Siege of Khartoum The Battle of Khartoum , Siege of Khartoum or Fall of Khartoum lasted from March 13 , 1884 , to January 26 , 1885 . It was fought in and around Khartoum between Egypt ian forces led by British General Charles George Gordon and a rebel Sudanese army led by the self - proclaimed Mahdi , Muhammad Ahmad . Khartoum was besieged by the Mahdists and defended by a garrison of 7 , 000 Egyptian and loyal Sudanese troops . After a ten - month siege , the Mahdists finally broke into the city and the entire garrison was killed . Background . Appointment of General Gordon . Since the 1882 Anglo - Egyptian War , the British military presence ensured that Egypt remained a " de facto " British protectorate . However , the administration of Sudan was considered a domestic Egyptian matter , and left to the Khedive ' s government . As a result , the suppression of the Mahdist revolt was left to the Egyptian army , which suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the Mahdist rebels at El Obeid , in November 1883 . The Mahdi ' s forces captured huge amounts of equipment and overran large parts of Sudan , including Darfur and Kordofan . These events brought Sudan to the attention of the British government , and of the British public . The Prime Minister William Gladstone and his War Secretary Lord Hartington did not wish to become involved in Sudan . Accordingly , the British representative in Egypt , Sir Evelyn Baring , persuaded the Egyptian government that all their garrisons in Sudan should be evacuated . General Charles Gordon was then a popular figure in Great Britain . Having already held the Governor - Generalship of Sudan in 1876 - 79 , he was appointed to accomplish this task . Gordon ' s ideas on Sudan were radically different from Gladstone ' s : he believed that the Mahdi ' s rebellion had to be defeated , or he might gain control of the whole of Sudan , and from there sweep over Egypt . His fears were based on the Mahdi ' s claim to dominion over the entire Islamic world and on the fragility of the Egyptian army , which had suffered several defeats at the hands of the Sudanese . Gordon favoured an aggressive policy in Sudan , in agreement with noted imperialists such as Sir Samuel Baker and Sir Garnet Wolseley , and his opinions were published in " The Times " in January 1884 . Despite this , Gordon pledged himself to accomplish the evacuation of Sudan ; he was given a credit of £100 , 000 and was promised by the British and Egyptian authorities " all support and cooperation in their power . " . On January 14 , 1884 , Gordon left the Charing Cross railway station in London for Dover , the ferry to Calais , and on to the Sudan . When in Cairo , Gordon met Al - Zubayr Rahma Mansur , a former slave trader who had once controlled a semi - independent province in southern Sudan . The two men had a troubled history , as Gordon had been instrumental in destroying Zubayr ' s influence . Passing over their previous enmity , Gordon became convinced that Zubayr was the only man with sufficient energy and charisma to counter the Mahdi . On his way to Khartoum with his assistant , Colonel Stewart , Gordon stopped in Berber to address an assembly of tribal chiefs . Here he committed a cardinal mistake by revealing that the Egyptian government wished to withdraw from Sudan . The tribesmen became worried by this news , and their loyalty wavered . Battle . Siege begins . Gordon made a triumphal entry in Khartoum on February 18 , 1884 , but instead of organising the evacuation of the garrisons , set about administering the city . His first decisions were to reduce the injustices caused by the Egyptian colonial administration : arbitrary imprisonments were cancelled , torture instruments were destroyed , and taxes were remitted . To enlist the support of the population , Gordon legalised slavery , despite the fact that he himself had abolished it a few years earlier . This decision was popular in Khartoum , where the economy still rested on the slave trade , but caused controversy in Britain . The British public opinion was shaken again shortly after by Gordon ' s demand that Zubayr Pasha be sent to help him . Zubayr , as a former slave trader , was very unpopular in Britain ; the Anti - Slavery Society contested this choice , and Zubayr ' s appointment was denied by the government . Despite this setback , Gordon was still determined to " smash up the Mahdi " . He requested that a regiment of Turkish soldiers be sent to Khartoum as Egypt was still nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire . When this was refused , Gordon asked for a unit of Indian Muslim troops and later for 200 British soldiers to strengthen the defenses of Khartoum . All these proposals were rejected by the Gladstone cabinet , which was still intent on evacuation and refused absolutely to be pressured into military intervention in Sudan . This drove Gordon to resent the government ' s policy , and his telegrams to Cairo became more acrimonious . On April 8 , he wrote : " I leave you with the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons " and added that such a course would be " the climax of meanness " . When these criticisms were made public in Britain , the conservative opposition seized on them and moved a vote of censure in the House of Commons . The government won by only 28 votes . Knowing that the Mahdists were closing in , Gordon ordered the strengthening of the fortifications around Khartoum . The city was protected to the north by the Blue Nile and to the west by the White Nile . To defend the river banks , he created a flotilla of gunboat s from nine small paddle - wheel steamers , until then used for communication purposes , which were fitted with guns and protected by metal plates . In the southern part of the town , which faced the open desert , he prepared an elaborate system of trenches , makeshift Fougasse - type land mine s , and wire entanglements . Also , the surrounding country was controlled by the Shagia tribe , which was hostile to the