{UAH} Kabalega’s resistance, Mwanga’s revolt and the Sudanese mutiny

Parallel to the unfolding of  developments in Tooro and Busoga, there was a very different story in Bunyoro.

 In Tooro, Ashburnham and Sitwell variously employed force majeure against several leading BaTooro figures, as on a number of occasions Grant did likewise in Busoga. 

In Tooro, however, there was never any armed clash between the British and Batoro – all the fighting there took place between British-led mercenaries and Kabalega's Bunyoro armies – while in Busoga there were never more than three or four brief skirmishes during the course of Williams' expedition there in mid 1892. 

By contrast, Bunyoro between 1893 and 1899 suffered a long-drawn out colonial war. (See Map 2.) 

It took the form of one of the three distinctive styles of armed opposition to the British which these years were to see: Bunyoro found itself thrust into a fluctuating case of 'primary resistance'; in 1897, SseKabaka Mwanga launched a 'post-pacification revolt'; while, shortly afterwards, three companies of the Sudanese mercenaries 'mutinied'.

 By 1898, these three coincided to comprise the most formidable opposition which the British enterprise in Uganda ever confronted. For some months its fate lay in the balance. 

By 1899, however, all three had been decisively defeated, leaving scars behind, particularly in Bunyoro, which were never really healed.

 Amid the fabrication of a new colonial polity, defeat was a coruscating outcome for a great many people. 

While the details could scarcely be more different, the general pattern of events in Bunyoro during the 1890s nevertheless followed the fourstage 'defining conjuncture' which each of its immediate neighbours underwent with the British. 

Over a critical period, this became intermeshed with the second of the successive 'Confrontations' that occurred wherever 'new model warbands' were to be found. In these terms, the 'precursors' to Bunyoro's 'defining conjuncture' with the British lay, on the Bunyoro side, in their ruler Kabalega's determination to fasten his personal control upon his kingdom, reincorporate its many lately seceded parts, and greatly enhance its standing in the region. 

To serve these ends, he created his formidable new military force, the Abarasura. 

On the British side, the 'precursors' here went back to his clashes in the 1870s with the Egyptian agents Baker and Gordon, since these sowed the seeds of the evil reputation accorded to him by almost every European who thereafter became in any way concerned with him. 

For while his contemporary, Kabaka Mutesa of Buganda, persistently chose the course of peaceful diplomacy towards the Egyptians, Kabalega gave himself over to open conflict with them.

 As, through the 1880s and early 1890s, he sent his Abarasura to reconquer Tooro, that highly negative perception was greatly reinforced – by Stanley's encounter with the Abarasura in 1889; by the support they gave to the Baganda Muslims in Buganda's sectarian civil wars; by their multiple assaults upon Lugard's expedition in the Tooro region in 1891; and, above all, by Kabalega's dispatch of them in the following year to renew their conquest of the Tooro region following Macdonald's withdrawal of the Sudanese Nubi garrisons Lugard had established there.

 Twice Kabalega sought a peace settlement with Lugard, who more than once rebuffed him; once too with Williams; and more than once with Mwanga; but then on three subsequent occasions he rejected peace proposals brought to him by Baganda envoys, as these clearly involved some kind of subjection to Buganda.

 Such were the circumstances that principally conditioned the ensuing encounter.

 By the end of 1893 Macdonald, having lately routed the Baganda Muslims, was clearly determined to hammer Kabalega into a punitive submission.

 To this end he concentrated his available Sudanese Nubi forces in three small forts on the Buganda/Bunyoro frontier, and when Kikukule, a leading Abarasura commander, whom he had hoped to separate from Kabalega, was reported as denying them their food supply and threatening to launch an assault against them, the newly arrived acting British Commissioner, Colonel Colvile, authorised an attack upon him.

 When this put Kikukule and his warriors to flight, Kabalega sent envoys to Kampala to seek a settlement. 

But they were sharply rebuffed by Colvile who had already told the Baganda leaders that there would soon be war with Bunyoro.

 The specified reason was that Kabalega needed to be punished for the renewed assault by the Abarasura upon the Tooro region, and a parallel attack upon Bugabula in Busoga For Colvile there was, however, a second reason.

