves of the oak, the hope strengthens that the
rise and fall of men and their movements are only the changing foliage
of the ever-growing tree of life, while underneath a greater evolution
goes on continually.
The movement which Mohammed Ahmed created did not escape the common fate
of human enterprise; nor was it long before the warm generous blood of
a patriotic and religious revolt congealed into the dark clot of a
military empire. With the expulsion or destruction of the foreign
officials, soldiers, and traders, the racial element began to subside.
The reason for its existence was removed. With the increasing disorders
the social agitation dwindled; for communism pre-supposes wealth, and
the wealth of the Soudan was greatly diminished. There remained only the
fanatical fury which the belief in the divine mission of the Mahdi had
excited; and as the necessity for a leader passed away, the belief in
his sanctity grew weaker. But meanwhile a new force was making itself
felt on the character of the revolt. The triumph no less than the
plunder which had rewarded the Mahdi's victories had called into
existence a military spirit distinct from the warlike passions of the
tribesmen--the spirit of the professional soldier.
The siege of Khartoum was carried on while this new influence was taking
the place of the original forces of revolt. There was a period when a
neutral point was obtained and the Mahdist power languished. But the
invasion of the Eastern Soudan by the British troops in the spring and
the necessary advance of the relieving columns in the winter of 1884
revived the patriotic element. The tribes who had made a great effort
to free themselves from foreign domination saw in the operations of Sir
Gerald Graham and Lord Wolseley an attempt to bring them again under the
yoke. The impulse which was given to the Mahdi's cause was sufficient
to raise a fierce opposition to the invading forces. The delay in the
despatch of the relief expedition had sealed the fate of Khartoum, and
the fall of the town established the supremacy of the military spirit on
which the Dervish Empire was afterwards founded.
All the warlike operations of Mohammedan peoples are characterised by
fanaticism, but with this general reservation it may be said--that the
Arabs who destroyed Yusef, who assaulted El Obeid, who annihilated
Hicks fought in the glory of religious zeal; that the Arabs who opposed
Graham, Earle, and Stewart fought in defence of the soil; and that the
Arabs who were conquered by Kitchener fought in the pride of an army.
Fanatics charged at Shekan; patriots at Abu Klea; warriors at Omdurman.
In order to describe conveniently the changing character of the revolt,
I have anticipated the story and must revert to a period when the social
and racial influences were already weakening and the military spirit
was not yet grown strong. If the defeat of Yusef Pasha decided the whole
people of the Soudan to rise in arms and strike for their liberties, the
defeat of Hicks satisfied the British Government that those liberties
were won. The powerful influence of the desire to rule prompted the
Khedive's Ministers to make still further efforts to preserve their
country's possessions. Had Egypt been left to herself, other desperate
efforts would have been made. But the British Government had finally
abandoned the policy of non-interference with Egyptian action in the
Soudan. They 'advised' its abandonment. The protests of Sherif Pasha
provoked Lord Granville to explain the meaning of the word 'advice.' The
Khedive bowed to superior authority. The Minister resigned. The policy
of evacuation was firmly adopted. 'Let us,' said the Ministers, 'collect
the garrisons and come away.' It was simple to decide on the course to
be pursued, but almost impossible to follow it. Several of the Egyptian
garrisons, as in Darfur and El Obeid, had already fallen. The others
were either besieged, like Sennar, Tokar, and Sinkat, or cut off from
the north, as in the case of the Equatorial Province, by the area of
rebellion. The capital of the Soudan was, however, as yet unmolested;
and as its Egyptian population exceeded the aggregate of the provincial
towns, the first task of the Egyptian Government was obvious.
Mr. Gladstone's Administration had repressed the revolt of Arabi Pasha.
Through their policy the British were in armed occupation of Egypt.
British officers were reorganising the army. A British official
supervised the finances. A British plenipotentiary 'advised' the
re-established Tewfik. A British fleet lay attentive before the ruins
of Alexandria, and it was evident that Great Britain could annex the
country in name as well as in fact. But Imperialism was not the object
of the Radical Cabinet. Their aim was philanthropic and disinterested.
As they were now determined that the Egyptians should evacuate the
Soudan, so they had always been resolved that the British should
evacuate Egypt.
Throughout this chapter it will be seen that the desire to get out of
the country at once is the keynote of the British policy. Every act,
whether of war or administration, is intended to be final. Every
despatch is directed to breaking the connection between the two
countries and winding up the severed strings. But responsibilities which
had been lightly assumed clung like the shirt of Nessus. The ordinary
practice of civilised nations demanded that some attempt should be
made to justify interference by reorganisation. The British Government
watched therefore with anxious solicitude the efforts of Egypt to
evacuate the Soudan and bring the garrisons safely home. They utterly
declined to assist with military force, but they were generous with
their advice. Everybody at that time distrusted the capacities of the
Egyptians, and it was thought the evacuation might be accomplished if
it were entrusted to stronger and more honest men than were bred by the
banks of the Nile. The Ministers looked about them, wondering how
they could assist the Egyptian Government without risk or expense to
themselves, and in an evil hour for their fame and fortunes someone
whispered the word 'Gordon.' Forthwith they proceeded to telegraph to
Cairo: 'Would General Charles Gordon be of any use to you or to the
Egyptian Government; and, if so, in what capacity'? The Egyptian
Government replied through Sir Evelyn Baring that as the movement in
the Soudan was partly religious they were 'very much averse' from the
appointment of a Christian in high command. The eyes of all those who
possessed local knowledge were turned to a different person. There was
one man who might stem the tide of Mahdism, who might perhaps restore
the falling dominion of Egypt, who might at least save the garrisons of
the Soudan. In their necessity and distress the Khedivial advisers and
the British plenipotentiary looked as a desperate remedy to the man
whose liberty they had curtailed, whose property they had confiscated,
and whose son they had executed--Zubehr Pasha.
This was the agent for whom the Government of Egypt hankered. The idea
was supported by all who were acquainted with the local conditions. A
week after Sir Evelyn Baring had declined General Gordon's services he
wrote: 'Whatever may be Zubehr's faults, he is said to be a man of
great energy and resolution. The Egyptian Government considers that his
services may be very useful.... Baker Pasha is anxious to avail himself
of Zubehr Pasha's services.'[Sir Evelyn Baring, letter of December 9,
1883.] It is certain that had the Egyptian Government been a free agent,
Zubehr would have been sent to the Soudan as its Sultan, and assisted by
arms, money, and perhaps by men, to make head against the Mahdi. It is
probable that at this particular period the Mahdi would have collapsed
before a man whose fame was nearly equal to, and whose resources would
have been much greater than, his own. But the British Ministry would
countenance no dealings with such a man. They scouted the idea of
Zubehr, and by so doing increased their obligation to suggest an
alternative. Zubehr being rejected, Gordon remained. It is scarcely
possible to conceive a greater contrast than that which these two men
presented. It was a leap from the Equator to the North Pole.
When difficulties and dangers perplex all minds, it has often happened
in history that many men by different lines of thought arrive at the
same conclusion. No complete record has yet been published of the
telegrams which passed between the Government and their agent at this
juncture. The Blue-books preserve a disingenuous discretion. But it is
known that from the very first Sir Evelyn Baring was bitterly opposed
to General Gordon's appointment. No personal friendship existed
between them, and the Administrator dreaded the return to the feverish
complications of Egyptian politics of the man who had always been
identified with unrest, improvisation, and disturbance. The pressure
was, however, too strong for him to withstand. Nubar Pasha, the Foreign
Office, the British public, everyone clamoured for the appointment.
Had Baring refused to give way, it is probable that he would have been
overruled. At length he yielded, and, as soon as his consent had been
obtained, the government turned with delight to Gordon. On the 17th of
January Lord Wolseley requested him to come to England. On the 18th he
met the Cabinet. That same night he started on the long journey from
which he was never to return.
Gordon embarked on his mission in high spirits, sustained by that belief
in personality which too often misleads great men and beautiful women.
It was, he said, the greatest honour ever conferred upon him. Everything
smiled. The nation was delighted. The Ministers were intensely relieved.
The most unbounded confidence was reposed in the envoy. His interview
with the Khedive was 'very satisfactory.' His complete authority was
proclaimed to all the notables and natives of the Soudan [Proclamation
of the Khedive, January 26, 1884.] He was assured of the support of the
Egyptian Government [Sir E. Baring to Major-General Gordon, January 25,
1884.] The London Foreign Office, having with becoming modesty admitted
that they had not 'sufficient local knowledge,' [Earl Granville to Sir
E. Baring, January 22, 1884.] accorded him 'widest discretionary
power.' [Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville, February 1, 1884.] One hundred
thousand pounds was placed to his credit, and he was informed that
further sums would be supplied when this was exhausted. He was assured
that no effort would be wanting on the part of the Cairene authorities,
whether English or Egyptian, to afford him all the support and
co-operation in their power [Sir E. Baring to Major-General Gordon,
January 25, 1884.] 'There is no sort of difference,' wrote Sir Evelyn
Baring, 'between General Gordon's views and those entertained by Nubar
Pasha and myself.' [Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville, February 1,1884.]
Under these propitious auguries the dismal and disastrous enterprise
began.
His task, though difficult and, as it ultimately proved, impossible, was
clearly defined. 'You will bear in mind,' wrote Sir Evelyn Baring,
'that the main end to be pursued is the evacuation of the Soudan.' 'The
object... of your mission to the Soudan,' declared the Khedive, 'is to
carry into execution the evacuation of those territories and to withdraw
our troops, civil officials, and such of the inhabitants... as may wish
to leave for Egypt... and after the evacuation to take the necessary
steps for establishing an organised Government in the different
provinces.' Nor was he himself under any misconception. He drew up a
memorandum when on board the Tanjore in which he fully acquiesced in the
evacuation of the Soudan. In a sentence which breathes the same spirit
as Mr. Gladstone's famous expression, 'a people rightly struggling to
be free,' he wrote: 'I must say that it would be an iniquity to
conquer these peoples and then hand them back to the Egyptians without
guarantees of future good government.' Finally, he unhesitatingly
asserted: 'No one who has ever lived in the Soudan can escape the
reflection "What a useless possession is this land!"' And Colonel
Stewart, who accompanied him and endorsed the memorandum, added: 'And
what a huge encumbrance to Egypt!' Thus far there was complete agreement
between the British envoy and the Liberal Cabinet.
It is beyond the scope of these pages to describe his long ride across
the desert from Korosko to Abu Hamed, his interview with the notables at
Berber, or his proclamation of the abandonment of the Soudan, which
some affirm to have been an important cause of his ruin. On the 22nd of
February he arrived at Khartoum. He was received with rejoicing by the
whole population. They recognised again their just Governor-General and
their present deliverer. Those who had been about to fly for the north
took fresh heart. They believed that behind the figure of the envoy
stood the resources of an Empire. The Mahdi and the gathering Dervishes
were perplexed and alarmed. Confusion and hesitancy disturbed their
councils and delayed their movements. Gordon had come. The armies
would follow. Both friends and foes were deceived. The great man was at
Khartoum, but there he would remain--alone.
Whatever confidence the General had felt in the power of his personal
influence had been dispelled on the journey to Khartoum. He had no more
illusions. His experienced eye reviewed the whole situation. He saw
himself confronted with a tremendous racial movement. The people of the
Soudan had risen against foreigners. His only troops were Soudanese. He
was himself a foreigner. Foremost among the leaders of the revolt were
the Arab slave dealers, furious at the attempted suppression of their
trade. No one, not even Sir Samuel Baker, had tried harder to suppress
it than Gordon. Lastly, the whole movement had assumed a fanatical
character. Islam marched against the infidel. Gordon was a Christian.
His own soldiers were under the spell they were to try to destroy. To
them their commander was accursed. Every influence was hostile, and in
particular hostile to his person. The combined forces of race, class,
and religion were against him. He bowed before their irresistible
strength. On the very day of his arrival at Khartoum, while the
townsfolk were cheering his name in the streets and the batteries were
firing joyful salutes, while the people of England thought his mission
already accomplished and the Government congratulated themselves on the
wisdom of their action, General Gordon sat himself down and telegraphed
a formal request to Cairo for Zubehr Pasha.
The whole story of his relations with Zubehr is extremely
characteristic. Zubehr's son, Suliman, had been executed, if not by
Gordon's orders, at least during his administration of the Soudan and
with his complete approval. 'Thus,' he had said, 'does God make gaps in
the ranks of His enemies.' He had hardly started from London on his
new mission, when he telegraphed to Sir Evelyn Baring, telling him that
Zubehr was a most dangerous man and requesting that he might be at once
deported to Cyprus. This was, of course, quite beyond the powers or
intention of the British Agent. The General arrived in Cairo like a
whirlwind close behind his telegram, and was very angry to hear that
Zubehr was still in Egypt. Before starting up the river he went to see
Sherif Pasha. In the ex-Minister's ante-room he met the very man he had
determined to avoid--Zubehr. He greeted him with effusion. They had a
long talk about the Soudan, after which Gordon hurried to the Agency and
informed Sir Evelyn Baring that Zubehr must accompany him to Khartoum at
once. Baring was amazed. He did not himself disapprove of the plan.
