In February, it was announced in the Queen's Speech that "the British troops will be withdrawn as promptly as may be permitted by a prudent examination of the country"; a declaration provoking intense alarm among the European inhabitants of Egypt. Their protests, however, were totally disregarded. The Egyptians naturally concluded that England owned no real interest in that reform of administration which her influence alone could achieve.
On 7th February, 1883, Colonel Hicks left Cairo for Khartoum, with his staff, consisting of Colonels Colborne and De Coetlogon, Majors Farquhar and Martin, and Captains Warner, Massey and Forrestier-Walker. Upon the night before their departure, Colonel Hicks and his staff dined with Lord and Lady Charles Beresford in Cairo. Lord Charles Beresford, who was then on half-pay, had expressed a wish to accompany Colonel Hicks, but Lord Dufferin disapproving of his suggestion, Lord Charles Beresford withdrew it.
Hicks and his men disappeared into the desert, which presently swallowed them up.
On the 28th April, Hicks defeated a large force of the Mahdi's army on the White Nile. The Egyptian Government then decided to reconquer the province of Kordofan, and dispatched reinforcements to Khartoum. On the 9th September, Hicks Pasha, at the head of 10,000 men, marched for Duem. The last dispatch received from him was dated 3rd October, 1883. Upon a day early in November, Hicks and his whole army were annihilated.
His defeat left Khartoum in great danger. On 9th November, before the news of the disaster reached England, the British Government stated that all British troops were to be withdrawn from Egypt. When the fact was known, the decision of the Government was modified; but they still declined to interfere in the Soudan; and advised the Egyptian Government to evacuate at least a part of that territory. The Egyptian Government protesting, the British Government, on 4th January, 1884, sent a peremptory message insisting that the policy of evacuation should be carried into execution. The inconsequence of Her Majesty's Ministers is sufficiently apparent.
In the meantime, during August of the preceding year, 1883, trouble had arisen in the Eastern Soudan, where Osman Digna, a trader, joined the Mahdi, and brought all the tribes of that country to his standard. At the beginning of November, 1883, just at the time when Hicks Pasha and his army had come to their end, an Egyptian force under Mahmoud Talma Pasha was defeated by Osman Digna in the attempt to relieve Tokar, besieged by the rebels, Captain Moncrieff, Royal Navy, British Consul at Souakim, being killed in the action. A second expeditionary force under Suleiman Pasha was cut to pieces on 2nd December at Tamanieh.
The Egyptian Government then dispatched reinforcements under the command of General Valentine Baker, among whose staff were Colonel Sartorius, Lieutenant-Colonel Harrington, Lieutenant-Colonel Hay, Majors Harvey, Giles, and Holroyd, Morice Bey and Dr. Leslie. On the 4th February, 1884, Baker was defeated at El-Teb, with the loss of nearly two-thirds of his force. Morice Bey, Dr. Leslie, and nine other European officers were killed. Souakim being threatened, Admiral Hewett, on 10th December, was given the command of the town, having under him some 3800 troops. Two days later came the news of the taking of Sinkat by the rebels, and of the massacre of the garrison. During the period in which these successive disasters occurred, the British Army of Occupation was kept idle in Cairo by the orders of the British Government.
The current of events now divides, one leading to Khartoum, the other still flowing in the Eastern Soudan. The British Government, hopelessly at fault, turned to General Charles Gordon, as the one man in the world who could apparently perform miracles. Ten years previously, "Chinese" Gordon, as Governor-General of the Soudan, and again in 1877, as Governor-General of the Soudan, Darfur and the Equatorial Provinces, had freed the country from Turkish rule, broken the slave trade, established peace, opened trade routes, and laid the foundations of civilisation. Since 1877 he had been engaged in setting wrong things right in Egypt in the Soudan again, in Abyssinia, in China, in the Mauritius, at the Cape, in Palestine, and in the Congo.
On 18th January, 1884, Gordon was instructed by the British Government to report upon the best method of evacuating the Soudan. When he arrived at Cairo, these instructions were radically altered by Sir Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer), who, on the 25th January, informed Gordon that he was required actually to direct the evacuation of Khartoum and of the whole Soudan, and afterwards to establish an organised government in that country. Gordon arrived at Khartoum on the 18th February, where he was hailed as the father and saviour of the people.
On the same day, Major-General Sir Gerald Graham left Suez to join at Souakim the force which had been placed under his command. That force was chiefly drawn from the British Army of Occupation in Egypt. The object of the expedition was the relief of Tokar, or, if that place had already fallen, the protection of Souakim, an alternative which involved an attack upon Osman Digna's victorious army. Tokar was in fact taken by the enemy before the expedition started.