The Battle of Dogali – 26 January 1887
On 26 January 1887, a small Italian relief column under Lieutenant Colonel Tommaso De Cristoforis marched from the Massawa area towards the garrison at Saati, which had recently come under attack by the forces of Ras Alula Engida. The column numbered 548 men, drawn from several infantry companies and detachments and supported by a section of artillery or machine-gun personnel. A small body of allied Bazi-Bouzouk irregulars was also present in the area. On the maps, the Italian troops are shown in blue, their local allies in red, and Ras Alula’s Abyssinian forces in yellow.
Near Dogali, the Italian column suddenly found itself confronted by a vastly superior Abyssinian force. Contemporary and later accounts differ over the exact Ethiopian strength, but it was many thousands strong, while De Cristoforis had barely five hundred men. Realising that retreat over open ground would expose his column to destruction, De Cristoforis occupied the rocky heights around Mehatel Hill and deployed his companies in a defensive perimeter. The scattered Italian positions shown on the maps reflect the desperate effort to hold the dominant ground and prevent the Abyssinians from closing in from several directions.
Ras Alula’s troops repeatedly pressed against the Italian line, using their overwhelming numerical superiority to envelop the position. The Italians nevertheless held out for approximately four hours. Company after company maintained its ground while the perimeter contracted. The men fired until ammunition became critically scarce, shifting between the rocky positions and supporting one another as successive sectors came under attack. The fighting eventually became extremely close, with the defenders increasingly unable to maintain a continuous line.
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Map h 8.30
Copyright Michele SAVASTA FIORE |
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| Copyright Michele SAVASTA FIORE |
The resistance of De Cristoforis’s column became one of the most celebrated last stands of the early Italian colonial period. Whatever judgement is made of the wider colonial policy that had brought them there, the conduct of the soldiers themselves was marked by remarkable discipline and determination. Isolated, heavily outnumbered and with no realistic prospect of immediate relief, they continued fighting even after the tactical situation had become hopeless. De Cristoforis remained with his men and was killed during the final fighting.
Once the ammunition was virtually exhausted and the defensive positions had been penetrated, organised resistance collapsed. The Abyssinian warriors swept over the surviving Italian positions and the column was effectively annihilated. The official Italian loss figures generally give about 430 dead, including most of the officers, while only a relatively small number of wounded survivors escaped or were recovered afterwards. The Italian Navy’s historical account records that only one officer and 86 soldiers survived from the 548-man column.
Thus Dogali was not simply an Italian defeat: it was the destruction of almost an entire isolated force. Roughly four out of every five men in De Cristoforis’s column were killed. Many died during the final overrunning of the position after hours of resistance, when the surviving formations had been broken up and ammunition was exhausted. This explains why contemporary Italian memory very quickly transformed Dogali into a symbol of sacrifice: the soldiers had not fled or surrendered as a formed body, but had continued to resist until their small force was overwhelmed. The Italian Presidency’s historical archive itself refers to the episode as the “massacre of Dogali.”
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Map h 9.30
Copyright Michele SAVASTA FIORE |
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Map h 10.30
Copyright Michele SAVASTA FIORE |
The battle was nevertheless a clear and important Abyssinian victory. Ras Alula had successfully intercepted the relief column, prevented it from reaching Saati and destroyed it before substantial Italian reinforcements could intervene. Dogali demonstrated both the fighting power of the Ethiopian forces and the vulnerability of small European columns operating inland without sufficient intelligence, security or concentration of force. Its political impact in Italy was immediate and profound, turning the name Dogali into a lasting symbol both of military disaster and of the extraordinary endurance of the men who fought and died there.
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Map final fighting
Copyright Michele SAVASTA FIORE |
