The only other place to hold out for a time was mostly Christian Equatoria under Emin Pasha. Following the destruction of Hicks's army, the Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone decided that the Sudan was not worth the trouble it would take to hang onto, and as such, the Sudan was to be abandoned to the Mahdi. In December 1883, the British government ordered Egypt to abandon the Sudan, but that was difficult to carry out, as it involved the withdrawal of thousands of Egyptian soldiers, civilian employees, and their families.