Flashman on the March

APPENDIX I: The Road to Magdala

Perhaps because it was so unusual, perhaps because it was such a triumph, the Abyssinian War has attracted an embarrassment of authors, who have covered every aspect of the campaign. Holland and Hozier’s official report is the main source work, dealing with everything from the overall narrative of operations to the rates of pay of native water-carriers; Blanc and Rassam have described the experiences of the prisoners, and the march has been covered in detail by Stanley, Henty, C. R. Markham’s History of the Abyssinian Expedition, 1869, A. F. Shepherd’s The Campaign in Abyssinia, 1868, and others. But for those who would like good shorter works by later historians, they cannot do better than Frederick Myatt’s The March to Magdala, 1970, and Moorehead’s The Blue Nile, which in its portrait of the river and its history includes an account of Napier’s march. The Diary of William Simpson of the Illustrated London News has been previously mentioned, and one cannot omit the week by week coverage which that paper gave to the campaign, with excellent illustrations.

Finally, whoever wishes to understand events which led up to the war, and the history of the country in which it was fought, will find Frank R. Cana’s essay in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910, most helpful, while Percy Arnold’s Prelude to Magdala, 1991, is invaluable as a detailed and author itative work on the diplomatic preliminaries to the war.