Sudan 1885 Read online

  ©Copyright Army History Unit

  Campbell Park Offices (CP2-5-166)

  Canberra ACT 2600

  AUSTRALIA

  (02) 6266 4248

  (02) 6266 4044 – fax

  Copyright 2011 © Commonwealth of Australia

  First published 2014

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission.

  See National Library of Australia for Cataloguing-in-Publication entry.

  ISBN: 978-1-922132-99-4

  Published by Big Sky Publishing, Sydney

  Cover and typesetting by Think Productions, Melbourne

  Printed in China through Asia Pacific Offset Limited

  Front cover and title page: Departure of the NSW Contingent from Sydney’s Circular Quay. Contemporary lithograph. Source: National Library of Australia.

  Back cover background: New South Wales artillery. Source: National Archives of the United Kingdom.

  Back cover top right: General Charles Gordon.

  Back cover bottom right: Royal Navy Gatling gun crew.

  CONTENTS

  Contents

  Series Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary and Abbreviations

  Preface

  Introduction

  Chronology

  Chapter 1:

  Background

  Chapter 2:

  The New South Wales Contingent

  Chapter 3:

  Operations In The Sudan 1881-1884

  Chapter 4:

  Operations In The Sudan: The Nile Expedition, 1885

  Chapter 5:

  The Suakin Expedition, 1885

  Chapter 6:

  The Railway

  Conclusion

  Further Reading

  Index

  SERIES INTRODUCTION

  In 2004, the then Chief of Army’s Strategic Advisory Group, the Army’s senior generals, established a scheme to promote the study and understanding of military history within the Army. The focus was the Army’s future generation of leaders and, from this, the Campaign Series was created. The series is intended to complement the Army’s other history publications, which are major analytical works of high quality, academically rigorous and referenced.

  The Campaign Series focuses on leadership, command, strategy, tactics, lessons and personal experiences of war. Each title within the series includes extensive visual sources of information – maps, including specifically prepared maps in colour and 3D, specifically commissioned artwork, photographs and computer graphics.

  Covering major campaigns and battles, as well as those less known, the Army History Unit and its Campaign Series provides a significant contribution to the history of the Australian Army and an excellent introduction to its campaigns and battles.

  Roger Lee

  Army Historian

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Mr. Roger Lee and Dr. Andrew Richardson of the Army History Unit, Canberra, the Australian War Memorial and the State Library of New South Wales. This book has been enhanced by the editorial skills of John Donovan.

  The text is supported by illustrations prepared by Glenn and Mark Walhert and Jeff Isaacs. Denny Neave, the series publisher, was a patient collaborator in designing maps and arranging photographs, lithographs and illustrations.

  GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

  Ansar:

  a name sometimes given to the Mahdi’s combined army

  Baggara:

  cattle herding tribe

  Bey:

  Ottoman honorary title for a governor of a province or senior officer in the Egyptian Army

  Dervish:

  a member of a Muslim sect

  Khedive:

  viceroy; it was first used in the early 1800s by the Governor of Egypt and Sudan, who was a vassal or subordinate of the Ottoman Empire. This self-declared title was officially recognized by the Ottoman government in 1867, and used subsequently by Ismail Pasha and his successors until 1914

  Khor:

  a dried watercourse

  Mahdi:

  the ‘Guided One (of the Prophet)’

  Pasha:

  an honorary title of rank given to army generals (including British officers) of armies within the Ottoman Empire

  Sirdar:

  the title of the British commander in chief of the Egyptian Army

  Sulleetah:

  a canvas or cloth carryall bag slung from a camel’s saddle

  Whaler:

  a 15 metre wooden boat, which could carry up to ten soldiers and two crew

  Zareba:

  a makeshift defensive enclosure usually constructed of brushwood, Mimosa or thorn bush

  Abbreviations

  BL:

  breech loading

  Bn:

  battalion

  CB:

  Companion of the Order of the Bath

  CSI:

  Companion of the Star of India

  EP:

  [Tent] European Privates

  KCB:

  Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath

  KCSI:

  Knight Commander of the Star of India

  KCMG:

  Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George

  KIA:

  killed in action

  NCO:

  non-commissioned officer

  NSW:

  New South Wales

  NSWAMC:

  New South Wales Army Medical Corps

  OM:

  Order of Merit

  PMO:

  Principal Medical Officer

  RE:

  Royal Engineers

  RHA:

