The British expedition to Abyssinia was a rescue mission and punitive expedition carried out in 1868 by the armed forces of the British Empire against the Ethiopian Empire (also known at the time as Abyssinia). Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, then often referred to by the anglicized name Theodore, imprisoned several missionaries and two representatives of the British government in an attempt to force the British government to comply with his requests for military assistance. The punitive expedition launched by the British in response required the transportation of a sizeable military force hundreds of kilometres across mountainous terrain lacking any road system. The formidable obstacles to the action were overcome by the commander of the expedition, General Robert Napier, who captured the Ethiopian capital, and rescued all the hostages.
Historian Harold G. Marcus described the action as "one of the most expensive affairs of honour in history."
Background
By October 1862 Emperor Tewodros's position as ruler had become precarious: much of Ethiopia was in revolt against him, except for a small area stretching from Lake Tana east to his fortress at Magdala. He was engaged in constant military campaigns against a wide array of opponents. Likewise, Abyssinia was also threatened by the encroachment of Islam as Ottoman Turks and Egyptians invaded Ethiopia from the Red Sea and through Sudan. Tewodros wrote to the major powers for help. As Donald Crummey recounts, "Now came the definitive attempt, at the turning point of the Emperor's career. Success might stabilize the internal situation; defeat would pull out the last prop. He proposed to send embassies with the ultimate objective of obtaining military alliances and agreements for technical progress."
Tewodros sent letters to the Russian Empire, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, French Empire and the British Empire. The French government responded with demands on behalf of a Lazarist mission in Hamasien, at the edge of Tewodros's realm; they were the only country known to have responded. A former diplomat has noted that factors beyond simple indifference may have limited the number, forcefulness, and speed of European powers' responses: The letter was in Amharic and was sent to Germany for translation.
Tewodros's letter to Queen Victoria appealed to Christian solidarity in the face of the Islamic expansion occurring throughout the region but this garnered little sympathy. The British Empire's interests in Northeast Africa were not geared towards a Christian "crusade" against Islam but instead, the British sought to cooperate politically, strategically and commercially with the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and the Sudan. This was not only to protect the route to India but also to ensure that the Ottoman Empire continued to act as a buffer against Russia's plans for expansion into Central Asia. Moreover, as a result of the American Civil War, deliveries of cotton from the Confederate States of America to the British textile industry were declining, making the British increasingly dependent on Egyptian-Sudanese cotton. In the view of these interests, the British Foreign Office did not look favourably on supporting Tewodros. The letter was preserved but not answered.
Hostages
The first European to cross Tewodros' path after this lack of a response happened to be Henry Stern, a British missionary. Stern had also mentioned the Emperor's humble origins in a book he had published; although the reference was not intended to be insulting ("the eventful and romantic history of the man, who, from a poor boy, in a reed-built convent became...the conqueror of numerous provinces, and the Sovereign of a great and extensive realm") it proved to be a dangerous mistake. At the time Tewodros was insisting on the truth of his descent from the Solomonic dynasty, and Tewodros expressed his rage in many ways, including having Stern's servants beaten to death, and Stern, together with his assistant, a Mr Rosenthal, were "chained, severely treated, and the latter thrashed on several occasions."
The British consul Charles Duncan Cameron, along with the Abuna Salama III and the group of missionaries based at Gafat, all interceded for the release of the imprisoned pair, and for a while it appeared that their efforts might succeed; but on 2 January 1864 Cameron was seized along with his staff, and all were put in chains. Shortly afterwards, Tewodros ordered most of the Europeans in the royal camp put into chains.
The British government sent Hormuzd Rassam, an ethnic Assyrian Christian from Mesopotamia, to negotiate a solution to this crisis, but "security in Tigre, the King's indecisiveness, and continuing confusion about the envoy's instructions" delayed Rassam's arrival at Tewodros's camp until January 1866. At first, it looked as if Rassam might succeed in the release of the hostages: the Emperor showed him great favour, establishing him at Qorata, a village on the south-eastern shores of Lake Tana, and sending him numerous gifts, and having Cameron, Stern, and the other hostages sent to his encampment.
However, about this time C.T. Beke arrived at Massawa, and forwarded letters from the hostages' families to Tewodros, asking for their release. At the least Beke's actions only made Tewodros suspicious. Rassam, writing in his memoirs of the incident, is more direct: "I date the change in the King's conduct towards me, and the misfortunes which eventually befell the members of the Mission and the old captives, from this day." Meanwhile, Emperor Tewodros's behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic, his actions included acts of friendship towards Rassam, paranoid accusations, and sudden violence upon whoever happened to be around him. In the end, Rassam himself was made a prisoner, and one of the missionaries dispatched with the news and Tewodros's latest demands in June 1866. The Emperor eventually moved all of his European prisoners to his fortress on Magdala, and continued to parley with the British until Queen Victoria announced the decision to send a military expedition to rescue the hostages 21 August 1867.