He had, in fact, already recommended it. But he thought the change in
Gordon's attitude too sudden to be relied on. To-morrow he might change
again. He begged the General to think more seriously of the matter.
Gordon with his usual frankness admitted that his change of mind had
been very sudden. He had been conscious, he said, of a 'mystic feeling'
that Zubehr was necessary to save the situation in the Soudan.
Gordon left Cairo still considering the matter. So soon as he made his
formal demand from Khartoum for the assistance of Zubehr it was evident
that his belief in the old slave dealer's usefulness was a sound
conviction and not a mere passing caprice. Besides, he had now become
'the man on the spot,' and as such his words carried double force. Sir
Evelyn Baring determined to support the recommendation with his whole
influence. Never was so good a case made out for the appointment of so
bad a man. The Envoy Extraordinary asked for him; Colonel Stewart, his
colleague, concurred; the British Agent strongly urged the request; the
Egyptian Government were unanimous; and behind all these were ranged
every single person who had the slightest acquaintance with the Soudan.
nothing could exceed the vigour with which the demand was made. On the
1st of March General Gordon telegraphed: 'I tell you plainly, it is
impossible to get Cairo employees out of Khartoum unless the Government
helps in the way I told you. They refuse Zubehr.... but it was the only
chance.' And again on the 8th: 'If you do not send Zubehr, you have
no chance of getting the garrisons away.' 'I believe,' said Sir Evelyn
Baring in support of these telegrams, 'that General Gordon is quite
right when he says that Zubehr Pasha is the only possible man. Nubar is
strongly in favour of him. Dr. Bohndorf, the African traveller, fully
confirms what General Gordon says of the influence of Zubehr.' The Pasha
was vile, but indispensable.
Her Majesty's Government refused absolutely to have anything to do with
Zubehr. They declined to allow the Egyptian Government to employ him.
They would not entertain the proposal, and scarcely consented to discuss
it. The historians of the future may occupy their leisure and exercise
their wits in deciding whether the Ministers and the people were right
or wrong; whether they had a right to indulge their sensitiveness at
so terrible a cost; whether they were not more nice than wise; whether
their dignity was more offended by what was incurred or by what was
avoided.
General Gordon has explained his views very clearly and concisely: 'Had
Zubehr Pasha been sent up when I asked for him, Berber would in
all probability never have fallen, and one might have made a Soudan
Government in opposition to the Mahdi. We choose to refuse his coming
up because of his antecedents in re slave trade; granted that we had
reason, yet, as we take no precautions as to the future of these lands
with respect to the slave trade, the above opposition seems absurd.
I will not send up 'A' because he will do this, but I will leave the
country to 'B', who will do exactly the same [Major-General Gordon,
JOURNALS AT KHARTOUM.]
But if the justice of the decision is doubtful, its consequences were
obvious. Either the British Government were concerned with the Soudan,
or they were not. If they were not, then they had no reason or right to
prohibit the appointment of Zubehr. If they were, they were bound to see
that the garrisons were rescued. It was an open question whether Great
Britain was originally responsible for the safety of the garrisons.
General Gordon contended that we were bound to save them at all costs,
and he backed his belief with his life. Others may hold that Governments
have no right to lay, or at any rate must be very judicious in the
laying of burdens on the backs of their own countrymen in order that
they may indulge a refined sense of chivalry towards foreigners. England
had not misgoverned the Soudan, had not raised the revolt or planted the
garrisons. All that Egypt had a right to expect was commiseration. But
the moment Zubehr was prohibited the situation was changed. The refusal
to permit his employment was tantamount to an admission that affairs
in the Soudan involved the honour of England as well as the honour of
Egypt. When the British people--for this was not merely the act of the
Government--adopted a high moral attitude with regard to Zubehr,
they bound themselves to rescue the garrisons, peaceably if possible,
forcibly if necessary.
With their refusal to allow Zubehr to go to the Soudan began the long
and miserable disagreement between the Government and their envoy.
Puzzled and disturbed at the reception accorded to his first request,
Gordon cast about for other expedients. He had already stated that
Zubehr was 'the only chance.' But it is the duty of subordinates to
suggest other courses when those they recommend are rejected; and with
a whole-hearted enthusiasm and unreserved loyalty the General threw
himself into the affair and proposed plan after plan with apparent hope.
Gordon considered that he was personally pledged to effect the
evacuation of Khartoum by the garrison and civil servants. He
had appointed some of the inhabitants to positions of trust, thus
compromising them with the Mahdi. Others had undoubtedly been encouraged
to delay their departure by his arrival. He therefore considered that
his honour was involved in their safety. Henceforward he was inflexible.
Neither rewards nor threats could move him. Nothing that men could offer
would induce him to leave Khartoum till its inhabitants were rescued.
The Government on their side were equally stubborn. Nothing, however
sacred, should induce them to send troops to Khartoum, or in any way
involve themselves in the middle of Africa. The town might fall; the
garrison might be slaughtered; their envoy--But what possibilities they
were prepared to face as regards him will not be known until all of this
and the next generation are buried and forgotten.
The deadlock was complete. To some men the Foreign Office might have
suggested lines of retreat, covered by the highest official praise, and
leading to preferment and reward. Others would have welcomed an order to
leave so perilous a post. But the man they had sent was the one man of
all others who was beyond their control, who cared nothing for what they
could give or take away. So events dragged on their wretched course.
Gordon's proposals became more and more impracticable as the best
courses he could devise were successively vetoed by the Government,
and as his irritation and disappointment increased. The editor of his
Journals has enumerated them with indignant care. He had asked for
Zubehr. Zubehr was refused. He had requested Turkish troops. Turkish
troops were refused. He had asked for Mohammedan regiments from India.
The Government regretted their inability to comply. He asked for a
Firman from the Sultan to strengthen his position. It was 'peremptorily
refused.' He proposed to go south in his steamers to Equatoria. The
Government forbade him to proceed beyond Khartoum. He asked that 200
British troops might be sent to Berber. They were refused. He begged
that a few might be sent to Assuan. None were sent. He proposed to
visit the Mahdi himself and try to arrange matters with him personally.
Perhaps he recognised a kindred spirit. The Government in this case very
naturally forbade him.
At last the quarrel is open. He makes no effort to conceal his disgust.
'I leave you,' he says, the 'indelible disgrace of abandoning the
garrisons.' [Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring (telegraphic),
received at Cairo April 16.] Such abandonment is, he declares, 'the
climax of meanness.' [Ibid, despatched April 8.] He reiterates his
determination to abide with the garrison of Khartoum. 'I will not leave
these people after all they have gone through.' [Major-General Gordon
to Sir E. Baring, Khartoum, July 30; received at Cairo October 15.] He
tosses his commission contemptuously from him: 'I would also ask her
Majesty's Government to accept the resignation of my commission.'
[Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring (telegraphic), Khartoum, March
9.] The Government 'trust that he will not resign,' [Earl Granville
to Sir E. Baring, Foreign Office, March 13.] and his offer remains
in abeyance. Finally, in bitterness and vexation, thinking himself
abandoned and disavowed, he appeals to Sir Evelyn Baring personally:
'I feel sure, whatever you may feel diplomatically, I have your
support--and that of every man professing himself a gentleman--in
private'; [Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring (telegraphic), received
at Cairo April 16.] and as a last hope he begs Sir Samuel Baker to
appeal to 'British and American millionaires' to subscribe two hundred
thousand pounds to enable him to carry out the evacuation without, and
even in spite of, the Governments of Cairo and London; and Sir Samuel
Baker writes a long letter to the Times in passionate protest and
entreaty.
Such are the chief features in the wretched business. Even the
Blue-books in their dry recital arouse in the reader painful and
indignant emotions. But meanwhile other and still more stirring events
were passing outside the world of paper and ink.
The arrival of Gordon at Khartoum had seriously perplexed and alarmed
Mohammed Ahmed and his Khalifas. Their following was discouraged, and
they themselves feared lest the General should be the herald of armies.
His Berber proclamation reassured them, and as the weeks passed without
reinforcements arriving, the Mahdi and Abdullah, with that courage
which in several great emergencies drew them to the boldest courses,
determined to put a brave face on the matter and blockade Khartoum
itself. They were assisted in this enterprise by a revival of the
patriotic impulse throughout the country and a consequent stimulus to
the revolt. To discover the cause it is necessary to look to the Eastern
Soudan, where the next tragedy, after the defeat of Hicks, is laid.
The Hadendoa tribe, infuriated by oppression and misgovernment, had
joined the rebellion under the leadership of the celebrated, and perhaps
immortal, Osman Digna. The Egyptian garrisons of Tokar and Sinkat were
beleaguered and hard pressed. Her Majesty's Government disclaimed all
responsibility. Yet, since these towns were not far from the coast, they
did not prohibit an attempt on the part of the Egyptian Government to
rescue the besieged soldiers. Accordingly an Egyptian force 3,500 strong
marched from Suakin in February 1884 to relieve Tokar, under the command
of General Baker, once the gallant colonel of the 10th Hussars. Hard by
the wells of Teb they were, on the 5th of February, attacked by about a
thousand Arabs.
'On the square being only threatened by a small force of the enemy...
the Egyptian troops threw down their arms and ran, carrying away the
black troops with them, and allowing themselves to be killed without
the slightest resistance.' [General Baker to Sir E. Baring, February 6
(official despatch), telegraphic.] The British and European officers
in vain endeavoured to rally them. The single Soudanese battalion fired
impartially on friend and foe. The general, with that unshaken courage
and high military skill which had already on the Danube gained him
a continental reputation, collected some fifteen hundred men, mostly
unarmed, and so returned to Suakin. Ninety-six officers and 2,250 men
were killed. Krupp guns, machine guns, rifles, and a large supply of
ammunition fell to the victorious Arabs. Success inflamed their ardour
to the point of madness. The attack of the towns was pressed with
redoubled vigour. The garrison of Sinkat, 800 strong, sallied out
and attempted to fight their way to Suakin. The garrison of Tokar
surrendered. Both were destroyed.
The evil was done. The slaughter was complete. Yet the British
Government resolved to add to it. The garrisons they had refused to
rescue they now determined to avenge. In spite of their philanthropic
professions, and in spite of the advice of General Gordon, who felt
that his position at Khartoum would be still further compromised by
operations on his only line of retreat [Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville,
Cairo, February 23.], a considerable military expedition consisting of
one cavalry and two infantry brigades, was sent to Suakin. The command
was entrusted to General Graham. Troops were hurriedly concentrated.
The 10th Hussars, returning from India, were stopped and mounted on the
horses of the gendarmerie. With admirable celerity the force took the
field. Within a month of the defeat at Teb they engaged the enemy almost
on the very scene of the disaster. On the 4th of March they slew 3,000
Hadendoa and drove the rest in disorder from the ground. Four weeks
later a second action was fought at Tamai. Again the success of the
British troops was complete; again the slaughter of the Arabs was
enormous. But neither victory was bloodless. El Teb cost 24 officers and
168 men; Tamai, 13 officers and 208 men. The effect of these operations
was the dispersal of Osman Digna's gathering. That astute man, not for
the first or last time, made a good retreat.
Ten thousand men had thus been killed in the space of three months in
the Eastern Soudan. By the discipline of their armies the Government
were triumphant. The tribes of the Red Sea shore cowered before them.
But as they fought without reason, so they conquered without profit.
As soon as Gordon had been finally refused the assistance of Zubehr
Pasha, it was evident that the rescue of the garrisons was impossible.
The General had been sent as the last hope. Rightly or wrongly, his
recommendations were ignored. His mission was an admitted failure. After
that the only question was how to bring him away as quickly as possible.
It was certain that he would not come willingly. Force was necessary.
Yet it was difficult to know how to apply it. After the victories in the
Eastern Soudan the opportunity presented itself. The road was open. The
local tribes were crushed. Berber had not then fallen. The Mahdi was
himself still on the road from El Obeid to Khartoum. Sir Evelyn Baring
saw the chance. He did not then occupy the formidable and imposing
position in Egyptian politics that he has since attained. But with
all his influence he urged the despatch of a small flying column to
Khartoum. His idea was simple. One thousand or twelve hundred men were
to mount on camels and ride thither via Berber. Those who fell ill or
whose camels broke down would have to take their chance by the
roadside. The plan, however, broke down in the military detail. Only one
honourable course remained--a regular expedition. This the British Agent
at once began to urge. This the Government obstinately refused to admit;
and meanwhile time was passing.
