The River War

"Too late, too late to save him. In vain, in vain, they tried. His life was England's glory, his death was England's pride."

—Music Hall song eulogizing Charles Gordon

Also called the Mahdist War or the Mahdist Revolt. Read on to see why.

In 1881, a religious leader in Sudan named Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi, the expected redeemer and purifier of the Islamic faith before The End of the World as We Know It. He led a successful rebellion against the Egyptian government (which was under the control of The British Empire), astounding the world by defeating technological superior forces with just spears and lances. By 1884, the British government sent the renowned soldier and explorer Charles George Gordon to oversee the evacuation of Anglo-Egyptian troops from Sudan, but the Mahdists holed him up in Khartoum for ten months. The world eagerly awaited news from the besieged Gordon, but expeditions sent to relieve him were held up on the Nile and by the time they reached Khartoum, it had fallen and Gordon killed by the Mahdi.

This disaster sent shockwaves through the British government, causing Queen Victoria to send a Strongly Worded Letter to Prime Minister William Gladstone chastising him for failing to act in time. In 1896, the British sent a force under Horatio Kitchener to reclaim Sudan. This force was victorious at Omdurman in 1898, claiming revenge for Gordon's death 13 years earlier. This expedition included a relatively unknown solider with some political ambitions named Winston Churchill, who published the first exhaustive history of the war.

The River War provides examples of the following tropes:

• Anticlimax: The British never got to take revenge on the Mahdi personally, because he died of natural causes six months after the Battle of Khartoum.
• Apocalyptic Log: Gordon's letters during the siege, which were smuggled out just before the city fell.
• Big Bad: To the British, the Mahdi was this. However, according to Winston Churchill, Islam was the real Big Bad.
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: Gordon had a tremendously charismatic personality and field presence. He was respected by both Europeans and Arabs as a figure almost larger-than-life. He was also incredibly eccentric, insubordinate, and impossible to work with. His religious mysticism had something to do with it, as he literally believed he was on a Mission from God.
• Calling the Hero Out: Winston Churchill does this in his history of the war. He criticizes Kitchener's decision to dig up the Mahdi's body and cut off his head as excessive and disrespectful.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: The Madhist conquest of the Sudan and probing attacks into pretty much all of its' neighbors.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: The steamers didn't arrive in time to save Gordon.
• Curb Stomp Battle: The destruction of the Hicks Column by the Mahdi in 1883. Most of his early battles are like this.
  • Paid back with *massive* interest to the Madhists at the end.
• Dark Messiah: It's hard to think of a more fitting description for The Madhi.
• The Empire: The British Empire and the Madhists.
• Fake Defector: Austrian general Rudolph Carl von Slatin surrendered to the Mahdi at Darfur and publicly converted to Islam. He lived among the Mahdists for years before escaping and publishing his story just before the deployment of Kitchener to Sudan.
• The Fundamentalist: Both the Mahdi and his followers and Gordon.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gordon.
  • As well as the entire Khartoum Garrison
• The Horde: The stereotype of the Madhists, and one which their tactics played into.
• I Can Rule Alone: The Madhists (who took so much damage invading their neighbors and pissing off non-British-alligned powers like the Italians, King Leopold's Congo Company, and the Ethiopians that when the British returned, they were severely weakened).
• La Résistance: The Mahdists thought of themselves as this at first.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The war reads like a Crisis Crossover of The British Empire. It included the participation of characters who were famous before, such as Gordon, Samuel Baker, and Henry Morton Stanley, as well as those who would gain fame from the war like Kitchener. Winston Churchill also makes an appearance.
• Never Found the Body: Gordon's body was never recovered, but reports held that the Mahdi cut off his head and displayed it as a trophy.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country!: The rebels' immediate goal.
• Ragtag Band of Misfits: The Hicks Pasha expedition, whose agonizing defeat goes to show that this trope isn't always good in Real Life.
• Real Men Love Jesus: Gordon literally had no fear of death, and actively volunteered for impossible battles because he believed that if he died he would be with God.
• Rock Beats Laser: Both played straight and subverted. The Mahdi's early victories were accomplished with only primitive armaments, until he found it difficult to besiege the city of El Obeid, whereupon he reversed his edicts prohibiting modern weapons.
• The Siege: Lasted for 10 months. Did not end well.
• Token Evil Teammate: The other person put in charge of overseeing the evacuation in 1884 was Zubehr Pasha, a notorious slave trader who Gordon had clashed with years earlier.
• Vestigial Empire: The war was triggered by a combination of the Egyptian Khedieve's decay coupled with its' attempts to assert control over the region. By the time of Khartoum it was all but a subdivision of the British Empire. Ethiopia also counts, and the splash damage from the conflict was enough to plunge them into a Succession Crisis.
• Victorian Britain
• Zerg Rush: Standard Madhist practice.

Appearances of The River War in fiction include:

Film

• The film Khartoum starring Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi and Charlton Heston as Gordon was released in 1966.

Literature

• A. E. W. Mason's novel The Four Feathers and its various film adaptations are all set during this war.
• Oddly, the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz also has a novel about it, In Desert And Wilderness.
• Rudyard Kipling wrote about it while it was still ongoing, in his 1890 novel The Light That Failed. It, too, was made into a film.

Live-Action TV

• The war is mentioned in both Dad's Army and Blackadder Goes Forth, as characters in those shows were veterans of the Sudan conflict.