by Duane Spurlock
"And how many of the people struggling to understand what they perceive as the unprecedented crimes of Osama bin Laden remember or have even heard of the Mahdi?"
- Brooke Allen, "G. A. Henty & the Vision of Empire," The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 8, April 2002
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/apr02/henty.htm
"The Soul of a Regiment" is one of Talbot Mundy's best-known stories. Originally published in the February 1912 issue of Adventure, it may be his most-reprinted short story. (As of this writing, it is available for reading online at two sites: The R.U.R.itanian Muglug site at http://www.geocities.com/ruritanian_muglug/mundy.html, and the Black Mask site at http://www.blackmask.com/books52c/soulreg.htm.)
A story of loyalty, of valor, of determination, "The Soul of a Regiment" describes the often thankless efforts made by British soldiers on campaign and the horrendous situations in which they could find themselves. And although the story is about the British military in the 1880s, its narrative has resounded with readers so greatly over the years because soldiers of any country and time can identify with its characters' devotion to duty in the face of dire crisis.
This article provides a brief historical background to "The Soul of a Regiment" and some sources to which interested readers can look for further information. While Mundy's tale is entertaining all on its own, knowing its historical context lends even greater power to the tale.
Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and the Suez Canal
"The Soul of a Regiment" occurs against the backdrop of the Sudan campaign against the Mahdi -- a piece of history called the Mahdiya. Yet, like all pieces of history, that period of action is not an isolated island of time and event -- it is connected to earlier events.
And those events occurred in Egypt. The British government had long been interested in Egypt -- since the time of Napoleon, whom the British feared might attack India via the overland route through Egypt.
In the 19th Century, Egypt was ruled by the Ottoman Empire -- an empire that was in decay, and whose power was failing. During the early years of the century, the Sultan of Turkey appointed Mohammed Ali as the Viceroy of Egypt. Mohammed Ali was apparently wily in the ways of politics and diplomacy, and was able to rule Egypt with relative autonomy from the Sultan.
Viceroy Mohammed Ali invaded and conquered the northern part of the Sudan, which lay to the south of Egypt. Here, he boosted the Egyptian economy with hardy fighting men, slaves -- which Arab traders captured and sold for great profit -- ivory, and harshly collected taxes.
Egypt was ruled by the Khedive Ismail Pasha by the time the Suez Canal opened in 1869, and the country staggered under great national debt. In 1875, the Khedive sold his shares of the Canal to Britain in an effort to stabilize the economy. Although Britain and France had been allied during the Crimean War (1854-56), they still conspired against one another politically, and Britain's purchase of the Khedive's canal holdings simply beat the French to the punch.
But after Ismail Pasha attempted to stir up an unsuccessful revolt in 1879, the two countries now exerted dual control over Egypt's government affairs. They demanded a new ruler for Egypt from the Sultan of Turkey, who named Tewfik (or Tawfiq) -- Ismail's son -- as Khedive.
The Egyptian Campaign of 1882
The officer class of the Egyptian army was primarily Turco-Circassians; Egyptian peasants made up the lower ranks, and only after 1860 were Egyptians allowed officer rank. Still, Egyptians found that they would not advance beyond the rank of colonel.
Morale was low among the ranks, for the Turco-Circassians were incompetent and inept. Further, in the face of Egypt's economic crisis, Khedive Ismail Pasha had proposed reducing the size of the army (with Egyptian soldiers to be the first casualties) and cutting soldiers' pay. The situation remained unchanged at the time Tewfik took power.
With foreign domination increasing, the ineffectual rule and the corruption of the Turkish officials continuing, and with the status of Egyptians in the army in peril, Ahmad 'Urabi (or Ahmed Bey Arabi), an Egyptian, was elected leader of the Egyptian officers. He led a revolt that quickly spread from the army to grow into a national rebellion.
Seeing a possible threat to the Suez Canal, Britain sent its forces under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley. The fighting was over in less than a year, and the Egyptian army was reorganized under British officers. As Britain strengthened its control over the country, it also gained the Sudan, Egypt's southern colony.
And with the Sudan came more trouble.
