And It Seemed
A Strange And Bitter Irony That The Order To Turn Back And The News That
All Had Been In Vain Was Announced To The Troops On The Very Day When
They Had Cleared The Cataracts And Were Moving Forward At Five Times
Their Former Speed.
The Desert Column started from Korti on the 30th of December.
Their strength did not exceed 1,100 officers and men, but they were
the flower of the army.
Dropping their communications, they set forth
along the caravan route towards Metemma. The knowledge which we have
since gained of the resources of the Mahdists enables the peril of
their desperate venture to be fully appreciated. Although the Dervishes
were neither so well armed nor trained as at a later date, they were
nearly as numerous and equally devoid of fear. Their tactics were more
in accordance with modern conditions: their fanaticism was at its height.
The British force, on the other hand, was equipped with weapons scarcely
comparable with those employed in the concluding campaigns. Instead of
the powerful Lee-Metford rifle, with its smokeless powder, its magazine
action, and its absence of recoil, they were armed with the Martini-Henry,
which possessed none of these advantages. In place of the deadly Maxim
there was the Gardner gun - the very gun that jammed at Tamai, and that
jammed again at Abu Klea. The artillery was also in every respect inferior
to that now in general use. Besides all this, the principles of
fire-discipline and of scientific musketry were new, little understood,
and hardly admitted.
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