The campaign
Planning
In the eyes of Alan Moorehead, "There has never been in modern times a colonial campaign quite like the British expedition to Ethiopia in 1868. It proceeds from first to last with the decorum and heavy inevitability of a Victorian state banquet, complete with ponderous speeches at the end. And yet it was a fearsome undertaking; for hundreds of years the country had never been invaded, and the savage nature of the terrain alone was enough to promote failure." Planning the expedition was difficult for the British as this war was not on the sea. They later mentioned that Ethiopia had "no seaboard; has, consequently, no cities or forts to bombard, no vessels to attack, and no commerce to appropriate."
The task was given to the Bombay Army, and command of the expeditionary force to Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier. This was a very unusual decision as it was the first time a campaign had been entrusted to an officer from the Corps of Royal Engineers. It was also a very sensible decision, as the whole campaign would rely on engineering skills to succeed. Intelligence was carefully gathered about Ethiopia while the size of the army was calculated and its needs estimated before the massive effort was begun. Moorehead describes it: "Thus, for example, forty-four trained elephants were to be sent from India to carry the heavy guns on the march, while hiring commissions were dispatched all over the Mediterranean and the Near East to obtain mules and camels to handle the lighter gear. A railway, complete with locomotives and some twenty miles (32 km) of track, was to be laid across the coastal plain, and at the landing place large piers, lighthouses and warehouses were to be built."
Given the long supply lines and limited resources of their own, the British understood that they were extremely dependent on a constant and reliable local supply of food for the men and forage for the animals. Accordingly, they decided to not plunder along the route but instead to pay for all needed supplies. To this end, the expedition took with it a sizable sum of the most commonly used currency in 19th century Ethiopia, the Maria Theresa Thaler.
The force consisted of 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers and over 40,000 animals, including the elephants. In addition, there was a sizable contingent of embedded journalists, including Henry Morton Stanley, as well as several European observers, translators, artists and photographers. The force set sail from Bombay in upwards of 280 steam and sailing ships. The advance guard of engineers landed at Zula on the Red Sea, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Massawa, and began to construct a port in mid-October 1867. By the end of the first month they had completed a pier, 700 yards (640 m) long; they completed a second one by the first week of December. The railway was already reaching into the interior, with eight iron girder bridges built. At the same time an advance guard, under Sir William Lockyer Merewether, had pushed up the dry bed of the Kumayli River to the Suru Pass, where again the engineers were busy at work building a road to Senafe 63 miles (101 km) long, rising to 7,400 feet (2,300 m) for the elephants, gun-carriages, and carts. The demand for water was enormous; the Zula camp using 200 tons a day, which was created using condensation from steamship boilers in the harbour. As the force moved inland, wells had to be dug. These tubewells, versions of the Norton tube well technology, were so successful at providing groundwater for the British forces that they became known as "Abyssinian wells" and were widely adopted in England and elsewhere for providing reliable water supplies
From Senafe, Merewether sent out two letters from Lieutenant-General Napier: one to Emperor Tewodros, demanding the release of the hostages (which Rassam intercepted and destroyed, afraid this ultimatum might enrage Tewodros against the prisoners); the other to the people of Ethiopia, proclaiming that he was there purely to free the captives and that he had hostile intentions only towards those who sought to oppose him. Napier arrived at Zula on 2 January 1868, and finished his plan of advance before leaving on 25 January for Senafe.
Advance
It took the British forces three months to trek over 400 miles (640 km) of mountainous terrain to the foot of the Emperor's fortress at Magdala. At Antalo, Napier parleyed with Dajamach Kassai (later Emperor Yohannes IV), and won his support, which the British needed in their single-minded march to Magdala; without the help, or at least indifference, of the local peoples, the British expedition would have had greater difficulty in reaching its goal deep within the Ethiopian Highlands. On 17 March, the army reached Lake Ashangi, 100 miles (160 km) from their goal, and here, to further lighten their loads, the troops were put on half-rations.
At this point, Emperor Tewodros's strength had already been dissolving. At the beginning of 1865 he controlled little more than Begemder, Wadla, and Delanta (wherein the fortress of Magdala lay). He struggled to keep up the size of his army—which Sven Rubenson points out was his only "instrument of power"—but by mid-1867 defections from his army had reduced its size to 10,000 men. Harold Marcus observes, "For a total cost of about £9,000,000 Napier set out to defeat a man who could muster only a few thousand troops and had long ago ceased to be Ethiopia's leader in anything but title."
The British were also aided by their diplomatic and political agreements with the native population, local potentates, and important provincial princes to protect the march from the coast to Magdala and to provide a reliable supply of food and forage. Additionally, Napier's pronouncement to the governors, the chiefs, the religious orders and the people of Abyssinia read: