MILITARY OPERATIONS. ]
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state of Kassala—held by Italy at British suggestion, and now closely invested by the dervishes—made it not only desirable but necessary to take immediate action. On the 14th March 1896 Major-General Sir H Kitchener, who succeeded Sir Francis Grenfell as Sirdar of the Egyptian army in 1892, received orders to reoccupy Akasheh, 50 miles south of Sarras, and to carry the railway on from Sarras. Subsequent operations were to depend upon the amount of resistance he encountered. On the 20th March Akasheh was occupied without opposition by an advanced column of Egyptian troops under Major J. Oolhnson, who formed an entrenched camp there. The reserves of the Egyptian army were called out, and responded with alacrity. The troops were concentrated at Wadi Haifa; the railway reconstruction, under Lieutenant E. P Girouard, R.E., pushed southward; and a telegraph line followed the advance. At the commencement of the campaign the Egyptian army, including reserves, consisted of 16 battalions of infantry, of which e’ were Sudanese, 10 squadrons, of cavalry, 5 batteries of artillery, 3 companies of garrison artillery, and 8 companies of camel corps, and it possessed 13 gunboats for river work. _ Colonel L. Bundle was Chief of the Staff; Major R. Wingate was head of the Intelligence Department, with Slatin Bey as his assistant; and Colonel A. Hunter was in command of Sarras, and south. The 1st battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment moved up from Cairo to join the Egyptian army. In the meantime the advance to Akasheh had already relieved the pressure at Kassala, Osman Digna having withdrawn a considerable force from the investing army and proceeded with it to Suakin. To meet Osman Digna’s movement Lieutenant-Colonel G. E. Lloyd, the Suakin commandant, advanced to the Taroi Wells, nineteen miles south of Suakin, on the 15th April to co-operate with the Friendlies, and with Major H. M. Sidney, advancing with a small force from Tokar. His cavalry, under Major Fenwick, went out to look for Sidney’s force, and were surprised by a large number of dervishes. Fenwick, with some 40 officers and men, seized an isolated hill and held it through the night, repulsing the dervishes, who were the same night driven back with such heavy loss in attacking Lloyd’s zeriba that they retired to the hills, and comparative quiet again reigned at Suakin. At the end of May an Indian brigade arrived for garrison duty, and the Egyptian troops were released for service on the Nile. The dervishes first came in contact with the Egyptian cavalry on the Nile near Akasheh, on the 1st May, and were repulsed. The army concentrated at Akasheh early in June, and on the 6th Kitchener moved to the attack of Firket, 16 miles away, where the Emir Hamuda, with 3000 men, was encamped. The attack was made in two columns: one, under Colonel Hunter, marching along the river-bank, approached Firket from the north; while the other, under Major Burn-Murdoch, making a detour through the desert, approached it from the south. The co-operation of the two columns was admirably timed, and on the morning of the 7th the dervish camp was surrounded, and, after a sharp fight, Hamuda and many emirs and about 1000 men were killed and 500 prisoners taken. The dash and discipline of the Egyptian troops in this victory were a good augury for the future. By the end of June the railway was advanced beyond Akasheh, and headquarters were at Kosheh, 10 miles farther south. Cholera and fever were busy both with the North Staffordshire Regiment at Gemai, whither they had been moved on its approach, and with the Egyptian troops at the front, and carried off many officers and men. The railway reached Kosheh early in August; the cholera
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717 disappeared, and stores were collected and arrangements steadily made for a farther advance. The North Staffordshire moved up to the front, and in September the army moved on Kerma, which was found to be evacuated, the dervishes having crossed the river to Hafir. There they were attacked by the gunboats and Kitchener’s artillery from the opposite bank, and forced to retire, with their commander, Wad Bishara, seriously wounded. Dongola was bombarded by the gunboats and captured by the army on the 23rd September. Bishara and his men retreated, but were pursued by the Egyptians until the retreat became a hopeless rout. Guns, small arms, and ammunition, with large stores of grain and dates, were captured, many prisoners taken, while hundreds surrendered voluntarily, among them a brother of the Emir Wad en Nejumi. The dervish Dongola army had practically ceased to exist. Debbeh was seized on the 3rd October, Korti and Merawi occupied soon after, and the principal sheiks came in and submitted to the Sirdar. The Dongola campaign was over, and the province recovered to Egypt. The Indian brigade at Suakin returned to India, and was replaced by Egyptians. The North Staffordshire returned to Cairo. The work of consolidation began, and preparations were made for a farther advance when everything should be ready. The railway up the right bank of the Nile was continued to Kermah, in order to evade the difficulties of the 3rd Cataract; but the Sirdar had conceived the bold project of cutting off the great angle of the Nile from Wadi Haifa to Abu Hamed, involving nearly 600 miles of navigation and including the Fourth Cataract, by Tbe Sudan constructing a railway across the Nubian desert, c*t?*aiga’ and so bringing his base at Wadi Haifa within a few hours of his force, when it should have advanced to Abu Hamed, instead of ten days. Early in 1897 this new line of railway was commenced from Wadi Haifa across the great Nubian desert 230 miles to Abu Hamed. The first-mentioned line reached Kerma in May, and by July the second had advanced 130 miles into the desert towards Abu Hamed, when it became necessary, before it was carried farther, to secure that terminus by an advance from Merawi. In the meantime the Khalifa was not idle. He occupied Abu Klea wells and Metemmeh; recalled the Emir Ibrahim Khalil, with 4000 men, from the Ghezira; brought to Omdurman the army of the west under Mahmud some 10,000 men; entrusted the line of the Atbara—Ed Darner, Adarama, Asubri, and El Fasher—to Osman Digna; constructed defences in the Shabluka Gorge; and personally superintended the organization and drill of the forces gathered at Omdurman, and the collection of vast stores of food and supplies of camels for offensive expeditions. Towards the end of June the chief of the Jaalin tribe, Abdalla wad Said, who occupied Metemmeh, angered by the Khalifa, made his submission to Kitchener and asked for support, at the same time foolishly sending a defiant letter to the Khalifa. The Sirdar sent him rifles and ammunition across the desert from Korti; but before they arrived, Mahmud’s army, sent by the Khalifa, swept down on Metemmeh on 1st July and massacred Abdalla wad Said and his garrison. On the 29th July, after several reconnaissances, MajorGeneral Hunter, with a flying column, marched up the Nile from near Merawi to Abu Hamed, 133 miles distant, along the edge of the Monassir desert. He arrived on 7 th August and captured it by storm, the dervishes losing 250 killed and 50 prisoners. By the end of the month the gunboats had surmounted the Fourth Cataract and reached Abu Hamed. Berber was found to be deserted, and occupied by Hunter on the 5th September, and in the
