Siege of Khartoum

Siege of Khartoum
Part of The Mahdist War
A painting General Gordon's death
Date March 13, 1884 – January 26, 1885 Location Khartoum, Mahdist Sudan Result Decisive Mahdist victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom Egypt	Sudan
Commanders and leaders
Charles George Gordon†	Muhammad Ahmad
Strength
Land: 7,000 cavalry infantry unknown artillery Sea: 9 gunboats	Land: 50,000 warriors, unknown artillery Sea: unknown skiffs
Casualties and losses
Entire force destroyed	unknown, but reportedly heavy
~4,000 civilians dead

The Battle of Khartoum, Siege of Khartoum or Fall of Khartoum lasted from March 13, 1884, to January 26, 1885. It was fought in and around Khartoum between Egyptian forces led by British General Charles George Gordon and a rebel Sudanese army led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. Khartoum was besieged by the Mahdists and defended by a garrison of 7,000 Egyptian and loyal Sudanese troops. After a ten-month siege, the Mahdists finally broke into the city and the entire garrison was killed.

Background

Appointment of General Gordon

Since the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, the British military presence ensured that Egypt remained a de facto British protectorate. However, the administration of Sudan was considered a domestic Egyptian matter, and left to the Khedive's government. As a result, the suppression of the Mahdist revolt was left to the Egyptian army, which suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the Mahdist rebels at El Obeid, in November 1883. The Mahdi's forces captured huge amounts of equipment and overran large parts of Sudan, including Darfur and Kordofan. These events brought Sudan to the attention of the British government, and of the British public. The Prime Minister William Gladstone and his War Secretary Lord Hartington did not wish to become involved in Sudan. Accordingly, the British representative in Egypt, Sir Evelyn Baring, persuaded the Egyptian government that all their garrisons in Sudan should be evacuated. General Charles Gordon was then a popular figure in Great Britain. Having already held the Governor-Generalship of Sudan in 1876-79, he was appointed to accomplish this task. Gordon's ideas on Sudan were radically different from Gladstone's: he believed that the Mahdi's rebellion had to be defeated, or he might gain control of the whole of Sudan, and from there sweep over Egypt. His fears were based on the Mahdi's claim to dominion over the entire Islamic world and on the fragility of the Egyptian army, which had suffered several defeats at the hands of the Sudanese. Gordon favoured an aggressive policy in Sudan, in agreement with noted imperialists such as Sir Samuel Baker and Sir Garnet Wolseley, and his opinions were published in The Times in January 1884.

Despite this, Gordon pledged himself to accomplish the evacuation of Sudan; he was given a credit of £100,000 and was promised by the British and Egyptian authorities "all support and cooperation in their power.". On January 14, 1884, Gordon left the Charing Cross railway station in London for Dover, the ferry to Calais, and on to the Sudan.

When in Cairo, Gordon met Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, a former slave trader who had once controlled a semi-independent province in southern Sudan. The two men had a troubled history, as Gordon had been instrumental in destroying Zubayr's influence. Passing over their previous enmity, Gordon became convinced that Zubayr was the only man with sufficient energy and charisma to counter the Mahdi. On his way to Khartoum with his assistant, Colonel Stewart, Gordon stopped in Berber to address an assembly of tribal chiefs. Here he committed a cardinal mistake by revealing that the Egyptian government wished to withdraw from Sudan. The tribesmen became worried by this news, and their loyalty wavered.

Battle

Siege begins

File:SiegeKhartoum02.JPG

Map of Khartoum during the siege.

Gordon made a triumphal entry in Khartoum on February 18, 1884, but instead of organising the evacuation of the garrisons, set about administering the city. His first decisions were to reduce the injustices caused by the Egyptian colonial administration: arbitrary imprisonments were cancelled, torture instruments were destroyed, and taxes were remitted. To enlist the support of the population, Gordon legalised slavery, despite the fact that he himself had abolished it a few years earlier. This decision was popular in Khartoum, where the economy still rested on the slave trade, but caused controversy in Britain.

Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi.

The British public opinion was shaken again shortly after by Gordon's demand that Zubayr Pasha be sent to help him. Zubayr, as a former slave trader, was very unpopular in Britain; the Anti-Slavery Society contested this choice, and Zubayr's appointment was denied by the government. Despite this setback, Gordon was still determined to "smash up the Mahdi". He requested that a regiment of Turkish soldiers be sent to Khartoum as Egypt was still nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire. When this was refused, Gordon asked for a unit of Indian Muslim troops and later for 200 British soldiers to strengthen the defenses of Khartoum. All these proposals were rejected by the Gladstone cabinet, which was still intent on evacuation and refused absolutely to be pressured into military intervention in Sudan. This drove Gordon to resent the government's policy, and his telegrams to Cairo became more acrimonious. On April 8, he wrote: "I leave you with the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons" and added that such a course would be "the climax of meanness". When these criticisms were made public in Britain, the conservative opposition seized on them and moved a vote of censure in the House of Commons. The government won by only 28 votes.

Knowing that the Mahdists were closing in, Gordon ordered the strengthening of the fortifications around Khartoum. The city was protected to the north by the Blue Nile and to the west by the White Nile. To defend the river banks, he created a flotilla of gunboats from nine small paddle-wheel steamers, until then used for communication purposes, which were fitted with guns and protected by metal plates. In the southern part of the town, which faced the open desert, he prepared an elaborate system of trenches, makeshift Fougasse-type land mines, and wire entanglements. Also, the surrounding country was controlled by the Shagia tribe, which was hostile to the Mahdi.

