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 CHAELES GEORGE GORDON 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition Jamiary 1889 
 
 Reprinted March 1889, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1897, 
 
 1898, 1899, 1901, 1904, 1907, 1911, 1913 (^w/c^) 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/charlesgeorgegorOObutlrich 
 
CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 Engraved by O. Lacour after a Photograph by Adams and Scanlan 
 
CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 LTEUT.-GENEEAL SIE WILLIAM F. BUTLEK, 
 
 K.C.B. '■' 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1913 
 
.32/ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Name and the Clan — Ancestors — Birth — 
 Early Days — Enters Royal Military Aca- 
 demy ....... .1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Crimea — Bessarabia — Armenia . . . .16 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 China 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Gravesend . . . . . .73 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Soudan . .91 
 
 304476 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Soudan {continued) . . . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 India — China — Ireland — Mauritius — The Cape 
 
 OF Good Hope — Palestine . . .161 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Khartoum . . . . . . . .192 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 The Last Months at Khartoum . . .221 
 
m 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE NAME AND THE CLAN — ANCESTORS — BIRTH — EARLY 
 DAYS — ENTERS ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY 
 
 Gordon — " Spear," the first weapon shaped by man to 
 aid his fight with nature, and give him dominion over the 
 wild things of plain and forest : the emblem of highest 
 rank among the old Norse gods, held in the right hand 
 of Odin : the weapon of sacrifice among those dim Celtic 
 tribes whose existence is all but lost in the dawn of 
 history — a name that goes back beyond history and 
 beyond even tradition, into days when man began to 
 chip the stones of primaeval river-beds into leaf-shaped 
 sharpened flints : a name full of strange significance ill 
 our history, whether borne in Norman, Saxon, or Celtic 
 sound, in simple or compound form by priest, poet, or 
 soldier, by Breakspeare, Shakespeare, Byron, or Gordon, 
 by those whose words and deeds have stirred men's 
 blood as none other in our history have done. 
 
 An old race, this Gordon, and a stout one : fierce 
 
 fighters, true soldiers, hard -striking, hard -dying men, 
 
 whose names crop up wherever fighting is found in their 
 
 country's history : holding their own, and often their 
 
 (E B 
 
life' of CH^f^FS GEORGE GORDON 
 
 neighbours' lands and chattels, with a tight grasp, yet 
 ever prodigal of blood and gold for clan and king : 
 smiting Mackays, Crichtons, Sinclairs, Forbes, Camerons, 
 Lindsays, and Macintoshes through the wild straths and 
 glens of Banff, Caithness, and Sutherland until they and 
 their enemies disappear backward into time, amid an 
 unresolvable mist of conflict, where the writ of history 
 does not run. 
 
 And downward, into the broader light of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, we see these Gordons steadily 
 falling into grander groups, where the issues are faith 
 and king, and the rewards are the prison and the block ; 
 their names standing out in times of political storm like 
 guiding lights that tell us, without further need of search, 
 where the old landmarks lie. 
 
 He is a Gordon who rallies round him whatever is 
 left in Scotland of loyalty and honour, when the preach- 
 ing of Knox, the intrigues of Cecil, and the murders of 
 Murray have upset the throne of Mary Stuart, and all 
 but brought Scotland under the dominion of Elizabeth. 
 
 A Gordon is the first to raise the royal standard for 
 Charles^ and one of the last to lay his head on the block 
 at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, telling his enemies 
 that "the only regret he has in dying is that he had not 
 been the first to suffer in a cause which made death so 
 sweet to him;" and also telling the Covenanting minis- 
 ters, who came at the last moment to pester him with 
 offers of their absolution if he would acknowledge his 
 "treason" to them, that "as he had never been accus- 
 tomed in life to give ear to false prophets, so now he 
 did not wish to be troubled by them at his death." 
 
 The Marquis of Huntly, whose spirit neither disaster 
 
OLD SOLDIERS OF THE CLAN 
 
 nor imprisonment could subdue, was not the only Gordon 
 who suffered at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and the 
 footsteps of three of his best friends and leading gentle- 
 men of the clan — Gordon of Invermarkie, Gordon of 
 Newton Gordon, and Gordon of Harthill — had already 
 made easier for their chief the pathway to the scaffold. 
 
 How many had fallen fighting under Montrose will 
 never be known, but almost the entire loss suffered by 
 the royal army in the brilliant victory of Alford was 
 borne by the Gordons ; and it was there that the hope 
 and pride of the clan, the man whom Montrose called 
 his " only friend," Huntly's eldest son, Lord Gordon, fell 
 at the moment he was dragging the Covenanting general 
 from his saddle. 
 
 But, with all its native feuds and quarrels, Scotland 
 in the seventeenth century could not find room for the 
 warlike proclivities of the Gordon race. The cadets of 
 the clan were to be found in the armies of Sweden, 
 France, Spain, and the Empire. Four of them rose to 
 high rank in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, another 
 became a general in the Kussian service, and another 
 left his name for ever associated with the dark scene in 
 the Castle of Eger on February 25th, 1634. 
 
 After the Stuart cause went finally out in a last 
 blaze of fruitless victory at Killiecrankie, AVilliam of 
 Orange was too good a soldier and too astute a politi- 
 cian not to see that the Highland broadsword was an 
 excellent weapon, provided he could only manage to 
 keep it always smiting his enemies ; but knowing that 
 it had a second edge which might be disastrously 
 turned against himself, he immediately began to adopt 
 towards the Highlanders a triple policy of treachery^ 
 
4 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 bribery, and emigration. He caused the Macdonalds to 
 be massacred ; he gave twenty thousand pounds to Bread- 
 albane to be distributed among the chiefs ; and he raised 
 several regiments of Highland dragoons to fight his 
 battles in the Low Countries. Of the prowess of these 
 last mentioned " emigrants," who were not intended, if it 
 could be helped, to be let back again into the Highlands, 
 we get a glimpse in the pages of Evelyn, under date 
 April 1694: "Some regiments of Highland dragoons 
 were on their march through England. They were of 
 large stature, well-proportioned, and disciplined. One of 
 them, having reproached a Dutchman for cowardice in 
 the late fight, was attacked by two Dutchmen, when with 
 his sword he struck off the head of one and cleft the 
 skull of the other to the chin." Truly this claymore 
 was a weapon to be taken away as soon as possible from 
 the hands of such a people. But it was one thing to 
 pass an Arms Act in Westminster, and another to enforce 
 disarmament among the rude "clachans" of the clans- 
 men, and in the castles where the chiefs still held their 
 own, "hard by thundering Spey." Eusty flint-lock or 
 cumbrous horse-pistol might be given up, for the true 
 Highlander had for such arms almost as great contempt 
 as the Arab of the desert has to-day for musket or rifle ; 
 but the broadsword, the weapon of his heart and hand, 
 he would keep to the death. And it must be admitted 
 that he had some reason to love this claymore. " Keep 
 a tight hold of the hilt of the sword, and a loose one of 
 the mouth of the purse," had been his old motto in 
 days when the sword had filled the purse ; and he 
 possessed a very shrewd idea that to give up the sword, 
 even though it no longer filled his purse, was also to 
 
I THE HIGHLANDER 5 
 
 abandon home and clan. So, despite Arms Act or dis- 
 armament order, the Highlander held on to his claymore. 
 And he was not mistaken in the weapon of his choice, 
 even though his love for it had been laid in times when 
 it was the acknowledged and unrivalled Queen of Arms 
 — long before the days of arquebus, snaphaunce, or flint- 
 gun. In 1745 a body of Highlanders, numbering less 
 than two thousand men, utterly routed and destroyed in 
 five minutes' fighting a force of old and seasoned regular 
 troops, fresh from the Flemish wars, capturing guns, camp, 
 and baggage, killing or taking prisoners more than two 
 thousand infantry, and doing it all so instantaneously 
 that the second line of clansmen, placed only fifty paces 
 in rear of the first, and following that first line in its 
 charge as fast as Highland legs could run, never got blow 
 of sword or scythe (for many of the men had taken 
 scythes for want of swords) at the English enemy, and 
 had to content themselves with prisoners and plunder. 
 Of these there were ample for all — standards, tents, 
 military chest, together with fifteen hundred prisoners of 
 the foot regiments of Lee, Lascelles, and Murray, were 
 taken on the field. Among the officers thus captured at 
 Gladsmuir, as the victors called the field of battle, there 
 was one David Gordon, a Highlander, serving in the 
 regiment known as Lascelles's Foot. It is the life of the 
 great-grandson of this man that I now propose to write. 
 How David Gordon came to be an officer fighting on 
 the side which, whatever were its merits, was certainly 
 not the side of his family and clan, is a thing now quite 
 impossible to know ; but, as he had been in Lascelles's 
 regiment for at least seven years earlier, it is probable 
 that the practice of seeking for soldiers in the Highlands, 
 
6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 which William of Orange had begun, was continued 
 during the succeeding half century. Certain is it that 
 the army, which was raised at the breaking out of the 
 European war of 1740, held a large number of Northern 
 Scotch in its ranks, and that the "rear lorn" guard 
 which covered the wreck of Cumberland's army in the 
 disastrous day at Fontenoy was wholly composed of 
 Highlanders. David Gordon, taken prisoner at Glads- 
 muir, could scarcely have found his captivity irksome to 
 him. He was certainly not a prisoner among strangers, 
 for his nearest relatives and great numbers of his clan 
 were fighting in the army of the Pretender. Six hundred 
 of them fought at Falkirk : there were two regiments 
 of Gordons at Culloden — Lord Lewis Gordon and five 
 chiefs. Sir William Gordon of Park, Gordon of Killi- 
 huntly, Gordon of Cobardie, Gordon of Abachie, and 
 the veteran septuagenarian Gordon of Glenbucket 
 followed to the end the fortunes of the prince whom 
 they believed to be their rightful king. 
 
 How many Gordons perished in the butcheries and 
 the burnings that followed the defeat of the clans at 
 Culloden will never be known : it is the victor who 
 writes the history and counts the dead, and to the 
 vanquished in such a struggle there only remains the 
 dull memory of an unnumbered and unwritten sorrow. 
 But if the record of the red-handed vengeance taken on 
 the Highlanders in their native glens in the long months 
 of devastation that followed Culloden be wanting, the 
 judicial horrors perpetrated by the Eoyal Commissions 
 at Carlisle and York upon the Jacobite prisoners give 
 us a fair standard by which to- judge what the others 
 must have been. Among the sixty individuals who 
 
1 ANCESTORS 7 
 
 suffered at York and Carlisle in the last months of 1746, 
 undergoing, without one exception, with the utmost 
 fortitude the cruel sentences of hanging, cutting down, 
 beheading and disembowelling, the name of Gordon 
 appears twice — at York in November, and at Carlisle in 
 December 1746 — and in each case the Christian name, 
 curiously enough, is Charles, A year later the Govern- 
 ment, tired of bloodshed, passed an Act of Indemnity, 
 but excluded from the benefit of the Act some eighty 
 persons. Among these appear the names of Lord Lewis 
 Gordon, Sir William Gordon of Park, Gordon of Aba- 
 chie, and Gordon of Glenbucket, all of whom died in 
 exile. 
 
 Six years after the battle of Culloden, David Gordon, 
 still of Lascelles's regiment, died at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 
 a far-away spot in those days from the old land at home. 
 He left an only son, called after the Duke of Cumber- 
 land, William Augustus, — whatever side the Highlander 
 was on, there was no half-hearted loyalty about him. 
 
 The prospect before the boy must have seemed blank 
 enough to the dying officer, for the feeling against the 
 clans still ran high, and the change of sentiment which 
 Chatham was to bring about in the next war had not 
 yet begun. Whether it was that the thoughts of the 
 dying Highlander turned naturally to the old home and 
 people, or that he wished his boy to know where he 
 could find a friend in case the whirligig of fate should 
 bring back the Stuarts, it is needless now to inquire, 
 but we are told that David Gordon on his deathbed 
 named Sir William Gordon of Park as the nearest sur- 
 viving relative his son would have — not much of a stay 
 for the boy so soon to be an orphan. Sir William 
 
8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Gordon of Park held a commission as lieutenant-colonel 
 of Lord Ogilvy's regiment in the French service, and at 
 the time when David Gordon was dying at Halifax Sir 
 William had been already gathered to his rest at Douay, 
 where his regiment lay in garrison. In the Stuart 
 papers there are three letters from officers of the regiment 
 of Ogilvy to the Chevalier de Saint Georges, dated June 
 1751, announcing the death of Sir William Gordon, and 
 asking that the vacant commission may be given to them. 
 
 But, however dark might have appeared the prospects 
 of the young orphan in Halifax, Nova Scotia, fortune 
 proved kind to him. He got his " pair of colours " while 
 yet a mere boy, and before he had reached his twentieth 
 year had already seen much service. He was at Louis- 
 burg in 1758, and a year later stood in the memorable 
 fight on the plains of Abraham. After this the way was 
 smooth. The Seven Years' War had changed the senti- 
 ment of suspicion towards Highlanders into admiration 
 of their courage and devotion. Chatham's glowing 
 panegyric upon the virtues of the clansmen was echoed 
 by the general voice of the nation, who began to be 
 ashamed of the " jealousy " he had so loftily denounced. 
 An officer of a line regiment, writing of the behaviour of 
 the "Scots Highlanders in the late bloody affair," the 
 defeat at Ticonderoga in 1758, says: "With a mixture 
 of esteem, grief, and envy, I consider the great loss and 
 immortal glory acquired by them. They appeared like 
 lions breaking from their chains. . . . There is much 
 harmony and friendship between us. . . . 
 
 But other causes besides heroic courage on foreign 
 fields were at work at home to change into kinder feelings 
 the national sentiment regarding the Highlanders. In 
 
I THE HIGHLANDER BECOMES FASHIONABLE 9 
 
 1750 Mack-Donell, as he signs himself, of Glengarry 
 writes to Cardinal York asking that a relic of the wood 
 of the Cross may be given him, saying, *' I more boldly 
 solicit your Eoyal Eminence for this, as our name is the 
 only Catholic one now in Scotland since the family of 
 Gordon changed^ and thereby I may say in Britain, that 
 without any mask has preserved the true religion since 
 they first embraced Christianity." 
 
 In the year that Quebec was taken, the Dowager- 
 Duchess of Gordon raised a new regiment in Lochaber 
 for service in the Seven Years' War, and henceforth the 
 name figures often in army-lists and becomes con- 
 spicuous in the battle-fields of America and India during 
 the remainder of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Henceforward it is plain sailing for William Augustus. 
 He does not appear to have seen service subsequent to 
 the Seven Years' War, but he has powerful friends, is 
 in active correspondence with Lord Chatham, marries in 
 1773, and becomes the father of a large family, among 
 his children being one, William Henry, born in the year 
 1786. Continuing the old military tradition of the race, 
 William Henry became in due time an officer of artillery, 
 fought at Maida, where the steady fire of the field- 
 artillery did much in the earlier part of the action to 
 throw the French line into confusion, and finally rose to 
 the rank of lieutenant-general, dying at an advanced age 
 in 1865. He left many children by his wife, Elizabeth 
 Enderby, whom he married in the year 1817. Among 
 these children was one, a son, Charles George, born in 
 Woolwich on January 28th, 1833, destined to die at 
 Khartoum fifty-two years later, all but two days. It is 
 of his life that this book would attempt to tell. 
 
lo LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 The early years in the life of a man whose name 
 becomes famous after he has passed middle age are 
 difficult fields of search for those who would like to trace 
 their hero through every scene of his journey from the 
 cradle to the grave, and who believe that the head and 
 heart will always be found to show through childhood, 
 boyhood, and youth the ever-deepening lines of character 
 which in the end have made him celebrated. Most of 
 the contemporaries of youth have passed away, and the 
 memories of those who still remain have lost the 
 recollection of days so far removed from them. It is 
 the mother who watches and notes the dawn and growth 
 of the child's ideas, and preserves the memory of traits 
 that to others are unnoticed, but when the half-hundredth 
 year of man's life is past, she who " kept all these things 
 in her heart " has in most cases long gone to her rest. 
 
 Of the childhood of Charles Gordon we know very 
 little beyond the bare record of the places in which it 
 was spent. The Pigeon House Fort in the Bay of 
 Dublin, Leith Fort, and the Island of Corfu were the 
 scenes of the first ten years of his life. All these places 
 possess that highest charm of every age and that best- 
 teacher of early age, beauty of scenery, fairness of the 
 outward form of the earth as it lies in far expanse of 
 sea, long line of shore, or bold outline of mountain-top — 
 these are the early scenes that smoke of city and gloom 
 of after-life can never blur, and these were the pictures 
 upon which the boy's eyes must most have dwelt when- 
 ever he looked from window or gun-embrasure upon the 
 surroundings of his childhood. 
 
 From Leith to Prestonpans is but a short distance, 
 and, no doubt, the first field of battle the boy ever 
 
I EARL Y DA YS — RO YAL MILITAR Y A CADEMY 1 1 
 
 saw was the one where, ninety -three years earlier, 
 his great-grandfather had been taken prisoner by his 
 own people. Timid and sensitive as a child, and easily 
 frightened by the discharge of cannon (an occurrence 
 which his father's profession must necessarily have made 
 almost an everyday event), the boy, nevertheless, grew 
 with years into marked determination and an indepen- 
 dence of thought that seemed to his relations to promise 
 ill for his success in life. 
 
 One or two incidents of those early days are yet 
 remembered, which seem to have had in them the germs 
 of a nature afterwards to be noticeable enough. At 
 Corfu, when only nine years of age, he used frequently 
 to fling himself into deep water, although quite unable 
 to swim, trusting to some older companion to take him 
 out. Again, at Woolwich, a few years later, it is told 
 of him that being once threatened with deprivation of 
 a promised visit to a great circus in London on account 
 of some offence for which he did not think himself re- 
 sponsible, he afterwards stubbornly refused to be taken 
 to the treat, and persisted in his refusal to the end. 
 
 At ten years of age he was sent to school at Taunton, 
 where he remained until 1848, when he entered as a 
 cadet the Eoyal Military Academy at Woolwich, an 
 institution which had for governor at that period an old 
 Waterloo veteran, who had lost a leg in the campaign 
 of 1815. Gordon was now sixteen years of age, a youth 
 full of animal spirits, hating every semblance of injustice, 
 and not at all given to bow down before the outer signs 
 and tokens of authority — somewhat inclined, indeed, to 
 hold them cheaply, and by no means impressed by the 
 formidable aspect of government as it was personified in 
 
12 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the governor. " Never employ any one minus a limb 
 to be in authority over boys," he used to say in after- 
 life : "they are apt to be irritable and unjust." 
 
 He remained at the Military Academy four years, 
 having been put back six months for his commission on 
 account of some trifling breach of discipline. He appears 
 not to have been at all anxious about entering the army, 
 and it is curious to notice how frequently in later life he 
 expresses his complete carelessness as to remaining in 
 the service. 
 
 During the years between 1848 and 1852 there was 
 little indeed to fire the imagination of a young soldier. 
 The long peace which had followed Waterloo seemed 
 yet unbroken : military service presented a monotonous 
 aspect of garrison -routine varied only by change of 
 station. It is true that Paris had spoken in 1848; and 
 although her voice had sufficed to make half the kings 
 of Europe pull out from under their thrones the Consti- 
 tutions which they had put away thirty -three years 
 before, no one seemed to think that the utterance meant 
 more than a passing storm, and all believed that things 
 would lapse back again into the accustomed quiet. 
 
 Stopping a moment in the course of our narrative, 
 and letting thought travel off through space in this year 
 1848, when the boy-cadet has for the first time put on 
 the military uniform, we see the forces that are to mould 
 his life in the future beginning to assume shape. 
 The long peace is virtually over. The most glaring 
 wrongs of the Treaty of Vienna are being undone. 
 Italy is in revolt against Austria : the Latin races are 
 in ferment, and the contagion of their movement is 
 spreading over the Ehine and beyond the Alps. For a 
 
I APPOINTED SECOND LIEUT. IN ENGINEERS 13 
 
 moment it looks as though the Eevolution has suddenly 
 burst forth over three parts of Europe, with a fury that 
 will sweep before it every throne save that of Eussia. 
 And yet it was upon Russia that the revolutionary out- 
 burst of 1848 was destined indirectly to leave the most 
 lasting impression. It diverted the gaze of her despotic 
 ruler from his old enemy the Turk, who in this convulsion 
 of Europe stood alone. The armies of the Czar must first 
 stifle the Eevolution in Hungary. Five years later, when 
 his columns can turn their attention towards Constanti- 
 nople, the opportunity has passed away, and the " sick 
 man" has got powerful supporters to keep him longer on 
 his legs. And, going off in thought beyond the horizon of 
 Europe, we see in this year, 1848, a year of beginnings 
 destined to bear a strange share in the life of the obscure 
 Woolwich cadet. In a small river -island far up the 
 Nubian Nile an Arab child is born into the world about 
 this time. Thirty-six years later the lines of these two 
 lives will come together, and at the place where they meet 
 that prayer so often to be uttered by Gordon in the lone 
 spaces of his life, " May I be ground to dust if He will 
 but glorify Himself in me," will find its answer. 
 
 In the middle of the year 1852 young Gordon obtained 
 his commission as a second lieutenant of engineers. To 
 his father this appointment was a much greater source 
 of satisfaction than it was to himself. " While he is in 
 the Academy I feel I am like one sitting on a powder- 
 barrel," the old officer used to say. He knew the fierce 
 impatience that was in his son if wrong or injustice were 
 put upon the boy ; but he did not know that beneath 
 the spirit of hatred against authority wrongly used there 
 lay a nature certain to be great, whether any letters of 
 
14 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, i 
 
 rank or profession were coupled or were not coupled with 
 his name. This unnoticed boy was of the stuff which no 
 profession can add honour to, but which can do much 
 to honour what it touches. 
 
 Then after Woolwich came Chatham, where the young 
 officer was still further to learn the lessons of the Master 
 of the Art of Defence, so great in greater things than 
 siege or safe keeping of cities. Perhaps in the library 
 of the barracks or on the old lines of Brompton the young 
 sapper read the lesson that Vauban has left in his letter 
 bo Louvois — a lesson of deeper meaning in the safe keep- 
 ing of the citadel of self than any of his famous "systems." 
 "For I dare plainly to tell you," wrote the veteran 
 (marshal of France at last after his fifty-three sieges) to 
 the all-powerful Minister, " that in a question of strictest 
 honesty and sincere fidelity I fear neither the king, nor 
 you, nor all the human race together. Fortune had me 
 born the poorest gentleman in France, but in requital she 
 honoured me with an honest heart, so free from all sorts 
 of swindles that it cannot bear even the thought of them 
 without a shudder." 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 CRIMEA — BESSARABIA — ARMENIA 
 
 Charles Gordon was twenty -one years of age on 
 January 28th, 1854. It was a good year for a young 
 soldier to begin the life of a man. The long peace was 
 over : the Russians had passed the Pruth and crossed 
 the Danube : Silistria was besieged : Omar Pasha was a 
 popular favourite; and two English officers, who had 
 gone as volunteers to assist the garrison of Silistria in 
 its defence against General Luders, were the heroes of 
 the hour. 
 
 Looking back on that time from to-day it is not easy 
 to understand the state of the public mind at the moment 
 the nation was about to enter upon a great struggle with 
 Russia. 
 
 England was entirely unprepared for war. Waterloo 
 had not only put an end to the necessity of keeping the 
 fighting force of the kingdom in anything like readiness 
 to take the field, but it had done what was far more 
 harmful, it had allowed men to believe that our system, 
 or rather our want of system, was the right thing, and that 
 we had only to put twenty thousand or thirty thousand 
 men on a foreign shore and they would at once proceed to 
 do the rest. The military system which Wellington had 
 
i6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 slowly created was a personal one. It liad been evolved 
 by his strong practical mind out of the lessons of many 
 fruitless campaigns and abortive expeditions, the very 
 names of which are now forgotten, and the records of 
 which have to be sought for in the by-ways of history, and 
 it had been proved and made perfect in the five years' 
 fighting that lay between Talavera and Toulouse. But 
 perfect though it was both in its tactical and adminis- 
 trative branches, it was a purely personal system, an 
 unwritten law of the organisation of an army and of the 
 art of war, that died with the man who had devised it. 
 
 That part of this system which lay within the scope 
 of the regimental or subordinate staff-officer had indeed 
 been continued in a very high state of perfection. The 
 drill, the discipline, the manual exercises of firing, the 
 art of moving on parade, the interior economy of the 
 troops in barrack and cantonment had never been more 
 striking in their order and regularity; but the larger 
 staff'-organisation, the harmony of many parts working 
 towards a common purpose, the exact measure and pro- 
 portion of separate departmental responsibility, the 
 avenues along which the central authority reaches its 
 destination by the most direct means, and the vast and 
 complicated system by which an army in the field is fed, 
 moved, and kept in health — these vital principles of war 
 had become almost a forgotten science in the forty years' 
 inaction that followed Waterloo. Hence it had come 
 about that, when the drift of events in the East in 1853 
 ran us quickly into conflict with Eussia, our military 
 system was totally unprepared for the strain about to be 
 imposed upon it. 
 
 The army that sailed from Great Britain and Ireland 
 
II THE ARMY IN 1853-54 17 
 
 for the East in the early half of 1854 was the most 
 brilliant fighting force that had ever left our shores. It 
 was composed of soldiers of a type and bearing now rarely 
 to be seen, men of tall stature, sinewy frame,. well-chiselled 
 features, keen glance, and elastic figure, the pick and 
 flower of a population still chiefly a rural one, before 
 emigration and the competition of great railways in the 
 labour-market had relegated the recruiting sergeant to 
 lower levels in the social strata. Whatever troops could 
 do when put face to face with an enemy these men were 
 sure to do ; but many things have to happen in war before 
 this point is attained, and the fortune of a campaign 
 depends quite as much upon the proper execution of 
 these things as upon the actual fighting power of the 
 men in the ranks. In the absence of staff-organisation, 
 transport-trains, and efficient machinery of supply, the 
 magnificent veteran battalions that formed the army 
 of the Crimea went for the most part to graves which 
 were dug for them by other agencies than those of the 
 bullets and bayonets of their enemies. It is curious to 
 trace in the diaries and letters of some subordinate 
 actor in the Crimean drama the palpable evidence of 
 our unreadiness for war, all the more convincing in its 
 testimony because it does not appear to be conscious 
 of the moral which the writer is at the moment pointing. 
 Throughout the greater portion of 1854 young Gordon, 
 now a first lieutenant of engineers, was in garrison at 
 Pembroke Dock. In his letters to his family, then 
 in Gibraltar, he speaks of the trouble arising from 
 the frequent changes of uniform recently ordered. 
 Among many other long-ridden hobbies clothing and 
 equipment were then undergoing a vigorous process of 
 C 
 
l8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 '* swopping " at the moment the animals were in the mid- 
 stream of the siege of Sebastopol. 
 
 In December Gordon announces that he has suddenly- 
 received orders to proceed to the Crimea in charge of 
 wooden huts for the troops. The soldiers were already 
 beginning to die of exposure to cold on the bleak plateau 
 above Sebastopol, but the huts were only leaving England 
 at Christmas. Having put his wooden planks on board 
 colliers in Portsmouth, working at the task, he tells 
 us, from morn to night, Gordon started overland 
 through France for Constantinople. This work of 
 loading the colliers was destined to find strange repeti- 
 tion thirty years later. In the autumn of 1884 men 
 were at work from mom to night at this same Ports- 
 mouth wharf, loading vessels with wooden boats instead 
 of wooden huts, the object being to save the life of 
 this lieutenant of engineers. Both labours were in Vain. 
 The huts reached their destination after the army they 
 were to shelter was in its grave : the boats gained the 
 smooth water above the cataracts of the Nile when all 
 was over in Khartoum. 
 
 In mid- December Gordon left England, reached 
 Lyons by railway, took steamer thence for Valence, and 
 by rail to Marseilles, where he arrives on the night of 
 the sixteenth, " very tired," but not too tired to sit up 
 and write a letter to his mother, telling her of what he 
 has seen on his journey, " the pretty towns and villages, 
 vineyards and rivers, with glimpses of snowy mountains 
 beyond." In this letter from Marseilles we see the 
 earliest indication of that steadfast faith which in after 
 years is to be the mainspring of his character. He is to 
 leave Marseilles, ^^ D.V., on Monday for Constantinople." 
 
BALAKLA VA 19 
 
 On New Year's Day, 1855, he arrives at Balaklava. It 
 is the depth of the disaster of the winter. One of 
 Eussia's two greatest generals has begun his work \ and 
 although the young sapper, down in the sheltered 
 harbour of Balaklava, where his duty at first keeps him 
 employed, sees nothing, and hears little of what is going 
 on six miles away on the heights, there are many signi- 
 ficant passages in his letters. "I have not yet seen 
 Sebastopol," he writes on January 3d, "and do not 
 hear anything about the siege. We hear a gun now and 
 then. No one seems to interest himself about the siege, 
 but all appear to be engaged in foraging for grub." 
 Yes, all the tinsel was off by this time ; and that splendid 
 army which six short months before had left our shores, 
 so full of light-hearted hope and anticipation of easy 
 conquest, was now reduced to look for what food it 
 could pick up among the mud of Balaklava. Two days 
 later he says : " We have only put up two huts as yet, 
 but hope to do better soon." The cold is intense : 
 General Janvier is already beginning to show results. 
 " Lieutenant Daunt, Ninth Eegiment, and another officer 
 of some Sixtieth Eegiment, were frozen to death last 
 night, and two officers of the Ninety-third Eegiment 
 were smothered by charcoal. The streets of Balaklava 
 are a sight, with swell English cavalry and horse-artillery 
 carrying rations, and officers in every conceivable cos- 
 tume foraging for eatables." ^ 
 
 Another ten days go by, and for the first time Gordon 
 
 gets a glimpse of the besieged town. " I do not think I 
 
 ever saw a prettier city," he says, "it looks quite open, 
 
 and a Eussian steamer was cruising about inside the 
 
 ^ General Gordon's Letters from the Criviea : London 1884. 
 
20 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 harbour." Then comes a bit of news that would seem 
 to imply that the sailors in the Fleets outside the harbour 
 had turned into their hammocks for the remainder of 
 the winter. "Two of their [the Eussian] steamers came 
 out the other day and bombarded the French lines for 
 two hours, but our vessels were unable to move out to 
 attack them, as steam was not up. For the future it 
 will always be up." 
 
 And so with many little glimpses of work and weather, 
 camp and trench, sap and sortie, the great siege drags its 
 slow length along through the mud and misery of the 
 winter. February comes, the Eussians have actually 
 advanced their lines and are throwing up batteries six 
 hundred yards in front of their old works. " Our army 
 is a mere handful. The railway progresses slowly." 
 Writing on February 1st, he thinks "it will be com- 
 plete in three weeks." The winter is breaking up, he 
 hopes, "as young grass and crocuses are appearing," 
 but further on he begs that his bad writing may be 
 excused, " as my ink is frozen, and getting a dip breaks 
 the nib of my pen." March comes, the Eussians are 
 still advancing, they have made another battery three 
 hundred yards in advance of the last one. " This looks 
 serious ;" and very serious it proved. While the French 
 and English engineers had been for months blindly wast- 
 ing their efforts along a front of eight miles, digging and 
 mining in a hundred places, the great Eussian engineer 
 had found the real key of the city and forts on the south 
 side of the harbour, and the batteries which late in Feb- 
 ruary the besieged began to erect in advance of their ori- 
 ginal line of defence were afterwards, under the names of 
 Mamelon and MalakofF, to become the keys of the fortress. 
 
BEFORE SEBASTOPOL 
 
 Painful is it to trace through the letters of the young 
 engineer in the off moments of his rest the unmistak- 
 able evidence of deterioration in the material from 
 which the nation had now to supply the losses at Alma, 
 Inkermann, and Balaklava, and the still greater ravage 
 which cold, hunger, and exposure had made in the 
 splendid army which seven months earlier had left our 
 shores. 
 
 Spring came, the weather was splendid, the men 
 were "healthy and well-fed," guns fired, trenches were 
 dug, mine and countermine, sap, siege, and sortie went 
 on, but all the same there was something missing ; that 
 something was indeed there too, but it was lying under 
 the turf of Inkermann, or beneath the mounds that stood 
 so thick on Cathcart's Hill. 
 
 At length the moment for the great assault came. 
 At three in the morning of June 17th all the vast 
 array of guns and mortars, most of them of the largest 
 calibre then existing, opened fire along a front of six 
 miles. This terrific storm of shot and shell was con- 
 tinued without a break all through the day. The Rus- 
 sian guns at first replied slowly, then ceased their fire 
 almost wholly. From half -past two in the morning 
 of the 17th until seven in the evening Gordon had 
 been on duty in the trenches — sixteen and a half 
 hours, "rather a long spell" he calls it. Returning 
 to the camp he has something to eat, and finds an 
 order awaiting him to go down again at midnight to 
 the right attack. Upon reaching the trenches he finds 
 the columns mustering for the assault : there are six 
 other engineer subaltern officers and three captains. 
 There are to be three columns of assault — one for the 
 
22 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 salient of the Eedan, the other two to take the right 
 and left flanks of that work. In silence they reach 
 their respective points within the advanced trenches, 
 and sit down to await the signal which is to send so 
 many of them to death. 
 
 The short summer night is still over land and sea : the 
 lines, the batteries, and the forts are silent. If some 
 mental process could be discovered by which the work- 
 ings of a human brain could be read in moments such as 
 this, as the electric machine tells off the letters on the 
 telegraph -tape, what a curious study it would be ! 
 Waiting for the assault, — each human being busy with 
 the world of his memory : no sight or sound to take 
 thought away from the vast problem : darkness islanding 
 each atom from the community of thought and com- 
 panionship of feeling which light and sight give to men 
 bound upon a common danger. What earthly chord it is 
 that at such moments touches deepest the hearts of men, 
 an incident, which happened a little distance away from 
 the spot where Charles Gordon sat on that June morning, 
 will best show. 
 
 On the left attack, at the head of the South creek, 
 we were to make a feint attack upon the Eussian 
 batteries known as the Spur and Cemetary redoubts. 
 When the column which was to deliver this attack was 
 drawn up waiting for the moment to move forward, the 
 general officer commanding it addressed a few words to 
 the leading battalion — the Eighteenth Royal Irish Regi- 
 ment. 
 
 He told the men to carry themselves in the coming 
 assault " so that the mud cabins in their native land 
 would ring at the news," and so truly did those words 
 
II THE FIRST ASSAULT ON THE REDAN 23 
 
 strike the hearts of the men who listened to them that, 
 despite the caution of silence, a loud cheer broke from 
 the battalion, and the charge immediately delivered was 
 pressed with such determination that the cemetary and 
 suburb of Sebastopol, adjacent to the creek, were cap- 
 tured. But the position was one which could not be 
 maintained while the Redan remained in the hands of 
 the Russians, and the main assault upon that work had 
 completely failed almost as soon as it was begun. 
 Gordon thus describes this main attack : "About 3 A.M. the 
 French advanced on the Malakoff tower in three columns, 
 and ten minutes after this our signal was given. The 
 Russians then opened with a fire of grape that was 
 terrific." In his report upon the bombardment of the 
 preceding day Gordon had stated that he believed the 
 silence of the Russian guns was owing to the fire being 
 reserved, not silenced. "They mowed down our men 
 in dozens, and the trenches, being confined, were crowded 
 with men who foohshly kept in them instead of rushing 
 over the parapet, and, by coming forward in a mass, 
 trusting to some of them at least being able to pass 
 through untouched to the Redan, where, of course, once 
 they arrived, the artillery could not reach them, and 
 every yard nearer would have diminished the effect of 
 the grape by giving it less space for spreading. We 
 could thus have moved up the supports and carried the 
 place. Unfortunately, however, our men dribbled out 
 of the ends of the trenches ten and twenty at a time, 
 and as soon as tliey appeared they were cleared away." 
 
 The space between the advanced trenches and the 
 Redan was about four hundred yards in length ; across 
 this open ground twelve heavy guns vomited grape-shot ; 
 
24 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the heads of the three columns withered away before they 
 were well clear of the trenches. One of them indeed, 
 that destined to attack the left flank of the Eedan, did 
 succeed in reaching the abattis of the work, but it was 
 the front fringe of the column that got thus far, only to 
 leave its gallant leaders, Jesse and Graves, the most 
 advanced in that densely-filled field of dead. 
 
 Thus ended the assault of June 18th. We had 
 lost some fourteen hundred killed and wounded, 
 while our allies, in their fruitless attempt upon the 
 MalakofF, had suffered a loss of four times that number. 
 Over four thousand Eussians had fallen in these early 
 morning hours. 
 
 A few days later Lord Eaglan died. The blow of this 
 failure to carry the place was too much for the old man. 
 The old army was gone, the generals of division were 
 all dead or invalided ; it was time for the leader, who 
 forty years earlier had given his right arm in the service 
 of his country, now to add his w^orn-out frame to the 
 offering. 
 
 For three months more the work went on again. 
 Nearly forty times has Gordon been on duty in the 
 trenches, twenty hours each time — "More than a 
 month straight on end," he writes. "It gets tedious 
 after a time, but if anything is going on one does not 
 mind." 
 
 The opposing lines of trench and battery are now 
 close together : 68-pounders, 32-pounders, 11 and 13-inch 
 mortars, Lancaster guns, small cohorns, and rifles go on 
 all day long. "When the 13 -inch shell drops, you see 
 timber, platforms, men, gabions, etc., all fly up in the 
 air as if a mine had exploded. The Eedan looks very 
 
II THE SECOND ASSAULT ON THE REDAN 25 
 
 sickly as we fire platoons of musketry all night to 
 prevent the Kussians repairing it, and give them shells 
 all day. The Eussians repay us with baskets of shells 
 5 1 inch, twelve at a time, each fired from a big mortar. 
 It requires to be lively to get out of their way." The 
 French are losing about a hundred men a day ; our loss 
 is a third of that number, but the end is now near. 
 
 Writing on August 10th Gordon speaks of another 
 assault as being soon probable. " If this does not suc- 
 ceed I think the raising of the siege not very unlikely, 
 but we know nothing." Not for another month does 
 the second assault take place. It differed from the pre- 
 ceding one in that it was made in noonday, and across 
 a very much narrower space of open ground, but the 
 result was the same as it had been before. " Our men 
 went forward well, losing apparently few, put the 
 ladders in the ditch and mounted on the salient of the 
 Eedan, but though they stayed there five minutes or more 
 they did not advance, and tremendous reserves coming 
 up drove them out. They returned well and without 
 disorder, losing in all one hundred and fifty officers and 
 two thousand four hundred men killed and wounded. 
 We should have carried everything before us if the men 
 had only advanced."' 
 
 Has it ever occurred to the nation to ask itself why 
 the men did not advance ? The following extract may 
 give the reason : — 
 
 ** It is said that as the first rush was made upon the salient 
 of the Redan, three old soldiers of the Forty-first Regiment 
 entered with Colonel Windham. The three men were named 
 Ilartnady, Kennedy, and Pat Mahony ; the last, a gigantic 
 
 ^ Letters from the Crimea. 
 
26 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 grenadier, was shot dead as be entered, crying ' Come on, boys, 
 come on.' There was more in the dying words of this Celtic 
 grenadier than the mere outburst of his heroic heart. The 
 garret-bred ' boys ' would not go on. It is in moments such 
 as this that the cabin on the hillside, the shieling in the 
 Highland glen, become towers of strength to the nation that 
 possess them. It is in moments such as this that between 
 the peasant-born soldier and the man who first saw the light 
 in a crowded ^ court,' between the cottier and the coster, there 
 comes that gulf which measures the distance between victory 
 and defeat — Alma and Inkermann on one side, the Redan on 
 June 18th and September 8th on the other." ^ 
 
 But the French had taken the MalakofF, and with it 
 went the south side of Sebastopol. Even in this hour 
 of final defeat the genius of the great Eussian engineer 
 was conspicuous. He had foreseen everything, he had 
 left nothing to chance. Realising that the Malakoff 
 must fall before the tremendous efforts which the French 
 general was making against it, he had begun a fortnight 
 or three weeks earlier the construction of a floating 
 bridge across the harbour, and all was ready before the 
 final moment came. 
 
 On the morning of September 9th, at four o'clock, 
 Gordon plodded the weary way from camp to trenches 
 on duty for the last time. Never before had the famous 
 fortress presented such a sight — "the whole town in 
 flames, and every now and then a terrific explosion." 
 
 The sun rose over the scene of ruin as the last of the 
 Russian columns crossed the bridge of boats. The great 
 siege was over. Never had a garrison marched out of the 
 scene of their sufferings heavier loaded with the honour 
 and glory of war. Just eleven months earlier the 
 hero KornilofF, struck down by a cannon shot in the 
 ^ A Flea for the Feasant. 
 
II END OP THE SIEGE 27 
 
 MalakofF bastion, had left a last message to his country- 
 men : " Now, gentlemen, I leave you to defend Sebas- 
 topol. Do not surrender it. Tell all how pleasant it 
 is to die when conscience is at rest." 
 
 Truly had the Russian soldiers and sailors kept 
 faith with their dead admiral. Of the ninety thousand 
 men killed and wounded in the eleven months' siege at 
 least half had fallen on or around the Malakoff hill. 
 
 Throughout the record that Gordon has left in his 
 letters of the siege of Sebastopol the reader becomes 
 aware of some marked characteristics. First a complete 
 absence of self-praise or anything approaching even to 
 the recital of his own particular doings which a young 
 man writing to his nearest relatives might, without any 
 reproach of vanity, have allowed himself. In all those 
 long hours of duty in the trenches he has a hundred 
 scenes of siege warfare to speak of, but his own part in 
 any event seldom finds relation. Once he gives a bit of 
 detailed experience which shows that early in the siege 
 the quality of our troops had begun to deteriorate : — 
 
 "The night of February 14th I was on duty in the 
 trenches. . . . The French that night determined to join 
 their sentries on their right and our sentries on our left in 
 advance of their and our trenches. ... I got, after some 
 trouble, eight men with picks and shovels, and asked the 
 
 captain of the advanced trench. Captain of the Fourth, 
 
 to give me five double sentries to throw out in advance. It 
 was the first time he had been on duty here ; and, as for 
 myself, I never had, although I kept that to myself. I led 
 forward the sentries, going at the head of the party, and 
 found the sentries of the advance had not held the caves, 
 which they ought to have done after dark, so there was just 
 a chance of the Russians being in them. I went on, how- 
 ever, and though I did not like it, explored the caves almost 
 
28 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 alone. We then left two sentries on the hill above the 
 caves, and went back to get round and put two sentries be- 
 low the caves. However, j ust as soon as we showed ourselves 
 outside the caves and below them, bang ! bang ! went two 
 rifles, the bullets hitting the ground close to us. The sentries 
 with me retired in a rare state of mind, and my working-party 
 bolted, and were stopped with great difticulty. What had 
 really happened was this. It was not a Russian attack, but 
 the two sentries whom I had placed above the caves liadi fired 
 at uSf lost their caps, and bolted to the trench. Nothing 
 after this would induce the sentries to go out, so I got the 
 working-party to go forward with me. The Russians had, 
 on the report of our shots, sent us a shower of bullets, their 
 picket not being more than a hundred and fifty yards awdy. 
 I set the men to work, and then went down to the bottom of 
 the ravine, and found the French in strength liard at work also. 
 Having told them who we were, I returned to the trench, 
 
 where I met Colonel of the First Royals. I warned him, 
 
 if he went out, he would be sure to be hit by his own sentries 
 or the Russians. He would go, however, and a moment after- 
 wards was hit in the breast, the ball going through his coats, 
 slightly grazing his ribs, and passing out again without hurt- 
 ing him. I stayed with my working-party all night, and 
 got home very tired." ^ 
 
 Naturally the chief interest in the letters lies in the 
 glimpses they give us of a great historical event as it 
 was seen by a young actor in it, and, turning the telescope 
 the other way, the mind of the young man seen through 
 the memorable event. We read the failure, but its causes 
 are of course unnoticed ; a humble actor in the great 
 drama knew little of what was going on beneath the 
 surface. 
 
 Of the absence of proper system ; single, direct author- 
 ity in the supply-departments at home ; of the confusion 
 resulting from an attempt made at the eleventh hour of 
 ^ Letters from the Crimea. 
 
II THE CAUSES OF FAILURE 29 
 
 disaster to create a machinery of war-administration ; and 
 of the terrible dangers to the State which lie in the 
 friction between rival authorities at the base, the obscure 
 subaltern of engineers toiling at the far away front natur- 
 ally knew nothing. It is doubtful if even a tenth part 
 of all these errors was ever known to any one person. 
 In the very wonderment produced by the details of some 
 colossal blunder the main sources of disaster often escape 
 unquestioned. Of the warm clothing put into the same 
 ship that carried ammunition, and hence lost in the 
 great storm of November, because a vessel with am- 
 munition on board would not be allowed to enter the 
 harbour of Balaklava ; of the coffee that was first 
 carried to Balaklava and then brought back to Con- 
 stantinople because it was stored underneath cargo, 
 which could only be unloaded at the latter place; of 
 all the terrible list of stupidity and incompetence that 
 allowed an army to perish of the common needs of food 
 and clothing within five miles of a seaport and within 
 fourteen days' steaming of Portsmouth harbour the 
 nation knew as little after the war, and knows as little 
 to-day, as of the administrative details of the war of the 
 Spanish Succession. Nay, it would be a hopeful thought 
 to think that it even knew as much about the blunders 
 of its servants in 1854-55 as it does about the pecula- 
 tions of its contractors and the corruption of its generals 
 in 1704. If Marlborough was proved to have taken a 
 bribe on every loaf from the Jew baker who supplied the 
 army of Blenheim with bread, and if he " led troops to 
 the slaughter that a great number of officers might thereby 
 be knocked on the head in a battle, or against stone 
 walls, in order to fill his pockets by disposing of their com- 
 
30 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 missions/' he at least took care that his soldiers should 
 never be without food, and that the battles and the stone 
 walls should be brilliant victories and captured cities. 
 
 The war of France and England against Russia in 
 1854-55 is now far enough removed by time to enable 
 the present generation to estimate at least the main 
 direction of its effect upon history. The general effect 
 of a war is often to produce results totally unlooked for 
 by any of the principals engaged in it. Not only are 
 the original reasons, which were outwardly the cause or 
 the pretence of hostilities, lost sight of, but the secret 
 objects sought for become obscured or lost in the evolu- 
 tion of new issues. 
 
 To the three chief powers concerned the war of the 
 Crimea had three negative results. To Russia it brought 
 a delay in her southward march of perhaps twenty years ; 
 to her extension eastward it added renewed impetus. 
 The fortress of Sebastopol was a mistake for Russia. 
 Notwithstanding its magnificent harbour and its advan- 
 tageous position as the base of an offensive blow against 
 Constantinople, it was not a first-class defensive place, 
 for the power that had command of the sea could always 
 cut it off. 
 
 To England the war brought a loss of prestige in the 
 capacity of her generals, the efficiency of her military 
 system, and the ability of her administration to carry 
 on war. To France, who had borne two-thirds of the 
 burden and heat of the long siege, it brought results 
 still more disastrous. Her enemy was not Russia. 
 The march of the Sclav southwards or eastwards could 
 have only a remote importance to her; but anything 
 that weakened the power that lay at the other side of 
 
II RESULTS OF THE CRIMEAN WAR 31 
 
 Germany was a terrible blow to France. Napoleon 
 the Third was supposed to have deeply at heart the 
 reversal of the settlement of Europe, made in the Con- 
 gress of Vienna. If so, he should have better read the 
 aims and intrigues of the emperors and kings whose will 
 became the law to Europe at that time. Lewis the 
 Eighteenth was not much of a monarch, and Alexander 
 was by no means a friend to France ; but there was a 
 significance in the words spoken by the Russian ruler 
 to his French "brother" at the moment when Prussia 
 claimed Alsace and Lorraine in 1814 as part of her 
 plunder : " Stand fast, brother, stand fast, and I will 
 see that these provinces are not taken from you." 
 
 The war against Eussia, which France so lightly 
 entered upon in 1854, put into the hands of Prussia 
 fifteen years later the cheap price at which the neutrality 
 of Eussia could be assured in the dismemberment of 
 France. To be allowed to tear up the Treaty of Paris 
 of 1856 was inducement sufficient to Eussia to let Paris 
 stand alone in her agony in 1870-71. 
 
 The real gainers by the Crimean war were Sardinia 
 and Prussia, the first by knowing when to interfere with 
 her small army, the last by knowing how to abstain alto- 
 gether with her big one. 
 
 It was in the battle of the Tchemaya, fought in August 
 1855, that the first foundations of the present kingdom 
 of Italy were laid ; and while the arms of France, Eng- 
 land, and Eussia were proving at Alma, Inkermann, 
 Balaklava, and in the ten weary months of toil and 
 bloodshed of the trenches, that the old arms and tactics 
 of Frederick and Napoleon had become wholly obsolete, 
 Moltke was quietly watching the costly experiment, and 
 
32 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 had already begun to apply to the Prussian army the 
 lessons of change and improvement which the errors 
 and failures of the rival antagonists were teaching. 
 
