Hicks arrives.Abd el Gader was, shortly before Hicks’s arrival, superseded by Ala el Din Pasha.
After a strong reconnaissance in force up the White Nile, during which Battle of Marabia.Makashif was heavily defeated and killed at Marabia on the 29th April, Hicks began preparations for an advance into Kordofan on a large scale. He started in September from Dueim with about 8,200 men, marching on El Obeid viâ Khor Abu Habl, this route having been recommended to him as holding much water. The Mahdi, informed of their approach, collected some 40,000 men and encamped in the forest of Shekan.
Annihilation of Hick’s Expedition, 5th November, 1883.Misled and betrayed by their guides, and suffering terribly from want of water, Hicks’s force advanced into the forest on the 5th November, was set upon by the enemy in overwhelming numbers and annihilated, some 300 only escaping death.
The news of this disaster naturally raised the Mahdi’s influence to the highest pitch, and produced a corresponding depression on the Egyptian side. At Khartoum, which had been virtually in a state of siege since July, there was a panic, but De Coetlogon (left by Hicks with the depot), Power, Herbin, and Hansal (British, French and Austrian Consuls respectively), collected food and outlying garrisons, and strengthened the defences by the end of the year. Sennar was meanwhile again besieged.
The effect of Hicks’s disaster on the Home Government was that it was decided that the Sudan should be abandoned and the garrisons evacuated. 1884. Gordon arrives.General Gordon was the man chosen to carry out this difficult task, and he, accompanied by Colonel Stewart, arrived in Khartoum on the 18th February, just a month after the proclamation in that town of the Government’s intentions.
Gordon was enthusiastically received at Khartoum, and proclaimed, in addition to the foregoing, that the suppression of the slave trade by Egyptian means was now abolished, and that the Sudan was now independent, with himself as Governor-General. A large exodus northward consequently took place.
Gordon quickly came to the conclusion that if the Sudan were evacuated, the only man capable of keeping it in order after the Egyptians had retired would be Zubeir Pasha. His request for him, however, was refused by the Government, so Gordon resolved to hold Khartoum at all costs and crush the enemy if possible.
Meanwhile the flood of Mahdism was spreading northwards, and after a fruitless attempt—owing to the rising of the Robatab tribe—on the part of Captain Kitchener and Lieutenant Rundle to communicate with and assist Hussein Pasha Khalifa, Governor of Berber, Fall of Berber, 20th May, 1884.this town was attacked, and, after a certain amount of resistance, taken by the enemy on the 20th May. Captain Kitchener’s efforts, however, in negotiating with the Bisharin and Ababda in the Korosko-Abu Hamed desert with a view to stopping an advance through this desert were successful, and a reconnaissance on the left bank of the Nile along the Arbaîn route from Assiut to Sagiyet el Abd by Lieut.-Colonel Colvile and Lieut. Stuart-Wortley proved that the water supply along that route was absolutely insufficient for the advance of an enemy in this direction. It was therefore certain that if an advance northwards took place, it could only come by the Nile, and subsequent events have proved the correctness of this supposition.
Halfa and Korosko were fortified about this time, and English troops sent up to Aswan.
Action at Debba.In June Heddai, victor of Berber, advanced down-stream in the direction of the Dongola province, but was beaten at Debba (5th July, 1884) by a force of Bashi Bazuks, and again at Tani. Mustafa Pasha Yawer, Mudir of Dongola, gave rise to some anxiety by his doubtful and temporising action with regard to the enemy, but these successes appear to have decided his line of action.