Mahdi . By early April 1884 , the tribes north of Khartoum rose in support of the Mahdi , and cut the Egyptian traffic on the Nile and the telegraph to Cairo . Communications were not entirely cut , as runners could still get through , but the siege had begun and Khartoum could only rely on its own food stores , which could last five or six months . On March 16 , an abortive sortie from Khartoum was launched , which led to the death of 200 Egyptian troops as the combined forces besieging Khartoum grew to over 30 , 000 men . Through the months of April , May , June , and July , Gordon and the garrison dealt with being cut off as food stores dwindled and starvation began to set in for both the garrison and the civilian population . Communication was kept through couriers while Gordon also kept in contact with the Mahdi , who rejected his offers of peace and to lift the siege . On September 16 , an expedition sent from Khartoum to Sennar was defeated by the Mahdists which resulted in the death of over 800 garrison troops at Al Aylafuh . By the end of the month , the Mahdi moved the bulk of his army to Khartoum , more than doubling the number already besieging it . As of September 10 , 1884 , the civilian population of Khartoum was about 34 , 000 . Fall of Khartoum . Gordon ' s plight excited great concern in the British press , and even Queen Victoria intervened on his behalf . The government ordered him to return , but Gordon refused , saying he was honour - bound to defend the city . By July 1884 , Gladstone reluctantly agreed to send an expedition to Khartoum . However , the expedition , led by Sir Garnet Wolseley , took several months to organise and only entered Sudan in January 1885 . By then , Gordon ' s situation had become desperate , with the food supplies running low , many inhabitants dying of hunger and the defenders ' morale at its lowest . The relief expedition was attacked at Abu Klea on January 17 , and two days later at Abu Kru . Though their square was broken at Abu Klea , the British managed to repel the Mahdists . The Mahdi , hearing of the British advance , decided to press the attack on Khartoum . On the night of January 25 – 26 , an estimated 50 , 000 Mahdists attacked the city wall just before midnight . The Mahdists took advantage of the low level of the Nile , which could be crossed on foot , and rushed around the wall on the shores of the river and into the town . The details of the final assault are vague , but it is said that by 3 : 30 am , the Mahdists managed to concurrently outflank the city wall at the low end of the Nile while another force , led by Al Nujumi , broke down the Massalamieh Gate despite taking some casualties from mines and barbed wire obstacles laid out by Gordon ' s men . The entire garrison , physically weakened by starvation , offered only patchy resistance and were slaughtered to the last man within a few hours , as were 4 , 000 of the town ' s inhabitants , while many others were carried into slavery . Accounts differ as to how Gordon was killed . According to one version , when Mahdist warriors broke into the governor ' s palace , Gordon came out in full uniform , and , after disdaining to fight , he was speared to death — in defiance of the orders of the Mahdi , who had wanted him captured alive . In another version , Gordon was recognised by Mahdists while making for the Austrian consulate and shot dead in the street . What appears certain is that his head was cut off , stuck on a pike , and brought to the Mahdi as a trophy and his body dumped in the Nile . Advance elements of the relief expedition arrived within sight of Khartoum two days later . After the fall of the city , the surviving British and Egyptian troops withdrew from the Sudan , with the exception of the city of Suakin on the Red Sea coast and the Nile town of Wadi Halfa at the Egyptian border , leaving Muhammad Ahmad in control of the entire country . Aftermath . The British press put the blame of Gordon ' s death on Gladstone , who was charged with excessive slowness in sending relief to Khartoum . He was rebuked by Queen Victoria in a telegram which became known to the public , and an acronym applied to him , G . O . M . for " Grand Old Man " which was changed to M . O . G . the " Murderer Of Gordon " . His government fell in June 1885 , though he was back in office the next year . However this public outcry soon paled , firstly when press coverage and sensationalism of the events began to diminish and secondly when the government released details of the £11 . 5 million military budget cost for pursuing war in the Sudan . In reality , Gladstone had always viewed the Egyptian - Sudanese imbroglio with distaste and had felt some sympathy for the Sudanese striving to throw off the Egyptian colonial rule . He once declared in the House of Commons : " Yes , those people are struggling to be free , and they are rightly struggling to be free . " Also , Gordon ' s arrogant and insubordinate manner did nothing to endear him to Gladstone ' s government . After his victory , Muhammad Ahmad became the ruler of most parts of what is now Sudan , and established a religious state , the Mahdiyah , which was governed by a harsh enforcement of Sharia law . He died shortly afterwards , in June 1885 , though the state he founded survived him . In Britain , Gordon came to be seen as a martyr and a hero . In 1896 , an expedition led by Horatio Herbert Kitchener was sent to avenge his death ( who swore to do so upon hearing of Gordon ' s demise ) and reconquer Sudan . On 2 September 1898 Kitchener ' s troops defeated the bulk of the Mahdist army at the Battle of Omdurman . Two days later a memorial service for Gordon was held in front of the ruins of the palace where he had died . Surviving family members of the movement ' s leaders were held by the British in a prison in Egypt . The women and children were held there for ten years . The men were held for twelve years . After their return to Sudan they were held under house arrest for the rest of their lives .