Charles Townshend (British Army officer) known for his theatrical style, and he liked to associate with actors. In 1884, Townshend was part of the relief expedition to rescue the besieged army of General Charles Gordon, better known to the British public as "Chinese Gordon", at Khartoum. As a Royal Marine officer, he strictly speaking should not had been part of an Army expedition, but he wrote to Field Marshal Garnet Wolsely asking if he could go, and his request was granted. The way that Gordon had defied the orders of the government to leave Khartoum, knowing full well that the government could not abandon a
Siege of Khartoum Siege of Khartoum The Battle of Khartoum, Siege of Khartoum or Fall of Khartoum was the conquest of Egyptian-held Khartoum by the Mahdist forces led by Muhammad Ahmad. Egypt had held the city for some time prior, but the siege that the Mahdists engineered and carried out from 13 March 1884 to 26 January 1885 was enough to wrest control away from the Egyptian administration. After a ten-month siege, when the Mahdists finally broke into the city, the entire garrison of Egyptian soldiers was killed along with 4,000 Sudanese civilians. Since the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, the British military presence had