Left: A private of the Black Watch Highland Regiment. His rifle is an 1876-pattern .45 Martini-Henry Mk. 2 single-shot breech loader with a maximum range of 1,000 yards. At Tel-el-Kebir each man had 100 rounds of ammunition. Right: A Sudanese (Nubian) rifleman of 1882. His weapon is the contemporary .43 US Remington, whose novel rolling-block action had a less strong cartridge ejection than the more reliable Martini-Henry, which could fire 15rpm.

 

The British invasion of Lower Egypt in 1882. Occupation of Alexandria (12July) and Suez (2 August) provided entry ports for the expedition from England and India. A sham landing at Aboukir to threaten Kafr-ed-Dauar drew Egyptian eyes off the Canal which was seized on 20 August for an advance to Cairo, via the railway from Ismailia.

 

Wolseley’s daring night march from Kassassin lock to surprise an Egyptian army twice his strength in two long trench lines.

1 Graham’s 2nd Brigade in half-battalion columns.

2 Alison’s Highland Brigade in double company columns.

3 Col. Goodenough’s six field batteries (9, 13 and 16-pounder).

4 Connaught’s Brigade of , Guards.

5 Ashburnham’s 4th Brigade, Duke of Cornwall’s Lt. Inf. and the King’s Royal Rifles.

6 The Cavalry Division.

7 Macpherson’s Brigade.

8 Nubian (Sudanese) sector.

Brilliantly conceived, mathematically planned: one of the Victorian ‘little wars’. And Britain won it to command Egypt and the Suez Canal

‘The war in Egypt is over. Send no more men from England’. So telegraphed the victorious Sir Garnet Wolseley from Cairo in 1882. In one month he had secured the Suez Canal and occupied the whole Nile Delta. It was the shortest major campaign the British Army had ever undertaken and the climatic action—Tel-el-Kebir—lasted only 50 minutes. But 13 infantry and six cavalry regiments bear that battle honor on their colors.

The British came to a strife-torn Egypt for economic reasons. They wished to protect their immense financial investment sunk in the country since 1875 and to have direct control of the Suez Canal opened in 1869. A ‘prototype’ of Nasser, Colonel Ahmed Arabi Pasha, had increasingly threatened these interests and given a lead to nationalist feelings. This 42-year-old fellahin (peasant) had risen from the ranks to become War Minister by 1881. Finally, in May 1882, a bloodless military coup gave Arabi a de facto dictatorship, leaving Egypt’s hereditary leader—the Khedive Tewfik—a virtual prisoner.

Anti-European riots in Alexandria roused the great powers to action; the British Mediterranean fleet silenced the Egyptian shore batteries and landed men to occupy the city. On 20 July the British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, overcame his moral qualms about imperialism and decided to send a full-scale military expedition to restore order in Egypt. A change of government in France and renewed fears of Germany left England to act alone, unfettered by any suspicious ally.

The War Office had been laying contingency plans for the invasion of Egypt since the beginning of the year and proceeded to implement them with rare speed and efficiency. Within a month, preparations were complete, including the provision of sunglasses for the troops to wear in the desert Other novel arrangements included the equipping of the Royal Engineers with five railway engines, 105 goods wagons, and 10 miles of track so that the army would not be hampered by a sabotaged Egyptian rail system. Since the irrigation canals of the Delta would impede ordinary

Immediately on landing, Wolseley set in motion the strategy he had formulated in London back on 3 July. This was to fix Arabi’s attention with a threatened British advance up the Nile from Alexandria while secretly pouncing on the Suez Canal. The deception plan was devised especially for the benefit of the historically minded; a simulated landing was to be made at Aboukir Bay (20 miles east of Alexandria) where the British had invaded Egypt before in 1801. Meanwhile a sortie by the garrison of Alexandria towards the 12,000 Egyptians in the lines of Kafr-ed-Dauar would persuade them that the British seaborne force was going to outflank them.

All the participants thought this was the real thing, for wheeled transport, mules were bought from sources as far afield as America, Natal, and India. Altogether 41,000 tons of supplies and 69 troopships were gathered to move 30,000 men, half of whom had a 3,000-mile sea-voyage from England to Alexandria.

