{
 "slug": "tel-el-kebir",
 "title": "Battle of Tel el-Kebir",
 "status": "draft",
 "era": "1850–1900",
 "date_text": "13 September 1882",
 "start": "1882-09-13",
 "end": "1882-09-13",
 "war": "Mahdist War",
 "cdb90_war": "EGYPT AND THE SUDAN",
 "place": {
  "name": "Egyptian entrenchments on the desert ridge north of the Sweetwater Canal and railway, east of Tel el-Kebir station, about 110 km north-east of Cairo, Egypt",
  "lat": 30.555,
  "lon": 31.81,
  "wikidata": "Q1420382"
 },
 "lede": "Before dawn on 13 September 1882 Wolseley's army, having marched through the night by the stars, stormed Ahmed ʻUrabi's entrenchments at Tel el-Kebir. In about an hour the Egyptian army broke; Cairo fell the next day and Britain occupied Egypt for decades.",
 "result": "Decisive British victory",
 "result_cdb90": "attacker win",
 "belligerents": [
  {
   "role": "attacker",
   "name": "British Army in Egypt (with the Indian Contingent and a Naval Brigade)",
   "commanders": [
    "Gen Sir Garnet Wolseley",
    "Lt-Gen G. H. S. Willis (1st Division)",
    "Lt-Gen Sir Edward Hamley (2nd Division)",
    "Maj-Gen Sir Archibald Alison (Highland Brigade)",
    "Maj-Gen Gerald Graham (2nd Brigade)",
    "Maj-Gen the Duke of Connaught (Guards Brigade)",
    "Maj-Gen D. C. Drury Lowe (Cavalry Division)",
    "Maj-Gen Sir Herbert Macpherson (Indian Contingent)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 17401,
    "low": 13000,
    "high": 17401,
    "source": "s2"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 459,
    "low": 459,
    "high": 469,
    "source": "s4"
   }
  },
  {
   "role": "defender",
   "name": "Egyptian Army of Ahmed ʻUrabi",
   "commanders": [
    "Ahmed ʻUrabi Pasha",
    "Ali Rubi Pasha (commandant of Tel el-Kebir)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 20000,
    "low": 18000,
    "high": 30000,
    "source": "s2"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 2500,
    "low": 2000,
    "high": 2534,
    "source": "s3"
   }
  }
 ],
 "sections": {
  "background": "By 1876 Egypt's debts to European creditors had bankrupted it, and Britain and France took control of its revenues. Discontent spread across Egyptian society, and especially among native officers, who were kept out of the senior ranks that the Turco-Circassian elite held. Their spokesman was Colonel Ahmed ʻUrabi, of peasant stock. After a demonstration in September 1881 Khedive Tawfiq gave the Chamber of Deputies real powers, and ʻUrabi joined the government as war minister. British writers called the movement a military revolt; the historian Juan Cole argues it was a broad social revolution, barely begun when Britain cut it short.\n\nAn Anglo-French fleet arrived off Alexandria in May 1882, and riots in the city followed in June. On 11 July, after the Egyptians refused an ultimatum to dismantle their coastal batteries, the British fleet bombarded Alexandria; France stood aside. Tawfiq sided with the British and declared ʻUrabi a rebel.\n\nʻUrabi's troops held the lines of Kafr el-Dawwar in front of Alexandria. Sir Garnet Wolseley switched his base to the Suez Canal instead, occupying Ismailia on 20 August; ʻUrabi, trusting Ferdinand de Lesseps's assurance that the British would not use the canal, had not blocked it. The army advanced west along the Sweetwater Canal and the railway and held Kassassin against Egyptian attacks on 28 August and 9 September. ʻUrabi's main army was entrenched at Tel el-Kebir, which Maurice's official history calls the gateway to Zagazig and Cairo. Wolseley would not attack across five miles of open slope by day, and a turning movement would only push the Egyptians back into the canal-cut Delta. He had noticed that the Egyptians put out their outposts only at daybreak, so he chose a night march and an assault at dawn, leaving the whole day for the pursuit to Cairo.",
