Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  All this anxiety, particularly during the early days of the campaign, took its toll on Kitchener’s highly strung personality. Lieutenant Edward Cecil, Lord Salisbury’s son and one of Kitchener’s ADCs, remembered how loathsome his chief could be: ‘He was more uncouth and uncivilised at that time [c. 1896] than he was later.’ Quite often Kitchener could act the bully, with Cecil often on the receiving end. Even Major Reginald Wingate, Kitchener’s invaluable and loyal intelligence officer, could be maddened by his ‘boorish insults’.11 Thus, any discussion of Kitchener’s leadership must include his insecurities. All the worst traits in his character flowed from these.

  His officers were not the only ones to suffer. Kitchener was also accused of being cavalier with the lives of his men and for being cruel. During the campaign’s early stages he ordered Colonel Archibald Hunter, his second in command, to force march his men across the desert during which time they were caught in a sandstorm. Hunter raged in a letter to his brother:

  I have plumbed the bottom of Kitchener now – he is inhuman, heartless, with eccentric and freakish bursts of generosity specially when he is defeated: he is a vain, egotistical mass of pride and ambition, expecting and usurping all and giving nothing; he is a mixture of the fox, Jew and snake and like all bullies is a dove when tackled.12

  The reputation for cruelty reached a height following the battle of Omdurman and threatened his career temporarily. This was about the killing of the wounded Dervishes and Winston Churchill, who was there, was particularly scathing on this point: ‘The stern and unpitying spirit of the commander was communicated to his troops and the victories which marked the progression of the River War were accompanied by acts of barbarity not always justified even by the harsh customs of savage conflicts or the fierce and treacherous nature of the Dervish.’ To his mother, Churchill was even more forthright: ‘I shall merely say that the victory at Omdurman was disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of the wounded and that Kitchener was responsible for this.’13 Ernest Bennet, Oxford academic and correspondent for the Westminster Gazette, pursued the matter after the war and complained about the killing of the severely wounded, who could offer no resistance, unlike some of those lightly injured. He failed to get the matter investigated and it never became a major issue. The British public liked their new hero and were not interested, while the attempt by the writer, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, to stop Kitchener receiving his £30,000 reward was an embarrassing failure. Nevertheless, wounded Dervishes were killed and some soldiers explained why it was done. Lieutenant Ronald Meiklejohn, in his personal account of the campaign, told how ‘several dervishes, whom we passed as dead, or beyond harm, slashed at our legs with their swords, or rose and charged’. On an earlier page he had explained that before the battle of the Atbara specific orders had been given to spare those who put up their hands and to be aware of those feigning death or still capable of bearing arms. While it seems no such order was given before the battle of Omdurman presumably the same rules applied.14 In the end very few complained about the killing of the wounded and it was soon forgotten.

  As an army commander, especially during the quiet phases, Kitchener’s methods often caused a great deal of scorn and bafflement to those expected to carry out his orders without question. The most common complaint was about his almost pathological secrecy, and the haphazard manner in which he operated. Captain Sir Henry Rawlinson, who joined the staff in the Sudan as an ADC in early 1898, was informed by Wingate ‘that K is very sketchy in the way he fires off telegrams without letting anyone know sometimes and always without keeping a copy’. His fellow ADC, à Court, was equally exasperated by Kitchener’s rectitude: ‘He scarcely ever issued a written order, and confined himself to curt telegrams, the forms for which he carried in his helmet … He had particularly no staff, and did everything himself.’ This was in spite of appointing his old comrade Colonel Leslie Rundle to be his Chief of Staff. Lieutenant Colonel John Maxwell, commander of the Egyptian 2nd Brigade, told his wife that when Rundle arrived about mid-July 1898 to take up his post, ‘the Sirdar told him he did not want him to do anything except stay quiet and not fuss’. Evidently, Rundle saw the funny side of it and amused his dining companions with tales ‘of the Sirdar’s arbitrary way of doing things’. Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Horace Smith-Dorrien, who returned to the Sudan in July 1898 without knowing what he was to do, fortuitously bumped into Kitchener who told him to take command of his old unit the 13th Sudanese Battalion and then rode off: ‘I found the 13th and announced I had come to take command and, as no one objected, I did.’15