 "The last of the old sieges," Gordon had called that 
 of Sebastopol. Of the old battles, old arms, old cannon, 
 he might have added, and sorrowfully also have said, " the 
 last of the old army too." But the end of the siege was 
 not to end the labours of the army; still less of its 
 engineer officers. The conquest of Sebastopol was a 
 barren one. " As for plunder," writes Gordon, " there 
 is literally nothing but rubbish and fleas ; the Russians 
 have carried off* everything else. They left their pictures 
 in the churches, which form consequently the only spoil, 
 and which I do not care about buying." The italics are 
 not Gordon's, but the sentence shows the respect for 
 religion in any and every form, which later on is to be 
 the ruling principle in his life. 
 
 Three weeks after the fall of Sebastopol an expedition 
 was sent against Kinburn, at the mouth of the Dnieper. 
 Here, at the extremity of a long sandy spit, stood the 
 fort of Kinburn or Kilburn, as it is variously spelt, 
 guarding the entrance to the Liman, as the em- 
 bouchure of the Rivers Bug and Dnieper is called. 
 The original idea of fortifying this point belongs to an 
 Englishman. It was Paul Jones, the famous sea-rover, 
 privateer, pirate, or hero, as he is variously named by 
 his enemies and friends, who first suggested to Suwarow 
 that the spit of land should have a fort constructed upon 
 its extremity. The attack of the fort by the Fleet was 
 the butterfly and the Nasmyth hammer. More than 
 eight hundred guns thundered against eighty during 
 four hours ; then the place surrendered. It was exactly 
 
II KINBURN— PROSPECTS OF PEACE 33 
 
 a year since the first bombardment of Sebastopol by 
 land and sea had taken place. 
 
 The second winter came, and the work of destroying 
 the docks at the south side went on. Gordon's letters 
 were no more headed "Camp before Sebastopol." He 
 is now at work in mining the docks and blowing up the 
 forts, wharves, locks, and granite buildings of the Arsenal. 
 
 Both armies appear to be weary of the struggle ; the 
 Russians in huts over on the north side, the allies com- 
 fortably hutted and well-fed on the old plateau between 
 Mount Sapoune and Balaklava. 
 
 Meanwhile negotiations for peace are going on. 
 Although the war has been little more than one long 
 siege, the drain upon all the powers engaged has been 
 enormous. Three armies have perished : France has spent 
 over eighty millions sterling; England more than half that 
 sum. Russia, obliged to carry on war in a remote corner 
 of her vast empire, without railroads, marching troops 
 enormous distances over the winter roads, has suffered a 
 loss of life and money impossible to estimate. As for 
 honour and glory, all sides had about equal shares, but 
 the failure to carry the Redan rankled deep in the mind 
 of the British army, and when Gordon writes in March 
 1856, "We do not, generally speaking, like the thought 
 of peace until after another campaign," he was uttering 
 the general opinion of the service. " I expect to remain 
 abroad for three or four years," he adds, " which individu- 
 ally I would sooner spend in war than in peace. There 
 is something indescribably exciting in the former." Then 
 came truce, armistice, and finally peace. 
 
 The Russians, now friendly, come up on the plateau : 
 we wander inland over the Tchernaya to Baidar and the 
 D 
 
34 JIPE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Katcha. Gordon rides to the Alma, has a look at the 
 battle-field, and returns to Sebastopol the same day, — "A 
 fifty-mile ride there and back over a grass country com- 
 pletely deserted." Another day he visits the north side 
 of Sebastopol, thinks it "strong, but the north or star 
 fort is a tumble-down affair, and not at all formidable," 
 and is certain that we should have attacked on that 
 side, and not upon the south. In May he takes advan- 
 tage of the interval between peace and embarkation to 
 run up along the south coast — the garden of the Crimea 
 — where there are no signs of strife, and the summer 
 palaces of the Kussian Court and nobility stand un- 
 touched, showing how completely the great siege had 
 centred and localised the ravages of war. 
 
 On May 18th Gordon finally quitted the Crimea, 
 and proceeded at once to join the frontier delimita- 
 tion survey in Bessarabia, where, during the succeeding 
 eleven months, he was engaged in the work of travelling 
 along and fixing the new frontier between Eussia and the 
 Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, two 
 names which were shortly after to disappear from the 
 political map of Europe, and to become merged into 
 Koumania. 
 
 The corner of Europe which lies between the Car- 
 pathian Mountains and the Black Sea presented in the 
 level sameness of its surface a singular mixture and 
 diversity of race and religion, and in a sweep of vision 
 around a single standpoint all the varying characteristics 
 of the three empires which there come together could be 
 seen and studied. Turk, Austrian, and Eussian then 
 met on the line of the Pruth. At the close of the war 
 in the Crimea it almost looked as if the slow movement 
 
II THE FRONTIER—SURVEY IN BESSARABIA 35 
 
 of Kussia southwards had at last been effectually stayed, 
 and that the Danube would in future be a barrier be- 
 tween Moslem and Muscovite ; but even in the letters 
 written by Gordon during his year's work along the 
 Pruth the reader can gather a good deal of the true 
 causes which underlie the surface of what seems only 
 the aggression of a great and powerful despotism : the 
 feasant is tvith the Russian. ''The Jews swarm in the 
 towns. The doctors, priests, shopkeepers, and mechanics 
 are Germans, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews," but "Rus- 
 sian and Moldavian are the only languages spoken by 
 the peasants." "The newly ceded territory is in great 
 disorder. The inhabitants refuse to obey the Moldaves 
 and own nobody's authority. This is caused, I suspect, 
 by Russian intrigues." Already there were cracks in the 
 foundation of the new settlement. 
 
 In April 1857 Gordon sees Lord Stratford de Red- 
 clifFe at Constantinople. The great " Elthchi " questions 
 the young engineer about the new frontier. " He wished 
 that we had held out for the whole of Bessarabia when 
 it would have been worth having." So, no doubt, it 
 would, but Napoleon the Third had begun to see the 
 mistake he had made in fighting Russia, and already he 
 was anxious to conciliate her. It was too late. The 
 Treaty of Paris of 1856 must be blotted out thirteen 
 years later in the ashes of the Second Empire. 
 
 From Constantinople Gordon goes in early May to 
 Trebizonde, visiting Sinope by the way, where the wrecks 
 of the Turkish ships sunk by the Russians in 1853 are 
 still to be seen. From Trebizonde he proceeds to 
 Erzerum, and begins at once the work of the commis- 
 sion, which is to verify the new frontier line between 
 
36 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Russia and Turkey in Asia. Here, for the first time, he 
 is face to face with a state of society almost savage ; the 
 roads are mere tracks practicable for horses only, and 
 at walking pace. "No such thing as a wheeled carriage 
 is to be seen." "The inhabitants are very poor and in 
 their primitive condition. They sleep in houses which 
 serve as stables and dwelling-places at the same time." 
 His Tursh confrere in the work of demarcation has been 
 unable to procure any money from his Government to 
 defray the expenses of the journey, and in lieu of money 
 he has been told to take any horses or mules he could 
 lay his hands on. This direction he obeys by stopping 
 the caravans on their way from Persia to Constantinople, 
 throwing off the goods, putting his own traps upon the 
 empty pack-saddles, and carrying off the animals. 
 
 During the next six months Gordon was engaged on 
 the frontier work. In June he visits the wonderful ruins 
 of Ani, once the old capital of Armenia, now a marvellous 
 scene of ruin, standing upon the mountain side with its 
 lava-built palace and immense number of churches roof- 
 less and silent, in a vast solitude. Next month he is 
 camping with the Kurds, climbs and all but reaches the 
 summit of Ararat, that great solitary mass of lava and 
 snow which from a height of nigh seventeen thousand 
 feet looks down upon Armenia, Georgia, and Erivan. 
 In August he visits Lazistan, the people of which State 
 *' supply the Constantinople Turks with slaves whom they 
 kidnap from the Gourelians who are on the Eussian 
 side." In the preceding "eighteen months sixty- two 
 people have been kidnapped, sixteen killed, and twenty 
 or thirty wounded on the part of the Gourelians."^ 
 ^ Letters from Armenia : London, 1884. 
 
ARMENIA 37 
 
 Twenty years later Gordon was destined to visit the 
 other extreme of the Turkish slave trade, and to see in 
 the sands of the Soudan and the swamps of the Equatorial 
 Nile the same infamous traffic which Russia was here 
 slowly stamping out in the mountains of Circassia and 
 Kurdistan. 
 
 Gordon returned to England in November 1857, after 
 an absence from home of nearly three years. That 
 long interval had been spent in incessant labour. War, 
 travel, and the practical study of his profession had filled 
 the entire time. Seldom had such varied experience 
 fallen to the lot of one so young. On all the shores of 
 the Black Sea he had seen and lived with the oldest and 
 the newest among the nations of men, and had looked 
 at their lives laid bare by the hard hand of war. 
 The chance had not been thrown away. He left Eng- 
 land a boy, he came back to it a man. Years later 
 it was to be said of him that he had read only one book 
 — the Bible — but the world holds many books besides 
 those that are on the shelves of its libraries, and in the 
 unwritten volumes of its greatest works, in the university 
 of its universe, Gordon during these three years had not 
 many equals of his age. 
 
 The winter of 1857-58 was spent at home. It was 
 the time of the great Sepoy Mutiny : the horrors of 
 Cawnpore had suddenly revealed to the nation the fact 
 that beneath the veneer of the civilisation which we 
 had introduced into India lay a ferocity as cruel as ever 
 existed in the worst days of Moghul or Mahratta power. 
 But history, writing a hundred years hence, will pro- 
 bably concern itself not so much with the cruelties of 
 Asiatics, debauched and degraded by centuries of ignor- 
 
38 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 ance and depravity, as with the spectacle of deliberate 
 vengeance practised by the victors, which was alike un- 
 worthy of a great or a civilised nation. 
 
 After spending the winter with his people in England 
 Gordon started in the spring of 1858 again for Armenia, 
 travelling by way of Constantinople. The steamer from 
 Odessa called at Sebastopol and made a stay there of 
 twenty-four hours. Gordon visits the city, the forts, the 
 graveyards, and the site of the old camp. *' The grass 
 has so overgrown the place where the camp stood," he 
 says, " that it was with difficulty I found my hut. The 
 graveyards are well cared for, but covered with grass. 
 The Eussian works and our trenches have subsided into 
 insignificant heaps, and give no idea of their original size. 
 I thought we had dug up every root, but at present 
 small oak bushes about fifteen inches high are springing 
 up everywhere, and in five years more the ground will 
 be scarcely known again." 
 
 The wiseacre who said Gordon had only read one 
 book had surely forgotten this day amongst the ruins of 
 Sebastopol in May 1858; there were a good many 
 volumes lying open in these grass-grown hillocks, and 
 some philosophy to be learned in the oak-groves which 
 sun and shower were already raising out of the bones 
 and cinders of the great siege. 
 
 The summer of 1858 was passed in the mountains 
 south of the main range of the Caucasus, again tracing 
 the boundary line between Turkey and Russia, through 
 forests where the track has to be cut as they proceed, 
 and over mountains where " life is more the work of an 
 animal than anything else." There is a good deal of 
 friction between his Russian and Turkish fellow-labourers, 
 
II HOME AGAIN AFTER ACTIVE SERVICE 39 
 
 and " my work consists chiefly in arranging the affairs of 
 my two colleagues, such as finding the pyramids we placed 
 last year, and which the inhabitants have carefully de- 
 stroyed, finding out the line to be cut in the woods, and 
 in generally keeping the two others from squabbling." 
 This is on August 17th. Writing three weeks later 
 he says : ''I am pretty tired of my post of peacemaker, 
 for which I am naturally not well adapted." He 
 is evidently tired of the frontier work, for in the same 
 letter he writes : " I am quite in the dark as to how my 
 mission has been fulfilled, but it is really immaterial to 
 me, for I will not accept other work of such an anomalous 
 character." In November 1858 he turns back to the 
 Black Sea, and travelling by Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin, 
 through "scenery the finest I ever saw," reaches Con- 
 stantinople on the 16th, and is in England at the end 
 of the month. 
 
 The four years which, with one short interval, Gordon 
 had spent abroad, were years full of consequence to the 
 world. Everywhere in Europe a new spirit had ap- 
 peared — a spirit which, acting by the interior strength of 
 peoples, was destined to undo much of the old system of 
 check and counter-check, poise and balance, which Metter- 
 nich and Castlereagh had imposed upon an exhausted 
 Continent. Not without great wars and struggles were 
 these changes to be consummated. Meanwhile that long- 
 standing chronic disease of the European body politic, 
 the Eastern Question, which, stripped of temporary issues 
 and passing aspects, is only the old struggle of Cross 
 against Crescent, of Europe against Asia, had been laid 
 in temporary rest on the plateau of Sebastopol. The 
 stipulations drawn up and boundaries laid down with 
 
40 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, ii 
 
 SO much care were destined, like the stone pyramids 
 and wooden marks which the inhabitants of Armenia 
 and Lazistan had so quickly levelled, to disappear before 
 a march which, whatever may be its final destiny, so far 
 eats deep, as it moves, into the features of the land and 
 the minds of men. 
 
 When Gordon came back to England after the four 
 years so filled with war, travel, and exploration, his mind 
 was fixed in the lines it was henceforward to move in. 
 He had drunk, and drunk deeply, at that spring which, 
 when it is once tasted, can never be forgotten ; he had 
 learned to read the great book which the earth opens to 
 those of her children who care to seek its knowledge. 
 Henceforth he is to be at home in the solitude, his mind 
 is to have the power of peopling with thought the forest 
 depth or the gray desert wilderness, and only in cities 
 and in crowds is the loneliness of life to be possible to 
 him. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 CHINA 
 
 The country which was now to become the scene of the 
 labours of Charles Gordon, and in which the great 
 qualities of his mind were soon to force him into the 
 foremost rank among the men of action of his time, was 
 of all lands the one least likely to offer scope for the 
 successful display of a stranger's genius. Satisfied with 
 a civilisation peculiar to itself, looking back to a remote 
 history which, in comparison, made modern the life of 
 every contemporary nation in the world, possessing the 
 moral strength that lies in the best qualities of conser- 
 vatism, — love and veneration for departed worth, — and 
 having the physical life of its entire executive adminis- 
 tration endowed with the vigour derived from a system 
 which made education the sole test of place and power, 
 China might well have seemed a land as sealed against 
 the efforts of outside individual energy as its commerce 
 had long been closed to the mercantile activity of the 
 world. Nor were there any great moral truths previously 
 unknown, or new mechanical discoveries on the incoming 
 flow of which a stranger might hope to attain prominence 
 in China. The people that had used gunpowder a thou- 
 sand years before it was known to Europe, that had 
 
42 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 guided ships with the aid of the mariner's compass since 
 the second century, that had been aware of the circulation 
 of the blood and had inoculated for the small-pox long 
 centuries before the days of Harvey and of Jenner, and 
 with whom the most beautiful productions of the silk- 
 loom and the ceramic art go back into an unrecorded 
 antiquity, were not likely to bow down before the 
 advent of a stranger who in his own land was then 
 unknown, and who came as an unnoticed soldier in a 
 hostile army which had just taken the capital city of the 
 Empire. But before we begin this period of Gordon's 
 life, the most remarkable save one in his whole career, it 
 will be advisable to speak a few words upon the nature 
 of the service which brought him to China. 
 
 In the long series of English wars with China which 
 began in 1839-40, opium was from first to last the cause 
 of quarrel. However skilfully minor incidents may have 
 been seized upon to hide the true reason of conflict, 
 impartial history has now stamped its verdict upon this 
 discreditable page of our history. The real matter 
 in dispute between the two nations had all the sim- 
 plicity that lies in the distinction between black and 
 white, between abstract right and abstract wrong. In 
 forcing our opium upon China we were reversing the 
 alternative of money or life given by the highway- 
 man to his victim. We were demanding life and money 
 at the same moment. Opium to the Chinaman was 
 death and worse than death, and in endeavouring to 
 keep this terrible new poison, for it was entirely a 
 novelty, from their shores, the Government of China 
 were only fulfilling the first obligation of rulers — the 
 protection of the lives of their people. There is nothing 
 
Ill THE OPIUM TRADE 43 
 
 clearer in history than the sincerity of the Chinese 
 Government in their action regarding opium. At any 
 moment it was possible for them to create out of the 
 trade in the drug the most lucrative sources of Chinese 
 revenue ; or, had their object been merely the injury of 
 the foreign grower and carrier, they had only to grow at 
 home the plant which yielded the poison ; but they 
 would neither tax nor produce. ''It is a principle of 
 the Chinese Government," wrote our own agent, " not to 
 license what they condemn as immoral. I know they 
 glory as to the superiority in principle of their own 
 Government, and scorn those Governments that tolerate 
 such vices, and convert them into a source of pecuniary 
 advantage or public revenue." Never, perhaps, in the 
 history of nations has a Government received from its 
 enemies such a tribute to the integrity of its motives 
 and the justice of its actions. But justice counts for 
 little where human interests are deeply concerned, and 
 as the production of opium was a Government mono- 
 poly in India that yielded many million pounds to the 
 revenue, the trade with China was to be enforced at the 
 cannon's mouth. It was little wonder that, in the face 
 of such experience in diplomatic intercourse with a 
 foreign State, a Chinese Minister should say, "Reason 
 has no place in the judgments of those people. It is 
 not rule but misrule that guides them." 
 
 The war which broke out in 1860, although indirectly 
 the residt of the more than strained relations produced 
 by long -continued struggles, arising from the forced 
 introduction of opium, did not directly spring from that 
 fertile source of quarrel. Tlie prestige of our arais 
 had received a severe blow in the repulse of the 
 
44 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 squadron at the Taku Forts in the Tientsin Eiver, and 
 for once we were entering into quarrel with China 
 with clean hands. The war did not last long : the 
 Chinese had placed all their hopes of defence in the 
 forts at Taku, guarding the Tientsin E-iver, the ap- 
 proach to the capital. These forts were captured 
 without difficulty in August, and Pekin was shortly 
 afterwards occupied by the Allied Forces. Eight 
 miles to the north-west stood the park, gardens, and 
 palace of the Yuen-Ming- Yuen, the Summer Palace, the 
 Versailles of the Emperor of China. Here, amid an 
 expanse covering twelve square miles of ground, all the 
 ingenious diversities and embellishments of Chinese 
 architectural and horticultural art had been exhausted 
 to produce a terrestrial paradise; lakes, rivulets, cas- 
 cades, pagodas, rocks, open spaces, and woodlands formed 
 the varied setting to the numerous palaces of marble, 
 porcelain, and cedar wood which in turn surrounded the 
 central residence of the Emperor. This beautiful monu- 
 ment of Eastern art, "the garden of perpetual bright- 
 ness," was devastated and burnt by order of the English 
 Envoy in retaliation for the imprisonment and murder 
 of certain British and French prisoners. It is difficult 
 to believe that the perpetration of such an act of van- 
 dalism could be possible in these later days o-f the world 
 by men who were supposed to represent the most ad- 
 vanced civilisation. In all ages of war burning has 
 been the peculiar stamp of barbarism. It is at once 
 the easiest act of rapine, and the one which history 
 remembers longest against the spoiler. If the Chinese, 
 in the ignorance of their pride, had imagined the outside 
 world to be barbarians, the senseless destruction of the 
 
Ill VISIT TO THE GREAT WALL 45 
 
 Yuen -Ming -Yuen could hereafter be pointed to as a 
 tangible proof of the truth of that belief. That this 
 act of vandalism was repugnant to Gordon we cannot 
 doubt. "You can scarcely imagine the beauty and 
 magnificence of the palaces we burnt," he writes. "It 
 made one's heart sore to destroy them. It was 
 wretchedly demoralising work." 
 
 During these events Charles Gordon had filled the 
 subordinate part of a captain of engineers attached to 
 a large expeditionary force. He had arrived in China 
 after the Taku Forts had fallen, and, when the capture 
 of Pekin put an end to hostilities, his work became the 
 usual routine description of sapper life, the hutting of 
 troops in the new camp at Tientsin, the preparation for 
 a winter which was colder than that of the old plateau of 
 the Chersonese. 
 
 In this camp at Tientsin, amid a vast level salt plain, 
 fertile but inexpressibly dreary, a year and a half passed 
 away, broken only by an occasional visit to Pekin, and 
 one expedition to the Great Wall at Suen-hoo, two 
 hundred miles north-west of the capital. It was mid- 
 winter when he reached this great landmark of old 
 Tartar times, stretching in an unbroken line over moun- 
 tain and plain, carried over rivers and across hilltops 
 until its crenellated battlements and square towers are 
 lost in remote horizons ; fifteen hundred miles long, two 
 thousand years old, built to stop the Tartar, but now 
 having the Tartar reigning behind it. A book with a 
 good deal of teaching in it, even where the sand has 
 drifted against it, and time has crumbled its towers 
 into the level of the plains. 
 
 While Gordon was travelling along this old northern 
 
46 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 defence of China against the Tartar, an enemy more 
 desolating than the hosts of Genghis Khan was working 
 havoc in the most fertile provinces of the Middle Empire 
 seven hundred miles south of Pekin. Profiting by the 
 withdrawal of the Imperial forces to resist the advance of 
 the Allied Armies towards the capital, the Taiping rebels 
 moving from the southern provinces of China had overrun 
 the wide delta of the Yang-tse-Kiang, the centre of the 
 richest industries and the garden of the Empire. City 
 after city had fallen before them. Nankin, the ancient 
 capital of the southern Empire; Soo-chow, the fresh- water 
 Venice of the East; Hang-chow, the gate of the great 
 imperial canal, had all been carried, and, with a foreign 
 army in possession of Pekin, and the fairest provinces 
 desolated by a successful rebellion, it might well have 
 seemed that the last hour of the Empire had struck, and 
 that the oldest civilisation in the world was tottering to 
 its final fall. But the rivets that hold together the 
 marvellous fabric of Chinese dominion were made of 
 stronger material than even such disasters could disrupt. 
 It is the storm that proves the ship. The confidence 
 which every individual of the three hundred million souls 
 in China feels in the absolute right, truth, power of their 
 system of government was not mistaken or misplaced, 
 and no sooner had peace been made with the northern 
 invaders than the Imperial forces turned their attention 
 to the middle provinces, where, like a fire long left 
 uncontrolled, the Taiping rebellion was now sweeping 
 everything before it. 
 
 The two years during which this revolt had been 
 allowed to gather head had made a vast difference in 
 its power. The possession of the delta of the Yang-tse- 
 
THE TAIPING REBELLION 47 
 
 Kiang had given the Taipings access to the foreign 
 trade, and thus put them in possession of whatever 
 money could purchase of guns, small arms, and muni- 
 tions of war. A mercantile community long accustomed 
 to regard the smuggling of opium as a reputable and 
 legitimate branch of commerce was not likely to be 
 hindered by qualms of conscience from selling arms and 
 ammunition to any one who would pay for them. For 
 one hundred miles north-west and south-west of Shanghai 
 a vast network of creeks, canals, rivers, and water-courses 
 intersected the entire surface of the country, offering 
 unequalled opportunities for smuggling, but the occupa- 
 tion of Ningpo and many other seaports had given the 
 Taipings access to the ocean, and enabled them to treat 
 direct with the foreign traders. What this trade was 
 may be judged from the seizure of a single English ship, 
 which was found to contain three hundred pieces of ord- 
 nance, several thousand rifles and revolvers, and fifty tons 
 of ammunition. Thus sedulously fed by foreign mer- 
 chants, the Taiping rebellion continued to roll on with ever- 
 increasing volume, constantly demanding fresh plunder to 
 supply it with the sinews of war, and drawing to its ranks 
 a daily deepening stream of the piratical and robber ele- 
 ment, which a demoralising illicit trade of half a century's 
 duration had called into life along the coasts of China. 
 
 Fortunately for the cause of right and truth in the 
 Empire, the conflagration thus fed and fostered was 
 destined before long to threaten the very existence of 
 the foreign trading communities of Shanghai, and to force 
 into joint action of repression the Imperial authorities 
 and the foreign residents. 
 
 In 1860, while the Allied Forces were advancing 
 
48 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 against Pekin, the smoke and flames of burning villages 
 within sight of Shanghai warned the inhabitants of that 
 city of the near approach of the Taiping hordes. There 
 were no troops to resist the threatened attack. In the 
 presence of a common calamity the Imperial mandarins 
 and the foreign residents joined hands to resist the new 
 invader, and a force was hastily got together, raised by 
 an American living in Shanghai, officered from the 
 floating population of foreigners, recruited among the 
 militia and peasants of the neighbourhood, and paid for 
 by the Imperial Government. The man to whom the 
 initiation, organisation, discipline, and earlier successes 
 of this force is due was an American named Ward, a 
 civilian whose name has been too much lost sight of in 
 the subsequent renown of a more celebrated man, but 
 who was unquestionably a natural leader of men, a brave 
 and skilful soldier, possessing all the qualities which, 
 had not death cut short his career, might easily have 
 attained to a reputation not inferior to that of Clive. 
 Ward fell while leading on his men to the assault of a 
 city fifteen miles from Ningpo in September 1862. In 
 the two years of his short military life he had fought 
 some seventy engagements without once suffering defeat. 
 The force had gradually increased from a company of 
 one hundred men to a body numbering two thousand, 
 with two batteries of artillery ; and so well had its efforts 
 succeeded in re-establishing confidence in the Govern- 
 ment at Pekin, that an Imperial edict announced, in 
 the grandiloquent language so dear to the Chinese official 
 mind, that henceforth the little disciplined force of 
 Shanghai was to bear the high-sounding title of the 
 " Chang-sheng-Chume, " or the "Ever-victorious Army," 
 
Ill EARLY OPERATIONS AGAINST THE T AIRINGS 49 
 
 For six months before the death of Ward the efforts 
 of his army and of the larger armies of the Imperial 
 generals around Shanghai had been assisted by strong 
 naval and military detachments from both the English 
 and French forces, which had moved from Tientsin to 
 Shanghai. Thus a pressure had been brought to bear upon 
 the Taiping enemy which soon cleared him for a radius 
 of thirty or forty miles from the country around Shanghai. 
 This result had not been achieved without loss to the 
 Allies. Admiral Protet, commanding the French squad- 
 ron, was killed in the assault of Nan-jae, twenty miles 
 south of Shanghai ; other English and French officers 
 had fallen, but as a rule the rapid bombardment of a 
 city wall at close range had been followed by a rush up 
 the breach, a fight, and a stampede of rebels through 
 lanes and enclosures, creeks and canals, where forces 
 skilfully placed to cut off fugitives had worked havoc 
 among them. In all these operations Gordon had taken 
 a prominent part as the senior engineer officer with the 
 English contingent, sometimes pushing on to reconnoitre 
 a city wall to the very edge of the moat which ran in 
 front of it, often placing guns in an advanced position, 
 laying boats to bridge some creek for the storming 
 parties to reach the foot of the breach, and always sketch- 
 ing and surveying the tangled web of canal and water- 
 course, which at first sight seemed to render the theatre 
 of operations a most difficult field of warfare, but which, 
 when once fully understood by a leader possessing tho 
 true genius of attack, gave rare opportunities for the 
 display of boldness, nice calculation, and strategical skill. 
 When the Taiping rebels had been driven from the 
 thirty-five mile radius around Shanghai, the English and 
 
50 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 French contingents ceased to co-operate with the Chinese 
 forces, and Gordon no longer took an active part in the 
 hostilities which still went on between the rebels and 
 the Imperialists ; but he continued the work of surveying 
 the rivers, creeks, and cities of that portion of the pro- 
 vinces of Kiang-soo and Chi-kiang which lay within 
 the limits of the conquered region. 
 
 Meanwhile many changes had taken place in the 
 Ever-victorious Army. Ward had been succeeded by 
 another American, named Burgevine, a man by no means 
 wanting in courage, but wholly unfitted by character 
 and temper for command. Burgevine, having grievously 
 insulted a mandarin, was dismissed from the army, and 
 the command passed to Holland, an English officer of 
 the marine service. Despite a thorough reorganisation 
 of the force, it was soon destined to suffer its first 
 defeat. On February 22d, 1863, the city of Tait-san was 
 attacked in the usual manner of bombardment at close 
 range and assault, but care was not taken to ensure exact 
 knowledge of the ground leading to the breach, and the 
 presence of a broad and deep wet ditch in the immediate 
 front of the city wall was unknown. Checked by this ob- 
 stacle, the columns of assault were thrown into confusion 
 and beaten back with heavy loss. Sixteen English and 
 other European officers, and four hundred and fifty of the 
 men were killed and wounded in this disastrous affair. 
 This defeat was shortly followed by another repulse at 
 the breach of the fortified city of Shaon-shing, where the 
 French officer in command was killed, with many others 
 of the force. These mishaps soon produced the inevit- 
 able consequences of disaster among troops whose 
 discipline is imperfect ; a spirit of dissension and mutiny 
 
Ill COMMAND OF EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY 51 
 
 appeared. It was felt on all sides that a leader of men 
 was required to keep the army together, and the officer 
 commanding the English troops at Shanghai, with whom 
 the selection practically rested, named Major Gordon 
 for command. Thus on March 24th, 1863, Gordon 
 stepped out for the first time from that inevitable 
 environment of the mass which so often keeps entangled 
 in its folds men on whom Nature has conferred great 
 gifts. Fate, it is said, knocks once at every man's door, 
 but sometimes it is when the shadows are gathering and 
 the fire is beginning to bum slow. Not so this time. 
 Gordon had just passed his thirtieth year when Fortune 
 not only knocked at, but threw open, the door which 
 was to lead him to fame. 
 
 The origin of the Taiping rebelhon, which thus far had 
 run its desolating course through the southern provinces 
 of China, lies still in oblivion. China, with all its long 
 history of settled government, has been subject to fierce 
 storms of rebellion, which have generally been produced 
 by the teaching of some enthusiast intent upon the new 
 and strange in philosophy rather than the effort of any 
 class or political party in the State to alter social in- 
 equality or change a dynasty. Thus the rebellions of the 
 sects of the White Lily and of Celestial Eeason, both reli- 
 gious movements, spread ruin through many provinces 
 a few generations since, and were in some respects the 
 precursors of the Taiping movement of our time.^ 
 
 ^ This movement, beginning in the inland provinces of Central 
 China, liad assumed in its earlier stages a character of mock Chris- 
 tianity ; but, as time went on, plunder, outrage, and destruction of 
 property became its sole objects ; and when, in 1860, the conflict 
 between the Imperial and foreign powers began, the true nature of 
 the Taiping revolt had already been made apparent in countless 
 acts of atrocity. 
 
52 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 There are few mental tasks more difficult to the 
 ordinary reader than that of following through pages of 
 description the geographical position or physical con- 
 formation of some theatre of war : the reader who has 
 constantly to keep in his mind points of compass, lines 
 of advance, and the relative positions of contending forces 
 is apt to read himself into a vague state of perplexity 
 neither conducive to exactness of comprehension nor to 
 his individual interest in the study. If, therefore, we 
 take some well-known portion of England which in size 
 and shape, if not in physical feature, is somewhat similar 
 to the scene now to be the theatre of Gordon's exploits, 
 it may be easier to understand the general nature of the 
 campaign against the Taipings. 
 
 If we take for this purpose the counties of Kent, 
 Surrey, and Sussex, and give to them a low alluvial 
 surface, with the Yang-tse-Kiang as their northern 
 boundary instead of the Thames, and everywhere intersect 
 this region by streams, canals, and creeks, allowing the 
 fullest water communication between the river on the 
 north and the south coast, joining towns such as Wool- 
 wich, Chatham, Canterbury, Brighton, Tunbridge, and 
 Dover in one great series of inland navigation, we shall 
 form a pretty accurate conception of the shape, if not of 
 the extent, of the scene of operations now to be described. 
 To the north the region has the estuary of the Yang- 
 tse-Kiang, on the east the ocean, on the south (corre- 
 sponding to the Channel) the Bay of Hang-chow, while 
 on the west (along the Hampshire side of Sussex and 
 Surrey) there extended a string of many-sized lakes, 
 which, together with the broad waterway of the Grand 
 Canal, running on the east of these lakes, almost separ- 
 
Ill THE THEATRE OF THE CONFLICT 53 
 
 ated this portion of the delta from the rest of the 
 province of Chi-kiang. As for the face of the country 
 itself, it was for the most part a perfectly flat surface of 
 very rich alluvial soil — here and there at intervals abrupt, 
 rocky hills rose above this level sea of verdure and water : 
 these ridges, in a far distant age of the world, had prob- 
 ably stood as islands in the estuary of the great river 
 whose waters, carrying the silt and sand of immense 
 interior regions, had gradually filled up with earth the 
 intervening spaces. Thickly scattered through this 
 level triangular peninsula stood many cities, most of them 
 of old time, surrounded by walls of blue brick-work, ten 
 to twenty feet high, crenellated, having towers built at 
 intervals, arched gateways opening to the four cardinal 
 points, and wide deep ditches or canals encircling the walls 
 and ramifying in many branches through the streets. 
 The walls, unHke those in the cities of the Middle 
 Ages in Europe, stood a long way from the buildings, 
 the town within the walls frequently not occupying a fifth 
 of the enclosed space. If one was disposed to wonder 
 how so many towns could find support in such a limited 
 area of country, the exceeding fertility of the soil and 
 the value of its productions supplied the answer. This 
 delta of the Yang-tse-Kiang was the garden of China ; in 
 these low-lying fields the trees that nourished the gold- 
 weaving silk -worms grew in the greatest luxuriance: 
 every vegetable production of the tropical and temperate 
 zones flourished there, and while the numerous canals 
 and lakes teemed with fish they ofl"ered at once an un- 
 failing means of irrigation and the easiest intercourse 
 for trade. 
 
 At the time of Gordon's appointment to command 
 
54 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the Ever-victorious Army the positions occupied by the 
 Taiping rebels and the Allied and Imperial forces were 
 as follows : the Imperialists held Shanghai ; the head- 
 quarters of Gordon's force occupied a strong position at 
 Soong-kiong, thirty miles inland from Shanghai ; from 
 this point -«fanals branched in all directions; fifty miles 
 again on the other side of- Soong-kiong the rebels had 
 their headquarters at Soo-chow, a large city of the first 
 rank, situated on the Grand Canal, and almost reaching 
 to the shore of Lake Taihoo. From this central position 
 they controlled the whole system of canals and lakes 
 between the main stream of the Yang-tse-Kiang and the 
 Bay of Hang-chow. The Imperial forces were in posses- 
 sion of the Yang-tse-Kiang River, and had been fruit- 
 lessly besieging Nankin, one hundred miles north-west of 
 Soo-chow, for many years. The country outside the delta 
 of the Yang-tse-Kiang was generally in the hands of the 
 Imperialists — indeed the Taiping rebellion was so de- 
 structive to life and propert}^ that it almost burned itself 
 out after a certain period of destruction, so great was 
 the havoc worked by it ; but in the delta the exceeding 
 richness of the provinces and the foreign assistance already 
 mentioned had there enabled the rebellion to exist, and 
 to concentrate itself in more permanent form. 
 
 Adopting again the parallel of England to the posi- 
 tions held by the rival forces, it would stand thus : the 
 Imperialists occupy Dover, Folkestone, Canterbury, and 
 Margate, with all the intervening country between these 
 places. Gordon's headquarters are at Canterbury : the 
 Taipings hold the remainder of Kent, with their head- 
 quarters at Chatham. Hampshire is a network of large 
 and small lakes, the country beyond is mixed Taiping 
 
Ill MARCHES ON FOOSHAN 55 
 
 and Imperialist ; and London, pushed back to somewhere 
 beyond Reading, represents the position of Nankin, now 
 besieged for fourteen years by the Imperialists. Such 
 was the situation of affairs when Gordon assumed com- 
 mand of the disciplined Chinese force, the task before 
 him to reduce the delta and its score of walled cities to 
 Imperial authority. 
 
 He will do it in eighteen months, he tells the Chinese 
 Generalissimo, the Footai Li Hung Chang, since a well- 
 known figure in Chinese history, and he will do it by 
 the very means which this labyrinth of canal, lake, and 
 river puts into his hand ; for with all its intricacies it is 
 only a big chess-board, its vast mazework making it all 
 the better for the man who first learns it by heart ; and 
 these creeks and cross creeks will be so many parallels 
 and trenches for sapping up to the very heart of the 
 revolt, for turning cities, taking positions in reverse, and 
 above all, for using the power which steam gives to 
 transport men, stores, and munitions along these navi- 
 gable waterways. It is now the month of March 1863 ; 
 by August 1864 the last city will have been taken from 
 the Taipings, and the delta cleared. 
 
 In the end of March Gordon moves from his camp 
 at Soong-kiong to Foo-shan, fifty miles north. He is 
 here joined by an Imperialist force, the object being the 
 relief of the city of Chanzu, lying ten miles to the south- 
 west. Chanzu is besieged by the Taipings, whose invest- 
 ing force reaches as far as Foo-shan. The stockades 
 at Foo-shan are soon carried by the Ever -victorious 
 Army, and the united force moves on to Chanzu, the 
 Taipings retreating from that city, which is entered on 
 April 5th. 
 
56 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 The relieving expedition being thus easily effected, 
 Gordon brings back his army to the old position at 
 Soong-kiong, and prepares to begin the real work of 
 clearing the delta. He has seen the country outside 
 the thirty-five mile radius, has marked the line by which 
 the Taiping centre at Soo-chow can best be reached ; he 
 will complete his preparations at the old headquarters 
 and then take the field, he hopes, for a regular campaign, 
 which will be prosecuted as a continuous consecutive 
 effort, and not in a series of detached expeditions which 
 have heretofore started from Soong-kiong to return to 
 it when the particular enterprise was accomplished. 
 
 On April 29th he is in motion, the objective being 
 the city of Tait-san, some thirty miles north of his 
 permanent camp. It is a city of oblong form, sur- 
 rounded by strong walls and wet ditches; but it also 
 possesses a peculiar strength in the fact that it is the 
 scene of the defeat of the Ever-victorious Army three 
 months earlier. On the last day of April Gordon arrives 
 before Tait-san. He has a force of three thousand of all 
 arms, and the Imperialists, as usual, are half -besieging 
 the rebel city and being half -besieged in their own 
 position by the rebels. The former attack by Holland 
 had been directed against the south face. Gordon moves 
 round more to the west side, carries two stockades, and 
 gets possession of the canal leading into the town, then he 
 plants his guns opposite the west wall, six hundred yards 
 distant from it, and opens fire on May 1st. The guns 
 are 12-pounder howitzers and two 32-pounders; thanks 
 to the facilities of water-carriage, the supply of ammu- 
 nition is abundant. It is yet early in the afternoon 
 when the breach is made; the guns have been pulled 
 
Ill STORMING OF TAIT-SAN 57 
 
 on from cover to cover until at last they are within 
 one hundred yards of the wall. Movable mantlets 
 of wood and iron protect the gunners from the 
 enemy's fire : the rebels, seeing that the moment of the 
 assault has come, concentrate their men behind and 
 around the threatened spot. At every discharge from 
 the 32-pounders larger masses of the brick wall and 
 its enclosed centre of rubble masonry tumble out 
 and fall down into the fosse, until a wide sloping mass 
 of brick and rubbish leads up to the summit of the 
 breach. Then the word to storm is given : the boats in 
 the canal have already moved up, and turning to the 
 right, have formed a bridge across the ditch. Over the 
 decks the stormers rush to the assault, but as they cross 
 the boats they are met with a terrible fire from the 
 battlements. They rush on to the foot of the breach 
 and begin to ascend the broken masonry. The moment 
 has now come when the guns of the besiegers must stop 
 firing, for friend and enemy are together. Bravely led 
 on by the leader of the forlorn hope. Captain Bannon, 
 the assaulting column gains half-way up the ascent, 
 meets in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with the 
 rebels, loses its gallant leader, and is finally hurled down 
 to the foot of the breach, where, mangled and broken, its 
 survivors get back as best they can across the bridge of 
 boats. But a repulse is only a defeat when it is final : 
 again the guns open on the breach, while another column 
 is forming for the assault. It is now seen that the 
 Taipings are led on by Europeans, and the arms on both 
 sides are of English make. Once more the assault is 
 made, the column rushes up the now slippery breach, 
 and is met as before by the defenders. It gains the top 
 
58 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 of the ascent, but the fight is stubborn, and once or twice 
 there is a backward surge down the slope, then one final 
 upward effort, and the place is won. One officer is killed, 
 three are wounded, and there are two hundred and fifty 
 casualties among the men — a heavy loss out of so small a 
 force. But the capture of Tait-san has re-established the 
 reputation of the Ever-victorious Army, and its leader is 
 now recognised as a man who knows the three great 
 secrets of war — when to strike, where to strike, and 
 how to strike. Twenty-one years later the scene at this 
 breach of Tait-san comes back to Gordon. He is writing 
 late in November 1884, when the Arabs have begun to 
 fire from Goba at the Palace in Khartoum, and some of 
 his old Soudan soldiers are manning the battery against 
 him. "It will not be the first time I have been fired 
 at by my own soldiers," he says, " for in China two men 
 of the Thirty-first Eegiment were on the breach at Tait- 
 san : one was killed, the other, struck by a shell splinter, 
 was taken prisoner. ' Mr. Gordon, Mr. Gordon, you will 
 not let me be killed ! ' * Take him down to the river 
 and shoot him ! ' — and aside — ' put him in my boat, let 
 the doctor attend him, and send him down to Shanghai.' 
 His name was Hargreaves, and I daresay he exists at 
 present."^ 
 
 Gordon prepared at once to follow up this hard-won 
 but important victory by moving to the attack of other 
 rebel cities. Heretofore the practice had been to fall 
 back after an action upon the stationary camp at Soong- 
 kiong, rest and refit, and then sally forth upon a new 
 enterprise. This mode of warfare, peculiar to all semi- 
 disciplined armies, has many personal attractions for the 
 ^ Khartoum Journals : London, 1885. 
 
Ill A NEW DEPARTURE IN METHOD OF WAR 59 
 
 soldier. It enables him to dispose of the plunder he has 
 taken in the recent battle : he tastes the pleasures of 
 heroship while the laurels of conquest are still green, 
 and the strain of service is of such short duration that he 
 is soon ready to set out again ; but it is, of course, fatal to 
 proper discipline or to anything like a speedy termina- 
 tion of war, and it has frequently in history enabled the 
 beaten side not only to recover the losses of defeat, but 
 to convert defeat into subsequent victory. 
 
 Gordon now attempted to lead his troops direct to 
 the attack of the important city of Quin-san, ten miles 
 west and south of Tait-san, but the "Go and he goeth, 
 come and he cometh " of real discipline was all unknown 
 among officers or men of the Ever-victorious Army, 
 and their leader soon found that, instead of leading his 
 army forward to Quin-san, he must follow it back to 
 Soong-kiong. So back they all go to camp, and for 
 another month the old work goes on, amid chafing of 
 spirit and clash of words between the leader, who is all 
 fire, forecast, and energy, and the followers, who, brave 
 as lions when the actual tug of battle comes, are still 
 what the average fighting man has been and will be to 
 the end of the chapter of war. At last all the plunder 
 has been disposed of ; the heroes are tired of strutting, 
 and ready to set out again. This time the objective is 
 Quin-san, a city which is the key to an intricate system of 
 lake and canal lying between it and the central Soo-chow 
 of the Taipings. It is the end of May when the force 
 reaches Quin-san, bringing with it all its military store, and 
 the little armed and iron-sheeted steamer Hyson^ under her 
 brave Irish captain, Davidson. The Imperialist generals 
 are entrenched and stockaded in front of the east gate 
 
6o LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 of the city, the rebels are strongly stockaded outside the 
 walls, and are reinforced and supported from their head- 
 quarters at Soo-chow, twenty miles more to the west, to 
 which place leads a broad and deep canal, having a road- 
 way running along its northern bank. The city of 
 Quin-san itself stands upon the slope of a high hill, once 
 an island in the old estuary ; the hill is entirely en- 
 compassed by wall and moat, and its conical summit 
 gives the besieged a vantage point from which to antici- 
 pate movements of attack. Altogether it is a formid- 
 able place looked at from the east, and before attacking 
 on that side Gordon would see more of the south and 
 west faces, and of the canal which connects Quin-san 
 with the centre of the revolt at Soo-chow. So, taking 
 the Chinese generals Ching and his superior, the Footai 
 Li Hung Chang, on board the Hyson steamer (which 
 now flies the long "snake-streamer" at its mast-head, 
 the battle-flag of the leader), Gordon drops back a little 
 out of view of the watchful eyes on the hill above the 
 besieged town, and then turns sharp to the south into a 
 branch canal that leads off in that direction. This canal 
 they follow for nine miles, then turn away to westward, 
 and steaming on for an hour, begin to bend up to the 
 north. They have now come nigh twenty miles by this 
 circuitous route, circling on a wide curve round the city, 
 and they are at the back or on the west side of Quin-san, 
 some twelve miles distant from it, and almost midway 
 between it and Soo-chow. They have, in fact, struck the 
 main line of the enemy's communication ; there are only 
 a few weak stockades to defend this vital point, and the 
 canal upon which the steamer is moving has a line of 
 stakes across it some little distance in advance of its 
 
Ill ATTACK ON QUINSAN 6i 
 
 point of junction with the main Quin-san-Soo-chow 
 waterway. The Hyson^ having seen all this, steams back 
 to the old position east of Quin-san, and the night is 
 spent in preparation for the morrow's work. At dawn 
 next day the move begins. A regiment of infantry, a 
 battery of artillery, and an unnumbered body of Imperial 
 troops in boats and junks, with the Hyson steaming in 
 the centre, follow the same canal course as yesterday to 
 the point where the two creeks come together. Then 
 the obstructing stakes are pulled up from the mud of 
 the canal, and the steamer and the boats move on to the 
 main canal, where the Taipings, in vast confusion at this 
 unexpected attack, separate into two retreating bodies to 
 right and left. There is only the canal and the track 
 along it for these confused masses to follow. The Hyson 
 turns to the left in pursuit of the men retreating towards 
 Soo-chow, the Imperial troops and the regiments of the 
 disciplined force hold the point where the canals meet. 
 Despite reinforcements from Soo-chow, and stockades and 
 stone forts which have been built to defend the line to 
 that place, the Taipings make no stand; broken into 
 panic-stricken bodies, they crowd each other into the 
 canal and lakes which bound the road on either side. The 
 confusion is prodigious. Numbers are drowned, many 
 surrender themselves prisoners, still greater numbers are 
 shot down by the fire of shell and grape from the steamer's 
 guns. The pursuit is continued along the canal to within 
 half a mile of Soo-chow. It is now sunset, and a long 
 return road, still occupied by broken bodies of rebels, 
 has to be followed back to the point where the Imperial 
 troops have been left. The Hyson throws a single shell 
 from her 32-pounder into the rebel capital, and then 
 
62 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 retraces her way to the junction of the canals. It is 
 now ten o'clock at night, but a fierce fight is going on 
 at this place, for the garrison of Quin-san, alarmed at the 
 news brought in by fugitives, have sallied out to force 
 their way under cover of night to Soo-chow. The 
 steamer passes on towards Quin-san and engages these 
 confused masses of men : all night long the firing goes 
 on, until daylight shows the rebel bands dispersed and 
 Quin-san in the hands of the Imperial troops. 
 
 This singular action, an armed steamer with a crew 
 of some forty men all told against many thousand men, 
 was perhaps the most strikingly representative feat of 
 Gordon's peculiar genius for war — quick to catch, resolute 
 to act, knowing the power of rapid movement against a de- 
 moralised foe, and realising the enormous effect which the 
 unexpected can produce even with the slenderest means. 
 
 Quin-san, now in Imperial possession, was to be made 
 the permanent headquarters of the force, but the men, 
 despite a success which must have shown them a new 
 power had come among them, refuse to obey, and there 
 seems nothing for it but martial law. One mutineer is 
 ordered to be shot, and the sentence is executed outside 
 the west gate of Quin-san ; but martial law is a dangerous 
 experiment in a semi-civilised country, where to desert 
 is practically to get away without chance of recapture. 
 In the night following the execution two thousand of the 
 Ever-victorious Army had disappeared to their homes. 
 Fortune favours the brave : two da^^s earlier this deser- 
 tion en masse would have been a fatal blow to further 
 progress, but now it was different. The prisoners taken 
 in the rebel rout along the Soo-chow-Quin-san canal 
 gave a material for new soldiers better even than the 
 
Ill MUTINY OF THE EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY 63 
 
 old ones. Within two days of a desertion which reduced 
 his lighting force to a third of its normal strength, 
 Gordon had enrolled as his followers two thousand 
 Taiping prisoners. "They are much better men," he 
 writes shortly after, "than the old ones;" and indeed it 
 was easy for them to be so. Plunder, regular pay, and 
 unlimited praise had long since sapped the soldier stamina 
 of the Ever-victorious ones. The Taipings had tasted 
 the bitterness of defeat, and had become all the better 
 soldiers in the experience. 
 
 For two months Gordon remained at Quin-san, drilling 
 his new levies, organising and preparing for the great 
 effort which was to strike at the central stronghold of 
 Soo-chow ; but the result of his daring march in the rear 
 of the rebel position at Quin-san had shown him the 
 advantages which followed an attack upon the com- 
 munications of the Taiping hordes, and henceforth he 
 determined to direct all his strategy on lines similar to 
 those then first practised. 
 
 Soo-chow sat secure from direct attack amidst its en- 
 vironment of lake. Tai-hoo, or the great lake, lay directly 
 west of it : to the north-east and south-east the beautiful 
 expanses of water known as the Sha-hoo and Kin-ki-koo 
 spread their clear waters to gravelly beaches, where the 
 golden pheasant still flew wild amid the thickets : the 
 Tai-hoo was so large that from its centre the eye of the 
 traveller rested only upon a horizon of sky and water. 
 The city itself was of the first order, and although its 
 prosperity had much decayed it still retained the beauty 
 which of old had made it a proverb throughout the 
 Empire that if Paradise was in heaven there was Soo- 
 chow on earth. 
 