The situation at Khartoum became grave even before the breach between
General Gordon and Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was complete. While the
British Government was indulging in vengeful operations in the Eastern
Soudan, the Mahdi advanced slowly but steadily upon the town with a
following variously estimated at from fifteen to twenty thousand men. On
the 7th of March Colonel Stewart telegraphed from Khartoum: 'The Mahdi
has attempted to raise the people of Shendi by an emissary.... We may be
cut off;' [Lieut.-Colonel Stewart to Sir E. Baring, March 7, 1884.] and
on the 11th Gordon himself reported: 'The rebels are four hours distant
on the Blue Nile.' [Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring, March 11,
1884.] Thereafter no more telegrams came, for on the 15th the wire was
cut between Shendi and Berber, and the blockade had commenced.
The long and glorious defence of the town of Khartoum will always
fascinate attention. That one man, a European among Africans, a
Christian among Mohammedans, should by his genius have inspired the
efforts of 7,000 soldiers of inferior race, and by his courage have
sustained the hearts of 30,000 inhabitants of notorious timidity, and
with such materials and encumbrances have offered a vigorous resistance
to the increasing attacks of an enemy who, though cruel, would yet
accept surrender, during a period of 317 days, is an event perhaps
without parallel in history. But it may safely be predicted that no one
will ever write an account which will compare in interest or in detail
with that set forth by the man himself in the famous. 'Journals at
Khartoum.'
The brief account has delighted thousands of readers in Europe and
America. Perhaps it is because he is careless of the sympathy of men
that Charles Gordon so readily wins it. Before the first of the six
parts into which the Journals were divided is finished, the reader has
been won. Henceforth he sees the world through Gordon's eyes. With
him he scoffs at the diplomatists; despises the Government; becomes
impatient--unreasonably, perhaps--with a certain Major Kitchener in the
Intelligence Branch, whose information miscarried or was not despatched;
is wearied by the impracticable Shaiggia Irregulars; takes interest in
the turkey-cock and his harem of four wives; laughs at the 'black
sluts' seeing their faces for the first time in the mirror. With him he
trembles for the fate of the 'poor little beast,' the Husseinyeh, when
she drifts stern foremost on the shoal, 'a penny steamer under cannon
fire'; day after day he gazes through the General's powerful telescope
from the palace roof down the long brown reaches of the river towards
the rocks of the Shabluka Gorge, and longs for some sign of the
relieving steamers; and when the end of the account is reached, no
man of British birth can read the last words, 'Now mark this, if the
Expeditionary Force--and I ask for no more than two hundred men--does
not come within ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for
the honour of our country. Good-bye,' without being thrilled with vain
regrets and futile resolutions. And then the account stops short. Nor
will the silence ever be broken. The sixth instalment of the Journals
was despatched on the 14th of December; and when it is finished the
reader, separated suddenly from the pleasant companionship, experiences
a feeling of loss and annoyance. Imagination, long supported, is brushed
aside by stern reality. Henceforward Gordon's perils were unrecorded.
I would select one episode only from the Journals as an example of
the peculiarity and the sternness of Charles Gordon's character--his
behaviour towards Slatin. This Austrian officer had been Governor of
Darfur with the rank in the Egyptian service of Bey. For four years
he had struggled vainly against the rebellion. He had fought numerous
engagements with varied success. He had been several times wounded.
Throughout his province and even beyond its limits he bore the
reputation of a brave and capable soldier. The story of his life of
suffering and adventure, written by himself, is widely known, and he is
thought by those who have read it to be a man of feeling and of
honour. By those who enjoy his personal acquaintance this belief is
unhesitatingly confirmed. He had, however, committed an act which
deprived him of Gordon's sympathy and respect. During the fighting in
Darfur, after several defeats, his Mohammedan soldiers were discouraged
and attributed their evil fortune to the fact that their commander was
an infidel under the curse of the Almighty. Slatin therefore proclaimed
himself a follower of the Prophet, and outwardly at least adopted the
faith of Islam. The troops, delighted at his conversion and cheered by
the hope of success, renewed their efforts, and the resistance of the
Governor of Darfur was prolonged. The end, however, was deferred,
not averted. After the destruction of General Hicks's army Slatin was
compelled to surrender to the Dervishes. The religion he had assumed
to secure victory he observed to escape death. The Arab leaders, who
admired his courage, treated him at first with respect and kindness, and
he was conducted to the Mahdi in his encampment before Khartoum. There
during the siege he remained, closely watched but not imprisoned.
Thence he wrote letters to Gordon explaining his surrender, excusing his
apostacy, and begging that he might be allowed--not even assisted--to
escape to Khartoum. The letters are extant, and scarcely anyone who
reads them, reflecting on the twelve years of danger and degradation
that lay before this man, will refuse their compassion.
Gordon was inflexible. Before the arrival of the letters his allusions
to Slatin are contemptuous: 'One cannot help being amused at the Mahdi
carrying all the Europeans about with him--nuns, priests, Greeks,
Austrian officers--what a medley, a regular Etat-Major!' [JOURNALS AT
KHARTOUM.] He is suspicious of the circumstances of his surrender. 'The
Greek... says Slatin had 4,000 ardebs of dura, 1,500 cows, and plenty
of ammunition: he has been given eight horses by the Mahdi.' He will
not vouch for such a man; but he adds, with characteristic justice, 'all
this information must be taken with reserve.'
At length the letters came. At the peril of his life, when ordered to
write and demand the surrender of the town, Slatin substituted an appeal
to Gordon to countenance his escape. This is the uncompromising minute
in the Journals: 'Oct. 16. The letters of Slatin have arrived. I have no
remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.' In the
afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man
for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan... he will want some
quarantine... one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again
inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do
with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive
leave, which he is not likely to get; his doing so would be the breaking
of his parole which should be as sacred when given to the Mahdi as
to any other power, and it would jeopardise the safety of all these
Europeans, prisoners with Mahdi.'
Slatin's position, it should be observed, was not that of an officer
released on parole, but of a prisoner of war in durance in the enemy's
camp. In such circumstances he was clearly entitled to escape at his
own proper risk. If his captors gave him the chance, they had only
themselves to blame. His position was not dissimilar from that of the
black soldiers who had been captured by the Dervishes and were now made
to serve against the Government. These deserted to Khartoum daily, and
the General fully acquiesced in their doing so. As to Slatin's escape
affecting the treatment of the other European prisoners, it must be
observed that when at various times escapes were effected from Omdurman,
and ultimately when Slatin himself escaped, no ill-treatment was
inflicted on the rest of the prisoners; and even had such ill-treatment
been the certain consequence of an escape, that need not have debarred
a man, according to the customs of war, from attempting to regain his
liberty. Nothing but his free and formal promise, obtained in return
for favours received, can alienate that right. If the Mahdi chose to
slaughter the remaining prisoners, the responsibility rested with the
Mahdi.
Slatin was, however, in no position to argue his case. His
correspondence with Gordon was discovered. For some days his life hung
on a thread. For several months he was heavily chained and fed on a
daily handful of uncooked doura, such as is given to horses and mules.
Tidings of these things were carried to Gordon. 'Slatin,' he observes
icily, 'is still in chains.' He never doubted the righteousness of the
course he had adopted, never for an instant. But few will deny that
there were strong arguments on both sides. Many will assert that they
were nicely balanced. Gordon must have weighed them carefully. He never
wavered. Yet he needed Slatin. He was alone. He had no one in whose
military capacity he could put the slightest confidence. Again and again
in the Journals he expresses his want of trustworthy subordinates. He
could not be everywhere, he said. 'Nearly every order has to be repeated
two or three times. I am weary of my life.' 'What one has felt so much
here is the want of men like Gessi, or Messadaglia, or Slatin, but I
have no one to whom I could entrust expeditions.....'
This was the man who would have employed Zubehr and bowed to expediency.
But Zubehr had never 'denied his Lord.'
The actual defence of Khartoum is within the province of the Journals,
nor shall I attempt a chronological account. After the 10th of
September, when General Gordon sent Colonel Stewart and Messrs. Power
and Herbin down the river in the ill-fated Abbas steamer, he was
altogether alone. Many men have bowed to the weight of responsibility.
Gordon's responsibility was undivided. There was no one to whom he could
talk as an equal. There was no one to whom he could--as to a trusty
subordinate--reveal his doubts. To some minds the exercise of power
is pleasant, but few sensations are more painful than responsibility
without control. The General could not supervise the defence. The
officers robbed the soldiers of their rations. The sentries slumbered at
their posts. The townspeople bewailed their misfortunes, and all ranks
and classes intrigued with the enemy in the hope of securing safety
when the town should fall. Frequent efforts were made to stir up the
inhabitants or sap their confidence. Spies of all kinds pervaded the
town. The Egyptian Pashas, despairing, meditated treason. Once an
attempt was made to fire the magazine. Once no less than eighty thousand
ardebs of grain was stolen from the arsenal. From time to time the
restless and ceaseless activity of the commander might discover some
plot and arrest the conspirators; or, checking some account, might
detect some robbery; but he was fully aware that what he found out
was scarcely a tithe of what he could not hope to know. The Egyptian
officers were untrustworthy. Yet he had to trust them. The inhabitants
were thoroughly broken by war, and many were disloyal. He had to feed
and inspirit them. The town itself was scarcely defensible. It must
be defended to the end. From the flat roof of his palace his telescope
commanded a view of the forts and lines. Here he would spend the greater
part of each day, scrutinising the defences and the surrounding country
with his powerful glass. When he observed that the sentries on the forts
had left their posts, he would send over to have them flogged and
their superiors punished. When his 'penny steamers' engaged the Dervish
batteries he would watch, 'on tenter-hooks,' a combat which might be
fatal to the defence, but which, since he could not direct it, must be
left to officers by turns timid and reckless: and in the dark hours of
the night he could not even watch. The Journals, the only receptacle of
his confidences, display the bitterness of his sufferings no less than
the greatness of his character. 'There is no contagion,' he writes,
'equal to that of fear. I have been rendered furious when from anxiety I
could not eat, I would find those at the same table were in like manner
affected.'
To the military anxieties was added every kind of worry which may
weary a man's soul. The women clamoured for bread. The townsfolk heaped
reproaches upon him. The quarrel with the British Government had cut
him very deeply. The belief that he was abandoned and discredited, that
history would make light of his efforts, would perhaps never know of
them, filled his mind with a sense of wrong and injustice which preyed
upon his spirits. The miseries of the townsfolk wrung his noble,
generous heart. The utter loneliness depressed him. And over all lay the
shadow of uncertainty. To the very end the possibility that 'all might
be well' mocked him with false hopes. The first light of any morning
might reveal the longed-for steamers of relief and the uniforms of
British soldiers. He was denied even the numbing anaesthetic of despair.
Yet he was sustained by two great moral and mental stimulants: his
honour as a man, his faith as a Christian. The first had put all courses
which he did not think right once and for all out of the question, and
so allayed many doubts and prevented many vain regrets. But the second
was the real source of his strength. He was sure that beyond this
hazardous existence, with all its wrongs and inequalities, another life
awaited him--a life which, if he had been faithful and true here
upon earth, would afford him greater faculties for good and wider
opportunities for their use. 'Look at me now,' he once said to a
fellow-traveller, 'with small armies to command and no cities to govern.
I hope that death will set me free from pain, and that great armies
will be given me, and that I shall have vast cities under my command.'
[Lieut.-Colonel N. Newham Davis, 'Some Gordon Reminiscences,' published
in THE MAN OF THE WORLD newspaper, December 14, 1898.] Such was his
bright hope of immortality.
As the severity of military operations increases, so also must the
sternness of discipline. The zeal of the soldiers, their warlike
instincts, and the interests and excitements of war may ensure obedience
of orders and the cheerful endurance of perils and hardships during a
short and prosperous campaign. But when fortune is dubious or adverse;
when retreats as well as advances are necessary; when supplies fail,
arrangements miscarry, and disasters impend, and when the struggle
is protracted, men can only be persuaded to accept evil things by the
lively realisation of the fact that greater terrors await their refusal.
The ugly truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience. It
is certain that the influence of General Gordon upon the garrison and
townspeople of Khartoum owed its greatest strength to that sinister
element. 'It is quite painful,' he writes in his Journals in September,
'to see men tremble so, when they come and see me, that they cannot
hold the match to their cigarette.' Yet he employed all other methods
of inspiring their efforts. As the winter drew on, the sufferings of the
besieged increased and their faith in their commander and his promises
of relief diminished. To preserve their hopes--and, by their hopes,
their courage and loyalty--was beyond the power of man. But what a great
man in the utmost exercise of his faculties and authority might do,
Gordon did.
