Before sunrise on 13 September 1882 a British army under Sir Garnet Wolseley, after marching through the night across the desert from Kassassin, stormed the entrenched lines of Ahmad Urabi's Egyptian army at Tel el-Kebir. Wolseley reported the battle practically over by nearly 6 a.m.; Wilfrid Scawen Blunt wrote that it lasted hardly more than forty minutes. The following night Urabi gave up his sword at Abbassiyeh, just outside Cairo. A court-martial later sentenced him to death, and the Khedive commuted the sentence to perpetual exile. On the same date in 1759, James Wolfe's British army defeated Montcalm's French outside Quebec.
Debts, demands and a bombardment
Neil Faulkner writes that Egypt had been bankrupted by interest payments on its loans and placed under Anglo-French "dual control". In his own later account, given to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in 1903, Urabi, whom British sources call Arabi, says that on 9 September 1881 he and his fellow officers renewed their demands for a Chamber of Notables, a larger army and the dismissal of Riaz, and that "They agreed to all".1
On 11 July 1882 British ironclads under Admiral Seymour bombarded the forts of Alexandria. Faulkner puts the expeditionary force that followed at 21,000 men under Wolseley, who chose to seize the Suez Canal and advance on Cairo from the east. Wolseley's despatch places his line of communications "from Suez to Ismailia, and thence on to Kassassin".2
Steering by the stars
Wolseley wrote that detachments and earlier losses left him able to "place in line about 11,000 bayonets, 2,000 sabres, and 60 field guns". Wolseley's intelligence put the enemy at Tel el-Kebir at two infantry divisions of about 20,000 men, three cavalry regiments, about 6,000 Bedouins and irregulars and 60 to 70 guns, though he believed the guns there to have been 59. In a statement given later in Ceylon, Urabi put the whole force holding the lines of Tel el-Kebir at 20,000 strong with 75 guns; Maurice adds that by the best information he actually had 25,000, or 30,000 with Bedouins. Blunt writes that there cannot have been more than 6,000 to 7,000 regular infantry, and that the total "may have been 20,000, but I have no accurate statistics to go by".3
Wolseley had found that the enemy kept his outposts close to the works at night and, he believed, "kept a very bad look out". At dawn on 12 September he inspected the works with his generals and explained the plan; after dark the army left Kassassin for a bivouac where no fires or smoking were allowed. At 1.30 a.m. on the 13th the 1st and 2nd Divisions moved off. The Indian Contingent and the Naval Brigade, south of the canal, did not move until 2.30.4
"In moving over the desert at night, there are no land marks to guide one's movements, we had, consequently, to direct our course by the stars," Wolseley reported. Maurice writes that Wolseley gave the Highland Brigade his naval aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Rawson, "a man well accustomed to steer his way by the stars". The Admiralty promoted Lieutenant Wyatt Rawson to Commander for services at the battle. Maurice also says that a shaft of light seen in the east at about 4.50, which caused no small anxiety as a possible sign of dawn, was the comet that was first reported in Europe that day.5
A ringing cheer
Maurice writes that at about five minutes to 5 it became evident that the Highland Brigade was nearing the parapet, and a few dropping shots were fired by the sentries. Wolseley described what followed: "The enemy were completely surprised, and it was not until one or two of their advanced sentries fired their rifles, that they realized our close proximity to their works. These were, however, very quickly lined with their infantry who opened a deafening musketry fire, and their guns came into action immediately. Our troops advanced steadily without firing a shot, in obedience to the orders they had received, and when close to the works went straight for them, charging with a ringing cheer".6
Wolseley reported that the leading brigades of both divisions reached the works within a couple of minutes of one another, the Highlanders a few minutes first. Maurice writes that when the fire broke out, Graham's 2nd Brigade was still some 800 or 900 yards from the parapet. He also rejects the correspondents' picture of a Highland attack that met almost no resistance: "That was by no means the case".7