For, following the successful participation of the two Christian parties in Macdonald's crushing of the Buganda Muslims earlier in the year, Colvile remained troubled that they might soon turn against each other: an eventuality he sought to obviate by giving them the opportunity, in company with a substantial force of Sudanese Nubi  mercenaries, of inflicting a far greater defeat upon Buganda's great enemy Bunyoro than it had ever suffered before.

 But there was a third reason as well, which was kept quite secret at the time. 

As we have seen, by August 1893,14 British Foreign Office officials had become much perturbed by press reports of the arrival of a Congolese expedition under Captain van Kerckhoven at or near Wadelai, and then by reports of the departure of the French Colonel Monteil for the same region. 

Rosebery, accordingly, had sent orders to Gerald Portal on 10 August 1893 stating that, since it had become necessary for Her Majesty's Government to take such steps as may be in their power to protect the important interests of this country on the Upper Nile ... emissaries should be sent into the district of the Nile Basin ... to ascertain the state of affairs in that portion of the British sphere [and] negotiate any treaties that may be necessary for its protection.

As Gerald  Portal was by then on his way back to Britain, these orders were handed on to Colvile as he left Zanzibar for the interior.

 In giving effect to them, he might have emulated Lugard and circumvented Bunyoro, or adopted Macdonald's plan for a two-pronged attack – on 10

Kabalega's capital to the west and on Mruli to the east.

 But, given the magnitude of the issues to which these orders referred, he immediately determined upon a speedy lunge across the heartland of Bunyoro towards – yet again – Wadelai. Within a month of his arrival, he accordingly left Kampala, on 13 December 1893,at the head of a large force of 6 British officers, 450 Sudanese Nubi Uganda Rifles , and 12,000 Baganda Spearmen under the command of Semei Kakungulu, 3,000 of them armed with guns.

 They were soon across the Kafu river, which broadly divided north and south Bunyoro, and by 2 January 1895 had overrun the charred remains of Kabalega's capital at Mparo.

 As Kabalega was having to await the return of his Abarasura leaders, Byabachwezi and Rwabudongo, from Tooro and Busoga, he was evidently very careful not to stand his ground against Colvile's forces lest, like Kikukule, he should suffer defeat, and so withdrew before them.

 When, moreover, in some early skirmishes, his forces were generally worsted, he sought refuge in the Budongo forest to the north. From there Colvile failed to bring him to battle.

 But he seized the opportunity to advance to the saltmaking centre of Kibiro on the eastern shore of Lake Albert, from where he launched Reddy Owen on a reconnaissance to the confluence of the Victoria Nile and Lake Albert, and thence to Wadelai.

 After an abortive first attempt,Reddy  Owen eventually reached Wadelai, and on 4 February 1894 secured a treaty with a representative of its Chief Ibn Ali (Wadelai) by which British interests in the area were purportedly recognised. 

There were no signs of any Europeans in the region – though somewhat later 400 Sudanese who had been with Kerckhoven were added to Colvile's mercenaries.

 Colvile then made a fateful decision. 

So as to ensure the security of his route to Wadelai, he embarked on the construction of a line of forts from Kibiro on the Lake Albert shore, southwards to Hoima near Kabalega's

capital, and on to Baranwa on the Kafu.

 Across the waistline of Bunyoro he there posted small garrisons of Sudanese troops under Sudanese officers, under the overall command of a British officer, Captain Thruston. 

That was to create an altogether new situation.

 Hitherto, every preceding invasion of Bunyoro had invariably ended in the withdrawal of the invading forces from the country.

 But not now. 

The British were evidently bent upon staying.

 Thereby they inflicted 'a raw assertion of British hegemony' on the kingdom. 

There followed five years of a harrowing 'determining vortex' that was central to Bunyoro's 'defining conjuncture' with the British.

 As Colvile's forts were being constructed, Kabalega, amidst a plethora of armed clashes, withdrew eastwards to the Mruli region on the Victoria Nile where he proceeded to congregate his forces.

 Early in April 1894, Colvile responded by sending Captain Gibb and a Baganda contingent to attack the Abarasura under their leaders Rwabudongo and Ireeta, who were assembled on an island in the Victoria Nile – only, however, to learn that Kabalega had fled northeastwards and was not to be encountered.

Later that month there was, however, a telling episode when, in order to foreclose a principal Banyoro base for attacks on his supply columns, Thruston successfully stormed Masaja Mukuru, a precipitous hill which was Byabachwezi's stronghold and was thought to be impregnable.

