Chain of Fire: Campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-98

by Peter Hart

In the 1880s, control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield into which Prime Minister Gladstone did not want to step - until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war.

It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought and civilians caught in the crossfire. Among the British officers were figures who would later adopt starring roles in the First World War, such as Egyptian Army sapper Captain Herbert Kitchener.

By turns shocking and dynamic, Chain of Fire examines the terrible desert wars using the testimonies of the men who fought there.

Genres: History, Africa

464 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 2025

About the author

Peter Hart is a British military historian.

He has been an oral historian at Sound Archive of Imperial War Museum in London since 1981.

He has written mainly on British participation in the First World War. His books include; The Somme, Jutland 1916, Bloody April on the air war in 1917, Passchendaele, Aces Falling (on the air war in 1918), 1918 A Very British Victory and Gallipoli.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have of course been intensely disappointed and believe that my plans were well laid and for a long time everything was bright: I could almost in imagination feel the grasp of my friend Gordon’s hand. It was only a question of a few days, a few hours. But I lost my best soldier when Stewart fell, and everything was indecision and nerveless afterwards. Days that were worth a nation’s ransom were squandered in doing nothing. Never was a commander as near making a great coup as I was.

Lieutenant General Garnet Wolseley, Headquarters

The depths of his self-delusion are staggering.

I am pulled in two directions by this book. I appreciate the novelty, but I am very ambivalent about the style.

The Chain of Events

While none of Britain's imperial adventures could be described as "undercovered", there is a tendency to treat various incidents and interventions as disparate events, often worked into the biographies of Britain's imperial heroes. I agree with Hart's approach here, of linking the original bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 to the series of events that lead to Omdurman in 1898. The subsequent interventions in Sudan (the main feature of the campaign) become clearer as mission creep.

This context humanises the individual battles covered in Chain of Fire, giving them purpose for strategic reasons or, on occasion, the glory seeking of adventurers. It's worth understanding the campaigns because it stands out as a transitional period in British leadership and tactics, in some ways even more starkly than the Boer War, thanks to the amphibious and riverine aspects necessitating the involvement of figures like Fisher and Beatty. Redvers Buller pops up, which helps explain why he was called up on as a commander later - it makes sense to have appointed him in light of the experience he had!

The words of others

Hart appears to have a certain style with his books – he collates the war diaries, letters or later recollections of figures then reproduces generous extracts of them throughout the book. His own contributions are relatively limited, mainly knitting other people’s words together to form a reasonably coherent narrative.

He has some skill with this, but the limitation of the sources is clear. There are not many Arab/African contributions, and the European ones are military in nature. While I credited Hart for providing context for the campaigns, it is limited to the experiences of the soldiery. There is insufficient coverage of Britain’s colonial project, both in a geo-political sense and how it affected locals on the ground. It’s not completely lacking (i.e. the importance of certain harbours, Gordon’s desire to retain power in Sudan) but I would not use this book as a source for that.

While the above is more a question of scope than an outright criticism, I do believe Hart leaves too little space for analysis of how both sides fought. Both sides clearly made mistakes at multiple levels – the Arabs/Sudanese pull off some creditable ambushes but also seem to have remained unwieldy when it became clear that direct confrontation on open ground would be disastrous.

There is a tendency to over-read the tea leaves when looking at conflicts, witness James Belich’s holding that the British missed how the New Zealand Wars presaged World War One trench warfare (as though no better examples existed). However, I just wanted a bit more about how experiences of those who would serve in World War One might have been shaped by the conflict – though Hart shows awareness on occasion:

Brackenbury may not have been the inspirational leader Hamilton wished for, but he was a competent officer who made a sound military judgement when placed on the spot by his superior. One might have hoped that Hamilton would learn the lesson of when it was important to retreat from a hopeless situation. Thirty years later Gallipoli would show that he did not.

…along with the analysis of the ambush of the 21st Lancers:

Overall, it could be said that great gallantry does not excuse a blunder. Courage is not always enough in warfare.

