The funeral service was
intoned; the solemn assembly sang Gordon's favourite hymn, "Abide with
me," and the Scottish pipes wailed their lament for the lost chieftain.
Few eyes were undimmed by tears at the close of this service, a slight
but affecting reparation for the delays and blunders of fourteen years
before. Then the Union Jack and the Egyptian Crescent flag were hoisted
and received a salute of 21 guns.

The recovery of the Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain was not to pass
unchallenged. All along France had viewed the reconquest of the valley
of the upper Nile with ill-concealed jealousy, and some persons have
maintained that the French Government was not a stranger to designs
hatched in France for helping the Khalifa[418]. Now that these questions
have been happily buried by the Anglo-French agreement of the year 1904,
it would be foolish to recount all that was said amidst the excitements
of the year 1898. Some reference must, however, be made to the Fashoda
incident, which for a short space threatened to bring Great Britain and
France to an open rupture.

[Footnote 418: See an unsigned article in the _Contemporary Review_ for
Dec. 1897.]

On September 5, a steamer, flying the white flag, reached Omdurman. The
ex-Dervish captain brought the news that at Fashoda he had been fired
upon by white men bearing a strange flag. The Sirdar divined the truth,
namely, that a French expedition under Major (now Colonel) Marchand must
have made its way from the Congo to the White Nile at Fashoda with the
aim of annexing that district for France.

Now that the dust of controversy has cleared away, we can see facts in
their true proportions, especially as the work recently published by M.
de Freycinet and the revelations of Colonel Marchand have thrown more
light on the affair. Briefly stated, the French case is as follows. Mr.
Gladstone on May 11, 1885, declared officially that Egypt limited her
sway to a line drawn through Wady Haifa. The authority of the Khedive
over the Sudan therefore ceased, though this did not imply the cessation
of the Sultan's suzerainty in those regions. Further, England had acted
as if the Sudan were no man's land by appropriating the southernmost
part in accordance with the Anglo-German agreement of July I, 1890; and
Uganda became a British Protectorate in August 1894. The French
protested against this extension of British influence over the Upper
Nile; and we must admit that, in regard to inte