British Diplomatic Victory
In naval terms, the situation was heavily in the United Kingdom’s favour, a fact that French deputies acknowledged in the aftermath of the crisis. Though the French force was larger, the British had them outgunned. The French army was far larger than the British one, but there was little it would have been able to do against Britain without efficient naval support.
This fact was undoubtedly an important one to Théophile Delcassé, the newly appointed French foreign minister. He saw no advantage in a colonial war with the British, especially since he was keen to gain their friendship in case of any future conflict with Germany. He therefore pressed hard for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The reopening of the Dreyfus Affair had done much to distract French public opinion from events in the Sudan and with people increasingly questioning the wisdom of a war over such a remote part of Africa, the French government quietly ordered its soldiers to withdraw on 3 November.
Read more about this topic: Fashoda Incident
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“We may be scum, but at least we’re la crème de la scum.”
—Report on the British royal family. quoted in Sunday Times (London, Nov. 13, 1988)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“For by superior energies; more strict
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—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)