I would have liked to read more of Hart’s voice, but he did a good job with this one.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Chain of Fire' is what history should always be about - the past on its own terms without subsequent moralising and tut-tutting and yet with a preparedness to point out wrongs and why they happened. It is for us to draw moral conclusions and not the writer. Hart is exemplary in this respect.

The book is a military history of British imperial campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan from the Battle of Tel El-Kebir (September 1882) to the Battle of Omdurman (September 1898) via other battles after the first and before the last. Battles result in the occupation of insurgent capitals.

There is enough political background to ensure that we have adequate context but this book is essentially about hard power - superior armament and organisation (though not at all necessarily superior courage) resolving political issues in favour of the British Empire at its height.

The political trigger was control of Egypt through a puppet Khedive at the expense of Egyptian nationalists (where Britain merely displaced the Ottoman Empire) in order to ensure control of the Suez Canal and so secure the Raj (the actual concern of British Imperial policy).

Unfortunately one thing always leads to another especially when ideology is involved. The sensible thing might have been to stop there and have the Egyptians be trained up militarily to ensure control of their anarchic territories in the Sudan.

Although the 'scramble for Africa' might have eventually 'required' British engagement to block French aspirations for a 'Soudan' from the Atlantic to Indian Oceans (hence the British waving a big stick in a friendly manner at Fashoda in 1898), military adventurism was expensive.

Liberal politicians in London (notably Gladstone) were not heroic by nature and tended to be more concerned with budgets than bullets. Any project involved a fair amount of humming and hawing before funds would be assigned but, once assigned, the Generals were left to do their job.

The common sense approach of concentrating on securing profitable commercial arteries and allowing satraps to bear the cost of war was thrown into disarray by one General Gordon, positioned to resist the insurgent Mahdi as the British representative in Khartoum without adequate support

His heroic and almost certainly unnecessary last stand and death at the hands of the Dervishes was lighting the touch paper of imperial politics in a democratic oligarchy back home. Concern not to raise taxes for the military competed with the demand to treat the killing as an insult and revenge it.

The period between Gordon's death (1885) and the shame of the failure to rescue him despite an expeditionary force that left too late and the final mounting of Kitchener's campaign to destroy the Mahdi with the best military equipment to hand takes up the last third of the book.

What makes this book so interesting as military history is that Hart liberally and effectively tells the story through the reports and memoirs of the British soldiery involved (largely officer class) with the occasional very rare intervention from an insurgent Sudanese participant.

In fact, there were three armies involved by the end. The antagonist was the Muslim fundamentalist Dervish force of the Mahdi's successor, the Khalifa, a formidably large force of undoubtedly courageous desert warriors who still apparently wielded swords taken from Crusaders.

This was a force of religious fanaticism (although we might ask whether British imperial ideology was any less fanatical at this point) but one which largely wielded spears and armament weaker than the two opposing armies which had both gunboats on the Nile and Maxims.

The protagonists were not only the British Imperial Army but also a separate and 'independent' Army made up of well trained Egyptians and Sudanese (some of who had once served the Mahdi) under British Officers led by the Sirdar, Lord Kitchener C-in-C Egyptian Army.

Technically the British Imperial forces were thus under the authority of Egypt although this, of course, was a fiction. Nevertheless, despite 'racial' attempts by some to diminish their role, the Egyptian-Sudanese soldiery performed as well as their British counterparts.

Because the story is told through participants, we get a strong sense of the brutality of war - the mass killing of superior armament against massed hordes but also the slaughters of the wounded that took place after a battle especially at Omdurman as well as the murder and rapine of occupation.

This is where Hart scores. Another writer encouraged by some limp-wristed young editor would have let this go as an outrage but there was a consistent problem of Dervishes relinquishing their arms or apparently being incapacitated and then rising up and trying to kill from behind.

