Fashoda Incident - Stalemate

Stalemate

A French force of just 120 tirailleurs soldiers and 12 French officers (Captain Marcel Joseph Germain - Captain Albert Baratier - Captain Charles Mangin - Captain Victor Emmanuel Largeau - Lieutenant Félix Fouqué - teacher Dyé - Doctor Jules Emily Major - Warrant Officer De Prat - Sergeant George Dat - Sergeant Bernard - Sergeant Venail - the military interpreter Landerouin) set out from Brazzaville in a borrowed Belgian steamer, under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand with orders to secure the area around Fashoda, and make it a French protectorate. They steamed up the Ubangi River to its head of navigation and then overland through jungle and scrub to the deserts of Sudan. They travelled across Sudan to the Nile River. They were to be met there by two expeditions coming from the east across Ethiopia, one of which, from Djibouti, was led by Christian de Bonchamps, veteran of the Stairs Expedition to Katanga.

After an epic 14-month trek across the heart of Africa the Marchand Expedition arrived on 10 July 1898, but the de Bonchamps Expedition failed to make it after being ordered by the Ethiopians to halt, and then suffering accidents in the Baro Gorge. On 18 September, a powerful flotilla of British gunboats arrived at the isolated Fashoda fort, led by Sir Herbert Kitchener and including Lieutenant-Colonel (later General) Horace Smith-Dorrien. As the commander of the Anglo-Egyptian army that had just defeated the forces of the Mahdi at the Battle of Omdurman, he was in the process of reconquering the Sudan in the name of the Egyptian Khedive. Both sides were polite but insisted on their right to Fashoda.

News of the meeting was relayed to Paris and London, where it inflamed the imperial pride of both nations. Widespread popular outrage followed, each side accusing the other of naked expansionism and aggression. The crisis continued throughout September and October, and both nations began to mobilise their fleets in preparation for war.