FROM EL-TEB TO OMDURMAN
(1884-1898)
Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave,
He perished with the folk he could not save.
And though none surely told us he is dead,
And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave, when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the secret Nile,
Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know
Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more—
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
_The White Pasha_, ANDREW LANG.
Considerably before the events of the last chapter, Sir Samuel Baker,
the English explorer, had travelled through the unknown regions of the
Upper Nile, and found that the country was almost entirely devoted to
the slave-trade. An effort was made to improve conditions there. The
Khedive for a time asserted his authority over these regions, two
Englishmen being appointed in succession as his governors, the first Sir
Samuel Baker himself, and the second Charles Gordon. For many years
Gordon, who had come fresh from China, struggled to free the natives
from the slave-traders, but his labours were rendered useless by the
accession of a worthless Khedive. Shortly afterwards he returned to
England, and the Soudan relapsed into its old corruption. Then, in 1882,
appeared one of those strange dramatic figures that in the East spring
into prominence and disappear as abruptly—a fanatic named Mohammed
Ahmed, proclaiming himself as Mahdi, and calling to his standard all
true Mahommedans.
The Arabs have ever been ready to follow the sword, and very soon 6000
troops under Yusef Pasha were almost annihilated. Swiftly one Egyptian
garrison fell after another. The Mahdi advanced towards the north, and
cut to pieces an Egyptian army under Colonel Hicks. The word passed from
village to village, from mosque to mosque, from one solitary encampment
to another that the Mahdi had indeed come at last, and with the defeat
of Hicks’s army not only was Khartoum in hourly peril, but Cairo itself
was threatened.
Fortunately, the Arab—like the Highlander of old—is satisfied with the
booty in hand, and very much prefers to see it safely put away before he
takes to the field again in search of more. Such practical
considerations were a check to the Mahdi’s religious zeal, and permitted
England to collect her strength—or one should say such strength as lay
to her hand; for at this time public interest in Egypt was very
luke-warm. The result was the tragic page in history that closed with
the death of Gordon in Khartoum. There was one man in Egypt who was
later on both to avenge Gordon and to subdue the Soudan, but he as yet
was unknown. The name of this young man was Kitchener, and the war
correspondent, Mr. John Macdonald, has given the following little sketch
of the future victor of Omdurman as he was in the year 1883—the year in
which the Mahdi renewed his activities. It is not without interest at
the present time.
“Taylor,” he writes, “had invited me the night before to accompany him
and his friend and witness the operation which they were both to
supervise. A tall, slim, thin-faced, slightly stooping figure in long
boots, ‘cut-away’ dark morning-coat and Egyptian fez, somewhat tilted
over his eyes—such, as I remember him, was the young soldier who was
destined to fulfil Gordon’s task of ‘smashing the Mahdi.’ ‘He’s quiet,’
Taylor whispered to me as we were getting ready; ‘that’s his way.’ And,
again, with characteristic jerk of the head, ‘He’s clever.’ And so, in
the raw, greyish early morning of January 8, 1883, the three of us drove
in our dingy rattle-trap over the white dusty road Nilewards to meet the
fellah cavaliers. Taylor did most of the talking. Kitchener expressed
himself in an occasional nod or monosyllable.
“At the barracks we found some forty men waiting. I remember Kitchener’s
gaze at the awkward, slipshod group as he took his position in the
centre of a circular space round which the riders were to show their
paces. ‘We begin with the officers,’ said Taylor turning to me; ‘we
shall train them first, then put them to drill the troopers. We have no
troopers just yet, though we have 440 horses ready for them.’
“And now began the selection of the fellah officers. They were to be
tested in horsemanship. The first batch were ordered to mount. Round
they went, Indian file, Kitchener, like a circus-master standing in the
centre. Had he flourished a long whip he might have passed for a
show-master at a rehearsal. Neither audible nor visible sign did he give
of any feeling roused in him by a performance most disappointing and
sometimes ridiculous. His hands buried in his trousers pockets, he
quietly watched the emergence of the least unfit. In half an hour or so
the first native officers of the fellah cavalry were chosen. It was then
that Kitchener made his longest speech, ‘We’ll have to drive it into
those fellows,’ he muttered, as if thinking aloud.”