Reorganizing the Egyptian Army
After quelling the Egyptian revolt, Britain disbanded the Egyptian army in December 1882. The British military then began reforming the new army in its own image.
It is during this period that Mundy's "The Soul of a Regiment" opens.
The new Egyptian army was intended to preserve internal order and defend the southern and western borders against Bedouin Arabs. The job of recreating the army of Egypt was given to 26 British officers and a score of drill sergeants. Mundy's "Sergeant-Instructor William Stanford Grogram" would have been one of these latter.
Mundy explains that although Grogram has retired from the army, he enlists for the Egyptian service because his elder brother was a "ne'er-do-well," so Grogram has turned over his pension to his sister-in-law and her children. Soldiering was "the only kind of work that he knew how to do."
Although British troops trained the new Egyptian army, Britain intended for local people to man their country's military. So the new soldiers trained by the many Grograms were fellaheen -- that is, the native peasants and farmers drawn from the Egyptian populace. The identification that Mundy describes for the drill instructors with their troops agrees with the description of this training period that Winston S. Churchill presents in The River War, the future British prime minister's account of the war in the Sudan, which was published in 1899.
Likewise the soldiers embraced their regiment colors and their instructors with a great loyalty, very similar to the manner that Mundy describes.
State of the British Army
The British Army was a volunteer force. However, the 21st Century reader shouldn't hold the notion that today's volunteer armies are anything like the volunteer military of the 19th Century. According to Robert Wilkinson-Latham in The Sudan Campaigns: 1881-1898, "Service . . . had originally been for 21 years, but in 1870 a system of 12 years' service was introduced . . . " (p. 4) Even in 1882, regiments were still composed mainly of "old soldiers" -- that is, the 21-year men.
It's easy to understand why a retired sergeant like Grogram would return to the army after serving in the military for 21 years, for he would likely know little about how to live in the civilian world. For instance, consider this passage written by Field Marshal William Robertson in 1877:
Year in and year out they went through the same routine, were treated like machines -- of an inferior kind -- and having little prospect of finding decent employment on the expiration of their 21 years' engagement, they lived only for the present, the single bright spot in their existence being the receipt of a few shillings -- perhaps not more than one -- on the weekly pay-day. (Wilkinson-Latham, pp. 4-5)
The details for a portrait of a Grogram are filled in further by Wilkinson-Latham:
The backbone of the army was . . . "the Non-Commissioned man." Junior officers and soldiers alike depended on the harsh judgment, skill and devotion to duty of the non-commissioned officers, the army professionals who -- often of intimidating countenance -- were a breed unto themselves. Everything in their lives was done "by the book," yet they were the mainstay of each and every regiment. A regiment with good non-commissioned officers was an efficient piece of military machinery. The soldier was not encouraged to think; this was done by the non-commissioned officer who was the vital link between the rank and file and the officers." (Wilkinson-Latham, pp. 6-7)
The devotion to his charges, and the devotion to their regiment and regimental colors drilled into them, that Mundy ascribes to Grogram, and which Churchill describes in The River War, rings true and echoes in this passage from The Soldier's Pocket Book, written by Sir Garnet Wolseley:
The soldier is a peculiar being that can alone be brought to the highest efficiency by inducing him to believe that he belongs to a regiment that is infinitely superior to the others round him. (Wilkinson-Latham, p. 4)
The Mahdi
Muhammad Ahmad was born on an island in the Nile River in 1844. Very poor, he grew to manhood following the scholarly pursuits of an Islamic wise man. Apparently quite a charismatic individual, he gathered a large following of believers. This mystical religious leader in 1881 declared himself al-Mahdi, "the proclaimed one," who urged the people of the Sudan to rid their country of its Turkish oppressors.
By this time, the Turks had little influence in the Sudan, but Viceroy Mohammed Ali's rule in the name of the Ottoman Empire had been so terribly oppressive that the population was ready to lash out against whatever authority was in power. In this case, the contempt directed at the British, as outsiders, was as great as that given the Turks and their representatives.
