On 2 September 1898, Major-General Horatio Herbert Kitchener fought his most famous action of his military career, the Battle of Omdurman. It was the finale of a long campaign against the Mahdists of Sudan, and the even longer awaited avenging of General Charles Gordon’s killing over a decade earlier. Thousands of fanatical Islamic warriors lay…
During the 1840s and 1850s, the recently acquired British colony of Hong Kong became a centre for piracy in the South China Seas. Here the Chinese pirates would off-load their booty to shopkeepers and other merchants who would then sell on the stolen goods to their eager European and Chinese customers. The pirates also targeted…
Army surgeon, explorer, administrator, author and member of parliament, Sir George Scott Robertson was viewed as a true hero during the late Victorian era. He had extensively travelled through rugged Kafiristan (modern day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan), took part in the military expedition against Hunza–Nagar, and commanded the difficult yet successful defence of Chitral during…
Demonised by some but highly respected by others, Osman Digna (sometimes spelt ‘Uthman Diqna) was a Mahdist leader who remained a thorn in the side of the British in Sudan for almost two decades during the late Victorian period. He was, perhaps, the ablest commander of the Ansar – the Mahdist army – who, despite…
Most people will have heard of Field Marshall Douglas Haig, who is often remembered as the ‘Butcher of the Somme’ due to the horrendously high casualty rates suffered by the British Army during the offensive in 1916. Indeed, Haig has been a controversial figure amongst historians ever since the end of the First World War,…
On 2 September 1898, Captain Nevill Maskelyne Smyth of the 2nd Dragoon Guards would perform an act of valour that would result in the award of a Victoria Cross. His citation, published in the London Gazette of 15 November 1898, read: ‘At the Battle of Khartum [Omdurman] on the 2nd September, 1898, Captain Smyth galloped…