acquiring the
esteem and confidence of their men, and the opportunity was nobly
utilized. While the patient fellah, resigned to the decrees of the
Almighty, saw the ruling Egyptian class hurry away from Cairo, he saw
also those of his comrades who were stricken tenderly nursed, soothed in
death's struggles, and in many cases actually washed, laid out and
interred by their new self-sacrificing and determined masters. The
regeneration of the fellahin army dates from that epidemic.

When the Egyptian Army of the Delta was dispersed at Tell el-Kebir, the
khedive had 40,000 troops in the Sudan, scattered from Massawa on the
Red Sea to 1200 m. towards the west, and from Wadi Halfa, 1500 m.
southward to Wadelai, near Albert Nyanza. These were composed of Turks,
Albanians, Circassians and some Sudanese. Ten thousand fellahin,
collected in March 1883, mainly from Arabi's former forces, set out from
Duem, 100 m. south of Khartum, in September 1883, under Hicks Pasha, a
dauntless retired Indian Army officer, to vanquish the Mahdi. They
disappeared in the deserts of Kordofan, where they were destroyed by the
Mahdists about 50 m. south of El Obeid. In the wave of successful
rebellion, except at Khartum, few of the Egyptian garrisons were killed
when the posts fell, long residence and local family ties rendering easy
their assimilation in the ranks of the Mahdists.

Baker Pasha, with about 4000 constabulary, who were old soldiers,
attempted to relieve Tokar in February 1884. He was attacked by 1200
tribesmen and utterly routed, losing 4 Krupp guns, 2 machine guns and
3000 rifles. Only 1400 Egyptians escaped the slaughter.

The sirdar made an attempt to raise a battalion of Albanians, but the
few men obtained mutinied when ordered to proceed to the Sudan, and it
was deemed advisable, after the ringleaders had been executed, to
abandon the idea, and rely on blacks to stiffen the fellahin. Then the
9th (Sudanese) Battalion was created for service at Suakin, and four
others having been successively added, these (with one exception--at
Gedaref) have since borne the brunt of all the fighting which has been
done by the khedivial troops. The Egyptian troops in the operations near
Suakin behaved well; and there were many instances of personal gallantry
by individual soldiers. In the autumn of 1884, when a British expedition
went up the Nile to endeavour to relieve the heroic Gordon, besieged in
Khartum, the Egyptians did remarkably good wo