By early April 1884, the tribes north of Khartoum rose in support of the Mahdi, and cut the Egyptian traffic on the Nile and the telegraph to Cairo. Communications were not entirely cut, as runners could still get through, but the siege had begun and Khartoum could only rely on its own food stores, which could last five or six months.

On March 16, an abortive sortie from Khartoum was launched, which led to the death of 200 Egyptian troops as the combined forces besieging Khartoum grew to over 30,000 men. Through the months of April, May, June, and July, Gordon and the garrison dealt with being cut off as food stores dwindled and starvation began to set in for both the garrison and the civilian population. Communication was kept through couriers while Gordon also kept in contact with the Mahdi, who rejected his offers of peace and to lift the siege. On September 16, an expedition sent from Khartoum to Sennar was defeated by the Mahdists which resulted in the death of over 800 garrison troops at Al Aylafuh. By the end of the month, the Mahdi moved the bulk of his army to Khartoum, more than doubling the number already besieging it. As of September 10, 1884, the civilian population of Khartoum was about 34,000.

Fall of Khartoum

George W. Joy's portrayal of Gordon's death

Gordon's plight excited great concern in the British press, and even Queen Victoria intervened on his behalf. The government ordered him to return, but Gordon refused, saying he was honour-bound to defend the city. By July 1884, Gladstone reluctantly agreed to send an expedition to Khartoum. However, the expedition, led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, took several months to organise and only entered Sudan in January 1885. By then, Gordon's situation had become desperate, with the food supplies running low, many inhabitants dying of hunger and the defenders' morale at its lowest.

The Nile Expedition for the relief of Gordon

The relief expedition was attacked at Abu Klea on January 17, and two days later at Abu Kru. Though their square was broken at Abu Klea, the British managed to repel the Mahdists. The Mahdi, hearing of the British advance, decided to press the attack on Khartoum. On the night of January 25–26, an estimated 50,000 Mahdists attacked the city wall just before midnight. The Mahdists took advantage of the low level of the Nile, which could be crossed on foot, and rushed around the wall on the shores of the river and into the town. The details of the final assault are vague, but it is said that by 3:30 am, the Mahdists managed to concurrently outflank the city wall at the low end of the Nile while another force, led by Al Nujumi, broke down the Massalamieh Gate despite taking some casualties from mines and barbed wire obstacles laid out by Gordon's men. The entire garrison, physically weakened by starvation, offered only patchy resistance and were slaughtered to the last man within a few hours, as were 4,000 of the town's inhabitants, while many others were carried into slavery. Accounts differ as to how Gordon was killed. According to one version, when Mahdist warriors broke into the governor's palace, Gordon came out in full uniform, and, after disdaining to fight, he was speared to death—in defiance of the orders of the Mahdi, who had wanted him captured alive. In another version, Gordon was recognised by Mahdists while making for the Austrian consulate and shot dead in the street. What appears certain is that his head was cut off, stuck on a pike, and brought to the Mahdi as a trophy and his body dumped in the Nile.

Advance elements of the relief expedition arrived within sight of Khartoum two days later. After the fall of the city, the surviving British and Egyptian troops withdrew from the Sudan, with the exception of the city of Suakin on the Red Sea coast and the Nile town of Wadi Halfa at the Egyptian border, leaving Muhammad Ahmad in control of the entire country.

Aftermath

The British press put the blame of Gordon's death on Gladstone, who was charged with excessive slowness in sending relief to Khartoum. He was rebuked by Queen Victoria in a telegram which became known to the public, and an acronym applied to him, G.O.M. for "Grand Old Man" which was changed to M.O.G. the "Murderer Of Gordon". His government fell in June 1885, though he was back in office the next year. However this public outcry soon paled, firstly when press coverage and sensationalism of the events began to diminish and secondly when the government released details of the £11.5 million military budget cost for pursuing war in the Sudan.

In reality, Gladstone had always viewed the Egyptian-Sudanese imbroglio with distaste and had felt some sympathy for the Sudanese striving to throw off the Egyptian colonial rule. He once declared in the House of Commons: "Yes, those people are struggling to be free, and they are rightly struggling to be free." Also, Gordon's arrogant and insubordinate manner did nothing to endear him to Gladstone's government.

After his victory, Muhammad Ahmad became the ruler of most parts of what is now Sudan, and established a religious state, the Mahdiyah, which was governed by a harsh enforcement of Sharia law. He died shortly afterwards, in June 1885, though the state he founded survived him.

In Britain, Gordon came to be seen as a martyr and a hero. In 1896, an expedition led by Horatio Herbert Kitchener was sent to avenge his death (who swore to do so upon hearing of Gordon's demise) and reconquer Sudan. On 2 September 1898 Kitchener's troops defeated the bulk of the Mahdist army at the Battle of Omdurman. Two days later a memorial service for Gordon was held in front of the ruins of the palace where he had died. Surviving family members of the movement's leaders were held by the British in a prison in Egypt. The women and children were held there for ten years. The men were held for twelve years. After their return to Sudan they were held under house arrest for the rest of their lives.

Cultural depictions

• These events are depicted in the 1966 film Khartoum, with Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as Muhammad Ahmad.
• The Siege of Khartoum is the setting for Wilbur Smith's novel The Triumph of the Sun, pub. 2005
• G. A. Henty wrote a young adults' novel about the siege called The Dash for Khartoum, originally published in 1892, since reissued and also available to read free online at Project Gutenberg.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner, set his novel In Desert and Wilderness in Sudan during Mahdi's rebellion, which plays a vital role in the plot.
• The 1999 Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy makes reference to the Fall of Khartoum.
• Gillian Slovo based her novel An Honourable Man (2012) on the established narrative of General Gordon's last days in Khartoum.

Further reading

• Asher, Michael (2005). Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-025855-8.