The organizational impetus behind this activity came from the Adjutant-General—Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley. ‘All Sir Garnet’ had even become cockney slang for ‘all correct’ and the Press took up Disraeli’s accolade of ‘our only general’. The public (as a later one would regard Field-Marshal Montgomery) saw in him the guarantor of certain success. Again, like Montgomery, Wolseley had his chosen team which served him on campaign after campaign. For Egypt, eight members of the ‘Wolseley Ring’ took the cream of the staff and Cavalry Division appointments. Unfair though this might be, it placed men who knew their chief’s mind into the key subordinate posts.

Sir Garnet embarked at the Albert Docks on 1 August, evading a frantic request from the Prince of Wales to accompany the expedition. Within a fortnight he was in Alexandria and a week later most of the army had arrived.

Wolseley only put his second-in-command and the Navy in the secret. Years before, he had remarked ‘The Press has become a power which a man should try to manage for himself’. He now put these words into practice and held a press conference. Accordingly the swarm of war correspondents feverishly wired London to announce the imminent third Battle of Aboukir. On the afternoon of 19 August eight ironclads and 17 transports dropped anchor in the bay. At dusk small craft closed the shore to open fire while the main force sped away under cover of darkness, bound for Port Said, 150 miles to the east. Back in Alexandria, journalists were dashing off their stories of ‘the great bombardment’.

On 20 August the entire 107-mile length of the Suez Canal was seized by naval landing parties starting from both ends—Port Said and Suez. All went beautifully to plan. The Egyptians had been dissuaded (for just long enough) not to destroy the canal by the protests of its resident builder. He was Ferdinand de Lesseps, who stuck firmly to the French government’s policy of neutrality. At Port Said marines captured the Egyptian garrison asleep in their barracks.

Cairo was then telegraphed by the landing force to announce that 5,000 troops had been put ashore. But it was another ruse to cover the slow British build-up. That evening, guided by fast Thornycroft torpedo boats, the first troopship reached Ismailia, 40 miles from Port Said. This brilliant coup de main stands in marked contrast to the disastrous 1956 Suez expedition, yet was achieved in the Victorian steamship era.

The news of the landing at Ismailia was quite unexpected by Arabi and his puppet government. By calling up all the reserves, however, his total strength reached 60,000 troops, of whom 12,000 were sent out to Tel-el-Kebir, between Cairo and Ismailia, to face the threat from the canal, while 25,000 were added to the army around Alexandria. Arabi, now certain that the main threat was coming from Ismalia and the east built a great 6ft by 10ft trench at Tel-el-Kebir, 30 miles west from Ismailia and 45 miles north-east from Cairo. Its right resting on the Sweet Water Canal and so, to a certain extent, difficult to outflank, the trench stretched northward for over four miles—a small enough distance in the great desert but, linked to the canal and the natural line of advance for an enemy, it was tactically sound.

The mass of fellahin living in Lower Egypt got their living from canals. Their knowledge and experience in making banks, draining waterways and general construction of earthworks now stood them in good stead. The results of their two weeks’ labor were incredible. Not only was the main position dug, but also three covering positions in front, which were to act as successive defensive outposts covering Tel-el-Kebir. There is no parallel in military history of such vast and improvised fortifications being so speedily constructed.

Wolseley’s plan was to move from the canal at Ismailia westward across the desert along the line of the Sweet Water Canal and its accompanying railway, towards Cairo 96 miles away, and so come between the capital and Arabi’s force around Alexandria, 120 miles distant.

Disembarkation of the main British force at the wooden pier took a long time. Only three big ships could dock at a time and some regiments on the later ships in the convoy had to wait several days, sweltering while the vessels lay at anchor, before going alongside. On landing the men, and more particularly the horses, were found to be very soft and unfit after their four weeks on board.

As a result, the advance along the canal and railway was slow, being carried out by brigades as they and their supporting troops disembarked and moved out of the base area.

Probing forward along the railway to find the enemy, a series of major advanced guard actions took place for the next fortnight. It took 17 days to advance 25 miles. This advance successively captured each of the three enemy outpost positions built to protect the great Tel-el-Kebir fortifications. The final line was secured on 26 August with the capture of Kassassin, 11 miles east of Tel-el-Kebir. Two half-hearted sorties by Arabi had also been driven off.

