In the meantime, during August of the preceding year, {214} 1883, trouble had arisen in the Eastern Soudan, where Osman Digna, a trader, joined the Mahdi, and brought all the tribes of that country to his standard. At the beginning of November, 1883, just at the time when Hicks Pasha and his army had come to their end, an Egyptian force under Mahmoud Talma Pasha was defeated by Osman Digna in the attempt to relieve Tokar, besieged by the rebels, Captain Moncrieff, Royal Navy, British Consul at Souakim, being killed in the action. A second expeditionary force under Suleiman Pasha was cut to pieces on 2nd December at Tamanieh. The Egyptian Government then dispatched reinforcements under the command of General Valentine Baker, among whose staff were Colonel Sartorius, Lieutenant-Colonel Harrington, Lieutenant-Colonel Hay, Majors Harvey, Giles, and Holroyd, Morice Bey and Dr. Leslie. On the 4th February, 1884, Baker was defeated at El-Teb, with the loss of nearly two-thirds of his force. Morice Bey, Dr. Leslie, and nine other European officers were killed. Souakim being threatened, Admiral Hewett, on 10th December, was given the command of the town, having under him some 3800 troops. Two days later came the news of the taking of Sinkat by the rebels, and of the massacre of the garrison. During the period in which these successive disasters occurred, the British Army of Occupation was kept idle in Cairo by the orders of the British Government. The current of events now divides, one leading to Khartoum, the other still flowing in the Eastern Soudan. The British Government, hopelessly at fault, turned to General Charles Gordon, as the one man in the world who could apparently perform miracles. Ten years previously, "Chinese" Gordon, as Governor-General of the Soudan, and again in 1877, as Governor-General of the Soudan, Darfur and the Equatorial Provinces, had freed the country from Turkish rule, broken the slave trade, established peace, opened trade routes, and laid the foundations of civilisation. Since 1877 he had been engaged in setting wrong things right in Egypt {215} in the Soudan again, in Abyssinia, in China, in the Mauritius, at the Cape, in Palestine, and in the Congo. On 18th January, 1884, Gordon was instructed by the British Government to report upon the best method of evacuating the Soudan. When he arrived at Cairo, these instructions were radically altered by Sir Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer), who, on the 25th January, informed Gordon that he was required actually to direct the evacuation of Khartoum and of the whole Soudan, and afterwards to establish an organised government in that country. Gordon arrived at Khartoum on the 18th February, where he was hailed as the father and saviour of the people.