The Mahdi called for jihad -- holy war -- against any who opposed him. His rise to power had been so rapid that many believers considered it miraculous, and so the ranks of the Mahdist army swelled remarkably. The British underestimated the Mahdi and his power, and his followers rather easily overwhelmed the small British forces sent to apprehend him.
Distressed by the deteriorating control of its army in the Sudan, the British government sent its enigmatic troubleshooter, Colonel Charles Gordon, to Khartoum -- the Sudanese capital -- to analyze the situation. Political indecision then left Gordon and his small force stranded in this city at the junction of the Blue and White Niles, and the Mahdist forces lay siege to the town. Eventually the Mahdi's followers stormed the gates, killing Gordon and his supporters in January 1885.
In the face of this defeat, Britain withdrew from the Sudan. Under the leadership of General Sir Evelyn Wood -- given the title of Sirdar, or commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army -- the British focused on building Egypt's economy and honing its army.
The Mahdi died six months after the taking of Khartoum. The role of leader fell to an early follower who had risen to power along with the Mahdi, the Khalifa Abdullahi. The Khalifa consolidated the Mahdiya's early expansion, and the movement's followers reveled in their power over the country.
Captives of the Mahdiya
If the end of "The Soul of a Regiment" seems contrived to 21st Century readers -- if the eventual arrival of Grogram and his ragged band of musicians at the Sirdar's polo field seems utter artifice -- it's worth mentioning that there were many European captives held by the Mahdist forces, and successful escapes certainly occurred.
At least two long-term captives made well-known escapes, and they -- along with a third captive -- left thrilling accounts. Byron Farwell presents their stories in Prisoners of the Mahdi. Father Joseph Ohrwalder escaped from Omdurman in 1891. Rudolf Slatin was an Austrian soldier in service to the Egyptians as Governor of Darfur. He was held prisoner many years, in time becoming almost a confidant to the Khalifa. He finally made his escape, reaching Aswan on March 16, 1895, arriving in dirty tatters. (So psychologically beaten was he by his life among the Mahdists and as the Khalifa's slave, Slatin's demeanor toward the British officers in Aswan when he first approached them made them initially dismiss him as an Arab beggar.) Charles Neufeld was a merchant who was freed by the Sirdar's army after 13 years as a prisoner in chains.
Actual incidents bear out the possibility that Grogram's band might have survived, escaped, and found their way back to Egypt. There were many captive Egyptian soldiers among the Mahdist camps. Interesting also after reading Mundy's story -- in which Grogram and the tatters of his regiment play music and dance for their Mahdist captors -- is the passage in Farwell about Neufeld. After his capture, he was being marched, day by day, to the Khalifa's headquarters: " . . . by mid-afternoon they were opposite Dongola where they halted. There, just outside the town, a great parade of Dervish troops was staged. There was even a band, made up of former Egyptian soldiers, and in the medley they played Neufeld heard a snatch of the Khedival hymn."
Some space devoted to these three captives -- Slatin, Ohrwalder, and Neufeld -- will provide the reader a slight sense of the ordeals they endured. (Farwell's book is the source for this information, and is highly recommended for its readability and detail.)
a.
Rudolf Slatin was born outside Vienna in 1857. Only a mediocre student, but with a desire to travel, he became a bookseller's clerk in Cairo in 1873. While there he traveled in the Sudan, and it cast its spell on him. Yet he returned to Austria to join its army in 1876 and fulfill his required time in the military. He became an officer of the reserve. In 1878, after some correspondence with Colonel Charles Gordon, he received a letter from Gordon -- then Governor-General of the entire Sudan -- for service with the Egyptian government. After receiving permission from the Austrian army, Slatin arrived in Khartoum in 1879. Slatin began his military career in the Sudan with his appointment to Mudir (district governor) of Dara, the southwestern part of Darfur. Then in 1881 he was named governor of Darfur and given the title of Bey.
In December of that year, Darfur began to feel the force of the Mahdi's army. Slatin was involved in various skirmishes with Mahdist forces, and most of the surrounding tribes were joining the Mahdists. In hope of encouraging his loyal troops -- loyal but sure they would be defeated because their leader, Slatin, was a Christian -- Slatin announced that he had converted to Islam. Slatin's efforts worked to buoy up his troops.
