“The battle ground had been selected by the Mahdi with his usual sagacity. It was a narrow rocky passage between wooded hills, in which he had placed the guns and rifles captured in former engagements, in positions where they could be used with effect, but where it was impossible for General Hicks to deploy his artillery. Into this ambuscade the Egyptian advance was led by a treacherous guide. The army of Hicks Pasha was totally annihilated. The troops are reported to have fought three days without water, until all their cartridges were expended. General Hicks then ordered a bayonet charge, but the army was immediately overwhelmed, and not a man escaped. The commander-in-chief, with Alla-ed-Din, Governor General of the Soudan, Abbas Bey, Colonel Farquahar, Major Von Seckendorf, Massy, Warner and Evans, Captain Horlth and Anatyaga, Surgeon-general Georges Bey, Surgeon Rosenberg, O’Donovan the well-known war correspondent, a number of Egyptian pashas and beys, and all the officers, who numbered 1,200, and soldiers of the army, were slain.”
In a book bearing the title of “Mr. Parnell, M.P., and the I. R. B.” I read this passage:
“The most distinguished literary man ever known to be in the ranks of Fenianism was undoubtedly Edmond O’Donovan, who was a ‘V,’ or organizer for the North of England, and afterward the well-known Asiatic traveler and writer.”
Looking at the death of the three eldest sons of John O’Donovan—John, Edmond and William—I cannot help thinking on what their father says about his being almost superstitious on the head of that holy curse pronounced against the name. John was drowned while bathing in the river at St. Louis; Edmond was slain in Africa; and William died here in New York a dozen years ago; I saw him buried in Calvary Cemetery. The three were actively connected with the Fenian movement in Ireland. I don’t know I may blame myself for having anything to do with that connection.
The father, John O’Donovan, died in the year 1862, at the age of fifty-three, and his co-laborer in Celtic literature, Eugene Curry, died a few months after. God be merciful to them, and to all the souls we are bound to pray for!
Another word; a few words; these few verses from a poem written by Thomas D’Arcy McGee on the death of John O’Donovan will end this chapter:
And thus it is, that even I,
Though weakly and unworthily,
Am moved by grief
To join the melancholy throng