The importance of this extract is the glimpse it gives of the material
that was the hope of Egypt.
That was the type of man that Kitchener took in hand, and that was the
type of man who was to uphold the supremacy of the British arms against
the fanatic forces of the Mahdi.
But between 1883 and Omdurman there was more than spade work—there was
grim tragedy and humiliating defeat. In August 1883, when the Mahdi was
again on the war-path, General Baker despatched native reinforcements
from Cairo in the vain hope that they would be able to withstand the
advance of the Arabs. On February 4, 1884, Baker’s poorly trained
Egyptians encountered the Sudanese, and were practically annihilated.
This disaster, following so quickly upon the rout of Hicks’s troops,
awakened the Government at home to the fact that something must be done.
Sir Gerald Graham was ordered to proceed with a force of 4000 British
troops to Suakin. With his force were the 1st Battalion of the Gordon
Highlanders and the Black Watch. On the 29th of February the British
troops set out upon the road over which Baker himself had passed, and
came in touch with the enemy at El-Teb. The Arabs were defended to some
extent with entrenchments, and for an hour maintained a steady fire.
Then, having grown confident by their easily-won victories over Egyptian
troops, the Sudanese hurled themselves at the Highlanders, shaking their
long spears, and shouting their battle-cries. They were met by the solid
unbreakable square of the 42nd. Checked and demoralised, their advance
was quickly turned into a rout. No sooner did the enemy waver than the
cavalry were let loose, and the engagement at El-Teb was turned into a
signal success.
On the 13th of March 1884 was fought the battle of Tamai, in which the
Black Watch took a leading part. The Highlanders were ordered to charge
at the enemy in front, but did not perceive that on their right lay a
deep nullah or piece of hidden ground. No sooner was their flank exposed
than hosts of the enemy leapt to their feet and broke upon them. The
42nd were caught between two fires and surrounded. The Naval Brigade,
forced back, were compelled to surrender their guns. It became a
hand-to-hand struggle, each man fighting for himself.
In the words of Kipling:
We took our chanst among the Kyber ‘ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu _impi_ dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ‘eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ‘oller.
Then ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ the missis an’ the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an’ of course we went an’ did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ‘ardly fair;
But for all the odds again’ you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the
square.
For a moment it seemed as though Baker’s disaster was to be repeated.
But the British regulars were very unlike the undisciplined Egyptians.
“The spectacle,” wrote a war correspondent, “did not so much terrify as
exercise a weird, terrible fascination. I do not suppose that either I
or any one else who witnessed it will often again see its equal for
magnificence. Though retreating, our men literally mowed down their
assailants. In the smoke and dust of the battle, amid the bright gleam
of their myriad spearheads, the semi-nude, brown-skinned, black,
shaggy-haired warriors were falling down in scores. Of all the savage
races of the world none are more desperately brave than the Soudan
Arabs, who were breaking upon our ranks like a tempestuous sea. At last
the pressure of the front upon the rear became so great that those of us
who were mounted were for a few moments too tightly wedged together to
be able to move; but we felt the collapse was only temporary.”
It was touch and go, but the undismayed veterans of the Black Watch and
those other troops who formed the British force were bound, sooner or
later, to enforce their superiority. Presently, shoulder to shoulder,
forming where they could into squares, the 42nd and 65th began to
advance. For a moment the conflict was in suspense, then the crisis had
passed. The victory was won.
Unhappily, the British Government took no advantage of Graham’s
successes, and decided upon the evacuation of the Soudan. Under these
circumstances the only thing left to do was to ensure the safety of the
civilians in the various towns more or less under European control.
