Battle of Omdurman
Battle of Omdurman | |||||||
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Part of the Mahdist War | |||||||
The Charge of the 21st Lancers by Edward Matthew Hale[a] | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United Kingdom Khedivate of Egypt | Mahdist State | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Unknown Egyptian officers | Abdallahi ibn Muhammad | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
8,200 British, Total: 25,800 | 52,000 warriors | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
47–48[1] dead 382 wounded |
12,000 killed[2] 13,000 wounded 5,000 captured |
The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the
Following the establishment of the Mahdist State in Sudan, and the subsequent threat to the regional status quo and to British-occupied Egypt, the British government decided to send an expeditionary force with the task of overthrowing the Khalifa. The commander of the force, Sir Herbert Kitchener, was also seeking revenge for the death of
The victory of the British–Egyptian force was a demonstration of the superiority of a highly disciplined army equipped with modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery over a force twice its size armed with older weapons, and marked the success of British efforts to reconquer Sudan. Following the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat a year later, the remaining Mahdist forces were defeated and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established.
Background
On 13 September 1882, the
In 1896 to protect British interests, in particular the Suez Canal, and to suppress the slave trade, the British government decided to reconquer Sudan. An Anglo-Egyptian army under British Commander-in-Chief of Egyptian Army Major General[b] Herbert Kitchener marched south from Egypt. Kitchener captured Dongola on 21 September 1896, and Abu Hamed on 7 August 1897. At the Battle of the Atbara River on 7 April 1898, he defeated Mahdist forces led by Osman Dinga and Khalifa Abdullah, opening a line of march up the Nile. On 1 September 1898 Kitchener, supported by a powerful flotilla of gunboats, arrived to face the main Mahdist army at Omdurman, near Khartoum.[5]
Battle
The battle took place at Kerreri, 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) north of Omdurman.[c] Kitchener commanded a force of 8,000 British regulars and a mixed force of 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptian troops. He arrayed his force in an arc around the village of Egeiga, close to the bank of the Nile, where a twelve gunboat flotilla waited in support,[3] facing a wide, flat plain with hills rising to the left and right. The British and Egyptian cavalry were placed on either flank.
Abdullah's followers numbered around 50,000,[2] including some 3,000 cavalry. They were split into five groups—a force of 8,000 under Osman Azrak was arrayed directly opposite the British, in a shallow arc along a mile (1.6 km) of a low ridge leading onto the plain, and the other Mahdist forces were initially concealed from Kitchener's force. Abdullah al-Taashi[2] and 17,000 men were concealed behind Surkab Hill (in older sources often distorted to "Surgham" Hill) to the west and rear of Osman Azrak's force, with 20,000 more positioned to the north-west, close to the front behind the Kerreri hills, commanded by Ali wad Hilu and Osman Sheikh ed-Din. A final force of around 8,000 was gathered on the slope on the right flank of Azrak's force.
The battle began in the early morning, at around 6:00 a.m. After the clashes of the previous day, the 8,000 men under Osman Azrak advanced straight at the waiting British, quickly followed by about 8,000 of those waiting to the northwest, a mixed force of rifle and spear-men. The 52 quick firing guns of the British artillery opened fire at around 2,750 metres (1.71 mi),[6] inflicting severe casualties on the Mahdist forces before they even came within range of the Maxim guns and volley fire. The frontal attack ended quickly, with around 4,000 Mahdist forces casualties; none of the attackers got closer than 50 m to the British trenches. A flanking move from the Ansar right was also checked, and there were bloody clashes on the opposite flank that scattered the Mahdist forces there.
