Nile Expedition
[3] The public in England also blamed Prime Minister William Gladstone for not having taken steps to relieve the siege of Khartoum and some historians have held Major-General Gordon responsible, because he had refused the order to evacuate while it was still possible.
[4] Not wanting to be involved in the costly suppression of the rebellion led by Mahommed Ahmed, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ordered Egypt to abandon its administration of Sudan in December 1883.
The British government asked General Gordon, former Governor-General of Sudan, to go to Khartoum and aid in the evacuation of Egyptian soldiers, civilian employees and their families.
Defying orders from the British government to withdraw, General Gordon, leading a garrison of 6,000 men, began the defence of Khartoum.
(The involvement of these Indigenous men was chronicled in the 1885 book "Our Caughnawagas in Egypt: a narrative of what was seen and accomplished by the contingent of North American Indian voyageurs who led the British boat..." by Louis Jackson.
)[9] On 7 October 1884, the Canadians reached Alexandria by sailing ship and headed up the Nile by a combination of shallow draft steam launch and train.
General Gordon's last entry in his journal, dated 14 December 1884, read, “Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force, and I ask for no more than 200 men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country.
Dismayed at the sight of the city's fall, Colonel Charles William Wilson, the on-scene commander, ordered his flotilla to turn about and steam back down river to Metemma.
This included, on 10 February 1885, the Mahdists defending a fortified site at Kirbekan they hoped would impede the main British column still ascending the river.
Indicative of the confusion, on 7 February 1885, three days before the battle of Kirbekan, Wolseley was told by London to make no retrograde steps down the Nile to Egypt.
This led to consideration of an operational pause, to last several months over the Sudanese summer, which might allow fresh British reinforcements to be assembled in Egypt and later sent up the river to Wolseley.
[14] The Panjdeh incident of 29 March 1885, initiated by Imperial Russia in south-central Asia, gave the British government sufficient excuse to make a face-saving withdrawal of the Wolseley force to Egypt and then home, thereby ending any further commitment to the region, including on the coast at Suakin.
[15] With the fall of Khartoum and now the subsequent removal of the last British troops in the vicinity of the upper Nile, Muhammad Ahmad controlled the whole of Sudan, allowing him to establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia law.
Wolseley wrote a letter to the Governor General of Canada praising the Canadians' service and the British Parliament passed a motion thanking them for their efforts.
[16] Among the journalists who covered the expedition was Charles Lewis Shaw who worked for the Winnipeg Times and published an account in his book Nile Voyageur.
[19] The Nile Expedition, and concern for the welfare of Army wives and children at home, led directly to the intervention of Major James Gildea of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who wrote a forceful letter to The Times in February 1885 appealing for funds and volunteers to look after unfortunate families left behind.
[20] Lance Corporal Jones in the television sitcom Dad's Army claimed to have been involved in the Anglo-Egyptian invasion of Sudan in 1896–1899 and the Nile Expedition.
