Marshalled in barbarian splendor upon an elevated ridge, were the serried hosts of the foe,
full 50,000 strong, their banners and shields glittering in the declining sun,
waiting the orders of their king...to move en masse across the valley.
—William Loring, 1884

Ismail was not exploring East Africa merely for the benefit of knowledge. He wanted an empire, one that included the Sudan, Ethiopia, and the caravan routes to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Several expeditionary forces were sent out to appropriate new territory. Famed British adventurer Charles “Chinese” Gordon (left, another mercenary for the Khedive) was placed in command of the Sudan and equatorial regions. Chaillé-Long led a coastal expedition as far south as Zanzibar and the Comoro Islands (however, British pressure on Egypt soon forced the recall of his party). In 1875 an inexperienced Danish officer, Colonel Søren Arendrup, led an expedition to Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia). His objective was to conquer the trade route from the Red Sea port of Massowah west to Khartoum, where Ismail hoped to establish a rail route. Arendrup told Abyssinia’s ruler, King John, that he wished to meet and redraw the boundary between Egypt and Abyssinia. Instead, King John quickly raised an army, and (a scant nine months before an eerily similar incident befell George Custer) ambushed and wiped out most of Arendrup’s force.

The massacre demanded a response from Egypt, but opinions on how to proceed were mixed. The American officers wanted to defeat John’s army and conquer Abyssinia. The more cautious Egyptians (who really had little heart for the new war) wanted to simply make a show of force. An army of 12,000 was raised, and dispatched to Massowah. Loring, originally slated to command the force, was instead made chief of staff to Ratib Pasha, commander in chief of the Egyptian army. Miscommunication and confusion would mark the entire campaign. After several months of preparation (thereby losing the element of surprise), the force set out for the interior of Abyssinia. Transportation and supply were in a shambles, and after a march of about three days, the army was forced to stop in the Gura Valley. Loring wanted to attack Abyssinia’s capital, but Ratib wanted to build a fort and await the enemy. Meanwhile, King John was putting together an army of some 60,000 men.

On March 7, 1876, King John engaged an Egyptian force of about 4,500 men. The Egyptians, who were still waiting for a sizeable portion of their force to reach the Gura valley, were routed (hundreds of men were slaughtered after running into a ravine, reminiscent of the Crater at Petersburg), and retreated into their fort. Egyptian forces in a smaller fort at the head of the valley did nothing to support their countrymen; the commander feared he would be attacked if he acted. On March 9 the Abyssinians attacked the main fort, but sustained heavy losses. Following the battle, Egyptian soldiers ventured out and massacred wounded Abyssinian soldiers left on the field; that night, the Abyssinians retaliated by murdering almost 600 Egyptian prisoners. The soldiers in the main fort were able to hold out for several days, until the Abyssinian army began to disintegrate. Over the course of the next month the Egyptians strengthened the two forts in the valley, but the fighting was over. Ratib began negotiations with King John, and in late April, hurriedly withdrew his army. (Remarkably, 65 years later, Americans would return again to play a military role in the Gura Valley.)

The campaign against Abyssinia had served no purpose, only succeeding in killing thousands of men and draining Ismail’s coffers. The Americans had fought bravely, but it made little difference. Convenient scapegoats, they were blamed for the disaster and the subsequent lackluster performance of American-trained Egyptian troops in the Russo-Turkish war. In an anonymous article published in Blackwood’s Magazine, Loring tried to set the record straight, blaming the failure of the campaign on Ratib. (Subsequent books by Loring and Colonel William Dye, as well as a firsthand account by Colonel Henry Derrick would offer the same conclusion.) The American officers in Egypt were now largely shunned or ignored, mostly relegated to minor tasks or left twiddling their thumbs. The experiment was almost at its end.