The Two Great Battles Had Been
Fought With Indescribable Ferocity By Both Sides, And The Slaughter Was
Appalling.
No reliable statistics are avaliable, but it may be reasonably
asserted that neither side sustained a loss in killed during the war of
fewer than 15,000 fighting men.
The flower of the Dervish army, the heroic
blacks of Abu Anga, were almost destroyed. The Khalifa had won a Pyrrhic
triumph. Never again was he able to put so great a force in the field,
and, although the army which was shattered at Omdurman was better armed
and better drilled, it was less formidable than that which broke the might
of Abyssinia.
During the progress of the struggle with Abyssinia the war against Egypt
languished. The Mahdi, counting upon the support of the population, had
always declared that he would free the Delta from 'the Turks,' and was
already planning its invasion when he and his schemes were interrupted
by death. His successor inherited all the quarrel, but not all the power.
Much of Mohammed Ahmed's influence died with him. Alive, he might conquer
the Moslem world; dead, he was only a saint. All fanatical feeling in
Egypt soon subsided. Nevertheless the Khalifa persisted in the enterprise.
The success of the Abyssinian war encouraged and enabled him to resume the
offensive on his northern frontier, and he immediately ordered
Wad-el-Nejumi, who commanded in Dongola, to march with his scanty force to
the invasion of Egypt. The mad enterprise ended, as might have been
foreseen, in the destruction of both Emir and army at Toski.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 114 of 476
Words from 30136 to 30400
of 127807
