3-074-761 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Hicks Pasha (Major-General Hicks), Commander of the Egyptian Army destroyed in the Sudan, 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...About one third part of the Egyptian troops at length surrendered to the Mahdi, and were spared; the rest had been slain, with Hicks Pasha and the other officers'. According to the story of Hicks's cook, one of the survivors, the general was the last officer to fall, pierced by the spear of the Khalifa Mahommed Sherif. Hicks's head was cut off and taken to the Mahdi. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.