But loyalty will not win a war. Losing men and running out of ammo, with no hope for reinforcements, and the countryside filled with tribes loyal to the Mahdi, Slatin surrendered on Christmas Eve, 1883.
Because of his professed conversion, because of his earlier fair treatment to men who now were in positions of power within the Mahdi's army -- and those same men's respect for the former Governor of Darfur -- and thanks to following a course of flattering his captors, Slatin was treated relatively well for a prisoner who had fought so determinedly against the Mahdists. He was assigned by the Khalifa to be one of his mulazem, a slave whose duties were that of a servant-courtier-bodyguard.
The Khalifa, a ruthless and contrary man, always feared that Slatin's loyalty was not complete. So when the Mahdi traveled to Omdurman to begin the siege of Khartoum, Slatin was thrown into chains. In that condition he spent his first anniversary in captivity, and stayed in chains eight months before he was released to serve as the Khalifa's slave.
Slatin remained a slave, although he eventually maintained a household under the Khalifa's watchful eye. Slatin's contact with other European captives was always limited.
Father Ohrwalder, who escaped before Slatin, worked from Cairo to help arrange various escape efforts for Slatin; and Slatin's family, in Austria, continually sent money and made efforts to have Rudolf rescued. Finally, by a combination of efforts, Slatin left Omdurman with an Arab guide February 20, 1895. It took nearly a month of difficult journeying and close calls for Slatin to reach Aswan and the safety of Egypt.
b.
Father Joseph (Giuseppi) Ohrwalder left Cairo for the Sudan in December 1880; he was assigned to the mission station at Dilling in the Nuba Hills, where Father Luigi Bonomi was the superior and Sister Teresa Grigolini was the mother superior of a small group of nuns.
The first of a series of raids in the area by Baggara Dervishes came in April 1882. In September, the missionaries and soldiers surrendered. They were marched to the Mahdi's camp near El Obeid. For a few days, the Mahdi and then the Khalifa attempted to make the priests and nuns convert. Unsuccessful, the Mahdi condemned them all to death.
The morning of the execution -- two nuns had already bowed their heads for the executioner's sword stroke -- the Mahdi halted the proceedings with no explanation.
The missionaries lived in rags, barely surviving except for the help of others in only slightly better situations. They sewed clothing from the rags of dead soldiers, and others sold these clothes for them in the marketplace, since they -- as unbelievers -- could not sell the goods themselves.
Eventually the nuns and priests were separated and handed out to various emirs as slaves. The nuns were sometimes tortured. Father Ohrwalder got his food and water from that given to the horses. He slept on the ground and shook scorpions each morning from the rags he wore. These religious servants were living in a camp surrounded by thousands who considered them infidels.
Ohrwalder was sent to Omdurman and left to his own resources. The Khalifa was in charge by then, and the city housed about 150,000 people. Ohrwalder and two nuns became ribbon makers and managed to make enough money to survive even through the 1889 famine -- many poorer, starving people ate old leather; some resorted to cannibalism. By 1891 almost half of the Europeans and Syrians who had survived the fall of Khartoum were dead.
The Mahdi had occasionally called Ohrwalder to him for religious debate and to attempt converting the Catholic priest to Islam. After the Mahdi's death, the Khalifa -- more interested in the material world and in maintaining his power than in spiritual matters -- did not continue these efforts.
Ohrwalder often smuggled out letters to encourage efforts to help him escape. Finally, an effort was made that rescued him, three nuns, and a young Sudanese girl who had been born in the Khartoum mission and later given to Ohrwalder for safekeeping. While the Khalifa was embroiled in a revolt instigated by the Ashraf -- the surviving family of the Mahdi who had lost power to the Khalifa -- the group escaped with help from an Arab, Ahmed Hassan, who was paid by the Intelligence Office of the Egyptian Army.
The group left November 29, 1891. After 10 days of many hardships on the trail -- continuous flight, little food and water, no rest for humans or camels -- they reached an Egyptian fort protecting the wells at Murat on December 8. They reached Cairo December 21. Their terrors were over.
c.
