Gordon Relief Expedition

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Charles George Gordon

The Gordon Relief Expedition or Nile Expedition was sent to Sudan in 1884/85, under Garnet Wolseley , to save Governor General Charles George Gordon from the Mahdi uprising . She reached the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, two days too late to prevent the Mahdists from storming the city and killing Gordon.

prehistory

In Sudan, which came under the rule of the Ottoman viceroys ( Khedives ) of Egypt from 1821, the Mahdi uprising began in 1881. Muhammad Ahmad declared himself a Mahdi and in November 1883 defeated the Egyptian army at the Battle of Sheikan . The colonial forces of Great Britain , which occupied Egypt in 1882, were at that time mainly focused on the conflict with Russia ( Great Game ). Due to the desperate situation of the Egyptian troops in Sudan, the British government under Gladstone ordered Egypt in December 1883 to give up the Sudan provinces. However, this was difficult insofar as thousands of Egyptian soldiers, civilian employees and their relatives were to be evacuated from Sudan. The British government therefore commissioned Charles George Gordon, who had been Governor of Sudan from 1877 to 1880, to go to Khartoum to organize the evacuation from there. Gordon reached Khartoum on February 18, 1884 and was able to bring about 2500 women, children, the sick and wounded to Egypt to safety before the Mahdists enclosed the city on March 18 and began the ten-month siege of Khartoum . In May, the Mahdists reached Berber and Evelyn Baring , the British consul general of Egypt, concluded that a British expedition was needed to save Gordon. However, nothing happened in the next few months, except that plans for a campaign were drawn up by Full General Wolseley. Wolseley has been the most popular British general since his victory in the Anglo-Egyptian War . In the summer of 1884 the discussion about the rescue of Gordon expanded to a motion for a vote of no confidence in the British government. Gladstone finally gave in to public pressure, and on August 5, 1884, moved to Parliament for £ 300,000 to conduct an expedition under Wolseley, known as the Gordon Relief Expedition .

Expeditionary forces

Garnet Wolseley, Commander of the Gordon Relief Expedition

On August 26th, Wolseley was put in charge. He reached Cairo on September 9, 1884. Wolseley had about 8,000 men. He knew Egypt very well from the Anglo-Egyptian War and therefore planned his advance through the desert very carefully. He divided his troops into two columns, the River Column and the Camel Corps . Due to the extensive preparatory measures, the expedition was not ready to leave until November 1884. In December 1884 the British troops reached Korti in order to advance from here to Khartoum. The Egyptian army, newly established under British leadership, only took on administrative tasks in this campaign.

River Column

The main force ( River Column ) under Major General William Earle (after his death Henry Brackenbury ) advanced on the Nile from Korti with messengers and steamers, some of which were borrowed from the tourist company Thomas Cook and Son . For this, whaling boats were equipped by William Francis Butler . The experiences that Wolseley and Butler had made during the Red River Expedition in Canada benefited them here and led to 392 men from Canada being recruited to steer the boats.

  • River Column (William Earle)
    • 1st Battalion Black Watch
    • 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders
    • 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders
    • 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment
    • 1st Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment
    • 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment
    • 1st Battalion Duke of Cambridge's Light Infantery
    • 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment
    • 19th Royal Hussars

Camel Corps

Photograph of the Camel Corps by Felice Beato

At the same time, the other smaller, more mobile force, under Sir Herbert Stewart , marched straight through the desert. For this desert force, Wolseley formed what is possibly the first special unit in British military history, the so-called Camel Corps . The Camel Corps consisted of four regiments composed of soldiers from 14 British infantry and cavalry regiments:

  • Camel Corps (Herbert Stewart)

To Stewart's force came men of the 19th Hussars on horses. Karl Neufeld , a German businessman, accompanied the expedition as a translator. The fact that almost all British guards regiments were represented and the names of the officers of the Camel Corps revealed something about the social significance of this formation, to be mentioned are the 4th Viscount St. Vincent , 12th Earl of Dundonald , 7th Baron Rodney ; Lord Edward Gleichen and Lord Binning .

On October 8th, various units of the Camel Corps arrived in Cairo . They were stationed at the pyramids to prevent disease infecting the city. The soldiers of these regiments had to be trained to handle camels. Chief of Staff Redvers Buller wrote the memorandum Notes for the Use of Camel Regiments . It was determined that the soldiers should fight on foot and use the camels to march.

course

"The Nile Expedition" from Graphic magazine
Battle of Abu Klea

On December 30, 1884, Stewart began his 185-mile march with 1,600 men and 2,400 camels, across the desert, towards Metemmeh. On January 3, 1885, he reached the wells of Gakdul. Two small forts were built here and the troops waited for reinforcements and supplies, increasing them to 1,800 men. On January 13th the advance continued. On January 17, the Camel Corps encountered an army of Mahdists near Abu Klea. This was formed from the siege army off Khartoum and from members of the Jaalin tribe. With 1,500 men, Stewart was able to defeat the far superior 10,000 Mahdists in the Battle of Abu Klea .

