XIV. THE AFGHAN AND TURKOMAN CAMPAIGNS…

XIV. THE AFGHAN AND TURKOMAN CAMPAIGNS

"The Forward Policy--in other words, the policy of endeavouring to extend our influence over, and establish law and order on, that part of the [Indian] Border, where anarchy, murder, and robbery up to the present time have reigned supreme, a policy which has been attended with the happiest results in Baluchistan and on the Gilgit frontier--is necessitated by the incontrovertible fact that a great Military Power is now within striking distance of our Indian possessions, and in immediate contact with a State for the integrity of which we have made ourselves responsible."--LORD ROBERTS: Speech in the House of Lords, March 7, 1898.

The operations at the outset of the Afghan War ended with so easy a triumph for the British arms that it is needless to describe them in much detail. They were planned to proceed at three points on the irregular arc of the south-eastern border of Afghanistan. The most northerly column, that of General Sir Samuel Browne, had Peshawur as its base of supplies. Some 16,000 strong, it easily captured the fort of Ali Musjid at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, then threaded that defile with little or no opposition, and pushed on to Jelalabad. Around that town (rendered famous by General Sale's defence in 1841-2) it dealt out punishment to the raiding clans of Afridis.

The column of the centre, acting from Kohat as a base against the Kurram Valley, was commanded by a general destined to win renown in the later phases of the war. Major-General Roberts represented all that was noblest and most chivalrous in the annals of the British Army in India. The second son of General Sir Abraham Roberts, G.C.B., and born at Cawnpore in 1832, he inherited the traditions of the service which he was to render still more illustrious. His frame, short and slight, seemed scarcely to fit him for warlike pursuits; and in ages when great stature and sturdy sinews were alone held in repute, he might have been relegated to civil life; but the careers of William III., Luxemburg, Nelson, and Roberts show that wiriness is more essential to a commander than animal strength, and that mind rather than muscle determines the course of campaigns. That the young aspirant for fame was not deficient in personal prowess appeared at Khudaganj, one of the battles of the Mutiny, when he captured a standard from two sepoys, and, later on the same day, cut down a third sepoy. But it was his clear insight into men and affairs, his hold on the principles of war, his alertness of mind, and his organising power, that raised him above the crowd of meritorious officers who saved India for Britain in those stormy days.

His achievements as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General at Delhi and elsewhere at that time need not be referred to here; for he himself has related them in clear, life-like, homely terms which reveal one of the sources of his personal influence. Englishmen admire a man who is active without being fussy, who combines greatness with simplicity, whose kindliness is as devoid of ostentation as his religion is of mawkishness, and with whom ambition is ever the handmaid of patriotism. The character of a commander perhaps counts for more with British troops than with any others, except the French; and the men who marched with Roberts from Cabul to Candahar, and from Paardeberg to Bloemfontein, could scarcely have carried out those feats of endurance for a general who did not possess both their trust and their love.

The devotion of the Kurram column to its chief was soon put to the test. After advancing up that valley, girt on both sides with lofty mountains and scored with numerous gulleys, the force descried the Peiwar Kotal Pass at its head--a precipitous slope furrowed only in one place where a narrow zigzag path ran upwards through pines and giant boulders. A reconnaissance proved that the Afghans held the upper part in force; and for some time Roberts felt the gravest misgivings. Hiding these feelings, especially from his native troops, he spent a few days in reconnoitring this formidable position. These efforts resulted in the discovery by Major Collett of another practicable gorge further to the north leading up to a neighbouring height, the Peiwar Spingawi, whence the head of the Kotal might possibly be turned.

To divide a column, comprising only 889 British and 2415 native troops, and that too in face of the superior numbers of the enemy, was a risky enterprise, but General Roberts determined to try the effect of a night march up to the Spingawi. He hoped by an attack at dawn on the Afghan detachment posted there, to turn the main position on the Kotal, and bring about its evacuation. This plan had often succeeded against Afghans. Their characteristics both in peace and war are distinctly feline. Prone to ease and enjoyment at ordinary times, yet, when stirred by lust of blood or booty, they are capable of great feats of swift fierce onset; but, like all men and animals dominated by sudden impulses, their bravery is fitful, and is apt to give way under persistent attack, or when their rear is threatened. The cat-like, stalking instinct has something of strategic caution, even in its wildest moods; it likes to be sure of the line of retreat[311].

[Footnote 311: General [Sir] J.L. Vaughan, in a Lecture on "Afghanistan and the Military Operations therein" (December 6, 1878), said of the Afghans: "When resolutely attacked they rarely hold their ground with any tenacity, and are always anxious about their rear."]

The British commander counted on exploiting these peculiarities to the full by stalking the enemy on their left flank, while he left about 1000 men to attack them once more in front. Setting out at nightfall of December 1, he led the remainder northwards through a side valley, and then up a gully on the side of the Spingawi. The ascent through pine woods and rocks, in the teeth of an icy wind, was most trying; and the movement came near to failure owing to the treachery of two Pathan soldiers in the ranks, who fired off their rifles in the hope of warning the Afghans above them. The reports, it afterwards transpired, were heard by a sentry, who reported the matter to the commander of the Afghan detachment; he, for his part, did nothing. Much alarm was felt in the British column when the shots rang out in the darkness; a native officer hard by came up at once, and, by smelling the rifles of all his men, found out the offenders; but as they were Mohammedans, he said nothing, in the hope of screening his co-religionists. Later on, these facts transpired at a court-martial, whereupon the elder of the two offenders, who was also the first to fire, was condemned to death, and the younger to a long term of imprisonment. The defaulting officer likewise received due punishment[312].

[Footnote 312: Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in India, vol. ii. p. 130 et seq.; Major J.A.S. Colquhoun, With the Kurram Field Force, 1878-79, pp. 101-102.]

After this alarming incident, the 72nd Highlanders were sent forward to take the place of the native regiment previously leading; and once more the little column struggled on through the darkness up the rocky path. Their staunchness met its reward. At dawn the Highlanders and 5th Gurkhas charged the Afghan detachment in its entrenchments and breastworks of trees, and were soon masters of the Spingawi position. A long and anxious time of waiting now ensued, caused by the failure of the first frontal attack on the Kotal; but Roberts' pressure on the flank of the main Afghan position and another frontal attack sent the enemy flying in utter rout, leaving behind guns and waggons. The Kurram column had driven eight Afghan regiments and numbers of hillmen from a seemingly impregnable position, and now held the second of the outer passes leading towards Cabul (December 2, 1878). The Afghans offered but slight resistance at the Shutargardan Pass further on, and from that point the invaders looked down on valleys that conducted them easily to the Ameer's capital[313].

[Footnote 313: Lord Roberts, op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 135-149; S.H. Shadbolt, The Afghan Campaigns of 1878-80, vol. i. pp. 21-25 (with plan).]

Meanwhile equal success was attending the 3rd British column, that of General Biddulph, which operated from Quetta. It occupied Sibi and the Khojak Pass; and on January 8, 1879, General Stewart and the vanguard reached Candahar, which they entered in triumph. The people seemed to regard their entry with indifference. This was but natural. Shere Ali had ruined his own cause. Hearing of the first defeats he fled from Cabul in company with the remaining members of the Russian Mission still at that city (December 13), and made for Afghan Turkestan in the hope of inducing his northern allies to give active aid.

He now discovered his error. The Czar's Government had been most active in making mischief between England and the Ameer, especially while the diplomatic struggle was going on at Berlin; but after the signature of the Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878), the natural leaning of Alexander II. towards peace and quietness began by degrees to assert itself. The warlike designs of Kaufmann and his officials in Turkestan received a check, though not so promptly as was consistent with strict neutrality.

Gradually the veil fell from the ex-Ameer's eyes. On the day of his flight (December 13), he wrote to the "Officers of the British Government," stating that he was about to proceed to St. Petersburg, "where, before a Congress, the whole history of the transactions between myself and yourselves will be submitted to all the Powers[314]." But nine days later he published a firman containing a very remarkable letter purporting to come from General Stolieteff at Livadia in the Crimea, where he was staying with the Czar. After telling him that the British desired to come to terms with him (the Ameer) through the intervention of the Sultan, the letter proceeded as follows:--

But the Emperor's desire is that you should not admit the English into your country, and like last year, you are to treat them with deceit and deception until the present cold season passes away. Then the Almighty's will will be made manifest to you, that is to say, the [Russian] Government having repeated the Bismillah, the Bismillah will come to your assistance. In short you are to rest assured that matters will end well. If God permits, we will convene a Government meeting at St. Petersburg, that is to say, a Congress, which means an assemblage of Powers. We will then open an official discussion with the English Government, and either by force of words and diplomatic action we will entirely cut off all English communications and interference with Afghanistan, or else events will end in a mighty and important war. By the help of God, by spring not a symptom or a vestige of trouble and dissatisfaction will remain in Afghanistan.

[Footnote 314: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 7, (1879), p. 9. He also states on p. 172 that the advice of the Afghan officials who accompanied Shere Ali in his flight was (even in April-May 1879) favourable to a Russian alliance, and that they advised Yakub in this sense. See Kaufmann's letters to Yakub, in Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 9 (1879).]

It is impossible to think that the Czar had any knowledge of this treacherous epistle, which, it is to be hoped, originated with the lowest of Russian agents, or emanated from some Afghan chief in their pay. Nevertheless the fact that Shere Ali published it shows that he hoped for Russian help, even when the British held the keys of his country in their hands. But one hope after another faded away, and in his last days he must have come to see that he had been merely the catspaw of the Russian bear. He died on February 21, 1879, hard by the city of Bactra, the modern Balkh.

That "mother of cities" has seen strange vicissitudes. It nourished the Zoroastrian and Buddhist creeds in their youth; from its crowded monasteries there shone forth light to the teeming millions of Asia, until culture was stamped out under the heel of Genghis Khan, and later, of Timur. In a still later day it saw the dawning greatness of that most brilliant but ill-starred of the Mogul Emperors, Aurungzebe. Its fallen temples and convents, stretching over many a mile, proclaim it to be the city of buried hopes. There was, then, something fitting in the place of Shere Ali's death. He might so readily have built up a powerful Afghan State in friendly union with the British Raj; he chose otherwise, and ended his life amidst the wreckage of his plans and the ruin of his kingdom. This result of the trust which he had reposed in Muscovite promises was not lost on the Afghan people and their rulers.

There is no need to detail the events of the first half of the year 1879 in Afghanistan. On the assembly of Parliament in February, Lord Beaconsfield declared that our objects had been attained in that land now that the three chief mountain highways between Afghanistan and India were completely in our power. It remained to find a responsible ruler with whom a lasting peace could be signed. Many difficulties were in the way owing to the clannish feuds of the Afghans and the number of possible claimants for the crown. Two men stood forth as the most likely rulers, Shere Ali's rebellious son, Yakub Khan, who had lately been released from his long confinement, and Abdur Rahman, son of Ufzal Khan, who was still kept by the Russians in Turkestan under some measure of constraint, doubtless in the hope that he would be a serviceable trump card in the intricate play of rival interests certain to ensue at Cabul.

About February 20, Yakub sent overtures for peace to the British Government; and, as the death of his father at that time greatly strengthened his claim, it was favourably considered at London and Calcutta. Despite one act at least of flagrant treachery, he was recognised as Ameer. On May 8 he entered the British camp at Gandarnak, near Jelalabad; and after negotiations, a treaty was signed there, May 26. It provided for an amnesty, the control of the Ameer's foreign policy by the British Government, the establishment of a British Resident at Cabul, the construction of a telegraph line to that city, the grant of commercial facilities, and the cession to India of the frontier districts of Kurram, Pishin, and Sibi (the latter two are near Quetta). The British Government retained control over the Khyber and Michnee Passes and over the neighbouring tribes (which had never definitely acknowledged Afghan rule). It further agreed to pay to the Ameer and his successors a yearly subsidy of six lakhs of rupees (nearly £50,000)[315].

[Footnote 315: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 7 (1879), p. 23; Roberts, op. cit. pp. 170-173.]

General Roberts and many others feared that the treaty had been signed too hastily, and that the Afghans, "an essentially arrogant and conceited people," needed a severer lesson before they acquiesced in British suzerainty. But no sense of foreboding depressed Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, the gallant and able officer who had carried out so much of the work on the frontier, when he proceeded to take up his abode at Cabul as British Resident (July 24). The chief danger lay in the Afghan troops, particularly the regiments previously garrisoned at Herat, who knew little or nothing of British prowess, and whose fanaticism was inflamed by arrears of pay. Cavagnari's Journal kept at Cabul ended on August 19 with the statement that thirty-three Russians were coming up the Oxus to the Afghan frontier. But the real disturbing cause seems to have been the hatred of the Afghan troops to foreigners.

Failure to pay was so usual a circumstance in Afghanistan as scarcely to account for the events that ensued. Yet it furnished the excuse for an outbreak. Early on September 3, when assembled for what proved to be the farce of payment at Bala Hissar (the citadel), three regiments mutinied, stoned their officers, and then rushed towards the British Embassy. These regiments took part in the first onset against an unfortified building held by the Mission and a small escort. A steady musketry fire from the defenders long held them at bay; but, when joined by townsfolk and other troops, the mutineers set fire to the gates, and then, bursting in, overpowered the gallant garrison. The Ameer made only slight efforts to quell this treacherous outbreak, and, while defending his own palaces by faithful troops, sent none to help the envoy. These facts, as reported by trustworthy witnesses, did not correspond to the magniloquent assurances of fidelity that came from Yakub himself[316].

[Footnote 316: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), pp. 32-42, 89-96.]

Arrangements were at once made to retrieve this disaster, but staff and transport arrangements caused serious delay. At length General Roberts was able to advance up the Kurram Valley and carry the Shutargardan Pass by storm, an exploit fully equal to his former capture of the Peiwar Kotal in the same mountain range. Somewhat further on he met the Ameer, and was unfavourably impressed with him: "An insignificant-looking man, . . . with a receding forehead, a conical-shaped head, and no chin to speak of, . . . possessed moreover of a very shifty eye." Yakub justified this opinion by seeking on various pretexts to delay the British advance, and by sending to Cabul news as to the numbers of the British force.

All told it numbered only 4000 fighting men with 18 cannon. Nevertheless, on nearing Cabul, it assailed a strong position at Charasia, held by 13 regular regiments of the enemy and some 10,000 irregulars. The charges of Highlanders (the 72nd and 92nd), Gurkhas, and Punjabis proved to be irresistible, and drove the Afghans from two ridges in succession. This feat of arms, which bordered on the miraculous, served to reveal the feelings of the Ameer in a manner equally ludicrous and sinister. Sitting in the British camp, he watched the fight with great eagerness, then with growing concern, until he finally needed all his oriental composure for the final compliment which he bestowed on the victor. Later on it transpired that he and his adherents had laid careful plans for profiting by the defeat of the venturesome little force, so as to ensure its annihilation[317].

[Footnote 317: Roberts, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 213-224; Hensman, The Afghan War of 1878-1880.]

The brilliant affair at Charasia served to bring out the conspicuous gallantry of two men, who were later on to win distinction in wider fields, Major White and Colour-Sergeant Hector Macdonald. White carried a ridge at the head of a body of 50 Highlanders. When the enemy fled to a second ridge, he resolved to spare the lives of his men by taking a rifle and stalking the enemy alone, until he suddenly appeared on their flank. Believing that his men were at his back, the Afghans turned and fled.

On October 9 Roberts occupied the Siah Sang ridge, overlooking Cabul, and on the next day entered the citadel, Bala Hissar, to inspect the charred and blood-stained ruins of the British Embassy. In the embers of a fire he and his staff found numbers of human bones. On October 12 Yakub came to the General to announce his intention of resigning the Ameership, as "he would rather be a grass-cutter in the English camp than ruler of Afghanistan." On the next day the British force entered the city itself in triumph, and Roberts put the Ameer's Ministers under arrest. The citizens were silent but respectful, and manifested their satisfaction when he proclaimed that only those guilty of the treacherous attack on the Residency would be punished. Cabul itself was much more Russian than English. The Afghan officers wore Russian uniforms, Russian goods were sold in the bazaars, and Russian money was found in the Treasury. It is evident that the Czar's officials had long been pushing on their designs, and that further persistency on the part of England in the antiquated policy of "masterly inactivity" would have led to Afghanistan becoming a Muscovite satrapy.

The pendulum now swung sharply in favour of India. To that land Roberts despatched the ex-Ameer on December 1, on the finding of the Commission that he had been guilty of criminal negligence (if not worse) at the time of the massacre of Cavagnari and his escort. Two Afghan Sirdars, whose guilt respecting that tragedy had been clearly proven, were also deported and imprisoned. This caused much commotion, and towards the close of the year the preaching of a fanatic, whose name denoted "fragrance of the universe," stirred up hatred to the conquerors.

Bands of tribesmen began to cluster around Cabul, and an endeavour to disperse them led to a temporary British reverse not far from the Sherpur cantonments where Roberts held his troops. The situation was serious. As generally happens with Asiatics, the hillmen rose by thousands at the news, and beset the line of communications with India. Sir Frederick Roberts, however, staunchly held his ground at the Sherpur camp, beating off one very serious attack of the tribesmen on December 20-23. On the next day General Gough succeeded in breaking through from Gandamak to his relief. Other troops were hurried up from India, and this news ended the anxiety which had throbbed through the Empire at the news of Roberts being surrounded near Cabul.

Now that the league of hillmen had been for the time broken up, it became more than ever necessary to find a ruler for Afghanistan, and settle affairs with all speed. This was also desirable in view of the probability of a general election in the United Kingdom in the early part of the year 1880, the Ministry wishing to have ready an Afghan settlement to act as a soporific drug on the ravening Cerberus of democracy at home. Unhappily, the outbreak of the Zulu War on January 11, 1880, speedily followed by the disaster of Isandlana, redoubled the complaints in the United Kingdom, with the result that matters were more than ever pressed on in Afghanistan.

Some of the tribes clamoured for the return of Yakub, only to be informed by General Roberts that such a step would never be allowed. In the midst of this uncertainty, when the hour for the advent of a strong man seemed to have struck, he opportunely appeared. Strange to say, he came from Russian Turkestan.

As has been stated above, Abdur Rahman, son of Ufzal Khan, had long lived there as a pensioner of the Czar; his bravery and skill in intrigue had been well known. The Russian writer, Petrovsky, described him as longing, above all things, to get square with the English and Shere Ali. It was doubtless with this belief in the exile's aims that the Russians gave him £2500 and 200 rifles. His advent in Afghanistan seemed well calculated to add to the confusion there and to the difficulties of England. With only 100 followers he forded the Oxus and, early in 1880, began to gather around him a band in Afghan Turkestan. His success was startlingly rapid, and by the end of March he was master of all that district[318].

[Footnote 318: See his adventures in _The Life of Abdur Rahman, _by Sultan Mohammed Khan, vol. ii, chaps, v., vi. He gave out that he came to expel the English (pp. 173-175).]

But the political results of this first success were still more surprising. Lord Lytton, Sir Frederick Roberts, and Mr. Lepel Griffin (political commissioner in Afghanistan) soon saw the advantage of treating with him for his succession to the throne of Cabul. The Viceroy, however, true to his earlier resolve to break up Afghanistan, added the unpleasant condition that the districts of Candahar and Herat must now be severed from the north of Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman's first request that the whole land should form a neutral State under the joint protection of Great Britain and Russia was decisively negatived on the ground that the former Power stood pledged by the Treaty of Gandamak not to allow the intervention of any foreign State in Afghan affairs. A strong man like Abdur Rahman appreciated the decisiveness of this statement; and, while holding back his hand with the caution and suspicion natural to Afghans, he thenceforth leant more to the British side, despite the fact that Lord Lytton had recognised a second Shere Ali as "Wali," or Governor of Candahar and its district[319]. On April 19, Sir Donald Stewart routed a large Afghan force near Ghaznee, and thereafter occupied that town. He reached Cabul on May 5. It appeared that the resistance of the natives was broken.

[Footnote 319: Roberts, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 315-323.]

Such was the state of affairs when the General Election of April 1880 installed Mr. Gladstone in power in place of Lord Beaconsfield. As has been hinted above, Afghan affairs had helped to bring about this change; and the world now waited to see what would be the action of the party which had fulminated against the "forward policy" in India. As is usually the case after ministerial changes, the new Prime Minister disappointed the hopes of his most ardent friends and the fears of his bitterest opponents. The policy of "scuttle" was, of course, never thought of; but, as the new Government stood pledged to limit its responsibilities in India as far as possible, one great change took place. Lord Lytton laid down his Viceroyalty when the full results of the General Election manifested themselves; and the world saw the strange sight of a brilliant and powerful ruler, who took precedence of ancient dynasties in India, retiring into private life at the bidding of votes silently cast in ballot-boxes far away in islands of the north.

No more startling result of the working of the democratic system has ever been seen in Imperial affairs; and it may lead the student of Roman History to speculate what might have been the results in that ancient Empire if the populace of Italy could honestly have discharged the like duties with regard to the action of their proconsuls. Roman policy might have lacked some of its stateliness and solidity, but assuredly the government of the provinces would have improved. Whatever may be said as to the evils of change brought about by popular caprice, they are less serious than those which grow up under the shadow of an uncriticised and irresponsible bureaucracy.

Some time elapsed before the new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, could take up the reins of power. In that interval difficulties had arisen with Abdur Rahman, but on July 20 the British authorities at Cabul publicly recognised him as Ameer of Northern Afghanistan. The question as to the severance of Candahar from Cabul, and the amount of the subsidy to be paid to the new ruler, were left open and caused some difference of opinion; but a friendly arrangement was practically assured a few days later.

For many reasons this was desirable. As far back as April 11, 1880, Mr. (now Sir) Lepel Griffin had announced in a Durbar at Cabul that the British forces would withdraw from Afghanistan when the Government considered that a satisfactory settlement had been made; that it was the friend, not the enemy, of Islam, and would keep the sword for its enemies. The time had now come to make good these statements. In the closing days of July Abdur Rahman was duly installed in power at Cabul, and received 19-1/2 lakhs of rupees (£190,500)[320]. Meanwhile his champions prepared to evacuate that city and to avenge a disaster which had overtaken their arms in the Province of Candahar. On July 29 news arrived that a British brigade had been cut to pieces at Maiwand.

[Footnote 320: The Life of Abdur Rahman, vol. ii. pp. 197-98. For these negotiations and the final recognition, see Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1881), pp. 16-51.]

The fact that we supported the Sirdar named Shere Ali at Candahar seemed to blight his authority over the tribesmen in that quarter. All hope of maintaining his rule vanished when tidings arrived that Ayub Khan, a younger brother of the deported Yakub, was marching from the side of Herat to claim the crown. Already the new pretender had gained the support of several Afghan chiefs around Herat, and now proclaimed a jehad, or holy war, against the infidels holding Cabul. With a force of 7500 men and 10 guns he left Herat on June 15, and moved towards the River Helmand, gathering around him numbers of tribesmen and ghazis[321].

