6 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

the then existing civil state. His principles have been summed up officially as “an insistence upon

universal law and religion—his own—with community of goods, and death to all who refused adherence to his tenets.” Unfortunately, ‘‘opportunity” played into his hands. The misrule of the Pashas, the burden of Over-taxation coupled with the legal suppression of the slave trade, and the demoralisation of the Egyptian forces enabled Mohammed Achmed to rebel success-

fully. Troops sent against him were defeated and annihilated. Towns capitulated to his arms and within a period of two years the inhabitants of the Soudan were hailing him as the true Mahdi, their invincible deliverer. With the capture of Khartoum,

on the morning of the 26th of January 1885, and the abandonment of the Soudan and its population—the

Egyptian frontier being fixed by British Government order at Wady Halfa—the over-lordship of that immense region from the Second Cataract to the Equatorial Lakes was yielded to the so-called Mahdi Mohammed Achmed did not long enjoy his conquests. Success killed him as it has done many a lesser man.

For a season he gave himself up to a life of indolence and the grossest lust. On the 22nd of June 1885, less than six months after Gordon’s head had been struck off and brought to him, the Mahdi suddenly died. It

is said by some that his death was due to smallpox, by others that one of his women captives poisoned him in revenge for the murder of her relatives. His demise was kept secret for a time by his successor Abdullah, the chief Khalifa, and the other dervish leaders. It