The English ministers then bethought themselves of General Gordon, one of the most remarkable characters of the nineteenth century. His career had been a strange and eventful one. After serving with distinction as a Royal Engineer in the Crimea, the chances of war carried him to the Far East where he played his part in the Anglo-French expedition to China. When the object of the campaign was accomplished, peace was signed with the Emperor of China, but the end of the war found some of the most fertile provinces of the Celestial Empire in the hands of great hordes of insurgents, with whom the Chinese authorities were wholly unable to cope. Gordon was lent to the Emperor to command a force of Chinamen, raised by himself and officered by adventurers of mixed nationality. With a rare combination of military talent and personal courage, readiness to assume responsibility, power of influencing his subordinates, and complete absence of self-seeking, he welded his unpromising material into good soldiers, with whom he stormed many walled towns and won battles innumerable against vastly superior numbers. After a long struggle, in which his men earned the title of “the ever-victorious army,” he completely crushed the rebels; and then, disbanding the troops who had learned to look upon him as invincible, he returned to Europe with the justly earned reputation of a born leader of men. During his five years’ sojourn in the Soudan Gordon had acquired great influence over its inhabitants. The fighting men had learned to follow, the slave-hunters to fear him: the traders respected his stern and evenhanded justice: all classes knew that his word, once pledged, was never broken, and that his orders must be obeyed to the letter. At a few hours’ notice, Gordon was sent to Egypt to secure the retreat of the garrison of Khartoum and of the thousands of civilians who would probably wish to accompany it, and also to effect the evacuation of the remainder of the Soudan. For this enormous task he was allowed one Staff officer, Colonel D. Stewart,[254] 11th Hussars, with whom he reached Khartoum on February 18, 1884.

While Gordon was on his way up the Nile, the tide of war was setting strongly against the Egyptians in the eastern Soudan, where a wing of the Mahdi’s army was commanded by Osman Digna, an ex-slave dealer who had been ruined by the capture of his dhows by British cruisers. Osman Digna had stormed several fortified towns and villages, held by the Khedive as outposts round Suakim, and had cut to pieces columns of Egyptian troops sent at various times to the relief of the garrisons scattered throughout the district. Suakim itself was threatened, and the ships of war then lying off the port landed bluejackets and Marines for its protection, while Major-General Sir Gerald Graham was sent from Cairo to reinforce them with 4000 British troops. There were two sharp engagements at El-Teb (February 29) and Tamai (March 13), in which Osman Digna fought with magnificent courage, but sustained such heavy losses that his power for evil appeared sufficiently diminished to warrant the withdrawal of the British soldiers from the eastern Soudan.

While these events were taking place round Suakim, things were going badly with Gordon at Khartoum, and though direct telegraphic communication with him was cut off about a month after his arrival, the news which reached Cairo showed that his position was becoming one of considerable danger. In April, the Secretary of State for War began to realise that it might become necessary to send an expedition to rescue Gordon, and called upon Lord Wolseley for a plan of campaign. In his reply Wolseley showed that Khartoum could only be approached by the caravan roads converging on Berber from the Red Sea or by the valley of the Nile, and strongly advocated the latter route. He proposed to move the dismounted troops up the river in boats, and after pointing out that Gordon’s supplies would not permit him to hold Khartoum later than the 15th of November, urged that immediate preparations should be made to meet possible contingencies. For several months government took little action beyond making inquiries about the track across the desert from Suakim to Berber, and sending naval officers up the Nile to report whether Lord Wolseley’s scheme was practicable. These officers reported against it, and Sir F. C. A. Stephenson, the General commanding the British troops in Egypt, agreed with their views. On the other hand, a committee composed of three officers who had taken part in the Red River expedition in Canada emphatically expressed their opinion that Wolseley’s plan was perfectly feasible, and pointed out that the naval objections to it were based on the assumption that steamers of considerable size, and boats up to 40 tons burden would be required, whereas the army only asked for whale-boats, which could be used at any state of the Nile.

While these discussions were going on, the tide of Mahdism steadily flowed northwards. To meet a possible attack upon Egypt proper, the bulk of the Khedive’s army, then in process of reorganisation by British officers, was hurried to Assouan, where it was strengthened by English battalions; the Nile was patrolled by steamers manned by the navy; and irregular levies of Bedouins, also commanded by British officers, were pushed up the river into Dongola, the most southern portion of the Egyptian dominions in which the authority of the Khedive was still recognised. Dongola was ruled by a Mudir who, though originally in sympathy with the Mahdi, had been won back by golden arguments to the cause of his Suzerain. In the course of the summer his territory was attacked; it was considered necessary to help him with British bayonets, and the 1st battalion of the Royal Sussex regiment was moved southwards from Assouan. On the 8th of August, only eight days before the Royal Sussex reached the town of Dongola, a vote of credit was obtained from the House of Commons to cover the expense of sending troops to the assistance of the Mudir; but though by this vote government definitely committed itself to the Nile route, and therefore to the use of small boats, it was not until the 12th that official sanction was given for the construction of these craft. Four hundred were then ordered, and in a few days the number was doubled. The boats were to carry twelve men with their equipment, ammunition, and rations; to be suitable alike for rowing, sailing before a wind, and tracking (i.e., being hauled up stream from the bank), for ascending and descending rapids, and for passing over shallow and rocky places in the river: to be as light as possible, yet strong enough to be dragged over short stretches of ground to avoid cataracts; and to be 32 feet in length, 6 feet 9 inches in breadth, and only 2 feet 6 inches in depth. The first consignment reached Alexandria on September 22, the last on October 18, 1884.