  "forces": "Wolseley marched from Kassassin with 634 officers and 16,767 men, 61 guns and 6 Gatlings. Willis's 1st Division on the right had Graham's 2nd Brigade (Royal Irish, Royal Marine Light Infantry, York and Lancaster, Royal Irish Fusiliers) leading the Guards Brigade under the Duke of Connaught. Hamley's 2nd Division on the left had Alison's Highland Brigade (Black Watch, Gordons, Camerons, Highland Light Infantry) leading Ashburnham's brigade (Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, King's Royal Rifle Corps). Between the divisions, Goodenough's seven field batteries, 42 guns, moved in a single line. Drury Lowe's cavalry division, Household Cavalry, Dragoon Guards, three Bengal cavalry regiments, mounted infantry and two horse batteries, was on the far right. South of the canal moved Macpherson's Indian Contingent (the Seaforth Highlanders, three Indian battalions, a mountain battery and sappers) and a Naval Brigade with six Gatlings on the railway.\n\nʻUrabi's army had been swollen with barely drilled recruits. At Tel el-Kebir he had, by his own count, 20,000 men and 75 guns, armed with Remington rifles and old-pattern 8 cm and 9 cm Krupp breech-loaders. The line ran some four miles along the ridge, with a ditch about ten feet wide, redoubts for the guns and an eight-gun advanced work in front of the right, but no obstacles. Sudanese battalions held the strongest works. His chief engineer, Mahmud Fehmi, had been captured at Kassassin, a loss Wikipedia's sources call irreparable.",
  "course": "**Into position, evening of 12 September.** Tents were struck at 18.15 and the army moved after dark to a bivouac near Ninth Hill, west of Kassassin. No bugles, fires or smoking were allowed. The night was very dark, and it was 23.00 before every unit had found the engineers' marker posts. Reconnaissance had fixed the distance from Ninth Hill to the works at 6,660 yards. At about one mile an hour, a start at 01.30 would bring the infantry to the parapet at first light.\n\n**The night march, 01.30–04.50.** At 01.30 both divisions moved west, linked by connecting files. With no landmarks the army steered by the stars. Wolseley's naval aide, Lieutenant Rawson, guided the Highland Brigade's company of direction; clouds hid most stars, so he took successive stars ahead while keeping the North Star on the right. Goodenough aligned his guns on the North Star and drifted slightly north. At a twenty-minute halt the Highlanders' flank battalions kept walking, curled into a crescent and almost met in front of the centre, and Alison took 25 minutes to straighten the line. The cavalry halted at 03.10 on the right to wait for the sound of firing. Macpherson's Indian Contingent set out an hour behind the rest, because the villages south of the canal would have raised the alarm. At about 04.50 a streak of light rose in the east; it was a comet, not the dawn.\n\n**The Highland assault, 04.55–05.30.** At 04.55 Egyptian pickets fired, bugles sounded and the whole parapet lit up with rifle fire at about 150 yards. The Highlanders fixed bayonets and charged without firing, scrambling up the loose sand of the scarp. In the centre the Gordons and Camerons broke in, but the defenders fought hard. Alison was driven back over the parapet, and Hamley rallied the wavering men with companies he had held back. On the left Sudanese troops volleyed into the Highland Light Infantry at close range and then charged them out of the ditch. On the right the Black Watch were held by a strong work. The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and King's Royal Rifle Corps came up in support, and mixed groups fought on towards the inner line.