[Footnote 321: "A ghazi is a man who, purely for the sake of his religion, kills an unbeliever, Kaffir, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian, in the belief that in so doing he gains a sure title to Paradise" (R.I. Bruce, The Forward Policy, p. 245).]

In order to break this gathering cloud of war betimes, the Indian Government ordered General Primrose, who commanded the British garrison at Candahar, to despatch a brigade to the Helmand. Accordingly, Brigadier-General Burrows, with 2300 British and Indian troops, marched out from Candahar on July 11. On the other side of the Helmand lay an Afghan force, acting in the British interest, sent thither by the Sirdar, Shere Ali. Two days later the whole native force mutinied and marched off towards Ayub Khan. Burrows promptly pursued them, captured their six guns, and scattered the mutineers with loss.

Even so his position was most serious. In front of him, at no great distance, was a far superior force flushed with fanaticism and the hope of easy triumph; the River Helmand offered little, if any, protection, for at that season it was everywhere fordable; behind him stretched twenty-five miles of burning desert. By a speedy retreat across this arid zone to Khushk-i-Nakhud, Burrows averted the disaster then imminent, but his anxiety to carry out the telegraphic orders of the Commander-in-chief, and to prevent Ayub's force from reaching Ghaznee, led him into an enterprise which proved to be far beyond his strength.

Hearing that 2000 of the enemy's horsemen and a large number of ghazis had hurried forward in advance of the main body to Maiwand, he determined to attack them there. At 6.30 A.M. on July 27 he struck camp and moved forwards with his little force of 2599 fighting men. Daring has wrought wonders in Indian warfare, but rarely has any British commander undertaken so dangerous a task as that to which Burrows set his hand on that morning.

During his march he heard news from a spy that the Afghan main body was about to join their vanguard; but, either because he distrusted the news, or hoped even at the last to "pluck the flower, safety, out of the nettle, danger," he pushed on and sought to cut through the line of the enemy's advance as it made for Maiwand. About 10 A.M. his column passed the village of Khig and, crossing a dried watercourse, entered a parched plain whereon the fringe of the enemy's force could dimly be seen through the thick and sultry air. Believing that he had to deal with no large body of men, Burrows pushed on, and two of Lieutenant Maclaine's guns began to shell their scattered groups. Like wasps roused to fury, the ghazis rushed together as if for a charge, and lines of Afghan regulars came into view. The deceitful haze yielded up its secret. Burrows' brigade stood face to face with 15,000 Afghans. Moreover some influence, baleful to England, kept back those Asiatics from their usually heedless rush. Their guns came up and opened fire on Burrows' line. Even the white quivering groups of their ghazis forebore to charge with their whetted knives, but clung to a gully which afforded good cover 500 yards away from the British front and right flank; there the Afghan regulars galled the exposed khaki line, while their cannon, now numbering thirty pieces, kept up a fire to which Maclaine's twelve guns could give no adequate reply.

It has been stated by military critics that Burrows erred in letting the fight at the outset become an affair of artillery, in which he was plainly the weaker. Some of his guns were put out of action; and in that open plain there was no cover for the fighting line, the reserves, or the supporting horse. All of them sustained heavy losses from the unusually accurate aim of the Afghan gunners. But the enemy had also suffered under our cannonade and musketry; and it is consonant with the traditions of Indian warfare to suppose that a charge firmly pushed home at the first signs of wavering in the hostile mass would have retrieved the day. Plassey and Assaye were won by sheer boldness. Such a chance is said to have occurred about noon at Maiwand. However that may be, Burrows decided to remain on the defensive, perhaps because the hostile masses were too dense and too full of fight to warrant the adoption of dashing tactics.

After the sun passed his zenith the enemy began to press on the front and flanks. Burrows swung round his wings to meet these threatening moves; but, as the feline and predatory instincts of the Afghans kindled more and more at the sight of the weak, bent, and stationary line, so too the morale of the defenders fell. The British and Indian troops alike were exhausted by the long march and by the torments of thirst in the sultry heat. Under the fire of the Afghan cannon and the frontal and flank advance of the enemy, the line began to waver about 2 P.M., and two of the foremost guns were lost. A native regiment in the centre, Jacob's Rifles, fled in utter confusion and spread disorder on the flanks, where the 1st Bombay Grenadiers and the 66th line regiment had long maintained a desperate fight. General Nuttall now ordered several squadrons of the 3rd Light Cavalry and 3rd Sind Horse to recover the guns and stay the onrushing tide, but their numbers were too small for the task, and the charge was not pressed home. Finally the whole mass of pursued and pursuers rolled towards the village of Khig and its outlying enclosures.

There a final stand was made. Colonel Galbraith and about one hundred officers and men of the 66th threw themselves into a garden enclosure, plied the enemy fiercely with bullets, and time after time beat back every rush of the ghazis, now rioting in that carnival of death. Surrounded by the flood of the Afghan advance, the little band fought on, hopeless of life, but determined to uphold to the last the honour of their flag and country. At last only eleven were left. These heroes determined to die in the open; charging out on the masses around, they formed square, and back to back stood firing on the foe. Not until the last of them fell under the Afghan rifles did the ghazis venture to close in with their knives, so dauntless had been the bearing of this band[322].

[Footnote 322: Report of General Primrose in Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 3 (1880), p. 156.]

They had not fought in vain. Their stubborn stand held back the Afghan pursuit and gave time for the fugitives to come together on the way back to Candahar. Had the pursuit been pushed on with vigour few, if any, could have survived. Even so, Maiwand was one of the gravest disasters ever sustained by our Indian army. It cost Burrows' force nearly half its numbers; 934 officers and men were killed and 175 wounded. The strange disproportion between these totals may serve as a measure of the ferocity of Afghans in the hour of victory. Of the non-combatants 790 fell under the knives of the ghazis. The remnant struggled towards Candahar, whence, on the 28th, General Primrose despatched a column to the aid of the exhausted survivors. In the citadel of that fortress there mustered as many as 4360 effectives as night fell. But what were these in face of Ayub's victorious army, now joined by tribesmen eager for revenge and plunder[323]?

[Footnote 323: S.H. Shadbolt, The Afghan Campaigns of 1878-80, pp. 96-100. Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 2 (1880), p. 21; No. 3, pp. 103-5; Lord Roberts, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 333-5; Hensman, op. cit. pp. 553-4.]

In face of this disaster, the British generals in Northern Afghanistan formed a decision commendable alike for its boldness and its sagacity. They decided to despatch at once all available troops from Cabul to the relief of the beleaguered garrison at Candahar. General Sir Frederick Roberts had handed over the command at Cabul to Sir Donald Stewart, and was about to operate among the tribes on the Afghan frontier when the news of the disaster sent him hurrying back to confer with the new commander-in-chief. Together they recommended the plan named above.

It involved grave dangers: for affairs in the north of Afghanistan were unsettled; and to withdraw the rest of our force from Cabul to the Khyber would give the rein to local disaffection. The Indian authorities at Simla inclined to the despatch of the force at Quetta, comprising seven regiments of native troops, from Bombay. The route was certainly far easier; for, thanks to the toil of engineers, the railway from the Indus Valley towards Quetta had been completed up to a point in advance of Sibi; and the labours of Major Sandeman, Bruce, and others, had kept that district fairly quiet[324]. But the troops at Quetta and Pishin were held to be incapable of facing a superior force of victorious Afghans. At Cabul there were nine regiments of infantry, three of cavalry, and three mountain-batteries, all of them British or picked Indian troops. On August 3, Lord Ripon telegraphed his permission for the despatch of the Cabul field-force to Candahar. It amounted to 2835 British (the 72nd and 92nd Highlanders and 2nd battalion of the 60th Rifles, and 9th Lancers), 7151 Indian troops, together with 18 guns. On August 9 it struck camp and set out on a march which was destined to be famous.

[Footnote 324: Colonel Sandeman: His Life and Work on our Indian Frontier, by T.H. Thornton; R.I. Bruce, The Forward Policy and its Results (1900), chaps. iv. v.; Candahar in 1879; being the Diary of Major Le Mesurier, R.E. (1880). The last had reported in 1879 that the fortifications of Candahar were weak and the citadel in bad repair.]

Fortunately before it left the Cabul camp on August 9, matters were skilfully arranged by Mr. Griffin with Abdur Rahman, on terms which will be noticed presently. In spite of one or two suspicious incidents, his loyalty to the British cause now seemed to be assured, and that, too, in spite of the remonstrances of many of his supporters. He therefore sent forward messengers to prepare the way for Roberts' force. They did so by telling the tribesmen that the new Ameer was sending the foreign army out of the land by way of Candahar! This pleasing fiction in some measure helped on the progress of the force, and the issue of events proved it to be no very great travesty of the truth.

Every possible device was needed to ensure triumph over physical obstacles. In order to expedite the march through the difficult country between Cabul and Candahar, no wheeled guns or waggons went with the force. As many as 8000 native bearers or drivers set out with the force, but very many of them deserted, and the 8255 horses, mules and donkeys were thenceforth driven by men told off from the regiments. The line of march led at first through the fertile valley of the River Logar, where the troops and followers were able to reap the ripening crops and subsist in comfort. Money was paid for the crops thus appropriated. After leaving this fertile district for the barren uplands, the question of food and fuel became very serious; but it was overcome by ingenuity and patience, though occasional times of privation had to be faced, as, for instance, when only very small roots were found for the cooking of corn and meat. A lofty range, the Zamburak Kotal, was crossed with great toil and amidst biting cold at night-time; but the ability of the commander, the forethought and organising power of his Staff, and the hardihood of the men overcame all trials and obstacles.

The army then reached the more fertile districts around Ghazni, and on August 15 gained an entry without resistance to that once formidable stronghold. Steady marching brought the force eight days later to the hill fort of Kelat-i-Ghilzai, where it received a hearty welcome from the British garrison of 900 men. Sir Frederick Roberts determined to take on these troops with him, as he needed all his strength to cope with the growing power of Yakub. After a day's rest (well earned, seeing that the force had traversed 225 miles in 14 days), the column set forth on its last stages, cheered by the thought of rescuing their comrades at Candahar, but more and more oppressed by the heat, which, in the lower districts of South Afghanistan, is as fierce as anywhere in the world. Mr. Hensman, the war correspondent of the Daily News, summed up in one telling phrase the chief difficulties of the troops. "The sun laughed to scorn 100° F. in the shade." On the 27th the commander fell with a sharp attack of fever.

Nevertheless he instructed the Indian cavalry to push on to Robat and open up heliographic communication with Candahar. It then transpired that the approach of the column had already changed the situation. Already, on August 23, Ayub had raised the siege and retired to the hills north of the city. That relief came none too soon appeared on the morning of the 31st, when the thin and feeble cheering that greeted the rescuers on their entrance to the long beleaguered town told its sad tale of want, disease, and depression of heart. The men who had marched 313 miles in 22 days--an average of 14-1/4 miles a day--felt a thrill of sympathy, not unmixed with disgust in some cases, at the want of spirit too plainly discernible among the defenders. The Union Jack was not hoisted on the citadel until the rescuers were near at hand[325]. General Roberts might have applied to them Hecuba's words to Priam:--

Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis Tempus eget.

As for the morale of the relieving force, it now stood at the zenith, as was seen on the following day. Framing his measures so as to encourage Ayub to stand his ground, Roberts planned his attack in the way that had already led to success, namely, a frontal attack more imposing than serious, while the enemy's flank was turned and his communications threatened. These moves were carried out by Generals Ross and Baker with great skill. Under the persistent pressure of the British onset the Afghans fell back from position to position, north-west of Candahar; until finally Major White with the 92nd, supported by Gurkhas and the 23rd Pioneers, drove them back to their last ridge, the Baba Wali Kotal, swarmed up its western flank, and threw the whole of the hostile mass in utter confusion into the plain beyond. Owing to the very broken nature of the ground, few British and Indian horsemen were at hand to reap the full fruits of victory; but many of Ayub's regulars and ghazis fell under their avenging sabres. The beaten force deserved no mercy. When the British triumph was assured, the Afghan chief ordered his prisoner, Lieutenant Maclaine, to be butchered; whereupon he himself and his suite took to flight. The whole of his artillery, twenty-seven pieces, including the two British guns lost at Maiwand, fell into the victor's hands. In fact, Ayub's force ceased to exist; many of his troops at once assumed the garb of peaceful cultivators, and the Pretender himself fled to Herat[326].

[Footnote 325: Roberts, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 357.]

[Footnote 326: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 3 (1880), p. 82. Hensman, The Afghan War; Shadbolt, op. cit. pp. 108-110. The last reckons Ayub's force at 12,800, of whom 1200 were slain.]

Thus ended an enterprise which, but for the exercise of the highest qualities on the part of General Roberts, his Staff, the officers, and rank and file, might easily have ended in irretrievable disaster. This will appear from the following considerations. The question of food and water during a prolonged march in that parched season of the year might have caused the gravest difficulties; but they were solved by a wise choice of route along or near water-courses where water could generally be procured. The few days when little or no water could be had showed what might have happened. Further, the help assured by the action of the Ameer's emissaries among the tribesmen was of little avail after the valley of the Logar was left behind. Many of the tribes were actively hostile, and cut off stragglers and baggage-animals.

Above and beyond these daily difficulties, there was the problem as to the line of retreat to be taken in case of a reverse inflicted by the tribes en route. The army had given up its base of operations; for at the same time the remaining British and Indian regiments at Cabul were withdrawn to the Khyber Pass. True, there was General Phayre's force holding Quetta, and endeavouring to stretch out a hand towards Candahar; but the natural obstacles and lack of transport prevented the arrival of help from that quarter. It is, however, scarcely correct to say that Roberts had no line of retreat assured in case of defeat[327]. No serious fighting was to be expected before Candahar; for the Afghan plundering instinct was likely to keep Ayub near to that city, where the garrison was hard pressed. After leaving Ghazni, the Quetta route became the natural way of retirement.

[Footnote 327: Shadbolt, op. cit. p. 107.]

As it happened, the difficulties were mainly those inflicted by the stern hand of Nature herself; and their severity may be gauged by the fact that out of a well-seasoned force of less than 10,000 fighting men as many as 940 sick had at once to go into hospital at Candahar. The burning days and frosty nights of the Afghan uplands were more fatal than the rifles of Ayub and the knives of the ghazis. As Lord Roberts has modestly admitted, the long march gained in dramatic effect because for three weeks he and his army were lost to the world, and, suddenly emerging from the unknown, gained a decisive triumph. But, allowing for this element of picturesqueness, so unusual in an age when the daily din of telegrams dulls the perception of readers, we may still maintain that the march from Cabul to Candahar will bear comparison with any similar achievement in modern history.

The story of British relations with Afghanistan is one which illustrates the infinite capacity of our race to "muddle through" to some more or less satisfactory settlement. This was especially the case in the spring and summer of 1880, when the accession of Mr. Gladstone to power and the disaster of Maiwand changed the diplomatic and military situation. In one sense, and that not a cryptic one, these events served to supplement one another. They rendered inevitable the entire evacuation of Afghanistan. That, it need hardly be said, was the policy of Mr. Gladstone, of the Secretary for India, Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), and of Lord Ripon.

On one point both parties were agreed. Events had shown how undesirable it was to hold Cabul and Central Afghanistan. The evacuation of all these districts was specified in Lord Lytton's last official Memorandum, that which he signed on June 7, 1880, as certain to take place as soon as the political arrangements at Cabul were duly settled. The retiring Viceroy, however, declared that in his judgment the whole Province of Candahar must be severed from the Cabul Power, whether Abdur Rahman assented to it or not[328]. Obviously this implied the subjection of Candahar to British rule in some form. General Roberts himself argued stoutly for the retention of that city and district; and so did most of the military men. Lord Wolseley, on the other hand, urged that it would place an undesirable strain upon the resources of India, and that the city could readily be occupied from the Quetta position, if ever the Russians advanced to Herat. The Cabinet strongly held this opinion. The exponents of Whig ideas, Lord Hartington and the Duke of Argyll, herein agreeing with the exponents of a peaceful un-Imperial commercialism, Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain. Consequently the last of the British troops were withdrawn from Candahar on April 15, 1881.

[Footnote 328: Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 430, 445. On June 8 Lord Ripon arrived at Simla and took over the Viceroyalty from Lord Lytton; the latter was raised to an earldom.]

The retirement was more serious in appearance than in reality. The war had brought some substantial gains. The new frontier acquired by the Treaty of Gandamak--and the terms of that compact were practically void until Roberts' victory at Candahar gave them body and life--provided ample means for sending troops easily to the neighbourhood of Cabul, Ghazni, and Candahar; and experience showed that troops kept in the hill stations on the frontier preserved their mettle far better than those cantoned in or near the unhealthy cities just named. The Afghans had also learnt a sharp lesson of the danger and futility of leaning on Russia; and to this fact must be attributed the steady adherence of the new Ameer to the British side.

Moreover, the success of his rule depended largely on our evacuation of his land. Experience has shown that a practically independent and united Afghanistan forms a better barrier to a Russian advance than an Afghanistan rent by the fanatical feuds that spring up during a foreign occupation. Finally, the great need of India after the long famine was economy. A prosperous and contented India might be trusted to beat off any army that Russia could send; a bankrupt India would be the breeding-ground of strife and mutiny; and on these fell powers Skobeleff counted as his most formidable allies[329].

[Footnote 329: See Appendix; also Lord Hartington's speeches in the House of Commons, March 25-6, 1881]

It remained to be seen whether Abdur Rahman could win Candahar and Herat, and, having won them, keep them. At first Fortune smiled on his rival, Ayub. That pretender sent a force from Herat southwards against the Ameer's troops, defeated them, and took Candahar (July 1881). But Abdur Rahman had learnt to scorn the shifts of the fickle goddess. With a large force he marched to that city, bought over a part of Ayub's following, and then utterly defeated the remainder. This defeat was the end of Ayub's career. Flying back to Herat, he found it in the hands of the Ameer's supporters, and was fain to seek refuge in Persia. Both of these successes seem to have been due to the subsidies which the new Ameer drew from India[330].

[Footnote 330: Abdur Rahman's own account (op. cit. ch. ix.) ascribes his triumph to his own skill and to Ayub's cowardice.]

We may here refer to the last scene in which Ayub played a part before Englishmen. Foiled of his hopes in Persia, he finally retired to India. At a later day he appeared as a pensioner on the bounty of that Government at a review held at Rawal Pindi in the Punjab in honour of the visit of H.R.H. Prince Victor. The Prince, on being informed of his presence, rode up to his carriage and saluted the fallen Sirdar. The incident profoundly touched the Afghans who were present. One of them said: "It was a noble act. It shows that you English are worthy to be the rulers of this land[331]."

[Footnote 331: Eighteen Years in the Khyber Pass (1879-1898), by Colonel Sir R. Warburton, p. 213. The author's father had married a niece of the Ameer Dost Mohammed.]

The Afghans were accustomed to see the conquered crushed and scorned by the conqueror. Hence they did not resent the truculent methods resorted to by Abdur Rahman in the consolidation of his power. In his relentless grip the Afghan tribes soon acquired something of stability. Certainly Lord Lytton never made a wiser choice than that of Abdur Rahman for the Ameership; and, strange to say, that choice obviated the evils which the Viceroy predicted as certain to accrue from the British withdrawal from Candahar[332]. Contrasting the action of Great Britain towards himself with that of Russia towards Shere Ali in his closing days, the new Ameer could scarcely waver in his choice of an alliance. And while he held the Indian Government away at arm's length, he never wavered at heart.

[Footnote 332: Lord Lytton's speech in the House of Lords, Jan. 1881.]

* * * * *

For in the meantime Russia had resumed her southward march, setting to work with the doggedness that she usually displays in the task of avenging slights and overbearing opposition. The penury of the exchequer, the plots of the Nihilists, and the discontent of the whole people after the inglorious struggle with Turkey, would have imposed on any other Government a policy of rest and economy. To the stiff bureaucracy of St. Petersburg these were so many motives for adopting a forward policy in Asia. Conquests of Turkoman territory would bring wealth, at least to the bureaucrats and generals; and military triumphs might be counted on to raise the spirit of the troops, silence the talk about official peculations during the Turkish campaign, and act in the manner so sagaciously pointed out by Henry IV. to Prince Hal:--

Therefore, my Harry, Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days.

In the autumn of 1878 General Lomakin had waged an unsuccessful campaign against the Tekke Turkomans, and finally fell back with heavy losses on Krasnovodsk, his base of operations on the Caspian Sea. In the summer of 1879 another expedition set out from that port to avenge the defeat. Owing to the death of the chief, Lomakin again rose to the command. His bad dispositions at the climax of the campaign led him to a more serious disaster. On coming up to the fortress of Denghil Tepe, near the town of Geok Tepe, he led only 1400 men, or less than half of his force, to bombard and storm a stronghold held by some 15,000 Turkomans, and fortified on the plan suggested by a British officer, Lieutenant Butler[333]. Preluding his attack by a murderous cannonade, he sent round his cavalry to check the flight of the faint-hearted among the garrison; and, before his guns had fully done their work, he ordered the whole line to advance and carry the walls by storm. At once the Turkoman fire redoubled in strength, tore away the front of every attacking party, and finally drove back the assailants everywhere with heavy loss (Sept. 9, 1879). On the morrow the invaders fell back on the River Atrek and thence made their way back to the Caspian in sore straits[334].

[Footnote 333: This officer wrote to the Globe on January 25, 1881, stating that he had fortified two other posts east of Denghil Tepe. This led Skobeleff to push on to Askabad after the capture of that place; but he found no strongholds. See Marvin's Russian Advance towards India, p. 85.]

[Footnote 334: Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1880), pp. 167-173, 182.]

The next year witnessed the advent of a great soldier on the scene. Skobeleff, the stormy petrel of Russian life, the man whose giant frame was animated by a hero's soul, who, when pitched from his horse in the rush on one of the death-dealing redoubts at Plevna, rose undaunted to his feet, brandished his broken sword in the air and yelled at the enemy a defiance which thrilled his broken lines to a final mad charge over the rampart--Skobeleff was at hand. He had culled his first laurels at Khiva and Khokand, and now came to the shores of the Caspian to carry forward the standards which he hoped one day to plant on the walls of Delhi. That he cherished this hope is proved by the Memorandum which will be found in the Appendix of this volume. His disclaimer of any such intention to Mr. Charles Marvin (which will also be found there) shows that under his frank exterior there lay hidden the strain of Oriental duplicity so often found among his countrymen in political life.

At once the operations felt the influence of his active, cheery, and commanding personality. The materials for a railway which had been lying unused at Bender were now brought up; and Russia found the money to set about the construction of a railway from Michaelovsk to the Tekke Turkoman country--an undertaking which was destined wholly to change the conditions of warfare in South Turkestan and on the Afghan border. By the close of the year more than forty miles were roughly laid down, and Skobeleff was ready for his final advance from Kizil Arvat towards Denghil Tepe.