Both sides were brutal because the situation was brutal and existential. The Dervishes were fighting for Allah and their land. The British were fighting for Queen and pay. The Egyptian-Sudanese for pay, revenge and plunder. Protecting your own is the game in war. So it was 'no prisoners'!

The British undoubtedly won, the Khalifa was taken down in a last stand that might equally stand for the last stands of similar indigenous insurgencies from the American plains to the Hindu Kush. A rather weak British colonial system held things together until Sudan declared independence in 1956.

The British trained the militaries that have more often than not subsequently ruled both Egypt and Sudan, Egypt is on a constant knife edge of ideological meltdown, Sudan has become a basket case with its Southern part hived off after a brutal war into an independent state.

Was the British Empire responsible for this mess as anti-imperialists like to claim? Well, yes and no. The Empire was the initiatory cause of so much of what happened later but responsible implies that people knew what they were doing. They did not. They were, in fact, irresponsible.

Egyptian nationalist resentment is almost certainly justified. The chance of an independent Egypt under Colonel Arabi was lost because of British realpolitik that had everything to do with India and little to do with Egypt itself. Islam would gain over time status as a mode of anti-imperial resistance.

What comes across though is that, for all the mistakes (the young Winston Churchill may acquit himself as brave but not as wise and certainly as excitable), British Generalship was effective. The Empire would not have been constructed without militarism.

Trekking down the Nile, taking gunships past its cataracts, traversing deserts and facing off hordes of warriors and having the discipline not to fire too soon or run involved discipline, organisation and an esprit de corps (as much in the Egyptian Army as in the British).

From a military perspective, the men in these various campaigns - naval as well as military, coming from out of the Raj or the homeland - were worthy comparators to the builders or attempted builders of other empires such as the Roman Legions or Wehrmacht.

But the question remains - was it all worth it? In terms of national morale, probably. Many of the officers trained in the Sudan Campaign went on to take commanding roles as Generals in the First World War which, bloodily, the Empire won Pyrrhically. The Suez Canal was preserved until 1956.

On the other hand, the habit of funding marginal enterprises should have warned politicians that something was being created that could not be sustained in the long run. Just as we shall probably see American bases reduced to deal with massive debt, so the Empire eventually died on its costliness.

In the year following, the Boer War broke out. An army of imperial subjugation relying on superior armament was faced not with massed hordes fighting according to late medieval tactics but sophisticated guerrillas with armament closer to that of their attackers.

The Sudanese Campaign might have been the creator of complacency about British military superiority although, even today, the much reduced British military still remains regarded as one of the best in the world. Its history is one of flexible adaptation with minimal political interference.

Overall, what readers might enjoy most are the selections from contemporary voices. Yes, you have sometimes to strip out the imperial arrogance and racial attitudes and may find the acceptance of brutality disturbing but you also get a strong sense of commitment - an ethos of sorts.

These are not 'bad men' but they are disciplined and ruthless with the officer corps buttressing each other against dishonour and cowardice. Much later one of the best generals shot himself because of a 'homosexual scandal'. Their attitude to human life, including their own, could be callous.

What will puzzle many 'moderns' is the enthusiasm for conflict. Fear is often acknowledged but as if it added spice to living at a higher level of 'being' for a relatively brief moment after months of boredom and hardship. There is a psychology here that requires contemporary texts to understand.

Reading Overy's assessment of the nature of war (reviewed elsewhere on Goodreads) and then reading these accounts and contemporary accounts of war only fifteen or so years later on the Western Front, it is hard not to see that Ernst Junger called it right as far as some people are concerned.

For the professional and well-trained soldier war may be in the blood, one of those things that make life worth living simply because the living are prepared to face death - initially for some cause but actually for an institution in which they mean something alongside comrades.

Ethically, it all stinks a bit - invading and taking other lands to secure the profits of fat cats at home, killing people en masse with massed rifle shot or Maxim fire, losing yourself in a group and abandoning individual responsibility except to the group ... but that is not the point.