Urabi told Blunt in 1903: "At Tel-el-Kebir we were taken by surprise and for the same reason of treachery"; he blamed his cavalry commanders and Ali Bey Yusuf Khunfis, adding: "I was still asleep when we heard the firing close to the lines". Maurice calls every assertion that any Egyptian in Tel el-Kebir took a bribe "baseless inventions". Blunt writes that the recruits fled "half-naked as they were sleeping", that "The whole thing lasted hardly more than forty minutes", and that "at the end of an hour the fighting was wholly over". Wolseley timed the battle "from the time we started at 1.30 A.M. until nearly 6 A.M., when it was practically over".8
Counting the cost
The summary of casualties attached to Wolseley's despatch lists 9 officers and 48 non-commissioned officers and men killed, 27 officers and 353 non-commissioned officers and men wounded, and 22 non-commissioned officers and men missing: a "Grand total of casualties, all ranks, 459". Maurice's table gives the same numbers killed, but 27 officers and 355 men wounded and 30 men missing.9
Wolseley reported defeating the Egyptians "with very great loss". Charles Royle, a judge of the Egyptian Court of Appeal, writes that "The Egyptian loss in killed was not far from 2,000", that there was no return of the wounded, and that 534 wounded were treated at Tel el-Kebir in the four days after the battle. Wolseley counted 59 field guns captured; Maurice's return gives "fifty-eight guns in all".10
Cairo and Ceylon
Wolseley reported that the leading detachment of the Indian Contingent reached Zagazig a little after four in the afternoon, and that General Lowe's cavalry reached the barracks of Abbassieh, "just outside of Cairo", at 4.45 p.m. on the 14th. That night, Maurice writes, a party of 150 men, all told, passed through the Bab el-Wezir at about a quarter to 10 on its way to take over the Citadel, and at about 10.45 p.m. Urabi and Toulba Pasha gave up their swords at Abbassiyeh. Blunt also has Urabi surrender his sword at Abbassiyeh, after reaching Cairo by train not long after noon on the day of the battle. "The result of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir has been the entire collapse of the rebellion," Wolseley wrote.11
According to his defence counsel, A. M. Broadley, Urabi pleaded guilty to rebellion on 3 December 1882; Broadley prints the court-martial's unanimous sentence of death and the Khedive's decree, read at the same sitting, commuting it "to perpetual exile from Egypt and its dependencies". Royle, who dates the sitting to 4 December, also records the death sentence and the decree commuting it to exile for life. In a letter that Broadley prints, Urabi wrote that the exiles reached Colombo, Ceylon, on 10 January 1883, and Maurice's preface refers to the "Egyptian State prisoners in Ceylon". Faulkner's verdict is that Egypt "became a British colony in all but name". In March 1903 Urabi told Blunt, in Blunt's English: "Now I return home after twenty years of sorrowful exile". For the Sudan in the years that followed, see our page on the fall of Khartoum.12
Also on 13 September
1759: before daybreak British troops landed on the north shore near Quebec. Brigadier Townshend's despatch to Pitt has them land "an hour before day-break", and C. P. Stacey dates the light infantry's dislodging of the guard on the path to about four in the morning. Captain John Knox writes in his journal that at about ten o'clock the French began to advance in three columns. In Townshend's words, "Our troops reserved their fire till within forty yards, which was so well continued, that the enemy every-where gave way"; James Wolfe fell at the head of Bragg's and the Louisbourg grenadiers. Stacey has Wolfe die that day of wounds received in what he calls the battle of the Plains of Abraham, and W. J. Eccles writes that Montcalm was mortally wounded at the Saint-Louis gate and died on the 14th. Knox's list of British killed, wounded and missing comes to "six hundred and sixty-four", and Townshend wrote that the French loss "is computed to be about fifteen hundred men". Townshend and Stacey both date the surrender of Quebec to 18 September, told on our 18 September page.13