 Nothing daunted, three months later Kabalega made his most ambitious move. 

He ordered his whole army to assemble in the vicinity of his old capital at Mparo under his eldest son Jasi, from where they were to mount a major assault upon the adjacent British fort at Hoima. 

Rwabudongo, Byabachwezi, Ireeta and a motley of others gathered their Abarasura together and, on 24 August 1894, advanced to the attack. 

After two hours of fighting, however, they were utterly defeated 

by a force of 150 Sudanese and a following of irregulars under Thruston's command.

 That was then followed by a series of running battles which climaxed when Thruston heard that Kabalega was encamped at Machudi in northern Bunyoro and, by forced marches and under cover of darkness, almost succeeded in capturing him. Kabalega was fortunate to make his escape, while leaving key elements of his royal regalia behind.

 At the end of 1894, following the defeat at Mparo and his rout at Machudi and in response to an ultimatum from Colvile, Kabalega eventually sent messengers to Hoima seeking a settlement – so long as his country was not placed under Buganda. 

Thruston immediately declared a three-month truce, and the acting Commissioner, Jackson, proceeded to draw up peace terms.

 But within a month the opportunity was lost. 

For, before the end of January 1895, appeals reached Kampala from Byakuyamba of Mwenge in Tooro for help against a Bunyoro attack upon him led by Rwabudongo, Kikukule and Ireeta.

 Intent upon the destruction of their longstanding rival, and sensing it might be within an ace of making an accommodation with the British, the Baganda leaders immediately took up Byakuyamba's cry and offered their full support to the British for a major counter-attack against Bunyoro. 

Swept along by their tirades, acting Commissioner Jackson unhesitatingly accepted the 'absolutely voluntary proffer from the King and chiefs' because of 'the treachery of Kabalega after suing for peace, obtaining a truce and then violating it in the manner he has'.

 As it happens, it was highly doubtful that treachery was involved. 

Rather, the evidence is that Rwabudongo went to the area to keep open the road for the arms traders from the south, and as a consequence there were clashes.

All the same, the damage was done, and a further expedition against Bunyoro was soon launched, during which Captain Cunningham, with two and a half companies of Sudanese, first overran Rwabudongo's headquarters south of Hoima, and then joined up with Captain Dunning, with two more, along with a Baganda army under Kakungulu. 

Together they took up a position opposite Kajumbera Island in the Victoria Nile, where Kabalega was now based.

 Realising that such a force might soon be upon him, Kabalega, following the defeat at Mparo, had evidently decided not to risk any further confrontation in the open.

 Instead he organised the construction of a long line of stockades and entrenchments upon the eastern bank of the Victoria Nile north of Mruli, from which to defy and if necessary repulse any attack upon his forces.

 Thanks to Dunning's impatience, this was brilliantly successful.

 For with just five canoes at their disposal, one of them small and two of them leaky, and without waiting for numbers of others on the way, Cunningham and Dunning, in the early morning mist of 2 March 1895, attacked across river, and thereupon suffered a serious reverse. 

Two of their canoes sank.

 Both of them were wounded, Dunning mortally. 

Thereupon Cunningham pulled back to Hoima, and with the onset of the rains disbanded his force.

That, however, was anathema to Jackson and Wilson, the British official in charge of Kampala, and to Major Ternan, now the senior British officer in the country. 

Such a reverse could all too easily restore Kabalega's tarnished prestige and severely damage that of the British.

Since there were reports that some arms traders had participated in the defeat on 2 March 1895, Jackson took energetic steps to stop their caravans passing through the western districts on their way to Kabalega.

 He ordered the construction of a fort at Nyakabimba in the critical corridor between Buganda and Tooro, and despatched reinforcements under Captain Pulteney and Lieutenant Vandeleur to the area, where, over the ensuing weeks, they mainly succeeded in breaking the back of the arms traffic through the region.

 Meanwhile, Ternan mobilised an expedition on the largest possible scale, which included a large Baganda army for the first time, under the command of Apollo Kagwa, the Katikiro.

 This foregathered at Mruli, where a fort was built, and following the arrival on 22 April 1895 of a flotilla of canoes from Busoga under Grant immediately responded to a Banyoro attempt to repel them, by launching a bombardment against them, not only this time with Maxim guns, but by two revolving Hotchkiss guns firing explosive shells. 