\n\n**Graham, the guns and the cavalry, 05.05–05.30.** Graham's brigade was still 800–900 yards out when the firing began, so it crossed a longer belt of fire before carrying the works ten to fifteen minutes after the Highlanders. The Egyptians fell back fighting. At about 05.10 the first gun of N/2 battery cantered into the ditch and over the parapet; other batteries enfiladed the line northwards and turned on the advanced work. The cavalry, 2,000 yards off when the shooting started, trotted round the northern end of the lines and into the Egyptian rear.\n\n**Collapse, 05.30–07.00.** ʻUrabi was in bed when the attack began and fled towards Belbeis. His reserve, seeing the cavalry sweep round its left and the 1st Division coming on, joined a rush for the railway station. Soon after sunrise at 05.52 Brancker's battery fired on the escaping trains. A little after 06.00 Hamley led about 200 Highlanders through ʻUrabi's camp to the bridge and station. South of the canal the Seaforths stormed the gun pits at about 06.00 and the 20th Punjabis carried a village with the bayonet; Macpherson reported success soon after 07.00. Wolseley wrote that the battle was practically over by nearly 06.00. Fifty-eight guns were taken.",
  "aftermath": "The official return gave 57 British killed, 380 wounded and 22 missing. The Egyptian dead were never counted: an American naval observer put them at not far from 2,000, mostly bayoneted in the trenches or shot in the retreat, and 534 wounded were treated on the field. He thought the men had fought bravely, the Sudanese above all, and their officers badly. Maurice's official history went out of its way to deny the rumour that Egyptian officers had been bribed.\n\nWolseley sent his cavalry straight on. The Indian cavalry took Belbeis at noon. Late on 14 September Drury Lowe's column reached the Abbassiyeh barracks outside Cairo, where Egyptian cavalry came out under white flags. ʻUrabi surrendered that night, and about 150 British troopers took over the Citadel from a garrison of at least 5,000. The remaining Egyptian forces had surrendered by 24 September.\n\nʻUrabi was tried in December, pleaded guilty, and saw his death sentence commuted to exile in Ceylon; he was allowed home in 1901. Tawfiq was restored, but British officials governed Egypt through the 'Veiled Protectorate' until 1914, and British troops stayed in the Canal Zone until 1956. In Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser later hailed ʻUrabi as a national hero.",
  "wargaming": "Tel el-Kebir is a game about the dark. The attacker's problem is getting two divisions, a grand battery and a cavalry division across four miles of featureless desert to arrive together before dawn, with no landmarks but the stars. Hidden movement, a drift die for each column, a random halt and a clock running towards 05.45 do the job; the Highland Brigade's crescent shows how easily a column can lose a quarter of an hour.\n\nThe assault itself suits battalion-level rules with five-minute turns over a table a mile or two wide: the parapet, the advanced redoubt, the inner lines, ʻUrabi's camp and the railway station behind. The Egyptian infantry should be brittle but not feeble. Give the Sudanese battalions and the Krupp batteries a better rating, let defenders surprised in the trenches react slowly, and let the rout spread from flank to flank once the cavalry are in the rear. The Indian Contingent's attack along the canal makes a separate small game.\n\nThe what-ifs belong mostly to the Egyptian player: outposts pushed out a mile at night, an engineer to replace Mahmud Fehmi, a commander awake at 04.55 with the reserve in hand. For the British player: what if the Highlanders had lost their direction completely, or Willis had arrived first?"