By 12 September Wolseley had assembled the whole force in and around Kassassin. The railway up from Ismailia was repaired; stores, food and ammunition were being brought up by train, no longer by mule-drawn railway wagons. The canal banks broken by the retreating Egyptians were rebuilt, abundant water became available and although the troops had to work hard they were not continually on the move and had time to get acclimatized.

Wolseley now had available five brigades with a total of 17 battalions, making 12,124 infantrymen. Six cavalry regiments (2,785 troopers) and 61 guns brought the total up to 17,401 men. Arabi had 20,000 regulars waiting in the great trench with 6,000 Bedouin and 2,500 cavalry. There were 75 Egyptian guns, including 60mm and 80mm Krupp breech-loaders.

For four successive days Wolseley had personally made a dawn reconnaissance and had noted that the enemy did not ‘stand to’ in the main position of Tel-el-Kebir until 0545. He therefore decided on a night advance across the desert and at first light to rush the enemy position before they were alert, or possibly even awake. The order of march had to be the order of battle, for there would be no time to deploy for fighting.

As Sir Garnet himself remarked, a night attack was ‘a new thing in our military annals’. His subordinates were aghast. Colonel Redvers Buller VC warned that he could not remember a battle where redcoat had not fired at redcoat in daylight! But a frontal attack against enemy entrenchments two miles in depth across ground virtually devoid of cover presented no other solution. Wolseley explained : ‘I know what the best troops feel and do when suddenly surprised at night; a surprise means panic, and a panic under such circumstances means a general stampede, and the side which is sufficiently well drilled, disciplined, and handled to enable it to make an attack at night will generally succeed, whether the enemy be surprised or not’.

The army was in two divisions. On the right, the 1st Division was led by Lieutenant-General G. H. S. Willis. His leading brigade—the 2nd—consisted of four battalions. In the second line came the Guards Brigade, commanded by the 32-year-old Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria’s third and favorite son, ‘burnt as brown as a saddle’.

On the left, the 2nd Division was commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hamley. His leading brigade of the Black Watch, Gordons, Camerons and the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) was commanded by Major-General Sir Archibald Alison, a one-armed veteran of the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny. Behind the Highland Brigade came the two battalions of the 4th Brigade.

In the gap between these right and left columns rolled the 42 horse-drawn field-guns, though well back between the 4th and Guards Brigades. They were not only placed to support the infantry, but acted as a central pivot for their march and would prevent any possible panic from spreading along the whole line. The Cavalry Division on the extreme right flank was commanded by Major-General D. C. Drury-Lowe, who had under his command a composite regiment of the three household cavalry regiments, the 4th and 7th Dragoon Guards, and an Indian Cavalry Brigade. In support were two batteries of the Royal Horse Artillery (18 guns).

On the left of the canal marched the Indian Brigade, four battalions including the Seaforth Highlanders. They were an hour behind the main force, in case this more inhibited area betray the British movement, for this brigade’s line of advance lay along a valley in which were marshes, orchards and a few native huts. North of the railway the ground was hard and sandy, with few obstacles of any sort. On the railway itself sailors of the Naval Brigade manned an armored train carrying a 40-pounder gun.

By 2300, all units were ready at their starting-points west of Kassassin ; connecting files were in position, telegraph-pole direction posts erected, and Lieutenant Rawson RN, well accustomed to navigation by the stars, was ready by the right-hand man of the Highland Brigade. Wolseley had ridden round to see the troops forming up and impressed on commanding officers the necessity of absolute silence. Rifles were unloaded so no shot would spoil surprise. The men lay down until 0130 and camp fires were left burning. The advance went very satisfactorily, the precautions to preserve distance, interval and direction worked well and by 0300 the force was slightly ahead of its time-table.

An order to pause for 20 minutes was given to the Highland Brigade and the 2nd Brigade, but this order, whispered down the line, took some time to reach the flanks of both brigades and the outer units lost direction veering slightly inward. By the time the order did arrive at the far ends of the line both brigades were in crescent formation, facing inward and on moving forward again, in danger of meeting its opposite number face to face! Fortunately this loss of direction by the flanks was discovered and units were brought back on to their proper alignment before the advance was resumed.

