1. The archslaver Zubair Rahmat in his pasha’s uniform;
2. Osman Digna, the Mahdi’s opportunist ally in the Red Sea hills;
a Hadendowa warrior, or “Fuzzy-Wuzzy.”
The ministers who sent Gordon to the Sudan for the last time:
1. Lord Granville and
2. Lord Hartington.
The making of a legend: General Gordon’s Last Stand by William Joy.
“Too Late!”: Britannia bereft on the cover of Punch magazine.
Scramblers for Africa:
1. Leopold II, King of the Belgians;
2. the sporting Lord Rosebery, lampooned in Punch as “A Doubtful Stayer.”
“From the Atlantic to the Red Sea”:
1. French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé;
2. Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, dreaming of Fashoda.
The modern traveler: British officers, Egyptian soldiers, and Sudanese laborers take a break from laying the Sudan Military Railway, 1897.
“A very Good Friday”: Kitchener’s intelligence officer Colonel Reginald Wingate smokes a cheroot as he interrogates the wounded Mahdist emir Mahmoud Ahmed after the Battle of the Atbara, April 8, 1897.
“Of course, there would be a charge”: Second Lieutenant Winston Spencer Churchill in the uniform of the Fourth Hussars, 1895.
“Old Mac”: Major General Hector MacDonald, whose Egyptian and Sudanese troops broke the khalifa’s charge at Omdurman and saved Kitchener’s reputation.
Shell damage to the dome of the Mahdi’s tomb, September 3, 1898, shortly before “Monkey” Gordon blew it up.
“Whatever happens, We have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not”: The bodies of Khalifa Abdullahi (center left) and his commanders at Umm Debeikerat in Kordofan, November 24, 1899.
Three Empires on the Nile Page 42