His extraordinary spirit never burned more brightly than in these last,
gloomy days. The money to pay the troops was exhausted. He issued notes,
signing them with his own name. The citizens groaned under the triple
scourge of scarcity, disease, and war. He ordered the bands to play
merrily and discharged rockets. It was said that they were abandoned,
that help would never come, that the expedition was a myth--the lie of a
General who was disavowed by his Government. Forthwith he placarded
the walls with the news of victories and of the advance of a triumphant
British army; or hired all the best houses by the river's bank for the
accommodation of the officers of the relieving force. A Dervish shell
crashed through his palace. He ordered the date of its arrival to be
inscribed above the hole. For those who served him faithfully he struck
medals and presented them with pomp and circumstance. Others less
laudable he shot. And by all these means and expedients the defence of
the city was prolonged through the summer, autumn, and winter of 1884
and on into the year 1885.
All this time the public anxiety in England had been steadily growing.
If Gordon was abandoned, he was by no means forgotten. As his mission
had been followed with intense interest throughout the whole country,
so its failure had caused general despondency. Disappointment soon gave
place to alarm. The subject of the personal safety of the distinguished
envoy was first raised in the House of Commons on the 16th of March by
Lord Randolph Churchill. Availing himself of the opportunities provided
by Supply, he criticised the vacillating policy of the Government,
their purposeless slaughter in the Eastern Soudan, and their failure to
establish the Suakin-Berber route. He proceeded to draw attention to the
perilous position of General Gordon at Khartoum.
'Colonel Coetlogon has stated that Khartoum may be easily captured; we
know that General Gordon is surrounded by hostile tribes and cut off
from communications with Cairo and London; and under these circumstances
the House has a right to ask her Majesty's Government whether they
are going to do anything to relieve him. Are they going to remain
indifferent to the fate of the one man on whom they have counted to
extricate them from their dilemmas, to leave him to shift for himself,
and not make a single effort on his behalf?' [HANSARD'S PARLIAMENTARY
DEBATES, March 16, 1884.]
The Government remained impassive. Lord E. Fitzmaurice made some sort of
reply, and there were Ministerial cheers. But the subject, Once raised,
was not allowed to drop. Inspired and animated by the earnest energy
of a young man, the Opposition were continually growing stronger. The
conduct of Egyptian affairs afforded ample opportunity for criticism and
attack. All through the summer months and almost every night Ministers
were invited to declare whether they would rescue their envoy or
leave him to his fate. Mr. Gladstone returned evasive answers. The
Conservative Press took the cue. The agitation became intense. Even
among the supporters of the Government there was dissatisfaction. But
the Prime Minister was obdurate and unflinching. At length, at the end
of the Session, the whole matter was brought forward in the gravest
and most formal way by the moving of a vote of censure. The debate that
followed Sir Michael Hicks Beach's motion was long and acrimonious. Mr.
Gladstone's speech only increased the disquietude of his followers and
the fury of the Opposition. Mr. Forster openly declared his disagreement
with his leader; and although Lord Hartington in winding up the debate
threw out some hopes of an expedition in the autumn, the Government
majority fell on the division to twenty-eight. And after the prorogation
the controversy was carried on with undiminished vigour outside the
walls of Parliament, and the clamour in the country grew louder and
louder.
It is usual to look upon Mr. Gladstone's conduct in the matter of the
relief of Gordon as dictated by benevolent weakness. History may take
another view. Strong and stubborn as was the character of the General,
that of the Minister was its equal. If Gordon was the better man,
Gladstone was incomparably the greater. It was easy for the First
Minister of the Crown to despatch an expedition against savages. He was
accustomed to the exercise of power. Compared with the resources of
the Empire, the enterprise was insignificant. Few men have feared
responsibility less than Gladstone. On the other hand, the expressed
desire of the nation was a force to which he had always bowed--to which,
indeed, he owed his political existence. Yet, in spite of the growing
agitation throughout the land, he remained stern and silent. Most men
do what is right, or what they persuade themselves is right; nor is
it difficult to believe that Mr. Gladstone did not feel justified in
involving the nation in operations in the heart of the Soudan for the
purpose, not of saving the life of the envoy--for Gordon had but to
embark on his steamers and come home--but simply in order to vindicate
the personal honour of a man. And it is possible that a feeling of
resentment against the officer whose intractable nature was bringing
such odium upon the Government may have coloured his resolution with a
darker tinge.
But for all his power and influence he was forced to give way. The
Government which had long ignored the call of honour abroad, was driven
to the Soudan by the cries of shame at home. Lord Hartington, at that
time Secretary of State for War, must be dissociated from the general
censure which his principal colleagues have incurred. He was the first
to recognise the obligation which lay upon the Cabinet, and through the
Cabinet upon the nation, and it was to his influence that the despatch
of the relieving expedition was mainly due. The Commander-in-Chief and
the Adjutant-General, who were fully alive to the critical position at
Khartoum, added their recommendations. But even at the last moment Mr.
Gladstone was induced to sanction the advance only by the belief that
the scale of the operations would be small, and that only a single
brigade would be necessary. The decision was taken forthwith by the
Ministry and announced to the nation. The Adjutant-General, however,
asked for a very different force from what the Government had
anticipated, and the single brigade was expanded into an expedition of
ten thousand men, selected from the whole army.
To reverse the decision was now, however, impossible, and the 'Gordon
Relief Expedition' began. The commander to whom the conduct of the
operations had been entrusted reviewed the situation. He saw himself
confronted with a task which was easy and safe if it were undertaken at
leisure, and which was doubtful and perilous if begun in haste. All the
fruits of a long and successful career were staked on the result, and
it is scarcely wonderful that he declined to be swift and reckless.
Shrewdly estimating the military difficulties, he made his plans for a
methodical and deliberate advance which would leave nothing to luck,
and which resembles in character that afterwards carried out by Sir
H. Kitchener. He excluded the idea of a wild glorious rush which might
result in astonishing success or terrible disaster.
Troops and stores were steadily collected at Wady Halfa and along the
Nile. The new Camel Corps, consisting of four regiments, practised their
drills and evolutions. To pilot the boats up the Cataracts voyageurs
were brought from Canada. At length, when all preparations were
complete, the expedition started. The plan was simple. A strong column
of infantry in boats was to work up the river. In case that should not
arrive in time, the Camel Corps was to strike across the Bayuda Desert
from Korti to Metemma. Having arrived there, a small detachment was
to be thrown into Khartoum by Gordon's steamers to sustain the defence
until the arrival of the main body in March or even April of 1885, when
the town could be regularly relieved.
The dramatic character of the enterprise and its picturesque and
original features fascinated the nation, and the advance was watched
with breathless interest. The fortunes of the River Column have been
graphically described by one who played no small part in their attempt.
'The Campaign of the Cataracts' [By Sir William Butler] is a record of
hard and unceasing toil. Day after day the long lines of soldiers hauled
on the tow-ropes or pulled at the oars of the broad-bottomed boats.
Night after night they camped on the banks amid the grim desolation of
the Monassir Desert. Yet their monotonous labours were encouraged by the
knowledge that as soon as the bend of the river at Abu Hamed was reached
the strong north wind would carry them swiftly to Khartoum. And it
seemed a strange and bitter irony that the order to turn back and the
news that all had been in vain was announced to the troops on the very
day when they had cleared the cataracts and were moving forward at five
times their former speed.
The Desert Column started from Korti on the 30th of December. Their
strength did not exceed 1,100 officers and men, but they were the flower
of the army. Dropping their communications, they set forth along the
caravan route towards Metemma. The knowledge which we have since gained
of the resources of the Mahdists enables the peril of their desperate
venture to be fully appreciated. Although the Dervishes were neither so
well armed nor trained as at a later date, they were nearly as numerous
and equally devoid of fear. Their tactics were more in accordance with
modern conditions: their fanaticism was at its height. The British
force, on the other hand, was equipped with weapons scarcely comparable
with those employed in the concluding campaigns. Instead of the powerful
Lee-Metford rifle, with its smokeless powder, its magazine action, and
its absence of recoil, they were armed with the Martini-Henry, which
possessed none of these advantages. In place of the deadly Maxim there
was the Gardner gun--the very gun that jammed at Tamai, and that jammed
again at Abu Klea. The artillery was also in every respect inferior
to that now in general use. Besides all this, the principles of
fire-discipline and of scientific musketry were new, little understood,
and hardly admitted. Nevertheless, the Camel Corps went boldly forward,
and engaged an enemy whose destruction ultimately required the strength
of a better-armed and better-instructed army twelve times as strong.
On the 3rd of January they reached Gakdul Wells. A hundred miles of
their march was accomplished. But they were now delayed by the necessity
of escorting a second column of supplies to Gakdul, and after that until
the arrival of reinforcements which raised their strength to 1,800 of
all ranks. The interval was employed in building two small forts and
establishing an advanced depot; nor was it until the 13th that the march
was resumed. The number of camels was not sufficient for the necessities
of the transport. The food of the camels was too poor for the work they
had to perform. By the 16th, however, they had made fifty miles,
and approached the wells of Abu Klea. Here their further advance was
disputed by the enemy.
The news of the advance of the Desert Column had been duly reported to
the Mahdi and his Arab generals. A small party of English, it was said,
with camels and some cavalry, were coming swiftly to the rescue of the
accursed city. Their numbers were few, scarce 2,000 men. How should they
hope to prevail against 'the expected Mahdi' and the conquering Ansar
who had destroyed Hicks? They were mad; yet they should die; not one
should escape. The delay in the advance offered ample opportunity.
A great force of Arabs was concentrated. Slatin relates how several
thousand men under important Emirs were detached from the army before
Khartoum and marched northward eager for the slaughter of 'the enemies
of God.' At Metemma the main strength of the Jaalin tribe was collected.
With the reinforcements from Omdurman the total force of the Arabs
actually at hand was not less than 10,000, and behind were many
thousands more. They permitted the little column to advance until their
retreat, if defeated, was impossible, and then, confident of victory,
offered battle near the wells of Abu Klea.
The Camel Corps remained halted during the morning of the 16th, and
built a small fort, in which they placed their reserve of stores, and
made some arrangement for the reception of wounded. At one o'clock they
moved leisurely forward, passed through the rocky defile which led into
the valley of Abu Klea and bivouacked. Early the next morning the force
moved out in square formation and advanced upon the enemy. The most
savage and bloody action ever fought in the Soudan by British troops
followed. Notwithstanding the numbers and the valour of the Arabs, that
they penetrated the square, and that they inflicted on the troops a
loss of nine officers and sixty-five men killed and nine officers and
eighty-five men wounded--10 percent of the entire force--they were
driven from the field with great slaughter, and the Desert Column camped
at the wells.
On the morning of the 18th they rested, placed their wounded in the
small fort they had built, and buried their dead. In the afternoon they
continued their advance, marched all through the night, and, having
covered twenty-three miles, halted exhausted, almost within sight of the
river, at daylight on the 19th. Meanwhile the enemy had again collected
in great strength, and an effective rifle fire was opened on the column.
Sir Herbert Stewart received the wound of which a few weeks later he
died. The command devolved upon Sir Charles Wilson. The position was
desperate. Water was running short. The Nile was only four miles away;
but the column were impeded by their wounded and stores, and between
the river and the thirsty men lay the Dervish army, infuriated by their
losses and fully aware of the sore straits to which their astonishing
enemy was now reduced.
It now became necessary to divide the small force. Some must remain to
guard the baggage and the wounded; the others must fight their way to
the water. At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th, 900 men left
the hastily made zeriba and marched towards the river. Without their
camels or those of the transport they appeared insignificant, a mere
speck on the broad plain of Metemma. The Dervishes hastened to clinch
the matter.
The square advances slowly and painfully over the stony ground, with
frequent jerky halts to preserve order and to pick up the wounded.
Little puffs of white smoke dot the distant sandhills. Here and there a
gaudy flag waves defiantly. In front the green tops of the palm-trees by
the Nile tantalise but stimulate the soldiers. On the left the great mud
labyrinth of Metemma stretches indefinitely. Suddenly the firing stops.
The low scrub in front is alive with the swarming figures of the enemy.
All the flags dance forward together. Ragged white figures spring up
in hundreds. Emirs on horses appear as if by magic. Everywhere are
men running swiftly forward, waving their spears and calling upon the
Prophet of God to speed their enterprise. The square halts. The weary
men begin to fire with thoughtful care, The Dervishes drop thickly. On
then, children of the desert! you are so many, they are so few. They are
worn with fatigue and their throats are parched. You have drunk deeply
of the Nile. One rush will trample the accursed under the feet of the
faithful. The charge continues. A bugle sounds in the waiting square.