Meanwhile the Tekkes had gained reinforcements from their kinsmen in the Merv oasis, and had massed nearly 40,000 men--so rumour ran--at their stronghold. Nevertheless, they offered no serious resistance to the Russian advance, doubtless because they hoped to increase the difficulties of his retreat after the repulse which they determined to inflict at their hill fortress. But Skobeleff excelled Lomakin in skill no less than in prowess and magnetic influence. He proceeded to push his trenches towards the stronghold, so that on January 23, 1881, his men succeeded in placing 2600 pounds of gunpowder under the south-eastern corner of the rampart. Early on the following day the Russians began the assault; and while cannon and rockets wrought death and dismay among the ill-armed defenders, the mighty shock of the explosion tore away fifty yards of their rampart.

At once the Russian lines moved forward to end the work begun by gunpowder. With the blare of martial music and with ringing cheers, they charged at the still formidable walls. A young officer, Colonel Kuropatkin, who has since won notoriety in other lands, was ready with twelve companies to rush into the breach. Their leading files swarmed up it before the Tekkes fully recovered from the blow dealt by the hand of western science; but then the brave nomads closed in on foes with whom they could fight, and brought the storming party to a standstill. Skobeleff was ready for the emergency. True to his Plevna tactics of ever feeding an attack at the crisis with new troops, he hurled forward two battalions of the line and companies of dismounted Cossacks. These pushed on the onset, hewed their way through all obstacles, and soon met the smaller storming parties which had penetrated at other points. By 1 p.m. the Russian standard waved in triumph from the central hill of the fortress, and thenceforth bands of Tekkes began to stream forth into the desert on the further side.

Now Skobeleff gave to his foes a sharp lesson, which, he claimed, was the most merciful in the end. He ordered his men, horse and foot alike, to pursue the fugitives and spare no one. Ruthlessly the order was obeyed. First, the flight of grape shot from the light guns, then the bayonet, and lastly the Cossack lance, strewed the plain with corpses of men, women, and children; darkness alone put an end to the butchery, and then the desert for eleven miles eastwards of Denghil Tepe bore witness to the thoroughness of Muscovite methods of warfare. All the men within the fortress were put to the sword. Skobeleff himself estimated the number of the slain at 20,000[335]. Booty to the value of £600,000 fell to the lot of the victors. Since that awful day the once predatory tribes of Tekkes have given little trouble. Skobeleff sent his righthand man, Kuropatkin, to occupy Askabad, and reconnoitre towards Merv. But these moves were checked by order of the Czar.

[Footnote 335: Siege and Assault of Denghil Tepe. By General Skobeleff (translated). London, 1881.]

A curious incident, told to Lord Curzon, illustrates the dread in which Russian troops have since been held. At the opening of the railway to Askabad, five years later, the Russian military bands began to play. At once the women and children there present raised cries and shrieks of dread, while the men threw themselves on the ground. They imagined that the music was a signal for another onslaught like that which preluded the capture of their former stronghold[336].

[Footnote 336: Russia in Central Asia in 1889. By the Hon. G.N. Curzon (1889), p. 83.]

This victory proved to be the last of Skobeleff's career. The Government having used their knight-errant, now put him on one side as too insubordinate and ambitious for his post. To his great disgust, he was recalled. He did not long survive. Owing to causes that are little known, among which a round of fast-living is said to have played its part, he died suddenly from failure of the heart at his residence near Moscow (July 7 1882). Some there were who whispered dark things as to his militant notions being out of favour with the new Czar, Alexander III.; others pointed significantly to Bismarck. Others again prattled of Destiny; but the best comment on the death of Skobeleff would seem to be that illuminating saying of Novalis--"Character is Destiny." Love of fame prompted in him the desire one day to measure swords with Lord Roberts in the Punjab; but the coarser strain in his nature dragged him to earth at the age of thirty-nine.

The accession of Alexander III., after the murder of his father on March 13, 1881, promised for a short time to usher in a more peaceful policy; but, in truth, the last important diplomatic assurance of the reign of Alexander II. was that given by the Minister M. de Giers, to Lord Dufferin, as to Russia's resolve not to occupy Merv. "Not only do we not want to go there, but, happily, there is nothing which can require us to go there."

In spite of a similar assurance given on April 5 to the Russian ambassador in London, both the need and the desire soon sprang into existence. Muscovite agents made their way to the fruitful oasis of Merv; and a daring soldier, Alikhanoff, in the guise of a merchant's clerk, proceeded thither early in 1882, skilfully distributed money to work up a Russian party, and secretly sketched a plan of the fortress. Many chiefs and traders opposed Russia bitterly, for our brilliant and adventurous countryman, O'Donovan, while captive there, sought to open their eyes to the coming danger. But England's influence had fallen to zero since Skobeleff's victory and her own withdrawal from Candahar[337].

[Footnote 337: C. Marvin, Merv, the Queen of the World (1881); E. O'Donovan, The Merv Oasis, 2 vols. (1882-83), and Merv (1883).]

In 1882 a Russian Engineer officer, Lessar, in the guise of a scientific explorer, surveyed the route between Merv and Herat, and found that it presented far fewer difficulties than had been formerly reported to exist[338]. Finally, in 1884, the Czar's Government sought to revenge itself for Britain's continued occupation of Egypt by fomenting trouble near the Afghan border. Alikhanoff then reappeared, not in disguise, browbeat the hostile chieftains at Merv by threats of a Russian invasion, and finally induced them to take an oath of allegiance to Alexander III. (Feb. 12, 1884)[339].

[Footnote 338: See his reports in Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1884), pp. 26, 36, 39, 63, 96, 106.]

[Footnote 339: Ibid. p. 119.]

There was, however, some reason for Russia's violation of her repeated promises respecting Merv. In practical politics the theory of compensation has long gained an assured footing; and, seeing that Britain had occupied Egypt partly as the mandatory of Europe, and now refused to evacuate that land, the Russian Government had a good excuse for retaliation. As has happened at every time of tension between the two Empires since 1855, the Czar chose to embarrass the Island Power by pushing on towards India. As a matter of fact, the greater the pressure that Russia brought to bear on the Afghan frontier, the greater became the determination of England not to withdraw from Egypt. Hence, in the years 1882-4, both Powers plunged more deeply into that "vicious circle" in which the policy of the Crimean War had enclosed them, and from which they have never freed themselves.

The fact is deplorable. It has produced endless friction and has strained the resources of two great Empires; but the allegation of Russian perfidy in the Merv affair may be left to those who look at facts solely from the insular standpoint. In the eyes of patriotic Russians England was the offender, first by opposing Muscovite policy tooth and nail in the Balkans, secondly by seizing Egypt, and thirdly by refusing to withdraw from that commanding position. The important fact to notice is that after each of these provocations Russia sought her revenge on that flank of the British Empire to which she was guided by her own sure instincts and by the shrieks of insular Cassandras. By moving a few sotnias of Cossacks towards Herat she compelled her rival to spend a hundredfold as much in military preparations in India.

It is undeniable that Russia's persistent breach of her promises in Asiatic affairs exasperated public opinion, and brought the two Empires to the verge of war. Conduct of that description baffles the resources of diplomacy, which are designed to arrange disputes. Unfortunately, British foreign affairs were in the hands of Lord Granville, whose gentle reproaches only awakened contempt at St. Petersburg. The recent withdrawal of Lord Dufferin from St. Petersburg to Constantinople, on the plea of ill-health, was also a misfortune; but his appointment to the Viceroyalty of India (September 1884) placed at Calcutta a Governor-General superior to Lord Ripon in diplomatic experience.

There was every need for the exercise of ability and firmness both at Westminster and Calcutta. The climax in Russia's policy of lance-pricks was reached in the following year; and it has been assumed, apparently on good authority, that the understanding arrived at by the three Emperors in their meeting at Skiernewice (September 1884) implied a tacit encouragement of Russia's designs in Central Asia, however much they were curbed in the Balkan Peninsula. This was certainly the aim of Bismarck, and that he knew a good deal about Russian movements is clear from his words to Busch on November 24, 1884: "Just keep a sharp look-out on the news from Afghanistan. Something will happen there soon[340]."

[Footnote 340: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. pp. 124, 133 (Eng. ed.).]

This was clearly more than a surmise. At that time an Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission was appointed to settle the many vexed questions concerning the delimitation of the Russo-Afghan boundary. General Sir Peter Lumsden proceeded to Sarrakhs, expecting there to meet the Russian Commissioners by appointment in the middle of October 1884. On various pretexts the work of the Commission was postponed in accordance with advices sent from St. Petersburg. The aim of this dilatory policy soon became evident. That was the time when (as will appear in Chapter XVI.) the British expedition was slowly working its way towards Khartum in the effort to unravel the web of fate then closing in on the gallant Gordon. The news of his doom reached England on February 5, 1885. Then it was that Russia unmasked her designs. They included the appropriation of the town and district of Panjdeh, which she herself had previously acknowledged to be in Afghan territory. In vain did Lord Granville protest; in vain did he put forward proposals which conceded very much to the Czar, but less than his Ministers determined to have. All that he could obtain was a promise that the Russians would not advance further during the negotiations.

On March 13, Mr. Gladstone officially announced that an agreement to this effect had been arrived at with Russia. The Foreign Minister at St. Petersburg, M. de Giers, on March 16 assured our ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, that that statement was correct. On March 26, however, the light troops of General Komaroff advanced beyond the line of demarcation previously agreed on, and on the following day pushed past the Afghan force holding positions in front of Panjdeh. The Afghans refused to be drawn into a fight, but held their ground; thereupon, on March 29, Komaroff sent them an ultimatum ordering them to withdraw beyond Panjdeh. A British staff-officer requested him to reconsider and recall this demand, but he himself was waived aside. Finally, on March 30, Komaroff attacked the Afghan position, and drove out the defenders with the loss of 900 men. The survivors fell back on Herat, General Lumsden and his escort retired in the same direction, and Russia took possession of the coveted prize[341].

[Footnote 341: See Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1885), for General Lumsden's refutation of Komaroff's misstatements; also for the general accounts, ibid. No. 5 (1885), pp. 1-7.]

The news of this outrage reached England on April 7, and sent a thrill of indignation through the breasts of the most peaceful. Twenty days later Mr. Gladstone proposed to Parliament to vote the sum of £11,000,000 for war preparations. Of this sum all but £4,500,000 (needed for the Sudan) was devoted to military and naval preparations against Russia; and we have the authority of Mr. John Morley for saying that this vote was supported by Liberals "with much more than a mechanical loyalty[342]." Russia had achieved the impossible; she had united Liberals of all shades of thought against her, and the joke about "Mervousness" was heard no more.

[Footnote 342: J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 184.]

Nevertheless the firmness of the Government resembled that of Bob Acres: it soon oozed away. Ministers deferred to the Czar's angry declaration that he would allow no inquiry into the action of General Komaroff. This alone was a most mischievous precedent, as it tended to inflate Russian officers with the belief that they could safely set at defiance the rules of international law. Still worse were the signs of favour showered on the violator of a truce by the sovereign who gained the reputation of being the upholder of peace. From all that is known semi-officially with respect to the acute crisis of the spring of 1885, it would appear that peace was due solely to the tact of Sir Robert Morier, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, and to the complaisance of the Gladstone Cabinet.

Certainly this quality carried Ministers very far on the path of concession. When negotiations were resumed, the British Government belied its former promises of firmness in a matter that closely concerned our ally, and surrendered Panjdeh to Russia, but on the understanding that the Zulfikar Pass should be retained by the Afghans. It should be stated, however, that Abdur Rahman had already assured Lord Dufferin, during interviews which they had at Rawal Pindi early in April, of his readiness to give up Panjdeh if he could retain that pass and its approaches. The Russian Government conceded this point; but their negotiators then set to work to secure possession of heights dominating the pass. It seemed that Lord Granville was open to conviction even on this point.

Such was the state of affairs when, on June 9, 1885, Mr. Gladstone's Ministry resigned owing to a defeat on a budget question. The accession of Lord Salisbury to power after a brief interval helped to clear up these disputes. The crisis in Bulgaria of September 1885 (see Chapter X.) also served to distract the Russian Government, the Czar's chief pre-occupation now being to have his revenge on Prince Alexander of Battenberg. Consequently the two Powers came to a compromise about the Zulfikar Pass[343]. There still remained several questions outstanding, and only after long and arduous surveys, not unmixed with disputes, was the present boundary agreed on in a Protocol signed on July 22, 1887. We may here refer to a prophecy made by one of Bismarck's confidantes, Bucher, at the close of May 1885: "I believe the [Afghan] matter will come up again in about five years, when the [Russian] railways are finished[344]."

[Footnote 343: Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 4 (1885), pp. 41-72.]

[Footnote 344: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages, etc., vol. iii. p. 135.]

* * * * *

Thus it was that Russia secured her hold on districts dangerously near to Herat. Her methods at Panjdeh can only be described as a deliberate outrage on international law. It is clear that Alexander III. and his officials cared nothing for the public opinion of Europe, and that they pushed on their claims by means which appealed with overpowering force to the dominant motive of orientals--fear. But their action was based on another consideration. Relying on Mr. Gladstone's well-known love of peace, they sought to degrade the British Government in the eyes of the Asiatic peoples. In some measure they succeeded. The prestige of Britain thenceforth paled before that of the Czar; and the ease and decisiveness of the Russian conquests, contrasting with the fitful advances and speedy withdrawals of British troops, spread the feeling in Central Asia that the future belonged to Russia.

Fortunately, this was not the light in which Abdur Rahman viewed the incident. He was not the man to yield to intimidation. That "strange, strong creature," as Lord Dufferin called him, "showed less emotion than might have been expected," but his resentment against Russia was none the less keen[345]. Her pressure only served to drive him to closer union with Great Britain. Clearly the Russians misunderstood Abdur Rahman. Their miscalculation was equally great as regards the character of the Afghans and the conditions of life among those mountain clans. Russian officers and administrators, after pushing their way easily through the loose rubble of tribes that make up Turkestan, did not realise that they had to deal with very different men in Afghanistan. To ride roughshod over tribes who live in the desert and have no natural rallying-point may be very effective; but that policy is risky when applied to tribes who cling to their mountains.

[Footnote 345: In his Life (vol. i, pp. 244-246) he also greatly blames British policy.]

The analogy of Afghanistan to Switzerland may again serve to illustrate the difference between mountaineers and plain-dwellers. It was only when the Hapsburgs or the French threatened the Swiss that they formed any effective union for the defence of the Fatherland. Always at variance in time of peace, the cantons never united save under the stress of a common danger. The greater the pressure from without, the closer was the union. That truth has been illustrated several times from the age of the legendary Tell down to the glorious efforts of 1798. In a word, the selfsame mountaineers who live disunited in time of peace, come together and act closely together in war, or under threat of war.

Accordingly, the action of England in retiring from Candahar, contrasting as it did with Russia's action at Panjdeh, marked out the line of true policy for Abdur Rahman. Thenceforth he and his tribesmen saw more clearly than ever that Russia was the foe; and it is noteworthy that under the shadow of the northern peril there has grown up among those turbulent clans a sense of unity never known before. Unconsciously Russia has been playing the part of a Napoleon I.; she has ground together some at least of the peoples of Central Asia with a thoroughness which may lead to unexpected results if ever events favour a general rising against the conqueror.

Amidst all his seeming vacillations of policy, Abdur Rahman was governed by the thought of keeping England, and still more Russia, from his land. He absolutely refused to allow railways and telegraphs to enter his territories; for, as he said: "Where Europeans build railways, their armies quickly follow. My neighbours have all been swallowed up in this manner. I have no wish to suffer their fate."

His judgment was sound. Skobeleff conquered the Tekkes by his railway; and the acquisition of Merv and Panjdeh was really the outcome of the new trans-Caspian line, which, as Lord Curzon has pointed out, completely changed the problem of the defence of India. Formerly the natural line of advance for Russia was from Orenburg to Tashkend and the upper Oxus; and even now that railway would enable her to make a powerful diversion against Northern Afghanistan[346]. But the route from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian to Merv and Kushk presents a shorter and far easier route, leading, moreover, to the open side of Afghanistan, Herat, and Candahar. Recent experiments have shown that a division of troops can be sent in eight days from Moscow to Kushk within a short distance of the Afghan frontier. In a word, Russia can operate against Afghanistan by a line (or rather by two lines) far shorter and easier than any which Great Britain can use for its defence[347].

[Footnote 346: See Col. A. Durand's The Making of a Frontier (1899), pp. 41-43.]

[Footnote 347: Colquhoun, Russia against India, p. 170. Lord Curzon in 1894 went over much of the ground between Sarrakhs and Candahar and found it quite easy for an army (except in food supply).]

It is therefore of the utmost importance to prevent her pushing on her railways into that country. This is the consideration which inspired Mr. Balfour's noteworthy declaration of May 11, 1905, in the House of Commons:--

As transport is the great difficulty of an invading army, we must not allow anything to be done which would facilitate transport. It ought in my opinion to be considered as an act of direct aggression upon this country that any attempt should be made to build a railway, in connection with the Russian strategic railways, within the territory of Afghanistan.

It is fairly certain that the present Ameer, Habibulla, who succeeded his father in 1901, holds those views. This doubtless was the reason why, early in 1905, he took the unprecedented step of inviting the Indian Government to send a Mission to Cabul. In view of the increase of Russia's railways in Central Asia there was more need than ever of coming to a secret understanding with a view to defence against that Power.

Finally, we may note that Great Britain has done very much to make up for her natural defects of position. The Panjdeh affair having relegated the policy of "masterly inactivity" to the limbo of benevolent futilities, the materials for the Quetta railway, which had been in large part sent back to Bombay in the year 1881, were now brought back again; and an alternative route was made to Quetta. The urgent need of checkmating French intrigues in Burmah led to the annexation of that land (November 1885); and the Kurram Valley, commanding Cabul, which the Gladstone Government had abandoned, was reoccupied. The Quetta district was annexed to India in 1887 under the title of British Baluchistan. The year 1891 saw an important work undertaken in advance of Quetta, the Khojak tunnel being then driven through a range close by the Afghan frontier, while an entrenched camp was constructed near by for the storage of arms and supplies. These positions, and the general hold which Britain keeps over the Baluchee clans, enable the defenders of India to threaten on the flank any advance by the otherwise practicable route from Candahar to the Indus.

Certainly there is every need for careful preparations against any such enterprise. Lord Curzon, writing before Russia's strategic railways were complete, thought it feasible for Russia speedily to throw 150,000 men into Afghanistan, feed them there, and send on 90,000 of them against the Indus[348]. After the optimistic account of the problem of Indian defence given by Mr. Balfour in the speech above referred to, it is well to remember that, though Russia cannot invade India until she has conquered Afghanistan, yet for that preliminary undertaking she has the advantages of time and position nearly entirely on her side. Further, the completion of her railways almost up to the Afghan frontier (the Tashkend railway is about to be pushed on to the north bank of the Oxus, near Balkh) minimises the difficulties of food supply and transport in Afghanistan, on which the Prime Minister laid so much stress.

[Footnote 348: Op. cit. p. 307. Other authorities differ as to the practicability of feeding so large a force even in the comparatively fertile districts of Herat and Candahar.]

It is, however, indisputable that the security of India has been greatly enhanced by the steady pushing on of that "Forward Policy," which all friends of peace used to decry. The Ameer, Abdur Rahman, irritated by the making of the Khojak tunnel, was soothed by Sir Mortimer Durand's Mission in 1893; and in return for an increase of subsidy and other advantages, he agreed that the tribes of the debatable borderland--the Waziris, Afridis, and those of the Swat and Chitral valleys--should be under the control of the Viceroy. Russia showed her annoyance at this Mission by seeking to seize an Afghan town, Murghab; but the Ameer's troops beat them off[349]. Lord Lansdowne claimed that this right of permanently controlling very troublesome tribes would end the days of futile "punitive expeditions." In the main he was right. The peace and security of the frontier depend on the tact with which some few scores of officers carry on difficult work of which no one ever hears[350].

[Footnote 349: Life of Abdur Rahman, vol. i. p. 287.]

[Footnote 350: For this work see The Life of Sir R. Sandeman; Sir R. Warburton, Eighteen Years in the Khyber; Durand, op. cit.; Bruce, The Forward Policy and its Results; Sir James Willcock's From Cabul to Kumassi; S.S. Thorburn, The Punjab in Peace and War.]

In nearly all cases they have succeeded in their heroic toil. But the work of pacification was disturbed in the year 1895 by a rising in the Chitral Valley, which cut off in Chitral Fort a small force of Sikhs and loyal Kashmir troops with their British officers. Relieving columns from the Swat Valley and Gilgit cut their way through swarms of hillmen and relieved the little garrison after a harassing leaguer of forty-five days[351]. The annoyance evinced by Russian officers at the success of the expedition and the retention of the whole of the Chitral district (as large as Wales) prompts the conjecture that they had not been strangers to the original outbreak. In this year Russia and England delimited their boundaries in the Pamirs.

[Footnote 351: The Relief of Chitral, by Captains G.J. and F.E. Younghusband (1895).]

The year 1897 saw all the hill tribes west and south of Peshawur rise against the British Raj. Moslem fanaticism, kindled by the Sultan's victories over the Greeks, is said to have brought about the explosion, though critics of the Calcutta Government ascribe it to official folly[352]. With truly Roman solidity the British Government quelled the risings, the capture of the heights of Dargai by the "gay Gordons" showing the sturdy hillmen that they were no match for our best troops. Since then the "Forward Policy" has amply justified itself, thousands of fine troops being recruited from tribes which were recently daring marauders, ready for a dash into the plains of the Punjab at the bidding of any would-be disturber of the peace of India. In this case, then, Britain has transformed a troublesome border fringe into a protective girdle.

[Footnote 352: See The Punjab in Peace and War, by S.S. Thorburn, ad fin.]

* * * * *

Whether the Russian Government intends in the future to invade India is a question which time alone can answer. Viewing her Central Asian policy from the time of the Crimean War, the student must admit that it bears distinct traces of such a design. Her advance has always been most conspicuous in the years succeeding any rebuff dealt by Great Britain, as happened after that war, and still more, after the Berlin Congress. At first, the theory that a civilised Power must swallow up restless raiding neighbours could be cited in explanation of such progress; but such a defence utterly fails to account for the cynical aggression at Panjdeh and the favour shown by the Czar to the general who violated a truce. Equally does it fail to explain the pushing on of strategic railways since the time of the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902. Possibly Russia intends only to exert upon that Achilles heel of the British Empire the terrible but nominally pacific pressure which she brings to bear on the open frontiers of Germany and Austria; and the constant discussion by her officers of plans of invasion of India may be wholly unofficial. At the same time we must remember that the idea has long been a favourite one with the Russian bureaucracy; and the example of the years 1877-81 shows that that class is ready and eager to wipe out by a campaign in Central Asia the memory of a war barren of fame and booty. But that again depends on more general questions, especially those of finance (now a very serious question for Russia, seeing that she has drained Paris and Berlin of all possible loans) and of alliance with some Great Power, or Powers, anxious to effect the overthrow of Great Britain.