Along with a much more professionally organised canoe attack across river, this soon inflicted a major defeat on the Banyoro. 

By nightfall the whole of the British-led force was being ferried across the Nile. 

Kabalega and his remaining followers were pursued to the north, but managed to escape. 

A commanding fort was built at Masindi in the northern reaches of Bunyoro. 

And on their return to Buganda, leaders of the Baganda army roundly declared, as Berkeley reported, that 'Kabarega never had such a hammering before'.

 He had now indeed been decisively expelled from his kingdom.

 It is at this point that the notion of successive 'Confrontations' once again becomes pertinent. 

As we have noted, following Kabalega's transformation of his father's Abarasura in the 1870s into 'new model warbands', they had extensively undertaken the two roles which in the manner of a Confrontation I they were designed to perform. First they proceeded against over-mighty subjects within the kingdom, beginning with those who had opposed Kabalega's accession and, by the late 1880s, by thrashing those who in his terms were the most recalcitrant of them all: the Palwo princes around the westward bend of the Victoria Nile in the east, and Kasagama of Tooro in the south.

 Then at Rwengabi in 1886 they had inflicted a major defeat upon Bunyoro's most formidable external enemy, Buganda, and thereafter formed the

backbone of their kingdom's defence against the British-led attacks upon it.

 Yet for those leaders, like several Abarasura commanders, who possessed no traditional claims to offices of state, there were ultimately limitations upon their loyalties when these became subject to significant pressure.

 Back in 1892 a Buganda envoy from Lugard had come offering peace in return for a substantial tribute.

 Kabalega had summoned his leading chiefs to discuss this, and a majority appeared to support it. 

But Kabalega opted for war. 'Ireeta and Rwabudongo', Nyakatura reported, 'did not hide their disappointment and anger at this decision'.

 Nevertheless, despite hesitations, they loyally maintained a united front against the assaults which, throughout 1894 and into 1895, the British and the Baganda launched against them. 

Against these, however, neither a scorched earth retreat, nor a withdrawal to the Budongo forest, nor many a skirmish, nor the heights of Masaja Mukuru, nor a full-frontal attack at Mparo, nor even (despite their initial success) the fortifications near Mruli – none of these succeeded in securing the defence of the kingdom. 

Bunyoro's forces had been consistently routed. Their casualties had been countless. 

The countryside and its inhabitants had been appallingly ravaged.

 Their opponents were coming to be vastly better armed and better drilled. 

And the Omukama had fled from his kingdom.

 In July 1895 there was some suggestion that he was once more seeking a settlement, but upon being told this would require his unconditional surrender, very soon decided against it.

 It was in these circumstances that a Confrontation II now occurred, under which the principal Abarasura leaders and a motley of others turned against their ruler and surrendered to the British.

In response to a bitter quarrel with Kabalega over his renewed opposition to the war, the wanton killing of some eighty of his followers, and his own defeats by a Baganda force, Rwabudongo submitted in May 1895.

followed in July, when Ireeta also sought to make peace.

 Thereafter, following a series of fluctuating encounters, Kikukule surrendered in October,and in the following January took steps to bring in Muhenda.

 It was not at all clear, however, what was to happen once these submissions had been made. 

As yet Bunyoro was in no way part of the British Protectorate. 

Arguably British operations there were in clear breach of quite precise orders to confine these to Buganda, and were only acquiesced in by the Foreign Office because of its concern to be speedily informed about the advance of any other European agents to the region. 

At the same time, there was scarcely even a handful of British military officers and only two civilians locally available to take command of the full extent of Kabalega's kingdom. It was in these circumstances that an essentially pragmatic course was taken.

 It took the form of entrusting some grouping of chiefs who acknowledged British hegemony, and possessed a concerted purpose, with the task of assuming control of a substantial part of Kabalega's kingdom in his place.

 Thus, as we have seen, Colvile in 1894 ordered the creation, under the returned exile, Omukama Kasagama of Tooro, of a 'confederacy of southern Unyoro chiefs' who had all variously suffered at Kabalega's hands, and soon afterwards – as we shall see – implanted Baganda Christian forces across the whole area south of the Kafu river: with the Protestants, under Kakungulu, taking control of the Namionjo region to the east, where he built a fort; and the Catholics of the area to the west around Bukumi, where the White Fathers soon established a mission.

There was, however, no such grouping ready to hand in northern Bunyoro. 

