They had no spirit,
no discipline, hardly any training, and in a force of over eight thousand
men there were scarcely a dozen capable officers. The two who were the
most notable of these few--General Hicks, who commanded, and Colonel
Farquhar, the Chief of the Staff--must be remarked.
El Obeid had fallen before the ill-fated expedition left Khartoum;
but the fact that Slatin Bey, an Austrian officer in the Egyptian service,
was still maintaining himself in Darfur provided it with an object. On the
9th of September Hicks and his army (the actual strength of which was
7,000 infantry, 400 mounted Bashi Bazuks, 500 cavalry, 100 Circassians,
10 mounted guns, 4 Krupps, and 6 Nordenfeldt machine guns) left Omdurman
and marched to Duem. Although the actual command of the expedition was
vested in the English officer, Ala-ed-Din Pasha, the Governor-General who
had succeeded Raouf Pasha, exercised an uncertain authority. Differences
of opinion were frequent, though all the officers were agreed in taking
the darkest views of their chances. The miserable host toiled slowly
onward towards its destruction, marching in a south-westerly direction
through Shat and Rahad. Here the condition of the force was so obviously
demoralised that a German servant (Gustav Klootz, the servant of Baron
Seckendorf) actually deserted to the Mahdi's camp. He was paraded
in triumph as an English officer.
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