by Hew Strachan
By the end of January Maxwell had remarkably precise and accurate details as to the Turks’ dispositions at either end of Lake Timsah. Although he reinforced the central sector around Ismailia accordingly, he could not bring himself to abandon entirely the defences to north and south. The former, facing the coastal route used in reverse by Napoleon, would enable him to employ the support of the Royal Navy; the latter, the Red Sea approaches, figured (albeit probably unknown to Maxwell) in the hare-brained schemes of German naval officers.102 Nine British warships patrolled the channel. He therefore treated the canal as a line of defence, placing his forces on the western rather than the eastern bank. The two Indian divisions deployed were in reality a hastily formed collection of brigades with indifferent artillery, and incorporating many Muslims of perhaps doubtful loyalty. The commitment to a static defence was therefore total—so much so that the intelligence on the Turks was not relayed in full from Cairo to the forward units. Britain had been the first to breach the neutrality of the canal zone: the need thereafter was to underline that the justification for British action was Turkish aggression and the protection of neutrals’ rights of navigation.
The Turkish march was a triumph of good management. Baggage was cut to a minimum, officers being allowed only 15 kilos each. The soldiers’ daily ration was restricted to tea, biscuits, and dates. And yet there were no losses and the sick rate was kept to one man per thousand. It was on the day of the attack that things went wrong.
Kress’s plan was for half the central force to advance on Ismailia on 2 February, drawing the British into the defence of the area to the north of Lake Timsah. The Turks would then move to their left and to the south, to support the main attack which would strike the canal between Tussum and Serapeum at 10.30 p.m. Divided into eight columns, some hundreds of metres apart, and each including three pontoons and a half-company of pioneers, the Turks would cross to the west bank under cover of dark. Surprise was all. Therefore the howitzers, there being only four of them, were not employed in advance of the attack on the slow-moving traffic in the canal. Nor did the infantry fire as the pontoons were being dragged into position.
A sandstorm on the night of 2/3 February caused the bridging train to lose its way and the attack to be delayed until 2 a.m. Not until 3.25 a.m. was the British observation post at Tussum aware of the attack. Three pontoons reached the far bank, but then daylight exposed the bridging equipment to the fire of the Indian defenders, enabling them to hole the pontoons and floats. At 7.45 a.m. a torpedo boat destroyed the pontoons left on the eastern bank. Only then did the Turks begin using their artillery, the 15 cm howitzers making good practice against the British ships in the canal. But the attack of the first echelon had already failed, and the feints to north and south had not deflected the British from concentrating on the vital sector.
MAP 28. LIBYA, EGYPT, AND THE SUNDAN
There was a case for renewing the attack on 4 February. The 10th division, forming the second echelon, had remained fresh and uncommitted throughout the day. But the bridging equipment was lost, and further failure could expose the entire force to annihilation. Djemal decided to withdraw under cover of dark that night. The German officers seemed to have disagreed with Djemal’s decision: certainly, the Turks blamed them for pressing the attack on the 3rd when surprise had already been lost.103 However, Kress subsequently concluded that Djemal’s decision was correct. For him the source of the defeat was less the sandstorm and its disruption to his plans than the poor training of the Turkish troops which prevented their surmounting the subsequent confusion. Although the 10th division was Turkish, whereas Arabs had been used in the attacks on 3 February, the Turkish and German tendency to blame all on their Arab soldiers was not borne out by the gallantry of those who did cross the canal. There was no reason to conclude that the 10th division would have fared any better on the morrow.
Maxwell did not pursue. In part, this was because the British expected the Turkish attack to be renewed. Given the inflation of the Turks’ strength, there were presumed to be troops as yet uncommitted. In part too it was a reflection of ignorance: the sandstorm had grounded the seaplanes and the Turks’ movements were not so clear after 3 February as they had been before. But the decision was of a piece with Maxwell’s overall approach. None of his formations was really equipped to enter the desert. There were no mobile formations. Water would be a major problem. Djemal lost 7,000 out of 11,000 camels on the return journey, and his total losses (excluding the Bedouin irregulars)— 192 killed, 375 wounded, and 727 missing—were considerably increased by the transport difficulties of the retreat. Both echelons were now moving simultaneously, not separately, with a baggage train smaller than that employed in the advance.
