Bodies of men were now sent out on all sides to pacify the country, and the sirdar, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartum, started on an expedition up the Nile in a gunboat, in order to settle the difficult question arising from the occupation of Pashoda by a French corps under Major Marchand. The ability and strategy of this French commander were of a very high order. The general plan of the expedition had been in accord with French military traditions, based upon former attempts in India and America to separate the British colonial dominions, or to block the way to their extension by establishing a series of military outposts or forts at certain strategic points chosen for this purpose. Had the French designs under Desaix in India, or of the army of occupation in the Mississippi Valley in the eighteenth century, been supported by a powerful fleet, there is no doubt that British colonisation would have suffered a severe setback. If Major Marchand remained in Fashoda, the route to all the upper regions of the Nile would be cut off from any English or Egyptian enterprise. Accordingly, Lord Kitchener ran the risk of grave international complications by advancing upon Fashoda to meet Major Marchand. Fortunately, a temporary agreement was entered upon that the home governments should decide the question at issue, and Lord Kitchener then hoisted the Anglo-Egyptian flag south of the French settlement, and the officers fraternised over glasses of champagne. It is now believed that Russia would have aided France if it had come to a war, but the French government thought the affair not of sufficient importance to warrant an international struggle over the retention of Fashoda, and the respective spheres of influence of France and Great Britain were finally agreed upon early in the following year by the Niger Convention, which left the whole of the ex-Egyptian provinces under British protection, as far south as the Equatorial Lakes, and as far west as the border line between Darfur and Wadai. The calif was subsequently pursued from place to place in the desert, and was at length overtaken by Colonel Wingate at Om Dubreikat. The dervish leader fought a desperate fight; and, refusing to fly, was slain with all his personal followers on November 26, 1899. The total cost of these campaigns had been incredibly small, not amounting in all to the total of $12,000,000, and the railroad, the cost of which is here included in the expenditure, is of permanent value to Egypt.