order and the tranquillity of the country.

"On June 3rd

three more British and three more French warships arrived at Alexandria. On June 11th a serious riot broke out at Alexandria, and the British Consul was stoned and nearly beaten to death, and Mr. Ribton, a missionary, and a British naval officer and two seamen, were actually killed." The massacre had been threatened by Maḥmûd Sami, and the riot was pre-arranged, and the native police and soldiery were parties to the murders of the Europeans which took place on that day. Mr. Royle (Egyptian Campaigns, p. 54) estimates the number of Europeans killed at 150. On June 25th the Sulţân decorated Arabi with the Grand Order of the Medjidieh! On July 11th, at 7 a.m. the bombardment of Alexandria was begun by H.M.S. "Alexandra" firing a shell into the newly made fortifications of the city, and the other British ships, "Inflexible," "Superb," "Sultan," "Téméraire," "Invincible," "Monarch," and "Penelope," soon after opened fire. After the bombardment was over, the city was plundered and set on fire by the natives, and an idea of the damage done may be gained from the fact that the Commission of Indemnities awarded the claimants the sum of £4,341,0II sterling (Royle, op. cit., p. 102). On July 14th British seamen were landed to protect the city, and on the 15th many forts were occupied by them. Early in August Arabi was removed from his post, and he at once began to prepare to resist the English soldiers who were known to be on their way to Egypt; on August 15th Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in Egypt; on the 18th the British fleet arrived at Port Sa îd; on the 20th the British seized the Suez Canal, and the British Government was declared by M. de Lesseps to have paid to him £100,000 for loss of business! (Royle, op. cit., p. 152.) On Sept. 13th Sir Garnet Wolseley was victorious at Tall al-Kabîr, at a cost of about 460 British officers and men ; the Egyptians lost about 2,000, and several hundreds were wounded. On the 15th, Cairo was occupied by the British, and the 10,000 Egyptian soldiers there submitted without fighting. On December 26th Arabi left Egypt for exile in Ceylon.

A rebellion led by the Mahdî breaks out in the Sûdân. The Mahdi was one Muḥammad Aḥmad, a carpenA.D. 1883. ter, who was born between 1840 and 1850; his native village was situated near the island of Arkô, in the province of Donkola, and, though poor, his parents declared that they belonged to the Ashraf, or "nobility," and claimed

to be descendants of Muḥammad the Prophet. His father was a religious teacher, and had taught him to read and write. He studied at Berber under Muḥammad al-Khêr, and later at Khartûm under the famous Shêkh Muhammad Sherîf, and when he became a man he led a life of great asceticism on the island of Abâ, or Abba, in the White Nile. His piety and learning secured for him a great reputation in the Sûdân, and the greater number of the inhabitants sided with him in a serious quarrel which he had with Muḥammad Sherîf. He wandered about preaching against the Christians, and he declared that the decay in the Muḥammadan religion was due to the contact of Arabs with Christians, that true faith was dead, and that he was deputed by God to restore it. He then attached a number of important people to himself, and, having retired to Abba Island, he declared himself to be the "Mahdi," or the being, whose advent had been foretold by Muḥammadan writers, who would restore the religion of the Arabs to its former purity. In July, 1881, Rauf Pâshâ, the Governor-General of the Sûdân, sent for him to come to Khartûm, but the Mahdî refused, and six weeks later he and his followers defeated the Government troops which had been sent to bring him, and slew half of them. In December he defeated Rashîd Bey, the Governor of Fâshôda, and slew nearly all the 400 soldiers whom he had with him at Kaddîr. In April, 1882, Giegler Pâshâ, the temporary GovernorGeneral, next attacked the Mahdî, and under his able generalship considerable loss was inflicted on the rebels; but on June 7th the Mahdî and his Dervishes massacred the combined forces of 'Abd-Allah and Yûsuf Pâshâ, and in September he besieged Al-'Ubêd, which capitulated on January 17th, 1883. In the same month Colonel W. Hicks, a retired Indian officer, was appointed head of the army in the Sûdân, and on February 7th he left Cairo for Khartûm viâ Berber, which he reached on March 1st; in April he set out against the Dervishes, and on on the last day of the month he defeated about 4,000 of them and killed about 500. On September 9th he set out with reinforcements for Dûwêm, intending to recapture Al-'Ubêd, but early in November the Mahdî attacked his force of about 10,000 mẹn with some 40,000 soldiers from the old Egyptian army, and the gallant Englishman and his officers and men, who were suffering greatly from want of water, were cut to pieces. Hicks had been led astray in a waterless country near Kashgil by his guides,

who then ran away and left him. He wandered about for three days looking for water, and then by chance entered into the forest of Shekan, where the Mahdî lay waiting for him. When Hicks was overthrown he was within a mile of a lake of fresh water. Thus the Mahdî became master of the Sûdân. In February Baker Pâshâ set out with about 3,800 men to relieve Sinkat, but his motley troops were A.D. 1884. defeated at Tôkar, and about 2,400 of them slain, and thousands of rifles and much ammunition fell into the hands of the Dervishes. In January of this year Charles George Gordon (born January 28th, 1833, murdered at Khartum on Monday, January 26th, 1885, a little before daybreak) was sent to Khartûm to arrange for the evacuation of the Sûdân; he left Cairo on January 26th and arrived there on February 18th. On February 28th, General Graham defeated the Dervishes at At-Teb, and nearly 1,000 of them were slain. On March 13th he defeated Osmân Dikna's * army at Tamâi and killed about 2,500 of his men; Osmân's camp was burnt, and several hundred thousand of the cartridges which had been taken from Baker Pâshâ were destroyed. On the 27th, Tamanib was occupied by Graham and then burnt. About the middle of April the Mahdi began to besiege Gordon in Kharṭum, and preparations for a relief expedition were begun in England in May; this expedition was placed (August 26th) under Sir Garnet Wolseley, who decided to attempt to reach Khartûm by ascending the Nile. This route made it necessary to travel 1,700 miles against the stream, and six cataracts, and other natural barriers, made the progress extremely slow; General Sir F. Stephenson, the highest authority on the subject, advised the route via Sawâkin and Berber, and by it troops could have entered Kharțûm some months before Gordon was murdered. On the other hand, it has been urged that, as the town of Berber surrendered on May 26th, the main reason for an advance along the Sawâkin-Berber road was taken away (Sudan Campaign, Part I, p. 25). The expe