The firing stops. What is this? They lose heart. Their ammunition is
exhausted. On, then, and make an end. Again the smoke ripples along the
line of bayonets and fire is re-opened, this time at closer range and
with far greater effect. The stubborn grandeur of the British soldier is
displayed by desperate circumstances. The men shoot to hit. The attack
crumples. The Emirs--horse and man--collapse. The others turn and
walk--for they will not run--sullenly back towards the town. The square
starts forward. The road to the river is open. With dusk the water is
reached, and never have victors gained a more longed-for prize. The Nile
is won. Gordon remains.
Sir Charles Wilson, having collected his force, remained three days by
the bank of the Nile before attempting any further advance on Khartoum.
He has explained why this delay was necessary, to the satisfaction of
most military critics. Nor is it easy to believe that men who had made
such splendid efforts would have willingly lost a single moment. On the
fourth day he embarked on two of Gordon's steamers, which awaited the
relieving column, and taking with him twenty British soldiers and a few
blue-jackets set forth towards the Shabluka Gorge and the town that lay
beyond. On the 27th of January the rescuers came in sight of Khartoum
and under the fire of the enemy. Many of their perilous adventures seem
to belong to romance rather than to reality: the tiny gimcrack boats
struggling with the strong stream of the cataract, running the gauntlet
of the Arab guns, dropping disconsolately down the river with their
terrible news, or wrecked and stranded on the sandbank; Stuart-Wortley
rowing to the camp before Metemma for help; Beresford starting in the
remaining steamer; the bursting of the boiler by a Dervish shell;
Benbow mending it in a single day; Wilson's rescue and the return to
the entrenchment at Gubat. But the scene that appeals to the imagination
above all the others is that where with both banks ablaze with musketry
and artillery, the black smoke pouring through the shot-holes in the
funnels, the water rising in spurts from the bullets, the men who had
come so far and braved so much stared at the palace roof and, seeing no
flag flying, knew that all was over and that they had come too late.
The news of the Dervish defeats at Abu Klea and Abu Kru impelled the
Mahdi to a desperate venture. The English were but 120 miles away. They
were few, but victorious. It was difficult to say what force could stop
such men. In spite of the wrath of the true God and the valour of Islam
they might prevail. The Mahdi depended on success for existence. The
tremendous forces of fanaticism are exerted only in a forward direction.
Retreat meant ruin. All must be staked on an immediate assault. And,
besides, the moment was ripe. Thus the Arab chiefs reasoned, and wisely
resolved to be reckless. Thus the night of the 25th of January arrived.
The band played as usual in the evening. Gradually the shadows fell and
it became dark. The hungry inhabitants betook themselves to bed. The
anxious but indomitable commander knew that the crisis impended, and
knew also that he was powerless to avert it. Perhaps he slept, satisfied
that he had done his duty; and in the silence of the night the savage
enemy crawled stealthily towards the town. The weary and disheartened
sentinels, weakened by famine and tired of war, maintained a doubtful
vigilance along the ramparts. The subsiding waters of the river had
left a bare gap between the White Nile and the wall. Perhaps there was
treachery besides. On a sudden the loud explosion of musketry broke
the stillness of the night and the slumbers of the people; and with
a continual shouting thousands of Dervishes swarmed through the
unprotected space and entered Khartoum.
One mob of assailants made their way to the palace. Gordon came out to
meet them. The whole courtyard was filled with wild, harlequin figures
and sharp, glittering blades. He attempted a parley. 'Where is your
master, the Mahdi?' He knew his influence over native races. Perhaps
he hoped to save the lives of some of the inhabitants. Perhaps in that
supreme moment imagination flashed another picture before his eyes; and
he saw himself confronted with the false prophet of a false religion,
confronted with the European prisoners who had 'denied their Lord,'
offered the choice of death or the Koran; saw himself facing that savage
circle with a fanaticism equal to, and a courage greater than, their
own; marching in all the pride of faith 'and with retorted scorn' to a
martyr's death.
It was not to be. Mad with the joy of victory and religious frenzy,
they rushed upon him and, while he disdained even to fire his revolver,
stabbed him in many places. The body fell down the steps and lay--a
twisted heap--at the foot. There it was decapitated. The head was
carried to the Mahdi. The trunk was stabbed again and again by the
infuriated creatures, till nothing but a shapeless bundle of torn flesh
and bloody rags remained of what had been a great and famous man and the
envoy of her Britannic Majesty. The blood soaked into the ground, and
left a dark stain which was not immediately effaced. Slatin mentions
that the Arabs used often to visit the place. Ohrwalder went himself,
and more than six weeks after the capture of the town, saw 'black spots'
upon the steps. But they have all since been obliterated.
Such, briefly, is the story of the fall of Khartoum and of the death of
Gordon. The fact that the two steamers arrived only two days after the
capture of the town has given colour to the belief that, but for the
three days' delay at Metemma, the catastrophe might have been averted.
This view appears incorrect. The Arabs had long held Khartoum at their
mercy. They hoped, indeed, to compel its surrender by famine and to
avoid an assault, which after their experience at El Obeid they knew
must cost them dear. Gordon has stated in his Journals that the town
became defenceless by the middle of December. The arrival of twenty
British soldiers and a few officers could not have materially affected
the situation--could only, in fact, have increased the loss. Yet nearly
everyone who reads the tale will wish--in spite of reason--that some
help, however little, had reached the lonely man; that before the
darkness fell he had grasped an English hand, and learned that his
countrymen had not abandoned him, had not forgotten--would never forget.
It may not be possible as yet to fix the exact place which Charles
Gordon will occupy in English history. It is certainly a high one.
Whether he will rank as a commander with Peterborough, Wolfe, and Olive,
those who come after us must decide. We may, however, assert that he was
a man of stainless honour and enduring courage, who in varied capacities
displayed a fertile and abundant genius. He was careless alike of the
honours and comforts of the world, and looked forward with firm faith
to the rewards of a future state. The severity of his religion did not
impair the amiability of his character. The uncertainty of his moods may
have frequently affected the soundness of his opinions, but not often
the justice of his actions. Gordon's statue, set up in the indignant
grief of the nation in the space which is appropriated to the monuments
of Great Captains by sea and land, claims the attention of the
passer-by, not only because it is comparatively new. The figure, its
pose, and its story are familiar even to the poorest citizens of London
and to people from all parts of the United Kingdom. Serene amid the
noise of the traffic, as formerly in that of the battle, the famous
General seems still, with bowed head and thoughtful countenance, to
revolve the problems of the dark Soudan and, inattentive to the clamour
of men, inquires what is acceptable to God.
With the capture of the city and the death of the envoy the reason for
the expedition disappeared. It remained only to withdraw the troops. The
stores which had been brought across the desert at a terrible cost were
thrown hastily into the Nile. The battered steamers which had waited
so long at Metemma were hurriedly dismantled. The Camel Corps, their
extraordinary efforts futile and their camels killed, marched back on
foot to Korti. Their retreat was pressed by the exultant enemy. The
River Column, whose boats after months of labour had just cleared the
Cataracts, and who had gained a success at Kirbekan, were carried
back swiftly by the strong current against which they had hopefully
struggled. The whole Expeditionary Force--Guards, Highlanders, sailors,
Hussars, Indian soldiers, Canadian voyageurs, mules, camels, and
artillery--trooped back forlornly over the desert sands, and behind
them the rising tide of barbarism followed swiftly, until the whole vast
region was submerged. For several months the garrison of Kassala under
a gallant Egyptian maintained a desperate resistance, but at last famine
forced them to surrender, and they shared the fate of the garrisons
of El Obeid, Darfur, Sobat, Tokar, Sinkat, Sennar, and Khartoum. The
evacuation of the Soudan was thus completed.
CHAPTER III: THE DERVISH EMPIRE
It might seem at first a great advantage that the peoples of the Soudan,
instead of being a multitude of wild, discordant tribes, should unite of
their own accord into one strong community, actuated by a common spirit,
living under fixed laws, and ruled by a single sovereign. But there
is one form of centralised government which is almost entirely
unprogressive and beyond all other forms costly and tyrannical--the rule
of an army. Such a combination depends, not on the good faith and good
will of its constituents, but on their discipline and almost mechanical
obedience. Mutual fear, not mutual trust, promotes the co-operation of
its individual members. History records many such dominations, ancient
and modern, civilised or barbaric; and though education and culture
may modify, they cannot change their predominant characteristics--a
continual subordination of justice to expediency, an indifference to
suffering, a disdain of ethical principles, a laxity of morals, and
a complete ignorance of economics. The evil qualities of military
hierarchies are always the same. The results of their rule are
universally unfortunate. The degree may vary with time and place, but
the political supremacy of an army always leads to the formation of
a great centralised capital, to the consequent impoverishment of the
provinces, to the degradation of the peaceful inhabitants through
oppression and want, to the ruin of commerce, the decay of learning,
and the ultimate demoralisation even of the military order through
overbearing pride and sensual indulgence.
Of the military dominations which history records, the Dervish Empire
was probably the worst. All others have displayed compensating virtues.
A high sense of personal honour has counterbalanced a low standard
of public justice. An ennobling patriotism may partly repair economic
follies. The miseries of the people are often concealed by the
magnificence of the army. The laxity of morals is in some degree excused
by the elegance of manners. But the Dervish Empire developed no virtue
except courage, a quality more admirable than rare. The poverty of the
land prevented magnificence. The ignorance of its inhabitants excluded
refinement. The Dervish dominion was born of war, existed by war, and
fell by war. It began on the night of the sack of Khartoum. It ended
abruptly thirteen years later in the battle of Omdurman. Like a
subsidiary volcano, it was flung up by one convulsion, blazed during the
period of disturbance, and was destroyed by the still more violent shock
that ended the eruption.
After the fall of Khartoum and the retreat of the British armies the
Mahdi became the absolute master of the Soudan. Whatever pleasures he
desired he could command, and, following the example of the founder of
the Mohammedan faith, he indulged in what would seem to Western minds
gross excesses. He established an extensive harem for his own peculiar
use, and immured therein the fairest captives of the war. The conduct of
the ruler was imitated by his subjects. The presence of women increased
the vanity of the warriors: and it was not very long before the patched
smock which had vaunted the holy poverty of the rebels developed into
the gaudy jibba of the conquerors. Since the unhealthy situation of
Khartoum amid swamps and marshes did not commend itself to the now
luxurious Arabs, the Mahdi began to build on the western bank of the
White Nile a new capital, which, from the detached fort which had stood
there in Egyptian days, was called Omdurman. Among the first buildings
which he set his subjects to construct were a mosque for the services of
religion, an arsenal for the storage of military material, and a house
for himself. But while he was thus entering at once upon the enjoyments
of supreme power and unbridled lust, the God whom he had served, not
unfaithfully, and who had given him whatever he had asked, required of
Mohammed Ahmed his soul; and so all that he had won by his brains and
bravery became of no more account to him.
In the middle of the month of June, scarcely five months after the
completion of his victorious campaigns, the Mahdi fell sick. For a few
days he did not appear at the mosque. The people were filled with alarm.
They were reassured by remembering the prophecy that their liberator
should not perish till he had conquered the earth. Mohammed, however,
grew worse. Presently those who attended him could doubt no longer that
he was attacked by typhus fever. The Khalifa Abdullah watched by his
couch continually. On the sixth day the inhabitants and the soldiers
were informed of the serious nature of their ruler's illness, and public
prayers were offered by all classes for his recovery. On the seventh
day it was evident that he was dying. All those who had shared his
fortunes--the Khalifas he had appointed, the chief priests of the
religion he had reformed, the leaders of the armies who had followed him
to victory, and his own family whom he had hallowed--crowded the small
room. For some hours he lay unconscious or in delirium, but as the end
approached he rallied a little, and, collecting his faculties by a great
effort, declared his faithful follower and friend the Khalifa Abdullah
his successor, and adjured the rest to show him honour. 'He is of me,
and I am of him; as you have obeyed me, so you should deal with him. May
God have mercy upon me!' [Slatin, FIRE AND SWORD.] Then he immediately
expired.
Grief and dismay filled the city. In spite of the emphatic prohibition
by law of all loud lamentations, the sound of 'weeping and wailing arose
from almost every house.' The whole people, deprived at once of their
acknowledged sovereign and spiritual guide, were shocked and affrighted.