The advance continued and by 0450 the Highlanders were unknowingly approaching the enemy trench. Just at that moment a light was seen in the east, an hour before sunrise. Wolseley riding ahead of the phantom army looked •at his watch in disbelief. Then he realized it was only the tail of a comet which lay below the horizon. Astronomical tables had not predicted this event. As the stars set they had shifted to the north-west and the British columns faithfully followed suit. This was a stroke of fortune for the error of 7° took the troops past a forward redoubt, 500 yards from the main line which reconnaissance had not spotted. Furthermore a west-to-east wind blew the sound of tramping feet and hooves back into the desert.

At 0455, Egyptian sentries fired one or two individual shots. Then a blaze of fire burst from the whole line of the parapet. The Highland Brigade was only 150 yards short of their objective, while on the right the 2nd Brigade, which had lost a little distance, was 800 yards from the enemy.

Out on the right wing of the Highlanders, Wolseley dismounted to take a closer look through his field glasses, leaving his brother to hold his horse. The first Egyptian shell dropped between Sir Garnet and the horse, but did not explode!

When the concentrated fire was opened against the Highlanders they fixed bayonets. The bugler with Maj.-Gen. Alison sounded the charge. It was taken up by the regimental buglers, and the position was rushed. Soft sand on the outer slope of the parapet slightly impeded the troops and 200 casualties were caused by enemy fire at point-blank range. The first man to reach the top, Lieutenant Brooks of the Gordon Highlanders, was shot dead but the Gordons together with the Camerons reached the top and pouring down into the main trench quickly cleared it. Gunners in the artillery redoubts were bayoneted in the back serving their guns. Pressing on, the Highlanders assaulted the second line in isolated parties and were there held up by rifle fire from troops with a few extra minutes warning.

On the left of the brigade the HLI had been unable to reach the top. The trench here was held by a Nubian regiment, the best troops the Egyptians had, and they not only drove off the HLI but actually advanced out from their cover to attack them. The personal example of Generals Hamley and Alison was needed to counteract the panic cries of ‘Retire!’ The bagpipers” ‘March of the Camerons’ helped renew the assault. On the right, the Black Watch had met much opposition but succeeded in capturing the front enemy trench.

Out on the right the 2nd Brigade arrived at the enemy position 15 minutes later than the Highlanders. In spite of the opportunity that the firing on their right had given them to prepare for the attack, the enemy made little effort to resist the Irish Fusiliers, Royal Irish, and York and Lancaster regiments. After only some minutes these regiments poured over the front trench with few casualties, while the fourth unit of this brigade, the Royal Marine Light Infantry Battalion, captured their section of the objective without firing a shot or a man being hit.

By 0520 it was light enough for the British artillery to move. Two batteries of guns were pushed forward in the gap between the two leading infantry brigades and, reaching the great trench crossed it, forming up facing south. From here they enfiladed the enemy in his support position and from which he was obstructing the Highlanders’ further advance. This artillery attack from the flank greatly shook the enemy on the lower right half of their main position and their units started to disintegrate. The H LI were able to get forward and crossing the trench joined the Camerons and Gordons, and with them wheeled left down to the canal clearing the enemy from the defences.

The 2nd Brigade re-formed and advanced in close order, followed by the Guards Brigade, both formations wheeling left after crossing the enemy trench, round the outer flank of the Highlanders. The cavalry then came in from the north, sweeping the fugitive Egyptians before them, and the collapse of the enemy was complete. It was now 0600 with the new dawn just ten minutes old.

The Indian Brigade, on the left of the canal, had advanced more slowly than expected, largely because of the difficult country there. However, they too succeeded in capturing, almost without loss, the enemy outpost near Tel-el- Kebir station, and arrived there just as the HLI came down from the north with the Camerons and Gordons.

Now the cavalry cut loose on both flanks. A Canadian recalled the terrible aspect of the Sikh lancers, ‘swarthy bearded faces, fierce with the lust to kill and intoxicated with the easy victory’. On the right the British cavalry were more gentle, often only using the flats of their sabres on the fleeing fellahin.

By 0700 Sir Garnet was meeting his generals at a stone bridge over the Sweet Water canal—the prearranged rendezvous two miles from the Egyptian front line. Sitting on the stone parapet, Wolseley smoked six cigars while dictating his victory despatch and making arrangements for a ruthless non-stop pursuit to Cairo and Zagzig, Arabi’s home town—a key railway junction in the Delta.

