The Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, also called the Dongola Campaign or the Sudan Campaign, was a reconquest of territory lost by the Khedives of Egypt in 1884–1885 during the Mahdist War.
The British had previously failed to organise an orderly withdrawal of the Egyptian Army from Sudan, and the defeat at Khartoum left only Suakin and Equatoria under Egyptian control after 1885. The conquest of 1896–1899 defeated and destroyed the Mahdist State and re-established Anglo-Egyptian rule, which remained until Sudan became independent in 1956.
Preliminaries
There was a considerable body of opinion in Britain in favour of retaking Sudan after 1885, largely to "avenge Gordon". However, Lord Cromer, the British consul-general in Egypt, had been the architect of the British withdrawal after the Mahdist uprising. He remained sure that Egypt needed to recover its financial position before any invasion could be contemplated. "Sudan is worth a good deal to Egypt," he said, "but it is not worth bankruptcy and extremely oppressive taxation."Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899, Simon & Schuster, 2007 p. 241 He felt it was necessary to avoid "being driven into premature action by the small but influential section of public opinion which persistently and strenuously advocated the cause of immediate reconquest." As late as 15 November 1895 he had been assured by the British government that it had no plans to invade Sudan.Edward M. Spiers, Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised, Routledge, 2013 p. 2
By 1896, however, it was clear to Prime Minister Salisbury that the interests of other powers in Sudan could not be contained by diplomacy alone – France, Italy and Germany all had designs on the region that could only be contained by re-establishing Anglo-Egyptian rule.Robert Collins, The British in the Sudan, 1898–1956: The Sweetness and the Sorrow, Springer, 1984 p. 8 Harold E. Raugh Jr., British Military Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 2008 p. xiv The catastrophic defeat of the Italians by Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia at the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 also raised the possibility of an anti-European alliance between Menelik and the Khalifa of Sudan.Harold E. Raugh Jr., British Military Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 2008 p. xxviii After Adwa the Italian government appealed to Britain to create some kind of military diversion to prevent Mahdist forces from attacking their isolated garrison at Kassala, and on 12 March the British cabinet authorised an advance on Dongola for this purpose. Salisbury was also at pains to reassure the French government that Britain intended to proceed no further than Dongola, so as to forestall any move by the French to advance some claim of their own on part of Sudan.Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899, Simon & Schuster, 2007 p. 240 The French government had in fact just dispatched Jean-Baptiste Marchand up the Congo River with the stated aim of reaching Fashoda on the White Nile and claiming it for France. This encouraged the British to attempt the full-scale defeat of the Mahdist State and the restoration of Anglo-Egyptian rule, rather than just providing a military diversion as Italy had requested.
Lord Salisbury then ordered the Sirdar, Brigadier Herbert Kitchener to make preparations for an advance up the Nile. As Governor-General of Suakin from 1886 to 1888, Kitchener had held off the Mahdist forces under Osman Digna from the Red Sea coast,Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899, Simon & Schuster, 2007 p. 247 but he had never commanded a large army in battle.Edward M. Spiers, Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised, Routledge, 2013 p. 3 Kitchener took a methodical, unhurried approach to recovering Sudan. In the first year his objective was to recover Dongola; in the second, to construct a new railway from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamad; in the third, to retake Khartoum.
Kitchener's forces The Egyptian army mobilised and by 4 June 1896 Kitchener had assembled a force of 9,000 men, consisting of 10 infantry battalions, 15 cavalry and camel corps squadrons, and 3 artillery batteries. All the soldiers were Sudanese or Egyptian, with the exception of a few hundred men from the North Staffordshire Regiment and some Maxim gunners.Harold E. Raugh Jr., British Military Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 2008 p. xxxviii The use of British troops was kept to a minimum and Sudanese troops were used wherever possible, partly because they were cheaper, and partly because they could survive the extreme conditions of campaigning in Sudan which Europeans often could not. To maximise the number of Sudanese troops deployed for the invasion, the Sudanese garrison was withdrawn from Suakin on the Red Sea and replaced with Indian soldiers. The Indians arrived in Suakin on 30 May, releasing the Xth Egyptian and Sudanese battalions for the Dongola expedition.Winston Churchill, The River War, Longman 1899 vol. 1 pp. 202–204
The Egyptian army in the 1880s was consciously trying to distance itself from the times of Muhammad Ali, when Sudanese men had been captured, enslaved, shipped to Egypt and enlisted. Nevertheless, on the eve of the 1896 invasion the manumission status and precise recruitment conditions of many Sudanese soldiers in the Egyptian army was unclear. Egyptian conscripts were required to serve six years in the army, whereas Sudanese soldiers enlisted before 1903 were signed up for life, or until medically unfit to serve.Ronald M. Lamothe, Slaves of Fortune: Sudanese Soldiers and the River War, 1896–1898, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2011 p. 32 While no official requirement existed for the practice, it is clear that in many instances at least, new Sudanese recruits into the Egyptian army were branded by their British officers, to help identify deserters and those discharged seeking to re-enlist.Ronald M. Lamothe, Slaves of Fortune: Sudanese Soldiers and the River War, 1896–1898, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2011 pp. 33–34
Sudan Military Railroad Kitchener placed great importance on transport and communications. Reliance on river transport, and the vagaries of the Nile flooding, had reduced Garnet Wolseley's Nile Expedition to failure in 1885, and Kitchener was determined not to let that happen again. This required the building of new railways to support his invasion forces.
