Egypt, Sudan, and Khartoum
Kitchener later served as a Vice-Consul in Anatolia, and in 1883, as a British captain with the Turkish rank bimbashi (major), in the occupation of Egypt. Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of the Khedive (Egyptian monarch) and his nominal overlord the (Ottoman) Sultan of Turkey. In 1884 Kitchener was an aide-de-camp during the failed Gordon relief expedition in the Sudan. According to verbal reports from William Forde, who was his batman, Kitchener was revered by his men for his leadership and fair treatment of subordinates. With his command of Arabic, Kitchener was able to mingle with the local people. At this time his fiancée, and possibly the only female love of his life, Hermione Baker (daughter of Valentine Baker pasha), died of typhoid fever in Cairo. He subsequently had no children, but he raised his young cousin Bertha Chevallier-Boutell, daughter of Kitchener's first cousin Sir Francis Hepburn de Chevallier-Boutell.
Major Kitchener served in the 1884-85 Nile Campaign as an intelligence officer. He was present at Abu Klea. In the late 1880s, he was Governor of the Red Sea Territories (which in practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) with the brevet rank of Colonel. He was severely wounded in the jaw during a skirmish, and recuperated in England. He also served at the Battle of Toski (1889).
Kitchener was worried that, although his moustache was bleached white by the sun, his blonde hair refused to turn grey, making it harder for Egyptians to take him seriously. His appearance added to his mystique: his long legs made him appear taller, whilst a cast in his eye made people feel he was looking right through them.
Having become Sirdar of the Egyptian Army in 1892 - with the rank of brigadier-general and then major-general in the British Army — in 1896 he led his British and Egyptian forces up the Nile, building a railway to supply arms and reinforcements, and defeating the Sudanese at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, near Khartoum.
Kitchener's second tour in the Sudan (1886–1899) won him national fame, and he was made Aide de Camp to Queen Victoria and appointed a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB). However, this campaign also made his brutality infamous, an aspect of his tactics that became well known after the Boer War. After victory in the Battle of Omdurman, the remains of the Mahdi were exhumed and scattered. Kitchener quite possibly prevented war between France and Britain when he dealt firmly but non-violently with the French military expedition, under Captain Marchand, intending to claim Fashoda, in what became known as the Fashoda Incident.
At this stage of his career Kitchener was keen to exploit the press, cultivating G.W.Steevens of the “Daily Mail” who wrote a book “With Kitchener to Khartoum”. Later, as his legend had grown, he was able to be rude to the press, on one occasion in the Boer War bellowing: “Get out of my way, you drunken swabs”.
He was created Baron Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk, on 31 October 1898 as a victory title commemorating his successes, and began a programme of restoring good governance to the Sudan. The programme had a strong foundation, based on education at Gordon Memorial College as its centrepiece—and not simply for the children of the local elites: children from anywhere could apply to study.
He ordered the mosques of Khartoum rebuilt, instituted reforms which recognised Friday — the Muslim holy day — as the official day of rest, and guaranteed freedom of religion to all citizens of the Sudan. He attempted to prevent evangelical Christian missionaries from attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Kitchener rescued a substantial charitable fund which had been diverted into the pockets of the Khedive of Egypt, and put it to use improving the lives of ordinary Sudanese.
He also reformed the debt laws, preventing rapacious moneylenders from stripping away all assets of impoverished farmers, guaranteeing them 5 acres (2 ha) of land to farm for themselves and the tools to farm with. In 1899 Kitchener was presented with a small island in the Nile at Aswan in gratitude for his services; the island was renamed Kitchener's Island in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener