customs of the Arabs, Sudanese, and Egyptians, and as a keen, hard-working, and able soldier. After a short spell of leave at home he was nominated, at the request of the Foreign Office, as the British member of a joint English, French, and German commission appointed at the close of 1885 to delimit the territory of the sultan of Zanzibar, a work made necessary by the general scramble of the European powers for territory in Africa, which was then in full course.
On his way home from East Africa in the summer of 1886, Kitchener received the news of his appointment as governor-general of the Eastern Sudan, with head-quarters at Suakin; this post he held till 1888. Here he was in constant conflict with Osman Digna, the local leader of the Dervishes, and on 17 January 1888 he was severely wounded in the jaw in a raid on that chief's head-quarters. For his work at Suakin he was made brevet colonel and aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria. After his recovery he was appointed in September adjutant-general of the Egyptian army, of which Sir Francis (afterwards Baron) Grenfell was then sirdar. In the summer of 1889 the Dervishes threatened an advance down the Nile into Egypt, and a considerable part of the Egyptian army was concentrated to meet them, Kitchener being given the command of the cavalry. On 2 August Grenfell heavily defeated the Dervishes at Toski, a success in which Kitchener's handling of the cavalry had no small part, and all fear of an invasion of Egypt was removed. For his services in this campaign Kitchener received the C.B. Then, at the request of Sir Evelyn Baring (afterwards Earl of Cromer) [q.v.], Kitchener undertook the reorganization of the Egyptian police, and acquired Baring's confidence to such an extent that, when Grenfell resigned the sirdarship (April 1892), Baring pressed for and obtained Kitchener's appointment as his successor. Kitchener had always maintained that the only possible solution of the problem of the Nile valley was to advance into the Sudan and to defeat the Dervishes; and for the next four years he devoted himself to the preparation of the Egyptian army for that task. He attracted to the service of that army a body of young, able, and energetic British officers, before whom he set, both by example and precept, a high standard of keenness and enterprise. With their help he infused a new spirit into the Egyptian Army, the fighting power of which had been materially increased by the formation of battalions of Sudanese. Kitchener's reforms were not always pleasing to the pashas, who intrigued against him with the khedive, but he was now sufficiently acquainted with the methods of Eastern courts to be able to forestall these manœuvres, and he found in Lord Cromer an unwavering ally. He was created K.C.M.G. in 1894. The preparations for the conquest of the Sudan revived the old controversy as to the rival merits of the desert and the Nile routes, but Kitchener obtained the approval of the home government for his plan of a methodical advance up the river.
In 1896 the River War was inaugurated by an advance on Dongola, the first stage of which was completed by the defeat of a Dervish force at Firket on 7 June. By the end of September Dongola was occupied and the Dervishes had been driven from the province of that name into the Bayuda desert. Kitchener was now promoted major-general and for his services in this campaign was created K.C.B. The winter of 1896–1897 and the following spring were spent in persuading the home government to agree to a further advance, and in making preparations for that end. The plan on which Kitchener had decided was first to move up the Nile and secure Abu Hamed, where the river bends westward to make a great loop round the Korosko desert, and then to build a railway across that desert from Wadi Halfa. The first of these undertakings was entrusted to Major-General Sir Archibald Hunter, who seized Abu Hamed with small loss on 7 August, and thereby created such a panic amongst the Dervishes that, to the general surprise and delight, he was able on 5 September without opposition to occupy Berber, which had been seized by friendly tribesmen on 31 August. These successes brought the reoccupation of Khartoum and the complete reconquest of the Sudan within reach; and the British Cabinet, and Lord Salisbury in particular—converted to reliance on Kitchener's judgement—promised him for the following year the support of British troops and the leadership in the last stage of the enterprise. By the end of January 1898 the greater part of the Egyptian army, with a British brigade under Major-General Sir William Forbes Gatacre [q.v.], was concentrated south of Berber, near the mouth of the Atbara river. The successor of the Mahdi, the Khalifa Abdullah, now thoroughly alarmed at Omdurman, sent a force of 20,000 men under Mahmud, his leading emir, to
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