present we may affirm with some confidence that the tidings of the Franco-Congolese compact of August 1894 and of expeditions sent under Monteil and Liotard towards the Nile basin must have furnished the real motive for the despatch of the Sirdar’s army on the expedition to Dongola.  That event in its turn aroused angry feelings at Paris, and M. Berthelot went so far as to inform Lord Salisbury that he would not hold himself responsible for events that might occur if the expedition up the Nile were persisted in.  After giving this brusque but useful warning of the importance which France attached to the Upper Nile, M. Berthelot quitted office, and M. Bourgeois, the Prime Minister, took the portfolio for foreign affairs.  He pushed on the Marchand expedition; so also did his successor, M. Hanotaux, in the Meline Cabinet which speedily supervened.

Marchand left Marseilles on June 25, 1896, to join his expeditionary force, then being prepared in the French Congo.  It is needless to detail the struggles of the gallant band.  After battling for two years with the rapids, swamps, forests, and mountains of Eastern Congoland and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, he brought his flotilla down to the White Nile, thence up its course to Fashoda, where he hoisted the tricolour (July 12, 1898).  His men strengthened the old Egyptian fort, and beat off an attack of the Dervishes.

Nevertheless they had only half succeeded, for they relied on the approach of a French Mission from the east by way of Abyssinia.  A Prince of the House of Orleans had been working hard to this end, but owing to the hostility of the natives of Southern Abyssinia that expedition had to fall back on Kukong.  A Russian officer, Colonel Artomoroff, had struggled on down the River Sobat, but he and his band also had to retire[422].  The purport of these Franco-Russian designs is not yet known; but even so, we can see that the situation was one of great peril.  Had the French and Russian officers from Abyssinia joined hands with Marchand at Fashoda, their Governments might have made it a point of honour to remain, and to claim for France a belt of territory extending from the confines of the French Congo eastwards to Obock on the Red Sea.

[Footnote 422:  Marchand l’Africain, by C. Castellani, pp. 279-280.  The author reveals his malice by the statement (p. 293) that the Sirdar, after the battle of Omdurman, ordered 14,000 Dervish wounded to be eventres.]

As it was, Marchand and his heroic little band were in much danger from the Dervishes when the Sirdar and his force steamed up to Fashoda.  The interview between the two chiefs at that place was of historic interest.  Sir Herbert Kitchener congratulated the Major on his triumph of exploration, but claimed that he must plant the flag of the Khedive at Fashoda.  M. Marchand declared that he would hoist it himself over the village.  “Over the fort, Major,” replied the Sirdar.  “I cannot permit it,”