The exhilaration of headlong chase kept the cavalry going. By 1600 they entered Zagzig, 18 miles from the battlefield. At the station they hijacked six trains crammed with fugitives; only one engine tried to steam away but taking the wrong track crashed into an oncoming locomotive! At dusk on 14 September the cavalry had reached the outskirts of Cairo—they had galloped 64 miles in 30 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Stewart went forward with just 50 troopers to summon the capital to surrender. A dispirited weeping Arabi, who had arrived huddled in a railway carriage boarded at Belbeis, had no fight left in him and came out to yield up the city.

‘Devoured by mosquitos’

Sir Garnet ‘devoured by mosquitos’ in Zagzig managed to enjoy the Duke of Connaught’s claret at the station. Next morning he left by train for the capital with Col. Redvers Buller in the driver’s cab. Before midday on the 15th the victor was in Cairo and telegraphing the War Office that no more troops were needed. On 25 September the Khedive was rethroned by the British with great ceremony. A huge triumphal parade through the streets and a further Grand Review were held to impress the populace. On 21 October Wolseley and his two divisional generals sailed for home.

At Tel-el- Kebir, Arabi’s great earthwork can still be easily traced. Because of the sandy soil the Egyptian fortification was a built-up breastwork often 6ft high—a narrow wall behind which the riflemen had cover from fire. The remains of this obviously man-made ridge, stretching endlessly across the desert, are today only 3 or 4ft high and they would not be noticeable were it not for the hollows immediately in front from which the soil to build the parapet was excavated. Ninety years of sand-storms have partly filled these hollows, and the parapet itself has mildly subsided, but the outline is unmistakable.

Occasionally there is a parados (rear facing earthwork) but, like the Boer trench at Magersfontein, there are no communication trenches and no traverses. It is evident that the number of man-hours needed to build this vast four-mile earthwork, with its three forward positions, was prodigious, while the collection and distribution of the tens of thousands of spades, picks and entrenching tools must have been a major administrative problem.

The only reserve trench follows an unusual pattern. Joined at its northern end to the main trench it diverges back from it, southward, at an angle of 45°, and at its lower end, where it almost reaches the railway, is more than a mile behind the front line. Tactically this reserve trench is not good. At its northern end it could be, and was, overrun in the initial assault, while at its southern end it was so far back that it gave the Highland Brigade both time and ground in which to re-form for the second phase. It seems surprising that any army which could show such ingenuity and industry for so many days could within an hour give up the work which it had so laboriously and efficiently built for itself.

A triumph of planning

The ground all around, contrary to expectations, is hard-packed sand, with countless myriads of small pebbles. Walking is easy but the ever-present folds in the ground, of tennis-court or football-field size, make direction-keeping difficult. There are no trees, scrub or vegetation of any sort, no major features other than shapeless ridges and hollows, and it is frequently necessary to check bearings and direction, even in broad daylight, with the railway line clearly seen in the distance. The march of Wolseley’s force for 11 miles in this featureless country in the dark was a triumph of planning by the staff and of execution by the regimental officers.

Standing in the trench today and looking due east, into the dawn as the Egyptians had done, it is easy to see how the British were practically invisible, frequently hidden by the folds in the ground. But the noise of thousands of men moving on the hard sand with their boots constantly kicking against the pebbles must have been considerable, and it says little for the vigilance of the enemy that they did not detect the British advance sooner.

In front of the enemy’s extreme right the ground is a little flatter and there are fewer folds than elsewhere. It is not difficult to see why the HLI crossing this open and almost flat area, failed temporarily against Arabi’s best troops.

Farther to the enemy’s left and about where the Camerons and Gordons attacked, the ground rises through its folds quite sharply up to the trench and these regiments must have been quite breathless when, after charging up-hill, they had also climbed the soft-sanded parapet after negotiating the excavated hollows in front.

In the lower ground between the front and the reserve trench the Highland Brigade had ample opportunity to re-form, although every square yard is under observation from the reserve trench. It is surprising that the enemy in the second position, now fully alerted and with the Highlanders in full view, was unable to interfere with or even delay their second advance.

