William Hicks

This article is about the officer William Hicks. For the mathematician, see William Mitchinson Hicks ; on the politician, see William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford .

Hicks Pasha

William Hicks (* 1830 ; † November 1883 with El Obeid in Sudan ), also called Hicks Pasha , was a British officer and Egyptian division general ( farik ). He was the commander of the Egyptian troops in the battle of Sheikan .

Life

Hicks joined the army of the British East India Company as an ensign in 1849 . In 1857 he fought in the Sepoy uprising . After the East India Company army was disbanded, Hicks served in the British Indian Army . With this he took part in Robert Cornelis Napier's expedition to Ethiopia (then Abyssinia ) in 1867/68 . There he served as a captain in the staff of the 2nd Brigade. In 1880 he was promoted to colonel.

The Mahdi uprising broke out in the Turkish-Egyptian Sudan in 1881 . After the Mahdists took El Obeid in January 1883, the government of the Viceroy of Egypt Tawfiq recognized the danger. Since the Egyptian army was disbanded after the Urabi uprising , some soldiers had to be reactivated for an expedition. These were gathered near Cairo, where from the autumn of 1882 they were gradually transported in small units to Khartoum (via Suez, Suakin and Berber). William Hicks, who had entered Egyptian service, was appointed chief of staff of this expeditionary force.

Hicks came to Khartoum on March 3rd . He intended to train the troops under his command more intensively. But the advance of the Mahdists left him no time. After a month of training his troops, he marched on April 29th with four battalions of Egyptian infantry , Sudanese cavalry and four Gatling machine guns , a total of 10,000 men. A few days later he was attacked by 45,000 mostly mounted Arabs near Jabel Ard . Hicks won the first victory against the Mahdists. He then left part of his troops on the White Nile, returned to Khartoum and organized a new expeditionary force.

At the beginning of August Hicks was given the command of all Egyptian troops in Sudan, with the task of carrying out an expedition to Kordofan to recapture El-Obeid. On September 9, 1883, Hicks moved up the Nile with 14,000 Egyptian soldiers to Duem , where he built a strong fortification, which he had 2,000 men guarded. From here he marched south-west through the desert on September 27th. On the advance, his army suffered from constant Mahdist attacks, water shortages and desertion . On November 1, it approached the city of El Obeid from the southwest and defeated the Mahdists there. Hicks then temporarily split his army. Surprisingly, he was attacked on November 3rd by strongly superior forces at Melbejs and Kasgil . Although he succeeded in reuniting the troops on November 4th after heavy fighting, the army had been pushed away from the water points and had used up all the ammunition. The entire army was destroyed in the battle of Sheican , and Hicks was also killed in the battle.

Fonts

• M [artin] W [illiam] Daly (ed.): The Road to Shaykan: Letters of General William Hicks Pasha written during the Sennar and Kordofan Campaigns, 1883 . University of Durham, Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham, digitized from Durham University .

literature

• Michael Barthorp: Blood-red desert sand. The British Invasions of Egypt and the Sudan 1882-98 . Cassell Military Trade Books, London 2002, ISBN 0-304-36223-9 .
• W. Dennistoun Sword, Henry SL Alford: Egyptian Soudan. Its loss and recovery. With Records of the Services of the Officers (1896-8) . Macmillan, London et al. 1898, (Reprinted by Naval & Military Press Ltd, Uckfield 2001, ISBN 1-84342-100-3 ).
• Wilfried Westphal: Storm over the Nile. The Mahdi uprising. From the beginnings of Islamic fundamentalism . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1998, ISBN 3-7995-0092-8 .
• Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): The Mahdi uprising in eyewitness reports . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-423-02710-X , ( dtv - dtv-Augenzeugenberichte 2710).
• Robin Neillands: The Dervish Wars - Gordon and Kitchener in the Sudan 1880-1898 . John Murray Ltd., London 1996, ISBN 0-7195-5631-7 .

swell

1. ↑ The Dervish Wars p. 70
2. ↑ The Dervish Wars p. 71