rder to his impatient
followers to go in and finish the work they had so well begun. The
Egyptian soldiers seem to have been butchered without resistance. The
Europeans and the Turkish cavalry fought well for a short time, but in
a few minutes they were overpowered by superior numbers. Of the whole
force of 10,000 men, only a few individuals escaped by some special
stroke of fortune, for nearly the whole of the 300 prisoners taken
were subsequently executed. Such was the complete and appalling
character of the destruction of Hicks's army, which seemed to shatter
at a single blow the whole fabric of the Khedive's power in the
Soudan, and rivetted the attention of Europe on that particular
quarter of the Dark Continent.

The consequences of that decisive success, which became known in
London three weeks after it happened, were immediate throughout the
region wherein it occurred. Many Egyptian garrisons, which had been
holding out in the hope of succour through the force that Hicks Pasha
was bringing from Khartoum, abandoned hope after its destruction at
Shekan, and thought only of coming to terms with the conqueror. Among
these was the force at Dara in Darfour under the command of Slatin
Pasha. That able officer had held the place for months under the
greatest difficulty, and had even obtained some slight successes in
the field, but the fate of the Hicks expedition convinced him that the
situation was hopeless, and that his duty to the brave troops under
him required the acceptance of the honourable terms which his tact and
reputation enabled him to secure at the hands of the conqueror. Slatin
surrendered on 23rd December 1883; Lupton Bey, commander in the Bahr
Gazelle, about the same time, and these successes were enhanced and
extended by those achieved by Osman Digma in the Eastern Soudan,
where, early in February 1884, while Gordon was on his way to
Khartoum, that leader inflicted on Baker Pasha at Tokar a defeat
scarcely less crushing than that of Shekan.

By New Year's Day, 1884, therefore, the power of the Mahdi was
triumphantly established over the whole extent of the Soudan, from the
Equator to Souakim, with the exception of Khartoum and the middle
course of the Nile from that place to Dongola. There were also some
outlying garrisons, such as that at Kassala, but the principal
Egyptian force remaining was the body of 4000 so-called troops, the
less efficient part, we may be sure, of those available, left behind