Only the Mahdi's wives, if we may credit Slatin, 'rejoiced secretly in
their hearts at the death of their husband and master,' and, since they
were henceforth to be doomed to an enforced and inviolable chastity,
the cause of their satisfaction is as obscure as its manifestation
was unnatural. The body of the Mahdi, wrapped in linen, was reverently
interred in a deep grave dug in the floor of the room in which he had
died, nor was it disturbed until after the capture of Omdurman by the
British forces in 1898, when by the orders of Sir H. Kitchener the
sepulchre was opened and the corpse exhumed.
The Khalifa Abdullah had been declared by the Mahdi's latest breath his
successor. He determined to have the choice ratified once for all by the
popular vote. Hurrying to the pulpit in the courtyard of the mosque, he
addressed the assembled multitude in a voice which trembled with intense
excitement and emotion. His oratory, his reputation as a warrior, and
the Mahdi's expressed desire aroused the enthusiasm of his hearers,
and the oath of allegiance was at once sworn by thousands. The ceremony
continued long after it was dark. With an amazing endurance he harangued
till past midnight, and when the exhausted Slatin, who hard attended him
throughout the crisis, lay down upon the ground to sleep, he knew
that his master's succession was assured; for, says he, 'I heard the
passers-by loud in their praises of the late Mahdi, and assuring each
other of their firm resolve to support his successor.'
The sovereignty that Abdullah had obtained must be held, as it had been
won, by the sword. The passionate agitation which the Mahdi had excited
survived him. The whole of the Soudan was in a ferment. The success
which had crowned rebellion encouraged rebels. All the turbulent and
fanatical elements were aroused. As the various provinces had been
cleared of the Egyptians, the new Executive had appointed military
governors by whom the country was ruled and taxed, subject to the
pleasure of Mohammed Ahmed. His death was the signal for a long series
of revolts of all kinds--military, political, and religious. Garrisons
mutinied; Emirs plotted; prophets preached. Nor was the land torn only
by internal struggles. Its frontiers were threatened. On the east the
tremendous power of Abyssinia loomed terrible and menacing. There was
war in the north with Egypt and around Suakin with England. The Italians
must be confronted from the direction of Massowa. Far to the south
Emin Pasha still maintained a troublesome resistance. Yet the Khalifa
triumphed over nearly all his enemies; and the greatest spectacle which
the Soudan presented from 1885 to 1898 was of this strong, capable ruler
bearing up against all reverses, meeting each danger, overcoming each
difficulty, and offering a firm front to every foe.
It is unlikely that any complete history of these events will ever be
written in a form and style which will interest a later generation. The
complications of extraordinary names and the imperfection of the records
might alone deter the chronicler. The universal squalor of the scenes
and the ignorance of the actors add discouragements. Nor, upon the
other hand, are there great incentives. The tale is one of war of the
cruellest, bloodiest, and most confused type. One savage army slaughters
another. One fierce general cuts his rival's throat. The same features
are repeated with wearying monotony. When one battle is understood, all
may be imagined. Above the tumult the figure of the Khalifa rises
stern and solitary, the only object which may attract the interest of
a happier world. Yet even the Khalifa's methods were oppressively
monotonous. For although the nature or courage of the revolts might
differ with the occasion, the results were invariable; and the heads
of all his chief enemies, of many of his generals, of most of his
councillors, met in the capacious pit which yawned in Omdurman.
During the thirteen years of his reign Abdullah tried nearly every
device by which Oriental rulers have sought to fortify their perilous
sovereignty. He shrank from nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding
principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among
many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable.
First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential
rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called
'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he
maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of power on
the side of his own tribe. All these three methods merit some attention
or illustration.
The general massacre of all possible claimants usually follows the
accession of a usurper to an Oriental throne. The Khalifa was able to
avoid this extreme measure. Nevertheless he took precautions. Availing
himself of the grief and terror that had followed Mohammed Ahmed's
death, he had extorted the oath of allegiance from the two other
Khalifas and from the 'Ashraf' or relations of the Prophet. [The Madhi
had superseded the original Mohammed as 'the Prophet.' His relations
consequently became 'Ashraf.'] But these complaisant men soon repented
of their submission. Each Khalifa boasted his independence. Each marched
attended by a numerous retinue. Each asserted his right to beat his
own great copper drum. Both the unsuccessful Khalifas combined against
Abdullah. But while they had been busy with the beating of war-drums
and the preparation of pageants, that sagacious ruler had secured the
loyalty of the Baggara tribe, to a section of which he belonged, and
of a considerable force of black riflemen. At length matters reached
climax. Both parties prepared for war. Abdullah drew up his array
without the city, and challenged his rivals to the utmost proof. The
combined forces of the ousted Khalifas were the more numerous. But
the fierce Baggara waved their swords, and the Soudanese riflemen were
famous for their valour. For some hours a bloody struggle appeared
imminent. Then the confederacy broke up. The Khalifa Ali-Wad-Helu, a
prudent man, talked of compromise and amity. The Khalif Sherif,
thus seriously weakened, hastened to make peace while time remained.
Eventually both bowed to the superior force of the ruler and the
superior courage of his followers. Once they had submitted, their power
was gone. Abdullah reduced their forces to a personal escort of fifty
men each, deprived them of their flags and their war-drums--the emblems
of royalty--and they became for the future the useful supporters of a
Government they were unable to subvert.
To other less powerful and more stubborn enemies he showed a greater
severity. The Mahdi's two uncles, named respectively Abdel Kerim
and Abdel Kader, were thrown chained into prison, their houses were
destroyed, and their wives and other property confiscated. The numerous
persons who claimed to be of the 'Ashraf' found the saintly honour
a burden upon earth; for, in order to keep them out of mischief, the
Khalifa enjoined them to attend five times every day at the prayers in
the mosque. Eighteen months of these devotions, declares the Christian
chronicler, were considered 'the highest punishment.' [Ohrwalder, TEN
YEARS' CAPTIVITY.] Still more barbarous was the treatment meted out to
the unfortunate Emir who had charge of the Treasury. Ahmed Wad Suliman
had been accustomed under the Mahdi's mild rule to keep no public
accounts, and consequently he had amassed a large fortune. He was
actively hostile to Abdullah, and proclaimed his sympathy with the
Ashraf. Whereupon the Khalifa invited him to give an account of his
stewardship. This he was, of course, unable to do. He was then dismissed
from his appointment. His private property was taken to fill the
deficiencies of the State, and the brutal population of Omdurman
applauded his punishment as 'an act of justice.' [Slatin, FIRE AND
SWORD.]
Although the Khalifa might establish his authority by such atrocities,
its maintenance depended on the military policy which he consistently
pursued. The terrible power of a standing army may usually be exerted by
whoever can control its leaders, as a mighty engine is set in motion by
the turning of a handle. Yet to turn the handle some muscular force is
necessary. Abdullah knew that to rule the Soudan he must have a great
army. To make the great army obedient he must have another separate
force; for the influences which keep European armies in subjection
were not present among the Dervishes. For some years, indeed, he was
compelled to leave much to chance or the loyalty of his officers.
But latterly, when he had perfected his organisation, he became quite
independent and had no need to trust anyone. By degrees and with
astonishing ability he carried out his schemes.
He invited his own tribe, the Taaisha section of the Baggara Arabs, to
come and live in Omdurman. 'Come,' he wrote in numerous letters to them,
'and take possession of the lands which the Lord your God has given
you.' Allured by the hopes of wealth and wives and the promise of power,
the savage herdsmen came to the number of 7,000 warriors. Their path was
made smooth and easy. Granaries were erected along the route. Steamers
and sailing-vessels waited on the Nile. Arrived at the capital, all were
newly clothed at the expense of the State. An entire district of the
city was forcibly cleared of its inhabitants for the accommodation of
the strangers. What the generosity of the Khalifa forgot or refused, the
predatory habits of his clansmen procured; and they robbed, plundered,
and swindled with all the arrogance and impunity of royal favourites.
The populace of the city returned a bitter hatred for these injuries;
and the Khalifa's object was attained. He had created a class in
Omdurman who were indissolubly attached to him. Like him, they were
detested by the local tribes. Like him, they were foreigners in the
land. But, like him, they were fierce and brave and strong. His dangers,
his enemies, his interests were their own. Their lives depended on their
loyalty.
Here was the motor muscle which animated the rest. The Taaisha
Baggara controlled the black Jehadia, once the irregular troops of the
Egyptians, now become the regulars of the Khalifa. The black Jehadia
overawed the Arab army in the capital. The army in the capital dominated
the forces in the provinces. The forces in the provinces subdued
the inhabitants. The centralisation of power was assured by the
concentration of military material. Cannon, rifles, stores of
ammunition, all the necessities of war were accumulated in the arsenal.
Only the armies on the frontiers, the Taaisha tribe, and the khalifa's
personal bodyguard habitually carried firearms and cartridges. The
enormous population of Omdurman was forced to be content with spears and
swords. Rifles were issued to the Soudanese whenever safe and necessary;
cartridges only when they were about to be used. Thus several millions
of warlike and savage people, owning scarcely any law but that of might,
and scattered about a vast roadless territory, were brought into the
firm grip of a single man.
The third principle of government which the Khalifa was compelled, or
inclined, to adopt was to keep the relative power of the various
tribes and classes conveniently proportioned. If an Emir rose to great
influence and wealth, he became a possible rival, and suffered forthwith
death, imprisonment, or spoliation. If a tribe threatened the supremacy
of the Taaisha it was struck down while its menace was yet a menace. The
regulation of classes and tribes was a far more complicated affair than
the adjustment of individuals. Yet for thirteen years the Khalifa
held the balance, and held it exact until the very end. Such was the
statecraft of a savage from Kordofan.
His greatest triumph was the Abyssinian war. It is not likely that two
great barbaric kingdoms living side by side, but differing in race and
religion, will long continue at peace; nor was it difficult to discover
a cause of the quarrel between the Dervishes and the Abyssinians. For
some time a harassing and desultory warfare disturbed the border.
At length in 1885 a Dervish--half-trader, half brigand--sacked an
Abyssinian church. Bas Adal, the Governor of the Amhara province,
demanded that this sacrilegious robber should be surrendered to justice.
The Arabs haughtily refused. The response was swift. Collecting an
army which may have amounted to 30,000 men, the Abyssinians invaded the
district of Gallabat and marched on the town. Against this host the Emir
Wad Arbab could muster no more than 6,000 soldiers. But, encouraged by
the victories of the previous four years, the Dervishes accepted battle,
in spite of the disparity of numbers. Neither valour nor discipline
could withstand such odds. The Moslems, broken by the fierce onset and
surrounded by the overwhelming numbers of their enemies, were destroyed,
together with their intrepid leader. Scarcely any escaped. The
Abyssinians indulged in all the triumphs of savagery. The wounded were
massacred: the slain were mutilated: the town of Gallabat was sacked and
burnt. The Women were carried into captivity. All these tidings came to
Omdurman. Under this heavy and unexpected blow the Khalifa acted with
prudence. He opened negotiations with King John of Abyssinia, for the
ransom of the captured wives and children, and at the same time he sent
the Emir Yunes with a large force to Gallabat. The immediate necessities
having thus been dealt with, Abdullah prepared for revenge.
Of all the Arab leaders which fifteen years of continual war and tumult
throughout the Soudan produced, none displayed higher ability, none
obtained greater successes, and none were more honourable, though
several were more famous, than the man whom the Khalifa selected to
avenge the destruction of the Gallabat army. Abu Anga had been a slave
in Abdullah's family long before the Mahdi had preached at Abba island
and while Egypt yet oppressed the country. After the revolt had broken
out, his adventurous master summoned him from the distant Kordofan home
to attend him in the war, and Abu Anga came with that ready obedience
and strange devotion for which he was always distinguished. Nominally
as a slave, really as a comrade, he fought by Abdullah's side in all the
earlier battles of the rebellion. Nor was it until after the capture
of El Obeid that he rose suddenly to power and place. The Khalifa was a
judge of men. He saw very clearly that the black Soudanese troops, who
had surrendered and were surrendering as town after town was taken,
might be welded into a powerful weapon. And in Abu Anga he knew a man
who could not only fashion the blade, but would hold it ever loyally at
his master's disposal. The former slave threw himself into the duties
of his command with extraordinary energy. His humble origin pleased the
hardy blacks, who recognised in their leader their equal in birth, their
superior in prowess. More than any other Emir, Abu Anga contributed
to the destruction of Hicks's army. The Jehadia, as his soldiers were
called--because they had joined in the Jehad, or Holy War--were armed
with Remington rifles, and their harassing fire inflicted heavy losses
on the struggling column until it was finally brought to a standstill,
and the moment for the spearmen to charge arrived. Henceforward the
troops of Abu Anga became famous throughout the land for their weapons,
their courage, and their cruelty. Their numbers at first did not exceed
5,000; but as more towns were taken and more slaves were turned into
soldiers they increased, until at one time they reached the formidable
total of 15,000 men. During the siege of Khartoum the black riflemen
distinguished themselves by the capture of Omdurman fort, but their
violent natures and predatory instincts made them an undesirable
garrison even for the Dervish capital, and they were despatched under
their general to Kordofan, where they increased their reputation by a
series of bloody fights with the Nubas, an aboriginal mountain people
who cared for nothing but their independence.
