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Khartoum Campaign, 1898; or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan — Context and Discussion

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In Category - Modern Nations

Authors: Burleigh, Bennet, 1840?-1914 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Omdurman, Battle of, Omdurman, Sudan, 1898; Sudan -- History -- 1881-1899; Sudan -- History, Military Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 86,705

Reading time 377 min

Text sections 10

Khartoum Campaign, 1898; or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan — Context and Discussion can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 86,705 words, 6 hr 17 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 20.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #25504

Bennet Burleigh's firsthand account of the 1898 reconquest of Sudan, blending telegraphic dispatches with detailed battle narratives. The prose shifts from measured logistical reporting to visceral combat scenes, notably in the account of the 21st Lancers' charge at Omdurman.

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INTRODUCTORY--REVIEW OF THE FIELD, 1

DAYS OF WAITING AND PREPARATION, 14

MUSTERING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF MAHDISM, 35

BY THE WAY--FROM CAIRO TO DAKHALA, 45

DAKHALA CAMP: GOSSIP AND DUTY, 63

MARCHING IN THE SOUDAN--FROM DAKHALA TO WAD HABESHI, 75

WITH THE ARMY IN THE FIELD--WAD HAMID TO EL HEJIR, 92

EL HEJIR TO UM TERIF--INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS, 105

ADVANCE TO KERRERI--SKIRMISHING WITH THE ENEMY, 119

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN--FIRST PHASE OF THE FIGHT, 135

BATTLE OF OMDURMAN--_continued._--THE CAVALRY FIGHTS--MACDONALD'S SAVING ACTION, 167

STORIES OF THE BATTLE--OMDURMAN, 199

CLOSE OF CAMPAIGN--GORDON MEMORIAL SERVICE, KHARTOUM, 228

KHARTOUM MEMORIAL COLLEGE--THE OFFICIAL DESPATCHES, 263

THE FASHODA AFFAIR--A RED BRITISH LINE THROUGH AFRICA, 295

Brigadier-General H. A. Macdonald, C.B., D.S.O., _Frontispiece_

Bennet Burleigh, _To face page_ 1

Headquarters, Wady Halfa, 9

Darmali (British Brigade Summer Quarters), 23

Group of Staff Officers--Colonel Wingate in Centre, 34

Street in Dakhala, 53

Troops going to Wad Habeshi, 58

Wood Station (_en route_ to Omdurman), 69

Loading Up--Breaking Camp, 77

21st Lancers--Advance Guard, 81

Slatin Pasha (on Foot), 89

Artillery going towards Omdurman, 125

Battle of Omdurman--Zereba Action, 151

Macdonald's Brigade advancing, 182

Sirdar directing Advance on Omdurman, 183

Khalifa's Captured Standard (Sirdar extreme left), 195

Chief Thoroughfare, Omdurman (Mulazim Wall, left; Osman Digna's House, right), 196

Effect of Shell Fire upon Wall (Mulazim Enclosure), 197

Mahdi's Tomb--Effect of Lyddite Shells, 219

Interior Mahdi's Tomb (Grille around Sarcophagus), 221

Khalifa's Gallows (cutting down his Last Victim), 223

Neufeld on Gunboat "Sheik"--Cutting off his Ankle-Irons, 225

Khalifa's Chief Eunuch (surrenders in British Camp), 229

Fresh Batch Wounded and Unwounded Dervish Prisoners, Omdurman, 4th September 1898, 231

Neufeld, with Abyssinian Wife and Children; also Fellow Prisoner, 241

Distant View, Khartoum (from Blue Nile), 255

Hoisting Flags, Khartoum, 259

Col. H. Macdonald at Omdurman, with Officer and Non-Commissioned Officer of 1st Brigade, 291

General View Plan, "A," _page_ 173

Zereba Plan, "B," " 179

First Attack on Macdonald's Brigade, "C," Plate 1, " 187

Second Attack on Macdonald's Brigade, "D," Plate 2, " 191

INTRODUCTORY.--REVIEW OF FIELD.