Charles Neufeld did not escape. He remained a captive for 13 years. Most of that time, he was held in heavy chains that restricted nearly all movement.
Karl (who called himself Charles in Egypt) Neufeld was a Prussian born around 1856 near what is now the Polish town of Bydgoszcz. He spoke English and Arabic, and was employed by the Gordon relief expedition as an interpreter, although his official standing in Egypt was as a merchant.
In 1887, he became involved in a venture to bring from the Sudan a large quantity of gum, which could be bought cheaply and then sold at a high price in Egypt. Success could mean a fortune. The mission would rely upon contacts among the Kababish tribes of the northern Kordofan province, since they were traditionally at odds with the Mahdists and frequently acted in rebellion against the Khalifa’s rule.
Neufeld wholeheartedly joined the endeavor. He also agreed to take messages to Sheikh Saleh of the Kababish from the Egyptian army -- telling him that his request for arms and ammunition had been granted.
Neufeld made arrangements, the caravan was assembled, and the expedition left in March. However, one of the guides was secretly an agent of the Mahdists, and he betrayed the caravan to the Dervish forces. Arms and ammo were found among the caravan’s supplies, and Neufeld was accused of being a spy and supporting rebellion.
Unlike many European prisoners facing Mahdist captors, Neufeld was brash and impatient. He denied all knowledge of the guns, and claimed that no matter what he said the Mahdists would kill him. The emirs were taken aback by his outbursts and candor. They took him to the Khalifa in Omdurman.
Neufeld refused to kowtow to the Khalifa. His obstinate manner in the face of such seemingly hopeless circumstances meant he was nearly sentenced to death on more than one occasion. Only the intercession of a sympathetic emir -- sometimes with a whispered word of encouragement from Rudolf Slatin on the sly -- kept Neufeld alive. Still, most of Neufeld’s time was spent in heavy chains that weighed him down nearly to immobility and chafed his flesh into festering sores.
The prisoners lived in filth, among excrement and parasites, aggravated by the heat and the stench and pandemonium of the crowd. Typhus and other diseases were common.
The Khalifa occasionally sent religious teachers to convert Neufeld. One old kadi who knew Slatin urged Neufeld to submit to conversion, even if he only pretended as Slatin had. But Neufeld would not compromise his ideals, publicly or privately.
Food was not provided by the prison, so those captives without friends or family usually starved. Neufeld was fed by Hasseena, an Arabic girl who had been his clerk in Egypt and who had been captured with his caravan. Father Ohrwalder also provided food for Neufeld. During the famine of 1888 and 1889, when Neufeld awoke each morning surrounded by new corpses, Hasseena managed to continue smuggling food to him.
As Farwell comments, "Although Slatin and Neufeld were in the same city for more than seven years, they never saw each other after the first few days of Neufeld’s arrival. Slatin often tried through friends to help Neufeld, but he was able to do very little and was forbidden by the Khalifa to visit him." (p. 177)
Flogging was an everyday punishment at the prison. Neufeld was lashed more than once, at least one time sentenced to 150 lashes. 500 lashes was a common sentence. 1000 was the maximum allowed by the prison rules, and that usually was ordered only to extort a confession of some sort.
At one point the Khalifa assigned Neufeld to make saltpeter for gunpowder. Neufeld wasn’t an expert at this, but he agreed so that he would be released from prison. He lived and worked in the ruined chapel of Khartoum. Eventually, however, he was thrown back into chains when Slatin’s escape was discovered.
In 1896 rumors reached Omdurman of the Anglo-Egyptian army’s advance into the Sudan. The Khalifa ordered Neufeld to help make cartridges for his army. Neufeld had more freedom than he had ever had as a captive, yet he still wore light chains. As Kitchener’s army grew closer, other prisoners and some men in authority sought to curry Neufeld’s favor in the hope that he would speak up for them to the British.
Following the Battle of Omdurman -- which effectively ended the Khalifa's rule of the Sudan, but not his influence -- General Sir Herbert Kitchener (who had been named Sirdar after the April 1892 resignation of Sir Francis Grenfell, who had succeeded Sir Evelyn Wood as Sirdar) entered the city and released Neufeld. Still, the victors were unable to remove the man's leg irons until nearly another day had passed.
