3-074-762 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Military Disaster in the Soudan: native Egyptian troops, 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...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...About one third part of the irregular Egyptian troops at length surrendered to the Mahdi, and were spared; the rest had been slain, with Hicks Pasha and the other officers...The origin and progress of the insurrection, which is guided by Arabs and other men of superior race, but which prevails among the various native populations of that part of Africa, ought to be more correctly known, it is due to several combined causes; discontent with the corrupt and oppressive rule of Egypt; the intrigues of the Arab slavedealers and their customers among the native chiefs, who wish to carry on their inhuman traffic without interference; but, more than all, a mighty impulse of religious fanaticism, which has been seething in the minds of African Moslems during several years past'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.