The uncertainty which, as a consequence, prevailed there was well illustrated by Rwabudongo's experiences during the two years following his surrender. 

He first submitted himself to Omukama Kasagama of Tooro, and was there appointed to a territorial chieftaincy.

 But, as we have seen, as a principal Abarasura leader he received such short shrift from Kasagama that he took himself off to Kampala instead. 

There the Buganda chiefs welcomed him to their ranks, and Wilson, the British official there, proposed he should be placed in charge of the Kyaka–Nyakabimba district.

 On seeing Rwabudongo, Commissioner Berkeley agreed that he could settle there.

 However, its Baitwara chief, Nyama, successfully appealed to Berkeley against Rwabudongo assuming its chieftaincy.

 Whereupon Berkeley avowed he had only intended that he should dwell there.

 Eventually, however, in March 1896, Pulteney, Thruston's successor as the officer in charge of Bunyoro, tried his hand at replicating the pragmatic course which Colvile had taken. 

In so doing, he drew in particular upon the ranks of the former Abarasura leaders. 

Under Rwabudongo as 'paramount chief', he designated Kikukule (who at Berkeley's instance had been sent to Entebbe), and Muhenda, along with three heirs to local territorial chieftaincies, to chieftaincies across the area in northwestern Bunyoro between the Muzizi river in the south and the Budongo forest in the north.

Such, however, was the virulence of the protests by the Baganda Catholics against what they saw here as a curtailment of their recent gains at Colvile's hands, that, despite having initially agreed to Pulteney's proposals, Commissioner Berkeley eventually gave way. 

In lieu, he lamely asked Pulteney to compensate Rwabudongo in northern Bunyoro, while ordering both him and Kikukule and their followers to go to Masindi and there await further instructions.

 In June 1896 Pulteney accordingly designated three other areas in northwestern Bunyoro over which Rwabudongo could 

be chief.

 That, however, availed so little that in October 1896 Rwabudongo joined with Kikukule in attempting to secure the support of Buganda's leaders in an attempt to transfer their allegiance to Buganda.

 Nothing, however, came of that either.

 Meanwhile, accompanied by his son Jasi and before long by two Abarasura leaders, Ireeta and Muhenda, who reverted to his side, Kabalega roamed the lands to the north and east of the Victoria Nile.

 From there his remaining followers variously embarked upon hit-and-run raids,and periodically clashed with a variety of Lango and Bakedi groups.

At one point he sought to open communications with the Buganda leaders; but to no avail.

 Soon, however, it became clear that his overriding concern was to mount one more attempt to secure control of his kingdom.

 In this cause he sought assistance from the Mahdists, procured further supplies of arms and powder, drilled his riflemen as never before and, despite earlier conflicts, won the support of some Lango and Bakedi groups.

 When, in August 1896, Ternan learnt of these preparations, he promptly decided upon taking countervailing action by building two new forts south of the westwards arm of the Victoria Nile as a check upon any crossing from the north.

 As, in October 1896, the first of these came to be built at Foweira Karuma Rapids, Kabalega mobilised his most ambitious attack on the British since Mparo two years earlier.

 From a ridge opposite the fort he launched his riflemen into a barrage of fusillades against it. 

When, at 900 yards, Ternan responded with his Maxim and Hotchkiss guns, they held their ground for over an hour, but with their losses mounting and some Baganda forces assaulting them across river they eventually withdrew.

 With that, Kabalega's forces were severely broken.

 He himself fled three days' journey to the north; a second fort was soon built at Fajao 

to the west; and a whole succession of Lango, Bakedi and Acholi leaders then took steps to make peace with the British.

 Ternan thereupon set about seeking once more to apply Colvile's formula of entrusting a group of amenable chiefs with the governance of the whole of Bunyoro's northern region. 

To this end he installed the Palwo Prince Rejumba as chief of the area between Mruli and Foweira Karuma Rapids ; nominated Rejumba's kinsman, Mugemu, to be chief from Foweira to Fajao; appointed a hereditary chief, Bikamba, to Masindi district; and assigned the two former Abarasura leaders Byabachwezi and Rwabudongo to be, respectively, chief of the Hoima–Kibiro region, and chief from there to Bunyoro's northwestern corner at Magungo.

When Rwabudongo then said that he and his followers wanted to settle at the south end of Lake Albert, Pulteney suggested that he should go to Kampala instead, where he arrived in February 1897.