It is an easier and kindlier duty to set forth facts than to proclaim opinions and pronounce judgments. Before Tel-el-Kebir was fought in September 1882 and the Egyptian army beaten and disbanded, the insurrection headed by the Mahdi or False Prophet had begun. In the disrupted condition of affairs which succeeded Arabi Pasha's defeat by British arms the dervish movement made further rapid progress. To Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C., at the close of 1882, was assigned the task, as Sirdar or Commander-in-Chief of the Khedivial troops, of forming a real native army. It was that distinguished soldier, aided by an exceptionally able staff, who first took in hand the re-organisation and proper training of the fellaheen recruits. By dint of drill, discipline and stiffening with British commissioned and non-commissioned officers he soon made passable soldiers of the "Gippies." The new army was at first restricted to eight battalions of Egyptian infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery. Although there were Soudanese amongst Arabi's troops, they were mostly gunners. It was not until May 1884 that the first "black" regiment was raised. Yet it had been notorious that the Soudanese were the only Khedivial soldiers who made anything of a stubborn stand against us in the 1882 campaign. The blacks who came down with the Salahieh garrison on the 9th of August 1882, and joined in the surprise attack upon General Graham's brigade then in camp at Kassassin, were not easily driven off. The large body of Egyptian infantry and cavalry, although supported by several Krupp batteries which, issuing from the Tel-el-Kebir lines, assailed us in front, were readily checked and pushed back. It was our right rear that the "blacks" and others forming the Salahieh column menaced, and it required some tough fighting before Sir Baker-Russell with his cavalry and horse artillery was able to drive them off. In truth, the "blacks" held on long after the main body of Arabi's force had abandoned their intention of driving the British into the Suez Canal or the sea.

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Bennet Burleigh, war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, structures his narrative of the 1898 campaign around a distinct alternation between preparatory logistics and sudden, violent engagement. The opening chapters move at a deliberate pace, cataloguing troop movements, supply depots, and the political backdrop of the Mahdist state. Yet when the narrative reaches the battlefield, the prose contracts into rapid, almost staccato accounts of individual actions. This shift in tempo is most pronounced in the description of the 21st Lancers' charge at Omdurman, where Burleigh abandons strategic overview for a granular, moment-by-moment reconstruction of the melee.

From Telegraphic Dispatch to Battlefield Vignette

Burleigh's preface acknowledges that the volume draws on his telegrams and letters to the Daily Telegraph, as well as notes made day by day. This dual origin is visible in the text's variable pace. The early chapters—such as "Days of Waiting and Preparation"—read as compiled dispatches, with a focus on distances, dates, and the mustering of forces. The prose is functional, conveying information without flourish. In contrast, the account of the Lancers' charge at Omdurman is built from short, vivid episodes: Lieutenant Grenfell's watch stopped by a lance at 8:40 a.m., Captain Fair's sword snapping over "dervish steel," and Private Ives reaching the infantry "covered with his comrade's blood." These details, likely drawn from interviews or Burleigh's own observations, give the later sections a novelistic immediacy absent from the campaign's logistical preamble.

The Mechanics of the Melee: Voice and Structure in the Charge

The charge sequence is the book's most sustained piece of action writing. Burleigh structures it as a series of parallel vignettes, each following a different officer or trooper through the same few minutes. He shifts between perspectives without transition: Lieutenant Montmorency turns back for his sergeant, Captain Kenna accompanies him, Lieutenant Churchill rescues a non-commissioned officer, Surgeon-Captain Pinches is saved by his orderly. The effect is a mosaic of overlapping experiences, emphasizing the chaos of close combat. Burleigh's voice remains detached—he reports that Lieutenant Grenfell "was probably struck from behind"—but the accumulation of specific, named individuals and their fates creates a cumulative emotional weight. The passage ends with a summary of squadron casualties, returning abruptly to the statistical tone of the earlier chapters.

Recurring Details and the Texture of Combat

Throughout the battle narrative, Burleigh returns to a small set of physical details that anchor the action. Swords bending or breaking—Lieutenant Wormwald's sabre "bent and had to be laid aside," Captain Fair's sword "snapped over dervish steel"—become a motif for the violence of the encounter. Horses are repeatedly shot, bolt, or struggle over rocky ground; the khor's "high rough bank of boulders" is described as "almost impassable for a horse." These recurring elements give the prose a tactile quality, grounding abstract maneuvers in the material resistance of the terrain and equipment. Burleigh also notes the precise times and locations of events—Grenfell's watch stopped at 8:40 a.m.—lending a documentary precision that contrasts with the fluid, overlapping perspectives of the charge itself.

Readers attentive to narrative pace will find Burleigh's account most striking in its abrupt transitions from the administrative to the visceral. The early chapters reward those interested in the logistical underpinnings of a colonial campaign, while the battle sequences offer a fragmented, multi-perspective view of combat that anticipates twentieth-century war reporting. The book is best approached not as a unified history but as a collection of dispatches and recollections, stitched together with varying degrees of polish.

I kept thinking about how Burleigh’s dispatches make war feel both clinical and unbearably close, like watching men vanish into a dust cloud. That odd mix of distance and intimacy stayed with me. It’s the same quiet ache I felt reading Life and adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the noted western outlaws — Text and Context — those brothers, too, lived inside a story they couldn’t step out of.