Hicks Pasha examining Arab telegraph wire cutters during a halt in the expeditionary force to Kordofan, 1883
Original illustration from the history of the war in the Soudan circa 1886. Info from wiki: The Kordofan expedition was made up of about 8,000 Egyptian regulars, 1,000 bashi-bazouk cavalry, 100 tribal irregulars, and 2,000 camp followers. The force was, in the words of Winston Churchill, "perhaps the worst army that has ever marched to war" - unpaid, untrained, undisciplined, its soldiers having more in common with their enemies than with their officers. Either by mistake or by design, their guides led them astray, and they soon found themselves surrounded. The regulars' morale plummeted and they started to desert en masse. After marching for some time they were set upon by the entire Mahdist army on November 3. The Egyptian forces quickly formed into a defensive square. According to reports published in England soon after, the square held for two days before finally collapsing. About one-third of the Egyptian soldiers surrendered and were later freed, while all the officers were killed. Only about 500 Egyptian troops managed to escape and make it back to Khartoum. Neither Hicks nor any of his senior officers were among them. Apparently only two or three Europeans survived. One survivor was newspaper artist Frank Power, who had initially been with the column but was invalided back to Khartoum with dysentery. At the time Power was working for a German-language publication.[1] Among two Europeans killed were Edmund O'Donovan of The Daily News and Frank Vizetelly of the Graphic. After the battle the Mahdist army made El Obeid a centre for operations for some time. Their success also emboldened Osman Digna, whose Hadendoa tribesmen, the so-called fuzzy-wuzzies, joined the rebellion from their lands on the Red Sea coast
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Photo credit: © Historical Images Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1883, 19th, arab, attempt, century, crush, cutters, engraving, era, examining, expeditionary, failed, force, halt, hicks, illustration, image, kordofan, mahdi, mahdist, pasha, picture, sudan, telegraph, victorian, war, wire
