1868 Expedition to Abyssinia Totally Explained

Everything about 1868 Expedition To Abyssinia totally explained

The British 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia was a punitive expedition against the Emperor of Ethiopia Tewodros II, also known as the Emperor Theodore II, who had imprisoned several missionaries and two representatives of the British government. It required the transportation of a sizable military force hundreds of miles across mountainous terrain lacking any road system. Harold G. Marcus described the action as "one of the most expensive affairs of honour in history."

Background

By October, 1862 Emperor Tewodros' position as ruler had become precarious: much of Ethiopia was in revolt against him, except for a small area stretching from Lake Tana east to his fortress at Magdala. He was engaged in constant military campaigns against a wide array of rebels. As a final attempt to recover his standing, Tewodros wrote to the major powers for help. As Donald Crummey recounts, "Now came the definitive attempt, at the turning point of the Emperor's career. Success might stabilize the internal situation; defeat would pull out the last prop. He proposed to send embassies with the ultimate objective of obtaining military alliances and agreements for technical progress."
   Tewodros sent letters to Russia, Prussia, Austria, France and Britain. The French government responded with demands on behalf of a Lazarist mission in Hamasien, at the edge of Tewodros' realm; they were the only country known to have responded. However, the first European to cross his path after this lack of a response happened to be Henry Stern, a British missionary. Stern had also mentioned the Emperor's humble origins in a book he'd published; although the reference wasn't intended to be insulting ("the eventful and romantic history of the man, who, from a poor boy, in a reed-built convent became...the conqueror of numerous provinces, and the Sovereign of a great and extensive realm") it proved to be a dangerous mistake. At the time Tewodros was insisting on the truth of his descent from the Solomonic dynasty, and Tewodros expressed his rage in many ways, including having Stern's servants beaten to death, and Stern with Rosenthal, were "chained, severely treated, and the latter thrashed on several occasions."
   The British consul Charles Duncan Cameron, along with the Abuna Salama and the group of missionaries based at Gafat, all interceded for the release of the imprisoned pair, and for a while it appeared that their efforts might succeed; but on 2 January 1864 Cameron was seized along with his staff, and all put in chains. Shortly afterwards, Tewodros ordered most of the Europeans in the royal camp put into chains.
   The British government sent Hormuzd Rassam to negotiate a solution to this crisis, but due to "security in Tigre, the King's indecisiveness, and continuing confusion about the envoy's instructions" delayed Rassam's arrival at Tewodros' camp until January 1866. At first, it looked as if Rassam might succeed in the release of the hostages, despite the interference of C.T. Beke, who had sent letters from the hostages' family asking for their release -- which only confused the already suspicious Tewodros. Meanwhile, Emperor Tewodros' behavior was becoming increasingly erratic, his actions included acts of friendship towards Rassam, paranoiac accusations, and violence upon whoever happened to be around him. In the end, Rassam himself was made a prisoner, and one of the missionaries dispatched with the news and Tewodros' latest demands (June 1866). The Emperor eventually moved all of his European prisoners to his fortress on Magdala, and continued to parlay with the British until Queen Victoria announced the decision to send a military expedition to rescue the hostages 21 August 1867.

