3-074-770 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Military Disaster in the Soudan: Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, at the junction of the Blue and White Nile, 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...Though cataracts, or rather rapids, obstruct the navigation of the Nile beyond Egypt, it is possible to march direct to Khartoum, either quitting the river below the Second Cataract and crossing the Nubian desert, to Abou Hamed or Berber; or else keeping up the river to Dongola, and thence crossing the western part of Nubia to Berber or Khartoum'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.