If Great Britain be not enervated by luxury; if she be not led astray from the paths of true policy by windy talk about "splendid isolation"; if also she can retain the loyal support of the various peoples of India,--she may face the contingency of such an invasion with firmness and equanimity. That it will come is the opinion of very many authorities of high standing. A native gentleman of high official rank, who brings forward new evidence on the subject, has recently declared it to be "inevitable[353]." Such, too, is the belief of the greatest authority on Indian warfare. Lord Roberts closes his Autobiography by affirming that an invasion is "inevitable in the end. We have done much, and may do still more to delay it; but when that struggle comes, it will be incumbent upon us, both for political and military reasons, to make use of all the troops and war material that the Native States can place at our disposal."

[Footnote 353: See The Nineteenth Century and After for May 1905.]

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Postscript

On May 22, 1905, the Times published particulars concerning the Anglo-Afghan Treaty recently signed at Cabul. It renewed the compact made with the late Ameer, whereby he agreed to have no relations with any foreign Power except Great Britain, the latter agreeing to defend him against foreign aggression. The subsidy of £120,000 a year is to be continued, but the present Ameer, Habibulla, henceforth receives a title equivalent to "King" and is styled "His Majesty."

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XV. BRITAIN IN EGYPT

It will be well to begin the story of the expansion of the nations of Europe in Africa by a brief statement of the events which brought Britain to her present position in Egypt. As we have seen, the French conquest of Tunis, occurring a year earlier, formed the first of the many expeditions which inaugurated "the partition of Africa"--a topic which, as regards the west, centre, and south of that continent, will engage our attention subsequently. In this chapter and the following it will be convenient to bring together the facts concerning the valley of the Nile, a district which up to a recent time has had only a slight connection with the other parts of that mighty continent. In his quaint account of that mysterious land, Herodotus always spoke of it as distinct from Libya; and this aloofness has characterised Lower Egypt almost down to the present age, when the events which we are about to consider brought it into close touch with the equatorial regions.

The story of the infiltration of British influence into Egypt is one of the most curious in all history. To this day, despite the recent agreement with France (1904), the position of England in the valley of the Lower Nile is irregular, in view of the undeniable fact that the Sultan is still the suzerain of that land. What is even stranger, it results from the gradual control which the purse-holder has imposed on the borrower. The power that holds the purse-strings counts for much in the political world, as also elsewhere. Both in national and domestic affairs it ensures, in the last instance, the control of the earning department over the spending department. It is the ultima ratio of Parliaments and husbands.

In order fully to understand the relations of Egypt to Turkey and to the purse-holders of the West, we must glance back at the salient events in her history for the past century. The first event that brought the land of the Pharaohs into the arena of European politics was the conquest by Bonaparte in 1798. He meant to make Egypt a flourishing colony, to have the Suez Canal cut, and to use Alexandria and Suez as bases of action against the British possessions in India. This daring design was foiled by Nelson's victory at the Nile, and by the Abercromby-Hutchinson expedition of 1801, which compelled the surrender of the French army left by Bonaparte in Egypt. The three years of French occupation had no great political results except the awakening of British statesmanship to a sense of the value of Egypt for the safeguarding of India. They also served to weaken the power of the Mamelukes, a Circassian military caste which had reduced the Sultan's authority over Egypt to a mere shadow. The ruin of this warlike cavalry was gradually completed by an Albanian soldier of fortune named Mohammed Ali, who, first in the name of the Sultan, and later in defiance of his power, gradually won the allegiance of the different races of Egypt and made himself virtually ruler of the land. This powerful Pasha conquered the northern part of the Sudan, and founded Khartum as the southern bulwark of his realm (1823). He seems to have grasped the important fact that, as Egypt depends absolutely on the waters poured down by the Nile in its periodic floods, her rulers must control that river in its upper reaches--an idea also held by the ablest of the Pharaohs. To secure this control, what place could be so suitable as Khartum, at the junction of the White and Blue Niles?

Mohammed Ali was able to build up an army and navy, which in 1841 was on the point of overthrowing Turkish power in Syria, when Great Britain intervened, and by the capture of Acre compelled the ambitious Pasha to abandon his northern schemes and own once more the suzerainty of the Porte. The Sultan, however, acknowledged that the Pashalic of Egypt should be hereditary in his family. We may remark here that England and France had nearly come to blows over the Syrian question of that year; but, thanks to the firm demeanour of Lord Palmerston, their rivalry ended, as in 1801, in the triumph of British influence and the assertion of the nominal ascendancy of the Sultan in Egypt. Mohammed was to pay his lord £363,000 a year. He died in 1849.

No great event took place during the rule of the next Pashas, or Khedives as they were now termed, Abbas I. (1849-54), and Said (1854-63), except that M. de Lesseps, a French engineer, gained the consent of Said in 1856 to the cutting of a ship canal, the northern entrance to which bears the name of that Khedive. Owing to the rivalry of Britain and France over the canal it was not finished until 1869, during the rule of Ismail (1863-79). We may note here that, as the concession was granted to the Suez Canal Company only for ninety-nine years, the canal will become the property of the Egyptian Government in the year 1968.

The opening of the canal placed Egypt once more on one of the greatest highways of the world's commerce, and promised to bring endless wealth to her ports. That hope has not been fulfilled. The profits have gone almost entirely to the foreign investors, and a certain amount of trade has been withdrawn from the Egyptian railways. Sir John Stokes, speaking in 1887, said he found in Egypt a prevalent impression that the country had been injured by the canal[354].

[Footnote 354: Quoted by D.A. Cameron, Egypt in the Nineteenth Century, p. 242.]

Certainly Egypt was less prosperous after its opening, but probably owing to another and mightier event which occurred at the beginning of Ismail's rule. This was the American Civil War. The blockade of the Southern States by the federal cruisers cut off from Lancashire and Northern France the supplies of raw cotton which are the life-blood of their industries. Cotton went up in price until even the conservative fellahin of Egypt saw the desirability of growing that strange new shrub--the first instance on record of a change in their tillage that came about without compulsion. So great were the profits reaped by intelligent growers that many fellahin bought Circassian and Abyssinian wives, and established harems in which jewels, perfumes, silks, and mirrors were to be found. In a word, Egypt rioted in its new-found wealth. This may be imagined from the totals of exports, which in three years rose from £4,500,000 to considerably more than £13,000,000[355].

[Footnote 355: Egypt and the Egyptian Question, by Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace (1883), pp. 318-320.]

But then came the end of the American Civil War. Cotton fell to its normal price, and ruin stared Egypt in the face. For not only merchants and fellahin, but also their ruler, had plunged into expenditure, and on the most lavish scale. Nay! Believing that the Suez Canal would bring boundless wealth to his land, Ismail persisted in his palace-building and other forms of oriental extravagance, with the result that in the first twelve years of his reign, that is, by the year 1875, he had spent more than £100,000,000 of public money, of which scarcely one-tenth had been applied to useful ends. The most noteworthy of these last were the Barrage of the Nile in the upper part of the Delta, an irrigation canal in Upper Egypt, the Ibrahimiyeh Canal, and the commencement of the Wady Haifa-Khartum railway. The grandeur of his views may be realised when it is remembered that he ordered this railway to be made of the same gauge as those of South Africa, because "it would save trouble in the end."

As to the sudden fall in the price of cotton, his only expedient for making good the loss was to grow sugar on a great scale, but this was done so unwisely as to increase the deficits. As a natural consequence, the Egyptian debt, which at his accession stood at £3,000,000, reached the extraordinary sum of £89,000,000 in the year 1876, and that, too, despite the increase of the land tax by one-half. All the means which oriental ingenuity has devised for the systematic plunder of a people were now put in force; so that Sir Alfred Milner (now Lord Milner), after unequalled opportunities of studying the Egyptian Question, declared: "There is nothing in the financial history of any country, from the remotest ages to the present time, to equal this carnival of extravagance and oppression[356]."

[Footnote 356: England in Egypt, by Sir Alfred Milner (Lord Milner), 1892, pp. 216-219. (The Egyptian £ is equal to £1:0:6.) I give the figures as pounds sterling.]

The Khedive himself had to make some sacrifices of a private nature, and one of these led to an event of international importance. Towards the close of the year 1875 he decided to sell the 177,000 shares which he held in the Suez Canal Company. In the first place he offered them secretly to the French Government for 100,000,000 francs; and the Foreign Minister, the Duc Decazes, it seems, wished to buy them; but the Premier, M. Buffet, and other Ministers hesitated, perhaps in view of the threats of war from Germany, which had alarmed all responsible men. In any case, France lost her chance[357]. Fortunately for Great Britain, news of the affair was sent to one of her ablest journalists, Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who at once begged Lord Derby, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, to grant him an interview. The result was an urgent message from Lord Derby to Colonel Staunton, the British envoy in Egypt, to find out the truth from the Khedive himself. The tidings proved to be correct, and the Beaconsfield Cabinet at once sanctioned the purchase of the shares for the sum of close on £4,000,000.

[Footnote 357: La Question d'Égypte, by C. de Freycinet (1905), p. 151.]

It is said that the French envoy to Egypt was playing billiards when he heard of the purchase, and in his rage he broke his cue in half. His anger was natural, quite apart from financial considerations. In that respect the purchase has been a brilliant success; for the shares are now worth more than £30,000,000, and yield an annual return of about a million sterling; but this monetary gain is as nothing when compared with the influence which the United Kingdom has gained in the affairs of a great undertaking whereby M. de Lesseps hoped to assure the ascendancy of France in Egypt.

The facts of history, it should be noted, lent support to this contention of "the great Frenchman." The idea of the canal had originated with Napoleon I., and it was revived with much energy by the followers of the French philosopher, St. Simon, in the years 1833-37[358]. The project, however, then encountered the opposition of British statesmen, as it did from the days of Pitt to those of Palmerston. This was not unnatural; for it promised to bring back to the ports of the Mediterranean the preponderant share in the eastern trade which they had enjoyed before the discovery of the route by the Cape of Good Hope. The political and commercial interests of England were bound up with the sea route, especially after the Cape was definitively assigned to her by the Peace of Paris of 1814; but she could not see with indifference the control by France of a canal which would divert trade once more to the old overland route. That danger was now averted by the financial coup just noticed--an affair which may prove to have been scarcely less important in a political sense than Nelson's victory at the Nile.

[Footnote 358: La Question d'Égypte, by C. de Freycinet, p. 106.]

In truth, the Sea Power has made up for her defects of position as regards Egypt by four great strokes--the triumph of her great admiral, the purchase of Ismail's canal shares, the repression of Arabi's revolt, and Lord Kitchener's victory at Omdurman. The present writer has not refrained from sharp criticism on British policy in the period 1870-1900; and the Egyptian policy of the Cabinets of Queen Victoria has been at times open to grave censure; but, on the whole, it has come out well, thanks to the ability of individuals to supply the qualities of foresight, initiative, and unswerving persistence, in which Ministers since the time of Chatham have rarely excelled.

The sale of Ismail's canal shares only served to stave off the impending crash which would have formed the natural sequel to this new "South Sea Bubble." All who took part in this carnival of folly ought to have suffered alike, Ismail and his beys along with the stock-jobbers and dividend-hunters of London and Paris. In an ordinary case these last would have lost their money; but in this instance the borrower was weak and dependent, while the lenders were in a position to stir up two powerful Governments to action. Nearly the whole of the Egyptian loans was held in England and France; and in 1876, when Ismail was floating swiftly down stream to the abyss of bankruptcy, the British and French bondholders cast about them for means to secure their own safety. They organised themselves for the protection of their interests. The Khedive consented to hear the advice of their representatives, Messrs. Goschen and Joubert; but it was soon clear that he desired merely a comfortable liquidation and the continuance of his present expenditure.

That year saw the institution of the "Caisse de la Dette," with power to receive the revenue set aside for the service of the debt, and to sanction or forbid new loans; and in the month of November 1876 the commission of bondholders took the form of the "Dual Control." In 1878 a Commission was appointed with power to examine the whole of the Egyptian administration. It met with the strongest opposition from the Khedive, until in the next year means were found to bring about his abdication by the act of the Sultan (June 26, 1879). His successor was his son Tewfik (1879-92).

On their side the bondholders had to submit to a reduction of rates of interest to a uniform rate of 4 per cent on the Unified Debt. Even so, it was found in the year 1881--a prosperous year--that about half of the Egyptian revenue, then £9,229,000, had to be diverted to the payment of that interest[359]. Again, one must remark that such a situation in an overtaxed country would naturally end in bankruptcy; but this was prevented by foreign control, which sought to cut down expenditure in all directions. As a natural result, many industries suffered from the lack of due support; for even in the silt-beds formed by the Nile (and they are the real Egypt) there is need of capital to bring about due results. In brief, the popular discontent gave strength to a movement which aimed at ousting foreign influences of every kind, not only the usurers and stock-jobbers that sucked the life-blood of the land, but even the engineers and bankers who quickened its sluggish circulation. This movement was styled a national movement; and its abettors raised that cry of "Egypt for Egyptians," which has had its counterpart wherever selfish patriots seek to keep all the good things of the land to themselves. The Egyptian troubles of the year 1882 originated partly in feelings of this narrow kind, and partly in the jealousies and strifes of military cliques.

[Footnote 359: England in Egypt, etc. p. 222. See there for details as to the Dual Control; also de Freycinet, op. cit. chap. ii., and The Expansion of Egypt, by A. Silva White, chap. vi.]

Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace, after carefully investigating the origin of the "Arabi movement," came to the conclusion that it was to be found in the determination of the native Egyptian officers to force their way to the higher grades of that army, hitherto reserved for Turks or Circassians. Said and Ismail had favoured the rise of the best soldiers of the fellahin class (that is, natives), and several of them, on becoming colonels, aimed at yet higher posts. This aroused bitter resentment in the dominant Turkish caste, which looked on the fellahin as born to pay taxes and bear burdens. Under the masterful Ismail these jealousies were hidden; but the young and inexperienced Tewfik, the nominee of the rival Western Powers, was unable to bridle the restless spirits of the army, who looked around them for means to strengthen their position at the expense of their rivals. These jealousies were inflamed by the youthful caprice of Tewfik. At first he extended great favour to Ali Fehmi, an officer of fellah descent, only to withdraw it owing to the intrigues of a Circassian rival. Ali Fehmi sought for revenge by forming a cabal with other fellah colonels, among whom a popular leader soon came to the front. This was Arabi Bey.

Arabi's frame embodied the fine animal qualities of the better class of fellahin, but to these he added mental gifts of no mean order. After imbibing the rather narrow education of a devout Moslem, he formed some acquaintance with western thought, and from it his facile mind selected a stock of ideas which found ready expression in conversation. His soft dreamy eyes and fluent speech rarely failed to captivate men of all classes[360]. His popularity endowed the discontented camarilla with new vigour, enabling it to focus all the discontented elements, and to become a movement of almost national import. Yet Arabi was its spokesman, or figure-head, rather than the actual propelling power. He seems to have been to a large extent the dupe of schemers who pushed him on for their own advantage. At any rate it is significant that after his fall he declared that British supremacy was the one thing needful for Egypt; and during his old age, passed in Ceylon, he often made similar statements[361].

[Footnote 360: Sir D.M. Wallace, Egypt and the Egyptian Question, p. 67.]

[Footnote 361: Mr. Morley says (Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 73) that Arabi's movement "was in truth national as well as military; it was anti-European, and above all, it was in its objects anti-Turk."--In view of the evidence collected by Sir D.M. Wallace, and by Lord Milner (England in Egypt), I venture to question these statements. The movement clearly was military and anti-Turk in its beginning. Later on it sought support in the people, and became anti-European and to some extent national; but to that extent it ceased to be anti-Turk. Besides, why should the Sultan have encouraged it? How far it genuinely relied on the populace must for the present remain in doubt; but the evidence collected by Mr. Broadley, How We Defended Arabi (1884), seems to show that Arabi and his supporters were inspired by thoroughly patriotic and enlightened motives.]

The Khedive's Ministers, hearing of the intrigues of the discontented officers, resolved to arrest their chiefs; but on the secret leaking out, the offenders turned the tables on the authorities, and with soldiers at their back demanded the dismissal of the Minister of War and the redress of their chief grievance--the undue promotion of Turks and Circassians.

The Khedive felt constrained to yield, and agreed to the appointment of a Minister of War who was a secret friend of the plotters. They next ventured on a military demonstration in front of the Khedive's palace, with a view to extorting the dismissal of the able and energetic Prime Minister, Riaz Pasha. Again Tewfik yielded, and consented to the appointment of the weak and indolent Sherif Pasha. To consolidate their triumph the mutineers now proposed measures which would please the populace. Chief among them was a plan for instituting a consultative National Assembly. This would serve as a check on the Dual Control and on the young Khedive, whom it had placed in his present ambiguous position.

A Chamber of Notables met in the closing days of 1881, and awakened great hopes, not only in Egypt, but among all who saw hope in the feeling of nationality and in a genuine wish for reform among a Moslem people. What would have happened had the Notables been free to work out the future of Egypt, it is impossible to say. The fate of the Young Turkish party and of Midhat's constitution of December 1877 formed by no means a hopeful augury. In the abstract there is much to be said for the two chief demands of the Notables--that the Khedive's Ministers should be responsible to the people's representatives, and that the Dual Control of Great Britain and France should be limited to the control of the revenues set apart for the purposes of the Egyptian public debt. The petitioners, however, ignored the fact that democracy could scarcely be expected to work successfully in a land where not one man in a hundred had the least notion what it meant, and, further, that the Western Powers would not give up their coign of vantage at the bidding of Notables who really represented little more than the dominant military party. Besides, the acts of this party stamped it as oriental even while it masqueraded in the garb of western democracy. Having grasped the reins of government, the fellahin colonels proceeded to relegate their Turkish and Circassian rivals to service at Khartum--an ingenious form of banishment. Against this and other despotic acts the representatives of Great Britain and France energetically protested, and, seeing that the Khedive was helpless, they brought up ships of war to make a demonstration against the de facto governors of Egypt.

It should be noted that these steps were taken by the Gladstone and Gambetta Cabinets, which were not likely to intervene against a genuinely democratic movement merely in the interests of British and French bondholders. On January 7, 1882, the two Cabinets sent a Joint Note to the Khedive assuring him of their support and of their desire to remove all grievances, external and internal alike, that threatened the existing order[362].

[Footnote 362: For Gambetta's despatches see de Freycinet, op. cit. pp. 209 et seq.]

While, however, the Western Powers sided with the Khedive, the other European States, including Turkey, began to show signs of impatience and annoyance at any intervention on their part. Russia saw the chance of revenge on England for the events of 1878, and Bismarck sought to gain the favour of the Sultan. As for that potentate, his conduct was as tortuous as usual. From the outset he gave secret support to Arabi's party, probably with the view of undermining the Dual Control and the Khedive's dynasty alike. He doubtless saw that Turkish interests might ultimately be furthered even by the men who had imprisoned or disgraced Turkish officers and Ministers.

Possibly the whole question might have been peaceably solved had Gambetta remained in power; for he was strongly in favour of a joint Anglo-French intervention in case the disorders continued. The Gladstone Government at that time demurred to such intervention, and claimed that it would come more legally from Turkey, or, if this were undesirable, from all the Powers; but this divergence of view did not prevent the two Governments from acting together on several matters. Gambetta, however, fell from power at the end of January 1882, and his far weaker successor, de Freycinet, having to face a most complex parliamentary situation in France and the possible hostility of the other Powers, drew back from the leading position which Gambetta's bolder policy had accorded to France. The vacillations at Paris tended alike to weaken Anglo-French action and to encourage the Arabi party and the Sultan. As matters went from bad to worse in Egypt, the British Foreign Minister, Lord Granville, proposed on May 24 that the Powers should sanction an occupation of Egypt by Turkish troops. To this M. de Freycinet demurred, and, while declaring that France would not send an expedition, proposed that a European Conference should be held on the Egyptian Question.

The Gladstone Cabinet at once agreed to this, and the Conference met for a short time at the close of June, but without the participation of Turkey[363]. For the Sultan, hoping that the divisions of the Powers would enable him to restore Turkish influence in Egypt, now set his emissaries to work to arouse there the Moslem fanaticism which he has so profitably exploited in all parts of his Empire. A Turkish Commission had been sent to inquire into matters--with the sole result of enriching the chief commissioner. In brief, thanks to the perplexities and hesitations of the Western Powers and the ill-humour manifested by Germany and Russia, Europe was helpless, and the Arabi party felt that they had the game in their own hands. Bismarck said to his secretary, Busch, on June 8: "They [the British] set about the affair in an awkward way, and have got on a wrong track by sending their ironclads to Alexandria, and now, finding that there is nothing to be done, they want the rest of Europe to help them out of their difficulty by means of a Conference[364]."

[Footnote 363: Morley, Life of Gladstone, iii. p. 79.]

[Footnote 364: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. p. 51.]

Already, on May 27, the Egyptian malcontents had ventured on a great military demonstration against the Khedive, which led to Arabi being appointed Minister of War. His followers also sought to inflame the hatred to foreigners for which the greed of Greek and Jewish usurers was so largely responsible. The results perhaps surpassed the hopes of the Egyptian nationalists. Moslem fanaticism suddenly flashed into flame. On the 11th of June a street brawl between a Moslem and a Maltese led to a fierce rising. The "true believers" attacked the houses of the Europeans, secured a great quantity of loot, and killed about fifty of them, including men from the British squadron. The English party that always calls out for non-intervention made vigorous efforts at that time, and subsequently, to represent this riot and massacre as a mere passing event which did not seriously compromise the welfare of Egypt; but Sir Alfred Milner in his calm and judicial survey of the whole question states that the fears then entertained by Europeans in Egypt "so far from being exaggerated, . . . perhaps even fell short of the danger which was actually impending[365]."

[Footnote 365: England in Egypt, p. 16. For details of the massacre and its preconcerted character, sec Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 4 (1884).]

The events at Alexandria and Tantah made armed intervention inevitable. Nothing could be hoped for from Turkey. The Sultan's special envoy, Dervish Pasha, had arrived in Egypt only a few days before the outbreak; and after that occurrence Abdul Hamid thought fit to send a decoration to Arabi. Encouraged by the support of Turkey and by the well-known jealousies of the Powers, the military party now openly prepared to defy Europe. They had some grounds for hope. Every one knew that France was in a very cautious mood, having enough on her hands in Tunis and Algeria, while her relations to England had rapidly cooled[366]. Germany, Russia, and Austria seemed to be acting together according to an understanding arrived at by the three Emperors after their meeting at Danzig in 1881; and Germany had begun that work of favouring the Sultan which enabled her to supplant British influence at Constantinople. Accordingly, few persons, least of all Arabi, believed that the Gladstone Cabinet would dare to act alone and strike a decisive blow. But they counted wrongly. Gladstone's toleration in regard to foreign affairs was large-hearted, but it had its limits. He now declared in Parliament that Arabi had thrown off the mask and was evidently working to depose the Khedive and oust all Europeans from Egypt; England would intervene to prevent this--if possible with the authority of Europe, with the support of France, and the co-operation of Turkey; but, if necessary, alone[367].

