Once more our attention is directed to the doings of our soldiers in
Egypt. All the toil, all the bloodshed, and all the treasure expended
against Mahdism had been in vain. General Gordon nobly holding out at
Khartoum waiting for the relief which the vacillating and divided
counsels of the British Cabinet had delayed until it was too late, had
been slain, and the inhabitants of Khartoum despoiled and massacred by
the savage followers of the Mahdi. Berber, Dongola, and Tokar had
shared the same fate; and the Anglo-Egyptian army, leaving the Sudan to
its fate, had fallen back to Wady Haifa, at which the southern frontier
of Egypt was fixed, and which became a barrier against which the tide of
Mahdism was to rush in vain. Suakin was also strongly held, and the
Mahdi's forces came no farther south; but the whole of the immense
territory from the Second Cataract to the Equatorial Lakes was overrun
by his fanatic hordes, who carried "fire, the sword, and desolation" far
and wide over that unhappy land. It is not to the British
administrators in Egypt that the blame of all this failure, and of the
purposeless bloodshed of the two expeditions from Suakin, is to be laid,
nor can it be said that after the fall of Khartoum any other course
could have been adopted than to retire for a time; but it is to the
British administrators in Egypt, and not to the Home Government, that
belongs the credit of years of patient perseverance, of restoring the
finances and resources of Egypt, and of instilling so much character
into an oppressed race that at length the poor fallaheen were able to
hold their own against the Sudanese, and to wipe out the disgrace of the
defeat at El-Teb and the slaughter of the army of Hicks Pasha in 1883.
And it may be said that it was these same English rulers in Egypt--
administrators, engineers, military officers, and drill sergeants--that
made it possible for the English to march in triumph through Khartoum
and to avenge the death of Gordon, to some extent to wipe out the
humiliations and blunders of past years.
The original Mahdi died within six months of General Gordon, and was
succeeded by the chief Khalifa, Abdullah. Abdullah was an ignorant and
wholly abominable person, and by his unspeakable cruelty and rapacity
soon alienated vast numbers of the followers of his predecessor, and by
1889 Mahdism could no longer be looked upon as an aggressive but as a
decaying force; yet, though dwindling, it still existed as a strong
military power, with its headquarters at Omdurman.
Meantime the English had been making soldiers of the fallaheen, to whom
successful skirmishes under their English officers and drill instructors
were yearly giving confidence and self-reliance; and in addition to the
fallaheen regiments, Sudanese regiments were formed of the very men who
fought so bravely against our squares at Abu Klea, the "Fuzzywuzzy" of
Kipling, "a first-class fighting man." Whilst the British campaigns in
the Sudan, though affording many a brilliant fight, and many an example
of the heroism and endurance of the British soldiers, were fruitless in
result, the Egyptian campaigns were from 1885 onwards one continual
success,--the fruit of steady effort and perseverance directed to one
end through every kind of difficulty and disappointment, but which
nothing could turn aside from its object, never faltering or swerving
for fourteen years, the credit of which is wholly due to Sir Evelyn
Baring (now Lord Cromer), Sir H. Kitchener (Lord Kitchener), Sir F.
Grenfell, Colonel Wingate, Colonel H.A. Macdonald, and many others; and
their subordinates, among whom must be remembered the English drill
sergeants.
In 1888 Osman Digna again threatened Suakin, and threw up trenches
against the town, but was defeated by Sir F. Grenfell, the Sirdar or
Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian forces, on December 20th. Next,
Wad-en-Nejunii, the great Emir who had defeated Hicks Pasha, came south
in 1889, attempting to get to the Nile at Toski behind Wady Haifa, the
garrison of which, under Sir F. Grenfell, attacked him at Toski, with
the result that he was killed and his army annihilated, and Egypt freed
from fear of invasion.
After this Egypt began to advance; Sarras, beyond Wady Haifa, was
reoccupied, and a railway laid between the two places. In February 1891
Colonel Holled Smith, commanding the Egyptian garrison at Suakin,
marched out against Osman Digna's men with only Egyptian and Sudanese
troops, and defeated them after a good fight and occupied Tokar. In
this action Captain Barrow was killed, and of the enemy a large number
of Emirs; but Osman as usual got away. The effect of this battle was to
clear away the dervishes from the Eastern Sudan and re-establish
Egyptian government there.
In 1892 the dervishes again gave trouble both on the Nile and in the
Eastern Sudan, and there were many skirmishes. A serious attempt was
made in January 1893 to cut the railway between Wady Haifa and Sarras,
but without success; in the fight Captain Pyne, commanding the Egyptian
force, was killed. Osman Digna again turned up near Suakin, but had no
success except in his usual flight.
In this year Sir Horatio Kitchener, who had had a long experience both
of Egypt and the Sudan, having been on active service in one or the
other since 1882, became Sirdar in succession to Sir F. Grenfell, who
was appointed to the command of the British forces in Egypt, and he set
himself to the task of the re-conquest of the Sudan. He had not the
British tax-payer to draw upon, but the very meagre Egyptian Treasury,
and he had therefore to work with very limited means. His plan was not
to raise a costly army for the purpose of winning victories glorious but
fruitless, slaughtering Arabs by the thousand and then retiring till
they gathered head and then slaughtering more, after the manner of the
peace-loving Government of 1885, but to make sure of each stage of his
progress as he went along, driving back the Mahdi and bringing
confidence and commerce in his train, never retiring from ground once
occupied, but never advancing till his course was clear; and his chief
instrument for effecting his purpose was, as it will be seen, the
railway.