  Rawlinson complained that the Sudan campaign was ‘too much of a one-man show. If anything were to happen to the Sirdar there would be chaos, as no one but he knows the state of preparedness in which various departments are’. Of course, Kitchener’s luck held and nothing did happen to him. Consequently, the vices pointed out by Rawlinson and others were turned into virtues at the end. Grenfell, in his memoirs, wrote of Kitchener’s ‘powers of organisation, his clear head, and the remarkable way he managed a very difficult campaign’. Virtually all those willing to eulogise over Kitchener focused on his apparent ability to run the war single-handedly. Even knowing Kitchener’s aversion to paperwork, Captain Alfred Hubbard could still praise him as a man ‘gifted with tireless energy, unflinching determination, an inflexible purpose, combined with a marvellous memory’. Furthermore, one ‘hot-off-the-press’ account of the campaign helped give rise to an image of Kitchener that would last until his death and told how: ‘The masterly grasp of detail and faculty of organisation possessed by the Sirdar, Sir Herbert Kitchener, showed itself clearly from the day he took command of the Nile Expeditionary Force, in 1896, to the day he finally destroyed the Khalifa’s army. With machine-like precision he carried out his plans; never in a hurry, but never wasting a moment.’ Machine-like was a term that certainly caught on thanks especially to the journalist George W Steevens of the Daily Mail, whose subsequent book lauded Kitchener’s achievement. Steevens wrote of the robotic Sirdar, whose ‘precision is so inhumanly unerring, he is more like a machine than a man’. Yet, hyperbole aside, Steevens also identified the most fundamental aspect of Kitchener’s ability – his skills as an engineer, which were arguably far superior to those of Kitchener the warrior. His master stroke was the building of the Sudan Military Railway (SMR), which Steevens described as ‘the deadliest weapon that Britain used against Mahdism’, and this time he was not exaggerating.16

  The historian of the SMR, Lieutenant Colonel E W C Sandes, writing in 1937, was unequivocal in his praise of Kitchener’s forethought: ‘It cannot be too clearly emphasized that the success of the Desert Railway should be attributed to Kitchener himself.’ It was Kitchener’s zeal for the enterprise and his determination to see it through that ensured the project’s success. He had seen how Wolseley’s expedition had struggled with boats and camels and decided that another way of moving troops and supplies was necessary. And he did this without really knowing whether a railway could be laid across the desert, and in the hope that water could be found along the route. Kitchener’s appointment of Lieutenant E P C Girouard was masterly, not only because Girouard knew his business thoroughly, but because he knew how to handle Kitchener, who had the good sense to let him get on with his work and would often defer to his superior expertise. But what really demonstrated Kitchener’s luck was the discovery of water at two points, 77 and 126 miles from the railhead at Wadi Halfa. To Steevens, this was ‘the luck that goes with genius’.17

  Omdurman, 1898

  This was the biggest battle of Kitchener’s career and the event that cemented his reputation as one of the era’s great generals. In many respects it was a battle typical of its age in that the main problem had been to get the troops to the battlefield in reasonable shape across extremely hostile terrain. Once there British and Egyptian technical superiority would be decisive and would not require subtle or imaginative generalship. Omdurman, though, was not a foregone conclusion because the Dervishes we
re capable of defeating the allied force. Their mistakes gave Kitchener his chance and a good general, if perhaps not a great one, exploits his opponent’s errors. This he did.

  Previously, Kitchener’s battlefield experience had been limited. He had only ever fought in the Sudan and had commanded small units before becoming Sirdar. His handling of that force in the early stages of the campaign, between 1896 and 1897, had been exemplary, but the army was not large enough to bring the reconquest to a successful conclusion. Consequently, in January 1898, British troops, under Major General William Gatacre, arrived to help deliver the final blow, and would be joined by more British regiments before the final march on Omdurman in August 1898.