[Footnote 366: For the reasons of de Freycinet's caution, see his work, ch. iii., especially pp. 236 et seq.]

[Footnote 367: See, too, Gladstone's speech of July 25, 1882, in which he asserted that there was not a shred of evidence to support Arabi's claim to be the leader of a national party; also, his letter of July 14 to John Bright, quoted by Mr. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. pp. 84-85. Probably Gladstone was misinformed.]

Even this clear warning was lost on Arabi and his following. Believing that Britain was too weak, and her Ministry too vacillating, to make good these threats, they proceeded to arm the populace and strengthen the forts of Alexandria. Sir Beauchamp Seymour, now at the head of a strong squadron, reported to London that these works were going on in a threatening manner, and on July 6 sent a demand to Arabi that the operations should cease at once. To this Arabi at once acceded. Nevertheless, the searchlight, when suddenly turned on, showed that work was going on at night. A report of an Egyptian officer was afterwards found in one of the forts, in which he complained of the use of the electric light by the English as distinctly discourteous. It may here be noted that M. de Freycinet, in his jaundiced survey of British action at this time, seeks to throw doubt on the resumption of work by Arabi's men. But Admiral Seymour's reports leave no loophole for doubt. Finally, on July 10, the admiral demanded, not only the cessation of hostile preparations, but the surrender of some of the forts into British hands. The French fleet now left the harbour and steamed for Port Said. Most of the Europeans of Alexandria had withdrawn to ships provided for them; and on the morrow, when the last of the twenty-four hours of grace brought no submission, the British fleet opened fire at 7 A.M.

The ensuing action is of great interest as being one of the very few cases in modern warfare where ships have successfully encountered modern forts. The seeming helplessness of the British unarmoured ships before Cronstadt during the Crimean War, their failure before the forts of Sevastopol, and the uselessness of the French navy during the war of 1870, had spread the notion that warships could not overpower modern fortifications. Probably this impression lay at the root of Arabi's defiance. He had some grounds for confidence. The British fleet consisted of eight battleships (of which only the Inflexible and Alexandra were of great fighting power), along with five unarmoured vessels. The forts mounted 33 rifled muzzle-loading guns, 3 rifled breech-loaders, and 120 old smooth-bores. The advantage in gun-power lay with the ships, especially as the sailors were by far the better marksmen. Yet so great is the superiority of forts over ships that the engagement lasted five hours or more (7 A.M. till noon) before most of the forts were silenced more or less completely. Fort Pharos continued to fire till 4 P.M. On the whole, the Egyptian gunners stood manfully to their guns. Considering the weight of metal thrown against the forts, namely, 1741 heavy projectiles and 1457 light, the damage done to them was not great, only 27 cannon being silenced completely, and 5 temporarily. On the other hand, the ships were hit only 75 times and lost only 6 killed and 27 wounded. The results show that the comparatively distant cannonades of to-day, even with great guns, are far less deadly than the old sea-fights when ships were locked yard-arm to yard-arm.

Had Admiral Seymour at once landed a force of marines and bluejackets, all the forts would probably have been surrendered at once. For some reason not fully known, this was not done. Spasmodic firing began again in the morning, but a truce was before long arranged, which proved to be only a device for enabling Arabi and his troops to escape. The city, meanwhile, was the scene of a furious outbreak against Europeans, in which some 400 or 500 persons perished. Damage, afterwards assessed at £7,000,000, was done by fire and pillage. It was not till the 14th that the admiral, after receiving reinforcements, felt able to send troops into the city, when a few severe examples cowed the plunderers and restored order. The Khedive, who had shut himself up in his palace at Ramleh, now came back to the seaport under the escort of a British force, and thenceforth remained virtually, though not in name, under British protection.

The bombardment of Alexandria brought about the resignation of that sturdy Quaker, and friend of peace, Mr. John Bright from the Gladstone Ministry; but everything tends to show (as even M. de Freycinet admits) that the crisis took Ministers by surprise. Nothing was ready at home for an important campaign; and it would seem that hostilities resulted, firstly, from the violence of Arabi's supporters in Alexandria, and, secondly, from their persistence in warlike preparations which might have endangered the safety of Admiral Seymour's fleet. The situation was becoming like that of 1807 at the Dardanelles, when the Turks gave smooth promises to Admiral Duckworth, all the time strengthening their forts, with very disagreeable results. Probably the analogy of 1807, together with the proven perfidy of Arabi's men, brought on hostilities, which the British Ministers up to the end were anxious to avoid.

In any case, the die was now cast, and England entered questioningly on a task, the magnitude and difficulty of which no one could then foresee. She entered on it alone, and that, too, though the Gladstone Ministry had made pressing overtures for the help of France, at any rate as regarded the protection of the Suez Canal. To this extent, de Freycinet and his colleagues were prepared to lend their assistance; but, despite Gambetta's urgent appeal for common action with England at that point, the Chamber of Deputies still remained in a cautiously negative mood, and to that frame of mind M. Clémenceau added strength by a speech ending with a glorification of prudence. "Europe," he said, "is covered with soldiers; every one is in a state of expectation; all the Power are reserving their future liberty of action; do you reserve the liberty of action of France." The restricted co-operation with England which the Cabinet recommended found favour with only seventy-five deputies; and, when face to face with a large hostile majority, de Freycinet and his colleagues resigned (July 29, 1882)[368]. Prudence, fear of the newly-formed Triple Alliance, or jealousy of England, drew France aside from the path to which her greatest captains, thinkers, and engineers had beckoned her in time past. Whatever the predominant motive may have been, it altered the course of history in the valley of the Nile.

[Footnote 368: De Freycinet, op, cit. pp. 311-312.]

After the refusal of France to co-operate with England even to the smallest extent, the Conference of the Powers became a nullity, and its sessions ceased despite the lack of any formal adjournment[369]. Here, as on so many other occasions, the Concert of the Powers displayed its weakness; and there can be no doubt that the Sultan and Arabi counted on that weakness in playing the dangerous game which brought matters to the test of the sword. The jealousies of the Powers now stood fully revealed. Russia entered a vigorous protest against England's action at Alexandria; Italy evinced great annoyance, and at once repelled a British proposal for her co-operation; Germany also showed much resentment, and turned the situation to profitable account by substituting her influence for that of Britain in the counsels of the Porte. The Sultan, thwarted in the midst of his tortuous intrigues for a great Moslem revival, showed his spleen and his diplomatic skill by loftily protesting against Britain's violation of international law, and thereafter by refusing (August 1) to proclaim Arabi a rebel against the Khedive's authority. The essential timidity of Abdul Hamid's nature in presence of superior force was shown by a subsequent change of front. On hearing of British successes, he placed Arabi under the ban (September 8).

[Footnote 369: For its proceedings, see Parl. Papers, Egypt, 1882 (Conference on Egyptian Affairs).]

Meanwhile, the British expedition of some 10,000 men, despatched to Egypt under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley made as though it would attack Arabi from Alexandria as a base. But on nearing that port at nightfall it steered about and occupied Port Said (August 15). Kantara and Ismailia, on the canal, were speedily seized; and the Seaforth Highlanders by a rapid march occupied Chalouf and prevented the cutting of the freshwater canal by the rebels. Thenceforth the little army had the advantage of marching near fresh water, and by a route on which Arabi was not at first expecting them. Sir Garnet Wolseley's movements were of that quick and decisive order which counts for so much against orientals. A sharp action at Tel-el-Mahuta obliged Arabi's forces, some 10,000 strong, to abandon entrenchments thrown up at that point (August 24).

Four days later there was desperate fighting at Kassassin Lock on the freshwater canal. There the Egyptians flung themselves in large numbers against a small force sent forward under General Graham to guard that important point. The assailants fought with the recklessness begotten by the proclamation of a holy war against infidels, and for some time the issue remained in doubt. At length, about sundown, three squadrons of the Household Cavalry, and the 7th Dragoon Guards, together with four light guns, were hastily sent forward from the main body in the rear to clinch the affair. General Drury Lowe wheeled this little force round the left flank of the enemy, and, coming up unperceived in the gathering darkness, charged with such fury as to scatter the hostile array in instant rout[370]. The enemy fell back on the entrenchments at Tel-el-Kebir, while the whole British force (including a division from India) concentrated at Kassassin, 17,400 strong, with 61 guns and 6 Gatlings.

[Footnote 370: History of the Campaign in Egypt (War Office), by Col. J.F. Maurice, pp. 62-65.]

The final action took place on September 13, at Tel-el-Kebir. There Arabi had thrown up a double line of earthworks of some strength, covering about four miles, and lay with a force that has been estimated at 20,000 to 25,000 regulars and 7000 irregulars. Had the assailants marched across the desert and attacked these works by day, they must have sustained heavy losses. Sir Garnet therefore determined to try the effect of a surprise at dawn, and moved his men forward after sunset of the 12th until they came within striking distance of the works. After a short rest they resumed their advance shortly before the time when the first streaks of dawn would appear on the eastern sky. At about 500 yards from the works, the advance was dimly silhouetted against the paling orient. Shortly before five o'clock, an Egyptian rifle rang out a sharp warning, and forthwith the entrenchments spurted forth smoke and flame. At once the British answered by a cheer and a rush over the intervening ground, each regiment eager to be the first to ply the bayonet. The Highlanders, under the command of General Graham, were leading on the left, and therefore won in this race for glory; but on all sides the invaders poured almost simultaneously over the works. For several minutes there was sharp fighting on the parapet; but the British were not to be denied, and drove before them the defenders as a kind of living screen against the fire that came from the second entrenchments; these they carried also, and thrust the whole mass out into the desert[371]. There hundreds of them fell under the sabres of the British cavalry which swept down from the northern end of the lines; but the pursuit was neither prolonged nor sanguinary. Sir Garnet Wolseley was satisfied with the feat of dissolving Arabi's army into an armed or unarmed rabble by a single sharp blow, and now kept horses and men for further eventualities.

[Footnote 371: Life, Letters, and Diaries of General Sir Gerald Graham (1901). J.F. Maurice, op. cit. pp. 84-95.]

By one of those flashes of intuition that mark the born leader of men, the British commander perceived that the whole war might be ended if a force of cavalry pushed on to Cairo and demanded the surrender of its citadel at the moment when the news of the disaster at Tel-el-Kebir unmanned its defenders. The conception must rank as one of the most daring recorded in the annals of war. In the ancient capital of Egypt there were more than 300,000 Moslems, lately aroused to dangerous heights of fanaticism by the proclamation of a "holy war" against infidels. Its great citadel, towering some 250 feet above the city, might seem to bid defiance to all the horsemen of the British army. Finally, Arabi had repaired thither in order to inspire vigour into a garrison numbering some 10,000 men. Nevertheless, Wolseley counted on the moral effect of his victory to level the ramparts of the citadel and to abase the mushroom growth of Arabi's pride.

His surmise was more than justified by events. While his Indian contingent pushed on to occupy Zagazig, Sir Drury Lowe, with a force mustering fewer than 500 sabres, pressed towards Cairo by a desert road in order to summon it on the morrow. After halting at Belbeïs the troopers gave rein to their steeds; and a ride of nearly 40 miles brought them to the city about sundown. Rumour magnified their numbers; while the fatalism that used to nerve the Moslem in his great days now predisposed him to bow the knee and mutter Kismet at the advent of the seemingly predestined masters of Egypt. To this small, wearied, but lordly band Cairo surrendered, and Arabi himself handed over his sword. On the following day the infantry came up and made good this precarious conquest.

In presence of this startling triumph the Press of the Continent sought to find grounds for the belief that Arabi, and Cairo as well, had been secretly bought over by British gold. It is somewhat surprising to find M. de Freycinet[372] repeating to-day this piece of spiteful silliness, which might with as much reason be used to explain away the victories of Clive and Coote, Outram and Havelock. The slanders of continental writers themselves stand in need of explanation. It is to be found in their annoyance at discovering that England had an army which could carry through a difficult campaign to a speedy and triumphant conclusion. Their typical attitude had been that of Bismarck, namely, of exultation at her difficulties and of hope of her discomfiture. Now their tone changed to one of righteous indignation at the irregularity of her conduct in acting on behalf of Europe without any mandate from the Powers, and in using the Suez Canal as a base of operations.

[Footnote 372: Op. cit. p. 316.]

In this latter respect Britain's conduct was certainly open to criticism[373]. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether Arabi would have provoked her to action had he not been tacitly encouraged by the other Powers, which, while professing their wish to see order restored in Egypt, in most cases secretly sought to increase her difficulties in undertaking that task. As for the Sultan, he had now trimmed his sails by declaring Arabi a rebel to the Khedive's authority; and in due course that officer was tried, found guilty, and exiled to Ceylon early in 1883. The conduct of France, Germany, and Russia, if we may judge by the tone of their officially inspired Press, was scarcely more straightforward, and was certainly less discreet. On all sides there were diatribes against Britain's high-handed and lawless behaviour, and some German papers affected to believe that Hamburg might next be chosen for bombardment by the British fleet. These outbursts, in the case of Germany, may have been due to Bismarck's desire to please Russia, and secondarily France, in all possible ways. It is doubtful whether he gained this end. Certainly he and his underlings in the Press widened the gulf that now separated the two great Teutonic peoples.

[Footnote 373: It is said, however, that Arabi had warned M. de Lesseps that "the defence of Egypt requires the temporary destruction of the Canal" (Traill, England, Egypt, and the Sudan, p. 57). The status of the Canal was defined in 1885. Ibid. p. 59.]

The annoyance of France was more natural. She had made the Suez Canal, and had participated in the Dual Control; but her mistake in not sharing in the work of restoring order was irreparable. Every one in Egypt saw that the control of that country must rest with the Power which had swept away Arabi's Government and re-established the fallen authority of the Khedive. A few persons in England, even including one member of the Gladstone Administration, Mr. Courtney, urged a speedy withdrawal; but the Cabinet, which had been unwillingly but irresistibly drawn thus far by the force of circumstances, could not leave Egypt a prey to anarchy; and, clearly, the hand that repressed anarchy ruled the country for the time being. It is significant that on April 4, 1883, more than 2600 Europeans in Egypt presented a petition begging that the British occupation might be permanent[374].

[Footnote 374: Sir A. Milner, England in Egypt, p. 31.]

Mr. Gladstone, however, and others of his Cabinet, had declared that it would be only temporary, and would, in fact, last only so long as to enable order and prosperity to grow up under the shadow of new and better institutions. These pledges were given with all sincerity, and the Prime Minister and his colleagues evidently wished to be relieved from what was to them a disagreeable burden. The French in Egypt, of course, fastened on these promises, and one of their newspapers, the Journal Egyptien, printed them every day at the head of its front columns[375]. Mr. Gladstone, who sought above all things for a friendly understanding with France, keenly felt, even to the end of his career, that the continued occupation of Egypt hindered that most desirable consummation. He was undoubtedly right. The irregularity of England's action in Egypt hampered her international relations at many points; and it may be assigned as one of the causes that brought France into alliance with Russia.

[Footnote 375: H.F. Wood, Egypt under the British, p. 59 (1896).]

What, then, hindered the fulfilment of Mr. Gladstone's pledges? In the first place, the dog-in-the-manger policy of French officials and publicists increased the difficulties of the British administrators who now, in the character of advisers of the Khedive, really guided him and controlled his Ministers. The scheme of administration adopted was in the main that advised by Lord Dufferin in his capacity of Special Envoy. The details, however, are too wide and complex to be set forth here. So also are those of the disputes between our officials and those of France. Suffice it to say that by shutting up the funds of the "Caisse de la Dette," the French administrators of that great reserve fund hoped to make Britain's position untenable and hasten her evacuation. In point of fact, these and countless other pin-pricks delayed Egypt's recovery and furnished a good reason why Britain should not withdraw[376].

[Footnote 376: The reader should consult for full details Sir A. Milner, England in Egypt (1892); Sir D.M. Wallace, The Egyptian Question (1883), especially chaps, xi.-xiii.; and A. Silva White, The Expansion of Egypt (1899), the best account of the Anglo-Egyptian administration, with valuable Appendices on the "Caisse," etc.

A far more favourable light is thrown on the conduct of Arabi and his partisans by Mr. A.M. Broadley in his work How We Defended Arabi (1884).]

But above and beyond these administrative details, there was one all-compelling cause, the war-cloud that now threatened the land of the Pharaohs from that home of savagery and fanaticism, the Sudan.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

For new light on the nationalist movement in Egypt and the part which Arabi played in it, the reader should consult How we defended Arabi, by A.M. Broadley (London, 1884). The same writer in his Tunis, Past and Present (2 vols. 1882) has thrown much light on the Tunis Question and on the Pan-Islamic movement in North Africa.

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XVI. GORDON AND THE SUDAN

What were my ideas in coming out? They were these: Agreed abandonment of Sudan, but extricate the garrisons; and these were the instructions of the Government (Gordon's Journal, October 8, 1885).

It is one of the peculiarities of the Moslem faith that any time of revival is apt to be accompanied by warlike fervour somewhat like that which enabled its early votaries to sweep over half of the known world in a single generation. This militant creed becomes dangerous when it personifies itself in a holy man who can make good his claim to be received as a successor of the Prophet. Such a man had recently appeared in the Sudan. It is doubtful whether Mohammed Ahmed was a genuine believer in his own extravagant claims, or whether he adopted them in order to wreak revenge on Rauf Pasha, the Egyptian Governor of the Sudan, for an insult inflicted by one of his underlings. In May 1881, while living near the island of Abba in the Nile, he put forward his claim to be the Messiah or Prophet, foretold by the founder of that creed. Retiring with some disciples to that island, he gained fame by his fervour and asceticism. His followers named him "El Mahdi," the leader, but his claims were scouted by the Ulemas of Khartum, Cairo, and Constantinople, on the ground that the Messiah of the Moslems was to arise in the East. Nevertheless, while the British were crushing Arabi's movement, the Mahdi stirred the Sudan to its depths, and speedily shook the Egyptian rule to its base[377].

[Footnote 377: See the Report of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, printed in The Journals of Major-General C.G. Gordon at Khartum, Appendix to Bk. iv.]

There was every reason to fear a speedy collapse. In the years 1874-76 the Province of the White Nile had known the benefits of just and tactful rule under that born leader of men, Colonel Gordon; and in the three following years, as Governor-General of the Sudan, he gained greater powers, which he felt to be needful for the suppression of the slave-trade and other evils. Ill-health and underhand opposition of various kinds caused him to resign his post in 1879. Then, to the disgust of all, the Khedive named as his successor Rauf Pasha, whom Gordon had recently dismissed for maladministration of the Province of Harrar, on the borders of Abyssinia[378]. Thus the Sudan, after experiencing the benefits of a just and able government, reeled back into the bad old condition, at the time when the Mahdi was becoming a power in the land. No help was forthcoming from Egypt in the summer of 1882, and the Mahdi's revolt rapidly made headway even despite several checks from the Egyptian troops.

[Footnote 378: See Gordon's letter of April 1880, quoted in the Introduction to The Journals of Major-General C.G. Gordon at Khartum (1885), p. xvii.]

Possibly, if Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had decided to crush it in that autumn, the task might have been easy. But, far from doing so, they sought to dissuade the Khedive from attempting to hold the most disturbed districts, those of Kordofan and Darfur, beyond Khartum. This might have been the best course, if the evacuation could have been followed at once and without risk of disaster at the hands of the fanatics. But Tewfik willed otherwise. Against the advice of Lord Dufferin, he sought to reconquer the Sudan, and that, too, by wholly insufficient forces. The result was a series of disasters, culminating in the extermination of Hicks Pasha's Egyptian force by the Mahdi's followers near El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan (November 5, 1883).

The details of the disaster are not fully known. Hicks Pasha was appointed, on August 20, 1883, by the Khedive to command the expedition into that province. He set out from Omdurman on September 9, with 10,000 men, 4 Krupp guns and 16 light guns, 500 horses and 5500 camels. His last despatch, dated October 3, showed that the force had been greatly weakened by want of water and provisions, and most of all by the spell cast on the troops by the Mahdi's claim to invincibility. Nevertheless, Hicks checked the rebels in two or three encounters, but, according to the tale of one of the few survivors, a camel-driver, the force finally succumbed to a fierce charge on the Egyptian square at the close of an exhausting march, prolonged by the treachery of native guides. Nearly the whole force was put to the sword. Hicks Pasha perished, along with five British and four German officers, and many Egyptians of note. The adventurous newspaper correspondents, O'Donovan and Vizetelly, also met their doom (November 5, 1883)[379].

[Footnote 379: Gordon's Journals, pp. 347-351; also Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 12 (1884), pp. 85 and 127-131 for another account. See, too, Sir F.R. Wingate's Mahdism, chaps. i.-iii., for the rise of the Mahdi and his triumph over Hicks.]

This catastrophe decided the history of the Sudan for many years. The British Government was in no respect responsible for the appointment of General Hicks to the Kordofan command. Lord Dufferin and Sir E. Malet had strongly urged the Khedive to abandon Kordofan and Darfur; but it would seem that the desire of the governing class at Cairo to have a hand in the Sudan administration overbore these wise remonstrances, and hence the disaster near El Obeid with its long train of evil consequences[380]. It was speedily followed by another reverse at Tokar not far from Suakim, where the slave-raiders and tribesmen of the Red Sea coast exterminated another force under the command of Captain Moncrieff.

[Footnote 380: J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 146; Sir A. Lyall, Life of Lord Dufferin, vol. ii. chap. ii.]

The Gladstone Ministry and the British advisers of the Khedive, among whom was Sir Evelyn Baring (the present Lord Cromer), again urged the entire evacuation of the Sudan, and the limitation of Egyptian authority to the strong position of the First Cataract at Assuan. This policy then received the entire approval of the man who was to be alike the hero and the martyr of that enterprise[381]. But how were the Egyptian garrisons to be withdrawn? It was a point of honour not to let them be slaughtered or enslaved by the cruel fanatics of the Mahdi. Yet under the lead of Egyptian officers they would almost certainly suffer one of these fates. A way of escape was suggested--by a London evening newspaper in the first instance. The name of Gordon was renowned for justice and hardihood all through the Sudan. Let this knight-errant be sent--so said this Mentor of the Press--and his strange power over men would accomplish the impossible. The proposal carried conviction everywhere, and Lord Granville, who generally followed any strong lead, sent for the General.

[Footnote 381: Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 147.]