The greatest asset of a dawn attack, surprise, had long since gone. The dark kilts and scarlet jackets must have shown up clearly against the sand and in the growing light. The enemy’s morale or ability must indeed have been poor, in that they so quickly ceased resistance to the second advance and allowed the British such an overwhelming victory.

The seeds of the disaster at Magersfontein in South Africa during the Black Week of 1899 at the beginning of the Boer War, were sown at Tel-el-Kebir in 1882. In each case a British formation in close order advanced by night across a desert to attack an entrenched enemy at dawn. On both occasions a preliminary engagement had pushed the enemy out of a forward position, the Egyptians from Kassassin, the Boers from Modder River. In each case several days elapsed after the first action, during which the enemy’s main position was prepared to receive attack. In each case the Highland Brigade led the night advance across the desert.

The most striking similarity between the two battles lay, however, in the personalities of two officers who were present at both. At Magersfontein in 1899, the commander of the division was Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen. At Tel-el-Kebir he had been a colonel on Sir Garnet Wolseley’s staff and had played some part in the preliminary reconnaissance, the planning of the night advance across the desert and the dawn attack. Seeing its complete success he became convinced of the superiority of trained disciplined British troops against untrained and ill-led semi-irregulars. To him the position after pushing the Boers off the Modder River line seemed so very similar to that after the driving of the Egyptians out of Kassassin, that he slavishly copied Wolseley’s plan. He ordered the Highland Brigade to advance in silence en masse by night across the desert. The other veteran of Tel-el-Kebir was Captain Andrew Wauchope, a company commander in the Black Watch. At Magersfontein, now a Major-General, he commanded the Highland Brigade. He too had seen the success of the earlier night advance and dawn attack. The overwhelming success of the operation in Egypt had so greatly influenced both Methuen and Wauchope that their appreciation of the difficulties and risks of a night advance had become dimmed because of one easy success.

Here all similarity between the two engagements ceases and two essential contrasts emerge. Wolseley made several intensive personal reconnaissance of the enemy position at Tel-el-Kebir, particularly noting the time and manner in which his enemy manned their defenses in the early morning. He saw that the sun was over the horizon before they ‘stood-to’—and also that it was then directly in their eyes. The enemy’s position could easily be seen, and detailed objectives were allotted to sub-units. Neither Methuen nor Wauchppe went forward to observe Magersfontein nor were cavalry sent out to reconnoiter.

The second essential difference between the two battles lay in the quality of the enemy. At Magersfontein the Highland Brigade faced the greatest marksmen in the world. The Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State intensely hated the English—the Imperialists. They fought patriotically, fanatically and brilliantly. Trained from earliest boyhood to live in the saddle, they killed their game for food by the rifle while still mounted and were considered by Sir Winston Churchill to be the finest armed horsemen the world had ever known.

Ominous sign of disaster

The Egyptians at Tel-el-Kebir were largely untrained, unorganized, easily frightened, and not at all sure of what was going on. Even Wolseley referred to prisoners as ‘these poor old creatures’. Their fear was increased when during the night the Great Comet was seen in the sky. They took this totally unexpected apparition as being an ominous sign of disaster ahead, and as they disintegrated during the battle, said to each other ‘what else could one expect, after such a warning in the Heavens.’

The warning was apt enough, for Tel-el-Kebir cost Arabi’s men 2,000 killed and unnumbered wounded as against a British loss of 57 dead and 382 wounded. Before the battle Sir Garnet had predicted 500 casualties as the price of taking the great trench—the actual count came to 480. Still more remarkable was that even before leaving London Wolseley had fixed on Tel-el-Kebir as the future battlefield and 16 September as the decisive day. It was this sureness of touch and almost mathematical precision in a campaign unique for its record of total competence that marks out Tel-el-Kebir as the best organized Victorian ‘little’ war. Between 1856 and 1914 it was the nearest the British Army came to fighting a regular army with modern weapons.

In no sense was Tel-el-Kebir one of the ‘decisive battles of the world’—but it ushered in British rule in Egypt, which lasted for seventy years. Great Britain became the paramount and occupying Power; she could have annexed the country as easily as she had annexed so many others.

Sitting astride the canal, occupying Lower Egypt and therefore controlling the whole of Egypt, she was in full and almost undisputed possession of perhaps the most important strategic area in the world.