64 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 It was at this city of Soo-chow that the Emperor 
 Kanghi, second of the Manchow dynasty, dismounted 
 from his horse and walked on foot through the streets, 
 in 1689, in order not to injure the magnificent silks and 
 embroidered tapestries which the inhabitants had laid 
 profusely on the ground along the line of his route. 
 The circuit of its massive walls measured twelve miles : 
 the form of the city was an oblong square, six large 
 gates opened landward, as many more gave entrance 
 towards the lakes : every street had its corresponding 
 canal, navigable for large-sized craft, while the freshness 
 of the great body of water that lay adjacent to the place, 
 the richness of the land between the lakes, the passage 
 through the city of the Grand Canal, and the presence 
 of a population skilled by the continuous training of 
 countless generations of the best embroiderers and 
 workers in silk in the world, made Soo-chow in the old 
 days a rich emporium of trade and a luxurious centre of 
 pleasure. 
 
 To attempt the capture of this city by assault while 
 its communications remained open on every side would 
 be clearly an operation of great difficulty ; on the other 
 hand, vast as was the circuit of the walls, the presence of 
 so many lakes all connected with each other by broad 
 and navigable channels rendered the isolation of the 
 place a comparatively easy undertaking. Hold a town 
 on the north and south sides of Soo-chow, as Quin-san held 
 the east side : patrol the lakes with steamers and war 
 junks ; and the pinch of famine would soon be felt, all 
 the sooner among an army which, during four years, had 
 wasted and impoverished the resources of the country. 
 
 On July 25th, 1863, the force again took the field, 
 
Ill SURRENDER OF SOO-CHOW 65 
 
 bound for a city south of Soo-chow named Woo-kiang. 
 This place, surrounded by stockades, was captured and 
 garrisoned by the end of the month, and Gordon was 
 preparing to carry out the rest of the plan of isolation 
 when an event occurred which caused him to delay his 
 movements. Burgevine, the former commandant of the 
 Ever -victorious Army, chafing under his dismissal, 
 had gone to Pekin and procured an Imperial order re- 
 instating him in command. The order was disregarded 
 by the local authorities at Shanghai, who rightly insisted 
 upon retaining Gordon at the head of the force. A 
 considerable section of officers, chiefly countrymen of 
 Burgevine, supported his cause, and threw up their com- 
 missions. Burgevine then joined the Taipings, bringing 
 with him a number of his supporters. At first this 
 desertion to the opposite side looked serious, but in 
 reality it made little difference. Dissensions were rife in 
 the garrison at Soo-chow, the Taipings were losing heart, 
 the end of the rebellion was drawing near. Holding on 
 to Woo-kiang, from which Burgevine vainly endeavoured 
 to dislodge him, Gordon gradually drew in nearer to 
 Soo-chow, captured by surprise the great bridge of Pata- 
 chiao with its fifty-three arches, and finally in October 
 completed the line of investment by joining his forces to 
 those of the Imperial troops on the north of the city. By 
 the end of October the foreign element in the Taiping 
 ranks had abandoned the rebel cause, and a month later 
 saw the defences and stockades lying outside the city wall 
 on the east side in possession of the Imperial troops. 
 The Taiping leaders still held positions of considerable 
 strength at diff'erent points in the city, but with one ex- 
 ception the " Wangs," or chiefs, were already negotiating 
 F 
 
dd LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 either with Gordon or with the Imperial generals, Li 
 Hung and Ching, for the surrender of the city on 
 the best terms they could obtain. And now we 
 arrive at a very painful episode in the history of the 
 suppression of the Taiping rebellion — the surrender 
 of Soo-chow and the treacherous execution of the 
 Wangs after life and protection had been guaran- 
 teed them. Of course there are numerous conflicting 
 accounts of this dark act, for whitewash will never be 
 wanting to gold or power, but the excuses are unavail- 
 ing to hide the bare facts that life had been promised 
 to the chiefs on condition of surrender, and that life was 
 taken when they surrendered. Gordon felt this dark 
 deed very deeply. His word had been pledged to the 
 Wangs for safety, and in negotiation with them he had 
 laid stress upon the fact that his presence with the 
 Imperial troops was a sure guarantee that the promise 
 would be held sacred. Acting under the first impres- 
 sions produced by the execution of the Wangs, 
 Gordon resigned his command of the Ever-victorious 
 Army, and the breach between him and the Imperialists 
 was still further widened by his refusal to accept the 
 money gift of ten thousand taels (between three and four 
 thousand pounds) which the Emperor ordered to be paid 
 him. On January 1st, 1864, Gordon was formally pre- 
 sented with the medal and the gratuity, accompanied 
 by the Imperial decree conferring on him those marks 
 of approbation. He wrote on the back of the translation 
 of the Emperor's rescript his "regret that, owing to 
 the circumstances which occurred since the capture of 
 Soo-chow, he was unable to receive any mark of His 
 Majesty the Emperor's recognition." 
 
Ill SECOND PHASE OF THE TAIPING WAR 67 
 
 It is doubtful if in all its long history China possesses 
 such another example of the treatment of high official 
 documents. It was perhaps a pity that this resolution 
 to withdraw from the command of the Ever-victorious 
 Army was not persevered in by Gordon. For fame 
 he had now done all that was to be done : the neck of 
 the rebellion was broken, and the work of following up 
 the capture of Soo-chow by the reduction of the country 
 lying west of Lake Tai-hoo was only a matter of time. His 
 insistence in resignation at this moment would have still 
 broader marked the gulf of separation which lay between 
 him and his employer. That he did not so persevere 
 was undoubtedly due to the representations from his 
 own consular and military authorities at Shanghai, and 
 to the fear that, if he resigned the command of the 
 Ever - victorious ones, that force might prove an 
 element of danger to China and to the foreign residents 
 at Shanghai by going over to the Taipings. Soldiers of 
 fortune are a little apt to get confused as to the side 
 upon which abstract right may rest in a quarrel ; and it 
 may even happen that, next to actual defeat of their own 
 side, the total destruction of the enemy, which would 
 put a period to their own employment, would appear to 
 them the most deplorable calamity. 
 
 Yielding to other counsels and to second thoughts, 
 Gordon consented to continue for a longer time in com- 
 mand of the semi-disciplined force, and in the end of 
 February 1864 he again resumed active operations. 
 We may pass quickly over the events which formed the 
 incidents in this second phase of his service. During 
 the months of March, April, and May Gordon continued 
 to reduce towns in the district lying north-west of Lake 
 
68 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Tai-hoo, as before he had cleared the region to the east of 
 the lake. The Taipings often fought with the courage 
 of despair, and more than once their desperate resistance 
 met with partial success. In the assault at Kintang 
 Gordon received a wound, which did not, however, in- 
 capacitate him from active operations : indeed, far from 
 inducing quiet, it seemed only to increase his energy. 
 Hearing that the rebels had broken back into the region 
 already cleared, he puts himself at the head of a portion 
 of his force and moves rapidly against them. He reaches 
 Waisso on March 31st, having covered one hundred and 
 fifty miles in two days, is attacked by a large body of 
 Taipings, and meets with a serious reverse, but that quiet 
 and immovable determination which, twenty years later, 
 is to make his name so famous in the hour of defeat is 
 here apparent. He gets more men from his reserves, 
 again assumes the offensive, and eleven days after his 
 defeat routs the rebels with great loss and captures 
 Waisso. One more victory, and his career as leader of 
 the Ever-victorious Army is to end. The country is in 
 a frightful state, the rebels are murdering wholesale, the 
 villagers are suffering the last pangs of hunger, and are 
 reduced to eat the dead bodies. " They are like wolves ; 
 the dead lie where they fall, and are in some cases 
 trodden quite flat by the passers-by." On April 27th 
 Gordon twice assaults the breach of Chang-chu-fu, and 
 is twice driven back ; then he begins to make regular 
 approaches against the south gate, and a fortnight later 
 the place is carried by a combined storming of the 
 Imperialists and disciplined troops. Thus, after fourteen 
 months, twelve of which had been spent in constant 
 fighting, the work of the disciplined force is over. 
 
Ill END OF THE TAIPING WAR 69 
 
 Nankin and a few other cities remain still to be cap- 
 tured, but the Imperialists will finish the campaign 
 themselves. 
 
 In June 1864 the Ever -victorious Army was dis- 
 banded. Whatever may have been the failings of the 
 force, want of courage was certainly not among them. 
 Out of one hundred and thirty foreign officers, thirty-five 
 had been killed and seventy-three wounded ; and among 
 four thousand Chinese soldiers, five hundred and twenty 
 had been killed and nine hundred and twenty wounded. 
 Few heavier losses, proportionate to strength, can be 
 found recorded in any similar length of war. And now 
 looking back, after twenty-four years have passed away, 
 at this campaign, which to many wears the aspect of a 
 chaotic and confused capturing of cities, rapid marches, 
 sudden stormings, and dreadful carnage, what are the 
 salient features that stand out to view % What was the 
 true nature of the service rendered by Gordon to China, 
 and what the real lesson which might have been learnt 
 from the campaign ? 
 
 It has been said that Gordon saved the Empire of 
 China; that is an exaggerated estimate of his service. 
 The Empire of China is far too old and too vast an 
 institution to be saved or lost so easily. One has only 
 to glance at the area of the action of the Ever-vic- 
 torious Army, and to compare it with the mighty Empire 
 outside, to realise the value of such an assertion. The 
 service rendered by Gordon to the Chinese was very 
 great. His presence gave vigour to their plans, thought 
 to their councils, rapidity to their movements, courage 
 to their soldiers. He climbed to a far higher standpoint 
 than they ever could have attained to, and surveyed the 
 
70 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 entire theatre of the struggle from an eminence they 
 could not reach. In fact, he taught the Chinese how to 
 make war, and, what is still more important, how to end 
 war. His blows were struck in vital places, and followed 
 each other with a rapidity that left the enemy no time 
 for reparation. He suited his strategy to the peculiar 
 nature of the country, and timed his tactics in exact 
 accord with the habits of his enemy. Indomitable 
 resolution, inexhaustible resource, sleepless activity, 
 were his master qualities. The distrust of English 
 leadership, which previous experience or prejudice had 
 engendered in the minds of his officers and men, soon 
 gave place to complete confidence, and, no matter how 
 difficult the labour or how stubborn the resistance, the 
 belief in the final triumph of the undertaking which 
 their leader had conceived never wavered. The in- 
 direct advantages to China which the presence of Gordon 
 as a leader gave were scarcely less important to the 
 cause of order. The scandal of the sale of English 
 munitions of war to the rebels received a check, and 
 although it would have been too much to expect that a 
 commercial activity which had for its chief commodity 
 the sale of a slow-consuming poison would have drawn 
 the line of conscience strictly at any more sudden form 
 of death, still there can be no doubt that the open supply 
 of the rebels with arms and ammunition became, in the 
 latter stage of the Taiping war, at least an unfashionable 
 form of commerce. 
 
 But the lesson of this brilliant episode was neither to 
 China nor to Gordon, it was to us. China might well 
 be trusted to go on its own road as it had gone its way 
 for two thousand years. Gordon knew himself and his 
 
Ill THE TRUE LESSON OF THE CHINESE WAR 71 
 
 qualities before he ever pointed with bamboo cane the 
 road of victory to his army, but to us the revelation was 
 given that there was among us a man gifted with all the 
 faculties of true kingship, a leader of men and a master, 
 a veritable " spear," sharp and swift and self-wielding, 
 and with a flash in its steel that could kindle the light 
 of battle in ten thousand duller weapons. It was but 
 a few years since, for the want of such a man as a 
 leader, that we had lost everything but honour on the 
 plateau above Sebastopol, and now, having found this 
 captain, it was for us to guard him with safe keeping, 
 to hold him for the evil day as the most precious of our 
 treasures. Assuredly it was from no plethora of such 
 possession that we could afford to waste or spend him 
 in distant outside enterprise. 
 
 The last act of Gordon's service in China took place 
 in 1864. During the succeeding score of years England 
 was fighting in many parts of the world — South Africa, 
 Abyssinia, West Africa, Afghanistan, and Egypt, but 
 Gordon was neither in the councils that directed nor the 
 armies that conducted hostilities. Nay, he was almost 
 a stranger in his own land, and when nearly a genera- 
 tion had passed away, and the fruit of many blunders 
 had accumulated in Egypt a load of disaster that seemed 
 too heavy to be borne, Gordon was at last called from 
 the obscurity in which he had been so long consigned, — 
 he was, his own brother has told us, as ** a person who 
 was now heard of for the first time." "What must the 
 man do to deserve renown?" once asked a disciple of 
 his master, Confucius. "What do you call renown?" 
 inquired the master. " To be known among the nations 
 and at home," replied the disciple. "That is only 
 
72 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, hi 
 
 notoriety and not true renown," answered the sage ; 
 " this last consists in straight and honest sincerity, in 
 love of justice, in knowledge of mankind, and in 
 humility." Surely when the old seer was speaking these 
 words the mists of two thousand coming years were being 
 lifted, and he was looking at " Chinese " Gordon. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GRAVESEND 
 
 While Gordon had thus been climbing with rapid steps 
 the ladder of fame in the service of a foreign nation, 
 he had also been lifting himself with slower progress 
 through the grades of his profession. In December 1862 
 he was promoted major by brevet in the army, and four- 
 teen months later he received a second brevet as lieu- 
 tenant-colonel "for distinguished service in the field." 
 So far as promotion went he had not done badly during 
 his four years' service in China, but in the wordly sense 
 of bettering himself by the accumulation of money he 
 had done nothing. Neither the reward of service nor his 
 refusal to accept money gave him the least concern. " I 
 do not care a jot about my promotion or what people 
 may say," he wrote in 1864, " I know I shall leave China 
 as poor as I entered it." That was his greatest source 
 of satisfaction. We have already seen how he refused the 
 Emperor's grant of ten thousand taels after the capture of 
 Soo-chow ; later on, when raised to the highest military 
 rank, and given the yellow jacket which placed him 
 among the chosen twenty of the Emperor's body-guard, 
 he still grudges taking even the buttons on the man- 
 darin's hat, "some of which are worth thii-ty or forty 
 
74 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 pounds." "I am sorry for it," he says, "as they cannot 
 afford it over well;" and again, "I would not take the 
 money from them in their miserable poverty, and I feel 
 correspondingly comfortable."^ 
 
 It was no wonder the Chinese Government believed 
 in the sincerity of this man who had served them. "They 
 trust me more than any foreigner was ever trusted. I 
 have never cringed or yielded to any of them, and they 
 have respected me all the more." Truly a wonderful sen- 
 tence this, and one that gives us the keynote to many 
 things. On the strength of his faith in God, his dis- 
 belief in Mammon, and his absolute independence of 
 mind and action, the Government and ruling classes of 
 China looked on Gordon as a hero. On the strength of 
 precisely these three things — faith, disregard of money, 
 and straightforward honesty of thought and speech, 
 he was in his lifetime not only without honour in his 
 own country, but was regarded by many of the man- 
 darin and ruling classes of his fellow-countrymen as a 
 madman. 
 
 A high authority, writing in our own time upon events 
 connected with the fraud and violence of certain English 
 officials in India a century ago, has taken pleasure in the 
 contemplation of the fact that " nobody now believes that 
 Clive was justified in tricking Omi-chund by forging 
 another man's name, that Impey was justified in hanging 
 Nuncomar for the very offence for which Clive was ex- 
 cused or applauded. Although forgery is no grave crime 
 according to Hindoo usage, and it is the gravest according 
 to English usage, . . . the whole drift of opinion has 
 changed, and it is since the trial of Hastings that the 
 
 ^ Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon: London, 1885. 
 
IV GORDON NO SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 75 
 
 change has taken place." ^ Nevertheless, if the whole 
 drift of opinion has changed — with all respect to the 
 great authority here quoted — the change is more ap- 
 parent than real. One hundred years hence the policy 
 that led to the annexation of the Transvaal and to 
 the destruction of the Zulus under Cetewayo, and that 
 still continues to force upon China a drug which murders 
 her sons and depletes her treasury, will probably be 
 looked upon as being as wholly unjustified as the deeds 
 and doings of Clive and Hastings are now regarded. No 
 doubt there is the difference between the sin of the indi- 
 vidual and of the corporation, but it is extremely doubt- 
 ful whether in purifying the action of the individual 
 actor we have advanced one atom in the scale of collec- 
 tive morality as a Government or a nation. The " remote 
 and unheeding ocean" in which the "cries of India" 
 were lost is now brought too near our shores to allow 
 the individual "avarice of age" or "the impetuosity of 
 youth " to settle down as " birds of prey and of passage, 
 with appetites continually renewing for a food that is 
 continually wasting." But the feast of Indian spoil, if 
 not partaken of so deeply by the few, is to-day eaten by 
 the many to an extent never dreamt of by the most 
 rapacious of the old-time vultures. If the Pagoda 
 tree no longer grows its golden fruit the precious 
 crop can still be gathered in the East, and the man 
 who fails to harvest fortune when chance throws it in 
 his way must not be astonished if he is looked upon, in 
 life at least, as an oddity. That the soldier of fortune, 
 who is ready to venture his life in the battle-field, should 
 not be equally ready to make his fortune when it is to 
 ' Mr. John ^forley's Life of Burke : London, 1885. 
 
76 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 be had for the taking, is a thing so strange to the eyes 
 of the world that the " drift of contemporary opinion " 
 would unhesitatingly regard him as an uncomfortable 
 sort of person; and if to this dislike or disdain of 
 Mammon he should add an all -abiding belief in God 
 and a fixed faith in the purpose of Providence, he 
 must elect to find in the circle of his professional 
 friends and associates the significant gesture of the 
 finger against the forehead, which is supposed equally 
 to denote a human being as fit for Hanwell or for 
 Heaven. 
 
 Gordon came back to England in the beginning of 1865, 
 and a few months later was appointed to the command 
 of the Eoyal Engineers at Gravesend. Six or seven years 
 earlier an Italian fanatic had thrown a hand-grenade filled 
 with fulminating powder at the Emperor of the French, 
 killing some members of the suite. The fanatic, brought 
 to trial, made little secret of his object, or base of opera- 
 tions. He wanted to blow up Napoleon the Third : the 
 shell, the fulminate, and the plot had been all made and 
 concocted in England. The case was such a glaring one 
 that the First Minister of the Crown, although by no 
 means prone to yield even the shadow of that right of 
 asylum of which the nation was justly proud, felt it in- 
 cumbent on him to draw the line between the right of 
 asylum and the right of assassination. Although he 
 was the most popular Minister that had held place for 
 more than a generation, he was nevertheless at once de- 
 feated by a hostile vote and thrown out of office. Being 
 a very old parliamentary hand, before many months he 
 was back again as First Minister of the Crown. The 
 lesson of defeat was not lost upon him, and an anti-French 
 
IV APPOINTED TO GRAVESEND 77 
 
 policy was the trump card which regained him his 
 popularity. There is in Chinese literature a poem, de- 
 scriptive of England and the English, the work of a 
 traveller from the Flowery Land : one verse in the poem 
 runs thus : 
 
 " Afar in the Ocean towards the extremity of the North-west 
 There is a Nation or Country called England. 
 The climate is frigid and you are compelled to approach the fire. 
 The pious inhabitants respect the ceremonies of worship, 
 And the virtuous among them ever read the Sacred Books. 
 They bear a peculiar enmity towards the French Nation. " 
 
 It was this last line which the great Minister remem- 
 bered when he got back to office, and he at once proceeded 
 to draw a blank cheque upon the panic of a French 
 invasion. His draft was honoured at sight. Plymouth, 
 Portsmouth, Dover, and the mouth of the Thames must 
 be defended by circles of defensive works of the most 
 costly description. Some twelve millions sterling was 
 spent upon these constructions, enormous prices being 
 given to the local landowners for their proprietary rights ; 
 and when the works were finished it was found that, 
 being built in the middle of a transition period in the 
 science of defence, they were already three parts obsolete. 
 It was at the work of completing these defences on the 
 Thames that Gordon was employed on his return from 
 China in 1865. Of course his outspoken nature could 
 not keep silent at this extravagant expenditure of public 
 money ; but he had yet to learn how small are the re- 
 presentations or protests of subordinate officers to check 
 that wild waste of the people's hard-earned gains which 
 seems to have become the inseparable accompaniment of 
 a public work. " It can only be by the sacrifice of a 
 
78 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer on the altar of public 
 economy," wrote a prominent politician in a later day, 
 "that the extravagant waste of public money can be 
 cured." He, too, spoke in ignorance of the real depth 
 of the disease. It will only be when the pinch of a 
 widespread want will make the people of England 
 demand of their masters, in a tone of voice not to be 
 mistaken, "What have you done with our hard-made 
 millions V that the lesson of honesty — for that is the 
 real root of the whole question — will be understood. 
 
 While Gordon was chafing under a sense of waste he 
 was powerless to check, the evil was made all the more 
 glaring to him by the poverty and want that he saw 
 around him on every side. This he could do something 
 to lighten : small, perhaps, compared with the great river 
 of wretchedness which, side by side with the exhibi- 
 tion of riches, rolls its deepest and darkest currents; 
 but however little the effort and the success, there was 
 in it the opposite of that sense of helpless, tied-down 
 inability to make less the evil of a great and highly 
 organised system of extravagance. How hard Gordon 
 laboured to lighten the lot of the poor during the six 
 long years he spent at Gravesend is now well known ; 
 but like all things that attach to the memory of a man 
 whose personality has passed beyond the reach of the 
 world at the moment the world wants most to learn in 
 every detail what manner of man he was, this page of life 
 at Gravesend is liable to be overladen with the com- 
 mentaries of admirers, who so often, in the absence of 
 specific detail, insist upon creating incidents or distorting 
 actual facts. Wherever I have been able to watch and 
 weigh the life and acts of Charles Gordon, I find him 
 
IV HIS WORK A T GRA VESEND 79 
 
 always even, practical, earnest, unemotional in his charity, 
 full of sound common-sense, hitting hard and straight at 
 poverty and vice, even as he hit hard and straight at 
 Chinese city or stockade ; no cheerier companion, no 
 one with keener sense of humour or quicker power to 
 catch the light and shade of life. It is perhaps inevitable 
 that around such a man the extremist of every class and 
 creed should endeavour to raise his own particular glass 
 house of ethics or religion, and to make Gordon austere, 
 enthusiastic, ascetic, fanatical, or peculiar ; but the real 
 Gordon was absolutely unlike such a creation ; nay, in 
 manner, mode of action, and method of life there was 
 almost the opposite of these attributes. His life at 
 Gravesend was that of a sound, common-sense Christian 
 man, intent upon doing the best he could to better the 
 misery that lay around him. Just as in fighting he 
 knew the value of following up until the end was gained, 
 so in his works of charity he did not limit his good offices 
 to one relief in the long catalogue of human want : he 
 was not content to teach the ragged boys of Gravesend, 
 or to give them only a day's food and a night's lodging. 
 He was too thorough a worker to be satisfied with patch- 
 work benevolence. He began at the beginning, and did 
 not leave off until the boy he had rescued from the 
 gutter had found his billet on board ship, or in a situa- 
 tion. Nor did his interest end even with the safe placing 
 of the boy in employment. " In his sitting-room," writes 
 one who knew him intimately,^ "Gordon had a big 
 chart of the world, with pins stuck in it, marking the 
 probable positions of the different ships in which his 
 * kings ' (as he called them) were sailing. He thus followed 
 1 Sir Geral(| Graham's Last Words with Oordoii: London. 1887. 
 
So LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 them in his thoughts, and was able to point out their 
 whereabouts to their friends when they came to inquire 
 about them." 
 
 Those who would endeavour to withdraw the work 
 done by Gordon into any particular groove or channel 
 peculiar to their own views of religion would really do a 
 deep injury, not only to his life, but, what is of more 
 importance, to his life as it still lives to us in the 
 example of its following. Gordon was no " saint " in the 
 usual meaning which the world attaches to the name. 
 He was utterly removed from the class of religious 
 Church Militant who, as passing residents in some French 
 or Italian city, are prone to hurl their hymns on the 
 Sabbath morning at the heads of the native heretics; 
 neither had he the smallest fellowship with another large 
 class of persons who would divide religion into two parts 
 — the muscular and the Methodist, one half John Bull 
 and the other John Knox. Absolutely without a parallel 
 in our modern life, Gordon stands out the foremost man 
 of action of our time and nation whose ruling principle 
 was faith and good works. No gloomy faith, no exalted 
 sense of self-confidence, no mocking of the belief of others, 
 no separation of his sense of God from the everyday work 
 to which his hand has to be put ; no leaving of religion 
 at the church-door as a garb to be put on going in and 
 taken off coming out ; but a faith which was a living, 
 moving, genial reality with him, present always and 
 everywhere, shining out in every act of his life, grow- 
 ing and strengthening as the years roll on, filling the 
 desert with thought and lighting the gloom of tropical 
 forest, until at last it enables him to sit quietly and 
 alone, watching with light heart and pleasant jest the 
 
IV THE NATURE OF HIS CHARITY 8i 
 
 great cloud drawing nearer in which his life is to go 
 down, but which to us is to make his name an unsetting 
 sun in the firmament of memory. 
 
 The work that Gordon did during his six years at 
 Gravesend is as simple as the work of light in darkness : 
 he looked upon himself as a central point which could 
 he used to lighten the misery around him. It mattered 
 not on what the light of his charity was to fall : old and 
 young, the rough sailor hoy in the fishing smack, the 
 street arah, the sick in hospital, the old paralytic wearing 
 out the worn thread of life, the urchin in the Eagged 
 School, or the hag in her garret, they were each entitled 
 to their share. True, this light was only a rush-light in 
 the night of the island's misery, but that did not matter 
 to him ; his work was to do what he could do to lift the 
 load that lay near his hand, and if every home in 
 England to which Providence had given wealth or know- 
 ledge would kindle such another rush-light in the heart of 
 a single member, what an illumination would go forth 
 over the land, what a mighty poor law would be born 
 without aid of Parliament or Parish ! The essential 
 principle of Gordon's good work was its simplicity, as it 
 must be the essential principle of all good work. There 
 are millions of men and women — Sisters of Charity, Little 
 Sisters of the Poor, Christian Brothers — whose work in 
 the world is exactly what this captain of engineers' was. 
 There is really nothing remarkable in the work, but there 
 is a whole bookful or lifeful of wonder in the fact that 
 it is done by a hard -toiling man of the world ; that 
 this man, who is trying as he walks to make straight the 
 road, to fill up the ruts, and to kick the stones off the 
 highway of life, is himself carrying his load all the time; 
 G 
 
82 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 writing his official letters, drawing his maps of the 
 Thames forts, and doing the rest of the routine of 
 military life in England. And the secret of the ease 
 with which he does all these things is a very simple one 
 when it is known, the key to it being, as he himself has 
 told us, "Give away your medal." The Emperor of 
 China had given him a large gold medal for the Taiping 
 war, and it was this, the most precious souvenir of his 
 great campaign, which he had given anonymously to 
 the Coventry Kelief Fund when he arrived from China. 
 
 And all the time while this humble work is going on, 
 while Bill and Tom and Jack are being provided with 
 sea-kits for their voyages, while the old widow's fire is 
 being lighted in her wretched garret, and the Eagged 
 School boys are getting their dinner every week, the 
 great fire of heroism is burning as bright as ever in his 
 breast. The knowledge is there that he can lead armies 
 to battle, and plan campaigns, and strike blows that have 
 victory in their ring. This man who, in the world's 
 rating, is stooping so low, has the stuff in him of which 
 kings were once made. 
 
 There never was a man less like his pictures than 
 Charles Gordon, and there seldom has been one whose 
 personality it is more difficult to put into words. When 
 height and hair have been described, when forehead and 
 jaw have been spoken of, the real man is still as far off 
 as ever. The Gaelic proverb, that " The strength of a 
 hero is his heartiness," is true of the outward as well as 
 of the inward man. Put Gordon in a room with a 
 hundred of the average soldiers of our time, and perhaps 
 nine out of ten human critics would pass him by with the 
 rest ; begin to talk to him, and before you had gone the 
 
IV THE LOOK AND NATURE OF THE MAN 83 
 
 length of a dozen words on any subject you would be 
 aware you were speaking to a man who was content to 
 take his news from the newspapers and to make his 
 opinions himself. But though a very few words sufficed 
 to show difference from other men, the depth of that 
 difference took a very long time to fathom. It is 
 doubtful if even the men who knew Gordon best observed 
 or suspected a tenth part of what was in him, for the 
 very lightness of the surface deceived people. The 
 blue eye sparkled with humour, the wit was always 
 peeping out through the most sombre subject ; between 
 him and the accepted wiseacre of war or diplomacy there 
 lay all the gulf that measures the difference between the 
 Highlander and the Scotchman, between the Celt and 
 the Saxon. 
 
 " His eye would appear to double in size as his talk 
 would race galloping along," writes one who knew him very 
 intimately ; " full of similes and parables leading to his 
 subject, so that you saw the picture he painted. He was the 
 most interesting talker. He was the most cheerful of all 
 my friends. ... So merry and playful in the garden at 
 Gravesend, with his ducks, on which he used to turn the 
 
 hose. There was the Duchess of , who waddled her 
 
 tail, and young Prince , who held his head so high. 
 
 How the old lady ducks put their heads together and 
 gossiped till he would souse them again with another 
 douche from the hose. Each duck had a name, and, under 
 Gordon's amusing talk, represented some human frailty or 
 weakness. Wonderfully rapid in seeing the motives of 
 others — for an honest man it was surprising how he could 
 so readily see the crabbed lines of life — he understood and 
 saw through all diplomacy, but he knew the shortest way to 
 the end was by the straightest line. He had one motive 
 only — the right ; and his prayers or his nature saved him 
 from selfishness, ambition, and the hundred other object** 
 
84 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 that blind men to their end. He had never to wait to ask 
 what motive should guide him. Had he been sent to Ireland 
 he would have known whether it was Irish men, women, and 
 children he had to consider, or an abstract and imaginary- 
 Ireland — it would not have been to enrich Gordon, to glorify 
 Gordon." 
 
 In figure Gordon, at forty years of age, stood some- 
 what under middle height, slight but strong, active, and 
 muscular. A profusion of thick brown hair clustered 
 above a broad open forehead. His features were regular, 
 his mouth firm, and his expression when silent had a 
 certain undertone of sadness which instantly vanished 
 when he spoke. But it was the clear blue-gray eye and 
 the low, soft, and very distinct voice that left the most 
 lasting impression on the memory of the man who had 
 seen and spoken with Charles Gordon — an eye that 
 seemed to have looked at great distances and seen the 
 load of life carried on many shoulders, and a voice that, 
 like the clear chime of some Flemish belfry, had in it 
 fresh music to welcome the newest hour, even though it 
 had rung out the note of many a vanished day. 
 
 In England there has long been an idea prevalent in 
 the minds of many persons that the soldier should be a 
 species of man distinct from the rest of the community. 
 He should be purely and simply a soldier, ready to 
 knock down upon word of command being duly given 
 for that purpose, but knowing nothing of the business of 
 building up; leaving that important branch of life to 
 Mr. Civil Commissioner This and Mr. Civil Administrator 
 That. It is needless to say that Charles Gordon held a 
 totally different view of the soldier's proper sphere of 
 action, and with him the building part of the soldier's 
 
IV HIS VIEWS OF WHAT A SOLDIER SHOULD BE 85 
 
 profession was far more important than the breaking part. 
 The surgeon who could only cut off a leg or amputate 
 an arm, but who knew nothing of binding up the wound 
 or stopping an open artery, could not be of much account 
 in any estimate of men. Gordon understood the fact 
 that nations as well as individuals have pulses, that the 
 leader who would lead to any definite end must know 
 how to count these pulsations, and, in addition to his 
 skill as a sword-cutter, must be able to do a good deal 
 of the binding up of wounds, even though he had himself 
 caused them. To say this is, of course, only to say that 
 Gordon was great, in a sense greater than any merit of 
 action in arms could aspire to. The nation that will 
 insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between 
 the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find 
 its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards. 
 
 While Gordon was thus living obscurely at Gravesend, 
 monotonously following the professional routine of service 
 at home, but finding in the labour which his work among 
 the poor imposed upon him material and occupation for 
 the employment of his wonderful energy, the world had 
 emerged from two great phases of strife — the war 
 between the Northern and Southern States of America, 
 and the war of Germany against France. From each 
 of these wars, so diflferent in their causes, their courses, 
 and their consequences, two vast forces had come to life, 
 both utterly unforeseen by the specialists in politics, and 
 both big with consequences to the future, the extent of 
 which no man can even yet guess. In the Old World 
 and in the New two immense military powers had 
 suddenly made themselves apparent — one despotic, the 
 other democratic; one stretching across Europe from 
 
86 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the North Sea to the Adriatic, the other touching the 
 Atlantic and the Pacific ; both bent on consolidating and 
 securing themselves ; and both conscious of possessing a 
 reserved strength which was equally based upon the 
 acknowledgment that the first-fruit of the earth belonged 
 to the peasant. 
 
 But although the final effect upon the world of these 
 two great powers still remains to be discovered, the 
 immediate lesson taught by them was easy enough to 
 read. When Cromwell uttered his famous formula of 
 war, " Trust in God and safe-keeping of powder," the 
 safe-keeping of the peasant was an axiom of State- 
 craft equally accepted. It needed not to be spoken ; 
 but when the new dispensation arose, and that division 
 of a nation's labour was made which Mr. Ruskin has 
 defined as "the brave men fighting, and the cowards 
 thinking," the old foundations of the peasant and the 
 plough, upon which prince, peer, parliament, and people 
 all rest, became lost, and as these \vorld-old truths sank 
 out of sight, so there arose the idea that the soldier's 
 part was to be a fighting one and nothing more. It 
 was to scrape clear the old foundations again, to tear 
 away the weeds and rubbish of two centuries of chatter 
 and chaffer, that the moral of the great slavery-fight in 
 America and the great territorial fight in Europe pointed. 
 True, there were in these conflicts wonderful revelations 
 of new powers of destruction, new tactics in the battle- 
 field, new possibilities of numbers, and new developments 
 of organisation ; but above and below all these lay the 
 old, old fact of leadership and serviceship, the captain 
 who was a thinker as well as a fighter, the soldier who 
 was a tiller of the soil before he was a killer of men. 
 
IV GOES TO TH^ DANUBE S; 
 
 How we in England learned the lesson of these two wars 
 may best be judged from the present position of the 
 population of England, about eighty per cent of which 
 is resident in cities ; and from the other fact that shortly 
 after the conclusion of the second war, and while we 
 were apparently much in earnest about reorganising our 
 military strength, the most active spirit of our time — the 
 man possessing the largest share of leadership, who 
 had alike shown extraordinary aptitude for cool calcula- 
 tion and for daring ; the man whose human sympathies, 
 keenly alive to the wants of every class in the national 
 scale below him, and nobly honest and straight in his 
 dealings with those above him, made him indisputably 
 the national sheet-anchor in times of danger — this man 
 was permitted to bury himself — in very weariness of that 
 feeling which he had himself described as " being chained 
 to the barrack square, seeing if the men's belts and gloves 
 were well pipe-clayed " — in the most distant depths of a 
 savage continent, his life for six years to become the 
 chance of every accident which climate, treachery, or 
 hostile natives might bring about. 
 
 In the end of 1871 Gordon, still a lieutenant-colonel 
 in the army but only a captain of engineers, proceeded 
 once more to the Black Sea to act as British Commis- 
 sioner on the Danube, in accordance with a stipulation 
 in the Treaty of Paris. He remained in this post for two 
 years, during which he visited many of the old scenes of 
 nineteen years earlier ; saw again the grass-grown lines, 
 the mounds and tombs of the great siege, and the battle- 
 fields whose names, despite so many later colossal con- 
 flicts, were still bright in memory. 
 
 The main provisions of the Treaty of Paris had 
 
88 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 already been torn up by Russia under the cover of the 
 great Franco-Prussian war, and it was novr clear to the 
 world that a few years more would bring about a 
 renewal of the old strife between Muscovite and Turk. 
 During 1872 and 1873 Gordon travelled much through 
 Bulgaria, sketching the military positions which he 
 thought might soon become the scenes of fighting. 
 In these travels in Bulgaria he gathered an intimate 
 knowledge of the ways and means of Turkish govern- 
 ment. " Have nothing to do with the Turk. I know 
 him well, he is hopeless," he once said to the writer 
 of these pages, when, early in 1877, the long-foreseen 
 struggle between Russia and Turkey was about to open. 
 At Constantinople, in November 1872, Gordon met 
 Nubar Pacha at the British Embassy. That far-seeing 
 Egyptian Minister soon noted the vast difference that lay 
 between the officer of engineers and any other English 
 official with whom he had ever come in contact.^ Clearly 
 this rich treasure in soldier-shape, now floating waif-like 
 about Europe, was something worth securing. Here was 
 the '' Captain " whose " good leading " the best thinker 
 of our time had been vainly asking for England, in 
 England, a few years before, speaking wonderful words 
 at the very place where this captain of engineers had 
 been born, and in the hearing of many men who had 
 been his associates. 
 
 "How many yet of you are there knights -errant now 
 beyond all former fields of danger — knights -patient now 
 beyond all former endurance — who still retain the ancient 
 
 ^ ** England owes little to her officials ; she owes her greatness 
 to men of a different stamp," Nubar Pacha once said to the writer. 
 
IV A " CAPTAIN OF GOOD LEADING " 89 
 
 and eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked 
 and to aid the weak ? To them, be they few or many, we 
 English people call for help to the wretchedness, and for rule 
 over the baseness of multitudes desolate and deceived, shriek- 
 ing to themselves this new gospel of their new religion, * Let 
 the weak do as they can, and the wicked as they will.' 
 ... You think they (the people) don't want to be com- 
 manded ; try them, determine what is needful for them, 
 honourable for them, show it them, promise to bring it them, 
 and they will follow you through fire. * Govern us,' they 
 cry with one heart, through many minds. They can be 
 governed still, these English, they are men still, not gnats or 
 serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old 
 masters, and their old land. They would fain live in it as 
 many as may stay there, if you will show them how, there, 
 to live, or show them even how, there, like Englishmen 
 to die." 1 
 
 As we read these words, spoken at Woolwich in 1869, 
 and think that only a few miles away from the place 
 where this prayer for a leader of men, for a knight who 
 would sustain "the ancient and eternal purpose of 
 knighthood," for one who would even teach us " how to 
 die," went forth like a cry into the wilderness, there was 
 living at Gravesend in absolute neglect, unnoticed and 
 unknown, the one man whose heart, brain, soul, and 
 hand were able to fill the void of that night which the 
 speaker saw beyond all the gaslight glare of a false and 
 rotten prosperity — "the pity of it all" is the first 
 thought that comes to us — the pity of the fate that let 
 this "Captain of good leading" waste his life in the 
 deserts of Africa. And yet who would now have it 
 otherwise? It was on the night of December 14th, 
 
 ^ See Mr. Raskin's Lectures on " War " and on the "Future of 
 England," deUvered at Woolwich in 1865 and 1869. 
 
90 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, iv 
 
 1869, this prayer, that a knight might arise who would 
 teach us how to die, was uttered at Woolwich. Fifteen 
 years later to a day, on December 14th, 1884, Gordon 
 was writing the last words that ever came to us from 
 Khartoum: "P. 6". — I am quite happy, thank God; 
 and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty." Surely 
 the prayer had been answered. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 THE SOUDAN 
 
 Gordon, having accepted Nubar Pacha's offer, reached 
 Egypt in February 1874. He spent a fortnight in Cairo, 
 had many interviews with Khedive Ismail and the Minis- 
 ters, and then started, by way of Suez and Suakim, for his 
 new command. We must pause a moment to sketch the 
 dim and distant region and the work that lay before him. 
 Any person standing in the centre of the long 
 bridge across the Nile at the Kasr-el-Nil in Cairo, and 
 looking up stream towards the south, will see on his left 
 hand gray sandstone hills which, beginning near the cita- 
 del of the city, stretch southwards out of sight. Below 
 his standpoint flows the Nile, coming out of the south, a 
 broad and rapid river. If the time of year be the month 
 of August, the current is full-flooded, thick with mud, 
 and swirling with the force of an immense volume pent 
 between banks too narrow to hold it; if the time be 
 February, the stream is shrunken to a tenth of its flooded 
 volume, the colour is ashen or milky gray, and there is 
 a wide margin of sand or dried mud between water and 
 bank. All these changes of volume and colour are caused 
 by conditions of climate and earth surface which can be 
 explained from this point as well as from any other. 
 
92 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 First let us take the mountain. From the sandstone 
 ridge at the citadel a line of hills, gradually growing in 
 altitude and broadening. in width of base, runs south into 
 enormous distance — runs, in fact, to the other end of 
 Africa. Fourteen hundred miles south of where you 
 stand this line of hills rises to a very lofty altitude, and 
 spreads out into many ranges and groups of mountains, 
 which are continued in snowy summits nearly to the 
 equator ; from thence it descends abruptly to moderate 
 elevations, becoming merged into a rolling table-land. 
 
 It is this range of mountains which, in its culminating 
 masses of Abyssinia and the mountains to the south of 
 that country, forms the barrier that acts the twofold 
 part of rendering Nubia and Egypt practically rainless 
 regions, and at the same time sends the summer in- 
 undations to fertilise the long line of river and the far 
 distant delta of Lower Egypt. 
 
 All across the vast breadth of the Indian Ocean from 
 Australia to Zanzibar a never-ceasing south-east wind 
 carries the millions of tons of water which the sun has 
 drawn up from the tropical ocean, in vapour -saturated 
 clouds to the east shores of Africa. The portion of this 
 vapour which is carried by the monsoon against the 
 Abyssinian highlands falls in a three months' continuous 
 downpour, beginning in May : the portion of it which is 
 borne on the wings of the never-ceasing south-east trade- 
 wind is carried up the long slope of land that runs from 
 Zanzibar to the centre of Africa, and is there precipitated 
 in rain that lasts some eight months out of the twelve. 
 
 Thus Abyssinia sends out from the heart of its great 
 hills a rush of water which, carried by many tributaries 
 into the Blue Nile and the Athbara, begins to inundate 
 
V THE TRUE SOUDAN 93 
 
 Lower Egypt in July, and continues to flood it during 
 the three following months; and thus Central Africa 
 sends, by the long channel of the White Nile, from 
 countless streams and rivers that flow from the Equatorial 
 Lakes and the Bahr Gazelle province, a steady stream 
 which is fed with a rainfall that knows little intermission 
 throughout the year. But for the Blue Nile, Egypt 
 would know no inundation, and would be only a strip 
 of fertile land along its river ; but for the White Nile, 
 Egypt would be a perfectly waterless land for six months 
 in every year. So much for the river and the rain by 
 which it is fed. Now let us look at the land which, 
 under the name of the Soudan, is practically the region 
 watered by the Upper Nile and its affluents. 
 
 For one thousand one hundred miles, as bird would 
 fly, due south of Cairo, the entire face of the land, 
 except the narrow strip by the very edge of the Nile, 
 is all glaring sand — a dead, rainless world. Then 
 begins a change : the sand disappears, grasses cover the 
 face of the earth, forests are seen, vast marshes fringe 
 the rivers, which wander with sluggish currents through 
 hundreds of miles of tall, waving reeds. This indeed is 
 the true Soudan — the " Country of the Blacks " — for in 
 this humid region the Arab of the desert quickly sickens, 
 the camel cannot live, the horse is unknown ; here, en- 
 trenched in marsh and fenced with fever, Dinka and 
 Shillook, Bongo and Unyoro, still hold their own — the 
 outposts of the heart of Africa, the land between the 
 lakes, the Congo and the Nile, into which the slave-trader 
 has not yet come. It was this Province of the Equator, 
 as it was called, that was to be the scene of Gordon's 
 rule in the year 1874. But we must go back a few 
 
94 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 years in the history of this region to rightly understand 
 the work that has to be done there. 
 
 The exploration of the Equatorial Soudan is of recent 
 date. It is little more than thirty years ago since the 
 first organised attempt at trade was made there. This 
 word "trade," in its African sense, has ever had but 
 one practical meaning, it is trade in slaves ; and the 
 reason of this singleness of commerce in the Dark Con- 
 tinent is simple enough when one comes to study the 
 dim interior of that vast region. Its sole productions 
 practically consist of two articles, ivory and human 
 beings — two ivories in fact, for men and women in the 
 African trade have always been termed "black ivory"; 
 and one article is the complement of the other in more 
 ways than in name. 
 
 There are no roads in Africa, and if there were roads 
 horses and oxen could not travel them because of the 
 Tetse fly : ivory is heavy, and there is nothing to carry it 
 to the sea except the heads and shoulders of men. These 
 heads and shoulders, worth so little at home, become 
 valuable in proportion as they are distant from home. 
 Dinka, Shillook, Bongo, or Darfourian, brought down 
 first as porters of tusks, were themselves converted into 
 money as porters and servants for the households of the 
 wealthy Turks of Syria, Egypt, and Turkey. When 
 the white ivory got hunted out from the forest and the 
 swamps, the " black ivory " still remained in bee-hive 
 hut and mud-and-wattle village, and the slave-gang still 
 plodded its weary way to the sea, the sole export of a 
 miserable land. 
 
 Sooner or later the great fact will be known that 
 interior Africa has one lasting article of export, and only 
 
V AFRICA'S ONE GREAT ARTICLE OF EXPORT 95 
 
 one. Ivory and ostrich feathers soon disappear : gum- 
 arabic does not grow in the true country of the blacks : 
 cassava and plantain are but the cabbages and potatoes 
 of the people : men, vromen, and children still form the 
 one sure and certain export, just as they formed it three 
 hundred years ago, when the Elizabethan captain of war, 
 Hawkins, carried the first cargo of slaves from Africa to 
 America. 
 
 For many centuries a vague tradition existed in the 
 East that the Nile had its sources in a land of great 
 mineral wealth. The name of Nubia was itself supposed 
 to indicate the presence of gold, and the reports of 
 traders to the old kingdom of Sennaar, where gold was 
 found in small quantities at the foot of the Abyssinian 
 hills, tended to keep alive the impression of some great 
 region of richness lying in the more remote interior. 
 Thus when, in 1820, Mehemet Ali sent his son with a 
 large army to conquer Dongola and the kingdoms of 
 Berber and Sennaar, the examination of the country for 
 gold was one of the chief duties entrusted to the ex- 
 pedition. But gold there was none. A small branch 
 expedition, following the White Nile, reached about to 
 the ninth parallel of north latitude, dug holes in the 
 sand or mud of the great river, which was there still 
 flowing out of the south, and returned to Sennaar. 
 Thirty years later the slave-traders, having in the 
 meantime wasted and depopulated the region lying 
 between Khartoum and the ninth parallel, began to 
 extend their trade, as it was called, into more southern 
 lands. Following up the innumerable rivers which 
 branched from the White Nile into the reed-covered 
 swamps of the true Soudan, these traders pushed their 
 
96 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 raids almost to the equator, producing far - spread 
 desolation as they went. A few years later, English 
 travellers starting from Zanzibar reached the great 
 Equatorial Lakes, whose previous existence Portuguese 
 missionaries had, centuries earlier, made the world 
 aware of. These travellers spoke of vast fertile lands 
 lying around the lakes. The Khedive of Egypt was a 
 man of immense projects. The Suez Canal had just 
 been opened with extraordinary display. There was no 
 difficulty in obtaining money for anything : the Jew 
 had always taken a deep interest in Egypt : Khedive 
 Ismail was a good borrower, not particular as to interest, 
 and ready to write his name, or rather the name of his 
 people, for twenty millions if the brokers would give 
 him — say, sixteen. So the pleasant years of the late 
 sixties and early seventies went on. Eailways, sugar 
 factories, palaces, canals, French upholstery, steamers, 
 were made or bought or built; and, among other 
 things, it was decided to form a great Egyptian province 
 in the centre of Africa, which in time, perhaps, would 
 draw to the valley of the Nile a vast trade, and would 
 eventually open the whole interior of Africa. 
 
 Thus was begun the policy of extravagance and 
 extension of dominion which has resulted, in less than 
 twenty years, in such ruin to Egypt. So far from the 
 Nile valley becoming a highway of commerce, or a 
 channel for civilisation to spread into the interior, it is 
 to-day more sealed against trade than it has been since 
 the century began. The outposts of Egypt are now 
 where they were in 1819, and the vast region of the 
 middle Nile, whose conquest and possession cost so 
 much life and treasure, has lapsed back into its original 
 
V FIRS T ENTR V INTO KHAR TO UM 97 
 
 darkness. Truly the Jew has taken a terrible vengeance 
 upon the land of his captivity. 
 
 Moving with his usual celerity, leaving staff and 
 baggage to follow, Gordon reached Khartoum on March 
 13th. He had come by Suakim and Berber, and 
 had been learning as he came. " Things cannot last 
 long like this, they are paying thirty-six per cent for 
 money," is the last remark he makes before quitting 
 Cairo. At Suakim the rottenness of things has become 
 still more apparent. The " spoiling of the Egyptians " 
 which had been going on by Europe is too much for 
 him. " Duke of This wants steamer — say six hundred 
 pounds; Duke of That wants house, etc., all the time 
 the poor people are ground down to get money for all 
 this. If God wills, I will shake all this in some way 
 not clear to me now."^ Thus he wrote in 1874. The 
 shaking of it was indeed to come about soon enough, but 
 the real spoilers were not to suffer in the catastrophe, 
 at least for a time. 
 