The campaign

In the eyes of Alan Moorehead, "There has never been in modern times a colonial campaign quite like the British expedition to Ethiopia in 1868. It proceeds from first to last with the decorum and heavy inevitability of a Victorian state banquet, complete with ponderous speeches at the end. And yet it was a fearsome undertaking; for hundreds of years the country had never been invaded, and the savage nature of the terrain alone was enough to promote failure."
   The task was given to the Indian Army, and Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier was given command of the expeditionary force. Intelligence was carefully gathered about Ethiopia while the size of the army was calculated and its needs estimated before a massive effort begun to meet them. "Thus, for example, forty-four trained elephants were to be sent from India to carry the heavy guns on the march, while hiring commissions were dispatched all over the Mediterranean and the Near East to obtain mules and camels to handle the lighter gear. A railway, complete with locomotives and some twenty miles (32 km) of track, was to be laid across the coastal plain, and at the landing place large piers, lighthouses and warehouses were to be built."
   The force consisted of 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers and over 40,000 animals, including the elephants. The force set sail from Bombay in upwards of 280 steam and sailing ships. The advance guard of engineers landed at Zula on the Red Sea, about south of Massawa, and began to construct a port in mid-October 1867, and by the end of the first month a pier, 700 yards long was completed; a second one was completed by the first week of December and the railway was already reaching into the interior. At the same time an advance guard, under Sir William Lockyer Merewether, had pushed up the dry bed of the Kumayli River to the Suru Pass, where again the engineers were busy at work building a road to Senafe for the elephants, gun-carriages, and carts.
   From Senafe, Merewether sent out two letters from Lieutenant-General Napier: one to Emperor Tewodros, demanding the release of the hostages (which Rassam intercepted and destroyed, afraid this ultimatum might enrage Tewodros against the prisoners); the other to people of Ethiopia, proclaiming that he was there purely to free the captives and that he'd hostile intentions only towards those who sought to oppose him. Napier arrived at Zula on 2 January 1868, and put the finishing touches on his plan of advance before leaving on 25 January for Senafe.
   It took Napier's forces 3 months to trek over of mountainous terrain to the foot of the Emperor's fortress at Magdala. At Antalo, the Napier parlayed with Ras Kassai (later Emperor Yohannes IV), and won his support, which the British badly needed in their single-minded march to Magdala; without the help, or at least indifference, of the local peoples, the British Expedition would never reach its goal deep within the Ethiopian highlands. On 17 March, the army reached Lake Ashangi, from their goal; here, to further lighten their loads, the men were put on half-rations.
   Meanwhile, Emperor Tewodros' facade of invincibility was dissolving. At the beginning of 1865 he controlled little more than Begemder, Wadla, and Delanta (wherein the fortress of Magdala lay). He struggled to keep up the size of his army -- which Sven Rubenson points out was his only "instrument of power" -- but by mid-1867 defections from his army had reduced its size to 10,000 men. Harold Marcus observes, "For a total cost of about £9,000,000 Napier set out to defeat a man who could muster only a few thousand troops and had long ago ceased to be Ethiopia's leader in anything but title." At the same time the British marched south to Magdala, Tewodros advanced from the west, up the course of the Bashilo River, with the cannons (including his prize creation, the massive Sebastopol) that he'd induced the European missionaries and foreign artisans to build for him at Gafat. The Emperor intended to arrive at Magdala before the British, and although he'd a shorter distance to cross his success wasn't certain, and he only arrived there a scant few days before his opponents. On 9 April, the lead elements of the British force reached the Beshitta, "and on the following morning, Good Friday, they crossed the stream barefooted, stooping to fill their water-bottles on the way."
   On 13 April, the decisive battle took place outside Magdala, almost as an anti-climax. The defending forces were routed with few injuries and no deaths to British side, though many on the defenders'. Over 700 of Theodore's men were killed and approximately twice as many wounded in just two hours; British casualties were only 20 wounded, two of them later dying from their wounds. A few days later, Tewodros himself committed suicide to avoid capture and the hostages were released.

Aftermath

The British entered the capital, and Sir Robert allowed his troops to loot and burn Magdala, including its churches, as a punitive measure before departing from Ethiopia. His army began to retrace its steps back to Zula, "an imposing procession, with the bands playing and the flags leading the way, but the army soon learned that they'd earned no gratitude in Ethiopia; they were treated as simply another warlike tribe on the move, and now that they were going away like weak and defeated men they were an obvious target for attack." At Senafe, Ras Kassai was rewarded for his services with a formidable quantity of supplies, which Marcus estimates were worth "approximately £500,000": 6 mortars, 6 howitzers, about 900 muskets and rifles, stocks of ammunition which included 585,480 percussion caps, and other goods and supplies. These later aided his rise to Emperor, against such talented rivals as Wagshum Gobeze and Menelik of Shewa. By 2 June Napier had reached Zula, and as the men were loaded into the ships, the base camp was dismantled; Napier boarded the Feroze on 10 June, and set sail for England by way of the Suez Canal.
   The British expedition took a large amount of treasure, manuscripts and many religious items such as tabots, which today can be seen in various museums and libraries in Europe, as well as in private collections. The manuscripts ignited an interest in Ethiopic studies in the West.
   A few of the items have since been returned to Ethiopia. The most important of these was the crown of Tewodros II, which King George V personally presented to the future Emperor Haile Selassie on his visit to England in 1925.
   With the expedition's objectives having been achieved, the British force returned home. Napier was created Baron Napier of Magdala in recognition of his achievement. At Gibraltar, where he served as governor from 1876 to 1883, there's a battery named in his honor, Napier of Magdala Battery.
   As a side note, it's worth mentioning that the first Canadian to win a Victoria Cross, Alexander Roberts Dunn, died in an hunting accident at Senafe before the expedition set out.

In fiction

The 1868 Expedition forms the backdrop to George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman on the March and Mason McCann Smith's When the Emperor Dies.

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