Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures & Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Egyptian Army Ranks & Turkish Honorifics
- Transliteration Note & List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Ali Jifun's Fashoda Homecoming
- 1 “Backbone of the Egyptian Army”
- 2 “Servants of His Highness the Khedive”
- 3 “Flavour of Domesticity”
- 4 “Brotherhood that Binds the Brave”
- 5 “Tea with the Khalifa”
- Epilogue: Mutiny at Omdurman
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - “Tea with the Khalifa”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures & Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Egyptian Army Ranks & Turkish Honorifics
- Transliteration Note & List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Ali Jifun's Fashoda Homecoming
- 1 “Backbone of the Egyptian Army”
- 2 “Servants of His Highness the Khedive”
- 3 “Flavour of Domesticity”
- 4 “Brotherhood that Binds the Brave”
- 5 “Tea with the Khalifa”
- Epilogue: Mutiny at Omdurman
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The three Soudanese battalions were now confronted with the whole fury of the Dervish attack from Kerreri. The bravery of the blacks was no less conspicuous than the wildness of their musketry. They evinced an extraordinary excitement – firing their rifles without any attempt to sight or aim, and only anxious to pull the trigger, re-load, and pull it again. In vain the British officers strove to calm their impulsive soldiers. In vain they called upon them by name, or, taking their rifles from them, adjusted the sights themselves. The independent firing was utterly beyond control. Soon the ammunition began to be exhausted, and the soldiers turned round clamouring for more cartridges, which their officers doled out to them by twos and threes in the hopes of steadying them. It was useless.
Winston S. Churchill, The River WarHilaire Belloc's couplet on the Maxim gun notwithstanding, it was Sudanese soldiers that effectively decided the Nile Campaign. However, one would not get this idea reading Winston Churchill's The River War, or the many accounts of “the reconquest of the Sudan” that have been published since. Rather, there is the sense that Sudanese soldiers, though gallant and willing fighters, were undisciplined and unskilled, and that their battalions were only held together in the face of the enemy by the strong will of British officers. Moreover, such accounts give the impression these men occupied only a combat role in the Nile Campaign, and a somewhat peripheral one at that, and served in no other capacity than as rank-and-file infantry soldiers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Slaves of FortuneSudanese Soldiers and the River War, 1896-1898, pp. 155 - 188Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011