 Looked at in the light of later events, this first entry 
 of Gordon into Khartoum has a strange interest for us. 
 The Governor-General met him at the palace-steps with 
 troops, fire of artillery, and music : there was good news 
 too, for only the day before an express had come from the 
 south to say that the 8vdd, the terrible floating mass of 
 vegetation which had so long barred the way to the upper 
 river, had broken asunder, and the Nile was now clear to 
 Gondokoro, one thousand miles beyond Khartoum. In 
 three weeks he might hope to reach his seat of govern- 
 ment, and, as Governor-General of the Equator, would 
 be at home. 
 
 ^ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa: London, 1884. 
 II 
 
98 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON ciiAr. 
 
 After a week's delay in Khartoum he is off again on 
 his road, guns firing parting salutes, and the rest of it, 
 Governor-General Ismail Yacoob no doubt watching his 
 departure with many inward thanks to Allah that this 
 curious, busy, restless, eye-piercing, honest Frank is no 
 longer near to worry with questions, to talk to slaves, 
 and visit hospitals, and take interest in schools, and do 
 sundry other utterly un-Turkish things that no Pacha 
 could be expected to understand, and with many an 
 inward chuckle, no doubt too, at the prospect that lay 
 before the new Governor-General of the Equator, whose 
 high-sounding dominion was in reality a united kingdom 
 of swamps, mdd^ and slaves. 
 
 The steamer goes slowly along, but all the wild life 
 of the great river is new, and there is much to study — 
 black and white storks, troops of monkeys w^ith tails 
 carried straight in air, hippopotami with their blunt 
 noses only protruding out of the water by day, but 
 visible enough by moonlight as they go " walking about 
 like huge islands in the shallow water," and here and 
 there wild-looking natives, who run back from the river- 
 banks when they see the glasses of the traveller pointed 
 towards them. 
 
 About two hundred miles above Khartoum there is an 
 island called Abba, in the White Nile, a spot at this time 
 of no importance, unnoticeable in the long length of Upper 
 Nile's inanity. A steamer leaving Khartoum and steam- 
 ing at the slow rate which Gordon's steamer was doing 
 would have been passing this island of Abba on the 
 fourth day of its journey. Describing the events of that 
 fourth day there is this passage : " Last night, March 
 26th, we were going along slowly in the moonlight, 
 
V THE NILE TO GONDOKORO 99 
 
 and I was thinking of you all, and of the expeditions, 
 and Nubar and Co., when all of a sudden from a large 
 bush came peals of laughter. I felt put out, but it 
 turned out to be birds, who laughed at us from the bushes 
 for some time in a very rude way. They are a species 
 of stork, and seemed in capital spirits, and 'highly 
 amused at anybody thinking of going to Gondokoro 
 with the hope of doing anything." A chance coinci- 
 dence, no doubt, but a strange one too. In a cave among 
 rocks in the Isle of Abba at this time there was living 
 a dervish, one Mahomet Achmet, who was already of 
 some repute in the Arab Soudan, seven years later to be 
 known far and wide as the Mahdi. Were they birds of 
 ill-omen, these storks, that thus vexed the night with 
 their weird mockery, as the boat that carried the 
 stranger who was to attempt the hopeless task of right- 
 ing this dark land passed by in the moonlight % The 
 stork is held sacred among Mohammedans. " The stork 
 knoweth her appointed times," says the great prophet of 
 doom. Did these Soudan storks see the "appointed 
 times," the years ahead in the lives of the two men whose 
 life-orbits at this spot now first came together ] 
 
 Still steaming up the great river they arrive at Gon- 
 dokoro on April 16th, twenty-six days from Khar- 
 toum. The full reality of the desolation of the land he 
 had come to slave in was now visible to Gordon. All 
 the novelty had worn off. " No one can conceive the 
 utter misery of these lands," he writes; "heat and 
 mosquitoes day and night all the year round." Six 
 days before reaching Gondokoro they passed a deserted 
 station, where twenty years earlier an Austrian mission 
 had essayed the hopeless task of teaching. Out of 
 
lOO LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 twenty missionary priests fifteen were lying buried 
 under the banana trees, whose long leaves were now the 
 sole relic of the mission. 
 
 Arrived at Gondokoro, the last nakedness of the land 
 is revealed : there is no government, no taxes, no any- 
 thing. " The only possessions Egypt has in my province," 
 writes Gordon, " are two forts, one here at Gondokoro, 
 the other at Fatiko ; there are three hundred men in 
 one, and two hundred in the other. You can't go out 
 in any safety half a mile."^ The soldiers had been 
 looting and cattle-lifting in the usual Soudan fashion : 
 the slavers are at work further away to south and 
 west. Single-handed Gordon can do nothing in this 
 sea of misery. It will be quicker to go back again to 
 Khartoum, pick up his staff and supplies, and return 
 with them to Gondokoro ) so, after six days spent in this 
 wretched place, he turns back, and is at Khartoum again 
 in eleven days. The staff and baggage are at Berber, 
 and thither Gordon goes to meet them. By the end of 
 May he is back once more at Khartoum, giving Ismail 
 Yacoob further bits of his mind — heavy bits too. "I 
 think I have crushed him," he says ; " told him he told 
 stories. It was undiplomatic of me, but it did the 
 governor-general good." - Then he is off again for the 
 equator. 
 
 And now begins the work of forming posts, making 
 the soldiers till the ground instead of robbing the 
 people, getting news of the slave-traders, learning 
 the habits and customs of the natives, catching all 
 traders that come in his way, and relieving, whenever 
 he is able, the misery of the wretched people around 
 ^ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. ^ Ibid. 
 
V MISERY OF THE NATIVES loi 
 
 him. He has already discovered that the seat of the 
 mischief lies at Khartoum, as later on he will find 
 that Cairo is the base which sets going Khartoum. It 
 is a wretched existence, but, bad as it is, there is for 
 Gordon something worse. 
 
 " I prefer it infinitely to going out to dinner in England," 
 he writes ; " the people here have not a strip to cover them, 
 but you do not see them grunting and groaning all day long 
 as you see scores and scores in England, with their wretched 
 dinner-parties and attempts at gaiety where all is hollow and 
 miserable. ... I took a poor old bag of bones into my 
 camp a month ago, and have been feeding her up, but 
 yesterday she was gently taken off, and now knows all 
 things. I suppose she filled her place in life as well as 
 Queen Elizabeth." " A wretched sister is struggling up the 
 road, but she is such a wisp of bones that the wind threatens 
 to overthrow her, so she has halted, preferring the rain to 
 being cast down. I have sent her some dhoora, and will 
 produce a spark of joy in her black and withered carcase." ^ 
 
 So vivid are these bits of Soudan life which he 
 gives us that we are tempted not to break their con- 
 text. Notwithstanding the dhoora, the "bag of bones" 
 dies two days later. "I daresay you will see," he 
 writes to his sister, "this black sister some day, and 
 she will tell you about it, and how Infinite Wisdom 
 directed the whole affair. I know this is a tough 
 morsel to believe, hut it is true. I prefer life amidst 
 sorrows, if these sorrows are inevitable, to a life spent 
 in inaction. Many a rich person is as unhappy as this 
 rag of mortality." 
 
 More and more the conviction grows that there is 
 nothing but slaves in the land. " There can be no trade," 
 
 ^ Colonel Oordon in Central Africa. 
 
I02 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 he writes, "for they have nothing to exchange for goods. 
 Poor creatures, they would like to be left alone." In 
 September they are in the midst of the rains, and the 
 country has become a vast swamp. The staff are falling 
 fast. The intrepid Linant is already dead. Anson was 
 also gone : two or three are unable to move, the rest are 
 skeletons : Gordon is himself " a shadow." " However, I 
 am quite well, but my temper is very, very short, and it 
 is bad for those who come across me the wrong way." 
 What a life of ceaseless worry it is ! His lieutenant, 
 Abou Said, the notorious slave -dealer, whom he has 
 taken upon the principle of setting a thief to catch 
 a thief, is already showing true colours — full of deceit, 
 lying, setting the natives against the governor- 
 general, taking bribes, and generally conducting himself 
 as all those who knew his previous history thought he 
 would. The employment of this notorious slave -dealer 
 and brigand seemed to many to be a mistake, but 
 Gordon knew his own work best. Through thick 
 and thin he had stuck to this new-found ally, whom he 
 had brought from Cairo. "All the people are dead 
 against Abou Said, but I am faithful to him, and trust to 
 a higher power to bring me through," he wrote from 
 Khartoum. At Berber the governor was " dead against 
 him." Notwithstanding all these hostile demonstrations 
 Abou was taken on and made second in command. " I 
 feel sure he will be the most useful man I have got," 
 Gordon writes from Gondokoro. Later on, "I mean to 
 support Abou Said against Eaouf Bey," he says ; but Abou 
 is too great a scoundrel and has at last to be dismissed. 
 The presence of elephant-tusks proved too much for the 
 old trader : he is cauofht at his tricks and sent back in 
 
V RAIN AND SICKNESS 103 
 
 disgrace, fortunately before he can do half the harm he 
 intends to do, but not before he has already worked 
 sufficient mischief among the black soldiers to last a 
 long time ; nevertheless that before his backsliding 
 Abou did the work he was wanted to do, and was no 
 failure to his employer, stands on record in Gordon's 
 own words. 
 
 A few miles above Gondokoro there is a rapid in the 
 river, and to this place Gordon determined to move the 
 station, building a post at the foot of the falls, which 
 was named Rageef. Here in the end of September he 
 pitched his tent. Illness still clung to the different 
 members of the expedition. "The rain is something 
 tremendous; it comes down in such sheets and with 
 such force — a good slope will scarcely carry off the 
 water. The Nile runs down very swiftly some three 
 knots an hour, an oily-looking stream," he writes. The 
 ground is higher than at Gondokoro, and the climate 
 is better than at the lower station. 
 
 Death and sickness have already removed most of the 
 staff, but the Governor -General of the Equator works 
 away all the same, never giving in for a moment. " I 
 am quite well, and things go on smoothly," he writes, 
 " and I have a conviction that, God willing, I shall do 
 much in this country. The main point is to be just and 
 straightforward, to fear no one or no one's saying, to 
 avoid all tergiversation or twisting, even if you lose by 
 it, and to be hard to all if they do not obey you. All 
 this is not easy to do, but it must be my aim to accom- 
 plish it."^ Wonderful words these, written in the dull 
 depths of this land of death on September 23d, 1874. 
 * Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. 
 
I04 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Ten years later, on September 23d, 1884, a solitary 
 English soldier sat writing in Khartoum these words : 
 "As for evacuation, it is one thing; as for ratting out, 
 it is another. I am quite of advice as to No. 1, but 
 I will be no party to No. 2 (the rat business), 1st, because 
 it is dishonourable ; 2d, because it is not possible (which 
 will have more weight), therefore if it is to be No. 2 
 the troops had better not come beyond Berber till the 
 question of what will be done is settled, so I will end 
 this book— C. G. Gordon." ^ 
 
 He had just received news that an expedition of 
 British troops was to be sent to Khartoum, and he closed 
 the first book of his journal with the words last quoted. 
 The other words, written ten years earlier, had been long 
 forgotten by writer and by readers, but they had not 
 been lost : " God willing, I shall do much in this country." 
 Was it not of a man set in authority, having under him 
 soldiers, and saying unto one, " Go, and he goeth, and to 
 another. Come, and he cometh," that the words had been 
 spoken eighteen and a half centuries before, " I have not 
 found so great faith, no, not in Israel "^ 
 
 Here then, at Kageef, the last months of 1874 pass 
 away. Despite rain, disease, and desertion, shape and 
 design are being stamped by the energy of this soldier 
 upon the dull inanity of this mournful land. The 
 stations are being formed which are to extend from 
 Khartoum to the great lakes : steamers are being brought 
 up in pieces to be put together above the impediments 
 to navigation. Colonel Long has been sent on an em- 
 bassy to King M'tesa of Uganda in Lake Victoria, and 
 he has returned, after many adventures^ to report a 
 ^ Khartoum Journals : London, 1888. 
 
CLOSE OF 1874 105 
 
 practicable waterway to the neighbourhood of that 
 monarch's dominions. 
 
 As Christmas draws near, the isolation of the centre 
 and source of all this effort becomes more profound. On 
 December 16th he writes, " The whole of the original staff 
 except Kemp have gone down, eight in all. I will have 
 no more fellows up here." " No man under forty should 
 come here, and then only those who are accustomed to 
 these climates," he had written a few months earlier. 
 "Why did I come here? you ask," he writes; "the 
 thing slid on little by little. I felt too independent to 
 serve, with my views, at Malta, or in the corps, and 
 perhaps I felt I had in me something that, if God 
 willed, might benefit these lands, for He has given me 
 great energy and health, and some little common sense." 
 Then his mind flies off to the world of "honour" 
 which he had voluntarily quitted. "Never shall I. 
 forget what I got when I scored out the inscription on 
 the gold medal. How I have been repaid a millionfold !" 
 (This was the Emperor of China's medal, which he had 
 sent anonymously to the Coventry Eelief Fund, having 
 first obliterated the inscription.) " There is now not one 
 thing I value in the world. Its honours, they are false ; 
 its knicknacks, they are perishable and useless ; whilst 
 I live I value God's blessing — health — and if you have 
 that, as far as this world goes, you are rich." ^ So closed 
 the 3^ear 1874. 
 
 Gordon was not the man to turn aside from anything 
 
 he had once laid his hand to. This dream of a Central 
 
 African Empire had taken deep hold of his mind, and 
 
 although each month made more fatally manifest the 
 
 ' Letters from Central Africa. 
 
io6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 wretchedness of the land and the hopeless nature of the 
 natives, he would not abandon hope that things might 
 prove better when once the lakes had been reached. 
 This Nile river was only the road to the real objective, 
 and already he was looking about for some alternative 
 route by which communication with Cairo might be 
 effected on a shorter line from Lake Victoria than that 
 along the Nile. Mombaza Bay, two hundred and fifty 
 miles north of Zanzibar, seemed to offer a base distant 
 from the east shore of Lake Victoria about four hundred 
 miles, and seizing the idea of making that place the sea- 
 port of a line by way of Suez, he proposed to the Khedive 
 to take possession of it early in 1875. From Mombaza 
 the party would then " push towards M'tesa," and, 
 the line once established, he proposed to "give up 
 Khartoum and the bother of the steamers, etc." " It is 
 the only mode of helping these inland countries," he 
 thinks ; "all the northern part of my province is marsh 
 and desert, useless for any one ; the rich parts are the 
 lake districts." Meanwhile the lakes had still to be 
 reached from the Nile side, and to that task Gordon 
 bent all his efforts during the early months of 1875. 
 Many obstacles had to be overcome. A native chief of 
 the Bari tribe was inclined to oppose his passage. It 
 was necessary to "take his cattle." "I do most cordially 
 hate this work," Gordon writes, "but the question is 
 what are you to dol" so two thousand^ six hundred 
 head of cattle are captured from Sheikh Beddan of the 
 Bari. A few days later it transpires tha.t it was not the 
 cattle belonging to the recalcitrant Beddan that were 
 "lifted," but those of another and a friendly sheikh. 
 When the discovery is made, the captured cattle are at 
 
V TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES 107 
 
 once given back, "although it was a matter of perfect in- 
 difference to my interpreter," writes Gordon, "whether 
 I had attacked a friendly or an unfriendly sheikh." " I 
 have done with raids after my misfortune with my 
 friendly sheikh, and only if attacked will I sanction re- 
 prisals, and I will also see whether I have not given cause 
 for attack." This necessity of being severe upon the 
 natives sits heavily on his mind. " It is not the climate, 
 it is not the natives, but it is the soldiery which is my 
 horror," he says. His whole soul revolts from this work 
 of killing or harrying the people, and already he is look- 
 ing forward with joy to " seeing some hope of being rid 
 of the whole affair." Once the boats are on the two 
 lakes he " will say good-bye." There is at this time a 
 statement of the case of white verms black in one of his 
 letters which so exactly sums up our own policy in South 
 Africa towards Kafirs, Zulus, and Pondos that it deserves 
 to be recorded word for word, even though its moral 
 should now be all too late in application. "These are 
 their maxims" (the white man's) : "If the natives don't 
 act after the most civilised manner, then punish them for 
 not so acting, but if it comes to be a question of our 
 action, then follow the customs of the natives — viz., re- 
 cognise plunder as no offence whatever. They weigh the 
 actions of ignorant natives after one and their own 
 code; they act towards the natives after the native 
 code, which recognises the right of the stronger to pillage 
 his neighbour. Oh ! I am sick of these people. It is 
 they, and not the blacks, who need civilisation." The 
 truth about this so-called spreading of civilisation in the 
 Dark Continent is now apparent to Gordon, and his 
 decision has been made — he will open the Nile to the 
 
io8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Equatorial Lakes and then say good-bye at the earliest 
 date to " civilisation " in the Soudan. 
 
 And now midsummer has come, and it is time to be 
 at work, hauling the nuggers and the steamers over the 
 rapids that begin close above his station of Lado. It is 
 more than four months since the steamers reached 
 Khartoum, but as yet they have not appeared at 
 Gondokoro. Of all the trials of life in the Soudan this 
 waiting is the worst. " One cannot tell what a blessing 
 employment is till we lose it. Like health, we do not 
 notice these blessings. Inaction to me is terrible." In 
 the absence of the longed-for boats he turns his hand to 
 anything. Out of an old garden -pump which Baker 
 had left at Gondokoro he makes a rocket-tube. Watches 
 and clocks are repaired, and a musical box of M'tesa's, 
 which had been given to that potentate and had 
 gone the way of all musical boxes, is set right, and sent 
 up again to Uganda. All this time correspondence with 
 Cairo has been brisk, and as Gordon never had two 
 measures in his dealings with man, the Khedive prob- 
 ably heard more truth in these last few months than 
 he ever had had told him before in his lifetime. Truth 
 is seldom palatable to princes, least of all to Eastern 
 princes, and the very possible contingency of finding his 
 dismissal in the official packet of letters from Cairo was 
 often discussed in Gordon's letters home. " Some might 
 care if they were dismissed," he says, "as the world 
 would talk. Thank God, I am screened from that fear. 
 I know that I have done my very best, as far as my 
 intellect has allowed me, for the Khedive, and I have 
 tried to be just to all ; so if I go, do not expect to see 
 your brother broken-hearted. ... I acknowledge to 
 
V THE RAPIDS OF RAGEEF 109 
 
 feeling a sort of regret if I have to leave before opening 
 the river to the Zate, but it would soon pass off, as I 
 should think it God's will that I should not do it." But, 
 to do the Khedive Ismail justice, he had not the 
 faintest idea of parting with this most faithful servant ; 
 on the contrary, he was in reality ready to go almost 
 any length to retain the man who, if his words rasped 
 sometimes like a file, was true as truest steel to his 
 employer. 
 
 Of all the rivers on the earth the Nile is the one 
 which gives fullest scope to make " the absent always 
 wrong." ^ The man who works at the Nile frontier 
 must expect to have his work and his motives, by the 
 time they reach Cairo, rent and twisted and tortured out 
 of shape, as though they had in concrete and bodily 
 form been sent down the windings and cataracts and 
 whirlpools of the great river. But Ismail knew the 
 man who was at the head of the sap which was being 
 run into the centre of the Dark Continent, and doubtless 
 he knew too the intervening " reflectors " of the far-off 
 work. This was the one really bright spot of Gordon's 
 toil during all these years. He, and not his enemies, 
 was listened to in Cairo. At length everything is in 
 readiness for the trial of the nuggers that are to carry 
 the sections of the steamers up the rapids. On August 
 3d the labour began. The river was running like 
 a mill-race, and was still rising : the natives had be- 
 come quiet, and many of them were even ready to aid 
 in hauling the boats through the cataracts. Few who 
 have not gone through this labour of forcing up the 
 rapids of the Nile can understand the true meaning of 
 ' Spanish proverb. 
 
no LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Gordon's description of the toil, and of the effect it had 
 upon his nervous system. " A day of agony to me," he 
 begins. 
 
 " I am really quite exhausted — more mentally than 
 physically. It has indeed been a fearful day ; one nugger 
 nearly sank. It is the violent eddies that are so terrible. 
 The slightest faltering in the haulers would be fatal. Your 
 brother " (he is writing to his sister) " prays the nuggers 
 up as he used to do the troops when they wavered in 
 the breaches in China, but often and often the ropes break 
 and it has all to be done over again. However, I feel sure 
 that we shall have fully made known to us the mystery 
 of these matters. Sometimes I think I am punished for 
 some arbitrary act I have been guilty of, for the soldiers 
 have tried me sorely. I do not feel that I ever could do 
 any more work after this command. It certainly takes the 
 edge off one, and adds to one's age." 
 
 Five days later, when all the native boats have been 
 got over the worst part of the Googi cataract, there is 
 a bit that tells what the strain has been better than long 
 pages of description. " Somehow or another I am not 
 so elated at our hitherto success as I thought I should 
 be. The anxiety has killed enthusiasm in me. I never 
 have had such an anxious time," he writes. The great 
 heart of the toiler was beating for a moment slower in 
 the recoil of the strain that had conquered those rapids ; 
 and well it might, for of all the fights of life that 
 whiten hair and dig wrinkles before they are due there 
 are few that compare with this battle of man against 
 the cataract strength of Nile's flooded volume. 
 
 The cataracts passed, there still remained the natives, 
 and each step now taken forward added to their hostility. 
 For days past they have been getting more excited : the 
 
ATTACK BY THE BARI TRIBE 
 
 women and children are busy carrying away from the 
 wattle-huts the poor household gods of their scantiest 
 possession. By day the spearmen stand on the hilltops 
 looking from afar at the work going on upon the river : 
 at night the Coojom' or magic fires are to be seen. At 
 last the conflict comes : a party of soldiers under Mr. 
 Linant has crossed the river with the intention of burning 
 some native huts, the inhabitants of which had made an 
 attack on the previous day. Gordon, thinking that the 
 burning might tend to distract the attention of the natives 
 from his steamer, now in the rapids, assented : the party, 
 some forty all told, crossed the river, and spent the day 
 foraging about the east shore. In the afternoon they 
 were set upon by the enraged natives, and only four 
 escaped. It was almost the first of a series of events of 
 the kind destined to be but too common a few years 
 later. " The natives are brave fellows," writes Gordon, 
 after describing this disaster ; " they know that our 
 soldiers cannot hit them in most cases when they fire, 
 and so in they rush and it is over." *'The wretched 
 black soldier is not a match for a native with spear and 
 bow; the soldier cannot shoot, and is at the native's 
 mercy, if the native knew it." Then he decides to put a 
 fortified post on the east side of the river, and train his 
 men to fight the natives. Then comes a significant pas- 
 sage : " The worst of this is, the way it ties me to one 
 place, the uncongeniality of the work, and the fact that 
 I may train the natives by my training my soldiers. It 
 is a difficult question, which God will solve." Then he 
 goes on in his usual way of thinking aloud, that mental 
 habit by which his mind is absolutely laid bare, so that 
 there is not a single lesson of his life that cannot be 
 
112 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 traced through its every train of thought and every 
 prompting of his nature. 
 
 "We derided these poor blacks who fought for their 
 independence, and now God gave them the victory. I 
 declare, in spite of the expressions you may note in my 
 letters, I truly sympathise with them. They say, ' We do 
 not want your cloth and beads ; you go your way, and we 
 will go ours. We do not want to see your chief.' This they 
 have said over and over again. They have said, * This land 
 is ours, and you shall not have it, neither its bread nor its 
 flocks.' Poor fellows ! you will say I am most inconsistent, 
 and so I am, and so are you. We are dead against our words 
 when it comes to action. We will at morning prayers say 
 forgive as we forgive, and then hurry over breakfast to carry 
 on the squabble of the day before."^ 
 
 There is nothing so remarkable in the life of this 
 man as his perfect sense of justice ; nothing can upset 
 the even balance of his mind in the cause of right against 
 wrong : no matter what self-interest is in the scale, no 
 matter how much disaster to his own side may lie in the 
 triumph of his enemy, he can never lose sight of the 
 original cause of quarrel, and the justice of the native 
 right to the possession of the land. Even the poor 
 " magic men," the Coojoors of the Baris, have the dignity 
 of men praying to the God of Battles for help against 
 the enemy who has come to attack them. 
 
 " Did I not mention the incantations made against us by 
 the magicians on the other side," he asks, " and how some- 
 how, from the earnestness that they made them with, I had 
 some thought of misgiving on account of them ? It was odd, 
 this repulse so soon to follow. These prayers were earnest 
 prayers for celestial aid, in which the prayer knew he 
 
 ^ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. 
 
V HIS HATRED OF NATIVE WARS 113 
 
 would need help from some unknown Power to avert a 
 danger. That the native knew not the true God is true, but 
 God knows him, and moved him to pray, and answered his 
 prayer." 
 
 A few days later an expedition is sent out at night 
 to harry one of the offending tribes. It fails in effecting 
 the capture of the cattle, and the cause of the failure is 
 laid upon the sheikh who was to have guided the party, 
 but who failed to do so. It is proposed to punish this 
 sheikh. Gordon won't have it. "If he did mislead 
 them," he writes, " he was a brave, patriotic man, and I 
 shall let him go." Later on we read : " I let the sheikh 
 go. Poor fellow, they had tied his hands so tight that 
 they were quite swollen. How I hate the country 
 and all the work ! " Truly a different stamp of soldier 
 this from the usual type of which history is so full. 
 What a contrast to any among the long list of later 
 heroes is this man, who, with all his humanity and all 
 his tenderness of heart, is still by far the most success- 
 ful conqueror of savage races, and the wisest ruler of 
 them, too, that this modern England of ours has seen. 
 As one reads the pages of Gordon's journal in Central 
 Africa, which tell not so much of the immense work 
 done on river and rapid as the thoughts that come to 
 him during that work, the picture of the man grows 
 and grows until he stands before us absolutely alone in 
 his generation ; and the thing that is so wonderful in 
 this life and this work is not the loneliness or the labour, 
 not the difficulties or the disease, not the figure of a 
 single toiler undismayed at his task amid death and 
 desertion — all these are common enough in the history 
 of war and exploration, and without them victorious war 
 I 
 
114 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 or successful exploration can never be accomplished — 
 but what is wonderful to watch, and utterly without 
 parallel in these modern times of ours at least, is the 
 love of justice, the mercy, the gentleness, the loving- 
 kindness, the generosity to enemies, the absence of all 
 revenge, the immense humanity of the man. Never 
 mind what it costs, he will do the right thing by this 
 wretched Bari native. Sheikh Beddan has his cows 
 returned to him, and is given a present. A war party 
 captures the daughter of another hostile sheikh : she is 
 at once dressed in the best costume that can be got in 
 the stores, and sent back to her father. Nay, so strong 
 is the sense of right and justice in the man that he is 
 ever ready to take the part of the wronged, even when 
 they are doing their best to kill him. It seems impos- 
 sible for him to get into a rage with them. He is 
 utterly unable to work himself into that fine frenzy of 
 hostility against some black king who may happen to 
 stand in the path of his progress, that state of whole- 
 some hatred which is almost laughable to watch in the 
 dealings of our race with the unfortunate sable monarchs 
 whose lands we have been desirous of acquiring. 
 
 And it is this absolute absence of the truly Saxon 
 element of hate that makes Gordon so often wish to be 
 alone in the work he has to do. He feels that his sense 
 of right is not the same as other men's ; that where they 
 would hang, he would often reward ; that where they 
 would burn and pillage, he would spare and protect; 
 that where they would make what they called an ex- 
 ample — a lesson, by the way, which would bear bitter 
 fruit in the memories of revenge it was so certain to 
 evoke later on — he too would make his example, but it 
 
V THE FOLA FALLS 115 
 
 would be of mercy and kindness to the vanquished. 
 The secret of Gordon's success as a ruler of savage or 
 semi-civilised races was a simple one. It lay in his 
 possession of two almost opposite qualities — an intense 
 feeling of sympathy with them in every want and work 
 of their lives, and a bodily energy or power of endur- 
 ance which made him their equal in physical toil. His 
 heart, soft as a woman's, was keenly alive to their suffer- 
 ing ; his body, capable of the most prolonged exertion, 
 was ever a tireless toiler for their welfare. Absolute 
 necessity of this bond of sympathy between the ruler 
 and the ruled was ever present to him. " Anything is 
 better," he once wrote, "than the wretched want of 
 sympathy between us and the Egyptians, which is now 
 (1883) increasing into a deadly hate. We must have 
 a Nemesis unless we show more sympathy." The end 
 of 1875 came. It found the line of posts extended 
 to Duffli, a spot on the Nile within three degrees 
 of the equator. Close to DujSli the river was broken 
 into a series of rapids and chutes which extended 
 for two miles. It was a terrible disappointment to 
 find the long -entertained hope of getting through to 
 Lake Albert without further interruption thus sud- 
 denly dispelled. " I bore it well," he says, " and for 
 all you could see it might have been a picnic party 
 to the Fola Falls ; but it is rather sad, and will give 
 me a mint of trouble and delay." And so it did. 
 Here for another three months the work of dragging 
 and portaging went on. All around spread a sea of tall 
 jungle grass : a dreary land where by day all the year 
 round a fierce sun beats down between drenching 
 showers, and where " the moment the sun goes down, a 
 
ii6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 cold damp arises which enters one's very bones. There 
 is not an interval of five minutes from the setting of the 
 sun and the rising of this dreadful damp, and you feel 
 the danger, as it were, at once." Lake Albert is still 
 some seventy miles distant. The Victoria Nyanza is two 
 hundred away, and meanwhile there is trouble with 
 Kaba Eega in front and the Bari in rear. The doctor, 
 who was also interpreter, dies in October : the servant 
 follows in December, and the year closes on the lonely 
 solitary figure, fighting man and nature : one day down 
 mth ague, the next forcing his way through swamp and 
 jungle ; sometimes feeling " very low," and again speak- 
 ing his thoughts of men and things with deep insight 
 and light badinage, but always summing up the situation, 
 be it death or failure, gleam of success or dark dis- 
 appointment, with the brightest, the most simple, the 
 most perfect faith that " whatever the world may say," 
 he will content himself " with what God may say." 
 
 At length all the obstacles are overcome, and the first 
 steamer, put together above the Fola Falls, emerges from 
 the maze of papyrus isles and floating vegetation which 
 hide the exit of the Nile out of the lake upon the 
 Albert Nyanza. Gordon had all along declared he would 
 not himself go on the lake, and he persisted in his decision. 
 A lieutenant, Gessi, was to have the honour of first 
 circumnavigating this sheet of water. This refusal of 
 Gordon to reap the harvest of his own toil is so typical 
 of the man that his words will alone show the thoughts 
 that guided him in his decision : — 
 
 " I say I wish to give a practical proof of what I think 
 regarding the inordinate praise which is given to an ex- 
 
V THE ALBERT NYANZA 117 
 
 plorer. Now surely Higginbotham ^ did much in getting up 
 tlie stores ; and through the desert, what work he must have 
 had ! Again, what work — not equal to his — have I not had 
 with these stores. But all this would go for nothing in 
 comparison to the fact of going on the lake, which you may 
 say is a small affair when you have the boats ready for you. 
 Others sow, and one will reap all the results of the labour. 
 
 sent me a letter written to him which speaks of the 
 
 honour and glory of going on the lake — the chaplet of laurels 
 to the great conqueror, etc. ! It is thus, therefore, that I 
 wisli to show palpably that it is a great mistake to draw the 
 false conclusions people do about these things." 2 
 
 It was the end of April by the time Gessi had com- 
 pleted the tour of Lake Albert. He found it much smaller 
 than had been anticipated, fifty miles across from east to 
 west, one hundred and forty from north to south, run- 
 ning into marsh and swamp at its southern end. Violent 
 storms swept its surface. The natives along the shores, 
 numerous and hostile, were crying out, "Go on, go 
 on ! We want no Turks here," so well had the know- 
 ledge of Ottoman character preceded the actual presence 
 of the Turk. From April to October 1876 the old work 
 of marching and mapping and fort-making went on in 
 that dead angle of Equatorial Africa which lies between 
 the lakes and the Falls of Fola. "A dead mournful 
 spot, with a heavy damp dew penetrating everywhere. 
 It is as if the Angel Azrael had spread his wings over this 
 land." " You have little idea of the silence and solitude. 
 I am sure no one whom God did not support could bear 
 up. It is simply killing. Thank God, I am in good 
 health, and very rarely low, and then only for a short 
 time." Through this mournful land the river winds at 
 
 ^ An engineer. ^ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. 
 
Ii8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 times in currentless reaches amid isles of papyrus, and 
 it is often impossible to reach for miles the real shore, 
 so dense is this growth of water vegetation : in other 
 places between the two lakes the Nile is a slant of water. 
 Over this wide sea of rapid marsh, grass, and rolling hill, 
 fierce sunshine and drenching rain alternate in quick 
 succession, and at night the stagnant water in the 
 hollows and the dense vegetation everywhere exhale 
 poisonous malaria. 
 
 Victoria Lake had yet to be reached, but the emis- 
 saries sent thither by Gordon had not given a more 
 favourable report of that region. M'tesa, King of 
 Uganda, was the usual mixture of buffoonery, cruelty, 
 and suspicion, which seem to constitute the chief ingredi- 
 ents in the composition of monarchical character in 
 Central Africa. In the previous year, under the influ- 
 ence of Mr. Stanley's teaching, he had declared himself 
 a Christian. He was now showing a decided tendency to- 
 wards Mohammedanism, under the tuition of an Ulema 
 sent to him by Khedive Ismail ; but whatever were his 
 religious doubts or convictions, there was one point upon 
 which he had apparently made up his mind without 
 much difficulty, it was to keep the white man, the 
 Turk, and the Arab as far off" as possible. " First come 
 missionary, then trader, then soldier — when soldier comes, 
 it is all over with black man." So poor King Cetewayo 
 of Zululand had tersely summed up the case of black 
 and white a few years earlier, and M'tesa had arrived 
 at much the same conclusion. 
 
 At length the time came to turn northwards from this 
 dreary equatorial land. On October 6th Gordon, 
 having abandoned his intention of establishing posts on 
 
V BACK TO LONDON 1 19 
 
 Lake Victoria, set his face for Khartoum and Cairo. 
 Amid a conflicting mass of thoughts as to his future 
 proceedings one impression had been steadily growing ; 
 it was, that the existing state of things in Egypt and her 
 Soudan dominion could not continue much longer. 
 "When a house gives ominous cracks prior to a fall, 
 one's desire is, like the rats in ships, to leave it, but this 
 proverb is generally used in the sense of * Having sucked 
 the orange throw away the rind,' and I do not like the 
 idea even if the cracks are serious. Why should I fear \ 
 Is man more strong than God 1 Things have come to 
 such a pass in these Mussulman countries that a crisis 
 must soon come about." Thus Gordon wrote at Khar- 
 toum in the end of October, and on Christmas Eve he 
 was in London. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE SOUDAN {continued) 
 
 In the three years during which Gordon had been 
 buried in Central Africa the germs of great changes 
 had been laid in the world of English dominion. A 
 new spirit had suddenly been developed in the Govern- 
 ment at home, and a policy of active extension of frontier 
 had succeeded the hitherto long -accepted dogmas of 
 masterly inactivity. 
 
 In December 1875 the order for the occupation of 
 Quetta had gone forth to the Indian frontier. In 
 September 1876 the order for the annexation of the 
 Transvaal and its occupation by British troops was 
 despatched to the Cape of Good Hope, and during 
 the whole of 1875 and 1876 there were visible in the 
 Levant, on the coast of Syria, and in Egypt many of 
 the premonitory symptoms which close observers had 
 little difficulty in reading as the certain signs of coming 
 aggression in those regions. As yet, however, no outside 
 opposition had followed these widespread extensions. 
 The change had been so sudden, its presence had been 
 accompanied by so much easy explanation of motive 
 and intention, that the ruling impression on the public 
 mind seemed to be more one of surprise that such facile 
 
CHAP. VI THREEGREATDIVISIONSOFTHESOUDAN 121 
 
 acquisitions should not have been earlier accomplished 
 than that beneath them there might possibly lie any 
 future trouble of Avar to the State. 
 
 Five years had to pass before the bill of this '' active " 
 policy was even to begin to be called for ; and then by 
 a mysterious and inexorable law of fate it was to fall, 
 not upon the men who had originated and supported 
 the new policy, but upon those who had persistently 
 opposed it. 
 
 Gordon had left the Soudan in 1876 with the inten- 
 tion of finally quitting the Khedive's service,- but at 
 Cairo he was prevailed upon to modify his views so far 
 as to still leave his return an open question. He had 
 not been a fortnight in England before the old deter- 
 mination of saying good-bye to Egypt returned, and he 
 telegraphed his decision to Cairo. In reply came a 
 most urgent message from the Khedive, reminding him 
 of his promise to complete the work which " you and I " 
 had begun in the Soudan. It was impossible to refuse 
 the urgency of this message, or the friendship of the 
 words that conveyed it. Gordon, after a stay of five 
 weeks in England, started on the last day of January 
 1877 for Egypt. He went out with the firm resolution 
 of getting the Governor-Generalship of the entire Soudan 
 conferred upon him, and of refusing any other appoint- 
 ment. His wishes were at once met by the Khedive, 
 and on February 26th, four weeks from the date of 
 leaving England, he landed at Massowah on the Eed Sea 
 as Governor-General of the entire Soudan. 
 
 And here we must stop a moment in the rapid life 
 of this extraordinary toiler, to glance at the new fields 
 of work that were now opening before him. 
 
122 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 The enormous region which is known to us under 
 the vague denomination of the Soudan falls, topographi- 
 cally as well as politically, into three distinct divisions. 
 First there is the region of the Nile and its equatorial 
 tributary rivers, where we have lately traced the work 
 done by Gordon in the years 1874, 1875, and 1876 : 
 this division is the Central, or Southern Soudan. Next 
 to it on the east lies the second division, which embraces 
 the long line of the Abyssinian frontier, the province of 
 Sennaar, and the coast of the Eed Sea from Massowah 
 to Suakim. The third division is that immense western 
 land in which lie the old Mohammedan kingdoms of 
 Kordofan and Darfour, great rolling plains upon which 
 the heavy rainfall from the equator gradually dies out 
 into a rainless desert. From east to west across the 
 entire breadth of the three divisions is not less than 
 twelve hundred miles : from north to south along the 
 entire length of the centre division is about the same 
 distance. In the three years just ended we have seen the 
 work of exploration and settlement all confined to the 
 Central African region, the line of the Nile. In the three 
 years now beginning we shall have to follow Gordon 
 through many thousand miles of camel- travel over the vast 
 plains and deserts of the eastern and western divisions. 
 
 While Gordon had been fighting climate and natives 
 on the borders of the Equatorial Lakes, the Khedive 
 Ismail had been gratifying his ambition in another 
 quarter of the Soudan by attempting the conquest of 
 Abyssinia. The sale of the Suez Canal shares to Eng- 
 land had put him in sudden possession of four million 
 pounds sterling, and with these sinews of war he deter- 
 mined to brave alike the difficulties of the mountain fast- 
 
VI A TROUBLED OUTLOOK 123 
 
 nesses, where this relic of old Christian Ethiopia still holds 
 its own, and the terrors of the curse which tradition asserts 
 the prophet to have delivered against those of Islam who 
 should ever attempt to subdue the mountaineers that 
 had once shielded him from his enemies. The Egyp- 
 tian invasion met with a disastrous repulse ; the soldiers 
 broke before the shock of battle began, and the story of 
 slaughter, so often to be repeated in subsequent scenes 
 of Soudan strife, had here its first beginning. Nine thou- 
 sand of the Fellaheen soldiery, armed with Eemington 
 rifles though they were, fell before the determined 
 rush of spear and sword. Tents, twenty- five cannon, 
 a great number of prisoners, arms, and an immense 
 treasure were the victor's spoil. The English sovereigns 
 which the sale of the Suez Canal shares had lately put 
 so plentifully into the Egyptian war-chest were scattered 
 broadcast over the gaunt table-land of Gura, and so 
 immense was the booty that the wild spearmen were 
 unable to believe gold in such quantities could be brought 
 together. It must be, they thought, some counterfeit of 
 the precious metal. So strong was this impression that 
 the Abyssinian soldiers are said to have disposed of their 
 plunder for a mere trifle, often giving thirty sovereigns 
 in exchange for a few silver dollars. The effect of this 
 defeat of the Egyptian arms soon became apparent in 
 remote parts of the Soudan. The news spread quickly 
 that the good old times had come back again — the times 
 when steel settled all differences, before guns had been 
 heard of. The day of the Turk seemed over. Insurrec- 
 tion broke out on all sides — along the foot-hills of the 
 Abyssinian mountains, as well as one thousand miles away 
 to the west, where the Darfourian wanted small induce- 
 
124 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 ment to rise against the conqueror he despised. It was 
 into this wide sea of trouble that Gordon was now enter- 
 ing, with no very settled plan as to policy, but with a 
 fixed resolve to work out each day's labour as it came 
 to one great end — the lightening of the load of human 
 misery wherever he might meet it ; to establish order 
 where there was anarchy ; to unbind the slave ; to stop 
 the horrible traffic that was the root of so much suffering ; 
 to mix mercy with justice ; to join government with 
 honesty; and for himself? — to "sacrifice a living life." 
 " To give your life to be taken at once is one thing ; 
 to live a life such as is before me is another and more 
 trying ordeal. I have set my face to the work, and 
 I will give my life to it. I feel as if I have nought 
 to do with the government. God must undertake the 
 work, and I am for the moment used as His instrument." 
 Thus he communed with himself as, mounted on a fleet 
 camel, he passed over the long wilderness of ridge and 
 gorge, plain and valley, which lies at the northern 
 frontier of Abyssinia ; a land which has been the battle- 
 ground of Christian and Moslem since that distant day 
 which first saw the Arab — a newcomer from Mecca — 
 forcing his way across the level plains that divided the 
 mountains of old Ethiopia from the cataract-kingdom of 
 Nubia. The Abyssinian frontier was in a state of 
 anarchy. King Johannes, notwithstanding his victory 
 over the Egyptians, did not venture to descend into the 
 low country, and some of his great feudatory chiefs were 
 still in revolt against him. Things might be safely left 
 in their present state for some months longer ; they 
 could not get worse for the simple reason that an 
 Abyssinian army, even if free from having to fight 
 
VI STARTS FOR DARFOUR 125 
 
 against revolt at home, could not advance far into the 
 low country for want of supplies. Gordon would there- 
 fore leave Abyssinia for the present, and turn his 
 attention to the extreme western portion of the Soudan, 
 where the Bedouin tribes and the slave-traders were in 
 revolt against the Government. Accordingly he wrote 
 a letter to Johannes, assuring him of neutrality during 
 the coming struggle with Menalik, King of Shoa, and 
 then turned his camel's head for the Blue Nile and 
 Khartoum. 
 
 As leagues and leagues of distance lay behind him 
 on this journey from Massowah to Khartoum, all the 
 vastness of the work he had to do seemed to become 
 accentuated by the physical space which daily passed 
 before, his vision. "With terrific exertion," he thinks, 
 "in*two or three years' time I may, with God's adminis- 
 tration, make a good province, — with a good army, and a 
 fair revenue and peace, and an increased trade, — also 
 have suppressed slave-raids, and then I will come home 
 and go to bed, and never get up again till noon every 
 day, and never walk more than a mile." 
 
 It is now late in April ; the heat is terrific, for as yet 
 the heavy storms of rain that once every year descend 
 upon the weary world of Sennaar have not yet begun, 
 and the great, level land now lies a scorched and dusty 
 plain where the rocks are shadowless at noon. It is 
 early May when Gordon reaches Khartoum. He has 
 " solved the difficulty," he thinks, though the " scheme 
 is not yet matured." First he will strike a great blow 
 at slavery in Darfour. What he has to do "is so to 
 settle matters that I do not cause a revolution on my 
 own death." The vested interests involved in this 
 
126 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 slave-question are enormous ; they touch every class in 
 the community, and already he sees that in uprooting 
 slavery he may bring the whole fabric of Egyptian 
 government to the ground. On May 5th he is installed 
 as Governor -General of the Soudan at Khartoum. 
 " With the help of God," he says in his speech to the 
 people, "I will hold the balance level." "A great 
 sorrow has been taken off the land — the reign of the 
 Icourhash (whip) has ceased." He disbands the motley 
 marauders known as Bashi-Bazouks ; sets up a petition- 
 box at the door of the palace ; puts the money which 
 is brought to his clerks as " backsheesh " for expected 
 favours, into the treasury ; has a quarrel with a Turkish 
 second in command, one Halid Pacha; arranges for a 
 better water supply for the town, and is then off on his 
 camel for remote Darfour. He has been a fortnight in 
 Khartoum : now he is away again on a two thousand 
 mile ride to begin his blows against slavery. 
 
 On May 19th Gordon left Khartoum; on June 7th 
 he reached the frontiers of Darfour, four hundred 
 miles distant. He has a wonderful camel that flies along 
 faster than the mythical hygeen of the prophet. The 
 escorts are left behind ; the secretaries and staff toil far 
 in the rear. Dressed in the richly-embroidered uniform of 
 a Turkish marshal, the Governor-General comes flying into 
 a station, and before the guards can turn out and present 
 arms he has passed the gates. The Bedouin chief who 
 rides with him says it is " the telegraph." The ribbon 
 of the Grand Cordon of the Mejidieh has been given to a 
 special bearer from the baggage behind, who has promised 
 to deliver the insignia to the Pacha before he can possibly 
 get to Fogia, but it is no use ; it arrives, an hour after 
 
VI HIS PECULIAR GENIUS FOR WAR 127 
 
 the Field-Marshal has reached his destination. Never 
 had Egyptian history recorded such extraordinary 
 behaviour on the part of a Pacha. The Mudir of Fogia 
 and the rest of the officials are completely out of time. 
 There have been watchers set to give timely notice 
 of the Governor-General's approach, and as a vast plain 
 lies around Fogia upon which objects are discernible at 
 an immense distance, it is hoped that no surprise can 
 possibly be effected. All at once two specks are noticed 
 by keen Arab eyes miles away to the east. All right, 
 these are the advanced scouts sent on to give warning, 
 there will be plenty of time for the Mudir to don his 
 Stambouli coat an hour hence, and for the soldiers to 
 fall in about sunset. The two specks draw nearer and 
 nearer, and then it is seen that the leading camel carries 
 a pale-faced man arrayed in gorgeous uniform, and that 
 a Kababish Arab sheikh is the second figure. What 
 can it all mean ! Only this, that there has come into 
 this vast, dreary world a new man, and that, dressed in 
 stately trappings of the highest Turkish military rank, 
 the most restless spirit of the nineteenth century has 
 come to thunder at the stronghold of African slavery. 
 
 And now there began a series of rapid marches, some- 
 times forward, sometimes to right or left ; opening com- 
 munications from one post to another through revolted 
 tribes; gathering up a garrison here to augment the 
 small force that marched permanently with the Governor- 
 General ; concentrating at a given point ; cutting off 
 some tribe from its water-supply; sending messengers 
 to revolted chiefs to threaten or to promise; freeing 
 slaves and drilling them as soldiers ; marching through 
 storm and sun and night, until the bare record of the 
 
128 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 work reads more like the movement of some race of 
 beings who knew nothing of the needs of food and rest 
 than of men to whom war and exposure brought the 
 usual consequences of fatigue — disease and death. There 
 is a peculiar trait in Gordon's method of war which 
 makes it a matter of regret to the military student that 
 it was never the lot of this brilliant soldier to find him- 
 self the leader of an army on the broad field of civilised 
 warfare. Above every other English soldier of his time 
 he possessed the power of catching the weak point in 
 his adversary, and directing to that point all the strength 
 of his own resources. Every great master of war has 
 had this faculty fully developed. It is the root and 
 foundation of successful offensive warfare ; it is the 
 quality that gives the largest results and produces the 
 most striking effects. Turenne, Frederick, Napoleon, 
 Stonewall Jackson, possessed this power, and to it they 
 owed their most brilliant triumphs. With it almost 
 everything is possible to a commander. Without it 
 success may indeed crown the efforts of a captain, but 
 it will be the success that stops short of great results, 
 and makes victory depend more upon the exhaustion of 
 States than on the genius of generals. 
 
 When Gordon entered Darfour all the chances seemed 
 against his effecting the pacification of the country. His 
 troops were of the worst description — the scum of Syria, 
 Egypt, and Asia Minor, demoralised by unchecked pillage 
 and frequent reverses. Their leaders, corrupt and craven 
 of spirit, moved without plan or energy, plundering and 
 oppressing as they went. The old hatred of the people 
 against the Turk had increased to a deadly animosity 
 under the influence of the stupid and ferocious tyranny 
 
VI EXTRAORDINARY MARCHES 129 
 
 to which they had been subjected in the three years that 
 had elapsed since the Egyptian conquest of the country. 
 Added to all these things there was the fact that some 
 of the best troops had been sent to fight the Eussians 
 in Bulgaria, and that the resources of the Soudan in 
 men, money, and material were at the lowest ebb. Not- 
 withstanding all drawbacks, Gordon in the short space 
 of four months put down the rebellion and broke the 
 power of the slave-kings. 
 
