The Nile Column, as already stated, got back on the 8th March, and the last troops of the Desert Column arrived from Abu Klea on the 16th, and, with the exception of the detachment left at Merawi, the whole of Wolseley's army was now assembled at Korti.[132]
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE SOUAKIM EXPEDITION OF 1885.
The real object and intention of the Gladstone Administration in directing the despatch of the Souakim expedition of 1885 will probably remain for ever a mystery.
Wolseley had, it is true, pointed out the necessity of losing no time in dealing a crushing blow to Osman Digna, and had suggested the sending of a brigade of Indian Infantry and a regiment of Punjaub Cavalry to Souakim to hold that place during the summer and to co-operate with him in keeping open the road to Souakim. He also approved the commencement of the Souakim-Berber railway. But his demands, so far as the published papers show, appear to have gone no further than that. The expedition told off to Souakim was nevertheless fixed at 9,000 men, and comprised nearly every arm of the service. In addition, there were all the plant, materials, and labour required for the purpose of making the Souakim-Berber railway. The season chosen for the expedition, too, was singularly unfortunate, as it coincided with the precise time of the year at which, a twelvemonth before, the hot weather had compelled the withdrawal of Graham's army, and when even the one or two squadrons of Cavalry which Gordon had asked to be sent to Berber were refused him.
There is some reason to suppose that at the time the expedition was resolved upon the idea was that it should co-operate with Wolseley's forces in a movement upon Khartoum as soon as the Nile force should have succeeded in taking Berber, and that when the movement on Berber was postponed till the autumn the object of the expedition had to be limited to "the crushing of Osman Digna and the opening up of the Souakim-Berber route." At all events, this was announced as the official programme. It will not fail to strike the reader that this was to undertake in March, 1885, with troops from England, precisely the enterprise which the Government, in March, 1884, declined to undertake with troops on the spot. The only change in the situation was that then the expedition would have been in time to have saved Khartoum, whereas now it was too late. It seems to have been fated that the policy of "Rescue and retire" should always be adopted, the former too late, and the latter too soon.
Probably the true explanation is to be found in the exigencies of the political situation. The Gladstone Administration felt the necessity for doing something, if only to satisfy public opinion, intensely excited by the news from Khartoum. The Government had allowed Khartoum to fall and Gordon to perish. The result was neither creditable to the Ministry nor favourable to British prestige. On the 19th February Lord Salisbury, replying to Lord Granville's announcement that the Government had "decided upon going on to Khartoum to break the power of the Mahdi," declared that "Gordon had been sacrificed to the squabbles of a Cabinet and the necessities of party politics."
This was followed on the 23rd by Sir Stafford Northcote moving a vote of censure in the House of Commons on the Soudan policy of the Government. The motion was only lost by fourteen votes, a similar motion by Lord Salisbury being carried in the House of Lords by no less than 121 votes.
Whatever may have been the motives of the Government in deciding upon the expedition to Souakim, no time was lost in making the necessary preparations. This time it was determined to carry out the operations on a grand scale.
The force was fixed at considerably more than double the number engaged in the Souakim expedition of 1884.