3-074-760 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lieutenant-Colonel H. W. K. Coetlogon, Commander of the Garrison at Khartoum, 1883. 'The Egyptian army of ten thousand men, under command of Major-General Hicks (with the title of Hicks Pasha) sent last February to put down the Mussulman native and Arab insurrection in the Soudan, has been utterly destroyed. In the march from Duem on the White Nile, to south-west through Kordofan, intending to capture El Obeid, the chief town of that country, lying far in the interior of Africa, it was overwhelmed by at least twenty times its own force, under the leadership of the "Mahdi," and in three days of desperate fighting was cut to pieces. This astounding news was published in England on Friday week. There is little hope that any of the British officers connected with the expedition have escaped with their lives, with the exception of Lieutenant-Colonel Coetlogon, who was in command of the garrison at Khartoum, the capital of all the Soudan provinces, at the junction of the Blue Nile with the White Nile'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.