 Looked at from a distance Darfour appeared a con- 
 fused mass of revolt : seen closer at hand the elements 
 of weakness were at once apparent. There were in 
 reality two great divisions in the disturbance, and these 
 again were divisible into many sections ; but the two 
 chief parties in revolt were at opposite poles of discon- 
 tent, and it was this diversity that gave Gordon the key 
 to his triumph. Darfour had had a history, one that 
 went back into a remote past. There had been sultans 
 of Darfour long before there were kings in Prussia. 
 There had been a trade, too, in Darfour that went back 
 very far in its traditions, — it was the slave-trade. 
 Now it was the partisans of these two things, throne 
 and trade, that were both in revolt against Egypt, and 
 were each opposed to the other. When Gordon was 
 striking at the adherents of the old race of sultans he 
 had the slave-kings at least neutral ; when he hit at the 
 slave-kings the Darfourians were with him. 
 
 Darfour is practically a desert, having wells scattered 
 over its surface at distances varying from thirty to sixty 
 miles apart. Between these wells the land is a waterless 
 waste. Occupy the wells and you hold the country : 
 this was the general plan upon which Gordon proceeded. 
 
 K 
 
I30 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 In four months, from June to the end of September, he 
 moved like a cloud driven about by the wind, now west, 
 now south, now north ; but there was a purpose in these 
 seemingly erratic wanderings. He has marched south 
 from Omchanga to Dara, one hundred and sixty miles, 
 in the first twelve days of July. By the middle of 
 August he is back at El Fascher, one hundred and 
 thirty miles to the north-west. By September 1st he 
 is at Dara again. On the 9th he starts south-east for 
 Shaka, a march of one hundred and eighty miles within 
 ten degrees of the equator. On the 15th he reaches 
 Shaka. By this time the throne-part of the revolt 
 has been broken, and it is now the slave -kings he 
 is fighting. They have thousands of good fighting 
 men, they outnumber Gordon's troops by ten to one, 
 but there is neither union nor plan nor leadership 
 with them ; and this extraordinary Pacha, who moves 
 quicker than the Arab, who is heard of one day at 
 Fascher, far in the north, and a few days later is seen in 
 the red haze and whirlwind of the desert, striking for 
 some extreme southern station, fills them with wonder. 
 It is impossible that he can have only a few hundred 
 men with him, they say, he must have armies within 
 reach ; and so they receive him with sudden submission, 
 and the bands that have assembled to fight break up at 
 night into separate portions and go their way back into 
 some remoter security. 
 
 Of the misery of the wretched people, of the arid, 
 hopeless land through which these scenes of war went 
 on, no pen could fitly tell the story. War, famine, 
 slavery were abroad in a horrible naked deformity that 
 baffles description. The '^rebels," as they are called, die 
 
VI THE SCENE AT DARA 131 
 
 of thirst and famine in great numbers. " The smell of 
 the putrefying dead (men and animals) is fearful." 
 " People have little idea how little glorious war is. It 
 is organised murder, pillage, and cruelty, and it is seldom 
 that the weight falls on the fighting men ; it is the 
 women, children, and old people. The Crimea was the 
 exception." ^ 
 
 It is on the slave-caravans that the horrors of thirst 
 and hunger fall heaviest. The wretched groups, chiefly 
 of women and children, are abandoned in the midst of 
 blinding deserts. It is often impossible to find food for 
 them, even after they have been rescued from their 
 masters. " I declare solemnly that I would give my life 
 to save the sufferings of these people," he says. "You 
 would have felt sick had you seen them." Again he 
 writes, " I am a fool, I daresay, but I cannot see the suffer- 
 ings of any of these people without tears in my eyes." ^ 
 
 It was at Dara, in the south of Darfour, that the 
 scene occurred which has been so often alluded to — the 
 meeting of Gordon with the chief slave-robbers, who had 
 assembled near that place in great force, still apparently 
 undecided as to fighting or joining the Government. 
 He reaches Dara after a ride of eighty-five miles in a 
 day and a half, alone, the escort having been left miles 
 behind. The heat is intense. " Imagine to yourself," he 
 says, "a single, dirty, red-faced man on a camel, orna- 
 mented with flies, arriving in the divan all of a sudden." 
 Then follows the account of the next day's work : — 
 
 "Dara, September 2d. — No dinner after my long ride, 
 but a quiet night, forgetting my miseries. At dawn I got 
 
 1 Colonel Cordon in Central Africa. ^ Ibid. 
 
132 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 up, and putting on the golden armour the Khedive gave me, 
 went out to see my troops, and then mounted my horse and, 
 with an escort of my robbers of Bashi-Bazouks, rode out to 
 the camp of the other robbers, three miles off. I was met 
 by the son of Sebehr, a nice-looking lad of twenty-two years, 
 and rode through the robber bands. There were about three 
 thousand of them — men and boys. I rode to a tent in the 
 camp. The whole body of chiefs were dumbfoundered at 
 my coming among them. After a glass of water I went 
 back, telling the son of Sebehr to come with his family to 
 my divan : they all came." 
 
 There they received Gordon's ultimatum. They 
 must disarm and go home. They have two days to 
 think over it. Sebehr's son is for fighting, and there 
 is much swearing on the Koran to assault the fort this 
 coming night, but many of the other chiefs are not 
 inclined to back him up. Even in the most savage of 
 African wars the second string, diplomacy, is never 
 forgotten. Separate negotiations are opened with the 
 doubtful ones, and one by one they go away, or agree to 
 stay as friends. At last Sebehr the younger gives in so 
 far as to agree to go off, bag and baggage, to the south. 
 This is on September 6th, and up to the last moment 
 the question of giving in or fighting had been wavering 
 in the balance. Had the slave-kings assaulted, there can 
 be little doubt they must have carried all before them. 
 "I have not the least confidence in my officers or men,"- 
 wrote Gordon on this very day ; " three hundred deter- 
 mined men would send them rushing to my house." 
 
 There remained one more thing to do before this 
 chapter at Darfour was finished. It was to go to Shaka 
 and, in that centre of the slave-trader's operations, receive 
 the formal submission of the chiefs. Shaka was the head- 
 
vr HOPELESS LABOUR 133 
 
 quarters of Sebehr Pacha's power (a name afterwards 
 to become very celebrated in diplomatic despatches). 
 Sebehr (as the name is spelt at this time in Gordon's 
 journal) was in this year, 1877, at Constantinople, whither 
 he had gone with Hassan Pacha, the Khedive's son, and 
 the Egyptian contingent to fight the Russians. " Shaka 
 is the Cave of Adullam; all murderers, robbers, etc. 
 assembled there, and thence made raids upon the negro 
 tribes for slaves," Gordon writes. On September 9th he 
 set out with four companies of troops on camels and 
 horses for the march to Shaka. It takes him only six 
 days to cover the one hundred and eighty miles which lie 
 between it and Dara. Here, too, the bold game is success- 
 ful; the chiefs disperse in different directions, and in 
 three days Gordon is again on the march, this time 
 striking straight for El Obeid in Kordofan, across three 
 hundred and eighty miles of misery. The first campaign 
 in Darfour is over. 
 
 And now comes the question, one probably which the 
 reader has often asked himself as he followed this brief 
 record of incessant marching and widespread misery. 
 What was it all for ? What good result was attained % 
 Alas ! the question is already answered. It was of no 
 use. Eevolt, slavery, pillage closed behind the path of 
 this dauntless soldier, as the Nile Ambatch, the float- 
 ing sudd^ closed again in the track of the toilers who 
 for a brief moment had opened a passage through its 
 masses. It was this sense of the hopeless nature of the 
 work he was engaged in that makes the record of 
 Gordon's work in the Soudan so sad. Bit by bit the 
 truth is growing upon him that so far as this earth is 
 concerned he might just as well be doing nothing. "I 
 
134 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 returned," he writes at the end of this first three years' 
 labour on the Equatorial Nile, " with the sad conviction 
 that no good could be done in these parts, and that it 
 would have been better had no expedition ever been 
 sent." Now again in Darfour he was learning the same 
 bitter lesson. The slave-trade is beyond his skill to cure. 
 *'I declare I see no human way to stop it," he says. 
 " When you have got the ink that has soaked into blot- 
 ting-paper out of it," he writes, on his long road back 
 to Kordofan, "then slavery will cease in these lands." 
 And so has it been wherever in the past we turn the 
 long page of African war or exploration. Never get we 
 nearer to the dawn. Never does the weary road of 
 human effort bring us within sight of the end. For 
 some inscrutable purpose is this vast continent plunged 
 in a darkness which even the blood of martyrs cannot 
 brighten. 
 
 There is in the record of Gordon's daily life in the 
 end of this year, 1877, unmistakable indication that 
 anger at the ignorance of English opinion relative to the 
 slave-question was the ruling thought in his mind. He 
 looks back over the dismal history of this terrible dis- 
 ease, and recalls the fact that we in England had been 
 for centuries the foremost slave -carriers among the 
 nations, and that our system of slavery was a more 
 barbarous and inhuman one than the domestic form 
 which exists in Egypt and the East. 
 
 What has been the work of emancipation and 
 suppression done in the last fifty years compared with 
 the vast sum of human misery inflicted by us upon 
 Africa during the long interval between Hawkins' first 
 slave voyage in the reign of Elizabeth and the date of 
 
VI FROM DARFOUR TO ABYSSINIA 135 
 
 emancipation in 1830, a period of two hundred and fifty 
 years % Who built the long line of slave-castles (prisons) 
 that still stud the sandy surf-beaten shore of Equatorial 
 West Africa? What was it that made Bristol the chief 
 port in the kingdom, and that first caused Liverpool to 
 rise from the mud flats of the Mersey % Was there not 
 an article inserted in the Treaty of Utrecht, of which Her 
 Gracious Majesty Queen Anne thus speaks in her message 
 to her Lords and Commons in the year 1712 : " Because of 
 the part which we have borne in the prosecution of this 
 war, entitling us to some distinction in the terms of peace, 
 I have insisted and obtained that the Assiento or contract 
 for furnishing the Spanish West Indies with negroes shall 
 be made with us for the term of thirty years;" and did 
 we not hold fast by slavery and its horrors until the 
 fortune of war had reft from us five-sixths of our pos- 
 sessions in America, and left the United States and 
 Spain the chief gainers by the trade ? 
 
 The real moral of all this Gordon knew well enough 
 when on his road to the slave-den at Shaka he wrote 
 these words: "I do not believe in you all. . . . The 
 Christianity of the mass is a vapid, tasteless thing, and 
 of no use to anybody. The people of England care 
 more for their dinners than they do for anything else, 
 and you may depend on it, it is only an active few whom 
 God pushes on to take an interest in the slave question. 
 ^ It is very shocking ! Will you take some more salmon 1 ' " 
 How then, it may be asked, if Gordon saw that the work 
 he was doing was being written in sand which the first 
 sweep of the desert wind would obliterate, did he still 
 keep his hand to such a furrowless plough, and set his 
 life against such a hopeless venture ? Often during these 
 
136 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 long, solitary rides, as he listens to " the cushioned footfall 
 of the camel," he asks himself the question — nor has he 
 long to wait for the answer : " I go on as straight as I 
 can," he writes, "I feel my own weakness, and look to 
 Him who is Almighty, and I leave the issue without 
 inordinate care to Him."^ 
 
 And he will not desert the Khedive in his extremity. 
 " I can only feel that I would not desert this government 
 for anything that could be offered me, for it would be 
 indeed cowardly." " I will use my very life to aid him " 
 (Ismail). Finally, in a passage written on his road to 
 Shaka, the whole heart of the man speaks out the thought 
 that is in it about the work he is doing. " Find me the 
 man," he says, " and I will take him as my help, who 
 utterly despises money, name, glory, honour; one who 
 never wishes to see his home again ; one who looks to 
 God as the source of good and the controller of evil ; 
 one who has a healthy body and energetic spirit, and 
 who looks on death as a release from misery ; and if 
 you cannot find him then leave me alone. To carry 
 myself is enough for me — I want no other baggage." 
 
 In November 1877 Gordon, having visited Khartoum 
 on his road from Kordofan, reaches Merawi on his way 
 to Wadi Haifa, whither he is going to see what can be 
 done to push on the railroad from the latter place to 
 Dongola. Shortly after leaving Merawi, a despatch from 
 Khartoum catches him, announcing an invasion of the 
 Eastern Soudan by Abyssinia. He turns back at once 
 towards the threatened point, only to find the intelligence 
 false. Strange, indeed, are the trifling accidents upon 
 which the lives of men turn. Had Gordon passed 
 ^ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa. 
 
VI AT CAIRO WITH KHEDIVE ISMAIL 137 
 
 Dongola before this false message reached him he would 
 have gone to Wadi Haifa, and seen for himself the para- 
 mount necessity of completing the line of railway 
 through the wilderness of the *' Batn el Hager " (Womb 
 of Rocks), uniting Egypt to Dongola and the Soudan. 
 And then ? Ah ! then history might indeed have taken 
 another course, and those terrible cataracts would not 
 have been so many barred gates against the expedition 
 seven years later, the forcing of which had to be done 
 in the shred of time that yet was left to this great life 
 on earth. 
 
 He turns back at once from Dongola for Khartoum ; 
 three weeks later he is under the shadow of the Abys- 
 sinian hills, and by the end of the year is once more at 
 Massowah on the Red Sea. The Abyssinian imbroglio 
 is as far off settlement as ever. The king keeps repeat- 
 ing in his letters that " Gordon is his brother, but that 
 the Khedive is a man without God ; that God will judge 
 the cause of quarrel between them, and that the whole 
 world knows the ancient frontier of Abyssinia." Evi- 
 dently this state of things will keep some little while 
 longer. 
 
 Whither next*? Back to Khartoum, travelling by 
 sea to Suakim, and thence across the desert to Berber. 
 Passing the town of Shendy, on the Nile, a telegram 
 reaches Gordon from the Khedive in Cairo. The day 
 of reckoning has come at last ; the bond-holder is tighten- 
 ing his grasp upon the Khedive, and behind, in the 
 shadow of the Jewish money-lender, England and 
 France, for the moment acting in concert, are already 
 feeling their way towards the conquest of Egypt. 
 " Come at once to my assistance," writes Ismail, " I know 
 
I3S LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 no one who can help me so faithfully in the difficult time 
 that is impending." A fortnight later Gordon is in Cairo. 
 Three days before he reaches the capital he has cut his 
 own salary from six thousand pounds to three thousand. 
 He has heard of the rush which has already begun 
 of English officials to Cairo, and as a protest against 
 the injustice of making the impoverished Fellaheen pay 
 enormous salaries to strangers, he makes this reduction 
 in his pay. He is received by the Khedive with extra- 
 ordinary honours. Ismail has waited dinner an hour 
 and a half. Dirty, and covered with the dust of the long 
 railway journey, Gordon has the place of honour given 
 him at table ; but before they sit down, the trouble that is 
 weighing upon the Khedive has been told to his guest. 
 *' Will Gordon be president of a Committee of Inquiry 
 into the state of the finances of Egypt f M. de Lesseps 
 has consented to act as a member of the Committee. 
 The Commissioners of the Debt are not to be on the 
 Inquiry, as they have been hostile to His Highness. 
 Such was the substance of the Khedive's proposal. 
 Looking back at this scene in the Abdeen Palace, and 
 on the intrigues that went on during the next few days 
 among the rival foreign diplomats in Cairo, whose one 
 object was to defeat Gordon's proposals and to drive 
 him back to the Soudan, it is difficult to repress a feel- 
 ing of animosity against the men on whose shoulders 
 must most justly rest the responsibility of having 
 destroyed, and deliberately destroyed, the sole chance 
 which the presence of an incorruptibly honest and far- 
 seeing man at the head of a Committee on Egyptian 
 Finance would at that time have given to Egypt. 
 Nothing could have been simpler than the main condi- 
 
VI HIS PROPOSALS OPPOSED 139 
 
 tions proposed by Gordon ; they were these : First, 
 examine exactly what is the real income you derive 
 from all sources of taxation. This inquiry will take 
 some months to complete ; meanwhile you must pay 
 the unfortunate officials and employees, many of whom 
 have been left absolutely without their salaries in order 
 to meet the outrageous interest which is being paid to 
 the Jews and bond-holders of Europe. While you are 
 doing this you must suspend the payment of the coming 
 coupon, and finally reduce the interest of the whole 
 debt from seven to four per cent. 
 
 All too fair was the proposal, all too honest the man 
 who made it, to meet with the approval of the men who 
 were now at work upon Egypt. If at this time of the 
 year 1878 the world had been searched to find two men 
 of the highest integrity, purest motive, and most com- 
 manding genius, no better couple could have been dis- 
 covered than these men, Lesseps and Gordon — the great- 
 est civil and the most celebrated military engineers of their 
 age. Their names were at once a guarantee that their 
 work would have been above suspicion. But, in truth, 
 honest men were not wanted either by the bond-holders 
 of Egypt or by the rival powers who were hankering 
 after her flesh-pots. Ismail had summoned to his aid 
 the one man who might have saved his throne and his 
 country, and that man must be got rid of as soon as 
 possible. He was got rid of. Opposed on all sides, 
 snubbed by the English Government officials, rudely 
 answered by English Ministers, turned into ridicule by 
 the hirelings of the Press in Cairo, and plotted against 
 at the Palace and the Consulates by Pachas, Commis- 
 sioners, consuls, and the whole tribe of Cairene intriguers, 
 
140 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Gordon went back again to biirj^ himself for another 
 couple of years in the Soudan, while Ismail and Egypt, 
 Pachas and intriguers, went drifting down to a gulf 
 which held in its depths many red days and dark dates 
 —Alexandria, Tel-el-Kebir, Tamai, Abu Klea, Khartoum ; 
 failure, loss of life, of treasure, of time ; and one date to 
 rise as the unchanging landmark of a future memory — 
 January 26th, 1885. 
 
 There is a scene described by Gordon in his letters ^ 
 that is strangely interesting when looked at through 
 the events that were so soon to follow. It is a meeting 
 between Gordon, Lesseps, and others of the Pacha and 
 Commissioner circles of Cairene life, which takes place 
 in the large reception room of the Kasr-el-Noussa 
 Palace, outside Cairo, " a palace full of lights, mirrors, 
 gentlemen to wait on you," as Gordon describes it. 
 Just seven and a half years later than this meeting, in 
 this same hall of dazzling light, a brilliant throng has 
 gathered. The great Nile Expedition has begun, and a 
 large share of the military life of England is assembled 
 in the reception room of the palace. All the wax lights 
 of the massive chandeliers and heavy gilt candelabra are 
 ablaze. The general commanding the expedition is the 
 centre of a brilliant throng of officers. Everything is run- 
 ning smooth ; the first steamer carrying the boats that 
 are to ascend the Nile has been signalled from Alexandria ; 
 the troops are already en route from Cairo to Assouan ; 
 stores and munitions are being pressed forward. Hope 
 is high ; those who are nearest the centre of authority 
 are the most confident of speedy success, and many of 
 
 ^ Events in (lie Life of Charles George Gordon: London, 1885; 
 p. 114. 
 
VI THE KASR-EL-NOUSSA AT CAIRO 141 
 
 them are offering wagers as to which of the two great 
 festivals of English life that bring their worshippers to 
 Epsom and to Ascot will find them again in London. 
 Suddenly there is a loud crash — one end of the great 
 room is darkened — the massive candelabrum that stood 
 on the marble pier set round with mirrors has fallen 
 forward into the room, quenching its hundred lights, 
 and smashing into pieces its crystals and its gildings. 
 There is a dead silence ; no one was near the spot ; no 
 gust of wind had blown down the great golden candle- 
 stick ; the big claws upon which it rested have suddenly 
 snapt off near the base, and the heavy weight has 
 toppled forward into the room. After a minute or two 
 there is an attempt to revive the conversation, but it is 
 no use — a cloud has fallen upon the throng. It was 
 only an accident, to be sure ; but all the same the 
 betting upon the return in May is not quite so 
 keen. In the throng gathered at the Kasr-el-Noussa 
 that September night there was not a man present 
 whose memory or inclination could put together the 
 two scenes through the intervening seven years. It 
 was in this room that the work of the salvation of 
 Egypt which Gordon had come to do was baffled. It 
 was here he had written, when disgusted with the 
 intrigues and duplicity that had been too much for him, 
 these memorable words, " Every one laughs at me, but I 
 do not care. I am much worn, and I wish I had my 
 rest, but it will not come till I have done His work. I 
 scarcely see any one, but remain in my sulks, wishing 
 and wishing that my end had come." Seven years pass 
 away, and at last the end has come. At last we seem to 
 know him. We are sending out our thousands of men 
 
142 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON ( hap. 
 
 and opening wide the money-bags of the nation to save 
 this great heart so long neglected by our rulers, and we 
 are about, too, to make this relief of Gordon into another 
 plank in the platform of our national pride — and then % 
 Was there not once a prophet who beheld in a vision 
 a " candlestick all of gold, with many lights and lamps 
 upon it," and asking the meaning of the strange sight he 
 was told, " This is the word of the Lord, saying. Not 
 with an army, or by might, but by my spirit, saith the 
 Lord of hosts'"? — an answer which neither men nor 
 nations, no matter what may be their might or power, 
 can ever do wrong to remember. 
 
 In May Gordon is back again at Khartoum, having in 
 the interval, since leaving Cairo, visited Zeila and Harrer 
 on the Eed Sea, opposite Aden. At Khartoum, for the 
 first time in his tenure of office, he has now opportunity 
 to sit down at the mass of administrative office-work. 
 Everything is in a mess. All these wars and revolts, 
 explorations and annexations, have left matters in sad con- 
 fusion. During the previous year the expenditure had 
 been two hundred and fifty-nine thousand pounds in ex- 
 cess of income. " I am at war," he writes in July, " with 
 nearly every one in Cairo, and my crest is a thistle. 
 I could justify my rows, for they arise from dishonest 
 officials, undue interfering of consuls, etc. Since the 
 long camel-rides are at an end I have no nice thoughts." 
 But with all the office -work, the want of money, 
 and the squabbles with Cairo officials, he is "striking 
 daily deadly blows against the slave-trade." The Soudan 
 summer drags its slow length along. With September 
 comes the sickly season, and Gordon is down with fever. 
 " I was so unwell," he writes, " in my vast, lonely house, 
 
VI IS PUNISHMENT TO BELONG ONLY TO MAN? 143 
 
 quite alone. I used to wander up and down it and think, 
 think for hours. It is a very great comfort to me never 
 to have the least fear of death when I am ill. I declare 
 I never did more work than I did in my brain, uselessly, 
 during these two nights. Imaginary petitions were pre- 
 sented. I gave the answers ; but over and over again 
 they came up, till one was almost wild with them." 
 Men in comfortable 'libraries or cushioned reading-rooms 
 scan lightly over such entries as these ; only the few 
 who have gone through such African fever sufferings 
 know what torture they mean. 
 
 The year 1878 draws to a close ; the outlook is worse 
 and worse ; there is a revolt in the Bahr Gazelle province. 
 King Johannes and his rebellious vassal, Waled el Michael, 
 are again at war ; and the cry from Cairo is for money, 
 money, money. The bond -holders and their backers 
 have now got their fingers round the throat of Egypt, 
 and Ismail is at his wit's end to keep the semblance 
 of his sovereignty. "Altogether," writes Gordon in 
 November, "things look as if they were coming to a 
 crisis in every direction. You can form no idea of what 
 shifts I am put to for even fifty pounds." 
 
 When the hours of work are over, the evenings sit 
 heavy upon this great, lonely soul. "The dulness is 
 almost insupportable," he writes, " one lacks books ; and 
 I scarcely ever see any one except on business, for I have 
 no associates. I am nearly always nauseated — not ill, 
 but with a feeling of sickness." Still through it all come 
 the flashes of humour ; the quaint contrast between life 
 in savagery and civilisation ; the ample insight into the 
 selfish strife going on at Cairo ; the keen criticism of the 
 conceit and pompous ignorance of officialism ; and, above 
 
144 Z//^^ OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 all, the same unchanging faith that everything is for the 
 best. Here in this great, gaunt palace he spends many 
 a lonely twilight hour, speaking his thoughts as he used 
 to do in the equatorial forest and in the deserts of 
 Kordofan. In the existence of a place of future punish- 
 ment he finds it at this time hard to believe. Yet never 
 lived there man who in his own life had seen more of 
 the vast sum of human wrongdoing which has to be 
 righted somewhere, and on which no sword of justice 
 ever lights in this world. He does not seem to have 
 asked himself the question. If I am shooting and hang- 
 ing these makers of orphans, if I am punishing with 
 stripes and chains these sellers and buyers of human 
 flesh, and doing it in the name of Truth and Right, is 
 the Great Judge of all to be denied His right to use the 
 sword of justice upon those who are beyond my reach % 
 Are nine-tenths of the evil-doers on earth not only to 
 escape the penalty of their crimes, but often and often to 
 be favoured reapers in the harvest of the world's success % 
 You catch the common robber, or the man who steals, 
 perhaps through starvation, penury, or through knowing 
 no better, and you imprison him for years or for life ; 
 and is the rich usurer who has wrung the widow's 
 farthing from her, is the fraudulent banker, is the unjust 
 judge, is the cruel spoiler of war to pass from a world 
 that in millions and millions of cases gave them wealth 
 and honours and stars and garters instead of ropes and 
 bars and gallows, to go forthwith to free pardon, to ever- 
 lasting light, and endless rest beyond the grave? It 
 would indeed be strange justice that meted to Jude and 
 Judas the same measure of mercy in the final judgment. 
 While Gordon had thus been engaged with the details 
 
ZEBEHR PACHA 145 
 
 of government at Khartoum, the revolt in the Bahr 
 Gazelle province had spread into wider area, drawing to 
 it all the floating discontent of Darfour, and threatening 
 to spread northward into that province. An able lieu- 
 tenant of Gordon's, an Italian named Eomulus Gessi, had 
 taken the field against the insurgents in the Bahr Gazelle 
 in the summer of 1878, moving from the Nile near 
 Gondokoro. The operations were long and difficult; 
 many rivers had to be crossed, and an unusually wet 
 season flooded the channels. The province known as 
 the Bahr Gazelle lies at the headwaters of the many 
 streams which, converging into a single river in the tenth 
 parallel of north latitude, form the White Nile. Beyond 
 the Bahr Gazelle, to the south, lies the great slave pre- 
 serve of the Niam-Niam, beyond which, again, no modern 
 traveller has ever penetrated. This region of the Bahr 
 Gazelle is really the central spot which has given birth 
 to most of the Soudan trouble, as we know it. Thirty 
 years ago there entered the region a certain powerful 
 Arab sheikh, named Zebehr Eahama. To say he traded 
 in slaves is but to say that he was an Arab chief of 
 the Soudan. The slave was, and is, as necessary to the 
 Arab, the Turk, and the Mohammedan generally, as the 
 broad acre is to an English peer or the bank-note to 
 the merchant. But Zebehr Bahama was a good deal 
 more than an owner of slaves, or a trader in them. He 
 was by far the ablest man which Arab Africa had pro- 
 duced in the century. He was more than a leader of 
 men ; he not only could conquer, but could govern. 
 About the year 1868 Zebehr established his authority 
 over a very wide extent of country at the headwaters 
 of the western tributaries of the White Nile. Had he 
 
146 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 been no more than a slave-dealer he could never have 
 created the power which so rapidly rose around him. It 
 is true that no Arab on the west of the Red Sea could 
 boast a purer pedigree, coming direct from the Anzars of 
 Medineh ; but he had other claims to the right of govern- 
 ment besides blood. He could organise armies, lead them 
 to victory, and consolidate his conquests. His capital 
 at Dem Sulieman was the resort of many traders ; and 
 though slaves were there freely bought and sold, ivory 
 and ostrich feathers and the skins of wild animals were 
 ten times more numerous than they are now, and these 
 articles, together with gum, tamarinds, and copper, were 
 bartered for the products or manufactures of Syria, 
 Egypt, and Europe. 
 
 Here it will be well if, pausing a moment in the 
 record of Gordon's life, we glance at that institution 
 of slavery which he spent so many years of toil in 
 endeavouring to combat. Slavery in Africa is the 
 natural, or unnatural, product of two causes — the ex- 
 ternal demand which, though once universal, is now 
 confined to Mohammedan countries, and the internal 
 state of savagery which makes war the normal condition 
 of the negro tribes of the interior continent. This nor- 
 mal condition of warfare among the negroes is still 
 further complicated, so far as the question of slavery is 
 concerned, by the horrible practice of cannibalism which 
 prevails among tribes beyond the limit of the trader's 
 operations. In other words, the captives taken in war 
 in Central Africa are killed and eaten where there is no 
 trade ; where trade exists they are sold. If we go back 
 in our own history only one thousand years, we shall find 
 much the same state of things existing, but without the 
 
VI THE REAL ROOT OF THE SLAVE-TRADE 147 
 
 cannibalism. If we go back fifteen hundred years we shall 
 find even that revolting part of the parallel also pre- 
 sent. The problem of African slavery, reduced to its 
 simplest conditions, stands thus : war is the unchange- 
 able habit of the savage races ; war produces captives ; 
 there are two roads open to these unfortunates — death 
 or slavery. The closing of one road crowds the other 
 with a denser multitude. But out of these general con- 
 ditions spring many other ramifications of the slave 
 question. Domestic slavery is part and parcel of 
 Mohammedanism. Mohammed was himself a servant 
 before he was a prophet ; and many of the greatest 
 leaders and most devoted soldiers that the creed of Islam 
 has produced have been slaves. There is a vast gulf 
 between the domestic and the predial slave. The rights 
 of the first named were carefully guarded under Mo- 
 hammedan law ; and once within the pale of Islam the 
 lot of the slave was a very different one from the fate of 
 his brother negro under a West Indian planter. So long 
 as a state of warfare is the normal condition of any 
 portion of the earth, so long will slavery be, to a certain 
 extent, a mitigation of the sufferings of the beaten ones ; 
 but it is when a higher form of life has been reached, 
 when strife is not the rule but the exception, that slavery 
 becomes the terrible evil which it is in our times ; for 
 then cause and effect have changed sides, and instead of 
 war producing slavery, slavery is made the reason for 
 war. And the higher the so-called civilisation becomes, 
 the deeper grows the villainy of the traffic. For, as the 
 luxury of the master in Damascus or Cairo demanded a 
 larger number of domestic slaves, the competition at the 
 remote Darfourian frontier "rrew keener. If the natural 
 
148 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 wars between the negro tribes could not supply the 
 demand, wars were made for the express purpose of 
 procuring slaves; and the frontier of Islam had ever 
 around it a wide zone of depopulated territory. How 
 was this terrible plague to be stayed % A thousand times 
 did Gordon ask himself the question, and at the end of 
 his labours he was as far off from the solution as ever. 
 Where was the evil to be attacked % Was it in the heart 
 of Islam at Cairo, Damascus, and Constantinople % Was 
 it in the centre of the long "Arbain" road between 
 Central Africa and Egypt, in its hundred links between 
 the first " Gellab " trader in Darfour and the last mer- 
 chant in Assouan % Or was it at the source of the supply 
 in the regions south of the Bahr Gazelle, where in regular 
 armed bands the Arab slave kings hunted their prey % 
 
 Look at it as he might, there seemed no means by 
 which the trade could be stopped. Slavery lay at the 
 very root of Mohammedan life. Of what use were con- 
 ventions made with foreign consuls in Cairo when every 
 man, woman and child, every Pacha, Bey and Bimbashi, 
 every Mudir, Vakeel and Nasser- el -Kisim was, heart 
 and soul, a supporter of slavery ? And, in truth, the 
 full hopelessness of the task becomes apparent to any 
 person who will take the trouble of reading for himself 
 the years of fighting that went on in England before the 
 emancipation of the West Indian slaves could be effected. 
 And what were the West Indian slaves % They were a 
 speck in the Empire. Their masters did not represent 
 the one thousandth part of the wealth and possessions 
 of Great Britain. Yet with what a struggle and at 
 what a cost was the manumission effected. Now let 
 slavery be an institution penetrating every branch of the 
 
VI THE REVOLT OF SULIEMAN R A HA MA 149 
 
 State, from the throne to the village household, and let 
 the traffic in slaves be the most lucrative business carried 
 on through six-sevenths of the Empire, and then you 
 will have some idea of the enormous difficulties of stopping 
 it. Bit by bit all this had come home to Gordon, yet 
 his sanguine nature would not admit he could be beaten. 
 At last, after five long years of struggle, he is forced to 
 confess the evil is beyond his power. " I declare," he 
 writes on March 31st, 1879, in the midst of that vast 
 four hundred miles of desert which lies between El 
 Obeid and Shaka, " I declare if I could stop this traffic I 
 would willingly be shot this night. This shows my 
 ardent desire, and yet, strive as I can, I can scarcely 
 see any hope of arresting the evil." 
 
 One thing is certain, that the extension of Egyptian 
 dominion into the Soudan added impetus to the slave- 
 trade. It threw open the traffic to hundreds of agents, 
 where before it had been confined to scores ; it literally 
 made the trade a free one. Gordon might toil as he 
 pleased, but what oould he effect when his own officers, 
 soldiers, and officials were secretly or openly themselves 
 engaged in the traffic ? 
 
 There was indeed one hope for the suppression of the 
 Soudan slave-trade, but the line upon which that might 
 have been effected was the last which the Egyptian 
 Government would have followed or permitted. It was 
 the establishment of a really strong kingdom under a 
 despotic ruler in the region of the Bahr Gazelle, such a 
 man, in fact, as Zebehr Eahama. It has been the fashion 
 to credit this man, Zebehr Pacha, with every enormity, 
 but the real facts of his life are at variance with such 
 a character. Zebehr aimed at empire and dominion 
 
ISO LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 instead of mere wealth and possession. It suited his 
 enemies in Egypt, who feared his rising power, to paint 
 him as only a king of slave-dealers. It is true that he 
 bought slaves, but he bought them to conquer and not 
 to trade with. He had already learnt the great secret, 
 that a man was a more valuable item to him as a soldier 
 and a subject at home than ever it was possible for that 
 man to be valuable to him abroad. A powerful empire 
 in Central Africa would act as a dam to stop the flow of 
 slaves to Egypt. Zebehr Eahama had all but established 
 such an empire, when in a weak moment he left his 
 kingdom of Mandugha, went to Cairo in 1876, and was 
 there detained a prisoner at large. By what promises 
 he had been brought to the capital, or whether he went 
 there of his own inclination, will not be known perhaps 
 in our time, but so far as human sense can read the 
 troubled page of Soudan history one thing is clear, if 
 Zebehr Eahama had reigned in the Bahr Gazelle and 
 Darfour there would never have been a Mahdi, and a 
 mournful chapter in our history would not have been 
 written. In the early months of 1879 Romulus Gessi, 
 marching westward from the White Nile, had penetrated 
 into the centre of the Bahr Gazelle. Sulieman, the son 
 of Zebehr Bahama, was at the head of the revolted tribes. 
 Around him had gathered the discontent of all the 
 borderland of Darfour and of the slave - traders, whose 
 occupation had been so much disturbed during the last 
 two years. For Sulieman Bahama's quarrel with the 
 Egyptian Government there was ample cause. Not only 
 had the kingdom of Mandugha, wholly founded by his 
 father, been taken away, but the government of Darfour, 
 a country which his father had conquered for the Khedive, 
 
VI TO DARFOUR AGAIN 151 
 
 had been given to a stranger. Nor was this all. His 
 father had gone to Cairo to put his claims directly before 
 the Khedive, and he had been treacherously detained 
 there as a prisoner. If ever the right of revolt against 
 injustice and tyranny has had cause to excuse it, it was 
 when Sulieman Eahama rose against the Government 
 which had first taken his father's possessions, then robbed 
 him of his conquests, and finally made him a prisoner. 
 
 To aid Gessi in his invasion of the revolted provinces 
 Gordon sent a force from Darfour to co-operate against 
 Sulieman, and in March 1879 he himself started from 
 Khartoum for Darfour, to be in closer touch of events in 
 the Bahr Gazelle. 
 
 It was the hottest season of the year, when the sun, 
 after passing the equinoctial, pours a terrible flood of heat 
 and glare over the northern tropic. "What a country," 
 he writes, "with districts as much as two hundred 
 miles long and broad without water." On March 27th 
 he arrives at the ancient frontier between Kordofan 
 and Darfour, where he had hoped to find water, " but 
 the wells are nearly dry. We expected to find water 
 sufficient for the camels, some forty, — there is not enough 
 for two ! ! ! The nearest wells are one and a half days 
 off, and the camels are exhausted. I must go all night 
 and try thus to avoid the heat." All next night the 
 weary caravan plods along. There is a halt a couple of 
 hours before daybreak, and camels and men lie do^\Ti in 
 the sand for a short sleep. One would imagine that the 
 utter weariness of mind and body produced by this 
 protracted exertion under such terrible conditions would 
 have worn to a standstill even the restless brain of this 
 tireless toiler, but it is not so. " During the long ride," 
 
152 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON- chap. 
 
 he says, " I was able to see my way to crush out the slave- 
 trade." Then he gives the fruits of his night- thoughts : 
 there must be a system of passports and a general 
 registration of occupation. For the moment it all seems 
 promising enough. He gets it down upon paper, thinks 
 it over, and is still satisfied, but a day or two after the 
 reality of the struggle comes back again, and he has no 
 glimmering of hope. The sudd closes in the Nile as 
 fast as it is opened, the simoom blots out the camel-tracks 
 almost as soon as they are made; the slave -curse of 
 Africa is stronger than the blotted paper of a thousand 
 statutes. At the best he sees it must be a lifelong 
 work. "Could I, sacrifice my life," he asks himself, 
 " and remain in Kordofan and Darfour ! To die quickly 
 would be to me nothing, but the long crucifixion that a 
 residence in these horrid countries entails appals me. 
 Many will say it is a worthy cause to die in. I agree, 
 if the death was speedy, but oh ! it is a long and weary 
 one, and for the moment I cannot face it." Go on, great 
 heart, thy moment is not yet come. Thou art not alone 
 in this immense desert. God has something still in 
 store for thee to do, and the life thou art ready to 
 give to these dark races shall be asked of thee later on, 
 as a message to the children of unbelief among thine 
 own people who now know nothing of thy greatness. 
 
 Still on to Shaka. A day before reaching that 
 distant place Gordon hears that Gessi has broken the 
 neck of the revolt, but this momentary clearing of the 
 atmosphere brings up a host of other troubles. There 
 are twenty-five thousand black soldiers in the Government 
 service in Darfour. They are all either captured or 
 bought slaves. What is to be done with them % There 
 
VI SUFFERINGS OF THE SLAVE-GANGS 153 
 
 is no money, the troops have not been paid for nearly two 
 years ; the men and their wives are more than half naked. 
 " It is very fortunate there are only black ladies here," 
 Gordon writes from Shaka, " for the poor wretches are 
 not clad." Cairo is still calling out for money. " When 
 the nakedness of my troops is partially covered I may 
 talk to you," replies the Governor-General. " I do not 
 care what I say," he writes, "for I feel very confident 
 that the way I could pay these people off best would be 
 to throw up the post, for no one would keep the incen- 
 diary materials of the Soudan quiet until he had been 
 here some years. It is only by hard camel-riding that 
 I hold my position among the people." 
 
 The next two months are a long camel- ride. In 
 the beginning of May Gordon is at Kalaka, in the 
 tenth parallel of north latitude; on the 14th he is 
 at Fascher, two hundred and thirty miles to the 
 north; on the 26th he reaches Kolkol, two hundred 
 miles to the west; on June 5th he is back again at 
 Fascher. There he receives a telegram from the Khe- 
 dive telling him to come to Cairo at once. Ismail 
 is at the very end of his lease of power, and again he 
 sends a despairing call to the one faithful servant who 
 can be of use to him in his extremity. Gordon pre- 
 pares to obey the summons and sets out for Cairo, but 
 again the fates intervene, and he turns south to prevent 
 a union between the slave-dealers and the followers of 
 Haroun of Darfour. On June 18th he reaches Toashia, 
 having travelled along a desert track where " the num- 
 ber of skulls along the road is appalling." They are 
 all the skulls of slaves. The sufferings of the wretched 
 gangs are worse than ever they were. "Why should 
 
154 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 I at every mile be stared at by the grinning skulls of 
 those who are at rest?" he asks. In three days he has 
 captured four hundred slaves, but they are only a drop in 
 the ocean of the traffic. If he remains at the wells the 
 gangs in charge of the slave-traders are taken away to 
 avoid him into a waterless desert, where they die in ter- 
 rible agony. Between Dara and Toashia, eighty miles, 
 thirty wretched creatures have died out of one hundred 
 and fifty. "It is enough to cause despair." At last, 
 on June 25th, after meeting Gessi and hearing all 
 details of the recent campaign in the Bahr Gazelle, 
 Gordon turns off for Khartoum and Cairo. His 
 last act in this weary land was in keeping with the 
 hopeless toil he had been so long engaged in. "I 
 have ordered the skulls which lay about here (Toashia) 
 in great numbers to be piled in a heap, as a memento to 
 the natives of what the slave-dealers have done to their 
 people." 
 
 The beginning of the end has now come. On 
 July 1st a telegram reaches Gordon at Fogia announc- 
 ing that Ismail Pacha has been deposed, and that 
 Tewfik reigns in his stead. On the 21st Khar- 
 toum is reached, and a month later Gordon is in 
 Cairo. His mind is now made up ; he has brought his 
 resignation with him. Ismail's dismissal has decided 
 matters. 
 
 Loyalty with Gordon was not a thing to be transferred 
 at the bidding of an intrigue. " It pains me what suff'er- 
 ings my poor Khedive Ismail has had to go through," 
 are the last words he writes before quitting Khartoum. 
 Again there is a special train and a palace placed at his 
 disposal. He refuses the first, and only accepts the last 
 
VI ABYSSINIA—DEATH OF SULIEMAN 155 
 
 SO as not openly to mark disapproval of the new regime ; 
 but his nature is not one to refuse help to any one. 
 There is an invasion threatening from Abyssinia, and 
 * he tells the new Khedive he is ready to start at once for 
 Massowah and make a final attempt to settle matters 
 with King Johannes ; he will then go home. Of course, 
 there is the usual cabal against him in Cairo, and for 
 once Pachas, Debt -Commissioners, and foreign consuls 
 feel friendly to each other in the presence of this out- 
 spoken honest soldier. 
 
 Arrived at Massowah he soon finds that negotiations 
 from a distance are useless ; he must cross the frontier 
 and go to Eas Aloula's camp, on the lofty table-land of 
 Abyssinia. At least this arrangement has the advantage 
 of changing the scene of negotiations from the sweltering 
 sea-coast to the top of the lofty blue line of mountains 
 where the clouds are beginning to break after the 
 summer rains. 
 
 After five days' toilsome climbing, the little caravan, 
 now mounted on mules, reaches Gura, the spot where, 
 three years earlier, the Egyptian army had been cut to 
 pieces. Here, on the "top of the steepest of hills," Eas 
 Aloula, the frontier chief, held his court. Gordon is in 
 the gorgeous Field -Marshal's uniform, which he has 
 donned in the open, amid a downpour of rain, but Eas 
 Aloula has a pretty accurate idea of how matters are 
 going in Egypt, and he receives his visitor with studied 
 discourtesy After three days of fruitless interview the 
 envoy agrees to continue his journey farther on. In 
 reality it is twenty-four days' journey. He is taken by 
 the worst road in this country of terrible pathways ; up 
 mountain sides and down into the depths of river valleys. 
 
156 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 past " Ambas," the natural fortress-prisons of Abyssinia, 
 where, on a dizzy table-mountain top, the king's state 
 prisoners are kept, communication between summit and 
 low country being only possible by means of rope, basket, 
 and pulley hauled from above. 
 
 On October 12th he receives on his road letters from 
 Gessi announcing the death of Sulieman Bahama and 
 ten other confederate leaders in the Bahr Gazelle, shot 
 after they had surrendered themselves as prisoners. " I 
 have no compunction about his (Sulieman's) death," Gor- 
 don writes. "I told him that if he fought the Govern- 
 ment God would slay him. Gessi only obeyed my orders 
 in shooting him." Alas! it was not so; he had com- 
 punction about the death of this young chief, and he 
 carried that compunction with him to the grave. Five 
 years later his repeated applications that Zebehr Pacha 
 might be sent from Cairo to Khartoum and reinstated 
 in all his honours and emoluments, had its deepest root 
 in the " compunction " which he here persuades himself 
 he does not feel. We do not mean to assert that the life 
 of this young man, Sulieman Eahama, was not legally 
 forfeited by his revolt against Egypt ; that is quite another 
 matter. There are men who cannot afford to play the 
 part of the ordinary soldier, and Gordon was one of these 
 men. The life of Major Andr6 was more justly for- 
 feited than was Sulieman Bahama's, but nevertheless 
 Washington did wrong to take it. The Due d'Enghien was 
 plotting treason against the Government of France, and 
 was in active correspondence with the men w^ho had made 
 a desperate attempt upon the life of the French ruler, and 
 were preparing to make another attempt, but Napoleon 
 was wrono; to let him be shot. It is not in the ears of 
 
VI ARRESTED IN AB YSSINIA 1 5 7 
 
 Wellington alone that the world thunders " Ney " when 
 the victor would sully his victory by setting up the 
 scaffold on the field of battle. 
 
 At last the long rugged journey draws to an end ; 
 the track has crossed all the tributaries on the right 
 bank of the Tacazz6 Eiver, and at each river-course the 
 path dips down one thousand feet on one side and 
 mounts up the same height on the other. Gordon has 
 been taken along this rugged roadway to show him the 
 hopelessness of invading Abyssinia. 
 
 The meeting of Gordon with the *'king of kings" 
 was a strange one. It took place at dawn. Johannes 
 demanded the retrocession of the lands Egypt had taken 
 from Abyssinia within the last ten years. "I could also 
 claim," he said, " Dongola, Berber, Nubia, and Sennaar, 
 but I will not do so." Memory lives long in these 
 mountain lands. Seven centuries had passed since those 
 provinces of old Ethiopia had been reft from this once 
 great Empire of Abyssinia. On November 8th the 
 king again received the envoy; nothing came of these 
 interviews. Gordon was instructed not to cede Bogos. 
 The king would give no promise not to endeavour to 
 recover his lost possessions by force of arms. He would 
 send a letter to the Khedive, that was all. Gordon was 
 glad to get away even with this trifling result of his 
 mission. At the first halting-place on his return road 
 he opened the letter and read as follows : " To Mahom- 
 med Tewfik. — I have received the letters you sent me 
 by that man. I will not make a secret peace with you. 
 If you want peace, ask the sultans of Europe." 
 
 That was all. Gordon continued his way, and reached 
 Char-Amba, the gate of Abyssinia, on November 14th. 
 
158 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Here he halted his little caravan. Below, to the north- 
 west, lay a wonderful panorama. Clear of cloud or 
 speck of mist, the great plains of the Soudan, the vast 
 level region through which the Blue Nile winds on its 
 way to Khartoum, lay outspread to a horizon which 
 sight could not reach. As Gordon sat looking at this 
 splendid vision of the land over which he had so long 
 ruled, a wild troop of mountain horsemen swooped down 
 upon his camp. Their leader carried a letter bearing 
 the king's seal. No personal violence was offered, but 
 Gordon and his party were prisoners ; they must return, 
 and take the road to Massowah instead of the one they 
 were following direct to Kassala. There was nothing 
 to be done but to obey. From a village on the back- 
 ward road Gordon managed to despatch telegrams to the 
 Khedive by way of Galabat. In these he urged that a 
 war-steamer with troops and two guns should be sent to 
 Massowah. Then turning to the east at Gondar he began 
 the long route to Massowah. From November 18th 
 to December 8th the march was carried out under great 
 difficulties. Although nominally free after the second 
 day from Gondar, the party was subjected to a great 
 deal of rough usage. The vnnter season had now begun, 
 and the mountains were covered with snow. A second 
 time Gordon was arrested near the frontier. " Sleeping 
 with an Abyssinian at the foot and one on each side of 
 you is not comfortable,'' he writes; "and so I passed 
 my last night in Abyssinia." The next day he reached 
 Massowah. So ended a strange experience of this 
 mountain land and its wild people. 
 
 Notwithstanding all he had suffered at their hands 
 Gordon read them with an unbiassed judgment. " You 
 
VI TIME CURES ALL 159 
 
 have far abler men to deal with than I had anticipated," 
 he wrote; "men of stern, simple habits, and utter free- 
 dom from bombast, or ordinary uncivilised tinsel and 
 show. It is a race of warriors, hardy, and though 
 utterly undisciplined, religious fanatics." Something 
 like that old Highland stock from which this man had 
 himself derived his own grand qualities. With that 
 extraordinary elasticity of mind which brought Gordon 
 quickly up from whatever depth of trouble or disaster 
 fortune sent him, he sums up his impressions and 
 experiences of Abyssinia as soon as he arrives at Mas- 
 sowah with still the same deep insight into human nature, 
 the same quaint comparisons. " He (the king) is of the 
 strictest sect of the Pharisees. He talks like the Old 
 Testament ; drunk overnight, he is up at dawn reading 
 the Psalms. If he were in England he would never miss 
 a prayer-meeting, and would have a Bible as big as a 
 portmanteau." 
 
