Fire and Sword in the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serving the Dervishes 1879-1895. Vol. I-III

Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1896. 296; 270; 256, 2 folding col maps. . HB. 3 vols, 8vo, rebound in buckram, leather titlepieces, teg; spines darkened, light staining/spotting to boards. Some minor spotting/foxing to endpapers. Good. Previous owner's small ex libris labels to endpapers.. Translated by F. R. Wingate. Title pages are dated 1896, which is the date this book was first published (UK edition, Edward Arnold), however, Tauchnitz followed the unusual practice of retaining the first printing date on the title page of later printings, with no indication of the date of actual printing. Sir Rudolf Carl von Slatin (1857-1932) was an Austrian author, Major-general, and colonial administrator who served under the Ottoman empire in Turco-Egyptian Sudan. <i>Fire and Sword</i> covers his career as the Governor of Dara, and his campaigns in the Mahdist war against the followers of Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi or Messiah. He took part in various campaigns against the Mahdists, as well as working as an intelligence agent, sending reports to British and Ottoman agents in Cairo. Slatin was captured by the Mahdists during the Fall of Darfur and spent over eleven years as prisoner, being forced to serve as an orderly for the Mahdi and his successor, the Khalifa, but continued to send intelligence, before staging a daring escape across the desert to Egypt. Following his escape the Khedive of Egypt raised him to the rank of Pasha. When his account was published in England, it led to a public outcry over the fate of the Sudan, and pushed public opinion towards the idea of reconquest of the Sudan..