Chapter Nineteen.
The Re-conquest of the Sudan—1898.
Once more our attention is directed to the doings of our soldiers in Egypt. All the toil, all the bloodshed, and all the treasure expended against Mahdism had been in vain. General Gordon nobly holding out at Khartoum waiting for the relief which the vacillating and divided counsels of the British Cabinet had delayed until it was too late, had been slain, and the inhabitants of Khartoum despoiled and massacred by the savage followers of the Mahdi. Berber, Dongola, and Tokar had shared the same fate; and the Anglo-Egyptian army, leaving the Sudan to its fate, had fallen back to Wady Haifa, at which the southern frontier of Egypt was fixed, and which became a barrier against which the tide of Mahdism was to rush in vain. Suakin was also strongly held, and the Mahdi’s forces came no farther south; but the whole of the immense territory from the Second Cataract to the Equatorial Lakes was overrun by his fanatic hordes, who carried “fire, the sword, and desolation” far and wide over that unhappy land. It is not to the British administrators in Egypt that the blame of all this failure, and of the purposeless bloodshed of the two expeditions from Suakin, is to be laid, nor can it be said that after the fall of Khartoum any other course could have been adopted than to retire for a time; but it is to the British administrators in Egypt, and not to the Home Government, that belongs the credit of years of patient perseverance, of restoring the finances and resources of Egypt, and of instilling so much character into an oppressed race that at length the poor fallaheen were able to hold their own against the Sudanese, and to wipe out the disgrace of the defeat at El-Teb and the slaughter of the army of Hicks Pasha in 1883. And it may be said that it was these same English rulers in Egypt—administrators, engineers, military officers, and drill sergeants—that made it possible for the English to march in triumph through Khartoum and to avenge the death of Gordon, to some extent to wipe out the humiliations and blunders of past years.
The original Mahdi died within six months of General Gordon, and was succeeded by the chief Khalifa, Abdullah. Abdullah was an ignorant and wholly abominable person, and by his unspeakable cruelty and rapacity soon alienated vast numbers of the followers of his predecessor, and by 1889 Mahdism could no longer be looked upon as an aggressive but as a decaying force; yet, though dwindling, it still existed as a strong military power, with its headquarters at Omdurman.
Meantime the English had been making soldiers of the fallaheen, to whom successful skirmishes under their English officers and drill instructors were yearly giving confidence and self-reliance; and in addition to the fallaheen regiments, Sudanese regiments were formed of the very men who fought so bravely against our squares at Abu Klea, the “Fuzzywuzzy” of Kipling, “a first-class fighting man.” Whilst the British campaigns in the Sudan, though affording many a brilliant fight, and many an example of the heroism and endurance of the British soldiers, were fruitless in result, the Egyptian campaigns were from 1885 onwards one continual success,—the fruit of steady effort and perseverance directed to one end through every kind of difficulty and disappointment, but which nothing could turn aside from
its object, never faltering or swerving for fourteen years, the credit of which is wholly due to Sir Evelyn Baring (now Lord Cromer), Sir H. Kitchener (Lord Kitchener), Sir F. Grenfell, Colonel Wingate, Colonel H.A. Macdonald, and many others; and their subordinates, among whom must be remembered the English drill sergeants.
In 1888 Osman Digna again threatened Suakin, and threw up trenches against the town, but was defeated by Sir F. Grenfell, the Sirdar or Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian forces, on December 20th. Next, Wad-en-Nejunii, the great Emir who had defeated Hicks Pasha, came south in 1889, attempting to get to the Nile at Toski behind Wady Haifa, the garrison of which, under Sir F. Grenfell, attacked him at Toski, with the result that he was killed and his army annihilated, and Egypt freed from fear of invasion.