 And here the curtain falls upon the last chapter but 
 one in the career of Charles Gordon in the Soudan. 
 From Massowah he went to Cairo. Despite all his toil 
 and suffering in the service of Egypt, his reception at the 
 capital was worse than the mere negative coldness of 
 official displeasure. It is only true to say that every 
 man's hand was against him, the hardest blows coming 
 from his own countrymen. His cipher telegrams to the 
 Khedive he was soon to read in the London papers, with 
 his proposals clipped and changed to suit the objects of 
 the men who were now in power in Cairo. Quick as 
 steam and electricity could carry the warped messages, 
 they were sent to demonstrate to England that this 
 great son of hers was not only inconsistent, disobedient. 
 
l6o LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, vi 
 
 and insubordinate, but that he was also mad ! Well, it 
 is all past now, and Time, the great avenger, has set 
 everything in its place. Khedives and Pachas, consuls 
 and commissioners, Ministers and journalists, big and 
 little, have sunk away into oblivion ; and, looking across 
 the dead level of the world which has taken them to 
 their rest, or in which they still await the great efFace- 
 ment, we see, beyond and above all, a mountain-top lying 
 in lustrous afterglow, the light that comes when the sun 
 has set, to carry the memory of a very noble life far 
 into the nidit of Time. 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 INDIA — CHINA — IRELAND — MAURITIUS — THE CAPE OF 
 GOOD HOPE — PALESTINE 
 
 Home and rest. How often in far-off scenes of strife 
 and misery, worn with prolonged exertion under a 
 terrible sun, and spent with the weariness that comes 
 from physical and mental suffering endured upon a 
 road that seemed endless in its length, had Gordon 
 pictured to himself a day when he would go home and 
 rest ! Well, now he had come home ; but the rest, 
 where was it^ The time was the midwinter of 1880. 
 A strange fit of hero-worship was still passing across 
 the English people. A campaign against the South 
 African tribe known as Zulus had just been brought 
 to a successful termination. Some two regiments of 
 British cavalry, fourteen battalions of regular infantry, 
 four batteries of artillery, and a strong auxiliary force of 
 irregular troops had marched from our frontier across 
 sixty or seventy miles of well- watered, open, grass 
 country, and the larger division of this force having re- 
 pulsed in square the attack of a body of natives chiefly 
 armed with spears, had burned the haal or grass village 
 of the Zulu king, and then retired within our frontiers. 
 It is difficult now to realise the extraordinary enthu- 
 M 
 
i62 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 siasm which this very facile feat of arms called forth 
 from an admiring nation. There were presentations of 
 swords of honour, subscriptions, civic banquets and 
 illuminated addresses from mayors and corporate bodies. 
 Old veterans, who still remembered the traditions of 
 the great French war, could not help indulging sar- 
 castic comment as they contrasted the landing of the 
 regiments that had won Waterloo with these effusive 
 demonstrations. 
 
 Meanwhile the real African hero, the man who for six 
 years had by his great genius maintained the authority 
 of a weak State over a region as large as Europe and 
 among races whose bravery and power in war we were 
 soon to test to our cost \ the man who, sweeping like a 
 whirlwind across immense deserts, had seemingly multi- 
 plied his individuality into legions of soldiers \ this man 
 whom, it is possible, the future will look upon as the 
 hero of our time and race, was now an unnoticed stranger, 
 dwelling as a bird of passage on our shores. " I like 
 Nelson's signal," he had once written while in the 
 Soudan. " England expects duty ; now the race is for 
 honours, not honour, and for newspaper praise." It is 
 probable that as time goes on there will arise an entirely 
 false conception, not of the man himself, because he has 
 left in his writings a vast mass of thought through 
 which it will not be easy for the world to lose its way, 
 but it is more than possible that the contemporary view 
 of Gordon and the treatment which he was accorded 
 by the governing powers of his time will altogether 
 change its aspect. There is a picture of Shakespeare 
 painted in our day which represents him seated in the 
 centre of an admiring circle of the great ones of his 
 
VII THE RACE FOR HONOURS, NOT HONOUR 163 
 
 age, who, in the neatest fitting trunk-hose and doublets, 
 are hanging upon the poet's words with an expression 
 of the profoundest interest. We know the truth about 
 Shakespeare and his times better than that, but the 
 truth of Gordon and his times is not so likely to be 
 clear to our children's children. The men who write 
 for the public of the moment are quite as ready to hide 
 with a broad varnish of adulation the people's hero, 
 whom a year or two ago they were equally ready to 
 ignore or to condemn before popularity or fashion had set 
 its approving seal upon him. All the official minutes 
 of disapproval, the inspired paragraphs of newspapers, 
 the sneers of society, will have floated off into the dead 
 sea of a forgotten past ; but in the inevitable reaction of 
 opinion, after long neglect, there is the other danger 
 that the real man will become almost as over-idealised 
 a favourite as before he had been an underestimated 
 reality. Men like to think of their hero beloved and 
 honoured during the brief span of his life on earth ; 
 they are apt to forget that the very singleness of pur- 
 pose which made his name appear so wonderful after 
 death, and was the real secret of the success they 
 so much admire, was also the cause of isolation in life 
 and of opposition to fellow-men, which must ever be 
 two of the most potent factors against popularity. 
 "The praise and blame of the world are equally in- 
 different to me," he had often said, " you may write of 
 me as if I were dead." The contemporary world does 
 not like to be told this, however much its children and 
 grandchildren may admire it later on, and the conr 
 temporary world has many methods of showing its 
 dislike. Gordon's presence in Egypt had been a reproach 
 
i64 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 to a wide class of foreign officials, who regarded that 
 country as a good place for doing English work in and 
 drawing Egyptian money out of. Neither was his 
 presence in England a comfortable thing. A nation 
 which is in the earlier stages of a transition state from 
 oligarchic monopoly of place and power to democratic 
 unexclusiveness can scarcely accept with pleasure, at 
 least in some quarters, the man who knows as much as 
 Gordon knew, who thinks as much as Gordon thought, 
 and who has a disagreeable habit of laying his finger 
 upon some Egyptian, Indian, or Irish sore, and saying 
 out without fear, favour, or affection the opinion that 
 is in his head. Clearly the Mauritius, the Cape of 
 Good Hope, or Van Diemen's Land must need the 
 immediate services of such persons. 
 
 Three months after Gordon returned from the Soudan 
 the lease of power which the Conservative party had 
 enjoyed for six years came to a close. Whether it was 
 that the people of England had begun to see war in 
 South Africa, war on the Indian frontier, and a policy 
 of activity, masterly or mischievous, as its partisans 
 or opponents might elect to call it, had a reverse side 
 to its medals, or whether they thought that the simple 
 rule of turn about being fair play was sound in politics, 
 is needless now to inquire; but the change of Government 
 that occurred in April 1880 was of much moment in 
 the life of Gordon. 
 
 The early months of 1880 were of unusual severity. 
 Gordon had been enjoined to take rest, to retire, in 
 fact, for several months of complete quiet. He would 
 seek this necessary repose, he thought, in the Swiss 
 mountains, where the blue of Leman's Lake and the 
 
VII PRIVATE SECRETARY TO VICEROY OF INDIA 165 
 
 snow of the hills of Savoy would cool the eyes and rest 
 the brain that had so long been seared with the fierce sun 
 and blinding sands of the Soudan. At Lausanne a few 
 weeks passed quietly away, but March brought a telegram 
 offering the command of the Colonial forces at the Cape 
 of Good Hope to the ex-Governor of the Soudan. The 
 Cape Government had at this time determined upon the 
 disarmament of the Basuto nation, and it was pretty 
 well understood that behind that order lay war with 
 this mountain people. Time had not yet taught us 
 wisdom in South Africa, and the annexation of the 
 Transvaal, still unpaid for, was regarded as the keynote 
 of our true Colonial policy. 
 
 Gordon declined the proffered command. His views 
 were opposed to those of the men who then guided 
 the ship of State in the troubled seas of South Africa. 
 
 The accession of the Liberals to office brought about 
 an immediate change in the government of India. 
 Lord Lytton was recalled and Lord Eipon appointed 
 Governor -General. Gordon was offered the post of 
 Private Secretary to the new Viceroy, and " in a moment 
 of weakness," as he himself terms it, he accepted the 
 post. Scarcely had he done so than he repented his 
 act.^ He saw at once that all the long war he had waged 
 with oflScial intolerance in Egypt would have been but 
 child's play to the hostility of the men who would be 
 his enemies in his new sphere. "My views were 
 
 1 "Off Aden, 22.5.80.— I have been an idiot, and took this 
 place with Lord Ripon, -who is a kind and considerate master ; 
 but I hate India, and how I ever could have taken the post is 
 past my comprehension. The endless sort of quarrels which seem 
 to be going on there by all accounts is enough to sicken one. I 
 shall get out of it as soon as I can." 
 
i66 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 diametrically opposed to those of the official classes, and 
 in the face of the vested interests in India I could not 
 hope to do anything really to the purpose." Neverthe- 
 less he felt bound to go out to India with the new 
 Governor-General. He had never been in our great 
 Eastern dependency, and perhaps on the spot the out- 
 look might not appear so hopeless. The sequel is so 
 recent and so well known that it is really needless to 
 dwell upon it. Three days after his arrival in Bombay 
 Gordon resigned his appointment. His reasons for 
 doing so are even now the subject of controversy among 
 many men. In reality there is nothing more simple. 
 The whole nature of the man, the entire tenor of his 
 previous life, every spoken word and written thought 
 of his long career were so many protests against the 
 supposition that he could have suited himself to the 
 work he was now to be engaged in. Perhaps if there 
 was a Governor -General of India with whom he could 
 have found himself in thorough unison in feeling and 
 acquiescence in policy, that man would have been 
 found in the deviser and supporter of the famous Ilbert 
 Bill j but the differences between the views of Gordon 
 and the permanent official world in which his life would 
 be cast in India were too vast to be bridged by similarity 
 of sentiment with any one man, no matter how great 
 might be that man's position. 
 
 There is a tradition among the Turks that the first 
 chief of their race who led a troop of wild horsemen 
 into Asia Minor came in sight, from a gorge in the 
 Karamanian hills, of a plain beneath, upon which two 
 rival tribes were contending for victor)^ The sight of 
 battle was dear to the Toorkman, but he reined in his 
 
VII J^ESIGNS THE APPOINTMENT 167 
 
 charger long enough to see which side was the weaker 
 — who were the losers. That was enough for him ; he 
 asked no other explanation of the quarrel, but charging 
 the stronger enemy he overthrew it Gordon had a 
 similar nature. He would no more have joined with 
 the official view of India and its people than he could 
 join with the foreign element in Cairo against the people 
 of Egypt. "When oil mixes with water, we will mix 
 together," he had written a short time earlier of one of 
 the most successful Indian officials of our time. Gordon 
 was not content to take the accepted reasons of things. 
 He looked below the surface. The men who make real 
 history know best of all the worthless nature of the thing 
 we call current history. To tell him that debt and famine 
 and war were the natural results of India under a really 
 wise and just system of government was not to convince 
 him that it was true. He had a fatal tendency to go to 
 the root of matters, and to ask himself, for instance, if 
 debt and famine and war were the natural conse- 
 quences of life in India, had not the fact of millions 
 sterling in the shape of pay for English employees, 
 pensions, cost of foreign troops, of unprofitable stores, 
 etc., annually taken out of the country, something to 
 say to this triple conglomerate of misery. It was only 
 a year before this date, 1880, that a military officer of 
 high rank and deep insight into Indian affairs had said 
 " that there never could be another rebellion in India, 
 because the people were too weak from want of food to 
 fight." That one fact would have sufficed for Gordon. 
 State-craft, official tradition, the policy of predecessors, 
 all would have gone down before the simple reality of 
 the first village he came to being in want of bread, while 
 
i68 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the vessels at the nearest port were shipping wheat to 
 England or sending rice to China. It was as necessary 
 for him to be on the side of the weak as it is necessary 
 for water to flow down or fire to burn up ; and to be 
 on the side of the weak, however glowing and brilliant 
 and easy it may seem in the pages of a novel or on the 
 boards of a theatre, is in real life, and especially in 
 official real life, the very hardest, most unromantic, 
 unpatriotic, unfriendly, and generally unpleasant task 
 that human existence can lay before its creatures. The 
 French, with their fine sense of definition, have found 
 various names for the men who have two sets of opinions, 
 one for their inward consciences, the other for outward 
 use in the political world. There are " solutionists," 
 "opportunists," and so forth. "Men whose ideas 
 are kept within the zone of practical politics" is the 
 modern English definition of such persons. Gordon was 
 neither a '' solutionist " nor an " opportunist " nor a 
 "practical politician," nor any other of the various 
 degrees of time-serving officialism which is content to 
 wait with its reform or denunciation of wrong until the 
 swing of the balance has begun to drop towards the side 
 of the weak, and they can carry their salaries and their 
 friends along with their opinions over to the cause which 
 has now become the strong as well as the right one. 
 
 Putting for a moment those reasons for resignation 
 aside, and admitting that it was possible for Gordon to 
 have continued as Private Secretary to the Viceroy, 
 it was perhaps unfortunate that there should have been 
 any meeting at Bombay between the incoming and the 
 outgoing officials. They were at opposite poles of 
 opinion. It would be too much to say that the out- 
 
\rii GOES AGAIN TO CHINA X69 
 
 going regime had been one of blood and iron ; the iron 
 part of the performance was certainly not apparent, but 
 the whole policy had been one of aggression hidden 
 under specious declaration. It was a policy which 
 ignored sentiments of abstract justice in dealing with 
 Asiatic princes or people. If it was the policy of 
 Clive without his open defiance of human right, it might 
 also be added it was the policy of Clive without his 
 genius. 
 
 Two days after the resignation of his office Gordon 
 received a telegram from China asking him to proceed 
 to Pekin. The position of China was critical : war with 
 Russia was imminent. " Work, position, conditions can 
 all be arranged to your satisfaction," said the message. 
 Three days later he replied, accepting the invitation 
 to China, but as for conditions he was "indifferent." 
 Then he telegraphed to the English War Office asking 
 for six months' leave. " Never mind pay," he added, 
 " and fear not that I will involve our Government in war." 
 For the next two or three days message and answer 
 were passing over the wires. Leave could not be given 
 until object and position were fully explained. Gordon 
 replied that he was ignorant of these things, but would 
 write fully from China. Then came a direct refusal. 
 This was stretching the bow of authority beyond the 
 breaking -point. He at once threw up his commis- 
 sion and, without waiting for further reply, turned his 
 face to China. He was actually without funds ; having 
 come out to India as a Government passenger he had to 
 defray the passage of his successor. He had now to 
 borrow the money which would pay his passage from 
 Bombay to China. The cost consequent upon his 
 
170 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 acceptance of the official appointment had been consider- 
 able. The expensive, richly embroidered vice-regal coat 
 had never even been worn. Never mind, he " will pre- 
 sent it to Li Hung Chang," he writes, " when he arrives 
 in China." Gordon had sailed from India without having 
 heard from England the result of his last decision. In 
 a few words he had said, " I must go to China. If you 
 decline to give me leave of absence I wish to retire from 
 the service ; if you say I cannot retire by commutation 
 of pension, then I resign my commission, and make you 
 a present of its value " (about six thousand pounds). 
 Before embarking for China he for the first time in his 
 life sought to explain his motives in the columns of 
 the Press. He had felt deeply the supposition that he 
 was about to proceed to China as a soldier of fortune, 
 intent only upon the personal advantage he might derive 
 from war between China and Eussia. "My object in 
 going to China," he said, " is to persuade the Chinese 
 not to go to war with Eussia. . . . Whether I succeed 
 in being heard or not is not in my hands. I protest, 
 however, at being regarded as one who wishes for war 
 in any country, still less in China. Inclined as I am, 
 with only a small degree of admiration for military 
 exploits, I esteem it a far greater honour to promote 
 peace than to gain any paltry honours in a wretched 
 war."i 
 
 In July 1880 Gordon reached China. He went at 
 once to Tientsin, where his old friend and companion-in- 
 arms, Li Hung Chang, held command. Li was for peace, 
 but there was a powerful war-party in Pekin, and the ques- 
 tion of peace or war hung in an evenly-poised balance. 
 ^ Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon. 
 
VII GOES AGAIN TO CHINA 171 
 
 From Tientsin Gordon proceeded to the Imperial 
 capital. Sixteen years before he had never hesitated 
 to speak his mind openly to the highest mandarins, and 
 the time that had since passed over him had not changed 
 his habit of truth. War with Eussia in the present 
 condition of China was not to be thought of : Pekin 
 would be in possession of a Eussian army within a few 
 weeks of a declaration of hostilities. The war -party 
 were obstinate : the dispute grew warm. Six years of 
 the Soudan sun had not cooled the temper of the former 
 captain of engineers. The high Ministers of the 
 Tsungli-yamen, with Prince Chun at their head, heard 
 many strange words, whose straightforward meaning not 
 even a tactful interpreter could soften. At last there 
 came a phrase that seemed impossible of repetition. " It 
 would be sheer idiotcy to fight Eussia," the interpreter 
 would not repeat the word "idiotcy," but there was an 
 Anglo-Chinese dictionary lying on the table, and Gordon, 
 opening the book, pointed out the obnoxious equivalent 
 to the astonished Ministers. It is probable that had 
 such a word been used in the hearing of an European 
 Council of Ministers there would have been a terrible 
 explosion of official wrath, and the speaker would have 
 been summarily dismissed. "Grieve not that men do 
 not know you," had once said Confucius, "but grieve 
 that you do not know men." The Tsungli-yamen had 
 the merit, so rare among their kind, of knowing the 
 man they were dealing with, and they not only listened 
 to his words but followed his advice. The peace with 
 Eussia was not broken. Gordon went back to Li Hung 
 Chang, wrote a long and very able treatise upon the 
 proper method of warfare to be followed by the Chinese 
 
172 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 in the event of an attack being made upon the Empire, 
 and then left China. On his return journey he received 
 a telegram from London informing him that his leave 
 had been cancelled, and that his resignation was not 
 accepted. A month later he replied from Aden, "You 
 might have trusted me." "I cannot stand it" (this 
 suspicion of his intentions), he wrote to a friend from 
 the same place. Truly the measurement of a man is 
 a long process in England. " The giant had to fall 
 before I could measure him," had said Chateaubriand of 
 the great Napoleon after St. Helena. Was it necessary 
 that England should measure Gordon by the scaffold of 
 Khartoum % 
 
 The winter of 1880 was beginning when Gordon 
 reached England. Another season of scanty crops and 
 dripping harvest had come to deepen the distress of the 
 peasant in his last home — Ireland. Grouse and stags 
 had long ago driven out the Scotch crofter : the " con- 
 solidation of farms" had even earlier destroyed the 
 English cottier ; but in Ireland the " march of civilisa- 
 tion," as the greed of landowners had been impiously 
 called, had not yet cleared from the surface of the soil 
 its best and truest product, the people. There, living on 
 the narrow margin between rack-rent and starvation, the 
 peasants still held on to their farms and households. 
 
 Two severe seasons and the narrow margin had dis- 
 appeared : the landlords began to tighten their grasp 
 upon the soil. Cmte que coMe, they must have, not their 
 pound of flesh, but what was in reality the price of the 
 flesh and blood of the entire family ; for already the 
 highest authority in the land had declared that the 
 process of eviction was tantamount to a sentence of 
 
VISITS IRELAND 173 
 
 death. Then began the old scenes : the " driver," the 
 server, the bailiff, the policeman, were abroad, and behind 
 them in gloomy procession came the antithesis of in- 
 justice — resistance. Against the driver appeared the 
 blackened face, against the server rose the "moon- 
 lighter : " the notice to quit was followed by the 
 threatening letter : Boycott and Bence Jones called 
 forth Kory of the Hills and Captain Rock. The only 
 wonderful thing about it all was that it should have 
 been possible in the end of the nineteenth century. 
 Gordon beheld this strange state of slavery and slave- 
 driving almost at the door of his own home. He who 
 had been fighting man's savage injustice to man afar 
 off in Darfourian deserts all at once found that twelve 
 hours' travel from him there was another species of this 
 vile traffic going on. If he turned to the columns of 
 the Press for explanation he met only abuse of the 
 wretched slaves who dared to speak their hurt or resist 
 their masters, but he knew too well the true value of 
 the Press when human interest is concerned, and, as five- 
 and- twenty years' experience of half the races on the 
 earth had shown him there never was discontent 
 among that most patient of all animals on earth, the man 
 who tilled the surface-soil of the world, except where 
 some great wrong was being perpetrated against him, 
 he determined to go to Ireland, and, with the evidence 
 of his own eyes and ears — those eyes and ears so keen 
 to catch truth, so quick to hear the ring of right metal 
 in the coinage of words — to judge of Ireland and her 
 people. 
 
 During the month of November he travelled through 
 the south and west of Ireland, watching and noting as 
 
174 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 he went. He carried a gun, so as to have an excuse for 
 penetrating the remote glens and mountains of those 
 beautiful highlands of Kerry and of Connemara without 
 exciting the suspicion that he was the friend or ally of 
 either landlord or tenant. He was simply a sportsman 
 seeking snipe. Thus journeying from town to town and 
 village to village he was able in a comparatively short 
 space of time to satisfy himself upon the much-vexed 
 question of Ireland, and the conclusion that he arrived 
 at bears all the more weight because it was not written 
 in the interests of one political party or the other, but 
 was the deliberate verdict of a man who had witnessed 
 in his life more human suffering and more of varied 
 human nature than any man then living. But that was 
 not all. Had Gordon bsen only an ordinary -brained 
 official, who had lived his life among the many races of 
 our Empire, his opinion would have been eminently 
 worthy of consideration ; but he was something beyond 
 all that. The man who wrote the letter which is here 
 given in full was not only the keenest observer, but 
 he was the bravest, the purest, and the most truthful 
 Englishman of his time : — 
 
 "December 1st, 1880. 
 
 " My dear , you are aware how interested I am in 
 
 the welfare of this country, and, having known you for twenty- 
 six years, I am sure I may say the same of you. 
 
 " I have lately been over the south-west of Ireland in the 
 hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of 
 the Irish question, which, like some fretting cancer, eats away 
 our vitals as a nation. 
 
 " I have come to the conclusion that (1) a gulf of antipathy 
 existsbet ween the landlords and tenants of the north-west, west, 
 and south of Ireland. It is a gulf which is not caused alone by 
 the question of rent, and there is a complete lack of sympathy 
 
VII PLAN FOR SETTLEMENT OF IRISH QUESTION 175 
 
 between these two classes. It is useless to inquire how such 
 a state of things has come to pass. I call your attention to 
 the pamphlets, letters, and speeches of the landlord class as a 
 proof of how little sympathy or kindness there exists among 
 them for the tenantry ; and I am sure that the tenantry feel 
 in the same way towards the landlords. 
 
 " (2) No half-measured Acts which left the landlords with 
 any say to the tenantry of these portions of Ireland will be 
 of any use. They would be rendered, as past Land Acts have 
 been, quite abortive, for the landlords will insert clauses to 
 do away with their force. Any half-measures will only place 
 the Government face to face with the people of Ireland as 
 the champions of the landlord interest. The Government 
 would be bound to enforce their decision, and with a result 
 which none can foresee, but which certainly would be dis- 
 astrous to the common weal. 
 
 " (3) My idea is that seeing, through this cause or that it 
 is immaterial to examine, a deadlock has occurred between the 
 present landlords and the tenants, the Government should 
 purchase up the rights of the landlords over the whole or 
 the greater part of Longford, Westmeath, Clare, Cork, Cavan, 
 and Donegal. The yearly rental of these districts is some 
 four millions. If the Government gave the landlords twenty 
 years' purchase, it would cost X80,000,000, which, at three 
 and a half per cent, would give a yearly interest of £2,800,000, 
 of which £2,500,000 could be recovered. The lands would 
 be Crown Lands — they would be administered by a Land 
 Commission, which would be supplemented by an Emigration 
 Commission, which might for a short time need £100,000. 
 This would not injure the landlords, and so far as it is an 
 interference with proprietary right, it is as just as is the law 
 which forces Lord A. to allow a railway through his park 
 for the public benefit. I would restrain the landlords from 
 any power or control in these Crown Land districts. Poor-law, 
 roads, schools, etc. should be under the Land Commission. 
 
 *' (4) For the rest of Ireland I would pass an Act allowing 
 free sale of leases, fair rents, and a Government valuation. 
 
 " In conclusion, I must say from all accounts, and my own 
 observation, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the 
 parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the 
 
176 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap 
 
 world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made 
 as we are ; that they are patient beyond belief ; loyal, but at 
 the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge 
 of starvation in places in which we would not keep our cattle. 
 
 "The Bulgarians, Anatolians, Chinese, and Indians are 
 better off than many of them are. The priests alone have 
 any sympathy with their sufferings, and naturally alone have 
 a hold over them. In these days, in common justice, if we 
 endow a Protestant university why should we not endow a 
 Catholic university in a Catholic country ? Is it not as 
 difficult to get a <£5 note from a Protestant as from a Catholic 
 
 or a Jew ? Eead the letters of , and tell me if you see 
 
 in them a particle of kind feeling towards the tenantry, and 
 if you have any doubts about this, investigate the manner in 
 which the Belief Fund was administered, and in which the sums 
 of money for the improvement of estates by landlords were 
 expended. In 1833 England gave freedom to the West India 
 slaves at a cost of .£20,000,000 — worth now £30,000,000. 
 This money left the country. England got nothing for it. 
 By an expenditure of £80,000,000 she may free her own 
 people. She would have the hold over the land, and she 
 would cure a cancer. I am not well off, but I would offer 
 
 or his agent £1000 if either of them would live one 
 
 week in one of these poor devil's places and feed as these 
 people do. 
 
 " Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their carica- 
 tures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in 
 Ireland is not greater than that in England ; and, secondly, 
 they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, 
 and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a ques- 
 tion which affects our existence. — Yours sincerely, 
 
 " C. G. Gordon." i 
 
 ^ Short as was this visit to Ireland, there is proof that the 
 condition of the island and the welfare of its people held during 
 the remainder of his life a foremost place in Gordon's mind. 
 Writing from Jerusalem in 1883 he again reverts to the subject, 
 and begs that a well-known Irish peer then on a diplomatic mission 
 to Egypt might be asked if his (Gordon's) plan for solving the 
 Irish land-question was not the only method of settlement. 
 
Vii UNHEEDED WARNINGS 177 
 
 There is no excuse necessary for the introduction 
 in this book of every word of the above letter. The 
 question of Ireland is still an open one. It still " affects 
 our existence " as a nation. " The state of our fellow- 
 countrymen in Ireland is worse than that of any people 
 in the world, let alone Europe : " these were terrible 
 words, coming from such an authority, coming from one 
 whose knowledge of human misery was unquestionably 
 greater than that of any living man, but they fell on 
 ears that would not listen. It was said then, and 
 it has been said since, that Gordon had not had time 
 to fully understand the Irish question. Doubtless 
 there were many Pachas in Egypt who said the same 
 of his Soudan views, and many slave-holders and 
 drivers and traders who spoke in a similar strain of 
 his efforts against slavery ; but had Gordon lived his 
 life in Ireland he could not have more fully compre- 
 hended the vital cause that lay at the root of the misery 
 of the land which another brilliant soldier, writing three 
 hundred years earlier, had named " The commonwealth 
 of common woe." 
 
 " The Irish question is a simple one," an Irish land- 
 lord had said to the writer of these pages about this very 
 same date, 1880 ; "you have only to emigrate the people 
 and get rid of the priests, and then all will be easy 
 enough." " I have good news for you," another large 
 landlord had remarked to a brother county magnate half 
 a dozen years before, also in the hearing of the writer, 
 " Blank (a well-known legal authoiity in Ireland) tells 
 me you can drive a coach and six through any part 
 of Gladstone's late Land Bill." Laughable in their 
 selfish stupidity would be these words if they were not 
 N 
 
178 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 terrible when one thinks of the wicked indifference to 
 human suffering which they reveal. 
 
 When Gordon wrote his Irish letter one hundred years 
 had passed away since Edmund Burke had been telling 
 the people of England the truth about Ireland. But 
 the voice and pen whose utterances had been so power- 
 ful in the cause of suffering humanity in India and in the 
 Colonial Empire of Great Britain were unheeded when 
 the injustice they denounced and the right they would 
 invoke were Irish ; and now, when another century 
 had rolled by, when famine and the insurrection of a 
 maddened people had built still higher the gloomy 
 monument of misrule, the warning voice of this great 
 soldier is raised in vain. He is listened to when he 
 speaks in the cause of some distant race in Central 
 Africa; he has legions of admiring readers when he 
 points the road to right and justice for some name- 
 less tribe in the remote Soudan ; but he is ridiculed 
 and told he knows nothing of his subject when he tells 
 the people of England that within twelve hours of the 
 capital there exists a deeper misery and a more unnatural 
 injustice. 
 
 The year 1881 opened with ill omens at home and 
 abroad. Coercion in Ireland was to precede any attempt 
 to settle grievances. In South Africa the long -pent 
 animosity of the Dutch Boers had suddenly broken into 
 active revolt in the Transvaal, and repeated disasters to 
 our arms were taking place. The penalty of the policy 
 of activity beyond the frontier was being paid by those 
 who had opposed the policy. Nemesis does not reckon 
 as to the particular fly that happens to sit on the head 
 of the nail when she drops her avenging hammer. 
 
THE YEAR 1881 179 
 
 In April 1881 "■ Colonel Gordon, tired of doing 
 nothing,^^ telegraphs to the Government of the Cape of 
 Good Hope that he is willing to go out to assist in 
 terminating war and administrating Basutoland. The 
 words in italics give his brother's reason for this step, and 
 it is not unlikely that future generations will read them 
 with wonder. Let us glance a moment at the state of 
 our Empire in this year 1881, when this man was tired 
 of doing nothing. The deep-seated malady of Ireland 
 had reached a most acute stage. Annexation, against 
 the wishes of the Dutch population, had produced a 
 dangerous revolt in the Transvaal. Misgovernment and 
 broken faith with the natives of Basutoland had brought 
 on a costly Colonial war in that mountain region. In 
 Afghanistan the people were still seething against an 
 aggressive intervention which had done more to facilitate 
 the advance of Eussia towards our Indian frontier than 
 twenty years of peace had done. In Egypt the steady 
 sapping of the Khedive's authority, done nominally in 
 the interest of the shareholders, was already producing 
 a plentiful crop of ^meute and intrigue ; while in the now 
 half-forgotten Soudan the Mahdi, still a dim item of 
 disturbance in that distant region, had already raised 
 his standard as the leader of a revolt of Islam. 
 
 Such in a few words was the state of the world of 
 English interest at the moment when England had no 
 employment to offer her best son.^ 
 
 ^ There is reason for thinking that at this time — March 1881 
 — efforts were being made to compel Gordon either to accept 
 some insignificant routine appointment in England or make him 
 retire from the army ; for on April 4th in that year he thus 
 writes to an old friend: "Now it would be trying to me to 
 
i8o LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 The Cape Government did not even think it necessary 
 to reply to Gordon's offer of service. A week or two 
 later something turned up. An engineer friend was 
 ordered to proceed to Mauritius in the ordinary routine 
 of duty. He did not wish to go. It was a thankless 
 office, with nothing really to be done, and having exile 
 thrown in along with idleness. Would somebody take 
 this death in life for him? Yes, on one condition 
 Gordon would take it. There must be no payment of 
 money to the substitute. That was not a stipulation 
 which, in this age at least, is likely to cause much diffi- 
 culty or delay. The exchange was soon arranged, and 
 in May Gordon started for his distant charge, where for 
 nearly a year he was employed, as he himself described 
 it, in " looking after the barrack repairs, and seeing that 
 the drains were in order." 
 
 At last this waste of a great life ceased.^ Early in 
 1882 the new Cape Government suddenly bethought 
 
 go and look after ordinary Royal Engineer duties, so if you could 
 aid me to anything in a very mild way at Cape, or elsewhere, 
 with the mildest of salaries, or even with Lieutenant-Colonel R. E.'s 
 pay, I would be much obliged." A day or two later he writes 
 again to the same friend — the difficulty having, through the inter- 
 vention of this friend, apparently been surmounted : ** For myself 
 {in re this forced employment in the obstructive circle of R.E. ) 
 duty was particularly vexatious, for I should certainly have come 
 to dire loggerheads with my obstructive R.E. chiefs. I claim 
 to sympathise with any who try to stem the effete administration 
 of our rulers. What we want is a man who will steam-hammer 
 all departments to the welfare of our army, and it is therefore I do 
 not wish to be shunted out, for I believe that the time is near 
 when there will be a cry for such a man, and it is then I would 
 like to be active." 
 
 ^ "This Patmos of idleness," he called Mauritius in a letter 
 written August 29th, 1881. 
 
Vii MAURITIUS AND CAPE OF GOOD HOPE i8i 
 
 them of the man whose telegram their predecessors had 
 not troubled themselves to reply to. Basutoland had 
 proved too hard a nut for the Colonial forces to crack. 
 A couple of millions had been uselessly squandered in 
 attempting to conquer the mountain chiefs, and the 
 burning of the ploughs which the missionaries had in- 
 duced the natives to adopt appeared to be the principal 
 result of this large expenditure. Manifestly the sooner 
 this very disreputable business was brought to an end 
 the better for all parties. 
 
 Would Gordon renew the offer he had made a year 
 earlier % Yes, he would. On April 2d he received this 
 invitation, and on the 4th he had sailed for Cape 
 Town. A sailing-ship named after his old Highland 
 home carried him. They are boisterous winds and huge 
 shaggy waves that go roaring round the Cape of Storms 
 and run up into the Madagascar seas, and for a •month 
 the Scotia beat her way against them, for May is the 
 November of the Southern Ocean. At length the Cape 
 was reached. It would take more space than can be 
 given to track the questions that lay at the root of the 
 trouble with the Basutos through the forty years of 
 their history, but a few words may suffice to put the 
 reader in possession of the main facts. The Basutos had 
 voluntarily become British subjects many years ago, 
 under express stipulations which guaranteed them all 
 their rights and privileges. They had accepted British 
 magistrates and paid a general hut -tax to defray the 
 cost of justice and of police. As they increased in 
 numbers, so had the tax become higher, until it produced 
 a large surplus sum. This surplus was absorbed into 
 the Cape treasury instead of being spent upon the im- 
 
i82 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 provement of the natives ; but that was not sufficient to 
 produce resistance. It happened about twenty years 
 ago that diamonds were discovered in large quantities in 
 South Africa. The Basutos flocked to the diamond-fields 
 to labour in the pits. They worked for hire. It suited 
 the owners of the fields to pay them in guns and 
 ammunition. This payment in arms was sanctioned by 
 the Cape Government. Thus the Basutos obtained large 
 quantities of guns, rifles, powder, and ball. When this 
 trade had been going on for more than a dozen years 
 the Cape Government passed a Disarmament Act, and 
 ordered the Basutos to surrender the weapons they had 
 legally acquired by the hard labour of their industry. 
 It was a piece of injustice that the people would not 
 submit to. They simply refused to give up their arms. 
 Then came war, begun recklessly by the Colonial Govern- 
 ment attempting to carry out their unjust law. In this 
 war the Colonial forces could make no way, and the 
 expense of hostilities threatened to involve the Govern- 
 ment in bankruptcy. Such was the state of matters 
 when Gordon was called in. As usual he quickly saw 
 the real cause of the trouble and as quickly spoke his 
 mind about it. They must admit their wrong and then 
 begin to do right. They must send to these people 
 magistrates of unspotted reputation. Of course,, the 
 "vested interests" were at once in revolt. It was neces- 
 sary to get rid of this just steward, as it had been neces- 
 sary to get rid of him in Egypt and in Ireland. To do 
 the Cape Ministry justice, they did not support the 
 cabal against their new servant. It is the unavoidable 
 result of party government that majorities have to be 
 thought of more than right or justice ; but at last the 
 
VII BASUTOLAND—HOME 183 
 
 opposition reached a culminating point. Three out of 
 the four Basuto chiefs had agreed to terms ; the fourth, 
 Masupha, still refused to accept magistrates and levy a 
 hut-tax. Gordon felt certain that if he could personally 
 interview this chief he, too, would accept the terms now 
 offered. For this purpose he starts for Masupha's 
 stronghold. It had been agreed between him and the 
 head magistrate that no overt act of hostility was to be 
 made against Masupha until Gordon had first tried his 
 hand at personal negotiation. After that had failed, 
 pressure might be applied. But no sooner had Gordon 
 reached the Basuto chieftain's stronghold, and while he 
 was yet negotiating with him, than news arrived that a 
 hostile expedition was approaching. If Masupha Mos- 
 hesh did not make the envoy pay with his life for this 
 breach of all the rules of fair fighting, it was assuredly 
 not because the men who were at the bottom of this 
 movement had taken steps to prevent such a calamity. 
 
 After this it was not possible to continue in the 
 service of the Cape Government. Gordon resigned his 
 post as commandant-general, and embarking for Eng- 
 land arrived home early in the month of November 
 1882. 
 
 It seemed to be the fate of this man that his life 
 should be spent in a series of researches into the con- 
 dition of the outside races of our Empire, and that each 
 time when he returned to his native land full freighted 
 with a fresh load of gathered experience, he was to be 
 allowed to drift off into absolute inaction or into the 
 service of a foreign State. It would be a curious study to 
 compare the receptions given to Gordon on his return by 
 the men who were at the head of the Foreign and Colonial 
 
i84 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Offices at this time with the manner in which a conti- 
 nental king greeted him. "I now again request you, 
 as you are at liberty, to enter my service," wrote the 
 King of the Belgians. "For the moment I have no 
 mission to offer you, but I wish much to have you at 
 my disposal, and to take you from this moment as 
 my counsellor. You can name your own terms. You 
 know the consideration that I have for your great 
 qualities." 
 
 Nor was neglect on the part of the English official 
 world a thing very much to be wondered at in this case. 
 Few men in our day had greater respect for principles, 
 and less respect for mere persons, than Gordon. That 
 bugbear of modern English life — a large majority — had 
 no terrors for him. Indeed, he held the strength of such 
 things to be much what Horace Walpole thought of them 
 — "the bravery of a mob ducking a pickpocket"; and 
 the sight of a poor Arab kneeling in the desert, turned 
 towards Mecca in prayer, was a thing eminently more 
 worthy of respect in his eyes than the spectacle of an 
 entire Cabinet of English Ministers eating dinner at the 
 Mansion-House. 
 
 Meanwhile there was an ardent wish which he 
 had never been able to gratify. It was to visit the 
 Holy Land. Few pilgrims over the earth had ever 
 dwelt so much in spirit in that wonderful country. 
 Now there had come an interval in this busy life. He 
 would employ it by going over the ground and visiting 
 the scenes he had so often seen in imagination amid the 
 drip of tropical forest, or when the *'lone and level 
 sands " of the desert had stretched around his bivouac. 
 
 There is no more marked trait in Gordon's character 
 
V« IN PALESTINE 185 
 
 than the power he possessed of throwing himself heart 
 and soul, body and mind, into his subject. Whatever it 
 is, be it the most opposite work at the opposite ends of 
 the earth, he attacks it with extraordinary energy. In the 
 Crimea, when almost a boy, he sees where the vital error 
 has been committed long before it has been caught by 
 older heads. In China he strikes at the heart of the 
 Taiping rebellion. At Gravesend he does not trouble 
 himself with attending Social Science discussions, or 
 writing magazine-articles on the state of the poor, but he 
 hits out right and left at all the poverty and ignorance 
 his arms can reach around him. In the Soudan he sees 
 that slavery lies at the root of all the suffering. In 
 Ireland he shows in a couple of pages more real insight 
 into the causes of misery and discontent than can be 
 gathered out of all the Blue Books and Eoyal Commis- 
 sions of half a century. In the Cape he lays bare the 
 real reasons of the native wars, and points out how 
 they can be avoided. And now, in the Holy Land, he 
 turns every faculty of his mind towards the examination 
 of the great facts of man's creation, fall, and redemption; 
 the everlasting struggle of life amid the rival forces of 
 good and evil, and the profound mysteries of death and 
 immortality. 
 
 It is curious to trace through his Reflections in Palestine 
 the nature of the man coming out at every page. It is 
 no theologian who is writing, no schoolman, no student 
 deeply read in Eastern language, but a soldier of faith 
 who has a thousand times in his wonderful life felt the 
 living reality of the thing he is writing about, who for 
 long years was never able to enter a church built by the 
 hands of man, but who made of the whole world of his 
 
i86 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 life a vast cathedral in which prayer and good work and 
 sacrifice and praise were ever going on — going on when his 
 Chinese soldiers wavered in the breach, when the hostile 
 natives closed around his scanty escorts in Unyoro, 
 when the long horizons of the deserts of Kordofan 
 shifted before the interminable "cushioned footfall of 
 his camel." And now he was come to the scene which 
 was the source and centre of it all. No wonder he shuts 
 himself up within himself. " I see no one ; my books 
 are enough companionship," he says. Again and again 
 he reads the Great History ; takes it out with him to the 
 hills, the pools, the gardens, the rocks ; climbs the steep 
 worn pathways, traces out the possible circuit of the old 
 walls, rebuilds the towers, the gates, the temples ; seeks 
 the place of the Crucifixion, notes the rocks, the un- 
 changeable outlines of the hills and the lights of sunrise 
 and shades of twilight that know nothing of time's variety. 
 Never before in his life had Gordon spent such a period 
 of unbroken quiet as during this year 1883 in Palestine. 
 It seemed that this long time of contemplation was given 
 to him as a fitting reward for the weary years of strife 
 in which he had worn, as he called it, "the greatcoat" 
 of faith, and that here, at the final scene in the life of 
 the Eedeemer, whose teachings he had studied and 
 practised, whose example he had tried to follow, whose 
 name he had worshipped during thirty years of life, 
 he was to prepare himself for the final approach of his 
 own great travail now so close at hand. 
 
 Often as faith has been spoken of as the master- 
 spring of Gordon's mind, no definition of that faith has 
 been given in these pages. There were many men 
 who spoke of his belief as being a strange mixture of 
 
VII THE NATURE OF HIS FAITH 187 
 
 mysticism and measurement. " He was not content," a 
 critic who knew nothing of the real man once said, " if 
 he could not give the exact height and . breadth of the 
 Deity." Gordon's nature was a curious mixture of the 
 spiritual and the matter-of-fact. Whatever he saw, or 
 thought, or felt, or heard, he liked to set down on paper. 
 The spiritual mystic and the sapper-measurer met in 
 his mind, and just as his last journals contained diagrams 
 showing the exact spot in the Nile where his steamer 
 had been sunk by the Arab fire, and sketches illustrating 
 the opinions or peculiarities of his opponents, so he was 
 ever ready to set down in words, or figures, or diagrams 
 every fact of that history which was to him the one 
 cherished study of his life. The site of the garden of 
 Eden, the spot where the ark first touched ground, the 
 place of the altar of burnt-ofFering, the Temple of Jeru- 
 salem, the verification of the walls and the gates of the 
 Holy City, were subjects of the deepest study to him. 
 His busy mind was never tired of rebuilding out of 
 the ruins of Arab, Greek, and Eoman times the earlier 
 edifices of long-vanished Jewish days. But all this was 
 only the pastime of the man's faith, and he who would 
 imagine from this pastime that Gordon was intent upon 
 grasping in his mind the outward form of God, could 
 indeed know little of the deep ocean of trust and faith 
 that lay beneath. 
 
 In the vast reality of belief that was in him, he did 
 not trouble himself with the labour of w^hat is called 
 reconciling faith and science. Nor did he ever enter 
 into the polemical disputes between diff*ering forms of 
 religion. As for faith and science, he knew too well 
 the exact value of the latter word ever to trouble his 
 
i88 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 mind with its "reconciliation." The fact that science 
 could make a wire which was able to transmit thought 
 with the rapidity of lightning could not obscure from 
 him that other fact that, so far at least, this lightning 
 thought-conductor had been used more to disseminate 
 lies and foster gambling in stocks or horses than to 
 spread truth or increase the store of human knowledge ; 
 and he knew, too, that while science might cast a 
 cannon big enough or make a powder strong enough 
 to knock down or blow up an entire nation, it was as 
 powerless to make a grain of wheat as it was to produce 
 a Charles Gordon. Neither did he enter into the 
 disputes of creeds. Bigotry, that common weakness of 
 even great minds, he was absolutely devoid of. What 
 was the particular creed to which he belonged may well 
 even be matter of dispute. 
 
 While in Jerusalem in 1883 he frequently received 
 the Sacrament of Holy Communion in the Greek Church. 
 A year later, on his last journey to Khartoum, he meets 
 the Eoman Catholic Bishop, Monseigneur Sogaro, and 
 says to him, "Do not forget me in your prayers." A 
 few days afterwards, writing from Korosko, he uses these 
 words : " I shall have no eating (Holy Communion) in 
 the Soudan. The Eoman Catholic priests have all left 
 (Khartoum), and are at Assouan." In the scant baggage 
 which he is to get together when leaving England, he 
 will bring only a few books, but among them will 
 be Cardinal Newman's Bream of Gerontius, which, curi- 
 ously enough, is to be the sole possession destined to 
 come out from the great catastrophe, and to come out 
 too, bearing in its worn pages many evidences of the 
 deep, pure, humble faith of the man whose hand had 
 
VII THOUGHTS IN PALESTINE 189 
 
 traced in marginal note and interlineation the tokens of 
 his admiration. 
 
 Underneath the following lines in this little book 
 deep pencil marks are drawn : — 
 
 " Now that the hour is come my fear is fled." 
 " Pray for me, oh my friends ! " 
 " 'Tis death, oh loving friends, your prayers, 'tis he." 
 *' So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to 
 pray ! " 
 
 *^Use well the interval ! " 
 " Prepare to meet thy God ! " 
 
 Gordon gave this book to Mr. Frank Power, after his 
 arrival in Khartoum, underlining these last lines, which 
 now, read in the mournful light of the fate of the Ahhas 
 at Hebbeh, have a strange significance : — 
 
 " Farewell, but not for ever, brother dear." 
 " Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow." 
 
 "A man in close communion with God," the great- 
 est English statesman of his day, speaking to our most 
 celebrated soldier, had defined Gordon. Perhaps this 
 definition explains a good deal of the power exercised 
 by Charles Gordon over the masses of the world, and a 
 great deal also of the antagonism that existed between 
 him and those who are called " Men of the World." 
 