There was one man above all others who was competent to deal with the
exigencies of the situation, and that was General Gordon. He was begged
by the Government to leave for Egypt to carry out this mission. We must
not overlook, in justice to the Government, that neither they nor
probably Gordon himself appreciated the strength of the revolutionary
movement in the Soudan, so that when he arrived at Khartoum in February
1884 he was dismayed to find it was exceedingly likely that he would be
isolated there, if not actually besieged by the enemy. Accordingly, he
advised the Government to make good the advantage gained by Sir Gerald
Graham, and ensure a lasting peace in the Soudan. But the Government
refused to be interested in the problem. Then Gordon communicated with
the country, stating that he had provisions for only five months. Lord
Granville, without dealing with the situation in any way, instructed him
to leave Khartoum as best he could, and it was not until the end of
March that the grave danger to Gordon was realised. Lord Wolseley,
voicing the sympathies of the English people, begged the Government to
do something to save a man whom they had sent out to represent the
country.
Then and only then, Mr. Gladstone, who had placed every possible
obstacle in the path of action, permitted the British troops to set out
for Egypt, with Wolseley in command. And so there embarked that
melancholy expedition, against which time and ill-luck waged a
remorseless warfare—an expedition that was to reach Khartoum two days
after the murder of Gordon.
Under Major-General Earle the Black Watch came up the Nile, while Sir
Charles Wilson was heading for Khartoum. On the 10th of February Earle’s
columns came into conflict with the enemy at Kirbekan, when, to quote
Wolseley’s despatch, “The Black Watch advanced over rocks and broken
ground upon the koppies, and after having by their fire in the coolest
manner driven off a rush of the enemy, stormed the position under a
heavy fire.”
The Arabs put up, as always, a desperate resistance; they hurled one
attack after another upon the guns, but always to be met with a
devastating fire. The Black Watch in a later stage in the battle
attempted to cut off the retreat of the enemy. Having placed them in an
ambuscade, General Earle prepared for a decisive action. “For this
assault,” says Charles Lowe, “the order was about to be given, when a
body of the Arabs, one of whom bore a banner, the rest being armed with
swords and spears, boldly rushed down from the heights in front, and
charged towards the nearest companies of the Black Watch, under Colonel
Green. The Highlanders, though standing in line as at Balaclava, never
budged, but met their assailants with such a withering fire that those
who were not mown down by the bullets of the Martini-Henrys turned and
fled towards the river.”
It was the last effort of the Arabs, and a counter-attack now began.
With ‘The Campbells are comin’’ the 42nd rushed up the hill-side, and
the battle was soon over. Unfortunately, at the conclusion, General
Earle was killed by one of the fugitives.
The Gordons took part in the arduous advance up the Nile to Abu Hamid,
and when they reached that place news came of the death of Gordon. The
tragic words ‘Too late!’ echoed throughout Egypt and the world. To those
who had strained every nerve to reach him the news was bitter indeed.
The expedition had failed, and there was nothing for it but to return.
The water in the Nile was falling, and the advance must needs be
stopped.
The Government, now roused to action and anxious to satisfy the
indignation of the public, decided that the Mahdi must be crushed; but
the matter was long delayed, and it was many years before Kitchener came
to avenge the murder of a great Scotsman, and one of the most memorable
figures of the last century.
The failure of the Gordon Relief Expedition encouraged the Mahdi in the
belief that his success was due to the direct guidance of God. In his
own mind, at least, he had driven the British home again, and although
his death occurred in 1885, it in no way concluded the threatening of
Egypt. There were many contests between the Dervishes and the Egyptian
troops, who, led by British officers, were now able to hold their own.
The labours of Kitchener were already beginning to bear fruit.
