Valentine Baker, hastening with thirty-five hundred men…

Valentine Baker, hastening with thirty-five hundred men to relieve Tokar when the war in Sudan breaks out, encounters the enemy under Osman Digna at El Teb on February 4, 1884.

His men become panic-stricken at the first rush and are slaughtered.

Baker himself, with a few of his officers, succeeds by hard fighting in cutting a way out, but his force is annihilated.

British troops soon afterwards arrives at Suakin, and Sir Gerald Graham takes the offensive.

Baker Pasha accompanies the British force, and guides it in its march to the scene of his defeat, and is wounded at the desperately fought second battle of El Teb.

Baker will remain in command of the Egyptian police until his death in 1887.

Among his writings are Our National Defences (1860), War in Bulgaria, a Narrative of Personal Experience (London, 1879), and Clouds in the East (London, 1876).

The crime that led to Baker's conviction and military discharge may have inspired the 1894 pornographic novel Raped on the Railway: a True Story of a Lady who was first ravished and then flagellated on the Scotch Express.

Elements of the same incident are suggested by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes short story, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.

Baker had been educated in Gloucester and in Ceylon, and in 1848 had entered the Ceylon Rifles as an ensign.

Soon transferred to the 12th Lancers, he had seen active service with that regiment in the 8th Cape Frontier War of 1852—1853.

Baker in the Crimean War had been present at the Battle of Chernaya River and at the fall of Sevastopol, and in 1859 he became major in the 10th Hussars, succeeding only a year later to the command and holding this position for thirteen years, during which period the highest efficiency of his men had been attained.

He ha passed through the wars of 1866 and 1870 as a spectator with the German armies, and in 1873 he had started upon a famous journey through Khorasan.

Though he had been unable to reach the Khanate of Khiva, the results of the journey had afforded a great deal of political, geographical and military information, especially as to the advance of Russia in central Asia.

Back in England in 1874, he had taken up a staff appointment at Aldershot.

Less than a year later, Colonel Baker’s career in the British army had come to an untimely end with his arrest, on a charge of indecent assault upon a young woman in a railway carriage.

He had offered no defense, and had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine, after which he had been dismissed from the service.

Two years later, having meanwhile left England, Baker had entered the service of the Ottoman Army in the war with Russia.

At first in a high position in the gendarmerie, he had soon been transferred to Mehmed Ali Pasha’s staff, taking over the command of a division of infantry.

With this division, Baker had sustained the rearguard action of Tashkessen against the troops of Gourko.

Promoted Ferik (lieutenant-general) for this feat, he had continued to command Suleiman’s rearguard.

After the peace he had been employed in an administrative post in Armenia, where he had remained until 1882, when he was offered the command of the newly formed Egyptian army, which he accepted.

On his arrival at Cairo, however, the offer had been withdrawn and he had only obtained the command of the Egyptian police.

In this post, he has  devoted by far the greater amount of his energy to the training of the gendarmerie, which he realizes will be the reserve of the purely military forces.