Black Powder Blood of the Nile

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The year was 1884, forty-seven years since Queen Victoria ascended to thethrone of the worlds greatest empire on which the sun would never set. Eightyears earlier, she became Empress of India having led her small island onto theglobal stage while the rest of the world danced to the British tune.

India was the jewel in the crown, but the hard-working, industrious types that proliferatedin Victorias empire dominated from Australia to Canada and persuaded the locals howbeneficial all this was for them. Of course, empire building was not easy: the Americansdidnt want anything to do with it, and French noses were all put out of joint over onething or another. Then there were some natives who wouldnt do as they were told andstood in the way of progress until properly civilized. But by 1884, most of the world knewwho was in charge and the rest didnt dare to take up their cudgels against the British.

Compare all that to the Egyptians. Thousands of years before they had an empire of theirown and built the pyramids and things so the world wouldnt forget about it. Then otherscame and the Egyptian Empire disappeared into the sand. Until 1819 that is, when theruler of Egypt, the Khedive, wanted a taste of Empire and took charge of the Sudan the large seemingly empty space on the map to the south of Egypt. The Egyptians made acomplete hash of running the Sudan, however, and rebellion was only a matter of time.

In 1881, a mystic came out of the Sudanese desert claiming he was the Mahdi, a new
Mohammedan prophet. The Egyptians sent a token force to arrest him only to have it
sent packing, as happened with every attempt afterwards. The following year, in an
unconnected episode, the Egyptians thought they could do without European meddling intheir affairs. Sir Garnet Wolseley and a few thousand of Britains finest soldiers sorted thatsituation out quickly enough, and Britain had no choice but to offer advice to the Khedivefrom a much closer distance, so she moved in her civil servants to show him how to runthings properly. That left the thorny problem of the Mahdist rebellion unsolved, but theBritish had little time or money to waste on such trivial matters and expected theEgyptians to take care of it.

The Egyptians continued to flounder in the Sudan. Even when British officers tookcommand of Egyptian troops to give them some backbone, those that the Mahdis mendidnt kill or convert still ran away. Now you cant have British officers being defeated; it isbad for morale and upsets the politicians. And it displeased Her Majesty, and that wouldnot do. Wolseley was itching for another fight, but Prime Minister Gladstone, that ratherreluctant imperialist, wasnt for it. He sent Chinese Gordon to Khartoum instead, whichjust about anyone could have told the Prime Minister was adding fuel to the fire. Gordonsoon found himself surrounded in the Sudanese capital and none of the fellows doing thesurrounding cared much for Gordons brand of religion any more than he cared for theirs.Gladstone finally got the message and let Wolseley off the leash. In the meantime, Britishsoldiers got down to business along the Red Sea ports to halt the Mahdist progress in thatregion. Once again the wheels of Victorias Empire were in motion with only the Mahdisfanatics standing in the way.