680 
THE SUDAN PAST AND PRESENT. 
instances it was in truth the villagers sad tribute to one of their com¬ 
munity dragged from their midst by a cruel fate, to die speedily of 
disease or a deadly climate, or to live, perhaps, for long years, in hope¬ 
less exile from his happy village home. 
The officers were for the most part illiterate men, ignorant of drill, 
and with little or no idea of maintaining discipline unless by a free 
use of the kurbash ; the majority of them had been guilty of some 
. political or military offence, which probably precluded them from all 
hope of advancement. Such a thing as military zeal and ardour was 
unknown ; their main idea was to live at ease, and this could not be 
arrived at without resort to plunder and robbery—for they were 
seldom paid or at best they were years in arrears, as were also their 
men. 
Is it then a matter of surprise that discipline, even of the most 
elementary kind, scarcely existed, and that these troops were guilty of 
almost every breach of the good order they were intended to preserve ? 
So much for the Egyptians ; now a word for the Bashi-Bazuks. 
The annexation of the Sudan by Mohammed Ali had been carried 
out for the most part by irregular Turkish troops, numbers of these 
had subsequently settled in the country, had intermarried with the 
inhabitants, and it is from their offspring that the heterogenous collec¬ 
tion of irregular troops, known as Bashi-Bazuks, have sprung. The 
evil propensities of the Egyptians were accentuated a hundred-fold in 
these hybrid soldiers, who possessed many of the qualities of natives 
of the Sudan—chiefly a love of plunder and oppression—while their 
Turkish origin supplied the element of courage which, utterly uncon¬ 
trolled, only served to make them still more oppressive to the wretched 
population they were supposed to keep in order. 
The blacks, except in some of the more distant provinces, were too 
few in number to give any decided preponderance, and doubtless in 
their treatment of the natives, who were for the most part Arabs and 
their hereditary enemies, they were, perhaps, more oppressive than 
either Bashi-Bazuks or Egyptians. But it was no doubt this Bashi- 
Bazuk and black element in the Egyptian ranks which served in some 
degree to preserve the authority which the latter alone must have 
failed to possess, and probably had their numbers been considerably 
greater than they were, the fate of the Sudan might have been some¬ 
what different. 
Now this curious medley of garrisons were designated as troops in 
occupation of the Sudan,” and there is no doubt had their composition 
been better understood, the expression would not have been so mis¬ 
leading as it was to the British authorities when the Sudan question 
became inseparably connected with that of Egypt. 
The industrious and peaceful Egyptian has a fatal talent for an 
exaggerated domesticity, and these troops in the Sudan were so many 
fathers of large families more or less properly acquired and domes¬ 
ticated in a foreign land. If they had not been in possession of 
weapons they might have made good colonists but the very possession 
of these weapons inclined them to tyranny. Their function was that 
of honest countrymen sharing in the villany of the brigands from the 
