This rapid victory was largely due to the garrison in the zeriba, who made very effective use of their guns.  The enemy left two hundred and fifty dead on the field.  Yet not a single British soldier was either killed or wounded in actually repelling the charge.  Among those seriously wounded later in the day was General Stewart, who died of his wounds a few days later.  Almost his last words to Colonel Barrow were, “Take care of the 19th Hussars; they have done well.”

But all this gallantry was vain.  While the force was still near Metammeh, news came of the fall of Khartoum.  An officer who was with him when the blow fell has recorded that he never saw French so profoundly moved as he was on the receipt of these black tidings.  With Khartoum fallen the mission of the flying column was ended.  Its position indeed had become extremely precarious.  The problem before the authorities was now not how to relieve Khartoum, but how to relieve the Relieving Expedition.

It cannot be said that they solved it very successfully.  Buller was sent up to Gubat to take command.  With him he brought only the Royal Irish and West Kent Regiments to reinforce the column.  And his instructions were to seize Metammeh and march on Berber!

[Page Heading:  HIS FIRST RETREAT]

Once on the scene, however, Buller soon saw the hopelessness of the situation.  Considering that the fall of Khartoum had released a host of the Mahdi’s followers, the storming of Metammeh was now a doubly difficult enterprise; an attack on Berber would have been simply suicidal.  Buller accordingly determined on a retreat.

On February 13 he evacuated Gubat.  On March 1 his advance guard had reached Korti.  In this retreat the 19th Hussars again did splendid work.  For days on end the column was submitted to that unceasing pelting of bullets which Buller characterised in one of his laconic dispatches as “annoying.”  But Barrow, the Hussars’ chief, was a master of the art of reconnoitring.  Time and again he and his men were able to deceive the enemy as to the direction of the column’s march.  It was then that French had his first experience in “masterly retreat.”

How sorely the column was pressed may be shown from one incident.  While he was preparing to evacuate Abu Klea, Buller received information to the effect that the enemy was advancing upon him with a force of eight thousand men.  He determined upon a desperate measure.  He left standing the forts which he had intended to demolish and filled up the larger wells.

A desert well, to the Oriental, is almost sacred, and never even in savage warfare would such a course have been adopted.  But Buller knew that the absence of water was the only thing that could check the rush of the oncoming hordes, and this deed, terrible as it may have seemed to the Eastern mind, was his sole means of covering his retreat.  Orders were therefore given to fill up all the principal wells with stones and rubbish.  It was certainly an effectual measure, for the enemy would be delayed for many hours, perhaps days, before he could restore the wells and obtain sufficient water to enable him to continue in pursuit of the British force which was so hopelessly outnumbered.  In the circumstances Buller could not be blamed for saving British lives at the price of Oriental tradition.