FROM KORTI TO KHARTUM (1885 NILE EXPEDITION)

The 1885 siege of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and the heoric death of Gen. Charles Gordon when its defences were overrun by the forces of the Mahdi is one of the great epics of Victorian imperial history. This account was written by one of the Intelligence Officers with the expedition which Gladstone’s government belatedly sent down the Nile in an abortive bid to save Gordon. Wilson, although a personal friend of Gordon, is clear that the Mahdi was so determined to take Khartourm that the presence of the advance guard of the relieving force, – a paltry twenty men in two steamers – would have made no difference to Gordon’s fate even if it had arrived a week earlier. With ten appendices and an end paper map.