Charles George Gordon, born at Woolwich in 1833, was the scion of a staunch race of Scottish fighters. His great-grandfather served under Cope at Prestonpans; his grandfather fought in Boscawen's expedition at Louisburg and under Wolfe at Quebec. His father attained the rank of Lieutenant-General. From his mother, too, he derived qualities of self-reliance and endurance of no mean order. Despite the fact that she had eleven children, and that three of her sons were out at the Crimea, she is said never to have quailed during that dark time. Of these sons, Charles George was serving in the Engineers; he showed at his first contact with war an aptitude and resource which won the admiration of all. "We used always to send him out to find what new move the Russians were making"--such was the testimony of one of his superior officers. Of his subsequent duties in delimiting the new Bessarabian frontier and his miraculous career in China we cannot speak in detail. By the consent of all, it was his soldierly spirit that helped to save that Empire from anarchy at the hands of the Taeping rebels, whose movement presented a strange medley of perverted Christianity, communism, and freebooting. There it was that his magnetic influence over men first had free play. Though he was only thirty years of age, his fine physique, dauntless daring, and the spirit of unquestionable authority that looked out from his kindly eyes, gained speedy control over the motley set of officers and the Chinese rank and file--half of them ex-rebels--that formed the nucleus of the "ever victorious army." What wonder that he was thenceforth known as "Chinese Gordon"?

In the years 1865-71, which he spent at Gravesend in supervising the construction of the new forts at the mouth of the river, the religious and philanthropic side of his character found free play. His biographer, Mr. Hake, tells of his interest in the poor and suffering, and, above all, in friendless boys, who came to idolise his manly yet sympathetic nature. Called thereafter by the Khedive to succeed Sir Samuel Baker in the Governorship of the Sudan, he grappled earnestly with the fearful difficulties that beset all who have attempted to put down the slave-trade in its chief seat of activity. Later on he expressed the belief that "the Sudan is a useless possession, ever was so, ever will be so." These words, and certain episodes in his official career in India and in Cape Colony, revealed the weak side of a singularly noble nature. Occasionally he was hasty and impulsive in his decisions, and the pride of his race would then flash forth. During his cadetship at Woolwich he was rebuked for incompetence, and told that he would never make an officer. At once he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and flung them at his superior's feet. A certain impatience of control characterised him throughout life. No man was ever more chivalrous, more conscientious, more devoted, or abler in the management of inferiors; but his abilities lay rather in the direction of swift intuitions and prompt achievement than in sound judgment and plodding toil. In short, his qualities were those of a knight-errant, not those of a statesman. The imperious calls of conscience and of instinct endowed him with powers uniquely fitted to attract and enthral simple straightforward natures, and to sway orientals at his will. But the empire of conscience, instinct, and will-power consorts but ill with those diplomatic gifts of effecting a timely compromise which go far to make for success in life. This was at once the strength and the weakness of Gordon's being. In the midst of a blasé, sceptical age, his personality stood forth, God-fearing as that of a Covenanter, romantic as that of a Coeur de Lion, tender as that of a Florence Nightingale. In truth, it appealed to all that is most elemental in man.

At that time Gordon was charged by the King of the Belgians to proceed to the Congo River to put down the slave-trade. Imagination will persist in wondering what might have been the result if he had carried out this much-needed duty. Possibly he might have acquired such an influence as to direct the "Congo Free State" to courses far other than those to which it has come. He himself discerned the greatness of the opportunity. In his letter of January 6, 1884, to H.M. Stanley, he stated that "no such efficacious means of cutting at root of slave-trade ever was presented as that which God has opened out to us through the kind disinterestedness of His Majesty."

The die was now cast against the Congo and for the Nile. Gordon had a brief interview with four members of the Cabinet--Lords Granville, Hartington, Northbrooke, and Sir Charles Dilke,--Mr. Gladstone was absent at Hawarden; and they forthwith decided that he should go to the Upper Nile. What transpired in that most important meeting is known only from Gordon's account of it in a private letter:--

At noon he, Wolseley, came to me and took me to the Ministers. He went in and talked to the Ministers, and came back and said, "Her Majesty's Government want you to undertake this. Government are determined to evacuate the Sudan, for they will not guarantee future government. Will you go and do it?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Go in." I went in and saw them. They said, "Did Wolseley tell you our orders?" I said, "Yes." I said, "You will not guarantee future government of the Sudan, and you wish me to go up to evacuate now?" They said, "Yes," and it was over, and I left at 8 P.M. for Calais.

Before seeing the Ministers, Gordon had a long interview with Lord Wolseley, who in the previous autumn had been named Baron Wolseley of Cairo. That conversation is also unknown to us, but obviously it must have influenced Gordon's impressions as to the scope of the duties sketched for him by the Cabinet. We turn, then, to the "Instructions to General Gordon," drawn up by the Ministry on Jan. 18, 1884. They directed him to "proceed at once to Egypt, to report to them on the military situation in the Sudan, and on the measures which it may be advisable to take for the security of the Egyptian garrisons still holding positions in that country and for the safety of the European population in Khartum." He was also to report on the best mode of effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Sudan and on measures that might be taken to counteract the consequent spread of the slave-trade. He was to be under the instructions of H.M.'s Consul-General at Cairo (Sir Evelyn Baring). There followed this sentence: "You will consider yourself authorised and instructed to perform such other duties as the Egyptian Government may desire to entrust to you, and as may be communicated to you by Sir Evelyn Baring[382]."

[Footnote 382: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 2 (1884), p. 3.]

After receiving these instructions, Gordon started at once for Egypt, accompanied by Colonel Stewart. At Cairo he had an interview with Sir Evelyn Baring, and was appointed by the Khedive Governor-General of the Sudan. The firman of Jan. 26 contained these words: "We trust that you will carry out our good intentions for the establishment of justice and order, and that you will assure the peace and prosperity of the people of the Sudan by maintaining the security of the roads," etc. It contained not a word about the evacuation of the Sudan, nor did the Khedive's proclamation of the same date to the Sudanese. The only reference to evacuation was in his letter of the same date to Gordon, beginning thus: "You are aware that the object of your arrival here and of your mission to the Sudan is to carry into execution the evacuation of those territories and to withdraw our troops, civil officials, and such of the inhabitants, together with their belongings, as may wish to leave for Egypt. . . ." After completing this task he was to "take the necessary steps for establishing an organised Government in the different provinces of the Sudan for the maintenance of order and the cessation of all disasters and incitement to revolt[383]." How Gordon, after sending away all the troops, was to pacify that enormous territory His Highness did not explain.

[Footnote 383: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 12 (1884), pp. 27, 28.]

There is almost as much ambiguity in the "further instructions" which Sir Evelyn Baring drew up on January 25 at Cairo. After stating that the British and Egyptian Governments had agreed on the necessity of "evacuating" the Sudan, he noted the fact that Gordon approved of it and thought it should on no account be changed; the despatch proceeds:--

You consider that it may take a few months to carry it out with safety. You are further of opinion that "the restoration of the country should be made to the different petty Sultans who existed at the time of Mohammed Ali's conquest, and whose families still exist"; and that an endeavour should be made to form a confederation of those Sultans. In this view the Egyptian Government entirely concur. It will of course be fully understood that the Egyptian troops are not to be kept in the Sudan merely with a view to consolidating the powers of the new rulers of the country. But the Egyptian Government has the fullest confidence in your judgment, your knowledge of the country, and your comprehension of the general line of policy to be pursued. You are therefore given full discretionary power to retain the troops for such reasonable period as you may think necessary, in order that the abandonment of the country may be accomplished with the least possible risk to life and property. A credit of £100,000 has been opened for you at the Finance Department[384]. . . .

[Footnote 384: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 6 (1884), p. 3.]

In themselves these instructions were not wholly clear. An officer who is allowed to use troops for the settlement or pacification of a vast tract of country can hardly be the agent of a policy of mere "abandonment." Neither Gordon nor Baring seems at that time to have felt the incongruity of the two sets of duties, but before long it flashed across Gordon's mind. At Abu Hammed, when nearing Khartum, he telegraphed to Baring: "I would most earnestly beg that evacuation but not abandonment be the programme to be followed." Or, as he phrased it, he wanted Egypt to recognise her "moral control and suzerainty" over the Sudan[385]. This, of course, was an extension of the programme to which he gave his assent at Cairo; it differed toto caelo from the policy of abandonment laid down at London.

[Footnote 385: Egypt, No. 12 (1884), p. 133.]

Even now it is impossible to see why Ministers did not at once simplify the situation by a clear statement of their orders to Gordon, not of course as Governor-General of the Sudan, but as a British officer charged by them with a definite duty. At a later date they sought to limit him to the restricted sphere sketched out at London; but then it was too late to bend to their will a nature which, firm at all times, was hard as adamant when the voice of conscience spoke within. Already it had spoken, and against "abandonment."

There were other confusing elements in the situation. Gordon believed that the "full discretionary power" granted to him by Sir E. Baring was a promise binding on the British Government; and, seeing that he was authorised to perform such other duties as Sir Evelyn Baring would communicate to him, he was right. But Ministers do not seem to have understood that this implied an immense widening of the original programme. Further, Sir Evelyn Baring used the terms "evacuation" and "abandonment" as if they were synonymous; while in Gordon's view they were very different. As we shall see, his nature, at once conscientious, vehement, and pertinacious, came to reject the idea of abandonment as cowardly and therefore impossible.

Lastly, we may note that Gordon was left free to announce the forthcoming evacuation of the Sudan, or not, as he judged best[386]. He decided to keep it secret. Had he kept it entirely so for the present, he would have done well; but he is said to have divulged it to one or two officials at Berber; if so, it was a very regrettable imprudence, which compromised the defence of that town. But surely no man was ever charged with duties so complex and contradictory. The qualities of Nestor, Ulysses, and Achilles combined in one mortal could scarcely have availed to untie or sever that knot.

[Footnote 386: Ibid. p. 27.]

The first sharp collision between Gordon and the Home Government resulted from his urgent request for the employment of Zebehr Pasha as the future ruler of the Sudan. A native of the Sudan, this man had risen to great wealth and power by his energy and ambition, and figured as a kind of king among the slave-raiders of the Upper Nile, until, for some offence against the Egyptian Government, he was interned at Cairo. At that city Gordon had a conference with Zebehr in the presence of Sir E. Baring, Nubar Pasha, and others. It was long and stormy, and gave the impression of undying hatred felt by the slaver for the slave-liberator. This alone seemed to justify the Gladstone Ministry in refusing Gordon's request[387]. Had Zebehr gone with Gordon, he would certainly have betrayed him--so thought Sir Evelyn Baring.

[Footnote 387: Ibid. pp. 38-41.]

Setting out from Cairo and travelling quickly up the Nile, Gordon reached Khartum on February 18, and received an enthusiastic welcome from the discouraged populace. At once he publicly burned all instruments of torture and records of old debts; so that his popularity overshadowed that of the Mahdi. Again he urged the despatch of Zebehr as his "successor," after the withdrawal of troops and civilians from the Sudan. But, as Sir Evelyn Baring said in forwarding Gordon's request to Downing Street, it would be most dangerous to place them together at Khartum. It should further be noted that Gordon's telegrams showed his belief that the Mahdi's power was overrated, and that his advance in person on Khartum was most unlikely[388]. It is not surprising, then, that Lord Granville telegraphed to Sir E. Baring on February 22 that the public opinion of England "would not tolerate the appointment of Zebehr Pasha[389]." Already it had been offended by Gordon's proclamation at Khartum that the Government would not interfere with the buying and selling of slaves, though, as Sir Evelyn Baring pointed out, the re-establishment of slavery resulted quite naturally from the policy of evacuation; and he now strongly urged that Gordon should have "full liberty of action to complete the execution of his general plans[390]."

[Footnote 388: Egypt, No. 12 (1884), pp. 74, 82, 88.]

[Footnote 389: Ibid. p. 95.]

[Footnote 390: Ibid. p. 94.]

Here it is desirable to remember that the Mahdist movement was then confined almost entirely to three chief districts--Kordofan, parts of the lands adjoining the Blue Nile, and the tribes dwelling west and south-west of Suakim. For the present these last were the most dangerous. Already they had overpowered and slaughtered two Egyptian forces; and on February 22 news reached Cairo of the fall of Tokar before the valiant swordsmen of Osman Digna. But this was far away from the Nile and did not endanger Gordon. British troops were landed at Suakim for the protection of that port, but this step implied no change of policy respecting the Sudan. The slight impression which two brilliant but costly victories, those of El Teb and Tamai, made on the warlike tribes at the back of Suakim certainly showed the need of caution in pushing a force into the Sudan when the fierce heats of summer were coming on[391].

[Footnote 391: For details of these battles, see Sir F. Wingate's Mahdism, chap, iii., and Life of Sir Gerald Graham (1901).]

The first hint of any change of policy was made by Gordon in his despatch of Feb. 26, to Sir E. Baring. After stating his regret at the refusal of the British Government to allow the despatch of Zebehr as his successor, he used these remarkable words:--

You must remember that when evacuation is carried out, Mahdi will come down here, and, by agents, will not let Egypt be quiet. Of course my duty is evacuation, and the best I can for establishing a quiet government. The first I hope to accomplish. The second is a more difficult task, and concerns Egypt more than me. If Egypt is to be quiet, Mahdi must be smashed up. Mahdi is most unpopular, and with care and time could be smashed. Remember that once Khartum belongs to Mahdi, the task will be far more difficult; yet you will, for safety of Egypt, execute it. If you decide on smashing Mahdi, then send up another £100,000 and send up 200 Indian troops to Wady Haifa, and send officer up to Dongola under pretence to look out quarters for troops. Leave Suakim and Massowah alone. I repeat that evacuation is possible, but you will feel effect in Egypt, and will be forced to enter into a far more serious affair in order to guard Egypt. At present, it would be comparatively easy to destroy Mahdi[392].

[Footnote 392: Egypt, No. 12 (1884), p. 115.]

This statement arouses different opinions according to the point of view from which we regard it. As a declaration of general policy it is no less sound than prophetic; as a despatch from the Governor-General of the Sudan to the Egyptian Government, it claimed serious attention; as a recommendation sent by a British officer to the Home Government, it was altogether beyond his powers. Gordon was sent out for a distinct aim; he now proposed to subordinate that aim to another far vaster aim which lay beyond his province. Nevertheless, Sir E. Baring on February 28, and on March 4, urged the Gladstone Ministry even now to accede to Gordon's request for Zebehr Pasha as his successor, on the ground that some Government must be left in the Sudan, and Zebehr was deemed at Cairo to be the only possible governor. Again the Home Government refused, and thereby laid themselves under the moral obligation of suggesting an alternate course. The only course suggested was to allow the despatch of a British force up the Nile, if occasion seemed to demand it[393].

[Footnote 393: Egypt, No. 12 (1884) p. 119.]

In this connection it is well to remember that the question of Egypt and the Sudan was only one of many that distracted the attention of Ministers. The events outside Suakim alone might give them pause before they plunged into the Sudan; for that was the time when Russia was moving on towards Afghanistan; and the agreement between the three Emperors imposed the need of caution on a State as isolated and unpopular as England then was. In view of the designs of the German colonial party (see Chapter XVII.) and the pressure of the Irish problem, the Gladstone Cabinet was surely justified in refusing to undertake any new responsibilities, except on the most urgent need. Vital interests were at stake in too many places to warrant a policy of Quixotic adventure up the Nile.

Nevertheless, it is regrettable that Ministers took up on the Sudan problem a position that was logically sound but futile in the sphere of action. Gordon's mission, according to Earl Granville, was a peaceful one, and he inquired anxiously what progress had been made in the withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons and civilians. This question he put, even in the teeth of Gordon's positive statement in a telegram of March 8:--

If you do not send Zebehr, you have no chance of getting the garrisons away; . . . Zebehr here would be far more powerful than the Mahdi, and he would make short work of the Mahdi[394].

[Footnote 394: Ibid. p. 145.]

A week earlier Gordon had closed a telegram with the despairing words:--

I will do my best to carry out my instructions, but I feel conviction I shall be caught in Khartum[395].

[Footnote 395: Ibid. p. 152.]

It is not surprising that Ministers were perplexed by Gordon's despatches, or that Baring telegraphed to Khartum that he found it very difficult to understand what the General wanted. All who now peruse his despatches must have the same feeling, mixed with one of regret that he ever weakened his case by the proposal to "smash the Mahdi." Thenceforth the British Government obviously felt some distrust of their envoy; and in this disturbing factor, and the duality of Gordon's duties, we may discern one cause at least of the final disaster.

On March 11, the British Government refused either to allow the appointment of Zebehr, or to send British or Indian troops from Suakim to Berber. Without wishing to force Gordon's hand prematurely, Earl Granville urged the need of evacuation at as early a date as might be practicable. On March 16, after hearing ominous news as to the spread of the Mahdi's power near to Khartum and Berber, he advised the evacuation of the former city at the earliest possible date[396]. We may here note that the rebels began to close round it on March 18.

[Footnote 396: Ibid. pp. 158, 162, 166.]

Earl Granville's advice directly conflicted with Gordon's sense of honour. As he stated, on or about March 20, the fidelity of the people of Khartum, while treachery was rife all around, bound him not to leave them until he could do so "under a Government which would give them some hope of peace." Here again his duty as Governor of the Sudan, or his extreme conscientiousness as a man, held him to his post despite the express recommendations of the British Government. His decision is ever to be regretted; but it redounds to his honour as a Christian and a soldier. At bottom, the misunderstanding between him and the Cabinet rested on a divergent view of duty. Gordon summed up his scruples in his telegram to Baring:--

You must see that you could not recall me, nor could I possibly obey, until the Cairo employés get out from all the places. I have named men to different places, thus involving them with the Mahdi. How could I look the world in the face if I abandoned them and fled? As a gentleman, could you advise this course?

Earl Granville summed up his statement of the case in the words:--

The Mission of General Gordon, as originally designed and decided upon, was of a pacific nature and in no way involved any movement of British forces. . . . He was, in addition, authorised and instructed to perform such other duties as the Egyptian Government might desire to entrust to him and as might be communicated by you to him. . . . Her Majesty's Government, bearing in mind the exigencies of the occasion, concurred in these instructions [those of the Egyptian Government], which virtually altered General Gordon's Mission from one of advice to that of executing, or at least directing, the evacuation not only of Khartum but of the whole Sudan, and they were willing that General Gordon should receive the very extended powers conferred upon him by the Khedive to enable him to effect his difficult task. But they have throughout joined in your anxiety that he should not expose himself to unnecessary personal risk, or place himself in a position from which retreat would be difficult[397].

[Footnote 397: Egypt, No. 13 (1884), pp. 5, 6. Earl Granville made the same statement in his despatch of April 23. See, too, The Life of Lord Granville.]

He then states that it is clear that Khartum can hold out for at least six months, if it is attacked, and, seeing that the British occupation of Egypt was only "for a special and temporary purpose," any expedition into the Sudan would be highly undesirable on general as well as diplomatic grounds.

Both of these views of duty are intelligible as well as creditable to those who held them. But the former view is that of a high-souled officer; the latter, that of a responsible and much-tried Minister and diplomatist. They were wholly divergent, and divergence there spelt disaster.

On hearing of the siege of Khartum, General Stephenson, then commanding the British forces in Egypt, advised the immediate despatch of a brigade to Dongola--a step which would probably have produced the best results; but that advice was overruled at London for the reasons stated above. Ministers seem to have feared that Gordon might use the force for offensive purposes. An Egyptian battalion was sent up the Nile to Korosko in the middle of May; but the "moral effect" hoped for from that daring step vanished in face of a serious reverse. On May 19, the important city of Berber was taken by the Mahdists[398].

[Footnote 398: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 25 (1884), pp. 129-131.]

Difficult as the removal of about 10,000 to 15,000[399] Egyptians from Khartum had always been--and there were fifteen other garrisons to be rescued--it was now next to impossible, unless some blow were dealt at the rebels in that neighbourhood. The only effective blow would be that dealt by British or Indian troops, and this the Government refused, though Gordon again and again pointed out that a small well-equipped force would do far more than a large force. "A heavy, lumbering column, however strong, is nowhere in this land (so he wrote in his Journals on September 24). . . . It is the country of the irregular, not of the regular." A month after the capture of Berber a small British force left Siut, on the Nile, for Assuan; but this move, which would have sent a thrill through the Sudan in March, had little effect at midsummer. Even so, a prompt advance on Dongola and thence on Berber would probably have saved the situation at the eleventh hour.

[Footnote 399: This is the number as estimated by Gordon in his Journals (Sept. 10, 1884), p. 6.]

But first the battle of the routes had to be fought out by the military authorities. As early as April 25, the Government ordered General Stephenson to report on the best means of relieving Gordon; after due consideration of this difficult problem he advised the despatch of 10,000 men to Berber from Suakim in the month of September. Preparations were actually begun at Suakim; but in July experts began to favour the Nile route. In that month Lord Wolseley urged the immediate despatch of a force up that river, and he promised that it should be at Dongola by the middle of October. Even so, official hesitations hampered the enterprise, and it was not until July 29 that the decision seems to have been definitely formed in favour of the Nile route. Even on August 8, Lord Hartington, then War Minister, stated that help would be sent to Gordon, if it proved to be necessary[400]. On August 26, Lord Wolseley was appointed to the command of the relief expedition gathering on the Nile, but not until October 5 did he reach Wady Haifa, below the Second Cataract.

[Footnote 400: Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 164.]

Meanwhile the web of fate was closing in on Khartum. In vain did Gordon seek to keep communications open. All that he could do was to hold stoutly to that last bulwark of civilisation. There were still some grounds for hope. The Mahdi remained in Kordofan, want of food preventing his march northwards in force. Against his half-armed fanatics the city opposed a strong barrier. "Crows' feet" scattered on the ground ended their mad rushes, and mines blew them into the air by hundreds. Khartum seemed to defy those sons of the desert. The fire of the steamers drove them from the banks and pulverised their forts[401]. The arsenal could turn out 50,000 Remington cartridges a week. There was every reason, then, for holding the city; for, as Gordon jotted down in his Journal on September 17, if the Mahdi took Khartum, it would need a great force to stay his propaganda. Here and there in those pathetic records of a life and death struggle we catch a glimpse of Gordon's hope of saving Khartum for civilisation. More than once he noted the ease of holding the Sudan from the Nile as base. With forts at the cataracts and armed steamers patrolling the clear reaches of the river, the defence of the Sudan, he believed, was by no means impossible[402].

[Footnote 401: For details, see Letters from Khartum, by Frank Power.]

[Footnote 402: Journal, p. 35, etc.]

On September 10 he succeeded in sending away down stream by steamer Colonel Stewart and Messrs. Power and Herbin; but unfortunately they were wrecked and murdered by Arabs near Korti. The advice and help of that gallant officer would have been of priceless service to the relieving force. On September 10, when the Journals begin, Gordon was still hopeful of success, though food was scarce.

