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Updated: May 9, 2025
As there was no further danger, the Soudanese marched back again and joined the other battalions, the garrisons on the river were re-established, and part of the force returned to Omdurman. The Sirdar had returned from Fashoda before Gregory came back, and had left almost immediately for Cairo.
As peace and confidence had been thoroughly established among the Shillooks, I determined to send for the governor of Fashoda, and to introduce him personally to the old king, Quat Kare, whom he had officially reported to be dead. When he arrived, I received him beneath the tree which formed my divan, and after a preliminary pipe and coffee, we proceeded to business.
The first of these forts or stations he established at the entrance of the Saubat river, and while there he made a discovery which showed how the slave-trade flourished with such impunity. He seized some letters from a slave-dealer to the Egyptian commander at Fashoda, stating that he was bringing him the slaves he wanted for himself and many others, besides 2000 cows.
Although everybody engaged in the Fashoda expedition was repeatedly warned not to disclose anything about it, and to forget all they had seen or heard, I was enabled very shortly after the event to wire, day by day, the whole story of the enterprise.
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.
My personal interference has rendered the slave trade of the White Nile impossible so long as the government is determined that it shall be impossible. At the close of the expedition, the higher officials had been changed, and the country appeared to be in good hands. The governor of Fashoda, Jusef Effendi, had captured the slave vessels of Abou Saood according to my instructions.
With Lord Roberts came, as Chief of the Staff, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, a hard and ready man who for fifteen years had been scouring the Nile. All his war service had been in Egypt, where recently he had not only smashed the dervishes and secured the Soudan, but by his diplomatic tact in the Fashoda affair had relaxed the tension of a dangerous international situation.
In answer to my question, whether a war with England would be popular in France, the Minister said: "The French people will be ready for any sacrifice if we make Fashoda our war-cry. British insolence never showed itself more brutal and insulting than over this affair. Our brave Marchand was on the spot with a superior force, and France was within her rights.
The comments of the French press on Britain's attitude, despite their studied reserve and conventional phraseology, bordered on recrimination and hinted at a possible cooling of friendship between the two nations, and in the course of the controversy the evil-omened word "Fashoda" was pronounced.
"You are authorised to settle the composition of these two forces in consultation with the Sirdar. "Sir Herbert Kitchener should in person command the White Nile flotilla as far as Fashoda, and may take with him a small body of British troops, should you concur with him in thinking such a course desirable.
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