On 3–5 November 1883, the "Ansar" (whom the British called "Dervishes"), as the Mahdi's followers were known, had destroyed an Egyptian Army of 8,000 under Colonel Hicks at El Obeid, with only about 250 Egyptians surviving and Hicks being one of the slain. At El Obeid, the "Ansar" captured from the Egyptians a huge number of Remington rifles and ammunition cases together with a large number of Krupp artillery guns and their shells. After the Battle of El Obeid, Egyptian morale, never high to begin with, simply collapsed, and the black flag of the Mahdi soon started to fly over many a town in the Sudan. By the end of 1883 the Egyptians held only the ports on the Red Sea and a narrow belt of land around the Nile in northern Sudan. In both cases naval power was the key factor as gunboats in the Red Sea and the Nile provided a degree of firepower with which the "Ansar" could not cope.