Khedive Ismail Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879, attempted to invade Ethiopia on several occasions. His military expeditions did not produce the results that he had expected or anticipated. The battles of Gundet and Gura were a showdown between an Egyptian army trained and led by Ex-Confederate Generals who had graduated from West Point, and the Ethiopian Army, who fought to defend their country. William Loring, one of the generals hired by Khedive Ismail Pasha to lead the Abyssinian expedition, captured the situation in his memorial entitled A Confederate Soldier in Egypt:
THERE had been from time immemorial, or at least from the time of the twelfth dynasty of the Pharaohs, constant war between the Ethiopians and the people who lived in the lower valley of the Nile. These continued to the time of Mehemet Ali, the founder of the present dynasty of Egypt, and of his successors, and culminated in these latter days in the formidable expedition it is proposed to notice now, which was sent to Abyssinia in 1875 by the Khedive of Egypt … Egypt being the most enlightened commercial nation in north-east Africa, and the Abyssinians being given up to war, turmoil, and the slave-trade, it was right that Egypt should thus hold the more barbarous nation in check. … Within a half mile of Osman, and a mile and a half of our position, and in its immediate front, 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, the ablest and most renowned African warrior of modern times, to move en masse across the valley. Around our right and rear, there were also lurking in great numbers their bravest and most venturesome warriors. In addition to their great numerical strength, the Abyssinians were known to be a desperately brave people, who had defied the conquering Saracen, and held their mountain homes when more powerful nations around them had succumbed to the scimetar, and who more lately were flushed with their victory over the brave Arrendrup, the unfortunate Egyptian commander, which had inspired them with an exaltation only equaled by the despondency it had occasioned the Egyptians’.
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