The Washington herald., 1911-02-05
OSMAN DIGNA, THE
FRENCH RENEGADE,
DBRYISH CHlBFTAIN
BY EX.ATTACHE.

where he has been revisiting, after an ab-
sence Of thirteen years, the scenes of
those brilliant victories. administrative
successes, and feats Of daring and en-
durance which, in the brief space Of .
decade and half carried him from q
mere lieutenancy of royal engineers to
the rank of general, with a seat in the
House OF Lords, and a large grant OF
money. by Parliament, to enable him to
maintain the dignity of his peerage, was
his interview at Wadi-Halfa with his
old enemy, Osman Digna-
From 1888 until 1900 Osman Digna's
name was on every lip; not only in Egypt
and throughout the British empire. but
also everywhere in Europe. where his
military prowesses and his extraordinary
immunity from capture ended by en-
dowfng him with all sorts Of legendary
attributes. OF all the emirs in the serv-
ice, first Of the Mahdi. and then Of tho
khalifa, he was the most resourcefu
He was far and away the most able Of
all the Dervish commanders, his strateg-
ical moves exciting the idmiration Of
the British officers opposed to him. In
deed, in the rapidity Of his movements
and in his way of suddenly turning up at
the very last place where his opponents
were expecting him, he had much in
common with the Boer general, De Wet.
who gave the English more trouble than
any other Boer leader during the last
South African war. Time and again
Osman Digna had defeated mingled An
glo-Egyptian forces. He cost the English
army many a gallant officer. 1t waA he
upon whom the khalifa relied to check
Kitchener's final advance upon khaf-
toum. He was defeated, after particu-
larly heavy fighting, at the battle Of At
bara, and again at the battle Of Om-
durham
Most people imagined that he had fallen
in that battle, in which over 10000 Der
wishes lost their lives, and 900 were cap
tured, or else that he had been slain
when in the following year Kitchener's
successor as Sirdar. Gen. Sir Francis
Wingate, overlook the remaining Der
wish forces at Abu Adil. on the White
Nile, where, after a hard-fought battle,
the Khalifa and his principal emirs, sub
mitted to death rather than to capture.
At any rate, from that time forth Osman
Digna disappeared from public print.
Few ever armed that nearly twelve
months later he was quietly captured
by Capt. Burgess, near Tokar. where he
had so signally defeated Gen. Valentine
Baker Pasha, just sixteen years previ-
ouSly, and conveyed first to SueZ, and
then via Cairo, up the Nile, he has ever
since been detained in captivity at Wadi-
Halfa, as a prisoner of state. Indeed, it
was only Lord Kitchener'S visit to his
old-time foe, when passing through
Wadi- Halfa that has really recalled
to popular attention the fact that Osman
Digna Is still in the land of the living.
A Native of France.
What renders Osman Digna an object
of such particular interest is the fact
that this old veteran Dervish is an
Oriental only by adoption. and Moslem
by conversion. being a native of France,
where he was born on the banks of the
Seine in 1886, as the son of certain
Joseph Nisbet, and his wife, Marie. The
boy was duly christened in the Cathedral
at Rouen, receiving the name of Georges
When he was about eleven years old his
father failed in business, and thereupon
migrated with his wife and son to Egypt.
where he died some months later, at
Alexandria. His widow who found her
self almost penniheSs, contracted few
months later a marriage. according to
Moslem rites, with a wel1-known Mo-
hammedan merchant of Alexandra. OS-
man Digna by name. Having no children
of his own, he became extremely fond
of young George Nisbet, insisted on his
becoming a convert to Islam, and en-
Digna the Younger. at the military coll
lege at Cairo, where the lad received
careful training at the hands of the dis
tinguished French and British officers
attached to the college as professors.
In 1860 the whole family took up their
residence at Suakim, where Osman Digna.
the elder, soon become known as the
leading merchant, and incidentally, too,
as the principal slave dealer of the entire
Red Sea littoraL On his death in 1865
his StepSon, the former Georges NiSbet,
inherited his fortune and his business,
and under the name of Osman Digna
soon acquired even greater wealth, power,
and influence. When the fnSurrection
broke out at Cairo, in 1852, he warmly
espoused the cause of Arab Pasha, the
rebel leader. who was an old classmate
and friend of his. 1t was on this occa-
sion that he was elected chief by the
sheikhs of the Eastern sudan. So great
was his power that both the Mahdi and
his successor, the Khalifa, were forced
to treat ''the French Arab" as he used
to be styled with extreme consideration
and to defer to his wishes.
If Osrnan Digna decided to throw in
his lot with the Mahdi, after the sup
preston of the Arab rebellion, Lord
Wolseley 1t was becauss the English, by
their efforts to stamp out the slave trade,
had virtually ruined that extremely lu-
CrdUSe part OF MS business OSman
Digna in those days was a man of
Herculean stature, which is now probably
bent by his eighty-one years HIS eyes
were Of piercing blaclneSs, looking forth
from beneath shaggy eyebrows, and he
wore an immense beard He lost his left
arm in one of the battles around Tukar,
in the early stages Of the Dervish insur-
recton, and 1t was his exceptional stat
ure and the absence of his left arm, that
N he hv
Burgess, In 1900, when he was endeavor-
ing to escape across the Red Sea into
the Businesses Of Arabia
Many Other ReneGadea.
Osman Digna was by no means the
only European IN the service Of the Der
wishes in the rebellion against Egyptian
and English rule. According to Father
Ohrwalder. the Roman Catholic MISSION
ary who spent many years Of cruel i'm
pfisonment at Khartom and Omdurman,
and whose book describing the horrors
Of his captivity. enjoys worldwide fame,
relates that there were several Euro
peanz, Germans, Greeks, French, and
even English. who. probably to save
their lives, abjured Christianity, em-
braced the Mahdist form Of Mohamme-
danism. and who became In the end
moro fanatic than the Dervfshes them.
selves. Prominent among them was the
Prussfan Klotx. former sergeant Of ar
tillery IN the German army, WHO had |
been one Of the crowd Of adventures