Continued defence also reflected Maxwell’s principal priority. Just as the Turkish attack hinged on an uprising within Egypt, so his main vulnerability lay not on the canal but in Cairo. He himself never left the capital. He could not, therefore, exploit the tactical opportunities available on 3 and 4 February. But he could ensure that the newly arrived forces of Australia and New Zealand, en route for Europe, would impress the civilian population. The pivot of the successful defence lay not where the action occurred, but where it was prevented from occurring.
Moreover, as a military headquarters Cairo enjoyed a central position. The Turkish threat to Egypt came not only from the east but also from the west. Ottoman resistance to the Turkish invasion of Cyrenaica had forged the reputation of Enver and grafted pan-Islamic awareness onto pan-Turanianism. Although Italy had consolidated its hold on Tripolitania, the western half of Libya, between 1912 and 1914, its progress in the eastern part, Cyrenaica, had been slower and remained incomplete.
Therefore, despite Constantinople’s formal concession to Rome, local resistance to the Italians had never died. In recognizing the Caliphate, Italy allowed Islam a role in Libya that, because it was religious, became also secular. The war pitted Muslim against Christian. Funds to support the fighting flowed from believers throughout the Islamic world, from Afghanistan, Morocco, and India, and were channelled into Libya via Egypt and Tunisia. The struggle, therefore, changed character. In 1911 and 1912 one colonial power fought another; after 1912 nationalism, of a sort and charged with religion, took up the cudgels.
Freed of the incubus of empire, Turkey could pose as the Islamic ally. By putting itself at the head of a holy war with Italy, Constantinople justified its claim to the Caliphate and its continuing dominion over other Arab peoples, those of Syria, Hejaz, and Iraq. In late 1913 the Turks set about the resumption of their involvement in Libya. In August of the following year Enver recommended that Sulayman al-Baruni be sent to lead the struggle against Italy. Baruni and his colleagues represented the new Ottoman approach: as Libyans, rather than Turks, they were intended to build on the strength of local resistance.104
But, formally speaking, Turkey and Italy were not at war. Furthermore, Italy was the ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and might still be prevailed upon to acknowledge its obligations to the Triple Alliance. Baruni’s rhetoric was therefore directed less at Italian rule in Libya than at British rule in Egypt. Enver tried to argue that Italy could remain neutral while eastern Cyrenaica became a conduit for an attack on Britain. He hoped thereby to be able to divide British troops in Egypt over two fronts, thus enhancing the prospects of success for Djemal’s 4th army.105 But Constantinople did not control events in Libya. The reciprocal effect for which Enver was striving eluded him. Baruni, seen in Cyrenaica not as a Libyan but as an Ottoman, was arrested by those he was meant to lead and his movements restricted thereafter. As Djemal prepared his thrust across Sinai, Turkish strategy in the western desert stood in tatters.
What gave coherence to anti-Italian resistance in Libya was not Ottoman leadership but the Senussi. The Senussi were a puritan sect of Islam, fundamentalist in their beliefs but latitudinarian in their appeal. From their bases among the Bedouin of the Libyan desert, by 1882 they claimed between 1.5 and 3 million adhere
nts across the Sahara and into equatorial Africa. Their role in the fighting of 1911 and 1912 was not major, but after 1913 their Islamic credentials and their ability to unite the tribes made them natural allies for the Turks. When Enver left Cyrenaica in September 1912 he entrusted the struggle to Ahmad al-Sharif, who was elected leader of the Senussi on the death of his uncle Mohammed el-Mahdi, owing to the youth of Mohammed’s own sons. Ahmad’s status as the leader of an emergent independent state in Cyrenaica was confirmed with a victory over the Italians near Derna in May 1913. Although the Senussi were cleared from western and central Cyrenaica by the outbreak of the First World War, about 10,000 continued to hold out in the east, close to the Egyptian frontier. Economically, therefore, the Senussi depended on British toleration. For them the enemy was Italy: hence Baruni’s downfall.
