1898 — The Battle That Broke the Mahdist State

On September 2, 1898, at Omdurman, near Khartoum, General Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army of 25,000 met the Khalifa's 50,000 Mahdist warriors. The Mahdists charged with spears and older rifles into Maxim machine guns, modern rifles, and artillery. Roughly 10,000 were killed, against fewer than 50 British dead.

It was a clash of unequal weapons with an unequal cost. The victory broke Mahdist power and paved the way for the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of Sudan, which became a British-Egyptian condominium in 1899. A young Winston Churchill rode in one of the last great cavalry charges of the British Army that day, and wrote about it in The River War.