The Siege of Khartoum was a major battle of the Mahdist War that occurred from 1884 to 1885 when the Ansar army of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad besieged, stormed, and massacred the Sudanese city of Khartoum. The British officer Charles Gordon had been sent to Khartoum by Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone with the mission of evacuating the Egyptian Army from the city and allowing Sudan to fall to the Mahdists to excuse Britain from intervention, but circumstances kept him in the city and compelled him to take command of the city as it fell under siege. His aide J.D.H. Stewart supervised the construction of a canal connecting the White and Blue Nile, transforming Khartoum into an easily-defensible island, but winter brought about the receding of the Nile's waters. Protests in London clamoring for Gladstone to rescue Gordon were met with only token actions, initially including the dispatch of Major Herbert Kitchener with 20 men to Egypt to open up an escape path for Gordon and the European civilians of Khartoum, and later the dispatch of General Garnet Wolseley with an expeditionary force to lift the siege. Gladstone ensured that the expedition did not rush to relieve the city, hoping to pressure Gordon into leaving, but it soon became too late. Stewart and several other European evacuees were massacred when their ship Abbas ran aground and was beset by Mahdist dervishes, and Gordon was killed at the governor's palace while defiantly staring down his dozens of attackers. The Mahdists killed the entire garrison and 4,000 male civilians, while the women and children of Khartoum were enslaved. The relief force arrived two days later, but realized their uselessness and withdrew from Sudan. The victory at Khartoum enabled Ahmad to found the Mahdist State, but he died a year later.
History[]
In 1881 Muhammad Ahmad, a Muslim religious leader in the Sudan, declared himself the Mahdi ("Expected One"). He began a holy war against Egyptian rule and gathered a large number of followers, the Ansar (dervishes), intent on establishing a purified form of Islam in the Sudan. In 1883 his forces exterminated an Egyptian army of 10,000 men led by a British officer, Colonel William Hicks. In Britain there was a clamor for action against the Mahdi, who now threatened Khartoum. British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone reluctantly agreed to send General Charles George Gordon to Khartoum. Gordon had suppressed the Taiping Rebellion in China in 1863-64 and had served in Khartoum as the governor-general of the Khedive (the Egyptian ruler). The terms of his mission were unclear. Gladstone thought he was to evacuate the civilians from Khartoum, which he promptly did. The Khedive believed he should evacuate all the Egyptian garrisons in the Nile valley. Gordon, however, became trapped in Khartoum as the Mahdi's Ansar advanced. The siege began in March. Gordon had no staff, and the Egyptian garrison was weak. Somehow it held out until January, when the falling level of the Nile weakened its defenses. The Ansar broke through, annihilated the garrison, and hacked Gordon to death. A relief expedition, led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, arrived three days later.
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