resh forces. General MacDonald, in making
a detour with a body of Lancers, was suddenly beset by two thousand
dervish riflemen, who fiercely charged him on three sides. Quickly
forming a square, he succeeded by desperate efforts in repelling the
enemy, until he was reinforced by Kitchener, who perceived his desperate
situation.

The calif then attacked the extreme left wing of the army, but was again
driven off. The Anglo-Egyptians were now in a position to deliver the
main attack upon the dervish defences. The troops of the califa
fought with heroic bravery, fearlessly advancing within range of the
Anglo-Egyptian fire, but each time they were mown down by the cross fire
of the Maxims and rifles. Vast numbers were slain, and some divisions
of the dervishes suffered complete annihilation. They left ten thousand
dead upon the field, and ten thousand wounded. The rest fled in all
directions, a scattered and straggling force, with the califa himself.
The Anglo-Egyptians lost but two thousand men. Few prisoners were taken,
for, in almost every instance, the dervishes refused to surrender, and
even when wounded used their swords and spears against the rescuers of
the ambulance corps. All the fighting was over by midday, and in the
afternoon General Kitchener entered Omdurman, and the army encamped in
the vicinity. Slatin Bey was duly installed as governor in the name
of the Egyptian khedive. The European prisoners of the califa were now
released, and on Sunday, the 4th of September, the sirdar and all his
army held a solemn service in memory of General Gordon near the spot
where he was killed.

Bodies of men were now sent out on all sides to pacify the country, and
the sirdar, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of
Khartum, started on an expedition up the Nile in a gunboat, in order to
settle the difficult question arising from the occupation of Pashoda by
a French corps under Major Marchand. The ability and strategy of this
French commander were of a very high order. The general plan of the
expedition had been in accord with French military traditions, based
upon former attempts in India and America to separate the British
colonial dominions, or to block the way to their extension by
establishing a series of military outposts or forts at certain strategic
points chosen for this purpose. Had the French designs under Desaix in
India, or of the army of occupation in the Mississippi Valley in the
eighteenth