The British Government under Prime Minister William…

The British Government under Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, under increasing pressure from the public to support General Charles George Gordon, had eventually ordered Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley to relieve him.

Wolseley, already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, is able to form up a large force of infantry, moving forward at an extremely slow rate.

Realizing they will take some time to arrive, Gordon presses for him to send forward a "flying column" of camel-borne troops across the Bayyudah Desert from Wadi Halfa under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Stuart.

This force is attacked by the Hadendoa Beja, or "Fuzzy Wuzzies" (so called for their elaborate hairdressing), twice, first at the Battle of Abu Klea and two days later nearer Metemma.

Twice, the British square holds and the Mahdists are repelled with heavy losses.

At Metemma, one hundred miles (one hundred and sixty kilometers) north of Khartoum, Wolseley's advance guard meets four of Gordon's steamers, sent down to provide speedy transport for the first relieving troops.

They give Wolseley a dispatch from Gordon claiming that the city is about to fall.

However, only moments later, a runner brings in a message claiming the city could hold out for a year.

Deciding to believe the latter, the force stop while they refit the steamers to hold more troops.

They finally arrive on Khartoum on January 28, 1885, to find the town had fallen during the Battle of Khartoum two days earlier.

When the Nile had receded from flood stage, Faraz Pasha had opened the river gates and let the Ansār in.

The garrison had been slaughtered, and Gordon had been killed fighting the Mahdi's warriors on the steps of the palace, hacked to pieces and beheaded, which the Mahdi forbade.

When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he had ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree "....where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above."

When Wolseley's force arrive, they retreat after attempting to force their way to the center of the town on ships, being met with a hail of fire.