Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns (1882-98). The chaotic state of Egypt's financial situation led the two major creditors, Britain and France, to establish joint control over Egyptian public finances in 1879 and, in effect, to control the country. A popular revolt against this foreign domination, led by an Egyptian army officer, Urabi Pasha, resulted in Europeans being murdered in Alexandria and to the bombardment of the city by a British fleet on 11 July 1882. The subsequent despatch of an army under Wolseley resulted in the defeat of the Egyptian army at Tel-el-Kebir on 13 September 1882 and to the British occupation of the country, the French having refused to co-operate.
In occupying Egypt Britain automatically assumed responsibility for the vast Egyptian Sudan. There, a revolt led by a religious leader, Muhammad Ahmed, self-styled the Mahdi, had started in 1881. By the end of 1882 his forces (popularly if inaccurately known as dervishes) had occupied a major part of the Sudan. A large Egyptian army, under a retired Indian army officer, Col William Hicks, sent to smash the Mahdi was itself annihilated on 5 November 1883—the day before another Egyptian force was destroyed outside Suakin on the Red Sea and the British consul killed. To retrieve the situation at Suakin a hastily assembled force under Maj Gen Gerald Graham was despatched there and defeated the Dervish forces under Osman Digna at El Teb and Tamai after severe fighting in March 1884. Graham's force was then withdrawn and the town remained under siege.
The British government now decided to evacuate the Sudan, with the exception of Suakin, and Gordon was sent to superintend the evacuation of the Egyptian garrisons. Against his instructions, he elected to stay and defend the capital, Khartoum, which came under siege from the Mahdi in May 1884. In October 1884, bowing to public pressure, the government despatched the Gordon relief expedition under Wolseley, who advanced slowly up the Nile. In the face of increasingly desperate appeals for help from Gordon, Wolseley despatched a flying column across the desert. After a desperate fight at Abu Klea on 17 January 1885, a small party embarked at Metemmeh on two steamers and reached Khartoum on 28 January, to find that the city had fallen and Gordon been killed two days earlier. Wolseley was forced to retreat and the Sudan was abandoned to the Mahdi. To salvage something from the debacle Graham was again sent to Suakin with a large, carefully prepared force, in February 1885, with orders to smash Osman Digna and to build a railway to Berber, on the Nile, with a view to the subsequent reconquest of the Sudan. Graham defeated Osman at Hashin and Tofrek in March and succeeded in laying nearly 50 miles (80 km) of the 250 miles (402 km) of track required to reach Berber but in May 1885 the force was withdrawn, ostensibly because of the imminence of an Anglo-Russian war over Afghanistan. Suakin was retained but remained under siege.
Wolseley's withdrawal left Egypt open to a Mahdist invasion, which came in December 1885 and was defeated at Ginnis. In July 1889 a second, major invasion was launched but was decisively defeated by Grenfell at Tushki on 3 August 1889. At Suakin Osman continued to plague the garrison until he was decisively defeated at Tokar in February 1891. For ten years after Gordon's death the British and Egyptian governments concentrated on building up Egypt's prosperity and in reconstructing the Egyptian army under British officers. As each unit reached operational efficiency it was ‘blooded’ by being sent to Suakin or to the Sudan frontier. By 1895 the British government was concerned about Italian and French designs on the Sudan and in 1896 decided the time was ripe to start the reconquest of the Sudan, using the reorganized and retrained Egyptian army, led by its C-in-C, Kitchener. Building a railway as he went, he moved methodically forward, inflicting severe defeats at Firket and Hafir in June and September 1896. By the end of September 1896, he had reoccupied the northernmost province of Dongola, roughly halfway to Khartoum.
The second phase of the reconquest started in January 1897. The railway was steadily pushed southwards, the dervishes outmanoeuvred and defeated at Abu Hamed on 7 August 1897, and Berbert on the Nile, only some 250 miles (402 km) from Khartoum, occupied. The dervishes seemed incapable of devising a strategic plan to halt the relentless British advance.
The final phase of the reconquest began in January 1898. For this final phase Kitchener was reinforced with two brigades of British troops. A large Dervish army under the Emir Mahmud had entrenched itself at the confluence of the Nile and Atbara rivers but it was attacked and routed on 8 June 1898. Kitchener was now only some 200 miles (322 km) from Omdurman, the Dervish capital opposite Khartoum. The final advance began at the end of August. Kitchener now had an immensely powerful force, including a cavalry brigade, four Egyptian, and two British infantry brigades, supported by a large field artillery force, 20 maxim machine guns, and some 25, 000 men; 10 gunboats gave fire support from the Nile. Against this, Khalifa Abdullah, the Mahdi's successor, could muster some 60, 000 men, ill-equipped by comparison and lacking in artillery.
By 1 September Kitchener was encamped on the Nile, 6 miles (9.7 km) from Omdurman. A night attack, in which Kitchener's technological advantage would have been largely nullified, would seem to have offered the Khalifa his best chance of success but he elected to fight in daylight. Kitchener was no tactician and in the battle next day he had some moments of concern, but the Khalifa was unable to co-ordinate the actions of his various forces and in the pitiless fire of repeating rifles, machine guns, and high explosive his troops were massacred. Their losses were estimated at 11, 000 killed and 16, 000 wounded; British casualties were 48 killed and 382 wounded. Omdurman was occupied the same day but the Khalifa, with other leaders, escaped and was not rounded up and killed until November 1899.
Two months before the battle of Omdurman, a small French expedition from West Africa had reached Fashoda on the White Nile 470 miles (756 km) south of Omdurman and raised the French flag. Kitchener reached Fashoda on 19 September 1898 with a browbeating display of force, but an international crisis blew up and it was not until December that a face-saving formula was found for a French withdrawal.
— Brian Robson