At this time the rescue expedition was mustering at Wady Haifa, a point which the narrowing gorge of the Nile marks out as one of the natural defences of its lower valley. There the British and Egyptian Governments were collecting a force that soon amounted to 2570 British troops and some Egyptians, who were to be used solely for transport and portage duties. A striking tribute to the solidarity of the Empire was the presence of 350 Canadians, mostly French, whose skill in working boats up rapids won admiration on all sides. The difficulties of the Nile route were soon found to be far greater than had been imagined. Indeed many persons still believe that the Suakim-Berber route would have been far preferable. The Nile was unfortunately lower than usual, and many rapids, up which small steamers had been hauled when the waters ran deep and full, were impassable even for the whale-boats on which the expedition depended for its progress as far as Korti. Many a time all the boats had to be hauled up the banks and carried by Canadians or Egyptians to the next clear reaches. The letters written by Gordon in 1877 in a more favourable season were now found to be misleading, and in part led to the miscalculation of time which was to prove so disastrous.

Another untoward fact was the refusal of the authorities to push on the construction of the railway above Sarras. It had been completed from Wady Haifa up to that point, and much work had been done on it for about fifteen miles further. But, either from lack of the necessary funds, or because the line could not be completed in time, the construction was stopped by Lord Wolseley's orders early in October. Consequently much time was lost in dragging the boats and their stores up or around the difficult rapids above Semneh[403].

[Footnote 403: See Gordon's letters of the year 1877, quoted in the Appendix of A. Macdonald's Too Late for Gordon and Khartum (1887); also chap. vi. of that book.]

Meanwhile a large quantity of stores had been collected at Dongola and Debbeh; numbers of boats were also there, so that a swift advance of a vanguard thence by the calmer reaches farther up the Nile seemed to offer many chances of success. It was in accord with Gordon's advice to act swiftly with small columns; but, for some reason, the plan was not acted on, though Colonel Kitchener, who had collected those stores, recommended it. Another argument for speedy action was the arrival on November 14, of a letter from Gordon, dated ten days before, in which he stated that he could hold out for forty days, but would find it hard to do so any longer.

The advance of the main body to Dongola was very slow, despite the heroic toil of all concerned. We now know that up to the middle of September the Gladstone Ministry cherished the belief that the force need not advance beyond Dongola. Their optimism was once again at fault. The Mahdists were pressing on the siege of Khartum, and had overpowered and slaughtered faithful tribes farther down the river. Such was the news sent by Gordon and received by Lord Wolseley on December 31 at Korti. The "secret and confidential" part of Gordon's message was to the effect that food was running short, and the rescuers must come quickly; they should come by Metammeh or Berber, and inform Gordon by the messenger when they had taken Berber.

The last entries in Gordon's Journals or in that part which has survived, contain the following statements:--

December 13. ". . . All that is absolutely necessary is for fifty of the expeditionary force to get on board a steamer and come up to Halfeyeh, and thus let their presence be felt; this is not asking much, but it must happen at once; or it will (as usual) be too late."

December 14. [After stating that he would send down a steamer with the "Journal" towards the expeditionary force]. . . . "Now mark this, if the expeditionary force, and I ask for no more than two hundred men, does not come in ten days the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good bye."

Owing to lack of transport and other difficulties, the vanguard of the relieving force could not begin its march from the new Nile base, near Korti, until December 30. Thence the gallant Sir Herbert Stewart led a picked column of men with 1800 camels across the desert towards Metammeh. Lord Wolseley remained behind to guard the new base of operations. At Abu Klea wells, when nearing the Nile, the column was assailed by a great mass of Arabs. They advanced in five columns, each having a wedge-shaped head designed to pierce the British square. With a low murmuring cry or chant they rushed on in admirable order, disregarding the heavy losses caused by the steady fire of three faces of the square. Their leaders soon saw the weak place in the defence, namely, at one of the rear corners, where belated skirmishers were still running in for shelter, where also one of the guns jammed at the critical moment. One of their Emirs, calmly reciting his prayers, rode in through the gap thus formed, and for ten minutes bayonet and spear plied their deadly thrusts at close quarters. Thanks to the firmness of the British infantry, every Arab that forced his way in perished; but in this mêlée there perished a stalwart soldier whom England could ill spare, Colonel Burnaby, hero of the ride to Khiva. Lord Charles Beresford, of the Naval Brigade, had a narrow escape while striving to set right the defective cannon. In all we lost 65 killed and 60 wounded, a proportion which tells its own tale as to the fighting[404].

[Footnote 404: Sir C.W. Wilson, From Korti to Khartum, pp. 28-35; also see Hon. R. Talbot's article on "Abu Klea," in the Nineteenth Century for January 1886.]

Two days later, while the force was beating off an attack of the Arabs near Metammeh, General Stewart received a wound which proved to be mortal. The command now devolved on Sir Charles Wilson of the Royal Engineers. After repelling the attacks of other Mahdists and making good his position on the Nile, the new commander came into touch with Gordon's steamers, which arrived there on the 21st, with 190 Sudanese. Again, however, the advance of other Arabs from Omdurman caused a delay until a fortified camp or zariba could be formed. Wilson now had but 1322 unwounded men; and he saw that the Mahdists were in far greater force than Lord Wolseley or General Gordon had expected. Not until January 24 could the commander steam away southwards with 20 men of the Sussex regiment and the 190 Sudanese soldiers on the two largest of Gordon's boats--his "penny steamers" as he whimsically termed them.

The sequel is well known. After overcoming many difficulties caused by rocks and sandbanks, after running the gauntlet of the Mahdist fire, this forlorn hope neared Khartum on the 28th, only to find that the place had fallen. There was nothing for it but to put about and escape while it was possible. Sir Charles Wilson has described the scene: "The masses of the enemy with their fluttering banners near Khartum, the long rows of riflemen in the shelter-trenches at Omdurman, the numerous groups of men on Tuti [Island], the bursting of shells, and the water torn up by hundreds of bullets, and occasionally heavier shot, made an impression never to be forgotten. Looking out over the stormy scene, it seemed almost impossible that we should escape[405]."

[Footnote 405: Sir C.W. Wilson, op. cit. pp. 176-177.]

Weighed down by grief at the sad failure of all their strivings, the little band yet succeeded in escaping to Metammeh. They afterwards found out that they were two days too late. The final cause of the fall of Khartum is not fully known. The notion first current, that it was due to treachery, has been discredited. Certainly the defenders were weakened by privation and cowed by the Mahdist successes. The final attack was also given at a weak place in the long line of defence; but whether the defenders all did their best, or were anxious to make terms with the Mahdi, will probably never be known. The conduct of the assailants in at once firing on the relieving force forbids the notion that they all along intended to get into Khartum by treachery just before the approach of the steamers. Had that been their aim, they would surely have added one crowning touch of guile, that of remaining quiet until Wilson and his men landed at Khartum. The capture of the town would therefore seem to be due to force, not to treachery.

All these speculations are dwarfed by the overwhelming fact that Gordon perished. Various versions have been given of the manner of his death. One that rests on good authority is that he died fighting. Another account, which seems more consistent with his character, is that, on hearing of the enemy's rush into the town, he calmly remarked: "It is all finished; to-day Gordon will be killed." In a short time a chief of the Baggara Arabs with a few others burst in and ordered him to come to the Mahdi. Gordon refused. Thrice the Sheikh repeated the command. Thrice Gordon calmly repeated his refusal. The sheikh then drew his sword and slashed at his shoulder. Gordon still looked him steadily in the face. Thereupon the miscreant struck at his neck, cut off his head, and carried it to the Mahdi[406].

[Footnote 406: A third account given by Bordeini Bey, a merchant of Khartum, differs in many details. It is printed by Sir F.R. Wingate in his Mahdism, p. 171.]

Whatever may be the truth as to details, it is certain that no man ever looked death in the face so long and so serenely as Gordon. For him life was but duty--duty to God and duty to man. We may fitly apply to him the noble lines which Tennyson offered to the memory of another steadfast soul--

He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands, Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevail'd, Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled Are close upon the shining table-lands To which our God Himself is moon and sun.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Shortly before the publication of this work, Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice published his Life of Earl Granville, some of the details of which tend somewhat to modify the account of the relations subsisting between the Earl and General Gordon. See too the issue of the Times of December 10, 1905 (Weekly Edition), for a correction of some of the statements, made in the Life of Earl Granville, by Lord Cromer (Sir Evelyn Baring).]

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XVII. THE CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN

"The Sudan, if once proper communication was established, would not be difficult to govern. The only mode of improving the access to the Sudan, seeing the impoverished state of Egyptian finances, and the mode to do so without an outlay of more than £10,000, is by the Nile."--Gordon's Journals (Sept. 19, 1884).

It may seem that an account of the fall of Khartum is out of place in a volume which deals only with formative events. But this is not so. The example of Gordon's heroism was of itself a great incentive to action for the cause of settled government in that land. For that cause he had given his life, and few Britons were altogether deaf to the mute appeal of that lonely struggle. Then again, the immense increase to the Mahdi's power resulting from the capture of the arsenal of Khartum constituted (as Gordon had prophesied) a serious danger to Egypt. The continued presence of British troops at Wady Haifa, and that alone, saved the valley of the Lower Nile from a desolating flood of savagery. This was a fact recognised by every one at Cairo, even by the ultra-Gallic party. Egypt alone has rarely been able to hold at bay any great downward movement of the tribes of Ethiopia and Nubia; and the danger was never so great as in and after 1885. The Mahdi's proclamations to the faithful now swelled with inconceivable pride. To a wavering sheikh he sent the warning: "If you live long enough you will see the troops of the Mahdi spreading over Europe, Rome, and Constantinople, after which there will be nothing left for you but hell and damnation." The mistiness of the geography was hidden by the vigour of the theology, and all the sceptics of Nubia hastened to accept the new prophet.

But his time of tyranny soon drew to a close. A woman of Khartum, who had been outraged by him or his followers, determined to wreak her vengeance. On June 14, 1885, she succeeded in giving him slow poison, which led him to his death amidst long-drawn agonies eight days later. This ought to have been the death of Mahdism as well, but superstitions die hard in that land of fanatics. The Mahdi's factotum, an able intriguer named Abdullah Taashi, had previously gained from his master a written declaration that he was to be Khalifa after him; he now produced this document, and fortified its influence by describing in great detail a vision in which the ghost of the Mahdi handed him a sacred hair of inestimable worth, and an oblong-shaped light which had come direct from the hands of the true Prophet, who had received it from the hands of the angel Gabriel, to whom it had been entrusted by the Almighty.

This silly story was eagerly believed by the many, the questioning few also finding it well to still their doubts in presence of death or torture. Piety and politics quickly worked hand in hand to found the impostor's authority. A mosque began to rise over the tomb of the Mahdi in his chosen capital, Omdurman; and his successor gained the support and the offerings of the thousands of pilgrims who came to visit that wonder-working shrine. Such was the basis of the new rule, which spread over the valley of the Upper and Middle Nile, and carried terror nearly to the borders of Egypt[407].

[Footnote 407: Wingate, Mahdism, pp. 228-233.]

There law and order slowly took root under the shadow of the British administration, but Egypt ceased to control the lands south of Wady Halfa. Mr. Gladstone announced that decision in the House of Commons on May 11, 1885; and those who discover traces of the perfidy of Albion even in the vacillations of her policy, maintain that that declaration was made with a view to an eventual annexation of the Sudan by England. Their contention would be still more forcible if they would prove that the Gladstone Ministry deliberately sacrificed Gordon at Khartum in order to increase the Mahdi's power and leave Egypt open to his blows, thereby gaining one more excuse for delaying the long-promised evacuation of the Nile delta by the redcoats. This was the outcome of events; and those who argue backwards should have the courage of their convictions and throw all the facts of the case into their syllogisms.

All who have any knowledge of the trend of British statesmanship in the eighties know perfectly well that the occupation of Egypt was looked on as a serious incubus. The Salisbury Cabinet sought to give effect to the promises of evacuation, and with that aim in view sent Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Constantinople in the year 1887 for the settlement of details. The year 1890 was ultimately fixed, provided that no danger should accrue to Egypt from such action, and that Great Britain should "retain a treaty-right of intervention if at any time either the internal peace or external security [of Egypt] should be seriously threatened." To this last stipulation the Sultan seemed prepared to agree. Austria, Germany, and Italy notified their complete agreement with it; but France and Russia refused to accept the British offer with this proviso added, and even influenced the Sultan so that he too finally opposed it. Their unfriendly action can only be attributed to a desire of humiliating Great Britain, and of depriving her of any effective influence in the land which, at such loss of blood and treasure to herself, she had saved from anarchy. Their opposition wrecked the proposal, and the whole position therefore remained unchanged. British officials continued to administer Egypt in spite of opposition from the French in all possible details connected with the vital question of finance[408].

[Footnote 408: England in Egypt, by Sir Alfred Milner, pp. 145-153.]

Other incidents that occurred during the years intervening between the fall of Gordon and the despatch of Sir Herbert Kitchener's expedition need not detain us here[409]. The causes which led to this new departure will be more fitly considered when we come to notice the Fashoda incident; but we may here remark that they probably arose out of the French and Belgian schemes for the partition of Central Africa. A desire to rescue the Sudan from a cruel and degrading tyranny and to offer a tardy reparation to the memory of Gordon doubtless had some weight with Ministers, as it undoubtedly had with the public. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the vox populi would have allowed the expedition but for these more sentimental considerations. But, in the view of the present writer, the Sudan expedition presents the best instance of foresight, resolve, and able execution that is to be found in the recent annals of Britain.

[Footnote 409: For the Sudan in this period see Wingate's Mahdism; Slatin's Fire and Sword in the Sudan; C. Neufeld's A Prisoner of the Khalifa.]

With the hour had come the man. During the dreary years of the "mark time" policy Colonel Kitchener had gained renown as a determined fighter and able organiser. For some time he acted as governor of Suakim, and showed his powers of command by gaining over some of the neighbouring tribes and planning an attack on Osman Digna which came very near to success. Under him and many other British officers the Egyptians and Sudanese gradually learnt confidence, and broke the spell of invincibility that so long had rested with the Dervish hordes. On all sides the power of the Khalifa was manifestly waning. The powerful Hadendowa tribe, near Suakim, which had given so much trouble in 1883-84, became neutral. On the Nile also the Dervishes lost ground. The Anglo-Egyptian troops wrested from them the post of Sarras, some thirty miles south of Wady Halfa; and the efforts of the fanatics to capture the wells along desert routes far to the east of the river were bloodily repulsed. As long as Sarras, Wady Halfa, and those wells were firmly held, Egypt was safe.

At Gedaref, not very far from Omdurman, the Khalifa sustained a severe check from the Italians (December 1893), who thereupon occupied the town of Kassala. It was not to be for any length of time. In all their enterprises against the warlike Abyssinians they completely failed; and, after sustaining the disastrous defeat of Adowa (March 1, 1896), the whole nation despaired of reaping any benefit from the Hinterland of their colony around Massowah. The new Cabinet at Rome resolved to withdraw from the districts around Kassala. On this news being communicated to the British Ministers, they sent a request to Rome that the evacuation of Kassala might be delayed until Anglo-Egyptian troops could be despatched to occupy that important station. In this way the intended withdrawal of the Italians served to strengthen the resolve of the British Government to help the Khedive in effecting the recovery of the Sudan[410].

[Footnote 410: See articles by Dr. E.J. Dillon and by Jules Simon in the Contemporary Review for April and May 1896. Kassala was handed over to an Egyptian force under Colonel Parsons in December 1897. The Egyptian Sudan, by H.S.L. Alford and W.D. Sword (1898).]

Preparations for the advance southwards went forward slowly and methodically through the summer and autumn of 1896. For the present the operations were limited to the recapture of Dongola. Sir Herbert Kitchener, then the Sirdar of the Egyptian army, was placed in command. Under him were men who had proved their worth in years of desultory fighting against the Khalifa--Broadwood, Hunter, Lewis, Macdonald, Maxwell, and many others. The training had been so long and severe as to weed out all weaklings; and the Sirdar himself was the very incarnation of that stern but salutary law of Nature which ordains the survival of the fittest. Scores of officers who failed to come up to his requirements were quietly removed; and the result was seen in a finely seasoned body of men, apt at all tasks, from staff duties to railway control. A comparison of the Egyptian army that fought at Omdurman with that which thirteen years before ran away screaming from a tenth of its number of Dervishes affords the most impressive lesson of modern times of the triumph of mind over matter, of western fortitude over the weaker side of eastern fatalism.

Such a building up of character as this implies could not take place in a month or two, for the mind of Egyptians and Sudanese was at first an utter blank as to the need of prompt obedience and still prompter action. An amusing case of their incredible slackness has been recorded. On the first parade of a new camel transport corps before Lord Kitchener, the leading driver stopped his animal, and therefore all that followed, immediately in front of the Sirdar, in order to light a cigarette. It is needless to say, the cigarette was not lighted, but the would-be smoker had his first lesson as to the superiority of the claims of collectivism over the whims of the individual[411].

[Footnote 411: Sudan Campaign, 1896-97, by "An Officer," p. 20.]

As will be seen by reference to the map on page 477, the decision to limit the campaign to Dongola involved the choice of the Nile route. If the blow had been aimed straight at Khartum, the Suakim-Berber route, or even that by way of Kassala, would have had many advantages. Above all, the river route held out the prospect of effective help from gunboats in the final attacks on Berber, Omdurman, and Khartum. Seeing, however, that the greater part of the river's course between Sarras and Dongola was broken up by rapids, the railway and the camel had at first to perform nearly the whole of the transport duties for which the Nile was there unsuited. The work of repairing the railway from Wady Haifa to Sarras, and thenceforth of constructing it through rocky wastes, amidst constant risk of Dervish raids, called into play every faculty of ingenuity, patience, and hardihood. But little by little the line crept on; the locomotives carried the piles of food, stores, and ammunition further and further south, until on June 6, 1897, the first blow was dealt by the surprise and destruction of the Dervish force at Ferket.

There a halt was called; for news came in that an unprecedented rain-storm further north had washed away the railway embankments from some of the gulleys. To make good the damage would take thirty days, it was said. The Sirdar declared that the line must be ready in twelve days; he went back to push on the work; in twelve days the line was ready. As an example of the varied difficulties that were met and overcome, we may mention one. The work of putting together a steamer, which had been brought up in sections, was stopped because an all-important nut had been lost in transit. At once the Sirdar ordered horsemen to patrol the railway line--and the nut was found. At last the vessel was ready; but on her trial trip she burst a cylinder and had to be left behind[412]. Three small steamers and four gunboats were, however, available for service in the middle of September, when the expedition moved on.

[Footnote 412: Ibid, p. 54.]

By this time the effective force numbered about 12,000 men. The Dervishes had little heart for fighting to the north of Dongola; and even at that town the Dervishes made but a poor stand, cowed as they were by the shells of the steamers and perplexed by the enveloping moves which the Sirdar ordered; 700 were taken in Dongola, and the best 300 of these were incorporated in the Sirdar's Sudanese regiments (Sept. 23, 1896).

Thus ended the first part of the expedition. Events had justified Gordon's statement that a small well-equipped expedition could speedily overthrow the Mahdi--that is, in the days of his comparative weakness before the capture of Khartum. The ease with which Dongola had been taken and the comparative cheapness of the expedition predisposed the Egyptian Government and the English public to view its extension southwards with less of disfavour.

Again the new stride forward had to be prepared for by careful preparations at the base. The question of route also caused delay. It proved to be desirable to begin a new railway from Wady Haifa across the desert to Abu Hamed at the northern tip of the deep bend which the Nile makes below Berber. To drive a line into a desert in order to attack an enemy holding a good position beyond seemed a piece of fool-hardiness. Nevertheless it was done, and at the average rate of about 1 1/4 miles a day. In due course General Hunter pushed on and captured Abu Hamed, the inhabitants of which showed little fight, being thoroughly weary of Dervish tyranny (August 6, 1897).

The arrival of gunboats after a long struggle with the rapids below Abu Hamed gave Hunter's little force a much-needed support; and before he could advance further, news reached him that the Dervishes had abandoned Berber. This step caused general surprise, and it has never been fully explained. Some have averred that a panic seized the wives of the Dervish garrison at Berber, and that when they rushed out of the town southwards their husbands followed them[413]. Certain it is that family feelings, which the Dervishes so readily outraged in others, played a leading part in many of their movements. Whatever the cause may have been, the abandonment of Berber greatly facilitated the work of Sir Herbert Kitchener. A strong force soon mustered at that town, and the route to the Red Sea was reopened by a friendly arrangement with the local sheikhs.

[Footnote 413: The Downfall of the Dervishes, by E.N. Bennett, M.A., p. 23.]

The next important barrier to the advance was the river Atbara. Here the Dervishes had a force some 18,000 strong; but before long the Sirdar received timely reinforcement of a British brigade, consisting of the Cameron and Seaforth Highlanders and the Lincolnshire and Warwickshire regiments, under General Gatacre. Various considerations led the Sirdar to wait until he could strike a telling blow. What was most to be dreaded was the adoption of Parthian tactics by the enemy. Fortunately they had constructed a zariba (a camp surrounded by thorn-bushes) on the north bank of the Atbara at a point twenty miles above its confluence with the Nile. At last, on April 7, 1898, after trying to tempt the enemy to a battle in the open, the Sirdar moved forward his 14,000 men in the hope of rushing the position soon after dawn of the following day, Good Friday.

Before the first streaks of sunrise tinged the east, the assailants moved forward to a ridge overlooking the Dervish position; but very few heads were seen above the thorny rampart in the hollow opposite. It was judged to be too risky at once to charge a superior force that clung to so strong a shelter; and for an hour and a half the British and Egyptian guns plied the zariba in the hope of bringing the fanatics out to fight. Still they kept quiet; and their fortitude during this time of carnage bore witness to their bravery and discipline[414].

[Footnote 414: The Egyptian Sudan: its Loss and Recovery, by H.S.L. Alford and W.D. Sword, ch. iv.]

At 7.45 the Sirdar ordered the advance. The British brigade held the left wing, the Camerons leading in line formation, while behind them in columns were ranged the Warwicks, Seaforths, and Lincolns, to add weight to the onset. Macdonald's and Maxwell's Egyptian and Sudanese Brigades, drawn up in lines, formed the centre and right. Squadrons of Egyptian horse and a battery of Maxims confronted the Dervish horsemen ranged along; the front of a dense scrub to the left of the zariba. As the converging lines advanced, they were met by a terrific discharge; fortunately it was aimed too high, or the loss would have been fearful. Then the Highlanders and Sudanese rushed in, tore apart the thorn bushes and began a fierce fight at close quarters. From their shelter trenches, pits, and huts the Dervishes poured in spasmodic volleys, or rushed at their assailants with spear or bayonet. Even at this the fanatics of the desert were no match for the seasoned troops of the Sirdar; and soon the beaten remnant streamed out through the scrub or over the dry bed of the Atbara. About 2500 were killed, and 2000, including Mahmud, the commander, were taken prisoners. Those who attempted to reach the fertile country round Kassala were there hunted down or captured by the Egyptian garrison that lately had arrived there.