The first phase of railway building followed the initial campaign up the Nile to the supply base at Akasha and then on southward towards Kerma. This bypassed the second cataract of the Nile and thereby ensured that supplies could reach Dongola all year round, whether the Nile was in flood or not. The railway extended as far as Akasha on 26 June and as far as Kosheh on 4 August 1896. A dockyard was constructed and three entirely new gunboats, larger than the Egyptian river boats already deployed, were brought in sections by rail, and then assembled on the river. Each carried one 12-pounder forward-firing gun, two 6-pounders midships and four Maxim guns.Winston Churchill, The River War, Longman 1899 vol. 1 pp. 238–241 At the end of August 1896 storms washed away a 12-mile section of the railway as preparations were being made to advance on Dongola. Kitchener personally supervised 5,000 men who worked night and day to ensure it was rebuilt in a week. After Dongola was taken, this line was extended south to Kerma.
Building the 225-mile-long railway from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamad was a much more ambitious undertaking. General opinion held the construction of such a railway to be impossible, but Kitchener commissioned Percy Girouard, who had worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway to undertake the project. Work began on the line on 1 January 1897, but little progress made until the line to Kerma was completed in May, when work began in earnest. By 23 July, 103 miles had been laid, but the project was continually under attack from Mahdists based in Abu Hamad. Kitchener ordered General Archibald Hunter to advance from Merawi and eliminate the threat. Hunter's forces travelled 146 miles in eight days and took Abu Hamad on 7 August 1897. Work could then proceed, and the railway eventually reached Abu Hamad on 31 October.Harold E. Raugh Jr., British Military Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 2008 pp. xxviii–xxix (see also Battle of Abu Hamed)
There were major problems in undertaking a major construction project in a waterless desert, but Kitchener had the good fortune to locate two sources and had wells dug to provide the water needed. To keep within the tight budget limits set by Lord Cromer, Kitchener ordered that the first section of the railway should be built from reused materials scavenged from the Khedive Ismail's derelict railway from the 1870s. In another economy measure, Kitchener borrowed steam engines from South Africa to work on the line.Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899, Simon & Schuster, 2007 pp. 248–259 Kitchener's workforce were soldiers and convicts, and he worked them very hard, sleeping just four hours each night, and doing physical labour himself. As the railway progressed in the extreme conditions of the desert, the number of deaths among his men increased, and Kitchener blamed his subordinates for them.Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899, Simon & Schuster, 2007 pp. 248–250
The Sudan Military Railway was later described as the deadliest weapon ever used against Mahdism and helped Kitchener's forces secure the Sudan for the British. The 230 miles of railway reduced the journey time between Wadi Halfa and Abu Hamad from 18 days by camel and steamer to 24 hours by train, all year round, regardless of the season and the flooding of the Nile. He also had 630 miles of telegraph cable laid, and 19 telegraph offices built along the railway, which were soon handling up to 277 messages per day.Edward M. Spiers, Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised, Routledge, 2013 pp. 2–3
Later, when the line was extended towards Atbara, Kitchener was able to transport three heavily armed gunboats in sections to be reassembled at Abadieh, enabling him to patrol and reconnoitre the river up to the sixth cataract.
Campaign of 1896
The Egyptian army moved swiftly to the border at Wadi Halfa and began moving south on 18 March to take Akasha, a village which was to be the base for the expedition. Akasha was deserted when they entered on 20 MarchWinston Churchill, The River War, Longman 1899 vol. 1 pp. 181–184 and Kitchener devoted the next two months to building up his forces and supplies ready for the next advance.
Apart from occasional skirmishing, the first serious contact with Mahdist forces took place in early June at the village of Farka. The village was a Mahdist strongpoint some way upriver from Akasha; its commanders, Hammuda Idris and Osman Azraq, led around 3,000 soldiers and had evidently decided to hold his ground rather than withdraw as the Egyptian army advanced. At dawn on 7 June, two Egyptian columns attacked the village from north and south, killing 800 Mahdist soldiers, with others plunging naked into the Nile to make their escape. This left the road to Dongola clear, but despite advice to move rapidly and take it, Kitchener adhered to his usual cautious and carefully prepared approach.