Fire and Sword in the Sudan : 9781782821144 : 22 Mar 2013 : An epic first hand account of high adventure The Victorian age was notable for the appearance of gentleman soldiers of fortune in the imperial world and there could be no more exotic and exceptional example of that than the author of this book, Rudolf Slatin. The son of a Viennese merchant, he went to Egypt to work as a bookseller's assistant in Cairo in the early 1870s. He travelled extensively through Egypt and the Sudan and made the acquaintance of the remarkable general, Charles Gordon. After a period of Austrian military service, Slatin returned to Africa at Gordon's invitation. He arrived in early 1879 and after a meteoric rise in career fortunes he secured, in 1881, the governor-generalship of Darfur with the rank of 'bey.' He then engaged in an extended war with the Mahdists, with considerable initial success, but after the annihilation of Hicks Pasha's force eventually surrendered to Mahdist