Page 82 - KRH Year of 2021 CREST

80 The Regimental Journal of The King’s Royal Hussars
One of the largest paintings on display at HorsePower The Museum of The King’s Royal Hussars is the Charge at ‘EL Teb’ by Godfrey Douglas Giles. It depicts the 10th Hussars charging Sudanese tribesmen at the second battle of El Teb in February 1884. Giles had ridden alongside the 10th during the battle and faithfully illustrated the officers and men in the charge. Over the past year 4 medals to El Teb veterans have been donated to the museum collection and we are soon to receive a painting of HM Troopship Jumna, that took the regiment from India to the Sudan to join the Suakin Expedition. In February 1884 the 10th Hussars were aboard the Jumna on their way to England, the same ship which had brought them to India eleven years earlier. While in the Red Sea they were diverted, along with several other regiments, to join a British expeditionary force to the Sudan. The 10th Hussars and the 19th Hussars were to provide the cavalry contingent for a 4,500 strong British force led by General Sir Gerald Graham VC.
The Battle of El Teb
El Teb by Godfrey Douglas Giles 1884
In 1881 an Islamic revolt had broken out in the Sudan led by Mohammed Ahmed, who styled himself the ‘Mahdi’ or ‘guide’. They opposed the Khedivate of Egypt, which controlled the Sudan and was heavily supported by Britain. In January 1884 the Mahdists inflicted two crushing defeats on Egyptian forces led by British officers, one a former Colonel of the 10th Hussars, Valentine Baker. Baker had been the extremely popular Commanding Officer of the 10th between 1860 and 1873. However, in 1875 he was dismissed from the Army for allegedly indecently assaulting a young lady in a railway carriage. After a year’s imprisonment he left England and joined the Ottoman Army during which time his bravery and skilled leadership earned him the honorific title ‘Pasha’. By 1884 he was commanding the Egyptian Gendarmerie, which had become a reserve for the Army.
On 4 February 1884 he was defeated at El Teb by Mahdist tribes- men under the command of Osman Digna, leader of the Hadendoa
Colonel Valentine Baker, also known as Baker Pasha
HM Troopship Jumna outward bound off Cowes for the Egyptian Campaign 1884, passing the Royal Yacht Alberta and the Admiralty Yacht
Baker visits the 10th Hussars on the Jumna – from the Illustrated London News