In August 1886 he was appointed Governor of Suakin, and instantly set
about fortifying the place against the Dervishes. Various engagements
followed during the forthcoming years, and the struggle with the Mahdi’s
forces went on until the campaign opened which was to end in the final
and crushing victory of Omdurman. It must not be thought that this
success was simply a success of arms; there had been many of those in
the past. It was rather the culminating and final achievement in a long
and silent campaign extending over many years, opening, as we have seen,
with the first rather dismal efforts at training the Egyptians, passing
on to that wonderful system of railways which crossed over five hundred
miles of bare desert, to reach its appointed end in the fall of Omdurman
and Mahdism.
It had taken sixteen years to make the Anglo-Egyptian army, and by the
time the battle of Omdurman was fought it numbered 18,000 men, with 140
English officers.
From 1888 to 1892 Kitchener was Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army;
in 1892 he became Sirdar. At last, in 1894, he seized his opportunity.
There was at this time a new Khedive—a young man who showed signs of
resisting or criticising British rule. Without hesitation the Sirdar
showed him very clearly that this would be unwise behaviour. He followed
up his action by pushing forward his railways, mile by mile, towards
Omdurman, the city of the Khalifa. It was impossible for the latter to
surrender the city, for such an action would proclaim throughout the
Soudan that the Mahdi was little better than a fugitive. The dawn of
peace was already breaking. Omdurman was within striking distance.
The Dongola Expedition took place in 1896, resulting in the capture of
Dongola and the dispersal of the Arabs in that quarter. In 1897 the
Government at last came to a practical decision, and determined to crush
for ever the power of the Khalifa, and for that purpose despatched an
army in which were included the Seaforth Highlanders and the Camerons.
It was no unexpected event for Kitchener. More truly was it the last
mile of the journey. His organisation was complete, his troops were
efficient, he could take his own time, and the result was certain.
The Khalifa’s army was roughly estimated at 60,000 men, and divided into
one division of 40,000 at Omdurman and another of 20,000 at Metammeh.
The Sirdar, accompanied by General Gatacre and General Sir Archibald
Hunter, was in command of a force of some 12,000 men perfectly equipped,
and with some eight squadrons of Egyptian cavalry. The Camerons and
Seaforths were brigaded under General Gatacre.
Mahmoud, who commanded the Khalifa’s troops at Metammeh, left that place
and marched towards the River Atbara, where he settled down in a zeriba,
and calmly awaited the British advance. This was a new turn in Dervish
tactics; formerly they had been only too ready to rush upon the British
bayonet. But Mahmoud had learnt with native shrewdness the foolishness
of throwing men upon the British square. He also knew who best could
play a waiting game. It was imperative that Kitchener should act, and
act quickly, and so, on the night of April 7 he advanced to open the
conflict. As the late G. W. Steevens has so graphically written: “All
England and all Egypt and the flower of the black lands beyond,
Birmingham and the West Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the
earth’s earliest civilisation, and grinning savages from the uttermost
swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery, lord and larrikin, Balliol
and Board School, the Sirdar’s brain and the camel’s back—all welded
into one, the awful war machine went forward into action.”
The Dervish zeriba lay some twenty miles distant. At about a quarter to
four in the morning the advance guard came in sight of the enemy, and
instantly the British force halted. It was, indeed, a formidable
position that faced them. Mahmoud had studied the lie of the ground very
carefully, and sheltered himself from artillery fire by a ridge of
rising country. All around his camp was knotted and twisted together an
entanglement of desert thorn some 10 feet high, and as much as 20 feet
broad in some places. Behind these were trenches and bomb-proof
shelters. Without the help of heavy artillery a frontal attack was the
only possible way to gain the victory. And so in two ranks the British
began their advance on the zeriba, headed by the Camerons and the
Seaforth Highlanders. It has been said that General Gatacre was the
first man to reach the formidable entanglement of desert thorn. At his
heels came the Camerons, who, forcing a way through, managed to enter
the zeriba. One of their pipers, standing upon a height of earth, began
to play ‘The March of the Cameron Men,’ and fell almost at once, riddled
with bullets. In the fierce conflict that followed none fought more
staunchly than Lewis’s half brigade of Egyptians. That in itself was
worth as much as half a dozen minor victories.
