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Once my position as a Mahdist was fully established, I should be able to join any party going towards Khartoum, and should avoid all questioning; whereas, if I were to journey alone, I should be asked by every band I met where I came from; and might, at any moment, be detected, if there happened to be any from the village I should name as my abode.
But the enemy's horse came out in strength, supported by footmen, and threatened them, so Broadwood's men had to fall back. Four of the Sirdar's gunboats, which had meanwhile steamed ahead, were briskly battering the Mahdist riverside forts. These works, like those abandoned to us at Shabluka Cataract and Kerreri, were strong, well-built earthen bastions, with flanking curtains.
He had gone to Khartoum to arrange the withdrawal of the troops from the Soudan, the Government having decided, if possible, to live at peace with the new Mahdist dictatorship; and he went through the deserts almost as solitary as a bird, on a journey as lonely as his end. He was cut off and besieged in Khartoum by the Mahdist armies, and fell with the falling city.
During a decade and a half, while Mahdism controlled the country, there flourished a tyranny which for cruelty, blood-thirstiness, unintelligence, and wanton destructiveness surpassed anything which a civilized people can even imagine. The keystones of the Mahdist party were religious intolerance and slavery, with murder and the most abominable cruelty as the method of obtaining each.
He fell into a Mahdist ambush at El Obeid, and after a desperate struggle, lasting three days, his force was almost completely annihilated, Hicks being the last to die. Very few of his men escaped to tell the tale of their defeat. To relieve these towns, Baker Pasha, a daring and able British leader, was sent with a force of 3,650 men.
The troops of Wolseley were aided by a camel corps of one thousand men, who were organised to make a rush across the desert. On the 16th of January, 1885, the camel troops came up with the enemy and fought the decisive battle of Matammeh. The Mahdist troops were mown down by rifles and Gatling-guns as soon as they were within short range.
Ismail deposed: Tewfik Pasha: Revolt of Arabi Pasha: Lord Wolseley and the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir: The Mahdist Rising: General Gordon in the Sudan: Death of Gordon: The Sudan abandoned and re-conquered: Battle of Onidurman: Khartum College: Financial Stability: Abbas II.: Education, Law, and the improved condition of the Fellaheen: The Caisse de la Dette
"Zaki will be as silent as the grave." "Well, I am going up dressed as a Mahdist. I can speak the Baggara tongue well. I am going to try and find out what they are going to do: whether they will march to Berber, or come here, or remain at Metemmeh." Zaki stared at his master, in speechless amazement. Gregory could not help smiling at the expression of his face.
On this ground, and in order to remove the danger of a return of barbarism, which was threatened by frequent Mahdist attacks, and finally in order to rescue captives who were enduring terrible sufferings in the hands of the Mahdi, it appeared that the reconquest of the Soudan must be undertaken as the inevitable sequel to the reorganisation of Egypt.
Trench heard of a man slipping out from Wadi Halfa, crossing the Nile and wandering with the assumed manner of a lunatic southwards, starving and waterless, until one day he was snapped up by a Mahdist caravan and dragged to Dongola as a spy. And at Dongola things had happened of which the mere mention made Trench shake.
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