The point is that the ethicist is faced with the problem that (existentially) being part of a closed warrior team that faces death alongside comrades and is judged by its preparedness to make the ultimate sacrifice for the mission is a 'high' for many people. Empires are built on such.

['Aussie Rick' · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Hart, author of numerous books covering World War One and World War Two, has offered in his new book; "Chain of Fire: Campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-98", another great account of the British soldier at war.

In this account of the campaign in Egypt and the Sudan we follow the events that led to the famous siege of Khartoum where General Charles Gordon fell at the hands of the Dervishes under the command of the Mahdi. This then led to the subsequent British led campaign to avenge Gordon's death and to destroy the followers of the Mahdi.

The author utilised numerous first-hand accounts from the soldiers and officers involved and made the point of quoting from many junior officers who later played prominent leadership roles in the Great War. It was interesting reading the accounts of these young and up-and-coming leaders knowing of their involvement in the later conflict.

This was a very engaging book and quite an easy and interesting read, mainly due to the selection of first-hand accounts quoted by the author. Here is a selection of various quotes covering different aspects of the campaign:

Part of a letter sent by Lieutenant General Garnet Wolseley after the Battle of Tel El Kebir:

"Before this reaches you the news of our fight will have reached you with its disquieting butcher's bill, over which Mr. John Bull rather gloats, and thinks, when the list is a long one, that he has had something for his money. And yet how much pleasanter is death from clean bullet wounds than from loathsome diseases. To be killed in the open air with the conviction you are dying for your country, how different from rotting to death in a hospital, or dying like a consumptive girl in an artificially heated room."

An account from what it was like being attacked by the Dervishes:

"Next moment they charged like a whirlwind. We opened fire and they fell in scores and in hundreds, but through the dense smoke which soon gathered around us we could see their wild forms ever springing forward over the heap of dead and dying and in less than it takes to tell they were on us!" - Captain Willougby Verner, Headquarters, Desert Column.

The issue of shoddy supplies and equipment seems to occur in every conflict:

"Nearly half the British rifles jammed owing to the use of leaf cartridges. The Remington rifles used by the Mahdi's soldiers had solid drawn cartridges, which did not jam. During the action of Abu Klea, the officers were almost entirely employed in clearing jammed rifles passed back to them by the men. The British bayonets and cutlasses bent and twisted, the result of a combination of knavery and laziness on the part of those who were trusted to supply the soldiers with weapons upon which his life depends. The bayonets were blunt, because no one had thought of sharpening them." - Captain Charles Beresford, Naval Brigade.

To finish off the book here is a final quote, a first-hand account of what it was like to be in a British square when under attack by Dervishes:

"We had hardly been in the zeriba a moment, when they came jumping over the hedge at the other side and tried to rush across brandishing their spears, while others swept round outside, or fired into it from the bushes. The noise and smoke were tremendous, and the men fought back-to-back, huddled together at the two lower corners of the square, firing both into the enclosure and out of it. All round the grey-green mimosa bushes swarm with swiftly moving black figures, who seem to court destruction, so recklessly do they rush on the hail of bullets that now pours from the zeriba, striking desperately with their spears and swords even after they are mortally wounded, and hardly ever missing their blow. Around the zeriba a wreath of white smoke hangs over the heads of all, broken here and there by the yellow flashes of the rifles and the gleam of the bayonets shining through it. The men, with hard, stern faces are clustered together in knots firing desperately fast; and the mounted officers, revolver in hand, are trying to control their terrified horses and steady their men's firing. Through the whirling wreaths of smoke some dark figures, brandishing swords and spears, come running across the square, only to totter and fall before they reach the centre under the furious shower of bullets that are whizzing in all directions. At my feet a dead soldier, who has been shot beside me, pale and motionless, a splash of blood across his young brow, the intense stillness and tranquility of his face contrasting strangely with the fierce action and turmoil all round." - Major Emilius De Cosson, Suakin Field Force.

I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone who enjoys a well-written history, and I am sure this book will soon be found on the shelves of numerous personal libraries.