The fire of the Dervishes from their trenches rained thick and fast upon
the Highlanders as they came through the break in the hedges, but when
they had gained a real foothold inside the zeriba, the Dervishes lost
heart, and made away towards the Atbara River. The fine strategy of
Kitchener forcing an engagement at this point was now apparent. The
enemy were faced with thirty miles of waterless desert, at the end of
which it was probable they would encounter the British gunboats. It was
more than a victory in arms; it struck the first devastating blow at the
power of the Khalifa.
In answer to Kitchener’s despatch, Queen Victoria replied: “Anxious to
know how the wounded British and Egyptians are going on. Am proud of the
gallantry of my soldiers. So glad my Cameron Highlanders should have
been amongst them.”
A writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ relates the following striking
incident, doubly pregnant with meaning to-day. “After Atbara,” he says,
“and as we rode through the ‘dem,’ Lord Cecil joined us, and presently
K. pulled up among the charred corpses on the burning ground to make
some enquiries. Cecil made a grimace and pointed to the ground; it was
strewn with Dervish shells lying about under our horses’ hoofs and the
hoofs of the chief’s horse, with the grass on fire all around them.
Neither of us spoke, but Kismet, destiny, or whatever it is that sits
behind the crupper, impelled K. to move on, and a few minutes later a
column of smoke shot up into the air—the shells had exploded. But K. had
passed on—destiny had need of him still.”
In July 1898 began the advance on Omdurman, in which the Camerons and
Seaforths took part. The battle was fought on September 2nd. The
Khalifa’s army numbered some 50,000 men, and the fight that was to end
in the utter defeat of Mahdism extended over five hours. The Highlanders
did not take as prominent a part here as at Atbara, and the chief battle
honours lie with Brigadier-General Hector Macdonald, whose Soudanese
troops were handled with much brilliancy, and the 21st Lancers, the
glory of whose charge rang throughout England and the Empire.
The Dervishes, trusting to their overwhelming superiority in numbers,
advanced in dense hordes against the British lines, and at this point of
the engagement the Camerons and Seaforths withstood the fury of the
opening attack with magnificent steadiness. The enemy were met with a
murderous fire; whole lines and ranks were simply mown down by our
shrapnel: attack upon attack was launched with reckless gallantry,
always to be repulsed.
In one portion of this campaign it has been related that for two hours a
company of the Seaforths were engaged with a great number of the
Dervishes, and as their ammunition had run short, they were compelled to
use the bayonet. “Not one shot was fired,” says an eye-witness, “for two
hours, and yet the greatest and most serious losses amongst the enemy
occurred during the time when the Seaforths were getting in with the
bayonet.” At Omdurman, in that great charge of the Dervishes, it became
impossible to check them altogether, and so heavy was the fire that the
rifles of the Cameron Highlanders became too hot to hold. To avert a
repulse the curious spectacle was seen of men carrying and exchanging
rifles with the reserve lines behind.
The stand made by the Dervishes has earned the praise of G. W. Steevens,
who witnessed it. “Our men,” he says, “were perfect, but the Dervishes
were superb—beyond perfection. It was their largest, best, and bravest
army that ever fought against us for Mahdism, and it died worthily of
the huge empire that Mahdism won and kept so long.” They lost, roughly,
11,000 men killed with 16,000 wounded; and with the battle of Omdurman
came the end of the long struggle in the Soudan, and not only that, but
the avenging of the death of Gordon.
The losses amongst the two Highland regiments, and indeed the British
force as a whole, were trifling for such a hard-fought action.
Whatever else the Highland regiments may have been asked to face before
or since—for whirlwind fury and deathless courage, for wild disturbing
swiftness and noisy violence, nothing could surpass a Dervish charge.
Troops that can meet that without wavering—front, rear, and flank—need
have no qualms for the future exigencies of war.