  The arrival of British forces was both a boon and a curse for Kitchener. On one hand, their arrival brought much-needed fresh men, who were well disciplined and well armed. On the other hand, their arrival awoke Kitchener’s latent anxieties about being superseded. Before the first major engagement of the combined British and Egyptian army, at the River Atbara on 8 April 1898, Kitchener completely lost confidence in his own ability when he received conflicting advice from his subordinates. The enemy commander, the Emir Mahmoud, had placed his army in a strong defensive position and Kitchener became uncertain how to act. On 1 April 1898, he telegraphed Cromer asking for advice: Hunter, his fighting general, had advised caution, in the hope that Mahmoud would come out to fight; Gatacre, wanted to assault the Dervish position head on. Cromer consulted Grenfell, who then referred to the War Office. Eventually, Cromer too advised caution, but left the matter to Kitchener who was told that whatever he did he had the full support of the British government.18 Buoyed by the government’s faith in his ability Kitchener ordered a frontal assault, although he left the handling of the respective armies to Hunter and Gatacre. The battle of the Atbara was a complete success, if somewhat costly, and Mahmoud himself was captured.

  The battle of Omdurman, phase one, 2 September 1898.

  The battle of Omdurman, phase two, 2 September 1898.

  The battle of Omdurman, phase three, 2 September 1898.

  After this victory there was a sense among the army that the final phase of the campaign was imminent. For the last advance Kitchener was reinforced by more British troops and equipment. It was well appreciated that firepower was the key to success, but Kitchener was out of touch with some developments as he had hardly been in Britain recently. While the allied army would muster 20 Maxim machine-guns and 44 guns, Wolseley, it seems, drew Kitchener’s attention to a new type of cannon available – the 5.5in howitzer that fired the new high-explosive (lyddite) shell – of which a battery (6 guns) was eventually sent.19 Supplementing the army’s artillery and machine-guns were those on board the gunboats that accompanied the army on its advance. There were 10 at Omdurman and together these massed 36 guns and 24 Maxims and would help protect the flanks of the allies during the battle. The gunboats had been with Kitchener from the start and were weapons in which he had taken a great interest.20 The infantry were armed with two types of rifle: the Egyptian forces had the older, single-shot Martini-Henry, while the British had the recent Lee-Metford II, a magazine rifle that used bullets propelled by smokeless cordite and had a range of 2,500yd. This was similar to that of the Maxims, although it was more effective at shorter ranges. Gatacre, to increase the ‘stopping’ power of the bullets, had had his men turn them into ‘dum dum’ bullets, which would enter cleanly but leave a massive hole at the back. The artillery, mostly modern rifled breech-loaders, had a range of over 5,000yd. In all, Kitchener’s forces numbered 25,000 men, 8,000 of whom were British.21

  Against this powerful force the Khalifa ‘Abdullahi, who had succeeded the Mahdi in 1885, could deploy some 50,000 men, although the numbers have been disputed. The only modern Sudanese account, that by ‘Ismat Hasan Zulfo, does not suggest a figure but questions the numbers above, which was a British estimate. The captured Dervish musters were apparently out of date and there were large desertions the night before the battle, while years of warfare since the creation of the Mahdist state in 1885, against the British, the Abyssinians and among themselves, had weakened the Dervish cause considerably. Zulfo adds that Hunter and the journalist Bennet Burleigh both thought the Dervish army numbered between 30,000 and 35,000, but gives no references. According to his recent biographer, Hunter told a correspondent that 50,000 Dervishes attacked, while Burleigh’s book of the campaign also gives that figure. Smith-Dorrien wrote later that the British cavalry estimated the Dervishes at 30,000, but ‘it subsequently proved to be double that number’. À Court stated that Lieutenant Colonel Hector MacDonald, commander of the Egyptian 1st Brigade and Lieutenant Colonel G R Broadwood, commander of the Egyptian Cavalry, ‘who are both sober people’, thought the enemy numbered 60,000; while Rawlinson gave figures of between 40,000 and 50,000. Whether Zulfo is correct in assuming that the Dervish numbers were exaggerated to add lustre to the victory is a point that cannot be resolved. It was Wingate who used the figures from the captured Dervish books (upwards of 52,000) and this remains the only reliable source.22