 Out in the wild spaces of the earth he had long ago 
 realised the immense secret which the wonderful mind 
 of Pascal had evolved from profound inquiry. "If 
 there were no darkness," had said the great Frenchman, 
 " man would not feel his corruption ; if there were 
 no light, man would have no hope of salvation. Thus 
 it is not only quite right but necessary that God should 
 be concealed in part and revealed in part, since it is 
 
I90 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 equally dangerous for man to know God without know- 
 ing his own misery, and to know his own misery without 
 knowing God." Never had the necessity of this dual 
 knowledge of God and man, of majesty and misery, of 
 light and shade, of good and evil, been better understood 
 than it was by Gordon. He had caught more than a 
 glimpse of the real truth that lies beneath the modern 
 craze of evolution, as often in the desert is found, deep 
 beneath some nauseous or poisonous gourd which grows 
 on the sand, a root leading to where, far down under the 
 arid surface, lies a hidden spring of pure, clear water. 
 The thoughts which came to Gordon in Palestine, written 
 though they are in disconnected form and without any 
 subsequent attempt to revise or classify them, are most 
 unmistakable evidences that the true evolution, the 
 evolution of good through faith, was fully understood by 
 him. He sees that this enormous process, carried on from 
 the first fall to this day, has had human faith as the 
 central point of its system. A repetition, he calls it, of 
 four great facts ever recurring — a state of darkness, a 
 light breaking through the darkness, a division of light 
 from darkness, a culmination or gathering up of light, 
 and a casting back into chaos of the darkness — and the 
 repetition is always made on some higher level of good, 
 some broader horizon from which the light is to break 
 upon the human soul. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, 
 Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zachariah — through all the long pro- 
 cession of leaders, shepherds, rulers, kings, and prophets 
 the central point of the vast revelation is Faith. Dim at 
 first, much mixed up with human longing, and sometimes 
 with human weakness, but still kept clear and visible 
 even in these, is this central fact; until at last the old 
 
VII . THOUGHTS IN PALESTINE 191 
 
 dispensation passes, and to the lesson of Faith is added 
 the equal lesson of Love. And from these twin fountains 
 of light, Faith and Love, which have their united source 
 springing out of the Eock of Calvary, flows forth the 
 stream which is at last to wash away the darkness of the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 KHARTOUM 
 
 Four years had passed away since that evening in 
 November 1879 when Gordon looked his last upon the 
 great plains of the Soudan, as they lay like a mighty 
 map unrolled beneath his standpoint at Char-Amba in 
 the Abyssinian mountains. All the long -gathering 
 forces whose approach he had so often watched in the 
 preceding years had since broken upon Egypt. The 
 expression of the national wishes had been sternly sup- 
 pressed ; the bombardment of Alexandria by the English 
 fleet had been followed by the invasion of Egypt by the 
 British army, the attack on the lines of Tel-el-Kebir, 
 and the break up of the Egyptian forces. In two months 
 from the date of the first shot at Alexandria all resist- 
 ance was at an end in the Delta. But the Soudan, that 
 vast region of unrest, had still to be reckoned with. A 
 rebellion, which began at the Island of Abba in 1881, 
 had gradually spread over seven-eighths of the immense 
 region. A new spirit seemed to have entered these 
 hitherto despised tribes. Two things had in truth come 
 to them — a leader to give unity to their efforts, and a 
 knowledge that they were in every way better men and 
 braver soldiers than the race which had so long ill-treated 
 
CHAP.viii THE PROGRESS OF THE ARAB REVOLT 193 
 
 them. The leader who in this interval had arisen to 
 give point and purpose to the hitherto chaotic discontent 
 of the Mohammedan Soudan was no ordinary man. 
 Born of lowly parents in Dongola, Mahomet Achmet, 
 the Nubian carpenter's son, had gradually succeeded in 
 uniting the long separated nations of the Middle Nile 
 into one powerful confederation, whose objects were the 
 expulsion of the Turk and the cleansing of the creed of 
 Islam from the corruptions of Ottojaan ascendency. 
 To his friends he was a genius, a guide, a Mahdi ; to his 
 enemies an impostor, a villain, a fanatic ; ta history he 
 will be a man who proved his possession of great genius 
 by the creation of empire out of nothing, and by the 
 triumph of his revolt of Islam over the highly disci- 
 plined efforts of the most powerful of European nations. 
 But the Soudan was a region lying so remote from 
 the world of what is called practical politics that it 
 might be safely left to stew in its own juice. So at 
 least thought many persons, whose knowledge of the 
 outside world and of the forces that move it would not 
 be less accurate if they were a little more secure on their 
 several seats of office. Those who ride solely by balance 
 instead of by grip of leg have little inclination for study- 
 ing the features of the country or the habits of the 
 people through which their horses are carrying them. 
 " How dare you speak suddenly to a man on horseback, 
 sir!" once remarked a general to a young staff- officer 
 who had cantered gaily up with outstretched hand, 
 offering a sandwich-case to the distinguished but uncom- 
 fortable equestrian, whose balance had almost deserted 
 him under the ordeal of sudden remark. So the Soudan 
 stewed steadily on during the years 1882-83 until, in 
 o 
 
194 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the end of the latter year, there came a thunder-clap 
 which all at once brought it painfully close at hand to 
 us. The Egyptian army with which Arabi Pacha had 
 endeavoured to fight us in 1882 had been collected in 
 driblets after the defeat at Tel-el-Kebir, marched in irons 
 to the great depot of the Barrage, and then sent to the 
 Soudan. About half-a-dozen Englishmen, mostly retired 
 officers, managed to get appointed to this force. In Sep- 
 tember 1883 a march from Khartoum towards Kordof an 
 had begun. Two months later the entire force, numbering 
 ten thousand men, twenty guns, five hundred horses, five 
 thousand camels, was annihilated by the wild clansmen 
 of Kordofan whom Mahomet Achmet, the Mahdi, had 
 gathered round his standard. So complete was the 
 slaughter that for many weeks no detail of the disaster 
 was known. It lay, and still lies, shrouded in the 
 silence of a total extinction. Although there were only 
 ten Englishmen in ten thousand Egyptians, the defeat at 
 Kazghil was a severe blow to o\xt prestige ; and it was easy 
 to see that even in Egypt, so hateful had our presence 
 become to the people of the Delta, the news of the 
 loss of their army in the Soudan was a subject of ill- 
 concealed satisfaction since it embraced the foreigner 
 in its catastrophe. The English Government were now 
 alarmed. One of two things must happen — either the 
 Soudan must be fought for with English troops and paid 
 for with English gold, or it must be abandoned. The 
 latter course was resolved upon, and was rightly resolved 
 upon, but the time was unsuited for the evacuation. 
 Had it been done while the army of Hicks Pacha had 
 existed in the flesh to act as a covering force for the 
 withdrawal of the garrisons from the Equator, Sennaar, 
 
VIII CHAOS IN CAIRO 195 
 
 and Khartoum, all would have been well ; but evacua- 
 tion in the face of a triumphant Mahdi and his hosts 
 flushed with victory, armed and equipped with the 
 plunder of numerous vanquished armies, and confident 
 that they were now the chosen soldiers of God, was an 
 absolutely impossible operation. 
 
 It was at this moment of defeat and proposed evacua- 
 tion that the English Government determined to call to 
 its aid the one man who, in the wide Empire of England, 
 had this Soudan at the ends of his fingers. Too late, 
 indeed, they called him in ; but if history would be just 
 it roust acquit the actual Ministers of the Crown of the 
 negligence or the design of Gordon's exclusion. The 
 men who had during many years kept at arm's length 
 from the councils of the Empire the one man whose 
 counsel might have enabled the men at the helm to 
 steer the ship of State safely through the quicksands of 
 Egyptian politics, were not the governors themselves. 
 It must manifestly be the interest of the highest govern- 
 ing officials that the best and clearest knowledge should 
 be given to them by their servants. A highly-centralised 
 system of government administering the aff'airs of an 
 immense scattered Empire can only be saved from inevit- 
 able ruin by the possession of the very best advice. All 
 the adjuncts of steam and electricity only make the 
 disaster of excessive centralisation more certain if the 
 information sent from the circumference to the centre 
 is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth. 
 
 It is not necessary that the world should know now 
 who are responsible for the fact, the most extraordinary in 
 all the career of Gordon, namely that when, at the eleventh 
 
196 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 hour of disaster in Egypt, he was sent for to endeavour 
 to set right the mass of ruin wrought by the mischievous 
 advice of the men he had so long opposed, he was almost 
 an unknown man to the English people. When the 
 world awakes to the knowledge of a great soul living in 
 its midst it is often slow to admit that it has ever gone 
 to sleep, but of the fact of ignorance or carelessness 
 regarding its knowledge of Charles George Gordon there 
 can be no doubt. " At the moment of his departure for 
 Khartoum," says his brother, "he was to the great mass 
 of his countrymen a person who was now heard of for 
 the first time." That this statement is not one prompted 
 by a brother's too tightly -draAvn criticism upon the 
 neglect shown by the English official world to his 
 illustrious relative will be clear enough from the follow- 
 ing anecdote, the truth of which the writer of these 
 pages can vouch for. When Gordon's departure on his 
 last dangerous mission to the Soudan had made him at 
 once the centre of comment in the Press, a gentleman in 
 Pembrokeshire remarked to a field-officer of the garrison 
 at Pembroke Dock, "I see the Government have just 
 sent a Chinaman to the Soudan. What can they mean 
 by sending a native of that country to such a place?" 
 Impossible though this may seem, it was said in all 
 gravity of mind and honest Conservative distrust of 
 body of anything a Liberal Government could attempt ; 
 and the man who in 1884 believed that "Chinese" 
 Gordon was a native of China, wearing a pigtail and the 
 rest of it, was not a mere cipher in his native place, 
 some rustic politician who was wont to get his inspira- 
 tion of foreign affairs over local pipe and ale, but he 
 was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of his county, 
 
VIII GORDON'S PLANS FOR THE CONGO 197 
 
 and in every way a worthy pillar of the State on the 
 lines dear to the English mind. 
 
 It was on November 20th, 1883, that the news of 
 the Mahdi's victory over the army commanded by Al- 
 ed-Deen Pacha and General Hicks reached Cairo and 
 London. For several weeks succeeding the arrival of 
 the news there was panic in Cairo and confusion in the 
 councils in London. It could not well have been other- 
 wise. Never had the elements of chaos been better dis- 
 tributed, never had the possibility of vigorous and cool- 
 headed action been more safely guarded against than 
 they were at this moment in the division and arrange- 
 ment of the governing power in Egypt. There were 
 three armies in Cairo, three generals, three staffs, and 
 naturally three ambitions. There were also two govern- 
 ing powers, each antagonistic to the other ; one backed 
 by the material authority of money and force, the other 
 having behind it the vast influence of religion, nationality, 
 and knowledge. Beyond and above all these rival 
 powers and authorities there was the Government in 
 London, with whom the final decision practically rested 
 upon all Soudan and Egyptian questions. Blue Books 
 are for many reasons not the most enlightening form of 
 historical study : broadly looked at, they may be said 
 to present to the reader the unmarked cards of the 
 diplomatic pack; but the Blue Book, 1884, Egypt, is 
 very interesting and Very painful reading. We see in 
 it a desire on the part of the English Government to 
 send Gordon at once to the Soudan, when the news of 
 Hicks Pacha's destruction had been received. We see 
 this desire repeatedly put forward from home during the 
 ensuing seven weeks, and as repeatedly declined by our 
 
198 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Minister in Cairo. Why? Who shall answer? If 
 Gordon did not know at the time the reason of his 
 services being so frequently declined when they could 
 have been given with effect, before disaster multij)lying 
 upon disaster had rendered his task in the Soudan the 
 most forlorn hope ever set before an officer, he knows it 
 all now, and in due time we shall all know about it, too. 
 Vague and indistinct as was the knowledge of the Soudan 
 possessed by the English Executive, they certainly under- 
 stood one solid course of action. It was clear that the 
 case was a serious one ; that the high doctors of profes- 
 sional diplomacy had sadly mistaken its symptoms, and 
 that the sooner a real master was called in the better it 
 would be. Thus they continued to urge upon their 
 representative in Cairo the necessity of Gordon's going 
 to the Soudan, and as events in that region only too plainly 
 indicated a still higher rising of the tide of revolt, and 
 the annihilation of a force near Suakim having added 
 its disaster to the long sequence of defeat, the opposition 
 to his mission was at length overcome, and on January 
 18th, 1884, two months all but two days after the 
 news of Kazghil had been received, he is told that the 
 Government would be glad if he would proceed to the 
 Soudan to superintend the evacuation of the Egyptian 
 garrisons, the civil employees, and all the waifs and strays 
 of Egyptian rule that wished to come away. But we 
 must go back for a moment in our record. In mid 
 December Gordon had left the Holy Land intent upon 
 getting to Brussels and entering at once into the service 
 of the King of the Belgians on the Congo. On New 
 Year's Day 1884 he reached Brussels, and there became 
 aware that his project of service would not be sanctioned 
 
VIII SUMMONED B Y ENGLISH GO VERNMENT 199 
 
 bj the English Government. He resolved to retire 
 from Her Majesty's service, since he could neither find 
 employment in tne army nor serve outside the service. 
 Accordingly, on January 7th, he wrote his letter of re- 
 signation, in which he " humbly petitions to be allowed 
 to retire from Her Majesty's service without any claim 
 whatever for pension from Her Majesty's Government," 
 adding that "His Majesty King Leopold H. has most 
 kindly assured me that His Majesty will compensate 
 an J pecuniary loss I may incur in leaving Her Majesty's 
 service." 
 
 Believing himself now to be free from further restraint 
 upon his actions, he made all arrangements to proceed 
 to the Congo, and by the middle of January everything 
 had been settled. The many and indignant protests 
 against his retirement had had their effect, and his letter 
 of resignation had been answered by the withdrawal of 
 the refusal to permit him to serve on the Congo. He 
 therefore still retained his commission as a general officer 
 with the unemployed pay of that rank. Then he went 
 again to Brussels preparatory to a final start, as he 
 thought, to the Congo ; but all this time the great finger 
 which men call Providence or Destiny had been silently 
 weaving another destination for him. The hour had at 
 last struck. No more was this great soul to be permitted 
 to bury itself in unseen wildernesses. He is to go forth 
 indeed into a remote region, but he will draw after him 
 the eyes of all men; and ere this year 1884, which has 
 dawned in such complication of purpose, shall have 
 closed, there will be seen, as though raised aloft upon a 
 colossal pedestal, the figure of this grand centurion, with 
 all the eflfort of his life, and the honesty of his heart, 
 
200 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 and the faith of his soul, made visible to the four points 
 of the earth, written in letters of flame amid the dark- 
 ness of disaster. 
 
 On January 17th Gordon received at noon, in 
 Brussels, a telegram from Lord Wolseley summoning 
 him at once to London. He understood what it meant : 
 those who had first claim had called him, and he obeyed 
 instantly. At 6 A.M. on the morning of the 18th he 
 was in London, and had prolonged interviews with Lord 
 Wolseley. At 3.30 P.M. on the same day he saw several 
 of the Ministers. This last interview is so important, 
 looked at in the light of what followed, that it had lest 
 be described in his own words : — ^ 
 
 ^ There are contradictory accounts existing of this interview 
 between Gordon and the Ministers on January 18th. I have heard 
 it stated on very high authority that the mission, as contem- 
 plated by the English Ministry, did not extend beyond Suakim, 
 from which place a full report was to be sent by Gordon to the 
 Government, both sides holding themselves perfectly free after that 
 point was reached. From Suakim Gordon was to advise the 
 Government as to their Soudan polic}^ but it by no means followed 
 the Government was to follow the advice. 
 
 I have heard the same high authority declare that Gordon, at 
 starting, had specially stipulated he was not to go by way of Cairo. 
 We know that at Port Said he received the pressing invitation 
 which induced him to change his intention and to visit Cairo, but 
 few persons are aware that the English Government knew nothing of 
 the appointment of their officer as Governor-General of the Soudan, 
 or of the change of his destination from Suakim to the Nile route, 
 until some days after both had been eflected by our Minister in 
 Cairo. When one remembers the enormous issues that were depend- 
 ing upon this mission, and thinks of the blood and treasure after- 
 wards to be poured out for it, one knows not whether to marvel 
 most at the vagueness in which such colossal results could be 
 initiated, or the strength of the nation which survives such vague- 
 ness of direction. 
 
vm THE ONE POSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS 201 
 
 " At noon he, Wolseley, came to me and took me to the 
 Ministers. He went in and talked to the Ministers, and 
 came back and said, * Her Majesty's Government want you to 
 undertake this : Government are determined to evacuate 
 Soudan, for they will not guarantee future gcvernment. Will 
 you go and do it?' I- said, *Yes.' He said, 'Go in.' I 
 went in and saw them. They said, ' Did Wolseley tell you 
 our orders ? ' I said, ' Yes.' I said, ' You will not guarantee 
 future government of Soudan, and you wish me to go up to 
 evacuate now.' They said, * Yes,' and it was over, and I left 
 at 8 P.M. for Calais." 1 
 
 There is no necessity to linger long over the events 
 of the following month, during which Gordon and his 
 companion Stewart with rapid steps were travelling 
 their long road to Khartoum, but there are a few points 
 which deserve consideration before we approach the 
 final scene. The difficulty of the task, the acceptance 
 of which he so lightly sketched above, was only 
 equalled by the vagueness of the terms that described 
 it. Vagueness and difficulty were not, however, the 
 worst obstacles against success. These things he had 
 often enough in his life met and conquered. The true 
 crux of the problem he had set himself to solve lay in 
 the link of the telegraph which still bound him to Cairo 
 and to England. Gordon was a man whose life had been 
 a series of successes which were the result of a strikingly 
 bold initiative working perfectly free of outside influence. 
 Check him in the slightest degree in any of his bold 
 strokes, introduce some new element of calculation or 
 opinion into his work, and it was certain to fail. He 
 started with a carte blanche, but ere he was half-way to 
 Khartoum the telegraph had begun to scrawl its dots 
 
 ' Letters to Rev. J. Barries: London, 1886. 
 
202 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON CHAP. 
 
 and dashes upon the surface of his yet open pro- 
 gramme. 
 
 The real work which the governing powers of England 
 and Egypt had -to do was a very easy one. They had 
 to see that the road behind their envoy was kept open 
 after he had passed it, and to record a simple, unvarying 
 "Yes" to all his proposals, so long as these proposals 
 did not involve offensive hostilities. For the man was 
 embarked upon a desperate venture, a venture which no 
 rules of so-called sense, no previous parallel, no finely- 
 calculated series, could hope to bring to a successful 
 issue. There are similar desperate cases known in the 
 lives of individual patients whose illness has reached a 
 point where science halts, and the physician, hopelessly 
 realising that the cure has long passed the realm of 
 medicine, says, " This man may have anything he wishes 
 for." So was it now with the evacuation of the garrisons 
 and its added task of establishing some form of govern- 
 ment in the Soudan. 
 
 Only on the rule of absolute acquiescence in every 
 proposition made by Gordon within the limits of peace 
 was there the remotest possibility of success. 
 
 The original intention had been to proceed direct 
 from England to Suakim, and going thence to Khartoum, 
 altogether avoiding Cairo. Whether it would have been 
 possible for him to have penetrated from any port in the 
 Eed Sea to the Valley of the Nile above Abu Hamed 
 cannot be now known, but there can be little doubt that 
 it would have been better had he not been deflected 
 from his first purpose, and permitted to make his way as 
 best he pleased without visiting Cairo. Granted, how- 
 ever, that the route from Suakim to Berber was closed 
 
Vin THE VISIT TO CAIRO 203 
 
 by the Arab revolt, and that it was necessary for Gordon 
 to proceed to Khartoum by the Valley of the Nile and 
 the Korosko desert, what was then the right course for 
 the English and Egyptian Governments to pursue*? 
 Simjply to keep open this route across the desert from 
 Korosko to Abu Harried at all and every cost. That 
 was the one thing to do, and that was the one thing 
 that was not done. Nothing was easier. We held the 
 Nile to Dongola; Korosko was but a day's steaming above 
 the first cataract ; from thence to Abu Hamed the track 
 lay across a desert, which even the Arab cannot per- 
 manently live in ; put a post of troops at Abu Hamed ; 
 hold the intervening single well of Mourat with a small 
 party of loyal Bedouins, and your line of communication 
 is perfect. Assemble one thousand camels at Korosko to 
 follow Gordon with troops and supplies to Abu Hamed ; 
 reinforce Berber with another battalion of infantry ; hold 
 Abu Hamed with two hundred men, and your work will 
 be done. He will then do the rest. No operation was 
 more feasible than this one, none would have cost so little, 
 none could possibly have been so important. As soon as 
 Gordon reached Khartoum he began to send away the 
 most helpless portion of his garrison, and in the seven or 
 eight weeks during which communication remained open, 
 not less than two thousand five hundred widows, children, 
 and employees reached Korosko from Khartoum, coming 
 across the Nubian desert from Abu Hamed, arriving, ac- 
 cording to the statement of the officer receiving them at 
 Korosko, "in an almost perfect state of comfort."^ If then 
 some two thousand five hundred helpless refugees could 
 come down in an almost perfect state of comfort, how 
 ^ Speech of Colonel Duncan, M.P. 
 
204 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 easily might half that number of soldiers have been sent to 
 Abu Hamed and Berber by the return camels which had 
 conveyed the refugees from these places. As a military 
 operation this despatch of a few hundred men to Abu 
 Hamed was at this time as simple as to send them from 
 Malta to Alexandria. The Ababdeh Arabs were then 
 our firm friends ; Hussien Pacha Khalifa, the Egyptian 
 officer in command of Berber, was the sheikh of that 
 tribe ; his men would have gone with alacrity upon any 
 service which was in aid of their chief. Abu Hamed 
 was the doorway of the Soudan, the gate of Berber and 
 Khartoum, the one golden key whose possession locked 
 or unlocked the vast prison of that hopeless land. It is 
 really terrible to think that this one cheap, easy, feasible, 
 and absolutely essential precaution should not have been 
 taken, and the rival authorities in Cairo should, during 
 those precious months of grace that were still left to us, 
 have been wildly building earth -works at Assouan, 
 sending soldiers to Luxor and Esneh, squandering tens 
 of thousands of pounds in subsidising Bedouins in the 
 deserts close to Lower Egypt, who are to this day as 
 separated from the Soudan as if they had dwelt in 
 Syria, and that no thought of the real thing to be done 
 appears ever to have entered the head of Minister or 
 General, Pacha, Mudir, or Miralai. In the month of 
 February a most costly English expedition was indeed 
 sent to Suakim, but that was in every sen^e a mistaken 
 line of operations. The expedition roused the fury of 
 the Soudanese to fever-pitch. The connection between 
 Gordon's presence in Khartoum and a projected conquest 
 of the country by the English seemed at once apparent 
 It was the one thinoj that was wanted to band tosrether 
 
VIII HIS THOUGHTS IN THE DESERT 205 
 
 the many tribes and races of the Soudan in the bond of 
 a common and intense fanaticism. There cannot now 
 be the shadow of a doubt that the sending of a British 
 force to Suakim in the end of February 1884, and the 
 neglect of the simple precaution to keep open the 
 Korosko route by placing a small Egyptian garrison at 
 Abu Hamed and by reinforcing Berber with Egyptian 
 troops, cost us millions of money, lost us many valuable 
 lives, and, worse than spent millions or lost lives, cost 
 us the life of Gordon. 
 
 We have seen that Gordon, abandoning under pres- 
 sure his first intention of trying the Ked Sea route, 
 had gone to Cairo, where he remained two days ; then 
 continuing his journey up the Nile he reached Korosko, 
 one hundred miles above Assouan, on the evening of Feb- 
 ruary 1st. At Cairo he had received a firman from the 
 Khedive appointing him once more Governor-General of 
 the Soudan, reiterating the general objects of evacuation, 
 and adding a "trust" that on the completion of the 
 retirement of the garrisons, organised government would 
 be established in the provinces of the Soudan. ^ 
 
 At Korosko, on the morning of February 2d, Gordon 
 mounted his camel and turned off into the great 
 
 ^ Extract from letter to Lord Wolseley. 
 
 "Cairo, 26.1.84. 
 " I leave to-night viA Korosko as Governor-General, with the same 
 instructions {i.e. to evacuate the Soudan) as you told me, and 
 H.M.'s Ministers also did. I go with every confidence and trust 
 in God. . . . Several ask me, ' Do you advise abandonment of 
 Soudan?* I answer, *How will you answer these two questions! 
 1st. Will H.M.'s Government guarantee future government of 
 Soudan? 2d. Will H.M.'s Government sanction funds from Cairo 
 to go to Soudan to the detriment of the creditors ? ' None can 
 answer these questions in affirmative." 
 
2o6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, 
 
 Nubian desert. Korosko is a gloomy spot. Dark 
 rugged hills, burnt by the sun as though they were blocks 
 of half-cooled lava, fence in a narrow open space on the 
 edge of the Nile. Through these arid heights a path 
 leads off to the south. It is the track to Abu Hamed. 
 Beyond these gaunt hills the desert opens out into 
 extended expanses of sand, varied by lonely ridges, 
 rugged out -crops of volcanic rock, and deep wadys 
 (valleys), but everywhere a dry and withered world, 
 which even among the desert Arabs bears the name of the 
 " Bahr-Bela-Moya " (Waterless Sea). For two hundred 
 and fifty miles this great expanse of desolation lies within 
 the loop or bend which the Nile makes from the point 
 near Abu Hamed, where it turns almost back upon its 
 original course, to where, flowing north again, it passes 
 Korosko after a total distance of not less than seven 
 hundred miles from Abu Hamed. 
 
 We have repeatedly seen how, in former years, Gordon 
 had dashed off upon some distant enterprise with his plan 
 of campaign still all unsettled, trusting to his old coun- 
 sellor, "the cushioned footfall of the camel," to find him 
 a solution of his problem ere he reached the scene of 
 action. So it was this time in the great enterprise he 
 was now bound for. Of such importance was his presence 
 at the distant scene of trouble that he had left London 
 without any of the absolute necessaries of travel. At 
 Cairo, too, he had neglected to provide himself with 
 these essential requisites of health and comfort. Filled 
 with the one all-absorbing thought of reaching the scene 
 of danger as quickly as possible, he allowed everything 
 to stand aside before that great end Now, at Korosko, 
 the moment for thought had arrived. Once embarked 
 
VIII ARRIVAL AT ABU HA MED AND BERBER 207 
 
 upon the sand waves of the Waterless Sea, he would 
 revolve in his mind the vast problem in his front. 
 
 Looking at these problems now, the feeling is one of 
 astonishment that the mission could ever have appeared 
 anything save what it was — a hopeless task, beyond 
 the power of mortal man to compass. Difficult enough 
 would it have been to withdraw, in a time of perfect 
 peace, the garrisons with their enormous entourage of 
 helpless people from these remote stations, some of them 
 as far removed from Khartoum as Khartoum was itself 
 distant from Cairo, but utterly impossible while the 
 most powerful factor in the Soudan world, the Mahdi, 
 was hostile to the withdrawing power. During the six 
 days that Gordon was tearing across the Nubian desert 
 all the difficulties before him had time to take shape 
 and substance, but his mind was not of the type to 
 admit the impossible in any form, and quick as diffi- 
 culties arose he had some counter-project ready to over- 
 come them. Was it impossible to remove the garrisons 
 of the Equatorial regions by this Korosko route % Then 
 he would leave them for the last, and having sent down 
 the Khartoum and Berber people across the Waterless 
 Sea, he would take his steamers to the Upper Eiver, 
 and proclaim the provinces of the Bahr Gazelle and the 
 Equator as portions of the Congo State under the King 
 of the Belgians. Was the Mahdi likely to move on the 
 Nile while the evacuation was going on % That danger 
 would be anticipated by opening direct negotiations 
 with Mahomet Achmet, and perhaps by a personal 
 visit to him in Kordofan. Was there an absolute im- 
 possibility of establishing any form of settled govern- 
 ment to succeed the Egyptian rule about to be abolished \ 
 
2o8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Then he would ask the Government of Cairo to send 
 Zebehr Eahama at once to Khartoum, and would appoint 
 that astute sheikh as Sultan of the New Soudan. Finally, 
 supposing everything to go wrong, the means of evacua- 
 tion to fail, and the spread of the Arab revolt to involve 
 the entire country in its flames, he had still the one art 
 of which he was so thorough a master. "If your 
 Government wants war," had said Napoleon to the 
 English Ambassador towards the close of the short peace 
 of Amiens, *' they can have it ; we are not altogether 
 ignorant of war." To governing powers in Cairo and 
 London the quickly-shifting points from which these 
 different and apparently differing possibilities had to be 
 regarded, and the almost opposite courses of action by 
 which they must be met, could not help wearing the 
 aspect of inconsistency. This was the misfortune which 
 we have already alluded to by saying the real crux of 
 Gordon's trouble lay in the telegraph behind him, unless 
 the rule had been made absolute that the wire was to be 
 used solely to receive orders from Khartoum, and to give 
 back an unquestioning " Yes " to every proposal that did 
 not involve war. The electric wire is a marvellous 
 addition to man's power when it is in powerful hands, 
 but it is a terrible engine of national destruction when 
 it induces a Minister, seated in an office-chair, to im- 
 agine that he sees the full depth of the horizon which 
 the man of action is beholding at the far end of the 
 telegraph. 
 
 On the sixth evening of his travel GordoU reached 
 Abu Hamed. The mists appeared to have lightened. 
 "All seems hopeful," he writes on the day following his 
 arrival. He thinks that things are settling down, and 
 
VIII REACHES KHARTOUM 209 
 
 "that in a month the country will be quiet and the 
 roads open." Four days later the little caravan reaches 
 Berber. By this time he has decided in his mind 
 the difficult question whether he will publish or keep 
 secret the Firman of evacuation. All the weight of 
 human wisdom counsels secrecy ; but on the other hand 
 has he not accepted this mission in . order to remove 
 the garrisons 1 Is not that the entire reason of his 
 presence % and how is he to begin his work without the 
 first boat-load of retiring officials giving the lie to any 
 other declaration % No, he has come to remove the 
 Egyptian garrisons, to cut the link which has bound the 
 Soudan to Egypt, and to establish some form of settled 
 government in place of the one that is to be removed. 
 How are these things to be done in the face of any 
 denial of their intention? He must be false to every 
 word he has spoken to the English Government, and to 
 every word they have spoken to him, if he does not 
 begin at once the work of evacuation. It would seem 
 that he had long wrestled in his mind upon this question, 
 and the outcome of the conflict was to stand fast by the 
 truth. At Berber he assembles the notables and openly 
 proclaims the object of his mission. The Soudan is 
 henceforth to be severed from Egypt, local governments 
 are to be established, and militias raised. Then he 
 pursues his route to Khartoum. 
 
 But all this time there was one power, and that by 
 far the most important one, that nobody appears to 
 have reckoned with. It was the Mahdi. He had been 
 shut out from calculations alike by Gordon and by the 
 Governments, as sometimes men will exclude from their 
 forecast of events the one disagreeable element which can 
 p 
 
2IO LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 upset all their calculations. And yet the Mahdi had 
 already proved himself a very potent factor in this business. 
 That the governing bodies in Cairo and London 
 should be slow to give importance to any movement 
 which had religious fervour as its mainspring is not to 
 be wondered at, but that Gordon should have so long 
 failed to grasp the true significance of the spirit which 
 the Mahdi had evoked among the Mohammedan races of 
 the Soudan is indeed a strange fact. " I do not believe 
 in advance of Mahdi, who is nephew to my old guide in 
 Darfour, who was a very good fellow," he writes from 
 Korosko. Again, he says "that he does not think it 
 possible the Mahdi can advance from Kordofan." A 
 month earlier he had taken a different and a juster view 
 of the situation. " I see," he said to a newspaper reporter 
 in London, "it is proposed to fortify Wadi Haifa and 
 prepare there to resist the Mahdi's attack. You might 
 as well fortify against a fever. Contagion of that kind 
 cannot be kept out by fortifications and garrisons." 
 This view, held in January, appears to have changed 
 as Gordon drew nearer the scene of his labours. It was 
 the Soudan of his own experience of five years ago that 
 he was now looking at — the Soudan of a thousand tribes 
 and a thousand separate grievances — but since that time 
 a new spirit had come into the land ; all the old fervour 
 of Islam had awakened, and in the white heat of religious 
 fanaticism the dividing lines between tribe and nation 
 had been melted down into one vast revolt. On Feb- 
 ruary 18th Gordon reached Khartoum and took up 
 his quarters in the palace which had so often in past 
 years been his lonely home, and which was destined a 
 few months later to become his tomb. " He had come 
 
VIII THE TRUE CAUSE OF ALL THE TROUBLE 211 
 
 again to hold the balance level," he told the people. 
 "There were to be no more Bashi-Bazouks. He had 
 not brought troops, but had come alone. He would not 
 fight with any weapons but justice." Then the chains 
 are struck off the captives' limbs in the crowded prisons ; 
 the records of unremitted taxes are burned in the palace 
 square; and the stocks and bastinado instruments are 
 broken up. Ail seemed for the moment hopeful, but 
 the real importance of the outlook on this first day in 
 Khartoum lies in the fact that ere the day had closed he 
 asks that Zebehr Rahama may be sent up at once to the 
 Soudan. The true strength of the Mahdi is again visible 
 to him. 
 
 And now from February 18th to April 8th, 1884, 
 there went on all that interchange of thought be- 
 tween Khartoum and Cairo, all those varied sugges- 
 tions, all that answering back of vital proposals by 
 questions that seem framed as though their object could 
 only be to gain time ; all that long diplomatic dialogue 
 which, when we read it now in the light of the silence 
 that ensued and of the tragedy which followed the 
 silence, seems like the throwing of straws to a drowning 
 man. Sifted from the mass of diplomatic verbiage in 
 which they lie, the proposals made by Gordon during 
 these days of grace amount to this : (1) Send me Zebehr 
 Rahama at once. Without him I have no counterpoise to 
 set against the all-powerful influence of the Mahdi. (2) 
 I can see no way of effecting the evacuation of even the 
 Upper Nile garrisons by the line of Berber and Korosko. 
 I therefore propose to send the Khartoum and Berber 
 garrisons north, under Colonel Stewart, and to take the 
 steamers and stores south, up the Nile to the Bahr 
 
212 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Gazelle province, which the King of the Belgians will 
 incorporate into the Congo State. (3) Immediate steps 
 must be taken to reopen the route from Suakim to 
 Berber, and Turkish troops must be sent to the Soudan. 
 Zebehr, evacuation south and north, Turkish troops — 
 these were the three main proposals by which the objects 
 of his mission might yet be achieved. Then the cloud of 
 silence came down, and the last act of Gordon's life began. 
 
 But although the real cordon of silence did not close 
 ^ around Khartoum until the beginning of April, Berber, 
 the key to the whole Soudan and to all chance of reaching 
 the Soudan, was invested by the Mahdi's troops in the 
 end of March, and fell to them in April. Fatal and hope- 
 destroying error, this all-important spot was left with a 
 wretched garrison of six hundred men, while Abu Hamed, 
 the next essential link in the route to Egypt, held no 
 garrison at all. Who was responsible for this terrible 
 mistake % Whether wisdom is really to be found among 
 many counsellors may well be an open question in these 
 our times, but of one thing there can be little doubt, that 
 among many counsellors responsibility is soon lost, and 
 in the maze of Governments, Ministers, and Generals that 
 existed in Cairo in 1883-84 — for it is Cairo that must 
 bear the full responsibility of the neglect of a most 
 obvious precaution — it is hopeless to follow the trail of 
 error to its real source. 
 
 So far as the matter lay between the principals at 
 each end, Gordon in the Soudan and the English Govern- 
 ment at home, it is easy enough to define the exact 
 measure of serviceship on one side and of support on 
 the other. He was charged to carry out (1) the 
 peaceful evacuation of the garrisons; (2) the peaceful 
 
VIII ERRORS OF THE GOVERNMENT 213 
 
 establishment of some form of government. There was 
 to be no fighting ; the Soudan was to be severed from 
 Egypt, and upon the desirability of that severance and 
 the peaceful nature of the mission both Gordon and the 
 Government were in close accord. Clearly, then, it was 
 the duty of the Government to have gone to every 
 length demanded by their servant which did not involve 
 them in actual war. And now comes in the fatal result 
 of the visit to Cairo. Not only were nine-tenths of the 
 official world of Cairo — English and Egyptian, civil and 
 military — opposed to a peaceful evacuation of the 
 Soudan, but there was a large majority of what may be 
 called the permanent Government of England also op- 
 posed to it, and it is now but too clear an historical fact 
 that these powerful parties at home and in Egypt did not 
 hesitate to use the name and the mission of Gordon as 
 instruments to their own ends, these ends being the 
 very opposite of what the English Government wished. 
 The meaning of the term " permanent " Government in • 
 England may appear strange; but there is a Govern- 
 ment of England, and a very powerful one too, which is 
 always in office — a Government that has no more 
 relation to the will of the majority of the people of 
 England than it has to the wishes of the people of Van 
 Diemen's land. In every public office, in the army and 
 navy, in the countless departments of the State, this 
 permanent Conservative Government is entrenched, and 
 if any person cares to study why a Liberal Executive 
 seems to have a confirmed habit of ill-fortune almost 
 always attached to its policy, when that policy lies out- 
 side its direct relation with the people of England, 
 he will find the real reason of such mishaps in the 
 
214 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 antagonism ever existing between the passing Liberal 
 Executive Administration and the permanent Official 
 Conservative Government that lies beneath it. If the 
 Administration of the United States knows no such habit 
 of ill-fortune it is because the wisdom of its founders 
 took measures to ensure that the American Executive 
 and its servants should be always working in the har- 
 mony of a common purpose. 
 
 The real error committed by the English Govern- 
 ment was in having embarked in this tremendous 
 undertaking without a due calculation of the cost. 
 Even a moderate amount of consideration would have 
 shown them that an evacuation of the garrisons was 
 impossible without one of two things taking place. 
 Either there must be war with the Mahdi, or there must 
 be arrangement with the Mahdi. Now, if there was to 
 be no war there should instantly have been negotiation. 
 Gordon's first intention was that upon reaching Khar- 
 toum he would himself proceed to Kordofan for the 
 purpose of coming to terms directly with Mahomet 
 Achmet. This intention has since been contradicted, 
 but the evidence of it is so strong, and the action 
 would have been so completely in harmony with his 
 previous proceeding in Darfour and Abyssinia, that 
 there can be little doubt he intended at one time to 
 visit the Mahdi. He received an order not to do so. 
 He asked for Zebehr : Zebehr was refused. He pro- 
 posed to evacuate the garrisons south as well as north : 
 this was declined. Each of these proposals lay within 
 the realm of peace, and as such, their refusal was mani- 
 festly wrong. And let us bear in mind that these three 
 propositions and these three negatives were the first 
 
VIII THE ARABS SURROUND KHARTOUM 215 
 
 steps in the tragedy. After them the sequence of 
 trouble came fast enough. On the one hand the 
 Government would not move to the extreme limit 
 demanded by peace ; on the other they were induced by 
 the permanent Government beneath them and by the 
 representatives of that party in Cairo and in England, 
 who were ever ready "to cry havoc and let slip the 
 dogs of war," to embark upon a part -policy of force 
 and to send an expedition to attempt the relief of the 
 garrisons of Sinkat and Tokar. They refused, in fact, 
 to allow their servant to proceed upon the lines of peace 
 which seemed to him the best to follow, and they 
 followed the path of force just far enough to exasperate 
 the people of the Soudan by a useless slaughter of a 
 splendid Arab tribe, whose blood, shed without honour 
 or result to us, called aloud to every Arab of the desert 
 for vengeance against us. From the moment the battle 
 of Tamai was fought in March 1884 all hope of a peace- 
 ful solution of Gordon's mission was gone. Then the 
 matter became a struggle between the permanent under 
 Government and the temporary upper Government. 
 Too late the latter realised their errors in refusing the first 
 proposals of their servant, and in exasperating the Arabs 
 by the Suakim slaughters. The door of peace had been 
 slammed at Tamai, and the Arab was as certain to take 
 his revenge at Khartoum as the sun of the Soudan was 
 to shine. But having begun the work of exasperation at 
 Suakim there was clearly no other policy than to con- 
 tinue it. The gage had now been thrown down, the harm 
 was done, and although the near approaching summer 
 season might well have made men hesitate ere they sent 
 English soldiers to certain death under the most terrible 
 
2i6 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 sun in the world, still there should have been the fullest 
 and most timely preparation made so as to be ready to 
 launch the relieving force upon its road at the earliest 
 moment it was possible for European life to stand the 
 slowly lessening heats of the Nubian autumn. 
 
 There is nothing clearer in the painful records of 
 these early months of 1884 than the connection existing 
 between the English operations at Suakim and the 
 Arab investment of Khartoum. 
 
 In the middle of February the road from Abu Hamed 
 to Berber and on to Khartoum was open and unmolested. 
 A week later English troops in large numbers are 
 landed at Suakim. On February 29th the action of 
 El-Teb is fought, and the news spreads like wildfire 
 that the English have begun the conquest of the 
 Soudan by a great slaughter of Arabs. A few days 
 later comes the still more sanguinary encounter at 
 Tamai. There can no longer be the shadow of a doubt 
 as to the object of this lavish expenditure of blood and 
 treasure. The departure of the hated Turk is only to be 
 the signal for the arrival of the detested Infidel. All 
 the hesitation which had before existed in the minds 
 of the Arab tribes around Khartoum instantly dis- 
 appears. On March 8th Gordon hears that the powerful 
 Shukrieah, hitherto friendly, have declared against him. 
 On the same day news is received that the Sheikh el- 
 Obeid intends to cut the Berber-Khartoum Eoad. From 
 Shendy comes intelligence that hostile Arabs are ap- 
 proaching that place ; all these movements and rumours 
 of movements are on the north and east of Khartoum, 
 the sides nearest to Suakim. 
 
 On March 10th the situation has become still more 
 
VIII DEPARTURE OF THE ''ABBAS'' 217 
 
 threatening. The village of El-Fon, on the Blue Nile, 
 is reported to be "full of rebel Arabs with banners." 
 The Sheikh el-Mugdi, a leader supposed to be faithful to 
 the Government, reports most of the sheikhs in and 
 around Khartoum to be traitors. Many of the Govern- 
 ment clerks in the city are also false. Berber and 
 Khartoum will be simultaneously attacked, he thinks. 
 
 At noon on this day the telegraph wire is severed 
 between Shendy and Berber, and on the following 
 morning, March 11th, a large force of Arabs appears 
 on the right bank of the Blue Nile within sight 
 of Khartoum. The Suakim expedition was described 
 at the time as being due to " Parliament having forced 
 the running" of the Government. Alas, that momentous 
 issues of life, death, and disaster should be made the 
 weapons with which the ignoble strife of party is 
 carried on. This forcing of the hand of Government 
 also forced the Arab hand. Before it the chances of 
 evacuation had certainly not diminished during the first 
 fortnight of the experiment, nay, they had steadily 
 improved, but henceforth there was no hope. 
 
 The operations around Suakim lasted exactly three 
 weeks. When they began, Khartoum was open on every 
 side ; when they ended, the siege had begun. 
 
 For nearly the first six months following the cutting 
 off* of communication with Khartoum we know little of 
 what took place in the beleaguered city. During March, 
 April, and May ceaseless labour in earth-works, mines, 
 wire-entanglements, expeditions for food, went on ; there 
 was a good deal of desultory firing and fighting. In 
 the middle of March, four days after the Arabs first sat 
 down before Khartoum, a battle occurred in which a 
 
2i8 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 portion of the garrison was signally defeated. The two 
 Pachas in command, accused by their soldiers of treachery, 
 were tried by court-martial and put to death. The cry 
 of "treason" by beaten troops is a dangerous one to 
 listen to, and whatever may have been the faults of Said 
 and Hassan Pachas, there can be no doubt that their 
 execution was all too hastily decided on, and was a 
 matter of deep regret to Gordon during the remainder 
 of the sieore. 
 
 As the Nile rose, the position of Khartoum became 
 improved. The Arabs had placed their camps of invest- 
 m*ent at some distance up the Blue and White Niles, and 
 when the rivers were high and the sand-banks covered 
 it became easier for the armed steamers to inflict damage 
 upon the enemy. 
 
 The intention of the Arabs was evidently to wear out 
 the patience of the garrison by scarcity of food, and by 
 the moral effect of a continuous attack always kept up, 
 but never pressed home to a decisive point ; and there is 
 a significant entry in the summary of the events of the 
 first six months of the siege that Gordon wrote to 
 Lord Wolseley which shows how well these tactics 
 succeeded. " The square was always broken," he writes. 
 At last the river was at its topmost height ; if any effort 
 was to be made to communicate with the outer world it 
 must be done at once. It is now September : for six 
 months the weary work has gone on : three months' food 
 yet remains. Is there no one coming over that vast 
 desert to the north, whose level horizon is visible for 
 leagues and leagues from the palace -roof, where day 
 after day Gordon and his two companions, Stewart and 
 Power, look out in expectation % All the plans for evacua- 
 
VIII ALONE IN KHARTOUM 219 
 
 tion, government, and settlement of the Soudan have 
 long ago given place to> a weary fight against odds for 
 life. Has the world gone to sleep away there, twelve hun- 
 dred miles beyond that clear-cut line of sky and desert % 
 What are all these armies of Egypt and of England 
 doing % You have untold stores of gold, and can you not 
 at least make it into keys to unlock this terrible silence, 
 sending us messengers if you will not send us soldiers % 
 
 Among the eight steamers which at this moment 
 were afloat at Khartoum there was a small paddle-boat 
 named the Abbas. With light draught of water, narrow 
 beam, and easily handled, this little craft seemed just 
 the one to accomplish in safety the descent of the river 
 from Khartoum to Dongola. It could only be hoped to 
 effect this descent during the height of the inundation, 
 when the unnumbered and unknown cataracts of Dar 
 Monassir had thirty and forty feet of water pouring 
 over their rugged stair-ways. On the night of Septem- 
 ber 9th the Abbas started on her voyage down stream. 
 She carried Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, M. Herbin the 
 French consul, eighteen Greeks, and some forty or fifty 
 soldiers. Correspondence, siege - journals, despatches, 
 telegrams to be sent from Dongola, — everything of 
 interest was put on board, and when the next morn- 
 ing broke one solitary man alone remained in the palace 
 at Khartoum. 
 
 From that day forward a new life began. Whatever 
 in the past had been the wear and tear of the siege ; the 
 anxiety of this sleepless watch ; the sickening sense of 
 desertion without and treachery within ; the knowledge 
 that the men whose advice and action had brought about 
 this terrible catastrophe were lying on soft beds, eating 
 
220 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap, viii 
 
 dainty food, and heaping up larger balances with their 
 bankers, while Ifie was here, in famine and misery, to 
 bear the load of the sins, the intrigues, and the falsehoods 
 he had so long denounced — all this had henceforth to be 
 borne alone, without the aid of a single friend, or the voice 
 of one sympathetic heart to aid him in this long and 
 terrible trial. And yet, in the great picture of his daily 
 life which on the night of September 10th he first began 
 to paint, there are a thousand touches that tell us he is 
 easier and happier and more at rest now than in the 
 seven months that have passed since he first undertook 
 this task. For the issues are now clear. No longer are 
 there doubts as to conflicting lines of policy and differing 
 interpretations of men's meaning. To God and to his 
 country he is now alone answerable. The real test 
 has at last come ; the real test of all teaching, the 
 measure of all philosophy, the sum of all religion — that 
 at no point between him and death is there to be a 
 hauling down of the flags of Faith and Duty which he 
 has nailed above his crucifixion. 
 
 For that this heroic soul had now come to look upon 
 his life as a sacrifice to be given in atonement for the 
 sins of his fellow-countrymen in Egypt is beyond dis- 
 pute. "I feel that all these wrongs can only be washed 
 out in blood," he wrote from Jerusalem in the end of 
 1883. A few months later, writing on March 4th 
 from Khartoum, he uses these words — than which there 
 are none more memorable in all his life: "May our 
 Lord not visit us as a nation for our sins, but may His 
 wrath fall on me, hid in Christ. This is my frequent 
 prayer, and may He spare these people, and bring them 
 to peace." 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 THE LAST MONTHS AT KHARTOUM 
 
 We must turn away for a moment from the spectacle of 
 this solitary sufferer for the sins of others, and look out 
 beyond the desert horizon to the north. 
 
 We shall have to travel a very long way through the 
 wilderness before falling in with even the outposts of 
 the army that is coming to the rescue, for at length 
 action has been evolved out of a chaos of counsellors 
 and men have begun to move slowly up the Nile ; depots 
 of military stores are being formed at Assouan and Wadi 
 Haifa, and on this very day, September 10th, the first 
 steamers carrying boats for the passage of the catar- 
 acts are leaving England. It is not yet a month since 
 sanction for the building of these Nile boats has been 
 given, and already one hundred of them are on their road 
 to Egypt. It is a curious coincidence that the day which 
 sees the first steamer of the Relief Expedition leaving 
 England is that upon which the ill-fated Abbas started 
 with Stewart, Power, and the French consul from 
 Khartoum. Five months later these Nile boats will 
 reach the spot where the Abbas lies a battered wreck 
 on the rocks of Dar Djuma, while the blood-stained 
 
222 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 relics of her murdered passengers and crew are blowing 
 about in the sands of Hebbeh. 
 
 And what, it may well be asked, had been the action 
 taken during all those months since the fall of Berber 
 had sealed the last hope of a peaceful evacuation of 
 Khartoum % Ah ! the answer to that question is indeed 
 a sad one. May, June, July, and almost half-way 
 through August before an undecided Executive above, 
 and congested clerkships, rival theories, and varying 
 ambitions below, can shape themselves into any fixed 
 plan of action. It is by railway from Suakim to Berber 
 that you must relieve Khartoum, say one set of coun- 
 sellors. But the route has many mountains, and the 
 passes are three thousand and four thousand feet above 
 sea-level, and for distances of eighty miles there is not a 
 drop of water along the proposed line, and the Arab-enemy 
 swarms at Suakim and at Berber, reply others who have 
 learnt a little of the realities of life in the wilderness. It 
 will take two campaigns and two years' labour to com- 
 plete such a line. No ; the true route of advance is the 
 one which Nature points out. The Nile in its long 
 reaches of open water gives easy transport for men and 
 stores, and even in its worst cataract it yields that first 
 necessary of desert-warfare — water. 
 
 Thus during the early summer months of 1884 the 
 strife of routes went on. Things almost impossible now 
 to credit were done. Contracts for the railroad between 
 Suakim and Berber were gravely discussed and given 
 out, officers were sent from Egypt to England to ascertain 
 by protracted experiments at Aldershot whether it would 
 be possible to pump condensed water from the Bay of 
 Suakim to the top of the height of land between that 
 
IX THE CITY OF KHARTOUM 223 
 
 place and Berber, a distance of nearly one hundred miles, 
 and some three thousand five hundred feet above the 
 level of the sea. It was found that water could indeed 
 be pumped a considerable distance, but two things were 
 also discovered which put a stop to further researches 
 into this interesting question — the water came out at 
 the end of the third or fourth mile at a temperature of 
 boiling-point, and it was also seen that, between condens- 
 ing and pumping through pipes, water delivered at the 
 height of land between the Eed Sea and the Nile would 
 cost per quart about the price of the choicest brands of 
 celebrated vintages. 
 
 But while the various counsellors of the Executive 
 were thus urging their dijfferent projects of relief upon a 
 reluctant Government, the spectacle of the single heroic 
 soldier afar off in the desert was daily sending a deeper 
 thrill through the big heart of that nation which knows 
 so little of the work that is going on in its name, and 
 throughout the land the cry for help was growing louder. 
 
 It was at the end of the first week in August that the 
 English Government finally decided to send out a relief 
 expedition to the Soudan, but for another week after 
 that date it was still possible for them to point with 
 truth to the conflicting counsels and opposite opinions 
 of their advisers at home and on the Nile. 
 
 It M^as on the evening of August 12th that the 
 project of a boat-expedition, first put forward by Lord 
 Wolseley in April and often urged by him in the 
 succeeding months, was at length sanctioned. The race 
 had now become a desperate one. The price that must 
 be paid for time wasted in diluted despatch and con- 
 densed telegram, for all the windy methods of administra^ 
 
224 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 tive delay, has to be given in flesh and blood ; and yet 
 there is still time to win, but no hour can be let slip, no 
 mile of all those thousands must be put off", even from 
 sunset to the next sunrise; and not one of the ten 
 thousand links in the chain of this immense effort can be 
 slackened for a single moment. 
 
