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Updated: May 19, 2025
It was attempted in the face of a bombardment that would have shaken a city, and a fusilade that ought to have mown down every blade of halfa-grass near. But Maxwell's men seemed not quite to get the range. The flag and flagstaff were riddled with bullet holes, and the dead were being piled around. Still, dervish after dervish sprang to uphold the black banner of Mahdism.
On his arrival he came to the conclusion that the position was not untenable, and took no steps to evacuate. There was much dangerous delay and vacillation; and in the end Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and killed by the bands of the Mahdi, before a relief force could reach him. But this triumph of Mahdism increased its menace to Egypt.
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.
His successor proved a false prophet and is dead also. Mahdism is at an end, and now our object will be to restore peace and prosperity to the land. "In a short time, all the prisoners will be released. Those who choose will be allowed to enter our service. The rest can return to their homes. We bear no enmity against them. They fought under the orders of their chiefs, and fought bravely and well.
The whirligig of time had transformed the equality preachings, and "unity in the faith" of Mahdism into the unbridled supremacy of the Baggara and especially the Taaisha branch of that sept over all the people of the Soudan. They alone were licensed to rob, ravish and murder with impunity. It was the natural sequence of lawless society.
The men belonging to the tribes that had renounced Mahdism Jaalin and others were at once allowed to leave for their homes; and numbers of others, whose appearance was peaceful, and who had at once given up their arms, were also released; but there were still no fewer than eleven thousand prisoners, among them some of the Khalifa's emirs.
Berber, Dongola, and Tokar had shared the same fate; and the Anglo-Egyptian army, leaving the Sudan to its fate, had fallen back to Wady Haifa, at which the southern frontier of Egypt was fixed, and which became a barrier against which the tide of Mahdism was to rush in vain.
Meanwhile the preparations for the final campaign against Mahdism were not slackened. Vast quantities of supplies and material of war were stored at Dakhala. Outposts were pushed forward and Shendy was occupied, whilst Metemmeh was held by friendly Jaalin tribesmen, who had suffered much at the Khalifa's hands.
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.
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