  What is not beyond doubt is the inferiority of the Dervish weapons compared to those of the allied army. While the Dervishes were not simply armed with swords and spears – although most were – the quality of their firearms was poor. Their rifles, Remingtons and Martini-Henrys captured from the British and Egyptians ten years earlier, were obsolete or badly kept. Their ammunition, while plentiful, was hampered by poor-quality, homemade gunpowder. The Dervishes could field 35 guns, but 27 of these were antiquated: the 8 modern Krupp breech-loaders were good enough but had hardly been fired since their capture and were, like the rifles, hindered by inferior gunpowder. As it happened, only five would be used on the battlefield, the rest were placed in forts meant to defend the river against the gunboats.23

  Kitchener’s advance to the outskirts of Omdurman, the Dervish capital opposite the abandoned city of Khartoum, was trouble-free. The Dervishes might have made a stand at the Shabluka gorge which contained the Nile’s sixth cataract (rapids). If forced to fight there the gunboats would have had little impact and the ground offered good defensive positions. The Dervishes did make an attempt to fortify the area but this was abandoned by the Khalifa who could not have provisioned his army there. Moreover, he preferred to lead the army himself and fight on familiar ground. Thus on 1 September 1898, Kitchener’s army encamped on the plain of Kereri (Karari) outside Omdurman, in a semicircle around the village of el-Egeiga.24

  Now they were so close Kitchener and his officers became anxious lest the Dervishes not come out and fight. There was some expectation that the Khalifa would make a stand in and around Omdurman itself and engage the allies in street fighting, where their technological superiority might be negated. What the allied army feared most, however, was a night attack and precautions were taken against such an eventuality: the gunboats’ searchlights swept the plain and spies helped make the Khalifa think he would be attacked instead. After passing a peaceful night, Kitchener, who knew the Dervishes had come out of Omdurman, ordered the army to leave their defences and make ready to march on the enemy’s capital because as dawn broke there was no sign of them. However, the 21st Lancers, having been sent out to find the enemy, found them very close indeed and on the move towards the allied forces. Lieutenant Meiklejohn summed up the army’s mood on hearing this: ‘I think everybody gave a sigh of relief, since it was much better that they should attack.’25

  The allied army returned to its positions. Kitchener had disposed of his army in a defensive semicircle and had left the manner of its deployment to the two main commanders. Hunter, on the right, had positioned the Egyptians in shallow trenches, while Gatacre placed the British behind a zariba, or thorn-bush fence. The 21st Lancers came into the position, but the Egyptian cavalry and camel corps remained on the Kereri hills, which were slightly towards the north-west of the allied army. To the south-west lay the ridge known as Jebel Surgham and to the south of that lay a dried river bed,
the Khor Abu Sunt, in which were eventually concealed about 2,000 Dervish warriors. Of these, 700 were Beja Hadendowa tribesmen under their wily chief Osman Digna, whom Kitchener had fought when governor of the eastern Sudan.

  The Khalifa did not simply launch his army against the allies in the hope of overwhelming the enemy by numbers alone. The frontal assault under Osman Azrak, assisted by a smaller force under Ibrahim al Khalil that came over the Jebel Surgham, was meant to pin the allied forces, while a force of around 15,000, under the Green Standard and commanded by Osman Shaykh al-Din and Abu Siwar, moved into the Kereri hills in order to attack the right flank of the allied army. Meanwhile, the Khalifa, with his brother Ya’qub and senior officer Ali Wad Hilu, waited with the Black Standard (some 12,000 to 15,000 men) ready to charge the enemy at the right moment.26

  The attack by the forces of Osman Azrak began at about 0630. The sight of these men on the move impressed all those who witnessed it. Lieutenant Colonel D F Lewis, commander of the 3rd Egyptian Brigade wrote: ‘The order and pace with which they moved struck us so particularly. This was no horde of savages but a well-ordered army.’ Rawlinson, agreed: ‘It was a magnificent sight these thousands of wild, brave uneducated savages advancing to their destruction.’27

  The allied artillery and gunboats fired first at about 0645 and then, as the survivors came closer, the Maxims and rifles of the infantry followed. There was little cover for the Dervishes and thousands fell. Ibrahim al Khalil’s smaller force soon engaged the allied left flank from the Jebel Surgham but they had mistimed their attack and engaged the British forces too early, before Osman Azrak’s assault had made any impact. They too were repulsed with heavy losses.