8,200 British,17,600 Egyptians (including Sudanese soldiers) Total: British-Egyptian expeditions (1885–1889) Ethiopian campaigns (1885–1889) Italian campaigns (1890–1894) British-Egyptian reconquest (1896–1899) The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief (sirdar) major general Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the Mahdist State, led by Abdallahi ibn Muhammad (the Khalifa), the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad.

Following the establishment of the Mahdist State in Sudan, and the subsequent threat to the regional status quo and to British-occupied Egypt, the British government decided to send an expeditionary force with the task of overthrowing the Khalifa.

The commander of the force, Sir Herbert Kitchener, was also seeking revenge for the death of General Gordon, who had been killed when a Mahdist army captured Khartoum thirteen years earlier.

Following the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat a year later, the remaining Mahdist forces were defeated and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established.

In 1883 Muhammad Ahmad ibn as-Sayyid Abd Allah who called himself the Mahdi appeared in Sudan followed by thousands of Islamic warriors known to the Europeans as Dervishes and to the Mahdists as the Ansār.

Another force, this time sent by the British government, and led by Major General Charles Gordon proceeded to Khartoum where it was besieged by the Mahdists.

The Mahdist state, the Mahdia, built on slavery and holy war, enforced a strict Islamic code imposing a reign of terror over the regions of Sudan.

At the Battle of the Atbara River on 7 April 1898, he defeated Mahdist forces led by Osman Dinga and Khalifa Abdullah, opening a line of march up the Nile.

On 1 September 1898 Kitchener, supported by a powerful flotilla of gunboats, arrived to face the main Mahdist army at Omdurman, near Khartoum.

He arrayed his force in an arc around the village of Egeiga, close to the bank of the Nile, where a twelve gunboat flotilla waited in support,[3] facing a wide, flat plain with hills rising to the left and right.

This marked a crucial stage of the battle, but Kitchener was able to deploy two gunboats to a position on the river where their cannon and Nordenfelt guns broke up the Mahdist force before it could destroy Broadwood's detachment and possibly penetrate the flank of the Anglo-Egyptian infantry.

In what has been described as the last operational cavalry charge by British troops, and the largest since the Crimean War,[8] the 400-strong regiment attacked what they thought were only a few hundred dervishes, but in fact there were 2,500 infantry hidden behind them in a depression.

[18] However, mindful of the effect that patriotic public opinion could have on his political career, Churchill significantly moderated criticism of Kitchener in his book's second edition in 1902.

Present as a war correspondent for The Times was Colonel Frank Rhodes, brother of Cecil, who was shot and severely wounded in the right arm.

In particular, the charge of the 21st Lancers held special appeal and several artists portrayed the scene including Stanley Berkeley, Robert Alexander Hillingford, Richard Caton Woodville, William Barnes Wollen, Gilbert S. Wright, Edward Mathew Hale, Capt.

What was passed off as films of the battle, or preparations for it, were in fact spliced footage of barracks training or troop movements far from the front.

Such films maintained their popularity for months in Britain and were succeeded by short features such as the fictional How Tommy Won the Victoria Cross: an Incident of the Soudan War (1899) in which English soldiers survive a 'dervish' ambush.

A Story of the Gallant 21st" by Orlando Powell (1867–1915)[22] and Léonard Gautier's "The Heroic Charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman", published complete with piano score (London: E. Donajowski, 1898).

The Triumph of the Sun (2005) by Wilbur Smith concentrates mainly on the siege of Khartoum and the fate of the defeated, but carries the story through to Kitchener's campaign.

The 2008 novel After Omdurman by John Ferry is also partly set during the 1898 re-conquest of Sudan, with the book's lead character, Evelyn Winters, playing a peripheral role in the fighting.

[31] The main focus of Jake Arnott's The Devil's Paintbrush (2009) is the life of Hector MacDonald but also includes the battle and Kitchener's railway-building drive through Sudan.