  Royal Horse Artillery

  RM:

  Royal Marines

  RMA

  Royal Marine Artillery

  RML:

  rifled muzzle loaded gun

  RMLI

  Royal Marine Light Infantry

  RN:

  Royal Navy

  VC:

  Victoria Cross

  WIA:

  wounded in action

  PREFACE

  The involvement of an Australian colonial military force in Britain’s Egyptian campaigns between 1883 and 1885 was very short, extending for only five months overall, including the pre-deployment phase. Consequently its influence on those campaigns was insignificant. Nevertheless, our involvement in the Sudan in 1885 is part of Australia’s military history. This book provides the context for Australia’s involvement in the Sudan, and follows operations chronologically. The call in the 1880s for jihad or ‘holy war’ by Sudanese leaders shows us that some of our current global challenges are not new.

  The deployment of the Sudan contingent foreshadowed themes that have emerged in Australia’s military history over the past century or more. These include the short-lived longevity of popular support for overseas deployments and the role of Australian forces as a junior partner in coalition warfare.

  Sending the contingent has been seen as the most important expression of Australian nationalism in the nineteenth century. In Australia, politicians were alive to their own colonies coming-of-age, and the conflict in the Sudan afforded an opportunity to demonstrate colonial maturity to an imperial audience across the globe. Despite other Australian colonies wanting to make a military contribution, only New South Wales actually deployed any troops. It did so because it had the largest and best organised defence force, and was led by a very opportunist politician.

  The late nineteenth centu
ry was also a time when European countries scrambled for empire as they carved up the known parts of the continent of Africa, and explored, exploited and conquered what had not yet been discovered. Such intervention, however, could backfire and drag them into long and expensive periods of war or occupation. This proved to be the case with Britain’s involvement in Egypt.

  However one looks at it, Britain’s experience in the Sudan in the 1880s comprised political indecision, expensive deployments and military defeats, followed by the withdrawal of Egyptian and imperial forces. British arms would not secure a victory there until 1898.

  While the term ‘Australian’ was not used widely then in the way we now know it, I have used it in preference to the more cumbersome ‘Australian colonial’ or ‘New South Wales Defence Force’. The term ‘colonial’ is also used in the same way. Similarly, I have used the term Mahdists to describe the various enemy forces opposing British and colonial troops in the Sudan. ‘Imperial’ refers to British troops acting either alone or with troops from Australia and India.

  To avoid confusion, the Anglicised version of Arabic place names has also been retained (e.g. Suakin rather than the modern day Sawákin). Precise numbers of troops in various engagements and orders of battle also vary between different sources, but the figures given here would be close to, if not exact, for the strengths of units deployed.

  Readers should also note that the ‘rank’ of brigadier general in the British army of Queen Victoria’s reign was actually an appointment held by senior colonels. References to naval brigades also should not be confused with the strength of an army infantry brigade of three or more battalions.

  Wherever possible, discussion of aspects of military organisation, strategy, uniform and equipment is accompanied by maps, illustrations or photographs. This was a time when photography was still new, and when industry and science, whether in shipping, communications, the railway, medicine or engineering, were being increasingly exploited by less conservative military planners to help them win wars.

  INTRODUCTION

  From an Australian perspective the Sudan campaign was a uniquely New South Wales affair. The New South Wales military commitment to deploy a small force to the other side of the world in 1885 is a milestonthe British governmente in Australia’s military history. To appreciate its significance properly needs some context, and an understanding of British imperial strategy. It is important to comprehend the political climate at the time, and British military operations in Egypt and Sudan before 1885.

  To understand how Australian colonial forces evolved during the early nineteenth century we also need a basic grasp of global strategy, the British army system, the role of the Royal Navy (RN), and the use of new weapons and other military technologies. Australia’s 1885 colonial military excursion also foreshadowed some features of its later involvement in the second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Some of the battles fought by native Sudanese during the overall campaign saw the first defeat of British arms since the Indian Mutiny (1857-58). This shook the defence establishment of the day, even though this was a time when the navy, rather than the army carried most of the responsibility for providing imperial defence.

  The British army had not fought a sophisticated military opponent since the Crimean War (1853-56). Senior commanders were often chosen on the basis of social position rather than professional competence. Then, as now, political considerations were an important factor in defence policy, and this was certainly the case when it came to Britain’s entanglement in Egypt.