As on previous occasions, the Sirdar now waited some time until the railway could be brought up to the points lately conquered. More gunboats were also constructed for the final stage of the expedition. The dash at Omdurman and Khartum promised to tax to the uttermost the strength of the army; but another brigade of British troops, commanded by Colonel Lyttelton, soon joined the expedition, bringing its effective strength up to 23,000 men. General Gatacre received the command of the British division. Ten gunboats, five transport steamers, and eight barges promised to secure complete command of the river banks and to provide means for transporting the army and all needful stores to the western bank of the Nile whenever the Sirdar judged it to be advisable. The midsummer rains in the equatorial districts now made their influence felt, and in the middle of August the Nile covered the sandbanks and rocks that made navigation dangerous at the time of "low Nile." In the last week of that month all was ready for the long and carefully prepared advance. The infantry travelled in steamers or barges as far as the foot of the Shabluka, or Sixth Cataract, and this method of advance left the Dervishes in some doubt by which bank the final advance would be made.

By an unexpected piece of good fortune the Dervishes had evacuated the rocky heights of the Shabluka gorge. This was matter for rejoicing. There the Nile, which above and below is a mile wide, narrows to a channel of little more than a hundred yards in width. It is the natural defence of Khartum on the north. The strategy of the Khalifa was here again inexplicable, as also was his abandonment of the ridge at Kerreri, some seven miles north of Omdurman. Mr. Bennett Burleigh in his account of the campaign states that the Khalifa had repaired thither once a year to give thanks for the triumph about to be gained there.

At last on September 1, on topping the Kerreri ridge, the invaders caught their first glimpse of Omdurman. Already the gunboats were steaming up to the Mahdist capital to throw in their first shells. They speedily dismounted several guns, and one of the shells tore away a large portion of the gaudy cupola that covered the Mahdi's tomb. Apart from this portent, nothing of moment was done on that day; but it seems probable that the bombardment led the Khalifa to hazard an attack on the invaders in the desert on the side away from the Nile. Nearer to the Sirdar's main force the skirmishing of the 21st Lancers, new to war but eager to "win their spurs," was answered by angry but impotent charges of the Khalifa's horse and foot, until at sunset both sides retired for the night's rest.

The Anglo-Egyptian force made a zariba around the village of el-Gennuaia on the river bank; and there, in full expectation of a night attack, they sought what slumber was to be had. What with a panic rush of Sudanese servants and the stampede of an angry camel, the night wore away uneasily; but there was no charge of Dervishes such as might have carried death to the heart of that small zariba. It is said that the Sirdar had passed the hint to some trusty spies to pretend to be deserters and warn the enemy that he was going to attack them by night. If this be so, spies have never done better service.

When the first glimmer of dawn came on September 2, every man felt instinctively that the Khalifa had thrown away his last chance. Yet few were prepared for the crowning act of madness. Every one feared that he would hold fast to Omdurman and fight the new crusaders from house to house. Possibly the seeming weakness of the zariba tempted him to a concentric attack from the Kerreri Hills and the ridge which stretches on both sides of the steep slopes of the hill, Gebel Surgham. A glance at the accompanying plan will show that the position was such as to tempt a confident enemy. The Sirdar also manoeuvred so as to bring on an attack. He sent out the Egyptian cavalry and camel corps soon after dawn to the plain lying between Gebel Surgham and Omdurman to lure on the Khalifa's men.

The device was completely successful. Believing that they could catch the horsemen in the rocky ridge alongside of Gebel Surgham, the Dervishes came forth from their capital in swarms, pressed them hard, and inflicted some losses. Retiring in good order, the cavalry drew on the eager hordes, until about 6.30 A.M. the white glint of their gibbehs, or tunics, showed thickly above the tawny slopes on either side of Gebel Surgham. On they came in unnumbered throngs, until, pressing northwards along the sky-line, their lines also topped the Kerreri Hills to the north of the zariba. Their aim was obvious: they intended to surround the invaders, pen them up in their zariba, and slaughter them there. To all who did not know the value of the central position in war and the power of modern weapons, the attack seemed to promise complete success. The invaders were 1300 miles away from Cairo and defeat would mean destruction.

Religious zeal lent strength to the onset. From the converging crescent of the Mahdists a sound as of a dim murmur was wafted to the zariba. Little by little it deepened to a hoarse roar, as the host surged on, chanting the pious invocations that so often had struck terror into the Egyptians. Now they heard the threatening din with hearts unmoved; nay, with spirits longing for revenge for untold wrongs and insults. Thus for some minutes in that vast amphitheatre the discipline and calm confidence of the West stood quietly facing the fanatic fury of the East. Two worlds were there embattled: the world of Mohammedanism and the world of Christian civilisation; the empire of untutored force and the empire of mind.

At last, after some minutes of tense expectancy, the cannon opened fire, and speedily gaps were seen in the white masses. Yet the crescent never slackened its advance, except when groups halted to fire their muskets at impossible ranges. Waving their flags and intoning their prayers, the Dervishes charged on in utter scorn of death; but when their ranks came within range of the musketry fire, they went down like swathes of grass under the scythe. Then was seen a marvellous sight. When the dead were falling their fastest, a band of about 150 Dervish horsemen formed near the Khalifa's dark-green standard in the centre and rushed across the fire zone, determined to snatch at triumph or gain the sensuous joys of the Moslem paradise. None of them rode far.

Only on the north, where the camel-corps fell into an awkward plight among the rocks of the Kerreri slope, had the attack any chance of success; and there the shells of one of the six protecting gunboats helped to check the assailants. On this side, too, Colonel Broadwood and his Egyptian cavalry did excellent service by leading no small part of the Dervish left away from the attack on the zariba. At the middle of the fiery crescent the assailants did some execution by firing from a dip in the ground some 400 yards away; but their attempts to rush the intervening space all ended in mere slaughter. Not long after eight o'clock the Khalifa, seeing the hopelessness of attempting to cross the zone of fire around el-Gennuaia, now thickly strewn with his dead, drew off the survivors beyond the ridge of Gebel Surgham; and those who had followed Broadwood's horse also gave up their futile pursuit, and began to muster on the Kerreri ridge.

The Sirdar now sought to force on a fight in the open; and with this aim in view commanded a general advance on Omdurman. In order, as it would seem, to keep a fighting formation that would impose respect on the bands of Dervishes on the Kerreri Hills, he adopted the formation known as echelon of brigades from the left. Macdonald's Sudanese brigade, which held the northern face of the zariba, was therefore compelled to swing round and march diagonally towards Gebel Surgham; and, having a longer space to cover than the other brigades, it soon fell behind them.

For the present, however, the brunt of the danger fell, not on Macdonald, but on the vanguard. The 21st Lancers had been sent forward over the ridge between Gebel Surgham and the Nile with orders to reconnoitre, and, if possible, to head the Dervishes away from their city. Throwing out scouts, they rode over the ridge, but soon afterwards came upon a steep and therefore concealed khor or gulley whence a large body of concealed Dervishes poured a sharp fire[415]. At once Colonel Martin ordered his men to dash at the enemy. Eagerly the troopers obeyed the order and jumped their horses down the slope into the mass of furious fanatics below; these slashed to pieces every one that fell, and viciously sought to hamstring the horses from behind. Pushing through the mass, the lancers scrambled up the further bank, re-formed, and rushed at the groups beyond; after thrusting these aside, they betook themselves to less dramatic but more effective methods. Dismounting, they opened a rapid and very effective fire from their carbines on the throngs that still clustered in or near the gulley. The charge, though a fine display of British pluck, cost the horsemen dear: out of a total of 320 men 60 were killed and wounded; 119 horses were killed or made useless[416].

[Footnote 415: Some accounts state that the Lancers had no scouts, but "an officer" denies this (Sudan Campaign, 1896-99, p. 198).]

[Footnote 416: The general opinion of the army was that the charge of the Lancers "was magnificent, but was not war." See G.W. Steevens' With Kitchener to Khartum, ch. xxxii.]

Meanwhile, Macdonald's brigade, consisting of one Egyptian and three Sudanese battalions, stood on the brink of disaster. The bands from the Kerreri Hills were secretly preparing to charge its rear, while masses of the Khalifa's main following turned back, rounded the western spurs of Gebel Surgham, and threatened to envelop its right flank. The Sirdar, on seeing the danger, ordered Wauchope's brigade to turn back to the help of Macdonald, while Maxwell's Sudanese, swarming up the eastern slopes of Gebel Surgham, poured deadly volleys on the Khalifa's following. Collinson's division and the camel corps were ordered to advance from the neighbourhood of the zariba and support Macdonald on that side. Before these dispositions were complete, that sturdy Scotsman and his Sudanese felt the full weight of the Khalifa's onset. Excited beyond measure, Macdonald's men broke into spasmodic firing as the enemy came on; the deployment into line was thereby disordered, and it needed all Macdonald's power of command to make good the line. His steadiness stiffened the defence, and before the potent charm of western discipline the Khalifa's onset died away.

But now the storm cloud gathering in the rear burst with unexpected fury. Masses of men led by the Khalifa's son, the Sheikh ed Din, rushed down the Kerreri slopes and threatened to overwhelm the brigade. Again there was seen a proof of the ascendancy of mind over brute force. At once Macdonald ordered the left part of his line to wheel round, keeping the right as pivot, so that the whole speedily formed two fronts resembling a capital letter V, pointing outwards to the two hostile forces. Those who saw the movement wondered alike at the masterly resolve, the steadiness of execution, and the fanatical bravery which threatened to make it all of no avail. On came the white swarms of Arabs from the north, until the Sudanese firing once more became wild and ineffective; but, as the ammunition of the blacks ran low and they prepared to trust to the bayonet, the nearest unit of the British division, the Lincolns, doubled up, prolonged Macdonald's line to the right, and poured volley upon volley obliquely into the surging flood. It slackened, stood still, and then slowly ebbed. Macdonald's coolness and the timely arrival of the Lincolns undoubtedly averted a serious disaster[417].

[Footnote 417: See Mr. Winston Churchill's The River War, vol. ii. pp. 160-163, for the help given by the Lincolns.]

Meanwhile, the Khalifa's main force had been held in check and decimated by the artillery now planted on Gebel Surgham and by the fire of the brigades on or near its slopes; so that about eleven o'clock the Sirdar's lines could everywhere advance. After beating off a desperate charge of Baggara horsemen from the west, Macdonald unbent his brigade and drove back the sullen hordes of ed Din to the western spurs of the Kerreri Hills, where they were harassed by Broadwood's horse. All was now ended, except at the centre of the Khalifa's force, where a faithful band clustered about the dark-green standard of their leader and chanted defiance to the infidels till one by one they fell. The chief himself, unworthy object of this devotion, fled away on a swift dromedary some time before the last group of stalwarts bit the sand.

Despite the terrible heat and the thirst of his men, the Sirdar allowed only a brief rest before he resumed the march on Omdurman. Leaving no time for the bulk of the Dervish survivors to reach their capital, he pushed on at the head of Maxwell's brigade, while once more the shells of the gunboats spread terror in the city. The news brought by a few runaways and the sight of the Khalifa's standard carried behind the Egyptian ensign dispelled all hopes of resisting the disciplined Sudanese battalions; and, in order to clinch matters, the Sirdar with splendid courage rode at the head of the brigade to summon the city to surrender. Through the clusters of hovels on the outskirts he rode on despite the protests of his staff against any needless exposure of his life. He rightly counted on the effect which such boldness on the part of the chief must have on an undecided populace. Fanatics here and there fired on the conquerors, but the news of the Khalifa's cowardly flight from the city soon decided the wavering mass to bow before the inscrutable decrees of fate, and ask for backsheesh from the victors.

Thus was Omdurman taken. Neufeld, an Austrian trader, and some Greeks and nuns who had been in captivity for several years, were at once set free. It was afterwards estimated that about 10,000 Dervishes perished in the battle; very many died of their wounds upon the field or were bayoneted owing to their persistence in firing on the victors. This episode formed the darkest side of the triumph; but it was malignantly magnified by some Continental journals into a wholesale slaughter. This is false. Omdurman will bear comparison with Skobeleff's victory at Denghil Tepé at all points.

Two days after his triumph the Sirdar ordered a parade opposite the ruins of the palace in Khartum where Gordon had met his doom. The funeral service held there in memory of the dead hero was, perhaps, the most affecting scene that this generation has witnessed. Detachments of most of the regiments of the rescue force formed a semicircle round the Sirdar; and by his side stood a group of war-worn officers, who with him had toiled for years in order to see this day. The funeral service was intoned; the solemn assembly sang Gordon's favourite hymn, "Abide with me," and the Scottish pipes wailed their lament for the lost chieftain. Few eyes were undimmed by tears at the close of this service, a slight but affecting reparation for the delays and blunders of fourteen years before. Then the Union Jack and the Egyptian Crescent flag were hoisted and received a salute of 21 guns.

The recovery of the Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain was not to pass unchallenged. All along France had viewed the reconquest of the valley of the upper Nile with ill-concealed jealousy, and some persons have maintained that the French Government was not a stranger to designs hatched in France for helping the Khalifa[418]. Now that these questions have been happily buried by the Anglo-French agreement of the year 1904, it would be foolish to recount all that was said amidst the excitements of the year 1898. Some reference must, however, be made to the Fashoda incident, which for a short space threatened to bring Great Britain and France to an open rupture.

[Footnote 418: See an unsigned article in the Contemporary Review for Dec. 1897.]

On September 5, a steamer, flying the white flag, reached Omdurman. The ex-Dervish captain brought the news that at Fashoda he had been fired upon by white men bearing a strange flag. The Sirdar divined the truth, namely, that a French expedition under Major (now Colonel) Marchand must have made its way from the Congo to the White Nile at Fashoda with the aim of annexing that district for France.

Now that the dust of controversy has cleared away, we can see facts in their true proportions, especially as the work recently published by M. de Freycinet and the revelations of Colonel Marchand have thrown more light on the affair. Briefly stated, the French case is as follows. Mr. Gladstone on May 11, 1885, declared officially that Egypt limited her sway to a line drawn through Wady Haifa. The authority of the Khedive over the Sudan therefore ceased, though this did not imply the cessation of the Sultan's suzerainty in those regions. Further, England had acted as if the Sudan were no man's land by appropriating the southernmost part in accordance with the Anglo-German agreement of July I, 1890; and Uganda became a British Protectorate in August 1894. The French protested against this extension of British influence over the Upper Nile; and we must admit that, in regard to international law, they were right. The power to will away that district lay with the Sultan, the Khedive's claims having practically lapsed. Germany, it is true, agreed not to contest the annexation of Uganda, but France did contest it.

The Republic also entered a protest against the Anglo-Congolese Convention of May 12, 1894, whereby, in return for the acquisition of the right bank of the Upper Nile, England ceded to the Congo Free State the left bank[419]. That compact was accordingly withdrawn, and on August 14, 1894, France secured from the Free State the recognition of her claims to the left bank of the Nile with the exception of the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. This action on the part of France implied a desire on her part to appropriate these lands, and to contest the British claim to the right bank. In regard to law, she was justified in so doing; and had she, acting as the mandatory of the Sultan, sent an expedition from the Congo to the Upper Nile, her conduct in proclaiming a Turco-Frankish condominium would have been unexceptionable. That of Britain was open to question, seeing that we practically ignored the Sultan[420] and acted (so far as is known) on our own initiative in reversing the policy of abandonment officially announced in May 1885. From the standpoint of equity, however, the Khedive had the first claim to the territories then given up under stress of circumstances; and the Power that helped him to regain the heritage of his sires obviously had a strong claim to consideration so long as it acted with the full consent of that potentate.

[Footnote 419: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 2 (1898), pp. 13-14.]

[Footnote 420: The Earl of Kimberley's reply of Aug. 14, 1894, to M. Hanotaux, is very weak on this topic. Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 2 (1898), pp. 14-15.]

The British Cabinet, that of Lord Rosebery, frankly proclaimed its determination to champion the claims of the Khedive against all comers, Sir Edward Grey declaring officially in the debate of March 28, 1895, that the despatch of a French expedition to the Upper Nile would be "an unfriendly act[421]." We know now, through the revelations made by Colonel Marchand in the Matin of June 20, 1905, that in June 1895 he had pressed the French Government to intervene in that quarter; but it did little, relying (so M. de Freycinet states) on the compact of August 14, 1894, and not, apparently, on any mandate from the Sultan. If so, it had less right to intervene than the British Government had in virtue of its close connection with the Khedive. As a matter of fact, both Powers lacked an authoritative mandate and acted in accordance with their own interests. It is therefore futile to appeal to law, as M. de Freycinet has done.

[Footnote 421: Ibid. p. 18.]

It remained to see which of the two would act the more efficiently. M. Marchand states that his plan of action was approved by the French Minister for the Colonies, M. Berthelot, on November 16, 1895; but little came of it until the news of the preparations for the Anglo-Egyptian Expedition reached Paris. It would be interesting to hear what Lord Rosebery and Sir Edward Grey would say to this. For the present we may affirm with some confidence that the tidings of the Franco-Congolese compact of August 1894 and of expeditions sent under Monteil and Liotard towards the Nile basin must have furnished the real motive for the despatch of the Sirdar's army on the expedition to Dongola. That event in its turn aroused angry feelings at Paris, and M. Berthelot went so far as to inform Lord Salisbury that he would not hold himself responsible for events that might occur if the expedition up the Nile were persisted in. After giving this brusque but useful warning of the importance which France attached to the Upper Nile, M. Berthelot quitted office, and M. Bourgeois, the Prime Minister, took the portfolio for foreign affairs. He pushed on the Marchand expedition; so also did his successor, M. Hanotaux, in the Méline Cabinet which speedily supervened.

Marchand left Marseilles on June 25, 1896, to join his expeditionary force, then being prepared in the French Congo. It is needless to detail the struggles of the gallant band. After battling for two years with the rapids, swamps, forests, and mountains of Eastern Congoland and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, he brought his flotilla down to the White Nile, thence up its course to Fashoda, where he hoisted the tricolour (July 12, 1898). His men strengthened the old Egyptian fort, and beat off an attack of the Dervishes.

Nevertheless they had only half succeeded, for they relied on the approach of a French Mission from the east by way of Abyssinia. A Prince of the House of Orleans had been working hard to this end, but owing to the hostility of the natives of Southern Abyssinia that expedition had to fall back on Kukong. A Russian officer, Colonel Artomoroff, had struggled on down the River Sobat, but he and his band also had to retire[422]. The purport of these Franco-Russian designs is not yet known; but even so, we can see that the situation was one of great peril. Had the French and Russian officers from Abyssinia joined hands with Marchand at Fashoda, their Governments might have made it a point of honour to remain, and to claim for France a belt of territory extending from the confines of the French Congo eastwards to Obock on the Red Sea.

[Footnote 422: Marchand l'Africain, by C. Castellani, pp. 279-280. The author reveals his malice by the statement (p. 293) that the Sirdar, after the battle of Omdurman, ordered 14,000 Dervish wounded to be éventrés.]

As it was, Marchand and his heroic little band were in much danger from the Dervishes when the Sirdar and his force steamed up to Fashoda. The interview between the two chiefs at that place was of historic interest. Sir Herbert Kitchener congratulated the Major on his triumph of exploration, but claimed that he must plant the flag of the Khedive at Fashoda. M. Marchand declared that he would hoist it himself over the village. "Over the fort, Major," replied the Sirdar. "I cannot permit it," exclaimed the Major, "as the French flag is there." A reference by the Sirdar to his superiority of force produced no effect, the French commander stating that if it were used he and his men would die at their posts. He, however, requested the Sirdar to let the matter be referred to the Government at Paris, to which Sir Herbert assented. After exchanging courteous gifts they parted, the Sirdar leaving an Egyptian force in the village, and lodging a written protest against the presence of the French force[423]. He then proceeded up stream to the Sobat tributary, on the banks of which at Nassar he left half of a Sudanese battalion to bar the road on that side to geographical explorers provided with flags. He then returned to Khartum.

[Footnote 423: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 2 (1898), p. 9; No. 3 (1898), pp. 3-4.]

The sequel is well known. Lord Salisbury's Government behaved with unexpected firmness, asserting that the overthrow of the Mahdi brought again under the Egyptian flag all the lands which that leader had for a time occupied. The claim was not wholly convincing in the sphere of logic; but the victory of Omdurman gave it force. Clearly, then, whether Major Marchand was an emissary of civilisation or a pioneer of French rule, he had no locus standi on the Nile. The French Government before long gave way and recalled Major Marchand, who returned to France by way of Cairo. This tame end to what was a heroic struggle to extend French influence greatly incensed the major; and at Cairo he made a speech, declaring that for the present France was worsted in the valley of the Nile, but the day might come when she would be supreme.

It is generally believed that France gave way at this juncture partly because her navy was known to be unequal to a conflict with that of Great Britain, but also because Franco-German relations were none of the best. Or, in the language of the Parisian boulevards: "How do we know that while we are fighting the British for the Nile valley, Germany will not invade Lorraine?" As to the influences emanating from St. Petersburg contradictory statements have been made. Rumour asserted that the Czar sought to moderate the irritation in France and to bring about a peaceful settlement of the dispute; and this story won general acceptance. The astonishment was therefore great when, in the early part of the Russo-Japanese war, the Paris Figaro published documents which seemed to prove that he had assured the French Government of his determination to fulfil the terms of the alliance if matters came to the sword.

There we must leave the affair, merely noting that the Anglo-French agreement of March 1899 peaceably ended the dispute and placed the whole of the Egyptian Sudan, together with the Bahr-el-Ghazal district and the greater part of the Libyan Desert, west of Egypt, under the Anglo-Egyptian sphere of influence. (See map at the end of this volume.)

The battle of Omdurman therefore ranks with the most decisive in modern history, not only in a military sense, but also because it extended British influence up the Nile valley as far as Uganda. Had French statesmen and M. Marchand achieved their aims, there is little doubt that a solid wedge would have been driven through north-central Africa from west to east, from the Ubangi Province of French Congoland to the mouth of the Red Sea. The Sirdar's triumph came just in time to thwart this design and to place in the hands that administered Egypt the control of the waters whence that land draws its life. Without crediting the stories that were put forth in the French Press as to the possibility of France damming up the Nile at Fashoda and diverting its floods into the Bahr-el-Ghazal district, we may recognise that the control of that river by Egypt is a vital necessity, and that the nation which helped the Khedive to regain that control thereby established one more claim to a close partnership in the administration at Cairo. The reasonableness of that claim was finally admitted by France in the Anglo-French agreement of the year 1904.

That treaty set the seal, apparently, on a series of efforts of a strangely mixed character. The control of bondholders, the ill-advised strivings of Arabi, the armed intervention undertaken by Sir Beauchamp Seymour and Sir Garnet Wolseley, the forlorn hope of Gordon's Mission to Khartum, the fanaticism of the Mahdists, the diplomatic skill of Lord Cromer, the covert opposition of France and the Sultan, and the organising genius of Lord Kitchener--such is the medley of influences, ranging from the basest up to the noblest of which human nature is capable, that served to draw the Government of Great Britain deeper and deeper into the meshes of the Egyptian Question, until the heroism, skill, and stubbornness of a few of her sons brought about results which would now astonish those who early in the eighties tardily put forth the first timid efforts at intervention.

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