Muhammad Ahmad, who in the meantime led the siege of Khartoum himself, decided to break it off, but his generals changed his mind. In Khartoum the supplies were meanwhile exhausted and the defenders exhausted. Against the background of the threatened relief of the city by British troops, the attack was scheduled for January 26, 1885.

Meanwhile, Stewart was advancing on Metemmeh and was attacked on January 19 near Gubat. He himself was fatally wounded and handed over command to Sir Charles William Wilson . This reached the Nile on January 21st and encountered four steamships that Gordon had sent with a request for assistance. Gordon sent word on January 14th that he would be able to hold out for ten days if British troops did not arrive. Wilson, however, took a three-day hiatus to tend his wounded. On January 24th, he loaded two steamers with troops and drove with Charles Beresford towards Khartoum. One of the steamers ran aground on the sixth cataract , which again caused a delay.

On the morning of January 26, 50,000 Mahdists attacked Khartoum. The Ansari had waited for the spring floods of the Nile to recede and then attacked the poorly defended river side of Khartoum in boats. At around 3 a.m. they stormed into town and killed Gordon, presumably in the governor's palace . The Mahdists displayed Gordon's head as a trophy in their camp.

On January 27, Wilson's two steamers came under gunfire. During a stopover, they learned that Khartoum should have fallen. A day later, on January 28th, the steamers arrived in Khartoum. Under heavy artillery and rifle fire, they came within sight of the governor's palace and found that any help came too late.

On February 10th the Battle of Kirbekan took place, where the Nile Column , under Earle, defeated a numerically superior Mahdist force. Earle was killed in the process.

consequences

In the course of the Gordon Relief Expedition, the commanders of Khartoum, the River Column and the Camel Corps , the British Generals Gordon, Steward and Earle were killed. After Gordon's death, despite Wolseley's protests, Gladstone had British troops withdrawn from Sudan, apart from the Suakin area . All claims that the expedition was sent out to save more people than Gordon have been discredited. The Egyptian garrisons remaining in Sudan were destroyed by the Mahdists. Wolseley blamed Wilson and Gladstone for the failure of the expedition. The failure hit him very hard. He never again took command in a campaign. Great Britain did not attempt to retake Sudan until around ten years later. The Mahdi uprising is considered to be the third world's first successful uprising against colonialism . The Mahdists established a state that stretched from Darfur in the west to Suakin in the east (excluding the city itself) and from Dongola in the north to Bahr al-Ghazal in the south. The Mahdi founded a new capital on the other bank of the Nile in Khartoum in Omdurman , where he died on June 12, 1885. The Mahdi successor, Caliph Abdallahi ibn Muhammad , was only defeated in 1898 by Anglo-Egyptian troops under British General Horatio Herbert Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman . The Sudan was not returned to Egypt after the battle, but constituted as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium . This condominium existed until 1956.

The Gordon Relief Expedition in the film

  • In the film Khartoum (German alternative title: Khartoum - The Uprising on the Nile ), with Charlton Heston as Gordon and Laurence Olivier as Muhammad Ahmad, the events surrounding Gordon Pascha and the fall of Khartoum are described above all. The film was directed by Basil Dearden and Eliot Elisofon in 1966 and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 1967 Academy Awards.
  • The film adaptation The Four Feathers from 2002 (by Shekhar Kapur with Heath Ledger and Kate Hudson ) is based on the novel by AEW Mason . In contrast to the film adaptations from 1939 and 1955, which dealt with the suppression of the Mahdi uprising (1898), this film is about the time of the Gordon Relief Expedition.

literature

  • Henry SL Alford, W. Dennistoun Sword: The Egyptian Soudan, its Loss and Recovery. With numerous Portraits, Illustrations and Maps, and Records of the Services of the Officers (1896-8). Macmillan, London et al. 1898 (Reprint: Naval & Military Press Ltd, Uckfield 2001, ISBN 1-84342-100-3 ).
  • Adrian Preston (Ed.): In Relief of Gordon. Lord Wolseley's Campaign Journal of the Khartoum Relief Expedition 1884–1885. Hutchinson, London 1967.
  • Archie Hunter: Kitchener's Sword-arm. The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter, GCB, GCVO, DSO Sarpedon, New York NY 1996, ISBN 1-885119-29-1 .
  • Mike Snook: Go Strong into the Desert. The Mahdist Uprising in Sudan 1881–1885. Perry Miniatures, Nottingham 2010, ISBN 978-0-9561842-1-4 .
  • Julian Symons: England's Pride. The story of the Gordon Relief Expedition , London 1965
  • Robin Neillands: The Dervish Wars , London 1996

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robin Neillands: The Dervish Wars, London 1996, p. 118
  2. ^ Henry Brackenbury : The River Column. A narrative of the advance of the River Column of the Nile Expeditionary Force, and its return down the rapids. Blackwood, Edinburgh et al. 1885.
  3. ^ Robin Neillands: The Dervish Wars, London 1996, p. 119
  4. ↑ Julian Symons: England 'Pride. The story of the Gordon Relief Expedition, p. 131
  5. ^ Robin Neillands: The Dervish Wars, London 1996, p. 146