General Kitchener was ordered to build a railroad up the Nile, and to push forward with a well-organised Egyptian army, whose chief officers were Englishmen. The whole scheme of the invasion was planned with consummate forethought and deliberation, the officials and advisers in charge of the enterprise being chosen from the most tried and able experts in their several provinces. Lieut.-Col. E. P. C. Girouard, a brilliant young Canadian, undertook the work of railroad reconstruction. Col. L. Bundle was chief of the staff, and Major R. Wingate head of the Intelligence Department, ably assisted by the ex-prisoner of the califa, Slatin Bey. The army consisted in the beginning almost entirely of Egyptian and Sudanese troops, together with one battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment. There were eight battalions of artillery, eight camel corps, and sixty-three gunboats which steamed up the Nile.
After some sharp skirmishing, the advance was made to Dongola, when the English battalion was sent home disabled, and in time was replaced by a strong English brigade under General Gatacre. Early in 1897, a railroad had been thrown across the desert from Wady Haifa towards Abu Hamed, obviating the need of making an immense detour around the bend of the Nile near Dongola. The califa had, by this time, organised his defence. The Jaalin tribe had revolted against him at Metammeh, and had sought for help from the Egyptians, but before the supply of rifles arrived, the dervishes under the Emir Mahmud stormed Metammeh and annihilated the whole tribe of the Jaalin Arabs.
The van of the army of invasion, both the flying corps and the flotilla of gunboats, advanced upon Abu Hamed towards the end of August. Major-General Hunter carried the place by storm. Berber was found to be deserted, and was occupied on September 5th. Hunter burned Adarama and reconnoitred on the Atbara. The gunboats bombarded Metammeh and reduced the place to ruins. The sirdar, General Kitchener, then went on a mission to Kassala, where he found the Italians anxious to evacuate. He thereupon made an agreement whereby the Egyptians should occupy the place, which was accordingly accomplished under Colonel Parsons on Christmas Day, 1897. Disagreements among the dervishes prevented them from making any concerted defence, and early in 1896 Kitchener renewed the advance and captured the dervish stores at Shendy on March 27th. The zeriba or camp of Mahmud was attacked and stormed with great loss to the dervishes on the 5th of April.
On the date scheduled beforehand by Lord Kitchener, just after the annual rains had refreshed the country, the Anglo-Egyptian army made its final advance upon Khartum. There were ten thousand British troops and fifteen thousand Egyptians. The forces were concentrated at Wady Hamed, sixty miles above Omdurman, from which point they bombarded the city with shells filled with deadly lyddite, and the mosque and tomb of the late Mahdi were destroyed. At length the entire army advanced to within four miles of Khartum. On September 2nd the cavalry and a horse battery reached Kasar Shanbal. From this point they saw the whole army of the califa, consisting of from forty to fifty thousand men, advancing to confront them from behind the hills. The Anglo-Egyptians advanced to meet the dervishes disposed in the form of a horseshoe, with either end resting upon the banks of the river. At intervals along the whole line of the army were field-pieces and Maxims, and the gunboats were within reach to aid in shelling the enemy. The British soldiers then built a square sand rampart called a zarilea, and their Egyptian allies dug defensive trenches.
On the front and left the dervishes came on in great strength, but, when the Maxims, the field-guns, and the repeating rifles opened fire upon them, at a comparatively close range, a frightful havoc was the result. All who remained to fight were immediately shot down, and the whole field was cleared in fifteen minutes. The dervishes retreated behind the hills, and were joined by fresh forces. General MacDonald, in making a detour with a body of Lancers, was suddenly beset by two thousand dervish riflemen, who fiercely charged him on three sides. Quickly forming a square, he succeeded by desperate efforts in repelling the enemy, until he was reinforced by Kitchener, who perceived his desperate situation.
The calif then attacked the extreme left wing of the army, but was again driven off. The Anglo-Egyptians were now in a position to deliver the main attack upon the dervish defences. The troops of the califa fought with heroic bravery, fearlessly advancing within range of the Anglo-Egyptian fire, but each time they were mown down by the cross fire of the Maxims and rifles. Vast numbers were slain, and some divisions of the dervishes suffered complete annihilation. They left ten thousand dead upon the field, and ten thousand wounded. The rest fled in all directions, a scattered and straggling force, with the califa himself. The Anglo-Egyptians lost but two thousand men. Few prisoners were taken, for, in almost every instance, the dervishes refused to surrender, and even when wounded used their swords and spears against the rescuers of the ambulance corps. All the fighting was over by midday, and in the afternoon General Kitchener entered Omdurman, and the army encamped in the vicinity. Slatin Bey was duly installed as governor in the name of the Egyptian khédive. The European prisoners of the califa were now released, and on Sunday, the 4th of September, the sirdar and all his army held a solemn service in memory of General Gordon near the spot where he was killed.
Bodies of men were now sent out on all sides to pacify the country, and the sirdar, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartum, started on an expedition up the Nile in a gunboat, in order to settle the difficult question arising from the occupation of Pashoda by a French corps under Major Marchand. The ability and strategy of this French commander were of a very high order. The general plan of the expedition had been in accord with French military traditions, based upon former attempts in India and America to separate the British colonial dominions, or to block the way to their extension by establishing a series of military outposts or forts at certain strategic points chosen for this purpose. Had the French designs under Desaix in India, or of the army of occupation in the Mississippi Valley in the eighteenth century, been supported by a powerful fleet, there is no doubt that British colonisation would have suffered a severe setback. If Major Marchand remained in Fashoda, the route to all the upper regions of the Nile would be cut off from any English or Egyptian enterprise. Accordingly, Lord Kitchener ran the risk of grave international complications by advancing upon Fashoda to meet Major Marchand. Fortunately, a temporary agreement was entered upon that the home governments should decide the question at issue, and Lord Kitchener then hoisted the Anglo-Egyptian flag south of the French settlement, and the officers fraternised over glasses of champagne.
It is now believed that Russia would have aided France if it had come to a war, but the French government thought the affair not of sufficient importance to warrant an international struggle over the retention of Fashoda, and the respective spheres of influence of France and Great Britain were finally agreed upon early in the following year by the Niger Convention, which left the whole of the ex-Egyptian provinces under British protection, as far south as the Equatorial Lakes, and as far west as the border line between Darfur and Wadai.
The calif was subsequently pursued from place to place in the desert, and was at length overtaken by Colonel Wingate at Om Dubreikat. The dervish leader fought a desperate fight; and, refusing to fly, was slain with all his personal followers on November 26, 1899.
The total cost of these campaigns had been incredibly small, not amounting in all to the total of $12,000,000, and the railroad, the cost of which is here included in the expenditure, is of permanent value to Egypt.