While the Anglo–Egyptian infantry were able to make use of their superior firepower from behind a zariba barricade without suffering significant casualties, the cavalry and camel corps deployed to the centre-north of the main force found themselves under threat from the Mahadist Green Standard force of about 15,000 warriors. Lieutenant Colonel R.G. Broadwood, the commander of the Anglo-Egyptian mounted troops, used his cavalry to draw off part of the advancing Ansar attackers under Osman Digna, but the slower-moving camel troops, attempting to regain the protection of the zariba, found themselves being closely pursued by Green Standard horsemen. This marked a crucial stage of the battle, but Kitchener was able to deploy two gunboats to a position on the river where their cannon and Nordenfelt guns broke up the Mahadist force before it could destroy Broadwood's detachment and possibly penetrate the flank of the Anglo-Egyptian infantry.[7]
Kitchener was anxious to occupy Omdurman before the remaining Mahdist forces could withdraw there. He advanced his army on the city, arranging them in separate columns for the attack. The British light cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers, was sent ahead to clear the plain to Omdurman. They had a tough time of it. In what has been described as the last operational cavalry charge by British troops, and the largest since the Crimean War,[8] the 400-strong regiment attacked what they thought were only a few hundred dervishes, but in fact there were 2,500 infantry hidden behind them in a depression. After a fierce clash, the Lancers drove them back (resulting in three Victoria Crosses being awarded to Lancers who helped rescue wounded comrades).[9] One of the participants of this fight was Lieutenant Winston Churchill, commanding a troop of twenty-five lancers.[9][d] On a larger scale, the British advance allowed the Khalifa to re-organize his forces. He still had over 30,000 men in the field and directed his main reserve to attack from the west while ordering the forces to the northwest to attack simultaneously over the Kerreri Hills.
Kitchener's force wheeled left in echelon to advance up Surkab ridge and then southwards. To protect the rear, a brigade of 3,000 mainly Sudanese, commanded by Hector MacDonald, was reinforced with Maxims and artillery and followed the main force at around 1,350 metres (0.84 mi). Curiously, the supplies and wounded around Egeiga were left almost unprotected.
MacDonald was alerted to the presence of around 15,000 enemy troops moving towards him from the west, out from behind Surkab. He wheeled his force and lined them up to face the enemy charge. The Mahdist infantry attacked in two prongs. Lewis's Egyptian Brigade managed to hold its own,
Awards
Four awards were made of the Victoria Cross, all for gallantry shown on 2 September 1898.[11]
- Thomas Byrne, Private, 21st Lancers
- Raymond de Montmorency, Lieutenant, 21st Lancers
- Paul Aloysius Kenna, Captain, 21st Lancers
- Nevill Smyth, Captain, 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays), attached to the Egyptian Army.[12]
Queen's Sudan Medal, British campaign medal awarded to British and Egyptian forces which took part in the Sudan campaign between 1896 and 1898.
Khedive's Sudan Medal (1897), Egyptian campaign medal awarded to British and Egyptian forces which took part in the Sudan campaign between 1896 and 1898.
Aftermath
Around 12,000 of the Mahdists were killed, 13,000 wounded and 5,000 taken prisoner. Kitchener's force lost 47 men killed and 382 wounded, the majority from MacDonald's command. One eyewitness described the appalling scene:
They could never get near and they refused to hold back. ... It was not a battle but an execution. ... The bodies were not in heaps—bodies hardly ever are; but they spread evenly over acres and acres. Some lay very composedly with their slippers placed under their heads for a last pillow; some knelt, cut short in the middle of a last prayer. Others were torn to pieces ...
— Ellis 1981, p. 86
The battle was the first time that the Mark IV hollow point bullet, made in the arsenal in Dum Dum, was used in a major battle. It was an expanding bullet, and the units that used it considered them to be highly effective.[13]
Controversy over the killing of the wounded after the battle, began soon afterwards.
Churchill published his account of the battle in 1899 as
The Battle of Omdurman has also lent its name to many streets in British and Commonwealth cities, for example 'Omdurman Road' in Southampton and 'Omdurman Street' in Freshwater, Sydney, Australia.