Senussi activity increased between August and November 1914. Nadolny had sent a five-man expedition to Tripoli on the second day of mobilization. Its leader, Otto Mannesmann, travelled under an alias and was a reserve officer, but the German foreign ministry insisted he was a consul. The Italians were fearful of British and French reactions, and their protests meant that by the end of August only Mannesmann remained. Without his colleagues he reduced his brief, which had originally embraced almost the entire North African coastline, to the establishment of links with the Senussi. German efforts to appease the Italians by trying to persuade the Senussi to stop fighting them were undermined by events.106 In Tripolitania, where Italian conquest seemed to be complete with the acquisition of Ghat in its south-western corner in August, the tribes rose in the Italian rear. The Italians evacuated first Ghat and then Ghadames, the garrisons of both withdrawing across the frontier into French territory. But it was the summons to holy war in November that really gave focus and impetus to the Senussi efforts. The Senussi responded more wholeheartedly to the call than perhaps any other single Muslim group: in Libya, if nowhere else, the idea of holy war found its fulfilment. The consequence of the Senussi’s purity of doctrine meant that the Italians could not, as the fatwa from Constantinople had specifically requested, be exempt. Ahmad raised the standard of holy war in Fezzan, in southern Libya, remote indeed from British interests.
Thus, from their nadir before 14 November Senussi-Ottoman relations began to improve. Money and equipment, initially smuggled in on Greek boats and from late 1915 in German U–boats, increased Senussi reliance on the Turks. Sollum, on the Libyan-Egyptian border, was the main point of entry. And it was here that Nuri, Enver’s younger brother and another veteran of the Libyan war of 1912, landed on 23 March 1915. Nuri was accompanied by fifty Turkish officers. The Turks were initially accorded little more trust than had been given Baruni and his colleagues. But Nuri proved politically more astute. He exploited latent splits among the Senussi leaders. He flattered Ahmad, appealing to his vanity and conferring on him the title of vizier (or the Caliph’s representative) for North Africa. On 20 August 1915 Italy’s declaration of war on Turkey united the narrower objectives of the Senussi with the broader aims of the Ottomans. For the Senussi the First World War became the means by which the Italians could be ejected from Libya.
The resurgence of Senussi activity in Fezzan and in southern Tripolitania culminated in the summer of 1915. The Italians who had withdrawn into Algeria re-entered Libya to take Ghadames in February. To the north-west, a policy of vicious repression had aimed to clear the hinterland around Tripoli so as to prevent supplies reaching the Senussi through Tunisia or from the sea. But by April plundered Italian equipment left the insurgents well stocked with rifles, artillery, machine-guns, and ammunition. In May Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary; its troops in Libya, which had reached 100,000 in 1912 and still totalled 60,000 in 1914, were refused reinforcements. They evacuated Ghadames again on 19 July, and by the end of the same month were confined to a coastal foothold at Tripoli.
The crisis in Fezzan and Tripolitania eased the military position of the Senussi in eastern Cyrenaica. Italian troops were pulled westwards; yet others were sent to Eritrea. But at the same time British policy towards the Senussi hardened. In 1914 Cairo had appreciated that the Senussi’s enemy was Italy, not Britain, and had concluded that a policy of appeasement would be sufficient: the 320,000 square kilometres of desert between the Libyan frontier and the Nile constituted a buffer more considerable than the Sinai desert. But in May 1915 Italy’s commitment to the Entente required Britain to prevent the Senussi using Egypt as their base. British pressure on the Senussi to recognize Italian rule was sustainable; the block to trade across the Egyptian frontier was not. Economic necessity increased the Senussi’s reliance on German and Turkish imports; it also forced them to move in order to feed. On 15 August Mannesmann tried to manufacture an exchange of fire between the Senussi and the British. He failed, and the Senussi, still reluctant opponents of Britain, apologized.107 But they were becoming increasingly open to the blandishments of Nuri.