 },
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "File:Egyptian compaign, 1882. Map no. 6, Sketch of formation for attack Tel el-Kebir.png",
   "kind": "map",
   "caption": "Wolseley's sketch of the formation for the attack on Tel el-Kebir, 'as distributed to General Officers before the attack' (not to scale), from the maps to Maurice's official history (Ordnance Survey reproduction, 1908).",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Egyptian_compaign%2C_1882._Map_no._6%2C_Sketch_of_formation_for_attack_Tel_el-Kebir.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "file": "File:Egyptian campaign, 1882. Map no. 5, Map of the country adjacent to Kassassin and Tel el-Kebir.png",
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   "caption": "Map of the country adjacent to Kassassin and Tel el-Kebir, illustrating the actions of 9 and 13 September, from the maps to Maurice's official history.",
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  {
   "file": "File:Tel El Kebir1882.jpg",
   "kind": "painting",
   "caption": "The Storming of Tel el-Kebir, by Alphonse de Neuville (National Museums Scotland).",
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   "artist": "Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville",
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  {
   "file": "File:Wolseley at Tel el-Kebir.jpg",
   "kind": "illustration",
   "caption": "Sir Garnet Wolseley at the battle of Tel el-Kebir: illustration for The Graphic, 4 November 1882.",
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   "artist": "After Sydney Prior Hall",
   "credit": "The Graphic ilustrated newspaper",
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  },
  {
   "file": "File:Report of the British naval and military operations in Egypt, 1882 (1883) (14596872829).jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "Part of the Egyptian entrenchments at Tel el-Kebir, photographed after the battle: plate from Goodrich's report for the US Navy (1883).",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Report_of_the_British_naval_and_military_operations_in_Egypt%2C_1882_%281883%29_%2814596872829%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Goodrich, Caspar F. (Caspar Frederick), 1847-1925",
   "credit": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14596872829/ Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/reportofbritishn01good/reportofbritishn01good#page/n472/mode/1up",
   "width": 3328
  },
  {
   "file": "File:Ahmed Orabi 1882.png",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "Ahmed ʻUrabi, in a portrait published on 7 July 1882.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Ahmed_Orabi_1882.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author",
   "credit": "Světozor, year 1882, issue 28 , digitized by Czech Academy of Sciences",
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  },
  {
   "file": "File:Urabi Pasha and Tolba Essmat in Abbasyia barreks prison after Tel-el-Kebir battle.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "ʻUrabi Pasha and Tulba ʻIsmat in captivity at the Abbassiyeh barracks after Tel el-Kebir, 1882.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Urabi_Pasha_and_Tolba_Essmat_in_Abbasyia_barreks_prison_after_Tel-el-Kebir_battle.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "thumb": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Urabi_Pasha_and_Tolba_Essmat_in_Abbasyia_barreks_prison_after_Tel-el-Kebir_battle.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled",
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   "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author",
   "credit": "http://www.civilizationguards.com/2013/08/ahmed-orabi.html",
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 ],
 "sources": [
  {
   "id": "s1",
   "title": "Battle of Tell El Kebir (Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tell_El_Kebir",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s2",
   "title": "Col. J. F. Maurice, Military History of the Campaign of 1882 in Egypt (Intelligence Branch, War Office; HMSO, 1887), chs. XI–XIII and appendices",
   "url": "https://archive.org/details/campaign-1882-egypt",
   "kind": "primary"
  },
  {
   "id": "s3",
   "title": "Lt-Cdr Caspar F. Goodrich, USN, Report of the British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt, 1882 (Office of Naval Intelligence; Washington, Government Printing Office, 1883)",
   "url": "https://archive.org/details/reportofbritishn01good",
   "kind": "primary"
  },
  {
   "id": "s4",
   "title": "Sir Garnet Wolseley's despatch on Tel el-Kebir, 16 September 1882, with the casualty return, Supplement to the London Gazette, 6 October 1882 (issue 25154), pp. 4556–4561",
   "url": "https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/25154/page/4556",
   "kind": "primary"
  },
  {
   "id": "s5",
   "title": "Neil Faulkner, 'All Sir Garnet! The Battle of Tel el-Kebir, 13 September 1882', Military History Matters 125 (2021), extracted from his Empire and Jihad",
   "url": "https://the-past.com/?p=19683",
   "kind": "article"
  },
  {
   "id": "s6",
   "title": "Battle of Tel-el-Kebir (britishbattles.com)",
   "url": "https://www.britishbattles.com/egypt-1882/battle-of-tel-el-kebir/",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s7",
   "title": "Ahmed Urabi (Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Urabi",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s8",
   "title": "''Urabi Rebellion', Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 (via Encyclopedia.com)",
   "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/urabi-rebellion",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s9",
   "title": "Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's 'Urabi Movement (Princeton University Press, 1993): publisher's description",
   "url": "https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400820900/colonialism-and-revolution-in-the-middle-east",
   "kind": "book"
  }
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