  The 1880s saw several changes in the British army and a corresponding increase in the professionalism of European armies as military powers everywhere sought to exploit emerging technologies and the increased firepower provided by new weaponry. The small military forces of the Australian colonies were reflecting these changes slowly, both in weapons and organisation. Naturally, they took their lead from the military traditions and army doctrine of the mother country.

  As an organisation the British army was starting to fall behind several European armies. For example, it had yet to adopt some of the more far reaching reforms undertaken by the Prussian army, particularly the establishment of a general staff. The adverse effects of the absence of this relatively simple, but highly effective, evolution in organisational thinking soon became apparent in the planning and conduct of operations throughout the Sudan campaign.

  Britain’s colonies were part of a wider imperial defence framework based on the projection of naval power. The Australian colonies, however, were beginning to develop a unique view on strategic defence measures (for example, their attitude to Japan and to French and German colonial expansion in the Pacific, and the reaction to the Russian threats of 1878 and 1885).

  At a strategic level, military planning for Britain’s Egyptian campaigns was shaped by four factors:

    •  the British government and its foreign policy;

    •  distance;

    •  climate; and

    •  terrain.

  In 1883 the Anglo-Egyptian and British armies suffered disastrous defeats in the Sudan and in southern Africa in the Zulu wars. The government had little experience in African affairs generally, even though it sought to add colonies there to its empire. The wider Sudan campaign was fought intermittently from 1883 to 1898, but in 1885 it was the first theatre in which the British army operated in a dual role to:

    •  project a force against a capable, highly motivated enemy scattered over a vast inhospitable area; and

    •  support and protect civilian contractors on a large engineering project – the construction of a railway.

  This posed challenges to the force commander and his planners. In the Sudan these challenges were distance and climate, and related logistics issues.

  For the first time, however, the British field force had a new range of offensive and defensive tools at its disposal. The use of the telegraph and heliograph (enabling faster communications with headquarters and more timely decision making by senior commanders), steam ships, observation balloons, locomotives and steam engines were relatively new industrial applications to warfare. Artillery and other weapons continued to evolve. There were also developments in logistics, with the introduction of tinned rations, portable forges and, in medicine, anaesthesia.

  The Sudan campaign was very much an engineer’s war, in which the erection of field works, resupply, maintenance of communications, and the survey and construction of pipelines and railways were key tactical considerations. Together, they often shaped strategies or imposed their own restrictions on the battle environment. Senior commanders there were often engineer officers, and they brought to battles and logistic problems a different perspective from those of their colleagues in the arms corps.

  As with most wars and military operations, there was a political imperative at work in 1885. The New South Wales government wanted to prove the colony’s patriotism and loyalty to Britain, and showcase its emerging economic strength. No doubt its acting premier, William Daley, also had an eye to his own prestige and that of New South Wales by being the first Australian politician to offer material support to London in the wake of General Sir Charles Gordon’s death at the hand of ‘savages’ in 1885.

  The deployment to the Sudan represents Australia’s first real military engagement aboard. It helped set the precedent for the Australian colonies’ role, attitudes and engagement in the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

  CHRONOLOGY

  1882

  7 June:

  rout of an Egyptian force at El Obeid by Mahdist forces

  5 November:

  destruction of a second Egyptian force under Hicks Pasha

  1883

  25 May:

  destruction of another Egyptian force under Hicks near Marabieh

  7 October:

  annihilation of a further, larger, force under Hic
ks at Kasghil

  18 October:

  ambush of an Egyptian force near Suakin

  5 November:

  massacre of an Egyptian force near El Teb

  2 December:

  massacre of 500 Egyptian troops at Tamai

  1884

  18 January:

  General Gordon leaves London for Egypt

  26-27 January:

  a force of 3656 troops under Baker Pasha deploys to Trinkitat by sea

  4 February:

  Baker’s force destroyed near Tokar

  10 February:

  Admiral Hewett takes command of the port of Suakin

  12 February:

  the Egyptian garrison of Sinkat surrenders to the Mahdists

  18 February:

  Gordon arrives in Khartoum

  23 February:

  Tokar surrenders

  29 February:

  General Graham defeats an enemy force at El Teb

  13 March:

  Graham wins the first battle of Tamai, Khartoum cut off by Mahdists

  20 March:

  Khartoum in a state of siege

  28 March:

  Graham’s force at Suakin ordered to return to Egypt

  5 May:

  British explore options to relieve Gordon in Khartoum