 Writing on September 17th Gordon, summing up 
 the reports that have reached him during the previ- 
 ous week of the advance of English troops by the Nile 
 Valley to relieve Khartoum, says, " I have the strongest 
 suspicion that these tales of troops at Dongola and 
 Meroe are all gas-works, and that if you wanted to 
 find Her Majesty's forces you would have to go to Shep- 
 beard's hotel in Cairo." Alas, this estimate was even 
 too sanguine ! It is true the first infantry battalion 
 did reach Dongola about that date, but the boats which 
 were to carry men and food over the cataracts of the 
 Batn-el-Hager were only beginning to arrive at Alex- 
 andria; and the troops destined to form the desert 
 column which was to cross the Bayuda from Korti to 
 Metemma had not yet quitted England. 
 
 Khartoum, a name now deeply cut in our history, 
 was six years ago a place that seldom caught the ear of 
 the outside world. It marks what Americans call *' the 
 Forks " of the Nile, the spot where the Blue and White 
 Eivers unite their waters to form that grand stream 
 which has still to roll some eighteen hundred miles to 
 the sea. At low water a tongue or spit of land projects 
 between the two rivers, and gives Khartoum its name, 
 " the Elephant's Trunk." It was at this spot that Ismail, 
 the son of Mehemet Ali, and the first modern Egyptian 
 conqueror of the Soudan, crossed his army of Turks in 
 
IX THE FORCES ON EACH SIDE 225 
 
 1820 over the White Nile before marching along the 
 Blue Nile to Sennaar. No building of any sort then 
 marked the point. "The army," wrote an American 
 who was an officer in the Pacha's service, " on crossing 
 the Bahr-el-Abiad encamped on the point of land below 
 which the Bahr-el-Abiad and the Nile join each other." 
 A year or two later the first settlement was made at 
 the Elephant's Trunk, and in a short time Khartoum 
 became the seat of Turkish Government and the capital 
 of the Soudan. 
 
 The possession of the valley of the Nile opened to the 
 Egyptians a new and unlimited slave -field. Merchants 
 who combined the dual pursuits of slaves and ivory 
 settled at this central station, which commanded access 
 alike to Abyssinia and the Equatorial regions. Khar- 
 toum soon became the great inland emporium of slavery; 
 from it the merchants despatched their hunting-parties 
 of armed Nubians into those vast regions where the 
 Shillook, Dinka, and Bongo had before dwelt in bliss- 
 ful ignorance of the Turk and his civilisation. Perhaps, 
 with the exception of Bristol and Liverpool, no other 
 city had ever in modern times centred in it so much of 
 that terrible traffic which for so many centuries has 
 desolated Africa. 
 
 So little apprehensive of attack were the successive 
 rulers of the Soudan that no attempt to fortify the city 
 was made, and when in 1881 the Mahdi first raised at 
 Abba Island the standard, with the strange device of 
 Cross and Koran, Khartoum on the land-side was an 
 open town. During the next three years, as successive 
 defeats at the hands of the new revolt of Islam alarmed 
 the Egyptian authorities more and more, earth -works 
 Q 
 
226 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 were raised between the two rivers, and detached forts 
 were erected at Omderman and other places. All these 
 works were, however, in a most unfinished state when 
 Gordon arrived at Khartoum in February 1884, and not 
 the least of the many subjects to which his attention 
 was at once given was the defence of the city. 
 
 Nearly all the records and journals of that period 
 have perished, and we know only in briefest outline 
 what was done to put the town in a state of defence. 
 Wire-entanglements were stretched in front of the earth- 
 works, mines laid under all the approaches, the steamers 
 were sheeted with plates and mounted with guns, new 
 boats were put together in the arsenal, and all the craft 
 of the sapper set in use to prepare for the attack which 
 from the first week of arrival was seen to be impend- 
 ing. At this time the population of Khartoum numbered 
 about sixty thousand souls. As the siege went on, a third 
 of this number were sent away as the open, or known, 
 adherents of the Mahdi. Of the forty thousand still 
 remaining, it is probable that a large proportion still 
 cherished feelings of sympathy with the revolt, and that 
 fully half of the entire population were in even balance of 
 mind between the old government and the new prophet. 
 
 Nor would these numbers give anything like a just 
 idea of the relative values of the rival forces existing 
 even in the close neighbourhood of the capital. The 
 loyalists, if we may use that term to men whose main 
 loyalty consisted in devotion to the property which they 
 possessed, were men who wished to have their fighting 
 done for them. The rebels, if we may call those 
 rebels who were at that time described by the highest 
 authority in England " as men rightly struggling to be 
 
IX SHIFTS OF DEFENCE 227 
 
 free," and of whom Gordon had so frequently said that 
 they had the highest sanction for their revolt/ were men 
 who did their own fighting without pay or reward save 
 that which the battle-field gave them. Put out in the 
 open, and given similar weapons to decide the question, 
 it would not he too much to say that one thousand Arab 
 dervishes would have scattered and destroyed twenty 
 thousand of their opponents. 
 
 One fact Khartoum had in favour of its defence. It 
 possessed an excellent arsenal, which was not only well 
 supplied with munitions, but had in its workshops and 
 trained employees means of replenishing many of its 
 warlike stores. In the early months of the investment 
 nothing was left undone that the ceaselessly active mind 
 of the commander could devise to secure the position. 
 Despite absence of staff, an army dispirited by defeat, 
 and a population fully half in opposition, Gordon created, 
 strengthened, and supplied. Now at last he was at 
 home. Not one-tenth of what he did in these earlier 
 months will ever be known ; the story of his wonderful 
 effort sleeps in the wilderness of the Monassir, where 
 the ill-fated Abbas^ carrying such precious freight, met 
 her end; but we know enough by the result; for ten 
 long months Khartoum held out until it fell at last 
 from famine. 
 
 Among the bits of torn paper blowing about in the 
 sands near the wreck of the Abbas the writer of these 
 pages picked up one that gave a glimpse of some of the 
 
 ^ " Note that I do not call our enemies ' rebels ' but * Arabs,* " ho 
 writes on September 12th, ''for it is a vexed question if we are not 
 rebels, seeing I hold the Firman restoring the Soudan to its chiefs." 
 — Journals. 
 
228 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 shifts of defence resorted to. It was a page of some 
 nameless diary that had been kept by one of the passen- 
 gers — probably Power. This leaflet described how " the 
 General " had bought in the bazaar many hundred yards 
 of cotton, and dyeing it earth-colour had stretched it out 
 in long sloping lines, making it appear at a distance like 
 the angle and colour of earth-works, so as to deceive the 
 Arabs while real works were constructed farther back. 
 But the activity of the leader was not confined to his 
 own professional engineer-duties. How he replenished 
 the supplies of food for garrison and people. How he 
 literally made money from an exhausted treasury. How 
 he kept up an unceasing correspondence with the hostile 
 chiefs, refuting the claim of the Mahdi to his mission. 
 How he created an army out of the wretched remnants 
 of officers and men which four successive years of 
 defeat, ending with the crowning disaster of the force 
 of Hicks Pacha, had left existing. How over and 
 over again he sent out through the hostile lines that 
 surrounded him spies and messengers to take news to, 
 and bring tidings from, the Eelief Expedition. How 
 in fact for ten long months he stood the sole spring 
 of the great machine he had created — baffling con- 
 spiracy within, facing hostility without, feeding the 
 poor, visiting the sick, watching by night and working 
 by day — without the hope to cheer him through this 
 terrible martyrdom that the far-away home, in which 
 he had so long been a stranger, would even thank him 
 for what he was doing — all this is but the bare record 
 of these wonderful Journals,^ whose possession, won by 
 
 ^ The Journals of Major -General Gordon at Khartoum: London, 
 1885, 
 
IX SEPTEMBER 1884 229 
 
 the toil and labour of the Nile Expedition and by the 
 blood shed at Abu Klea and before Metemma, would 
 have been cheaply purchased at even far heavier cost. 
 For the value of the lessons taught by these Journals 
 is priceless, if it be learned by us in fitting spirit of 
 sorrow and depth of humility, but terrible in its con- 
 demnation if it is to be made another plank in the 
 platform of pride, another stone in the idol of our 
 covetousness. 
 
 Let us tear ourselves away for a moment from the 
 sophistries which national pride and greed have woven 
 about this chapter of Khartoum. What is the lesson of 
 it ain During these three memorable months, from 
 September 10th to December 14th, a solitary man is 
 sitting writing his last thoughts for us. 
 
 All the while we are spending millions of money in 
 fruitless efforts to reach him. We cannot do so. Late 
 though our date of setting out has been, there is still 
 time to effect the object of the expedition and to save 
 Gordon and Khartoum, but a greater order has gone 
 forth than any man can compass with millions or with 
 men. We are not to get back this heroic soul, whose 
 life we have so long ignored. Not a shred of his coat, 
 not a lock of his hair, grown gray in our service, is to 
 come forth, but every word of the lesson is to reach us. 
 Night after night he will set down a hundred truths 
 which, had he written them at home in England, not one 
 in ten thousand among us would ever have looked at, but 
 now the magnificence of this martyrdom will force us to 
 listen to these last words. We will see him as we have 
 never before seen him, and, like a voice from the dead, 
 the words of the j)rophet he so often quoted, "Not by 
 
230 UFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 might, nor by an army, but by my spirit, saith the Lord 
 of hosts," will be brought home to us in the knell of this 
 disaster. 
 
 In the three weeks of September which find record 
 in the Khartoum Journals many important events took 
 place. It was on the 21st of the month that authentic 
 news first reached Gordon of a relief expedition being 
 actually on the road. Three days later he resolves upon 
 sending his armed steamers to Metemma to await the 
 arrival of the troops, and on the 30th of the month the 
 vessels start for the rendezvous. 
 
 At this time the attack of the Arabs on the town is 
 not pressed close, the Mahdi is still far away in Kordofan, 
 and his lieutenants, the Sheikhs el-Obeid and Negumi, 
 keep their investing forces on the Blue and White Niles 
 some miles back from the outworks. It is still easy to 
 reach Shendy, one hundred miles north, even by land. A 
 good deal of desertion is going on among the black troops 
 of the Arabs, the store of grain and provision in the town 
 is yet ample, and the spirit of the garrison is fairly good. 
 Actual fighting is confined to distant rifle -fire, and 
 still more distant exchange of shells between Arab 
 batteries and the steamers. All these things find full 
 record in the eighty pages of closely printed diary which 
 describe this interval ; but the wonderful fact revealed 
 in these pages is the matchless spirit of the man who 
 writes them. Never has the breath of life been breathed 
 into a more indomitable breast. Never has human soul 
 looked out from its prison-house in greater gaiety of 
 heart. Night after night this solitary soldier sits down 
 after a day of anxiety, of toil, of mental and bodily 
 labour, such as not one man in ten million ever knows, 
 
THE FIRST JOURNALS 231 
 
 to write his thoughts for us. Is it a gloomy record of 
 trouble*? Is it despairing accusations against the fate 
 or the men that have brought about this state of affairs 1 
 Not a bit of it. Page after page of vivid description, 
 of practical philosophy, of sound common sense, shrewd 
 observation of men, and humorous touches of satire, 
 that make us forget every surrounding of the writer's 
 suffering in the absolute freshness and gaiety of the 
 heart they reveal to us. 
 
 The Journal is a complete laying bare of the man's 
 mind. No attempt to excuse a fault or to shift responsi- 
 bility, never a word spoken to the gallery, nor yet a 
 sentence that seems to indicate a thought that it is his 
 last testament he is really writing, and how lowly is the 
 estimate of self which he gives us in the midst of this 
 superb heroism. Here is what the most heroic heart of 
 the nineteenth century has to say about his own cour- 
 age :— 
 
 " During our blockade we have often discussed the ques- 
 tion of being frightened, which in the world's view a man 
 should never be. For my part I am always frightened and 
 very much so. I fear the future of all engagements. It is 
 not the fear of death, that is past, thank God, but I fear 
 defeat and its consequences. I do not believe a bit in the 
 calm, unmoved man. I think it is only that he does not 
 show it outwardly. Thence I conclude that no commander 
 of forces ought to live closely in relation with his subordi- 
 nates, who watch him like lynxes, for there is no contagion 
 equal to that of fear. I have been rendered furious when 
 from anxiety I could not eat, I would find those at the same 
 table were in like manner affected." 
 
 And again he writes : — 
 
 " I think if instead of Minor Tactics or books on art of 
 war we were to make our young officers study Plutarch's 
 
232 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 Lives^ it would be better ; there we see men (unsupported by 
 any true belief — pure pagans) making as matter of course 
 their lives a sacrifice, but in our days it is our highest merit 
 not to run away. I speak for myself when I say I have been 
 in dire anxiety, not for my own skin, but because I hate to 
 be beaten, and I hate to see my schemes fail, but that I have 
 had to undergo a tithe of what any nurse has to undergo 
 who is attached to a querulous invalid is absurd, and not to 
 be weighed together. When I emerge, all are complimentary. 
 When the invalid dies the question is, What shall be given 
 to the nurse for her services ?" 
 
 And here is what the man who at this moment is 
 doing the finest bit of hero- work ever done by any of 
 his countrymen himself says of that work : — 
 
 ''A member of Parliament in one of our last received 
 papers asks ' Whether officers are not supposed to go where 
 they are ordered V I quite agree with his view, but it can- 
 not be said I was ordered to go. The subject was too com- 
 plex for any order. It was, * Will you go and try V and my 
 answer was, ' Only too delighted.' As for all that may be 
 said as to why I did not escape with Stewart, it is simply 
 because the people would not have been such fools as to let 
 me go ; so, there is an end of these * great-coats ' of self- 
 sacrifice, etc." 
 
 Whenever he lifts his mind from matters that relate 
 to his surroundings, and glances back at the long cata- 
 logue of mistaken policy and obstinate adherence to 
 error, there is not a touch of real hardness in his criticism 
 of others. One diplomatist who, he thinks, is mainly 
 responsible for the disasters of Egypt he calls "the 
 Siren ;" another official, whose telegram he has just 
 received demanding in this eleventh hour of agony to 
 be " informed exadhj when he, Gordon, expects to be in 
 difficulties as to provisions and ammunition," he thinks 
 
IX DEPARTURE OF STEAMERS FOR METEMMA 233 
 
 must be preparing "a great statistical work," and 
 that this information is needed for "literary purposes." 
 
 " If he," the sender of the message, " will only turn to 
 the archives (a delicious word) of his office, he will see we 
 have been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It 
 is as if a man on the bank, having seen his friend in a river 
 already bobbed down two or three times, hails, * I say, old 
 fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life-buoy. 
 I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is 
 a pity to throw you the life-buoy until you are in extremis^ 
 and I want to know exactly.' " 
 
 And yet even this bantering criticism, though the 
 point of it is his own life and death, is blamable, he 
 thinks. ," Blessed is the man who does not sit in the 
 seat of the scornful," he writes. "I own it is not right 
 to scoff at one's superiors, but I do not do it in malice, 
 and I hope those who are remarked upon will not be 
 offended. Life is a very leaden business, and if any one 
 can lighten it, so much the better." 
 
 On September 29th, the steamers being ready to 
 start for Metemma, Gordon sums up his resolutions as 
 to his future line of conduct. Having said that it is one 
 of his "joys he is never to see Great Britain again," but 
 that he " hopes to get out of this affair, and to go to 
 the Congo either by the Equatorial provinces or by 
 Brussels," he continues : — 
 
 "I say this in order that those who may have to do with 
 me may know how very determined a man's will must be 
 who does not wish (and indeed will not ever) go back to Eng- 
 land again, and to whom continuance in Her Majesty's 
 service, except for the honour of it, is a matter of indiflfer- 
 ence. My idea is to induce Her Majesty's Government to 
 undertake the extrication of all people or garrisons, now 
 
234 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 hemmed in or captive, and that if this is not their programme 
 then to resign my commission and do what I can to obtain 
 it (the object). As long as a man remains in Her Majesty's 
 service he is bound to obey his superiors, but if he resigns 
 he cannot be held insubordinate if he disobeys ; perhaps," 
 he adds, " one may risk dismissal if the cause is worthy of 
 it, which I think the question of abandoning the garrisons 
 is." 
 
 At 2 P.M. on September 30th Gordon closes the 
 second book of his Journal, and an hour later the 
 steamers start for Shendy, or Berber, as circumstances 
 may determine. More than half his defensive, and 
 probably three-fourths of his offensive power went with 
 those four steamers. Two thousand men was the equi- 
 valent estimate he had put upon each boat. Already 
 weak enough in holding this far-extending position, he 
 will be henceforward doubly weak in the absence of the 
 means of moving troops and guns quickly from place to 
 place along the waterways of the two rivers. 
 
 In one of the four great books of Chinese philosophy 
 there is given the definition of a man who, " knowing 
 neither sorrow nor fear, walks alone all confident in his 
 courage. Such a man," says the sage, "although he 
 may love life will love something better than life, and 
 although he may hate death will hate something more 
 than death." This description of a perfect man was 
 written more than two thousand years ago, but if there 
 still are to be found in the great Empire of the East men 
 who fulfil the definition, the name of " Chinese " Gordon, 
 given for other reasons to this soldier, who now stands 
 in Khartoum "alone and all confident in his courage," 
 had warranty greater even than feat of arms or forecast 
 of campaign could give it. 
 
IX BAD NEWS IN OCTOBER 235 
 
 October ran its course with little change of situation 
 until its 21st day. It was the New Year of the Arab 
 Calendar 1302, and it was marked by two events of 
 great importance. On that date the Mahdi arrived 
 before Khartoum, and the first authentic information 
 of the loss of the steamer Abbas, the death of Stewart, 
 of the consuls, and the capture of all the papers, was 
 sent to Gordon. He received this fatal news on the 
 morning of the 22d, but he still hopes against hope. 
 " It would be terrible if it is true," he writes. Later in 
 the day a despatch comes in from the Mahdi giving the 
 fullest particulars of the captured correspondence ; every 
 document taken is noted, numbered, and neatly given 
 in p'ecis. 
 
 The New Year of the Moslems has indeed dawned 
 gloomily upon this solitary Christian soldier, but all 
 this has been long ago forecast in his mind, and he 
 telegraphs back to Omderman, from whence the news 
 has come, this message : " Tell the Mahdi that it is all 
 one to me whether he has captured 20,000 steamers 
 like the Abbas, or 20,000 officers like Stewart Pacha. 
 I hope to see the newly-arrived English, but if Mahomet 
 Achmet says the English die it is all the same to me. 
 I am here like iron.' Here like iron — like the old 
 " spear " whose name he bore. 
 
 From this day forward the pressure of the siege by 
 the Arabs became more determined. It was now a race 
 between the Mahdi and the expedition for the possession 
 of Khartoum. Among the papers captured in the Abbas 
 were some which gave the fullest details of all stores 
 and food remaining in the city on September 9th. 
 The exact strength of garrison and population were also 
 
236 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 stated. The Arabs could therefore calculate to a day 
 how long the place could hold out. It was ardebs of 
 dhurra against miles of distance. 
 
 Where was the expedition on this Moslem New Year's 
 Day, this 21st of October*? It was still at Wadi Haifa, 
 six hundred miles distant, struggling with congested 
 transport, lack of coal at Assouan, broken-down rail- 
 way, and administrative machinery not yet running 
 smooth in work. Two hundred English boats have 
 indeed reached that point, but they were waiting at the 
 foot of the second cataract, while some fifty or sixty 
 native craft were being passed through that formidable 
 obstruction, and a full fortnight has to pass ere the first 
 company of infantry will be embarked for Khartoum. 
 
 Still with clouds gathering closer around, with symp- 
 toms of desertion and treachery daily increasing in the 
 garrison, and with the incessant wear of watching grow- 
 ing more intense, as enemies multiplied within and with- 
 out, we search in vain through the Journals for any trace 
 of despondency, or for even the slackness of physical ex- 
 haustion. In the twenty days of September which the 
 Journals cover, Gordon wrote eighty pages of closely 
 printed matter : in the thirty-one days of October he wrote 
 almost one hundred pages. Often for long pages together 
 he seems to forget all about his own sombre surroundings, 
 his mind is busy discussing the future of the Soudan, 
 his memory recalls the mistakes that have led to the 
 deplorable condition of affairs in Egypt, and through 
 forecast or memory the brightness of his humour seldom 
 ceases to shine out amid the clouds that encompass him. 
 Still never a word to the gallery, no thought of that 
 immense audience which so soon will be trying to people 
 
NOVEMBER 1884 237 
 
 with vain imaginings these big lonely palace rooms 
 where he sits at work, and over and over again he 
 repeats the thought that Plutarch's Lives are out of print 
 in our generation, and that come what may there is 
 still a joy in store for him that not even the conquest 
 of Khartoum can take from him ; that whether he 
 lives or dies he will not in the future have again to 
 endure the misery of the selfish civility of English 
 society. '' I would sooner live like a dervish with the 
 Mahdi than go out to dinner every night in London," 
 he writes on the two hundred and twenty-sixth day of 
 the siege of Khartoum. 
 
 Early in November matters begin to look a little 
 brighter so far as the chances of relief of the garrison are 
 concerned. On November 2d stock of provisions is 
 taken, and it is found that there is still enough for six 
 weeks' consumption ; " then the sponge must be thrown 
 up," is the significant comment. Will he put the troops 
 on half rations? No, because the faith of officers and 
 men is already weak enough, and the wholesale desertion 
 which would follow short commons would bring cata- 
 strophe before its time. Already the Sheikh el-Islam, 
 the Cadi, and the Mudir have been intriguing with the 
 Mahdi ; the black soldiers are now the last stay, and 
 if they are pinched for food they will desert. Next 
 day, November 3d, a steamer arrives from Shendy, 
 bringing letters from Dongola ; there can no longer be 
 doubt about the wreck of the Ahbas^ and the murder of 
 Stewart, Power, and Herbin. The other news is meagre 
 enough, but it looks definite. There is a letter from 
 Debbeh, dated October 14th. Lord Wolseley is at 
 Wadi Haifa. The expedition will start from Dongola 
 
238 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON CHAr. 
 
 on or about November 1st. Major Kitchener, the 
 writer of this letter, encloses an Arabic cipher telegram 
 from Lord Wolseley of September 20th, but unfortu- 
 nately the key to the cipher has been taken by Stewart, 
 and the telegram remains unread. 
 
 For three days following the receipt of these letters 
 Gordon's mind is too engrossed with the murder of his 
 late companions to give much thought to other subjects. 
 He reviews in the Journal every circumstance relating 
 to their journey, "i/" Abbas was captured by treachery^ 
 then I am not to blame" he writes. ^^ Neither am I to 
 blame if she struck a rock, for she drew under two feet 
 of water, and fifty boats (sailing) used to go down 
 yearly to Cairo with high Nile ; if they were attacked and 
 overpowered then I am to blame, for I ought to have fore- 
 seen the chance and prevented their going." Then he 
 relates every event leading up to the departure of the 
 officers. He had resolved upon sending the Abbas down to 
 Dongola under charge of an Arab ries (captain), then — 
 
 " Herbin asked to be allowed to go. I jumped at his 
 offer. Then Stewart said he would go if I would exonerate 
 him from deserting me. I said you do not desert me. I — 
 I cannot go, but if you go you do me a great service. I 
 then wrote him an official. He wanted me to write him an 
 order. I said no, for though I fear not responsibility, I will 
 not put you in any danger in which I am not in myself. I 
 wrote them a letter couched thus: ' Abbas is going down. 
 You say you are willing to go in her if I think you can do 
 so with honour. — You can go in honour, for you can do 
 nothing here, and if you go you do me service in telegraph- 
 ing my views.'" 
 
 Finally he sums up the disaster thus : "I look on 
 it as being a Nemesis on the death of the two Pachas." 
 
IX THE SIEGE CLOSELY PRESSED 239 
 
 With the exception of this confirmation of previous 
 rumours regarding the Abbas, and the definite tidings 
 about the expedition, there was no other information 
 by this important post. The few letters which it 
 brought had, however, been wrapped up in some old 
 newspapers. The wrapper was thrown aside upon 
 arrival. Some person chanced to pick it up, and seeing 
 the papers were English brought them to the apothecary 
 of the hospital, who happened to know English. Finally 
 the Greek doctor noticed them, and at last these precious 
 glimpses of the outside world found their way into 
 Gordon's hands. " They are like gold," he writes, " as 
 you may imagine, since we have had no news since 
 February 24th, 1884 !" Chief among the news given in 
 these London papers of September 15th, 1884, were 
 items referring to the progress of the "Gordon Eelief 
 Expedition." This definition of the object of the Nile 
 Expedition added another sting to the many he had 
 already endured. "iVb /" he writes in capital letters — 
 "for the relief of the Soudan garrisons." Again and 
 again he repudiates the idea that the " relief " is for 
 him. " I am not the rescued lamb, and I will not be," 
 he had long ago said. Now in the seeming light of 
 this certainty that the expedition is to relieve him he 
 makes a declaration of intention with so much force 
 and iteration that it is clear he has formed in his mind 
 a new resolution. Of this resolution we shall have 
 something to say further on. 
 
 As the month of November progresses, the siege is 
 everywhere more closely pressed by the Arabs. On the 
 12th they began at dawn a determined attack upon 
 Omderpian^ and on the steamers Ismailia and Hussi- 
 
240 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 neyeh. These two little ** penny steamers" are repeatedly 
 struck by shells, and at last the Hussineyeh has to be 
 run aground to prevent her sinking. There are a few 
 lines in the Journal describing this day's work which 
 bring very vividly to the mind the last hundred days of 
 this long-protracted agony : — 
 
 " One tumbles at 3 a.m. into a troubled sleep. A drum 
 beats — tup ! tup ! tup ! It comes into a dream, but after a 
 few moments one becomes more awake, and it is revealed to 
 the brain that one is in Khartoum. The next query is where 
 is this tup-tupping going on ? A hope arises it will die 
 away again. No ; it goes on, and increases in intensity. 
 The thought strikes one have they enough ammunition (the 
 excuse of bad soldiers). One exerts oneself. At last it is 
 no use, up one must get, and go on to the roof of the palace. 
 Then telegrams, orders, swearing, and cursing goes on till 
 9 A.M. Men may say what they like about glorious war, but 
 to me it is a horrid nuisance (if it is permitted to say any- 
 thing is a nuisance which comes on us). I saw that poor 
 little beast, the Hussineyeh (a Thames launch), fall back, 
 stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breech-loaders. I saw 
 a shell strike the water at her bows ; I saw her stop and puff 
 off steam, and then I gave the glass to my boy, sickened unto 
 
 death; and my thoughts turned on more than on any 
 
 one, and I will say they were not beneficent towards him. 
 My boy (he is thirty) said, ' Hussineyeh is sick. ' I knew it 
 but said quietly, *Go down and telegraph to Mogrim, Is 
 Hussineyeh sick V " 
 
 Alas ! the little sister- boat to the Abbas was not 
 only sick but dying, and now there is left but one 
 boat, the Ismailia, to cover all the water-way of the two 
 rivers. The expenditure of ammunition is forty thou- 
 sand rounds a day, but as there is fifty days' supply of 
 shell and rifle cartridges in store at this rate of con- 
 sumption, and as the limit of food will be reached in 
 
IX THE EXPEDITION STILL FAR OFF 241 
 
 thirty days, it does not matter. " I feel quite indifferent," 
 he writes, " for if not relieved before a month our food- 
 supply fails, and I like to go down with our colours 
 flying." The day after this, the 13th, the Arabs send a 
 force to the north side of the city, completely hemming 
 in Khartoum. They have also established themselves 
 between Omderman and the river isolating that fort. 
 
 During the remainder of November the hopeless 
 work goes on. On the 2 2d Gordon draws a sketch 
 of his position, and sums up his losses. He has had 
 eighteen hundred or nineteen hundred men killed and 
 two hundred and forty-two wounded. Then he writes in 
 italics some very memorable words : — 
 
 " If the expedition comes here before the place falls 
 (which is doubtful), and if the instructions are to evacuate the 
 place at once and leave Kassala and Sennaar, etc., I will resign 
 and have nothing more to do with the government of the place or 
 of the Soudan, and this I have a perfect right to do, and no 
 one, not even the Soudan troops or people, could say one 
 word. It will depend on circumstances how I shall act in 
 re my commission in Her Majesty's service (which I do not 
 hold too fast to, seeing any future employment would not be 
 accepted even if, in the very improbable case of its being 
 offered), but I consider that every officer has a right to resign, 
 and if he resigns he is no longer subject to military orders, 
 
 AND IS FREE TO GO WHEN AND WHERE HE LIKES." 
 
 Then he goes on to say that he was named Governor- 
 General "in order to carry out evacuation of the 
 Soudan," against which "he has nothing to say, but 
 he was not named Governor- General in order to run 
 away from Khartoum, and leave the garrisons elsewhere 
 to their fate." These words, written immediately under- 
 neath a plan of the city, showing in detail the positions 
 R 
 
242 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 occupied by the enemy, and therefore certain to catch 
 the eye of any incoming general, give the clue to much 
 that will be important later on. When this entry was 
 made in the Journal Gordon believed the advanced 
 position of the expedition to be at or near Metemma. 
 Three days later, on the 25th, he receives news 
 that the English force is still at Ambukol, nearly two 
 hundred miles farther off, and with all the Bayuda yet 
 to cross. 
 
 At last November, like so many other previous 
 nionths, has closed, and still the sole tidings from the 
 outside world are of remote relief. More than a year 
 has gone by since the news of the annihilation of the 
 army of Hicks Pacha at Kazghil was known in Cairo, 
 and in that long interval exactly nine men have been 
 sent from Egypt to Khartoum. Well would it have 
 been for us if the expedition on this last day of Novem- 
 ber had been even within one hundred miles of Ambukol. 
 It was in reality many a hundred miles farther away. 
 On November 30th one solitary boat had alone passed 
 the Third Cataract, the six hundred others were labour- 
 ing slowly under the enormous burthen of food they 
 were carrying amid the " Womb of Eocks." 
 
 December comes. All the long threads of disaster 
 are gathering into a closer cord of doom. On the 5th 
 Omderman fort is still safe. There are twenty-one 
 thousand pounds of dhurra and one hundred and 
 twenty-one thousand okes of biscuits still in store in 
 Khartoum ; but desertion among the garrison grows 
 greater, and the long-deferred hope of relief is making 
 the weak heart of the defence beat weaker day by day. 
 The entries in the Journal are getting shorter. In 
 
IX LAST MESSAGES 243 
 
 November there were seventy pages written ; in these 
 December days the entries do not more than fill a page 
 each day, and the record is ever of a lessening food- 
 supply. " Truly I am worn to a shadow with the food 
 question," he writes on December 10th ; "it is one con- 
 tinued demand." Then comes the significant entry, 
 " five men deserted to-day." The sand in the hour-glass 
 is running very low. There is not fifteen days' food in 
 the whole town. 
 
 On December 14th the steamer Bordeen will return 
 to Shendy. Why 1 Because the town may now fall at • 
 any moment, and the last messages have to be sent 
 out ere the fatal hour strikes. So, on December 14th, 
 1884, the Journal is closed, and final farewells are 
 written to many old friends. " As it seems impossible 
 we shall meet again in this world," he writes to one 
 steadfast friend,^ "I would ask you to see that my 
 family do not lose by my death." Then follows a list 
 of sums due to the English Foreign Office, the Cairo 
 Government, and the King of the Belgians — in all four 
 thousand five hundred and six pounds, *' which I should 
 have met," he goes on, "by leaving Her Majesty's army, 
 and asking the King of the Belgians to give me com- 
 pensation for the same. However, as it seems all this 
 is at an end, I do not think it too much for Her 
 Majesty's Government to pay Cairo what I owe it, 
 £2100; and also King of the Belgians, £570; and to 
 take any pay due to me against the sum I owe Foreign 
 Office. I know you will see to this."^ Then ho writes 
 
 ^ Lord Wolseley. 
 
 - These debts may require a few words of explanation. When 
 Gordon accepted the Soudan 'mission in January 1884 ho had no 
 
244 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 other letters — one to his sister, in which he tells her 
 he is " quite happy, thank God 1" and, " like Lawrence, I 
 have tried to do my duty ;" and again he writes to Lord 
 Wolseley, recommending to his notice one "Abdul 
 Hamed Bey as the best young fellow I have met in the 
 Soudan." To another friend he speaks very quietly 
 of " the catastrophe," so soon to take place, " which 
 would not have happened if our people had taken better 
 precautions as to informing us of their movements ; but 
 this is * spilt milk.' Good-bye." The last entry in the 
 
 money. He had, in fact, to borrow a few pounds from the King of 
 the Belgians in order to come to London after the receipt of Lord 
 Wolseley's telegram. When Gordon came out from his interview 
 with the Ministers the fact of his poverty was discovered by Lord 
 Wolseley putting the direct question to him, "Have you any 
 money?" It was then after bank hours, and as Gordon was to 
 leave for the Soudan at eight p.m. there was not much time to pro- 
 cure a requisite sum. Borrowing ten or twenty pounds here and 
 there, Lord Wolseley got together two hundred pounds in a bag, 
 which he handed to Gordon as the train was about to start from 
 Charing Cross. Eight days later Gordon met at Ismailia an old 
 Soudan servant — one Mahomed Tuhami — who had formerly been 
 his secretary at Khartoum, but who was now old, blind, and in 
 poverty. He gave this man one hundred sovereigns from the bag, 
 and passed on to Cairo. Between that day and December 14th 
 following he increased this debt of two hundred pounds to eighteen 
 hundred and thirty-six pounds, which he owes to the Foreign 
 Office, and to a further sum of two thousand one hundred pounds 
 due to Cairo. The five hundred and seventy pounds to the King 
 of the Belgians was evidently of older date. How these amounts 
 were spent is easy enough to conjecture. There can be little doubt 
 they went as the one hundred pounds went at Ismailia, in the 
 relief of want and suff"ering, or in payment of messengers and ser- 
 vants. Many men would have considered such drops of expendi- 
 ture might well go into the ocean of Soudan cost, but Gordon 
 charges himself with every farthing, and amid a thousand troubles 
 asks his old friend to "see to this" for him. 
 
FAMINE 245 
 
 Journal can never be forgotten : " I have done the best 
 for the honour of our country. Good-bye. You send 
 me no information though you have lots of money." 
 Very sorrowful, yet very wonderful evidences these of 
 the nature now shining forth so strong in the quick 
 gathering gloom of death. There may be sadder pages 
 in our history, but I have not read them. 
 
 The Bordeen 'sailed on the night of December 14th, 
 and then silence settled for ever over Khartoum. For 
 forty-three days following the departure of the steamer 
 the hopeless work still drags on. During fifteen days 
 there is a daily lessening issue of food given out, and 
 then actual starvation begins ; everything that can keep 
 the light of life flickering a little longer in these wretched 
 frames is tried — rats and mice, the leather of boots, the 
 straps and plaited strips of skin of native bedsteads, 
 gum of mimosa, the inner fibre of the palm tree, have all 
 been eagerly devoured. Fifteen thousand of the towns- 
 people have been sent out to the camp of the Mahdi. Great 
 numbers have died; there are only some fourteen thousand 
 inhabitants now remaining in the city. Daily and nightly 
 the enemy presses his attack. Omderman has fallen, the 
 circle of the Arab leaguer is clasped tighter around the 
 famished garrison, and many among the Egyptian officers 
 and officials are clamouring for surrender. These particu- 
 lars we know from the collected accounts of soldiers and 
 slaves who escaped the final catastrophe. We know, 
 too, from the accounts of these men that through all this 
 terrible time the heart of Charles Gordon never wavered, 
 and that up to the very brink of the last scene he stood 
 the sole stay of the defence, the head and front of the 
 defending — refusing all idea of surrender, still toiling to 
 
246 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 the last, still "doing his best for the honour of the 
 country" which he thinks has forgotten him in his 
 agony, but which now would willingly give her best 
 blood and spend her last treasure to save him. 
 
 One help he has through all this time that never 
 leaves him. "The Almighty God will help me," he 
 wrote in the last message that ever came to us. Yes, 
 that Help he has to the last moment of this crucifixion — 
 to the last step of the long ladder which is leading him 
 to a double immortality. For twenty years past he has 
 asked that the end might thus come to him. Away in 
 those dim deserts to the west, beyond where the sun 
 goes down behind the smoke of the Arab leaguer, he has 
 scores of times in past years almost sought death in the 
 obscure strife of this weary Soudan world; once and 
 again has he prayed of heaven the boon of death, if 
 by his sacrifice the load of human misery might be 
 lightened, the sum of human wrong -doing might be 
 lessened ; — it was not to be ilien. He was to come back 
 again and again to the nation that seemed to care so 
 little for him ; and amid the babble of the street, or in 
 the chatter of the club, the faith, the generosity, and the 
 matchless honesty of the man were to be ridiculed or ex- 
 plained away as the aberrations of an over-excited mind. 
 
 And now he is to come back to us no more ; the 
 order has gone forth which is to heighten his glory and 
 deepen our shame \ the sacrifice so often ofi"ered is 
 accepted ; the narrow gate is at last thrown open, and 
 amid a flood of such light as God seldom s lets fall upon 
 the face of man, we are to see this last great Christian 
 hero vanish from our world. 
 
 To the resolution which he had formed on November 
 
IX WHERE IS THE EXPEDITION ? 247 
 
 14th, of resigning his commission on the approach of 
 the expedition if the relief of all the garrisons in 
 the Soudan was not intended, he adhded to the last 
 moment. There can be no doubt that the one steamer 
 remaining to him, the Ismailia, was kept with steam up 
 day and night, so as to be ready to start up Nile at a 
 moment's notice, when the arrival of the expedition 
 would have enabled him by signal or otherwise to 
 hand over the command of the city to the incoming 
 general. It was this fact of the Ismailia having steam 
 up on the night of the final Arab assault which lay at 
 the root of the vague hope that existed for months 
 after the fall of the city, that Gordon had escaped to 
 the equator by the White Nile. From the date of the 
 sailing of the steamer Bordeen on December 14th to the 
 end of the month he seems to have sent out several 
 messengers with the words, "Khartoum all right. 
 Could hold out for years," written on very small 
 scraps of paper. The only explanation yet given of 
 these messages is that they were meant to deceive the 
 Arabs, into whose hands they would probably fall, but 
 this reason seems improbable. Gordon knew too well 
 how accurate was the knowledge possessed by the 
 Arabs of the true condition of the town. It seems to be 
 much more probable that he judged the Mahdi would 
 permit the bearers of these written words to proceed to 
 their destination, because the messages were calculated 
 to delay the English advance, and that by this means 
 the verbal messages with which the men were charged, 
 and which were of a widely different purport, might 
 be safely conveyed to the expedition. Where mean- 
 while was the expedition 1 
 
248 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 On the day when Gordon was writing the last entry 
 in his Journal, December 14th, the leading troops in 
 boats and on camels reached Korti, a village on the 
 left bank of the Nile, which marks the point of de- 
 parture from the river of the desert-track to Metemma. 
 At this place troops and supplies were concentrated 
 during the next sixteen days, and on December 30th 
 the first advance into the Bayuda was made from Korti. 
 But the progress across the desert was a slow one. In 
 order to make up for a marked deficiency of camels the 
 first advance was only continued to Jakdul, little more 
 than half-way on the road to Metemma. Here large 
 natural cisterns of water existed in the rocks of Gebil 
 Giliff, and at these pools a depot was formed, while the 
 camels returned again to Korti to move a second detach- 
 ment of men and stores from that place. When this 
 had been done, and the entire column was concentrated 
 at Jakdul, it was January 12th. But the camels, 
 worn by this triple march, from Korti to Jakdul, from 
 Jakdul to Korti, and again from Korti to Jakdul, a 
 total distance of three hundred miles in fourteen days, 
 were now exhausted, and sixty hours had to pass 
 before the advance towards Metemma could be again 
 continued. 
 
 On the evening of January 14th the entire column 
 moved from Jakdul; on the 17th it fought the 
 Arabs at the wells of Abu Klea; on the 19th it 
 fought a second time near Metemma, and on the even- 
 ing of the same day the advance touched the Nile at 
 Gubat. By the evening of the 20th the entire column 
 was collected on the left shore of the river, about 
 three miles south of Metemma. The daylight of the 
 
TOO LATE 249 
 
 next morning brought the four steamers, which had been 
 waiting near this place for one hundred and twelve 
 days, and communication was at last effected between 
 them and the expedition. This was on the morning of • 
 January 21st, 1885. 
 
 On the morning of the 24th two of the steamers 
 started for Khartoum, carrying Sir Charles Wilson 
 and a small detachment of English soldiers of the 
 Thirty-fifth or Sussex Regiment. The distance these 
 steamers had to traverse was one hundred miles, but 
 about midway in that interval the Sixth Cataract 
 begins, and the Nile flows for twelve miles through 
 narrow, rock-encumbered channels. It was nearly mid- 
 day on January 28th before the boats, having cleared 
 the cataract, approached the north end of the Isle of Tuti, 
 from whence Khartoum can first be seen on the level 
 point of land between the Blue and White Niles. As 
 the steamers drew slowly on into the broad water which 
 still shows the unmixed currents of the two rivers, every 
 glass was fixed upon the palace, that large, square build- 
 ing, whose flat roof, raised high above other houses, 
 was conspicuous over all, — there was no flag flying. 
 Another half-hour passes, the boats are now abreast of 
 the centre of the island ; the city is in full view. Still 
 no flag waves on the palace-roof ; no sign of welcome 
 comes from a long-expectant garrison, but hostile guns 
 are opening fire upon the steamers, and the crackle of 
 musketry is spreading farther along the shores until, 
 reaching the houses of the city that are nearest to the 
 water, it completes the circle of the enemy's shot around 
 the approaching boats. On the shores of isle and main- 
 
250 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 land, and over the sandy point below the town, crowds 
 of men wearing the strange uniform and waving the 
 battle-fiags of the Mahdi are visible, and between the 
 roar of cannon and the rattle of small arms ten thou- 
 sand shrill shouts of Arab-triumph tell that all is over 
 in Khartoum. 
 
 This is what had happened : Three hours before 
 daybreak on January 26th the Arabs made a final 
 assault upon the lines. Of the details of this last attack 
 we know very little. We know that the sight of the 
 wounded from the battle of Abu Klea, who had been 
 brought to the camp of the Mahdi, produced a profound 
 effect upon the Baggara and other fighting tribes of the 
 army. These men, inflamed at the appearance of their 
 stricken comrades, loudly demanded to be led at once 
 against the city. The attack, delivered under a chosen 
 leader in the darkest hour of the early morning, was 
 directed against the lines near the gates of Bourr6 
 and Mesalamieh. On this morning of Monday, Janu- 
 ary 26th, the moon, just past its first quarter, set at 
 one o'clock. From that hour until the earliest dawn 
 profound darkness wrapped the dying city and the 
 hostile camps. It is certain that the Arabs, as they 
 approached the ramparts, were met by the feeblest 
 resistance. Hunger had now brought to the lowest 
 point the spirit of a garrison never strong, but whether 
 actual treachery added its black help to famine, or 
 whether the wretched soldiery fell back from the 
 parapets in panic before the first onset of the enemy, 
 will probably never be accurately known. Once the 
 lines were gained by the Arabs, the city lay at the 
 
IX DEATH OF GORDON 251 
 
 mercy of its assailants. Shortly before daybreak they 
 api:)ear to have advanced cautiously into the town, and 
 as the winter dawn was breaking they reached the 
 neighbourhood of the palace. Here, certain that the 
 entire city was now in their possession, they gave 
 vent to those shrill shouts of triumph with which the 
 soldiers of Islam celebrate victory. It was at this 
 hour, just as day was breaking, that Gordon, roused 
 from one of those short and troubled slumbers which for 
 months had been his only •■ rest, quitted the palace and 
 moved, at the head of a small party of soldiers and 
 servants, towards the Church of the Austrian Mission. 
 This building lay to the east pf the palace, from which 
 it was separated by an open space of ground. Some 
 months earlier the church had been made the reserve 
 magazine of the town; the surrounding houses were 
 cleared from its vicinity, and it had been silently selected 
 as the spot where a last desperate resistance might be 
 maintained if ever the final moment of the defence of 
 Khartoum should arrive. 
 
 That supreme moment had now indeed come. 
 
 Walking a few yards in advance of his party, which 
 did not number more than twenty men, Gordon drew 
 near the church. The short and mysterious dawn of 
 the desert was passing into broader day — over the 
 palm trees on the edge of the Blue Nile the eastern 
 sky was flushed with the red of the coming sun. From 
 the lost town, still lying in shadow to the right, the 
 shouts of a victorious enemy and the cries of a perishing 
 people rose in deeper volume of sound. Ere yet the 
 little band of footmen had crossed the open space 
 
252 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON chap. 
 
 between palace and church, a body of Arabs issued 
 from a neighbouring street. For a moment the two 
 parties stood almost face to face, then a volley of 
 musketry flashed out at close range, in the yet uncertain 
 light, and the bravest and noblest soldier of our time 
 was no more. 
 
 Thus fell in dark hour of defeat a man as unselfish 
 as Sidney, of courage dauntless as Wolfe, of honour 
 stainless as Outram, of sympathy wide -reaching as 
 Drummond, of honesty straightforward as Napier, of 
 faith as steadfast as More. Doubtful indeed is it if 
 anywhere in the past we shall find figure of knight or 
 soldier to equal him, for sometimes it is the sword of 
 death that gives to life its real knighthood, and too,often 
 the soldier's end is unworthy of his knightly life ; but 
 with Gordon the harmony of life and death was com- 
 plete, and the closing scenes seem to move to their 
 fulfilment in solemn hush, as though an unseen power 
 watched over the sequence of their sorrow. 
 
 Not by the blind hazard of chance was this great 
 tragedy consummated ; not by the discord of men or 
 from the vague opposition of physical obstacle, by fault 
 of route or length of delay, was help denied to him. 
 The picture of a wonderful life had to be made perfect 
 by heroic death. The moral had to be cut deep, and 
 written red, and hung high, so that its lesson could be 
 seen by all men above strife and doubt and discord. 
 Nay, the very setting of the final scenes has to be 
 wrought out in such contrast of colour that the dullest 
 eye shall be able to read the meaning of it all. For 
 many a year back this soldier's life has been a protest 
 
IX THE LESSON OF HIS LIFE 253 
 
 against our most cherished teaching. Faith is weakness, 
 we have said. He will show us it is strength. Eeward 
 is the right of service. Publicity is true fame. Let us 
 go into action with a newspaper-correspondent riding at 
 our elbow, or sitting in the cabin of the ship, has been 
 our practice. He has told us that the race should be for 
 honour, not for " honours," that we should " give away 
 our medal," and that courage and humility, mercy and 
 strength, should march hand in hand together. For 
 many a year we have had no room for him in our 
 councils. Our armies knew him not ; and it was only in 
 semi-savage lands and in the service of remote empires 
 he could find scope for his genius. Now our councils 
 will be shamed in his service, and our armies will find 
 no footing in our efforts to reach him. We have said 
 that the Providence of God was only a calculation of 
 chances ; now for eleven months the amazing spectacle 
 will be presented to the world of this solitary soldier 
 standing at bay, within thirty days' travel of the centre 
 of Empire, while the most powerful kingdom on the 
 earth — the nation whose wealth is as the sands of the 
 sea, whose boast is that the sun never sets upon its 
 dominions — is unable to reach him — saving, lie does not 
 want — but is unable to reach him even with one message 
 of regret for past forgetfulness. 
 
 No; there is something more in all this than mis- 
 take of Executive, or strife of party, or error of Cabinet, 
 or fault of men can explain. The purpose of this life 
 that has been, the lesson of this death that must be, is 
 vaster and deeper than these things. The decrees of 
 God are as fixed to-day as they were two thousand 
 
254 LIFE OF CHARLES GEORGE GORDON char 
 
 years ago, but they can be worked to their conckision 
 by the weakness of men as well as by the strength of 
 angels. 
 
 There is a gray frontlet of rock far away in Strath- 
 spey — once the Gordons' home — whose name in bygone 
 times gave a rallying -call to a kindred clan. The 
 scattered firs and wind-swept heather on the lone 
 summit of Craig EUachie once whispered in Highland 
 clansmen's ear the war-cry, *' Stand fast ! Craig Ellachie." 
 Many a year has gone by since kith of Charles Gordon 
 last heard from Highland hilltop the signal of battle, 
 but never in Celtic hero's long record of honour has such 
 answer been sent back to Highland or to Lowland as 
 when this great heart stopped its beating, and lay ^' stead- 
 fast unto death " in the dawn at Khartoum. The winds 
 that moan through the pine trees on Craig Ellachie have 
 far-off meanings in their voices. Perhaps on that dark 
 January night there came a breath from heaven to 
 whisper to the old Highland rock, " He stood fast ! 
 Craig Ellachie." 
 
 The dust of Gordon is not laid in English earth, nor 
 does even the ocean, which has been named Britannia's 
 realm, hold in " its vast and wandering grave " the bones 
 of her latest hero. Somewhere, far out in the immense 
 desert whose sands so often gave him rest in life, or by 
 the shores of that river which was the scene of so much 
 of his labour, his ashes now add their wind-swept atoms 
 to the mighty waste of the Soudan. But if England, 
 still true to the long line of her martyrs to duty, keep 
 his memory precious in her heart — making of him no 
 
HIS GRAVE 255 
 
 false idol of pride or brazen image of glory, but holding 
 him as he was, the mirror and measure of true knight- 
 hood — then better than in effigy or epitaph will his life 
 be written, and his nameless tomb become a citadel to 
 his nation. 
 
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