A third expedition, despatched by Osman, met with a similar fate to the other two, and now the Khalifa vented his wrath on his unsuccessful lieutenant. In October 1888, he wrote to him to retire at once to El Fasher, to confine himself entirely to defensive operations, and on no account to attack the enemy. There was great excitement in Omdurman, where the importance of Abu Gemaizeh's victories had been enormously exaggerated. It was even said that Osman had been killed, El Fasher captured, and Kordofan on the point of being invaded. Then came the news that El Obeid had been captured, and now the rejoicings at the Khalifa's defeat were an open secret. But these highly-coloured rumours were merely the outcome of an intense desire and longing on the part of the wretched inhabitants of the Sudan, groaning under the Dervish yoke, to see themselves once more free from the tyrannical oppression which their own short-sighted conduct had brought upon themselves. Abu Gemaizeh had, it is true, been very successful. He had three times defeated Osman, who was now besieged in El Fasher, and in great want of food. All Darfur had sided with Abu Gemaizeh, and the Dervishes were almost powerless; but in the zenith of his success the great religious sheikh was suddenly struck down by small-pox, and died at Kebkebieh in February 1889. His death caused many of his adherents to quit the cause, and his successor--who, had he not attacked El Fasher, might have succeeded in compassing the downfall of Osman, who was then entirely cut off and in great straits--felt that he must do something to keep his army together. But his force was hampered by a large number of women, children, and camp followers. He was deficient in firearms, whilst Osman was well supplied with rifles and ammunition, and his Shaggieh troops fought magnificently. The final action took place under the walls of El Fasher, on the 22nd of February, 1889, and resulted in the death of the leader and the massacre of thousands of his followers. This was the death-blow to the movement, and is an example of how easily Moslems are imposed upon by religious adventurers. Numbers of those who had joined and left Mahdiism, thoroughly convinced of its fraud and deception, had unhesitatingly allied themselves to this new religious movement, which they inspired with almost greater enthusiasm than that they had just quitted. The collapse of this new delusion was therefore comparatively greater. The heads of Abu Gemaizeh and a number of his important leaders were sent to Omdurman, where they found a place on the gallows, and were subsequently relegated to the pit in which lay the whitening skulls of Merhdi, the Abyssinians, and the mutinous blacks. Osman's victory delighted the Khalifa even more than Abu Anga's success in Abyssinia, because he had always considered Darfur a place of refuge, to which he had a secure line of retreat in case of attack from the north.