On Pulteney's further advice, Ternan then split the area he had allocated to Rwabudongo into two, by appointing Melindwa, the chief of the saltmakers, to Kibiro, and Wamara – who, following his father's exiling by Kabalega's father, had served the British since Lugard's day – to Magungo.

 All of this, however, was no more than a highly contrived grouping whose members collectively had little or nothing in common.

 Several of them were keeping their lines open to Kabalega, whose influence was 'far from dead', while Ternan himself was under no illusion about his scheme's likely success.

 Then, in May 1897, Wamara died of poisoning, evidently at Kabalega's instance, and with that the whole flimsy edifice broke apart.

 'The country at present', Thruston, Pulteney's replacement, wrote to Ternan on 30 June 1897, 'can hardly be said to be under a government at all: it is rather under a military occupation, or at most a weak military government – highly dependent on a series of small Sudanese garrisons placed in a string of forts across the region. 

Its replacement by an effective civilian order would here require the irreversible defeat of Kabalega along with the installation of a new ruler endowed with traditional authority in his place.

 So far, of that there was no sign. 

Quite suddenly, the surrounding circumstances were then twice radically transformed. 

On 6 July 1897, Kabaka Mwanga wormed his way through a reed fence around his royal enclosure, and on reaching the nearby landing place on Lake Victoria left secretly by canoe for the large southern county of Buddu.

 Wilson, who was in charge at Kampala, was quite bewildered. 

At the capital, nothing stirred.

 But as a precaution he sent his assistant, Forster, to Villa Maria, the Catholic mission there, to check any disturbance.

From there, Forster sent him a note on 9 July 1897  saying that 'it would appear that the King's flight is the outcome of a deliberately organised conspiracy'; and on the following day added: 'But there must be no mistake ... but Buddu is to reconquer'.

 Such was the launch of Mwanga's 'post-pacification revolt'. 

Over the preceding four years, following Macdonald's rout of the Muslims in 1893, there had been many issues in dispute in Buganda.

 Nonetheless, it had remained at peace. Mwanga, however, deprived of his earlier supreme authority, understandably yearned to see it restored.

 Instead, he found himself constantly denigrated and rebuffed.

 Believing the Catholics would give him more support than the Protestants, he more than once sought to become a Catholic again.

 But he was sternly warned by Colvile against doing so.

 More recently he had been deeply humiliated by being heavily fined for sending a consignment of ivory to Zanzibar without paying the British-imposed customs duty;and then by being made to dismiss large numbers of young pages about his court, whom both the British and the Christian oligarchs believed to be exercising a malign influence over him.

 His anger was palpable, directed now not just against the British but against his senior chiefs as well.

He was not, moreover, the only notable to be incensed at his treatment.

 A Sudanese escort had marched a senior Protestant chief, Jona Waswa, Mukwenda of Singo, from Masindi to Kampala, on a charge of stealing Banyoro women, while another, Samwiri Mukasa, Kitunzi of Gomba, was dismissed from his position on a similar charge. 

Waswa and Sematimba, Kaima of Mawagola, were then both exiled for rebellion.

These impositions all had a wider import since treatments like these, of both ruler and senior chiefs, were deeply resented.

A seminal episode then followed when Gabrieli Kintu, the Catholics' leading general, was sentenced to death for the murder of a thief who had stolen his favourite gun. 

Only with Mwanga's connivance did he escape to Buddu to become the leading figure in Mwanga's subsequent revolt.

 There, away from the beaten path of British intrusion into northern Buganda, the Catholics in Buddu and a miscellany of others from elsewhere, including some Protestants, were soon on the verge of a major insurgency against the very notion of British dominion over their kingdom.

 There had been several intimations that this was in the offing.

When, early in 1897, Ternan, with Wilson and the Catholic Katikiro Mugwanya, spent a fortnight in Buddu, Streicher, the Father Superior at the Catholic mission of Villa Maria there, strove to alert him to the rumblings of revolt. 

Ternan would have none of them.

 On the contrary, he concluded, Buddu was 'evidently very flourishing and loyal'.

 Despite this rebuff, Streicher wrote to him in May with forebodings which were even more dire; but with little further result.

 When, moreover, down in Entebbe, Ternan first heard of Mwanga's flight, he, like Wilson in Kampala, found: 'All is quiet here.'

