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Updated: April 30, 2025
The re-occupation of the province of Dongola in 1896, freed the Nile up to Merawi, and gave the disaffected Kababish, Jaalin and riverain tribesmen a chance of reverting to their allegiance to the Khedive. It also enabled the Sirdar to pass his gunboats farther up the river. Another gain issuing from the forward movement was that his right was secured from serious attack.
Lewis's brigade were not even able to assist so much, and such outside help as came in time to be of use was in the first instance from the guns of Major Williams' and another battery, and the Maxims upon the left near Surgham hurried forward by the Sirdar himself, as I saw.
I have the honour to forward a despatch from Major-General Sir H. Kitchener, K.C.B., Sirdar, describing the later phases of the Soudan Campaign, and the final action on 2nd September.
The Sirdar now conceived, and at once began to carry out, the bold idea of laying a railway from Wady Haifa across the desert to Abu Hamed, and thence to Berber and to Dakhala, and the junction of the Nile and the Atbara, a distance of nearly 400 miles.
Kurruck Singh, the son of Runjeet Singh, and the inheritor of an overflowing treasury and a disciplined and numerous army, was an uneducated idiot, and easily induced to frown upon his father's able favourite, the Rajah Dhyan Singh, and to invest his own confidential adviser, the Sirdar Cheyk Singh, with the authority, if not the title, of his prime-minister.
In this year Sir Horatio Kitchener, who had had a long experience both of Egypt and the Sudan, having been on active service in one or the other since 1882, became Sirdar in succession to Sir F. Grenfell, who was appointed to the command of the British forces in Egypt, and he set himself to the task of the re-conquest of the Sudan.
The land forces numbered over 8000 British troops and about 15,000 Egyptian; in addition to this the Sirdar had a river flotilla of eleven steamboats well armed, besides iron barges especially made for transport of troops, and innumerable native craft.
And the four consummate knaves do set down the palkee, and shift the pads on their shoulders; while the sirdar slips round to the sliding-door, and timidly intruding his sweaty phiz, at an opening sufficiently narrow to guard his nose against assault from within, but wide enough to give us a glimpse, through an out-bursting cloud of cheroot-smoke, of a pair of stout legs encased in white duck, with the neatest of light pumps at the end of them, says:
Next day the Sirdar, with his staff and General Hunter, came up; and, on the following morning, made a triumphant entry into the town, followed by the Soudanese brigade. Berber was prepared to do honour to the occasion. Flags waved, coloured cloths and women's garments hung from the windows, and the whole population lined the streets, and received the conquerors with cries of welcome and triumph.
News was sent back to the Sirdar that the enemy's army were coming on en masse, and step by step Colonel Martin's troops were retired towards Mount Surgham and the river. Our retreat was pressed, and the regiment had to mount and trot off behind the shelter of Surgham to avoid the vigorous advance of the dervishes.
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