 Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of the Khedive (Egyptian monarch) and his nominal overlord the (Ottoman) Sultan of Turkey.Kitchener became second-in-command of an Egyptian cavalry regiment in February 1883, and then took part in the failed expedition to relieve Charles George Gordon in the Sudan in late 1884.Fluent in Arabic, Kitchener preferred the company of the Egyptians over the British, and the company of no-one over the Egyptians, writing in 1884 that