Battle of Ginnis

The Battle of Ginnis (also known as the Battle of Gennis) was a minor battle of the Mahdist War that was fought on December 30, 1885, between soldiers of the Anglo-Egyptian Army and Mahdist Sudanese warriors of the Dervish State. The battle was caused by the Mahdist blockade of the Ginnis-Kosha fort, which British commanders hoped to relieve. The fighting resulted in a British victory. It is principally remarkable as the last battle fought by the British Army in red coats (although a maxim battery from the Connaught Rangers is said to have fought in red at the Battle of Ferkeh in 1896).

Background to battle

The situation

In 1884, a Sudanese religious fanatic, Muhammad Ahmed, also known as "The Mahdi", planned and executed a series of attacks that left a British general, William Hicks, and thousands of ill-trained Egyptian soldiers dead at the hands of angry Arab rebels called Dervishes or (more accurately) Mahdists. The Sudan was controlled by an Anglo-Egyptian administration, and it was decided that something must be done. General Charles Gordon was sent by the British government to be the Egyptian Army's Governor-General there. General Gordon and his aide, Colonel John Donald Hamill Stewart, carried orders from both governments to evacuate the town from the Mahdi. Instead, Gordon built up the town's defenses and prepared for a siege. The British government sent two relief columns, the slow River Column and the mobile Desert Column, to rescue Gordon, Stewart, and the Egyptian garrison. After both columns won hard-fought battles, Kirbekan and Abu Klea, respectively, it was found that Stewart had been murdered by wandering Arabs north of Khartoum after his steamboat ran aground and that, through the treachery of an Egyptian deputy commander, Khartoum had fallen and Gordon was killed, the columns retreated, leaving behind a series of forts.