It had not been proposed to employ Lord Wolseley in the expedition, but on August 26, he was appointed to command the troops upon the Nile. He reached Cairo on September 9, when there were actually in Egypt, or on their way thither, a regiment of cavalry, one battery of Royal Horse artillery, one of Royal Field artillery, one camel battery of mountain guns, and two garrison batteries; four companies of Royal Engineers, one of which was at Suakim; a battalion of mounted infantry, 423 strong; and thirteen and a half battalions of infantry—in all, nearly 11,000 officers and men, among whom were the first battalion of the Royal Irish regiment. Not all these troops, however, were available for the actual operations at Khartoum when that far-distant goal should be approached. The garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria absorbed four and a half battalions of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and all the artillery except the mountain guns. Though the Egyptian army held the line of communication from Cairo to Hannek, it was considered necessary to strengthen this section with a British battalion, while to secure the Nile between Hannek and Berber, at least five battalions would be required. Lord Wolseley aimed at placing about 5400 men in line at Shendi, a place on the river about 100 miles south of Berber, and the same distance to the northward of Khartoum, and after making allowance for the inevitable wastage of troops in an expedition such as he was to conduct, and for the possibility that he might have to send part of his column on a sudden dash across the desert, he asked the War Office to supply him with eleven hundred more men, volunteers from regular regiments at home, to be turned into “camelry”—i.e., infantry mounted upon camels. The request was granted, and these reinforcements arrived in time to reap a large share of the honours of the campaign.

Before any troops could be moved to Shendi, through a country from which little or no food could be obtained, it was necessary to form an advanced base as high up the river as possible, where stores of all kinds were to be collected before the main body began to arrive from Cairo. It was also necessary to establish along the line of communication on the river a chain of intermediate depôts, from which the troops would draw rations and thus preserve intact the cargo of stores with which each whale-boat was to be freighted. Korti was selected for the advanced base, and there, when the first thousand miles of its journey from the sea was accomplished, the expeditionary force was to effect its preliminary concentration.[255] As far as Wadi Halfa, about 750 miles above Cairo, the navigation of the Nile presents no great difficulties, and every available river steamer and river boat was pressed into the service. But above Wadi Halfa a formidable series of cataracts, or rapids as they should more accurately be termed, proved fatal to so many of the native craft that the transport of stores to the higher reaches had almost entirely to be carried out by the whale-boats. It was not until the 1st of November that a sufficient quantity of supplies had been sent up the river to warrant Lord Wolseley in moving the main body of his infantry. Then as speedily as possible each corps was despatched in turn on its journey southward. Towards the end of December the first battalion of infantry reached Korti, where the camelry, who had marched along the banks of the Nile, were beginning to assemble; in about four weeks more the last regiments arrived, and by the end of January the preliminary concentration had been successfully accomplished.

While the second battalion was winning fresh honours for the regiment at Tel-el-Kebir, the first battalion was in India. It was stationed at Meerut in August, 1884, when the welcome order was received to start for Egypt forthwith on active service. In high spirits at the prospect of a campaign, all ranks worked with a will; by the 20th the preparations were finished, and the Royal Irish, after a very hot railway journey, embarked at Bombay on the 29th, and three weeks later arrived at Cairo in magnificent order. They are described by an officer who was then serving with the regiment—

“When the 1st battalion Royal Irish landed in Egypt in 1884, it was, bar none, the finest battalion I have ever seen, both in physique and in general appearance. Under Colonel M. MacGregor they were considered to be the best dressed regiment in India, and since his departure they had lived up to their reputation. In this respect they presented a very marked contrast to many of the battalions in Egypt, who were dressed in a very hideous grey serge very similar to that worn by convicts, which was worn apparently exactly as it had been issued from store. Their physique was equally distinguishable from the Corps who had lately arrived from home. The average service was (if I remember right) about seven years, and the average height, taken from the annual return prepared at Wady Halfa, was 5.7¾, and the chest measurement was 38″. While we were at Cairo a gymkhana was held at Gezireh, where one of the events was a tug-of-war open to all troops in garrison. The Royal Garrison artillery for some time past had invariably won this contest: so invincible were they considered that no infantry regiments would compete against them, and they used to take the prize on every occasion with a ‘walk-over.’ On the arrival of the Royal Irish, we determined to enter our team, which had been practically unbeaten in India. On the day of the gymkhana the R.G.A. expected to have another ‘walk over,’ when to their surprise and to that of the spectators (we had kept the fact dark that we intended to enter a team), ten strapping Royal Irishmen, in jerseys of the regimental colours, stepped out on to the ground. The gunners were so unprepared for this that they hadn’t even taken the trouble to be suitably dressed for a tug-of-war. So confident were they of beating all comers that instead of the usual line they had arranged an open ditch filled with water, across which the opposing teams had to pull. It was not many minutes before the two leading gunners were in the water, and the rest, to save themselves a ducking, had to let go the rope!”