Cultural depictions
Contemporary responses
The subject of the battle made its appearance in several oil paintings later exhibited in Britain. In particular, the charge of the 21st Lancers held special appeal and several artists portrayed the scene including Stanley Berkeley, Robert Alexander Hillingford, Richard Caton Woodville, William Barnes Wollen, Gilbert S. Wright, Edward Mathew Hale, Capt. Adrian Jones, Major John C. Mathews, and Allan Stewart.[19] The pictorial press covered the campaign extensively and employed several artists to record the events.[20]
Although some among the press corps accompanying the army had film cameras, no footage was shot of the actual fighting. What was passed off as films of the battle, or preparations for it, were in fact spliced footage of barracks training or troop movements far from the front. Such films maintained their popularity for months in Britain and were succeeded by short features such as the fictional How Tommy Won the Victoria Cross: an Incident of the Soudan War (1899) in which English soldiers survive a 'dervish' ambush.[21]
The victory, and especially the cavalry charge of the 21st Lancers, was soon celebrated by songs on the popular stage, including "What Will They Say in England? A Story of the Gallant 21st" by Orlando Powell (1867–1915)[22] and Léonard Gautier's "The Heroic Charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman", published complete with piano score (London: E. Donajowski, 1898). William McGonagall was also among those inspired to doggerel patriotism in a hastily produced broadside, "The battle of Omdurman: a new poem: composed September 1898",[23] soon to be joined by the equally spontaneous verse of Henry Surtees, one of the uniformed participants, in his The March to Khartoum and Fall of Omdurman (1899).[24] In the following year there appeared a more polished performance in Annie Moore's poetry collection, Omdurman and other verses.[25]
In Sudan itself, the Khalifa had poets among his entourage, not all of whom were killed in the fighting, but much of their work was either destroyed by the British during systematic searches after the battle, or even by the poets themselves in fear of reprisal. Nevertheless, as part of the oral tradition there survived a lamentation by Wad Sa’d, who was an eye-witness of the defeat.[26]
Later fiction
It was not long before a fictional account of the British military expedition appeared in
The battle was later made an incident in a few 21st century novels.
See also
Notes
- ^ This illustration of the charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman was produced for Sir Evelyn Wood’s 1915 edition of British Battles on Land and Sea. "As they rode over the low ridge, the lancers were surprised by the thousands of Sudanese soldiers concealed behind it.”
- ^ Colonel in the British Army
- Khalifa) Abdullah retained it as his capital. Following the battle Omdurman was occupied under a joint Anglo-Egyptian condominium, which lasted until 1956. Omdurman is today a suburb of Khartoumin central Sudan, with a population of some 2 million.
- ^ Churchill later wrote a two-volume account of the campaign titled The River War.
References
Citations
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica 2010.
- ^ a b c Khan. 2005.
- ^ a b BBC 2005.
- ^ a b Overy & Overy 2014, p. 124.
- ^ a b Tucker 2011, pp. 375–376.
- ^ a b "Omdurman 1898". Obscure Battles. blogspot.com. 10 November 2015.
- ^ Faught 2016, pp. 84–85.
- ^ Roberts 2018, p. 65.
- ^ a b "Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, 2 September 1898". Army Museum. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2015.
- ^ Churchill 1899, pp. 82–164.
- ^ "No. 27023". The London Gazette. 15 November 1898. p. 6688.
- ^ Churchill 1899, p. 199.
- ^ "Dum Dums". Archived from the original on 25 September 2008.
- ^ Treatment of wounded at Omdurman Archived 26 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine Hansard
- ^ Bennett 1899a, pp. 18–33.
- ^ Bennett 1899b.
- ^ Churchill 1906.
- ^ Churchill 1899.
- ^ Harrington 1993.
- ^ Harrington 1998, pp. 82–110.
- ^ Bottomore 2007.
- ^ Powell et al. 1898.
- ^ McGonagall 1968.
- ^ van Wyk Smith 1978, p. 28.
- ^ Moore 1901, pp. 7–22.
- ^ Sharkey 1994, pp. 95–110.
- ^ Henty 1903.
- ^ "The Four Feathers. 1939". Museum of Modern Art.
- ^ Bottomore 2007, p. 6, Ch. IV.
- ISBN 978-0752860244. See e.g. Series 4 Episode 8 The Two and a Half Feathers
- ^ Ferry 2008.
- ^ Kaveney 2013.
Sources
- Bennett, E. N. (1899a). "After Omdurman". Contemporary Review. 75.