 But in response to Forster's increasingly sombre tidings, he immediately mobilised a substantial force to march down to Buddu, made up of the greater part of three companies of Sudanese mercenaries along with 14,000 Baganda Spearmen  under Apollo Kagwa, armed with guns. 

These latter were available to him since, despite some passing wavering in the western counties, by contrast with those who rallied to Mwanga's cause, the overwhelming majority of Buganda's incumbent chiefs stood out against him, in no way minded to assist him in retrieving his erstwhile authority, nor to forgo their now entrenched bonds with the British.

 Wilson summarised the upshot by saying: '11 out of the 12 provinces' (counties)115 into which Buganda was divided refused to support him.

 It was thus that Mwanga's revolt became transmuted into an unrelenting civil war as well.

 Ternan and Kagwa's combined forces entered Buddu on 16 July 1897, and on the 20th July 1897 defeated Mwanga's 1,400 supporters at a brief but decisive battle at Kabwoko.

 Three days later, Mwanga was reported to have surrendered to the Germans.

But Ternan stayed on, and on 28 July 1897 first encircled and then crushed a Baganda Abangoni  force at Malongo, before returning to Kampala. 

On leaving Buddu he gave its command to Grant who, with a reduced force under Lieutenant Hobart, defeated, at a battle near Masaka on 23 August 1897, a combination of an Nkore contingent and a reduced insurgent force under Kintu, who had now taken command of the revolt.

 Grant and Hobart were then joined by 3,000–4,000 Baganda spearmen , under Apollo Kagwa and Mugwanya, who extensively scoured the area in search of the now highly elusive Kintu who constantly slipped their net, until eventually, like Mwanga before him, he fled to the German sphere.

With that, Mwanga's revolt might well have petered out altogether.

 Instead, at the end of September 1897, three companies of the Sudanese mercenaries in the lately formed Uganda Rifles mutinied, thereby inflicting upon the British something like the Baperes' revolt against Mwanga nine years previously, and immensely threatening the whole coercive basis of their embryonic British Protectorate. 

Once again there were warning signs which the British ignored.

 Discipline amongst the Sudanese mercenaries had slackened and twice during the Buddu campaign some of them had threatened to revolt: their pay was under half that of those in the adjacent East Africa Protectorate; still less than for those in German service; and less too than the average for a porter.

 Even then it was often in arrears.Nos. 4, 7 and 9 companies had, moreover, been continuously engaged in campaigning against Kabalega, Mwanga and the Nandi (in what became Kenya) and were now made to foregather at a base on the western side of the Rift Valley to escort Macdonald on a further treaty-making expedition, of the kind which four years earlier Rosebery had ordered Portal to dispatch to the Upper Nile.

 Since this would once again entail a long separation from their wives and families, the assembled Sudanese, despite a minor concession, had had enough. On 23 September 1897  No. 9 company deserted.

 The other two followed shortly afterwards.

 As they marched westwards to rouse their fellows in their cause, they variously swept past the smaller forts upon their route, before occupying Luba's Fort, adjacent to the outflow from Lake Victoria into the Victoria Nile. 

There, Thruston, who had taken command, thought the garrison was loyal to him.

 But he was mistaken.

 They very soon joined the mutineers, and he and two other British officials were then arrested.

As the mutineers moved westwards, Jackson, as acting Commissoner, tried in vain to parley with them.

 Macdonald's special escort of 17 Sikhs, 10 Europeans and 340 Swahili troops meanwhile marched in pursuit, and by 18 October 1897 had successfully established themselves on Bukaleba ridge overlooking Luba's Fort. 

There, on 19 October 1897, they were attacked by 300 mutineers and 150 Banyoro, Baganda Muslims and others.

 For five hours they held them at bay, till in a final charge they drove them back to the fort.

 There, on the following day, Thruston and his two companions were led out and shot. 

The die was cast.

 Nine days earlier, news of the mutiny had reached Kampala, and a party of Baganda under two British officials was immediately dispatched to prevent the mutineers crossing the Victoria Nile. 

These preliminaries were then greatly enhanced when a letter from the mutineers was received by Prince Nuhu Mbogo, the principal Buganda Muslim leader, offering him the Kabakaship – which he promptly rejected – and announcing their impending arrival in Kampala.

 For that not only threatened the hold of the Christian oligarchy upon the core of their kingdom. 

