Mahdists - but not to fight the Brits!

[James Morris]

That's really handy, thank you Plynkes!  I've found the section now in the Chris Peers book - brief but enough to do a couple of games for!   

Firstly Chaltin's Force Publique expedition to the Lado Enclave that fought the Mahdists at the battles of Bedden, Rejaf (and Rejaf again) contained about 600 Azande allies.


But for a purely Azande affair we have King Gbudwe, a long-time opponent of anyone non-Azande poking their noses into Azande affairs. The Mahdists initially ignored him, but did in the end send an army to sort him out.

This Wikipedia article says Gbudwe soundly defeated the Mahdist force without giving any details, but Chris Peers tells a slightly different story. He says a small Azande force initially successfully ambushed the advancing Mahdist column, but they were too few to fight a pitched battle against them and so withdrew. All the king's men had not assembled so he was forced to evacuate his headquarters at Birikiwe which the Mahdists occupied and fortified.

Once Gbudwe's army had assembled they attacked the Mahdist stockade, throwing their spears over the parapets. Seems like they were driven back with heavy losses, but it also seems that the Mahdists sallied out, because a number of Mahdist dead fell into Azande hands, and the king ordered his men to eat the corpses to terrorise the enemy bottled up in the fortifications (so folk tradition asserts, anyway).

Even though the assault had been a failure, the Mahdists decided to withdraw, and Gbudwe pursued, intending to ambush them. Unfortunately the Azande themselves came under attack from their foes who had emplaced themselves in a defensive thorn boma or zariba. Gbudwe lost more men and abandoned the pursuit, letting the Mahdists leave his country. They never came back, as their own regime was destroyed by the British a few months later.

So you have an ambush, an assault on a stockade and a bit of a skirmish at a boma, plus any number of hypothetical encounters. Or you could do it as a mini-campaign and create your own battles. Unfortunately, as it was a "native on native" affair, we don't really have any idea of numbers.

[James Morris]

And i have Force Publique. I'm just saying ... 

Ready when you are James. J

I'm going to get off the internet now and carry on painting the last 18 Azande!  Between child-wrangling, work, marking and other projects, these Azande are well overdue to get finished off!!!