Battle of the Atbara

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Battle of the Atbara
Part of: Mahdi uprising
Emir Mahmud Ahmad as a prisoner after the battle.  The blood came from a wound on the thigh.
Emir Mahmud Ahmad as a prisoner after the battle. The blood came from a wound on the thigh.
date April 8, 1898
place At the confluence of the Nile and Atbara near Atbara
output British-Egyptian victory
Parties to the conflict

United Kingdom 1801United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland United Kingdom Khedivat Egypt
Flag of Egypt (1882-1922) .svg

Ansar (Mahdists)

Commander

Herbert Kitchener

Mahmud Ahmad
Osman Digna

Troop strength
10,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, a Maxim's battery, four Egyptian mule batteries and a rocket launcher division. 15,000 warriors and three howitzers
losses

80 dead

3,000 dead
4,000 wounded or captured

The Battle of Atbara took place on April 8, 1898 at the confluence of the Nile and Atbara rivers between a British - Egyptian army and 15,000 Sudanese insurgents in the course of the suppression of the Mahdi uprising .

prehistory

The Mahdi uprising began in Sudan in 1881 and culminated in 1885 with the conquest of Khartoum by the Mahdists. Since his appointment as sirdar (commander in chief) of the Egyptian army in 1892, Horatio Herbert Kitchener had worked on preparing the Egyptian army for the reconquest of Sudan. In 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian Nile Expeditionary Force was finally set on the march. In the so-called Dongola expedition, the northern province of Sudan was first occupied and the logistical basis for the campaign to the south was created. This included the expansion of a railway line from Wadi Halfa along the Nile to Kerma , since shipping in this area was restricted by cataracts , and from January 1897 the construction of another railway line through the desert via Abu Hamad to Atbara . After completing these construction works, the Anglo-Egyptian army was able to march further south in the Nile campaign.

course

The battle of the Atbara
Battle plan

Caliph Abdallahi ibn Muhammad , the successor of the Mahdi , was pressured by his general Mahmoud Ahmad to attack Kitchener's advancing army. But it wasn't until the beginning of December 1897 that the caliph decided to attack. Disputes over the occupation of the supreme command meant that not all Mahdist forces were deployed as planned, but only Mahmud Ahmad's increased contingent around Osman Digna's Bedscha troops. Mahmoud Ahmad and his 15,000-strong army marched north to the confluence of the Nile and Atbara rivers to attack Kitchener. Kitchener therefore ordered the Egyptian army to rally at Berber . He asked Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, for assistance from a British brigade. The British government then put together a brigade of troops from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment , the Lincoln Regiment , the Cameron Highlanders and later the Seaforth Highlanders under the leadership of William Gatacre . Since the steamers of the British-Egyptian army had already advanced to the confluence of the Atbara and Nile and the cataracts prevented the retreat to Berber at this time of year, Kitchener transferred an Egyptian brigade to his fleet on December 22nd.

Mahmoud Ahmad crossed the Nile in mid-February and marched on Berbar to conquer the city. Kitchener gathered his troops and moved them a little north to a fortified position around the village of Kunur. On March 18, Mahmoud Ahmad El Aliab left to bypass Kitchener's left flank. This moved his troops to Ras el Hudi. Mahmoud Ahmad therefore marched with his 20,000 men, including women and children, to the Atbara in Nakheila in order to continue his evasion . With Kitchener's force blocking the only possible route to Berbar, the Mahdists stayed on site. They had a "Zariba" (a parapet built of thorn bushes) around their camp. Both sides watched each other for two weeks. A British flotilla landed at Shendi , across from Metemma, and captured some women who had been left there by Mahmoud Ahmad. Many Mahdi warriors then deserted to check on their wives. After Kitchener decided to attack, he moved another eight kilometers closer to the enemy on April 4, from Ras el Hudi to Abadar. On April 6th, the Anglo-Egyptian forces moved closer to the Mahdists for the last time, to the abandoned village of Umdabia. Only eleven kilometers as the crow flies separated them from the Mahdists.

At 1:00 am on April 8th, Kitchener's troops marched to their attack positions. On the left stood the British brigade , led by William Gatacre, with an artillery battery in between, then in the center the brigade of Hector Archibald MacDonald and on the right that of John Grenfell Maxwell (three battalions in line), on whose right flank the Artillery was deployed. Lewis Brigade stood behind British forces from Gatacre with the Camel Corps on their left. The Egyptian cavalry covered the extreme left flank five kilometers away.

MacDonald, Maxwell, and Lewis' brigades were part of Archibald Hunter's Egyptian division and consisted of Sudanese and Egyptian battalions . Kitchener also had a battery of Maxim machine guns and a missile division under the command of the later Admiral David Beatty .

At 6:00 a.m., the Anglo-Egyptian army launched an attack on the opposing camp after briefly preparing to attack by artillery fire. After a short time the soldiers had reached the camp and were involved in hand-to-hand fighting. After an hour, Kitchener's soldiers had fought their way to the river at the other end of the camp, and Osman Digna led several thousand insurgents in a retreat southward, while the majority of the Mahdists were killed or captured. Mahmoud Ahmad, who had been placed in Kitchener's army by Sudanese troops, was among the prisoners.

The battle of Atbara was a turning point in the conquest of Sudan by the Egyptians and the British. Kitchener himself saw it as a turning point in his career.

Footnotes

  1. Arthur: Life, p. 224
  2. Michael Barthorp: BLOOD-RED DESERT SAND The British Invasions of Egypt and the Sudan 1882-98 , p. 146
  3. ^ Bond: Victorian, p. 291

literature

  • Sir George Arthur: Life of Lord Kitchener. Volume 1. Macmillan, London 1920.
  • Brian Bond (Ed.): Victorian Military Campaigns. Praeger, New York NY et al. 1967.
  • 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 ).
  • 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 .
  • Winston S. Churchill : Crusade against the Empire of the Mahdi . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8218-6204-0 , ( Die Andere Bibliothek 282), (original: The River War. A Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan . London 1899).

Web links

Commons : Battle of Atbara  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files