It presaged the establishment of a Muslim regime there in their place. Accordingly, leaving Katikiro Mugwanya in charge of the capital, Katikiro Kagwa promptly led out a much larger force.

 This reached Bukaleba on 23 October 1897 , just in time to provide Macdonald with the reinforcements he needed to lay siege to the mutineers in Luba's Fort, and prevent them from crossing the Nile and entering Buganda.

 Over the next two months, during which there were periodic but ineffectual attempts at a settlement, Kagwa's forces, through a series of skirmishes and a considerable battle on 24 November 1897 (during which they suffered serious losses), successfully confined the mutineers to the fort.

Further reinforcements, however, were now urgently required, not only against the existing mutineers, but in case any other Sudanese companies whom they were pressing to join them should do so.

 In this context Kagwa and Wilson succeeded in disarming the Sudanese troops in Kampala; Grant in Buddu and Sitwell in Toro both expressed confidence that theirs could be relied upon, but Dugmore in Bunyoro became deeply fearful that the small garrisons scattered across the countryside could not be so readily counted upon.

 Thanks to the promptitude of Commissioner Hardinge of the neighbouring Kenia East Africa Protectorate, a relief column of Indian and Swahili troops was soon, however, on its way.

When, moreover, news of the mutiny eventually reached London on 22 November 1897, important decisions were immediately taken to dispatch the 27th Bombay Light Infantry and a wing of the 4th Bombay Infantry to the rescue, and recruit a permanent Indian contingent for Uganda that, in due course, would take their place.

The first of this sequence of reinforcements reached Bukaleba at the turn of the year, and was immediately engaged with the mutineers.

 Their number, however, was considerably reduced when (as we shall see) it was learnt that Mwanga had escaped from German Tanganyika custody and, along with a considerable following, was once again at large in Buddu. 

For Macdonald immediately decided to take no chances and speedily assembled a powerful column to attack him. 

That, however, entailed reducing the force at Bukaleba, which in turn opened the way for the mutineers to evacuate Luba's Fort early in January 1898, with the evident intent of breaking away westwards so as to add further Sudanese companies to their number.

 Once away from Luba's Fort, the mutineers found themselves hemmed in, however, by the forces Apollo Kagwa and his British allies variously posted against them. 

As a consequence, they marched northwards along the course of the Victoria Nile till they overran Kakungulu's fort at Namionjo, close to the shore of Lake Ibrahim Kyoga.

 There they set about

Defeat: resistance, revolt and mutiny gathering a fleet of canoes that could transport them to Mruli on its west end, from where they could hope to contact their Sudanese fellows in Bunyoro and swing them to their side. 

In a speedy response to this move, Macdonald, on his return from Buddu, first dispatched a flying column to Mruli, which, with great skill, successfully disarmed or otherwise disabled the Sudanese troops, both there and in Bunyoro to the west.

Then, with the arrival of further reinforcements of Indian and Swahili troops now substantially augmenting his force, he launched its main body on a daring advance upon Semei  Kakungulu's fort, which on 18 February 1898 inflicted a considerable defeat on the mutineers.

 As a consequence, they immediately abandoned the fort.

 But they then moved westwards across the Sacred  Sezibwa river and proceeded to build a substantial stockade at Kabagame prior to embarking upon a decisive advance across Bunyoro and beyond. 

That created a highly critical situation for the Baganda and Britishled forces.

 Macdonald quickly countered by himself returning to Kampala to pick up still more Indian troops, while, in an audacious move, ordering his already available forces to cross the Sacred Sezibwa river and its swamps directly, so as to take the mutineers upon the other side by surprise. 

There, on 24 February 1898 under Captain Harrison's command, they carried the mutineers' fort at Kabagame by assault and trounced them so decisively as to scatter them in great confusion.

 That meant that every attempt by the mutineers, from the Bukaleba conflicts through to Kabagame, to break out to the west had been blocked by the combination of the Baganda and British-led forces.

 They had quite failed, moreover, to persuade any other Sudanese company to join in their mutiny despite sending emissaries to them. 

They now found themselves having instead to take refuge in Bukedi country to the east. 

That, for the time being, removed the most serious threat to the hold of the British and their Baganda allies upon the country that so far they had ever encountered.

 There was, however, many an armed conflict still to come.

 From this point onwards, they were largely concentrated in three rather separate arenas.

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