Grogram and Escape
The cases that the three famous captives present are interesting. The Khalifa played a continual game of psychological cat and mouse with Slatin, giving the former governor much of his attention. There were other captives who had held equally high-ranking governmental positions, but who received much less attention -- for example, Frank Lupton (who served as another provincial governor before his capture) was essentially ignored and left much to his own devices until he finally succumbed to depression and illness. The Khalifa reserved special attention for Slatin because his family had lived in the province governed by Slatin, and the Mahdist leader delighted in having the former governor as his slave. In this way, Slatin served as a living trophy that the Khalifa could show off to his emirs.
Neufeld, although he remained unbendable during his captivity, received special treatment in many ways, since the Khalifa made sure that his jailer took special care to prevent Neufeld's death. On the other hand, the so-called merchant also received many punishments. The Khalifa considered Neufeld a spy, but also seemed to believe that Neufeld had knowledge and many useful skills, for which he put him to work concocting gunpowder and building cartridge machines.
Meanwhile, to the Khalifa, Father Ohrwalder was an infidel priest. Yet he was largely ignored to some degree, left to live or die according to his own wits, much like Lupton.
There were many prisoners from the Egyptian army, and it's possible that a regimental sergeant such as Mundy's Grogram might have been cast into circumstances such as Lupton or Ohrwalder. While efforts were made in some instances to keep captives on a short leash, Omdurman was a barbaric city full of chaos. It was impossible for the authorities to completely control every person within its walls. For example, Farwell writes, "A half-witted Bohemian minstrel who had wandered by accident into the Sudan and had been captured, now as casually wandered out of Omdurman." (p. 268)
So Grogram and his band of regimental musicians might just as easily have escaped. Or simply wandered out of captivity.
But whether Grogram might realistically have escaped and somehow reached Cairo really doesn't matter. Mundy's story relies as much upon artifice as history to stir its readers. And while knowing the historical context for "The Soul of a Regiment" helps strengthen its impression on a modern reader, it is the author's skill that best carries the tale.
Bibliography
There are many books about this period and the conflict in the Sudan. This is only a short selection of books I used in researching and writing this article.
Barthorp, Michael, The British Army on Campaign 4: 1882 - 1902. Illustrated by Pierre Turner. Men-At-Arms Series no. 201. Osprey Military Publishing (London: 1996).
Churchill, Winston S., The River War: An Account of the Re-conquest of the Soudan. Carroll & Graf (New York: 2000).
Farwell, Byron, Prisoners of the Mahdi. W.W. Norton & Co. (New York: 1989).
Knight, Ian, Queen Victoria's Enemies 2: Northern Africa. Illustrated by Richard Scollins. Men-At-Arms Series no. 215. Osprey Military Publishing (London: 1998).
Mundy, Talbot, "The Soul of a Regiment." Adventure Magazine, February 1912.
Wilkinson-Latham, Robert, The Sudan Campaigns: 1881-1898. Illustrated by Michael Roffe. Men-At-Arms Series no. 59. Osprey Military Publishing (London: 1976).
Copyright Duane Spurlock
Links
Read "The Soul of a Regiment" online:
The R.U.R.itanian Muglug site at http://www.geocities.com/ruritanian_muglug/mundy.html.
The Black Mask site at http://www.blackmask.com/books52c/soulreg.htm.
The British Army on Campaign 4: 1882 - 1902 is available at Amazon.com. Click here for more info.
The River War: An Account of the Re-conquest of the Soudan is available at Amazon.com. Click here for more info.
Prisoners of the Mahdi is out of print. However, some used copies are available from Amazon.com. Click here for info.
Queen Victoria's Enemies 2: Northern Africa is available from Amazon.com. Click here for more info.
The Sudan Campaigns: 1881-1898 is available from Amazon.com. Click here for more info.
Other Titles by Talbot Mundy available from Amazon.com:
Guns of the Gods. Click here for more info.
Hira Singh. Click here for more info.
Told in the East. Click here for more info.
The Winds of the World. Click here for more info.
Posted by ds at June 11, 2003 12:05 PM