At the end of June Abu Anga reached Omdurman with an army variously
estimated at from 22,000 to 31,000 men, of whom at least 10,000 were
armed with Remington rifles. The Khalifa received him with the utmost
honour. After a private interview, which lasted for several hours, a
formal entry into the town was arranged. At daybreak on the following
morning the whole force marched into the city and camped along the
northern suburbs, applauded and welcomed alike by the population and
their ruler. A few days after this a great review was held under the
Kerreri hills, on the very ground where the Dervish Empire was doomed
to be shattered. But the fateful place oppressed the Khalifa with no
forebodings. He exulted in his power: and well he might, for after the
cannon had thundered indefinite salutes, no fewer than 100,000 armed men
defiled to the music of the war-drums and the ombyas before the famous
Black Flag. The spectacle of the enormous numbers provoked their
enthusiasm. The triumphant Khalifa was cheered by his mighty host, who
pressed upon him in their exuberant loyalty until he was almost crushed.
It was indeed a stirring scene. The whole plain was filled with the
throng. Banners of every hue and shape waved gaily in the breeze,
and the sunlight glinted from innumerable spear-points. The swarming
Dervishes displayed their bright parti-coloured jibbas. The wild Baggara
cavalry circled on the flanks of the array. The brown dome of the
Mahdi's tomb, rising above the city, seemed to assure the warriors of
supernatural aid. Abdullah was at the summit of his power. The movement
initiated by the priest of Abba island had attained its climax. Behind,
in the plain, the frowning rocks of Surgham Hill rose ragged and gloomy,
as if their silence guarded the secrets of the future.
After the feast of Bairam had been celebrated on a gigantic scale,
Abu Anga was despatched to Gallabat with his army and considerable
reinforcements from the troops in Omdurman, and it became evident that
war with Abyssinia was imminent. The great leader relieved the Emir
Yunes, much to the latter's disgust, of the chief command, and, since
the strong Gallabat garrison was added to his own force, Abu Anga
was able to take the field at the head of 15,000 riflemen and 45,000
spearmen. The Khalifa had embarked on a great venture in planning the
invasion of Abyssinia. The vast strength of the Negus was known to
the Dervishes, and has since been proved to the world. The Mahdi had
forbidden such a war. An ill-omened prophecy further declared that the
King of Abyssinia would tether his horse to a solitary tree by Khartoum,
while his cavalry should ride through the city fetlock deep in blood.
But Abdullah feared neither God nor man. He reviewed the political
situation, and determined at all risks to maintain his frontiers
inviolate. His Emir Wad Arbab had been killed. Blood must settle the
matter.
The Abyssinians had not watched the extensive hostile preparations
apathetically. Ras Adal had collected an army which in numbers actually
exceeded that of the Dervishes. But the latter were far superior in
rifles, and the black infantry were of invincible valour. Nevertheless,
confident in his strength and relying on his powerful cavalry, the
Abyssinian general allowed the Arabs to toil through all the mountainous
country, to traverse the Mintik Pass, and to debouch unmolested on to
the plain of Debra Sin. Abu Anga neglected no precaution. He knew that
since he must fight in the heart of Abyssinia, with the mountains behind
him, a defeat would involve annihilation. He drew up his army swiftly
and with skill. Then the Abyssinians attacked. The rifle fire of the
Soudanese repulsed them. The onset was renewed with desperate gallantry.
It was resisted with equal valour and superior weapons. After frightful
losses the Abyssinians wavered, and the wise Arab seized the moment for
a counterstroke. In spite of the devotion of his cavalry Ras Adal was
driven from the field. Great numbers of his army were drowned in the
river in front of which he had recklessly elected to fight. His camp was
captured, and a valuable spoil rewarded the victors, who also gratified
their passions with a wholesale slaughter of the wounded--a practice
commonly followed by savages. The effect of the victory was great.
The whole of the Amhara province submitted to the invaders, and in the
spring of 1887 Abu Anga was able to advance without further fighting to
the capture and sack of Gondar, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.
Meanwhile the Khalifa had been anxiously expecting tidings of his army.
The long silence of thirty days which followed their plunge into the
mountains filled him with fear, and Ohrwalder relates that he 'aged
visibly' during that period. But his judgment was proved by the event,
and the arrival of a selected assortment of heads turned doubt to
triumph. The Dervishes did not long remain in Abyssinia, as they
suffered from the climate. In December the army returned to Gallabat,
which they commenced to fortify, and their victorious general followed
his grisly but convincing despatch to Omdurman, where he received the
usual welcome accorded by warlike peoples to military heroes. But the
famous and faithful slave may have been more gratified by the tears of
joy which his master and sovereign shed on beholding him again safe and
successful.
The greater struggle was still to come. The whole of Abyssinia was
convulsed with fury, and King John in person prepared to take the field
and settle the quarrel for ever. He assembled a mighty host, which is
said to have amounted to 130,000 foot and 20,000 horsemen. The rumours
of this formidable concentration reached Gallabat and Omdurman, and
in spite of the recent victory caused deep alarm. The Khalifa saw his
frontiers--even his existence--menaced, for King John had declared that
he would sweep the Dervishes from off the face of the earth: and in the
hour of need the general on whom so much depended died of some poisonous
medicine with which he had endeavoured to cure himself of indigestion.
Abu Anga was buried in his red-brick house at Gallabat amid the
lamentations of his brave black soldiers, and gloom pervaded the whole
army. But, since the enemy were approaching, the danger had to be faced.
The Khalifa appointed Zeki Tummal, one of Anga's lieutenants, to the
command of the forces at Gallabat, which by strenuous exertions he
brought up to a total of 85,000 men. King John sent word that he was
coming, lest any should say that he had come secretly as a thief.
The Dervishes resolved to remain on the defensive, and, fortifying
themselves in an enormous zeriba around the town, awaited the onslaught.
At dawn on the 9th of March, 1889, the Abyssinians came within sight of
their enemies, and early the next morning the battle began. Great clouds
of dust obscured the scene, and all intelligible sounds were lost in
the appalling din. The Abyssinians, undaunted by the rifle fire of the
Soudanese, succeeded in setting the zeriba alight. Then, concentrating
all their force on one part of the defence, they burst into the
enclosure and town. The division of Wad Ali, a fourth part of the entire
Dervish army, which bore the brunt of this attack, was almost completely
destroyed. The interior of the zeriba was crowded with women and
children, who were ruthlessly butchered by the exultant Abyssinians. The
assailants scattered in all directions in search of plunder, and they
even had time to begin to disinter the body of Abu Anga, which they were
eager to insult in revenge for Gondar. The Dervishes already wavered;
their ammunition began to fail, when suddenly a rumour spread about
among the Abyssinians that the King was killed. Seizing what booty
they could snatch, the victorious army began a general retreat, and the
zeriba was soon cleared. The Arabs were too exhausted to pursue, but
when on the following day the attack was not renewed they learned, to
their surprise, that they were the victors and that their enemy was
falling back towards the Atbara river. Zeki Tummal resolved to pursue,
and his army were further incited to the chase by the fact that the
Abyssinians had carried off with them a large number of Dervish women,
including the harem of the late beloved Abu Anga. Two days after the
battle the Dervishes overtook the enemy's rearguard and, surprising
their camp, inflicted severe loss and captured much booty. The temporary
Negus who had been appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of
King John was among the killed. The body of that courageous monarch fell
into the hands of the Dervishes, who struck off the head and sent
it--a tangible proof of victory--to Omdurman. The Abyssinians, still
formidable, made good their retreat; nor did Zeki Tummal venture to
follow into the mountains. Internal difficulties within his dominions
prevented the new Negus from resuming the offensive, and thus the
Dervish-Abyssinian war dwindled down to, as it had arisen out of,
frontier raids.
The arrival in Omdurman of King John's head intoxicated the Khalifa with
joy. Abyssinia was regarded throughout the Soudan as a far greater power
than Egypt, and here was its mighty ruler slain and decapitated. But the
victory had been dearly purchased. The two great battles had been
fought with indescribable ferocity by both sides, and the slaughter
was appalling. No reliable statistics are avaliable, but it may be
reasonably asserted that neither side sustained a loss in killed during
the war of fewer than 15,000 fighting men. The flower of the Dervish
army, the heroic blacks of Abu Anga, were almost destroyed. The Khalifa
had won a Pyrrhic triumph. Never again was he able to put so great
a force in the field, and, although the army which was shattered at
Omdurman was better armed and better drilled, it was less formidable
than that which broke the might of Abyssinia.
During the progress of the struggle with Abyssinia the war against Egypt
languished. The Mahdi, counting upon the support of the population, had
always declared that he would free the Delta from 'the Turks,' and was
already planning its invasion when he and his schemes were interrupted
by death. His successor inherited all the quarrel, but not all the
power. Much of Mohammed Ahmed's influence died with him. Alive, he
might conquer the Moslem world; dead, he was only a saint. All fanatical
feeling in Egypt soon subsided. Nevertheless the Khalifa persisted in
the enterprise. The success of the Abyssinian war encouraged and enabled
him to resume the offensive on his northern frontier, and he immediately
ordered Wad-el-Nejumi, who commanded in Dongola, to march with his
scanty force to the invasion of Egypt. The mad enterprise ended, as
might have been foreseen, in the destruction of both Emir and army at
Toski. The Khalifa received the news with apparent grief, but it is
difficult to avoid suspecting him of dark schemes. He was far too clever
to believe that Egypt could be conquered by five thousand men. He knew
that besides the Egyptians there was a strange white tribe of men,
the same that had so nearly saved Khartoum. 'But for the English,' he
exclaimed on several occasions, 'I would have conquered Egypt.' Yet,
knowing of the British occupation, he deliberately sent an army to its
inevitable ruin. It is difficult to reconcile such conduct with the
character for sagacity and intelligence which Abdullah has deserved.
There is no doubt that he wanted to conquer Egypt. Possibly by some
extraordinary chance Wad-el-Nejumi might succeed, even with his small
force. If so, then the glory of God and the power of the Khalifa would
advance together. If not--and herein lies the true reason for the
venture--the riverain tribes would have received a crippling blow.
The terrible slaughter of the Abyssinian war had fallen mainly on the
Jehadia and the eastern Arabs. The jealous tribes in the north had not
suffered. The balance of power was in need of re-adjustment. The Jaalin
and Barabra were fast becoming dangerous. Nejumi's army was recruited
almost entirely from these sources. The reinforcements sent from
Omdurman consisted of men selected from the flag of the Khalifa Sherif,
who was growing too powerful, and of the Batahin tribe, who had shown a
mutinous spirit [Ohrwalder, TEN YEARS' CAPTIVITY.] The success of such
an army in Egypt would be glorious. Its destruction anywhere would be
convenient. Whatever Abdullah's motives may have been, his advantage was
certain. But the life of the empire thus compelled to prey upon itself
must necessarily be short.
Other forces were soon added to the work of exhaustion. The year
following the end of the Abyssinian war was marked by a fearful famine.
Slatin and Ohrwalder vie with each other in relating its horrors--men
eating the raw entrails of donkeys; mothers devouring their babies;
scores dying in the streets, all the more ghastly in the bright
sunlight; hundreds of corpses floating down the Nile--these are among
the hideous features, The depopulation caused by the scarcity was even
greater than that produced by the fighting. The famine area extended
over the whole Soudan and ran along the banks of the river as far as
Lower Egypt. The effects of the famine were everywhere appalling. Entire
districts between Omdurman and Berber became wholly depopulated. In the
salt regions near Shendi almost all the inhabitants died of hunger.
The camel-breeding tribes ate their she-camels. The riverain peoples
devoured their seed-corn. The population of Gallabat, Gedaref, and
Kassala was reduced by nine-tenths, and these once considerable towns
shrank to the size of hamlets. Everywhere the deserted mud houses
crumbled back into the plain. The frightful mortality, general
throughout the whole country, may be gauged by the fact that Zeki
Tummal's army, which before the famine numbered not fewer than 87,000,
could scarcely muster 10,000 men in the spring of 1890.
The new harvest came only in time to save the inhabitants of the
Soudan from becoming extinct. The remnant were preserved for further
misfortunes. War, scarcity, and oppression there had always been. But
strange and mysterious troubles began to afflict the tortured tribes.
