Battle of Omdurman (1898): Kitchener's Conquest of the Sudan

The Battle of Omdurman, fought on 2 September 1898 on the plain north of the Sudanese city of Omdurman, was the decisive clash of the British-led reconquest of Sudan. An Anglo-Egyptian army under Major-General Sir Herbert Kitchener, armed with machine guns, artillery and Nile gunboats, destroyed the much larger army of the Mahdist state in a single morning. It became one of the starkest examples of the firepower gap between industrial European armies and their opponents during the Scramble for Africa.

Background: the Mahdist state

In 1881 a Sudanese religious leader, Muhammad Ahmad, proclaimed himself the Mahdi, a redeemer expected by many Muslims at the end of time. His movement rose against the Egyptian administration that had ruled Sudan since the 1820s, an administration that by then employed British officers and was seen as corrupt and oppressive. The Mahdist War that followed ended Egyptian control.

In January 1885 Mahdist forces stormed Khartoum and killed the British general Charles Gordon at the end of the Siege of Khartoum. A British relief column arrived two days too late and was withdrawn. The Mahdi died a few months later, in June 1885, and his successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, ruled a large Islamic state from Omdurman, across the Nile from the ruined Khartoum.

Why Britain returned

For a decade Britain, which had occupied Egypt since 1882, left Sudan alone. By the mid-1890s the situation had changed. Other European powers were advancing towards the upper Nile: France was preparing an expedition from West Africa, and an Italian army was crushed by Ethiopia at Adwa in March 1896. British strategists feared that a rival power controlling the Nile’s headwaters could threaten Egypt and the Suez route to India.

In March 1896 the British government authorised an advance up the Nile, officially to help Italy by distracting the Mahdists. Kitchener, the Sirdar (commander-in-chief) of the Egyptian army, led a methodical campaign. Its backbone was the Sudan Military Railway, built across the Nubian Desert from Wadi Halfa under the Canadian engineer Percy Girouard. It allowed men, ammunition and dismantled gunboats to move south far faster than by river alone.

The campaign of 1896–1898

Kitchener’s forces took Dongola in September 1896 and Abu Hamed in August 1897. On 8 April 1898 they defeated a Mahdist army under Mahmud Ahmad at the Battle of the Atbara, killing several thousand. By late August 1898 Kitchener’s army of about 25,000 men, roughly 8,000 British and 17,000 Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers, was camped at the village of Egeiga on the west bank of the Nile, a few miles north of Omdurman.

The army carried around 44 field guns and 20 Maxim machine guns, and a flotilla of armed steamers patrolled the river. The Khalifa had gathered an army usually estimated at 50,000 to 60,000 men, armed mostly with spears, swords and older rifles, with some artillery and a few machine guns captured from earlier campaigns.

The battle

At dawn on 2 September 1898 the Mahdist army advanced across the open plain in several great divisions under their banners. British and Egyptian artillery opened fire at long range, followed by volleys of rifle fire and the Maxim guns. The first assault, against the front of the Anglo-Egyptian position, broke down well short of the lines.

Kitchener’s men fought from behind a zariba, a defensive hedge of thorn bushes, and shallow trenches, with their backs to the Nile. The gunboats on the river added their own guns and machine guns to the fire, and the day before, gunboats and heavy howitzers landed on the east bank had shelled Omdurman, damaging the dome of the Mahdi’s tomb. Few attackers came within several hundred yards of the British and Egyptian firing lines.

Kitchener then ordered his army to march south towards Omdurman to prevent the Khalifa from retreating into the city. As the brigades moved, a large Mahdist reserve, including the Khalifa’s own Black Flag division and later the Green Flag division from the hills of Kerreri, attacked the exposed rear brigade under Colonel Hector MacDonald. MacDonald’s Sudanese and Egyptian battalions changed front under fire and held their ground until other brigades came to help. This was the most dangerous moment of the day for Kitchener’s army.

By about 11.30 am the battle was over. Kitchener is reported to have remarked that the enemy had been given “a good dusting”. The army entered Omdurman that afternoon, and the Khalifa fled south-west.

The charge of the 21st Lancers

The most famous episode of the battle was also among its least necessary. Early in the second phase, the 21st Lancers, about 400 men under Colonel Rowland Martin, were sent to clear the ground towards Omdurman. They charged what appeared to be a few hundred Mahdist riflemen, but the enemy had concealed a much larger force, perhaps 2,000 men, in a dry watercourse (khor) behind them.

The regiment crashed into the khor, fought its way through and dismounted to drive the Mahdists off with carbine fire. In a few minutes the Lancers lost 21 killed and around 50 wounded, plus more than 100 horses. Three men received the Victoria Cross. Among the officers was the 23-year-old Lieutenant Winston Churchill, attached to the regiment and also writing for the Morning Post. His account in The River War made the charge famous.

Aftermath and controversy

Casualty figures show how one-sided the fighting was. British reports counted about 10,000 Mahdist dead, roughly 13,000 wounded and 5,000 prisoners, while the Anglo-Egyptian army lost fewer than 50 killed and a few hundred wounded. Many wounded Mahdists were killed on the battlefield or left without care, which critics, including Churchill and the journalist Ernest Bennett, later condemned.

Kitchener also ordered the Mahdi’s tomb in Omdurman to be destroyed and his remains thrown into the Nile, reportedly keeping the skull for a time. The act caused disquiet in Parliament and with Queen Victoria, and the skull was later buried. On 4 September a memorial service for Gordon was held in the ruins of the governor’s palace at Khartoum.

Within days Kitchener steamed further up the White Nile to confront a French expedition, leading to the Fashoda Incident. Under the Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 19 January 1899 Sudan became a condominium, nominally shared by Britain and Egypt but in practice run by British officials. The Khalifa was killed at Umm Diwaykarat on 24 November 1899, and Reginald Wingate became Governor-General of the Sudan later that year.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1885, 26 January: Mahdist forces take Khartoum; General Gordon is killed.
• 1896, March: Britain authorises the advance up the Nile under Kitchener.
• 1897, August: Anglo-Egyptian forces capture Abu Hamed; the desert railway pushes south.
• 1898, 8 April: Kitchener defeats Mahmud Ahmad at the Battle of the Atbara.
• 1898, 2 September: Battle of Omdurman; the Mahdist army is destroyed.
• 1898, 4 September: Memorial service for Gordon held at Khartoum.
• 1898, 19 September: Kitchener reaches the French post at Fashoda.
• 1899, 19 January: Anglo-Egyptian Condominium agreement signed.
• 1899, 24 November: The Khalifa is killed at Umm Diwaykarat.

Why it matters

Omdurman ended the Mahdist state and placed Sudan under British-dominated rule until independence in 1956. It made Kitchener a national hero and Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and gave Churchill his first literary success. Above all, it showed the crushing power of machine guns and modern artillery against mass infantry attacks, a lesson European armies would face themselves within two decades.