3-074-772 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Military Disaster in the Soudan: Souakim, the sea-port of Nubia and of Khartoum, on the Red Sea, 1883. 'The Coquette gun-boat, and probably other British vessels of war, are to be sent to Souakim [ie Suakin], which is a port of considerable traffic, and is the residence of several European merchants...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...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.