WARS OF THE

"NINETIES. 8

sending out any scouts to search the hills in

the neighbourhood. Only a few sentinels were

posted close to thecamp. In fact,Toselli arranged

his bivouac just as if he were at home inItaly in

peace time. He paid dearly for his carelessness.

There were some 20,000 of Menelek's troops, riflemen and spearmen, moving on Amba Alagi,

and on that same Sundaythey fell uponToselli's little force. TheItalianofficers and their native levies made a hard fight, but the battery was

30,000 Gras rifles, no longer in use in the French army, and some millions of cartridges. Other rifles were purchased abroad; they were all landed at Obok, and sent up into Abyssinia on pack animals. This was goingon for months in 1895. Towards the end of the yearMenelek was ready to move. TheItalians seem to have been very badly informed, and to have com- mitted the serious mistake of underrating their

enemy. They made no adequate prepara-

"

THE KHALIFA FORCED HIS HORSE INTO THERIVER, AND DRAWING OUT HIS SWORD AND POINTING TOWARDS THK

EAST, HE SHOUTED OCT IN A LOUD VOICE, 'ALLAHU AKBAR! ALLAHU AKBAR'.'" [p. 5).

rushed andcaptured, three-fourths ofthe officers

were shot or speared, two thousand two hundred of their men fell in the fight, and a mere handful, less than three hundred, escaped from

the field of slaughter and reached the fort of Makalla.

tions for the storm that was about to burst upon them.

General Arimondi,the victor of Agordat,and oneof the best soldiersin theItalian army, was in commandof the advancedposts that had been pushed into Tigre" after the victory of Koatit. He had occupied and fortified the littletown of Makalla,and sent forwardfrom ita flying column

of 2,500 men,native troops underItalianofficers,

with a mountain battery, the whole commanded by Major Toselli. On Sunday,December 8, the Major reached a place called Amba Alagi. He had no idea that there wasany hostile force in

the neighbourhood, and he bivouacked without

Arimondi decided to leave Makalla to its own resources for awhile, concentrating an army

to relieve it at Adigrat, where Baratieri, the Governor-General, was to join him with con- siderable forces, including new regiments from Italy. Makalla was held by a thousand men under Major Galliano, and was supposed to be perfectly safe for some weeks. But Menelek