- "Radio 4 Empire – Battle of Omdurman". BBC. 26 September 2005.
- Bennett, E. N. (1899b). The Downfall of the Dervishes. London: Methuen.
- Bottomore, Stephen (2007). "Chapter 4: The Battle of Omdurman (1898) – Moving images of a British victory". Filming, faking and propaganda: The origins of the war film, 1897–1902 (doctoral). University of Utrecht. hdl:1874/22650.
- Churchill, Winston (1899). "Ch. XVIII The Reconnaissance of Kerreri". The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan. Vol. 2. Longmans, Green.
- Churchill, Winston (1906). Lord Randolph Churchill. Vol. 1. Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4655-8184-6.
- Ellis, John (1981) [1975]. The Social History of the Machine Gun. New York: ISBN 978-0-405-14209-3.
- "Battle of Omdurman". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica. 24 June 2010.
- Faught, C. Brad (2016). Kitchener. Hero and Anti-Hero. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78453-350-2.
- Ferry, John (2008). After Omdurman. ISBN 978-0-7090-8516-4.
- Harrington, Peter (1993). British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700–1914. ISBN 978-1-85367-157-9.
- Harrington, Peter (1998). Edward M. Spiers (ed.). Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-7146-4749-4.
- Henty, George Alfred (1903). With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Story of Atbara and Omdurman. Library of Alexandria. ISBN 978-1-4655-5757-5– via Project Gutenberg.
- Kaveney, Roz (15 September 2013). "The Devil's Paintbrush, By Jake Arnott". The Independent.
- Khan., Amil (2 September 2005). "Sudanese honour warriors who fell fighting British". Sudan Tribune. Archived from the original on 23 May 2021. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
- McGonagall, William (1968). James L. Smith (ed.). Last Poetic Gems: Selected from the Works of William McGonagall. Dundee: David Winter.
- Moore, Annie (1901). Omdurman: And Other Verses. W.C. Lister.
- Overy, R.J.; Overy, R. (2014). A History of War in 100 Battles. ISBN 978-0-19-939071-7.
- Powell, Orlando; Munroe, Walter; Hall, Albert; Banks, H G (1898), What will they say in England? : a story of the gallant 21st, London: Francis, Day & Hunter, OCLC 47041557
- Roberts, A. (2018). Churchill: Walking with Destiny. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-241-20564-8.
- Tucker, S. (2011). Battles that Changed History: An Encyclopedia of World Conflict. ISBN 978-1-59884-429-0.
- Sharkey, Heather J. (1994). "Mahdist oral praise poetry". Sudanic Africa. 5: 95–110. JSTOR 25653247.
- van Wyk Smith, Malvern (1978). Drummer Hodge: The Poetry of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902. Oxford: ISBN 978-0-19-812082-7.
Further reading
- Asher, Michael (2005). Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-025855-4.
- ISBN 978-1-86126-189-2
- Dutton, Roy (2012). Forgotten Heroes – The Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman. London: Infodial. ISBN 978-0-9556554-5-6.
- Featherstone, Donald (1993). Omdurman 1898: Kitchener's Victory in the Sudan. London: ISBN 978-1-85532-368-1.
- Harrington, Peter, and Frederic A. Sharf (ed.) (1998). Omdurman 1898: The Eyewitnesses Speak. London: Greenhill. ISBN 978-1-85367-333-7.
- Meredith, John (1998). Omdurman Diaries 1898: Eyewitness Accounts of the Legendary Campaign. Barnsley: ISBN 978-0-85052-607-3
- Ziegler, Philip (1974). Omdurman. New York: ISBN 978-0-394-48936-0.
- Zulfo, I.H. (1980). Karari: The Sudanese Account of the Battle of Omdurman. Warne. ISBN 978-0-7232-2677-2.
External links
- Battle of Omdurman Original reports from The Times
- Om Der Man! – an overview of the battle by the War Nerd
- Sudanese honour warriors who fell fighting British Archived 21 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine – A report from battle commemoration, originally by Reuters
- Bennet Burleigh, Khartoum Campaign or the Re-conquest of the Soudan, 1898