Senussi penetration of Egypt had begun with an element of British connivance. But by November 1915 main force had replaced trade as its vehicle. Sollum and its environs were in Senussi hands. The British withdrew along the coast to Mersa Matruh, a more effective base for operations, suppliable from Alexandria by rail (as far as Daaba) and by sea. Immediately, however, the evacuation expanded Senussi success, sucking them further into Egypt. The British reckoned that the Senussi force of 3,000 to 5,000 could be swelled by local support to 50,000. In fact—although some Egyptian troops deserted to join the Senussi—those calculations proved exaggerated. The Senussi taxed the local population for payments in kind and in cash, and thus alienated rather than wooed it.
In Enver’s plan, Egypt would have been attacked simultaneously from east, south, and west. In October 1915 Ahmad, the Senussi leader, spoke of acting in conjunction with Ali Dinar in western Sudan, and sent letters to the eastern Arabs urging them to join the jihad. But the idea that insurgents operating over such a vast area, lacking any means of direct communication with each other and, in the final analysis, without a sizeable body of regular troops is testimony to the grandiloquent absurdity of Enver’s strategic thought. The strength in such situations rested not with exterior but with interior lines; the British on the Nile enjoyed an immediate operational advantage.
Efforts to construct a southern front, inherently fantastic in any case, were further vitiated by being pulled in two directions. German agents saw in Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Sudan the possibility of a campaign which might jeopardize British East Africa and so relieve the pressure on Lettow-Vorbeck. Plans developed on these lines early in 1915 by Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg, a former governor of Togoland, and Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorff were seized on by the German colonial secretary, Wilhelm Solf. For Solf the attack on Egypt was the route to the conquest of Central Africa. But efforts to establish contacts across the Red Sea from Arabia showed such schemes to be fantasies. In the winter of 1914–15 the combination of religious sensitivities close to Mecca and British patrols in the Red Sea thwarted the expeditions of a Hungarian officer, Franz Gondos, Major Schwabe, and Bernhard Moritz. Leo Frobenius, ‘the ethnographer and German agent, well known . . . from French West Africa for his liking for absinthe and negro women and his Teutonic brusqueness’,108 was marginally more successful. In Constantinople he haggled over titles and orders rather than the men and equipment which the Turks refused him, but he managed to sail down the Red Sea to Massawa. There the Italians turned him back, and on Wangenheim’s advice he was not re-employed. He did, however, manage to establish contact, via the German minister in Addis Ababa, with Lij Yasu, the youthful emperor of Abyssinia, who was promised that a Turco-German victory in Egypt would give him Eritrea, parts of the Sudan and Kenya, as well as Italian and British Somaliland.
Hitherto Abyssinia had adopted an attitude favourable to Britain, reflecting its hopes that it too might benefit from the partition of Somalia. However, by 1915 Lij Yasu was more concerned to cement unity within his domains by merging Muslim and Copt in a co
mmon cause, although hopes of a joint Somali-Abyssinian attack on Berbera underestimated the strength of their mutual distrust. Ironically, Lij Yasu’s flirtation with Islam prompted Sayyid Mohammed, or the ‘Mad Mullah’, to negotiate with Britain. Although Sayyid Mohammed overplayed his hand, Somali tribal leaders were impressed by tours of the Egyptian front and news of the Arab revolt in June 1916. Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg and Wilhelm Solf hoped the Somalis would attack British East Africa, and so provide succour from the north for Lettow-Vorbeck. But the Somalis’ distrust of Abyssinia, supplemented by the British and Italian ministers’ courtship of the latter’s Christian leadership, left Lij Yasu’s schemes for an Islamic empire in East Africa exposed. In September 1916 a Christian-led coup against Lij Yasu in Addis Ababa resulted in civil war in Abyssinia. In the same month Italy, Britain, and—more reluctantly—France agreed to ban arms sales in the region.109