dition consisted of 7,000 men, and all of them had reached Wâdî Ḥalfah by the end of November. On December 2nd the troops at Donkola set out for Kôrtî, which was reached by Sir Herbert Stewart on the 13th of the same month. Here it was decided to send a part of the force to

*

I.e., "Osman of the beard"; he was the son of a Turkish merchant and slave dealer who settled in the Eastern Sûdân early in the 19th century.

Khartum across the desert, viâ Matammah, and a part by way of the river. On December 30th Sir Herbert Stewart set out with about 1,100 officers and men, and on January 2nd he seized the Gakdûl Wells, 95 miles from Kôrtî; A.D. 1885. after one day he returned with the greater part of his force to Kôrtî (January 5th) to fetch further supplies, having left 400 men at Gakdûl to build forts and to guard the wells. On the 8th he again set out for Gakdûl, and on the 16th he reached a spot about four miles from the wells of Abû Klea,* and 23 miles from Matammah; next day the famous battle of Abû Klea was fought, and 1,500 British soldiers defeated 11,000 Dervishes. The Dervishes succeeded in breaking the British square, but every one of them who got in was killed, and 1,100 of their dead were counted near it; the number of their wounded was admitted by them to have been very large. On the 18th General Stewart moved on towards Matammah and, after a march which lasted all day and all night, again fought the Dervishes on the 19th, and killed or wounded 800; in this fight, however, he received the wound of which he died. On the 20th Abû Kru, or Gubât, was occupied by the British; on the 21st Sir Charles Wilson attempted to take Matammah, but the force at his command was insufficient for the purpose. On the 22nd the British soldiers began to build two forts at Abû Kru; on the 23rd Sir C. Wilson began to make the steamers ready to go to Kharțûm; and on the 24th he set out with two steamers and twenty men. Four days later he came to Tutî Island and found that Kharțûm was in the hands of the Mahdî, whereupon he ordered his vessels to turn and run down the river with all speed; when they were out of the reach of the enemy's fire, Sir C. Wilson stopped them and sent out messengers to learn what had happened, and it was found that Kharțûm had fallen on the night of the 25th, and that Gordon had been murdered a little before daybreak on the 26th. In short, the Relief Expedition. was sanctioned too late, and when it started for Khartûm it went by the wrong route; the fate of Gordon himself was sealed by the inexplicable delay of the British at Gubât from January 20th to 24th. The Mahdî did not begin to move his troops over to Khartûm until he heard that the British had stopped at Gubât, and the transport was not finished until Sunday evening, * More correctly Abu Taliḥ a place abounding in acacia trees.

أبو

the 25th. Had the British steamers left Gubât on the 22nd even, they could have rescued Gordon easily, but they did not leave till the 24th, and the delay of four days was fatal. Gordon's head was cut off and taken to the Mahdî, but his body was left in the garden for a whole day, and thousands of Dervishes came and plunged their spears into it; later the head was thrown into a well. On February 13th the British troops, including those which had marched with General Buller to Gubât, retreated to Abû Klea, and a fortnight later they set out for Kôrtî, which they reached on March 1st. The portion of the British troops which attempted to reach Khartûm by river left Kôrtî on December 28th, 1884, and reached Berti on February ist, 1885, and on the 9th was fought the battle of Kirbekan in which General Earle was shot dead. On the 17th the house, palm trees, and water-wheels of Sulêmân Wâd Ķamr, who murdered Colonel Stewart, were destroyed, and on the 24th, orders having been received to withdraw, the river column made ready to return to Kôrtî, which was reached on the 8th of March. When it was seen that Lord Wolseley's expedition had failed to bring Gordon from Kharțûm, it was decided by the British Government to break the power of Osman Diķna, and with this object in view the Sawâkin Expedition was planned. On February 17th, 1885, the British Government made a contract with Messrs. Lucas and Aird to construct a railway of 4 feet 8 inches gauge from Sawâkin to Berber.* On the 20th General Graham was placed in command of the Sawâkin Field Force, which consisted of about 10,500 officers and men. On March 20th General Graham fought an action at Hashîn, and two days later a fierce fight took place at Tofrîk, between Sawâkin and Tamâî. General McNeill was attacked by about 3,000 Dervishes, of whom 1,000 were killed, but the British loss was, relatively, considerable. In May the British Government recalled Graham's expedition, and abandoned the making of the railway to Berber, and thus Osmân Dikna was again able to boast that he had driven the English out of the country (Royle, Egyptian Campaigns, p. 436). On June 22nd, the death of the Mahdî occurred; he was succeeded by 'Abd-Allah, commonly known as the "Khalifah." In July the last of the British troops of Lord Wolseley's expedition left Donkola; by the end of September nearly the whole of the country as far north as

*See Parliamentary Paper C-4325, 1885 (Suakim-Berber Railway).