The face of heaven was pitiless or averted. In 1890 innumerable swarms
of locusts descended on the impoverished soil. The multitude of their
red or yellow bodies veiled the sun and darkened the air, and although
their flesh, tasting when roasted like fried shrimps, might afford a
delicate meal to the natives, they took so heavy a toll of the crops
that the famine was prolonged and scarcity became constant. Since
their first appearance the locusts are said to have returned annually
[Ohrwalder, TEN YEARS' CAPTIVITY.] Their destructive efforts were aided
by millions of little red mice, who destroyed the seeds before they
could grow. So vast and immeasurable was the number of these tiny pests
that after a heavy rain the whole country was strewn with, and almost
tinted by, the squirrel-coloured corpses of the drowned.
Yet, in spite of all the strokes of fate, the Khalifa maintained his
authority unshaken. The centralisation which always occurs in military
States was accelerated by the famine. The provincial towns dwindled;
thousands and tens of thousands perished; but Omdurman continually grew,
and its ruler still directed the energies of a powerful army. Thus for
the present we might leave the Dervish Empire. Yet the gloomy city of
blood, mud, and filth that arose by the confluence of the Niles deserves
a final glance while still in the pride of independent barbarism.
It is early morning, and the sun, lifting above the horizon, throws the
shadows of the Khartoum ruins on the brimful waters of the Nile. The old
capital is solitary and deserted. No sound of man breaks the silence of
its streets. Only memory broods in the garden where the Pashas used to
walk, and the courtyard where the Imperial envoy fell. Across the
river miles of mud houses, lining the banks as far as Khor Shambat, and
stretching back into the desert and towards the dark hills, display
the extent of the Arab metropolis. As the sun rises, the city begins to
live. Along the road from Kerreri a score of camels pad to market with
village produce. The north wind is driving a dozen sailing-boats, laden
to the water's edge with merchandise, to the wharves. One of Gordon's
old steamers lies moored by the bank. Another, worked by the crew that
manned it in Egyptian days, is threshing up the Blue Nile, sent by the
Khalifa to Sennar on some errand of State. Far away to the southward the
dust of a Darfur caravan breaks the clear-cut skyline with a misty blur.
The prolonged beating of war-drums and loud booming notes of horns
chase away the silence of the night. It is Friday, and after the hour
of prayer all grown men must attend the review on the plain without the
city. Already the streets are crowded with devout and obedient warriors.
soon the great square of the mosque--for no roof could shelter so many
thousand worshippers--is filled with armed men, kneeling in humble
supplication to the stern God of Islam and his most holy Mahdi. It
is finished. They rise and hurry to the parade. The Emirs plant their
flags, and all form in the ranks. Woe to the laggard; and let the speedy
see that he wear his newest jibba, and carry a sharp sword and at least
three spears. Presently the array is complete.
A salute of seven guns is fired. Mounted on a fine camel, which is led
by a gigantic Nubian, and attended by perhaps two hundred horsemen in
chain armour, the Khalifa rides on to the ground and along the ranks.
It is a good muster. Few have dared absent themselves. Yet his brow is
clouded. What has happened? Is there another revolt in the west? Do the
Abyssinians threaten Gallabat? Have the black troops mutinied; or is it
only some harem quarrel?
The parade is over. The troops march back to the arsenal. The rifles are
collected, and the warriors disperse to their homes. Many hurry to the
market-place to make purchases, to hear the latest rumour, or to watch
the executions--for there are usually executions. Others stroll to the
Suk-er-Rekik and criticise the points of the slave girls as the dealers
offer them for sale. But the Khalifa has returned to his house, and
his council have been summoned. The room is small, and the ruler sits
cross-legged upon his couch. Before him squat the Emirs and Kadis.
Yakub is there, with Ali-Wad-Helu and the Khalifa Sherif. Only the
Sheikh-ed-Din is absent, for he is a dissolute youth and much given to
drinking.
Abdullah is grave and anxious. A messenger has come from the north.
The Turks are on the move. Advancing beyond their frontier, they have
established themselves at Akasha. Wad Bishara fears lest they may attack
the faithful who hold Firket. In itself this is but a small matter, for
all these years there has been frontier fighting. But what follows is
full of menacing significance. The 'enemies of God' have begun to repair
the railway--have repaired it, so that the train already runs beyond
Sarras. Even now they push their iron road out into the desert towards
their position at Akasha and to the south. What is the object of their
toil? Are they coming again? Will they bring those terrible white
soldiers who broke the hearts of the Hadendoa and almost destroyed
the Degheim and Kenana? What should draw them up the Nile? Is it for
plunder, or in sheer love of war; or is it a blood feud that brings
them? True, they are now far off. Perchance they will return, as they
returned before. Yet the iron road is not built in a day, nor for a day,
and of a surety there are war-clouds in the north.
CHAPTER IV: THE YEARS OF PREPARATION
In the summer of 1886, when all the troops had retreated to Wady Halfa
and all the Soudan garrisons had been massacred, the British people
averted their eyes in shame and vexation from the valley of the Nile. A
long succession of disasters had reached their disgraceful culmination.
The dramatic features added much to the bitterness and nothing to the
grandeur of the tragedy. The cost was heavy. Besides the pain produced
by the death of General Gordon, the heavy losses in officers and men,
and the serious expenditure of public money, the nation smarted under
failure and disappointment, and were, moreover, deeply sensible that
they had been humiliated before the whole world. The situation in
Egypt was scarcely more pleasing. The reforms initiated by the
British Administrators had as yet only caused unpopularity. Baring's
interference galled the Khedive and his Ministers. Vincent's parsimony
excited contempt. Moncrieff's energy had convulsed the Irrigation
Department. Wood's army was the laughing-stock of Europe. Among and
beneath the rotten weeds and garbage of old systems and abuses the new
seed was being sown. But England saw no signs of the crop; saw only
the stubborn husbandmen begrimed with the dust and dirt, and herself
hopelessly involved in the Egyptian muddle: and so in utter weariness
and disgust, stopping her ears to the gibes and cat-calls of the Powers,
she turned towards other lands and other matters.
When the attention of the nation was again directed to Egypt the scene
was transformed. It was as though at the touch of an angel the dark
morasses of the Slough of Despond had been changed to the breezy slopes
of the Delectable Mountains. The Khedive and his Ministers lay quiet and
docile in the firm grasp of the Consul-General. The bankrupt State was
spending surpluses upon internal improvement. The disturbed Irrigation
Department was vivifying the land. The derided army held the frontier
against all comers. Astonishment gave place to satisfaction, and
satisfaction grew into delight. The haunting nightmare of Egyptian
politics ended. Another dream began--a bright if vague vision of
Imperial power, of trans-continental railways, of African Viceroys, of
conquest and commerce. The interest of the British people in the work of
regeneration grew continually. Each new reform was hailed with applause.
Each annual Budget was scrutinised with pride. England exulted in the
triumph of failure turned into success. There was a general wish to know
more about Egypt and the men who had done these great things. In 1893
this desire was satisfied, and yet stimulated by the publication of Sir
Alfred Milner's 'England in Egypt.' His skilful pen displayed what had
been overcome, no less than what was accomplished. By explaining the
difficulties he enhanced the achievement. He showed how, while Great
Britain was occupied elsewhere, her brilliant, persevering sons had
repeated on a lesser scale in Egypt the marvellous evolution which
is working out in India. Smaller systems circulate more rapidly. The
administrators were guided by experience. The movement had been far
swifter, and the results were more surprising. Such was the wonderful
story, and it was told in a happy moment. The audience were eager and
sympathetic. The subject was enthralling. The story-teller had a wit
and a style that might have brightened the dullest theme. In these
propitious circumstances the book was more than a book. The words rang
like the trumpet-call which rallies the soldiers after the parapets are
stormed, and summons them to complete the victory.
The regeneration of Egypt is not a theme which would fall within the
limits of this account, even if it had not been fully dealt with by Sir
Alfred Milner. But the reorganisation of the Egyptian army, the forging
of the weapon of reconquest, is an essential feature. On the 20th of
December, 1882, the old Egyptian army--or, rather, such parts as had
escaped destruction--was disbanded by a single sentence of a British
decree, and it was evident that some military body must replace that
which had been swept away. All sorts of schemes for the employment of
foreign legions or Turkish janissaries were devised. But Lord Dufferin
adhered firmly to the principle of entrusting the defence of a country
to its inhabitants, and it was determined to form a new Egyptian army.
The poverty of the government, no less than the apparent folly of the
experiment, demanded that the new army should be small. The force was
intended only for the preservation of internal order and the defence of
the southern and western frontiers of Egypt against the Bedouin Arabs.
The Soudan still slumbered out its long nightmare. Six thousand men was
the number originally drawn by conscription--for there are no volunteers
in Egypt--from a population of more than 6,000,000. Twenty-six British
officers--either poor men attracted by the high rates of pay, or
ambitious allured by the increased authority--and a score of excellent
drill-sergeants undertook the duty of teaching the recruits to fight.
Sir Evelyn Wood directed the enterprise, and became the first British
Sirdar of the Egyptian army. The work began and immediately prospered.
Within three months of its formation the army had its first review. The
whole 6,000 paraded in their battalions and marched past the Khedive
and their country's flag. Their bearing and their drill extorted the
half-contemptuous praise of the indifferent spectators. Experienced
soldiers noticed other points. Indeed, the new army differed greatly
from the old. In the first place, it was paid. The recruits were treated
with justice. Their rations were not stolen by the officers. The men
were given leave to go to their villages from time to time. When they
fell sick, they were sent to hospital instead of being flogged. In
short, the European system was substituted for the Oriental.
It was hardly possible that the fertile soil and enervating climate
of the Delta would have evolved a warrior race. Ages of oppression and
poverty rarely produce proud and warlike spirits. Patriotism does not
grow under the 'Kourbash.' The fellah soldier lacks the desire to kill.
Even the Mohammedan religion has failed to excite his ferocity. He may
be cruel. He is never fierce. Yet he is not without courage--a courage
which bears pain and hardship in patience, which confronts ill-fortune
with indifference, and which looks on death with apathetic composure.
It is the courage of down-trodden peoples, and one which stronger breeds
may often envy, though they can scarcely be expected to admire. He has
other military virtues. He is obedient, honest, sober, well-behaved,
quick to learn, and, above all, physically strong. Generations of
toiling ancestors, though they could not brace his nerves, have braced
his muscles. Under the pressure of local circumstances there has
been developed a creature who can work with little food, with little
incentive, very hard for long hours under a merciless sun. Throughout
the river campaigns, if the intellect of the army, if the spirit of the
troops, have come from without, Egypt herself has provided the sinews of
war.
Such was the material out of which the British officers have formed the
new Egyptian army. At first, indeed, their task was embittered by the
ridicule of their comrades in the British and Indian Services; but as
the drill and bearing of the force improved, the thoughtless scorn would
have been diverted from the Englishmen to fall only upon the Egyptian
soldiers. But this was not allowed. The British officers identified
themselves with their men. Those who abused the fellah soldier were
reminded that they insulted English gentlemen. Thus a strange bond of
union was established between the officers and soldiers of the Egyptian
Service; and although material forces may have accomplished much,
without this moral factor the extraordinary results would never have
been achieved.
It was not long before the new military organisation was exposed to the
stern test of war. The army that was raised to preserve internal order
was soon called upon to guard the frontier. The revolt in the
Soudan, which in its earlier stages seemed the least of the Egyptian
difficulties, speedily dwarfed all the rest. The value of the new force
was soon recognised. In June 1883 we find General Hicks, then preparing
for his fatal march, writing to Sir Evelyn Wood: 'Send me four
battalions of your new army, and I shall be content.' But fortune
protected the infant organisation from such a disastrous beginning. The
'new army' remained for a space in Cairo; and although during the Nile
expedition of 1884-85 the Egyptians were employed guarding the lines of
communication, it was not until the British troops had been withdrawn
from Dongola that they received at Ginniss their baptism of fire.
Henceforth their place was on the frontier, and from 1886 onward the
Egyptian troops proved equal to the task of resisting the northward
pressure of the Dervishes.
The numbers of the army grew with its responsibilities. Up to the end of
1883 the infantry still consisted of eight fellahin battalions. In 1884
the first Soudanese battalion was raised. The black soldier was of a
very different type from the fellahin. The Egyptian was strong, patient,
healthy, and docile. The negro was in all these respects his inferior.
His delicate lungs, slim legs, and loosely knit figure contrasted
unfavourably with the massive frame and iron constitution of the peasant
of the Delta. Always excitable and often insubordinate, he required the
strictest discipline. At once slovenly and uxorious, he detested his
drills and loved his wives with equal earnestness; and altogether
'Sambo'--for such is the Soudanese equivalent of 'Tommy'--w
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