KHARTOUM

Before entering on the events of this crowning passage in the career of this hero, I think the reader might well consider on its threshold the exact nature of the adventure undertaken by Gordon as if it were a sort of everyday experience and duty. At the commencement of the year 1884 the military triumph of the Mahdi was as complete as it could be throughout the Soudan. Khartoum was still held by a force of between 4000 and 6000 men. Although not known, all the other garrisons in the Nile Valley, except Kassala and Sennaar, both near the Abyssinian frontier, had capitulated, and the force at Khartoum would certainly have offered no resistance if the Mahdi had advanced immediately after the defeat of Hicks. Even if he had reached Khartoum before the arrival of Gordon, it is scarcely doubtful that the place would have fallen without fighting. Colonel de Coetlogon was in command, but the troops had no faith in him, and he had no confidence in them. That officer, on 9th January, “telegraphed to the Khedive, strongly urging an immediate withdrawal from Khartoum. He said that one-third of the garrison are unreliable, and that even if it were twice as strong as it is, it would not hold Khartoum against the whole country.” In several subsequent telegrams Colonel de Coetlogon importuned the Cairo authorities to send him authority to leave with the garrison, and on the very day that the Government finally decided to despatch Gordon he telegraphed that there was only just enough time left to escape to Berber. While the commandant held and expressed these views, it is not surprising that the garrison and inhabitants were disheartened and decidedly unfit to make any resolute opposition to a confident and daring foe. There is excellent independent testimony as to the state of public feeling in the town.

Mr Frank Power had been residing in Khartoum as correspondent of The Times from August 1883, and in December, after the Hicks catastrophe, he was appointed Acting British Consul. In a letter written on 12th January he said: “They have done nothing for us yet from Cairo. They are leaving it all to fate, and the rebels around us are growing stronger!” Such was the general situation at Khartoum when General Gordon was ordered, almost single-handed, to save it; and not merely to rescue its garrison, pronounced by its commander to be partly unreliable and wholly inadequate, but other garrisons scattered throughout the regions held by the Mahdi and his victorious legions. A courageous man could not have been charged with cowardice if he had shrunk back from such a forlorn hope, and declined to take on his shoulders the responsibility that properly devolved on the commander on the spot. A prudent man would at least have insisted that his instructions should be clear, and that the part his Government and country were to play was to be as strictly defined and as obligatory on them as his own. But while Gordon’s courage was of such a quality that I believe no calculation of odds or difficulties ever entered into his view, his prudence never possessed the requisite amount of suspicion to make him provide against the contingencies of absolute betrayal by those who sent him, or of that change in party convenience and tactics which induced those who first thought his mission most advantageous as solving a difficulty, or at least putting off a trouble, to veer round to the conclusion that his remaining at Khartoum, his honourable but rigid resolve not to return without the people he went to save, was a distinct breach of contract, and a serious offence.

The state of feeling at Khartoum was one verging on panic. The richest townsmen had removed their property and families to Berber. Colonel de Coetlogon had the river boats with steam up ready to commence the evacuation, and while everyone thought that the place was doomed, the telegraph instrument was eagerly watched for the signal to begin the flight. The tension could not have lasted much longer without the signal the flight would have begun when on 24th January the brief message arrived: “General Gordon is coming to Khartoum.” The effect of that message was electrical. The panic ceased, confidence was restored, the apathy of the Cairo authorities became a matter of no importance, for England had sent her greatest name as a pledge of her intended action, and the unreliable and insufficient garrison pulled itself together for one of the most honourable and brilliant defences in the annals of military sieges. Yet it was full time. Two months had been wasted, and, as Mr Power said, “the fellows in Lucknow did not look more anxiously for Colin Campbell than we are looking for Gordon.” Gordon, ever mindful of the importance of time, and fully impressed with the sense of how much had been lost by delay, did not let the grass grow under his feet, and after his two days’ delay at Cairo sent a message that he hoped to reach Khartoum in eighteen days. Mr Power’s comment on that message is as follows: “Twenty-four days is the shortest time from Cairo to Khartoum on record; Gordon says he will be here in eighteen days; but he travels like a whirlwind.” As a matter of fact, Gordon took twenty days’ travelling, besides the two days he passed at Berber. He thus reached Khartoum on 18th February, and four days later Colonel de Coetlogon started for Cairo.

The entry of Gordon into Khartoum was marked by a scene of indescribable enthusiasm and public confidence. The whole population, men, women, and children, turned out to welcome him as a conqueror and a deliverer, although he really came in his own person merely to cope with a desperate situation. The women threw themselves on the ground and struggled to kiss his feet; in the confusion Gordon was several times pushed down; and this remarkable demonstration of popular confidence and affection was continued the whole way from the landing-place to the Hukumdaria or Palace. This greeting was the more remarkable because it was clear that Gordon had brought no troops only one white officer and it soon became known that he had brought no money. Even the Mahdi himself made his contribution to the general tribute, by sending General Gordon on his arrival a formal salaam or message of respect. Thus hailed on all hands as the one pre-eminently good man who had been associated with the Soudan, Gordon addressed himself to the hard task he had undertaken, which had been rendered almost hopeless of achievement by the lapse of time, past errors, and the blindness of those who should have supported him.

Difficult as it had been all along, it was rendered still more difficult by the decisive defeat of Baker Pasha and an Egyptian force of 4000 men at Tokar, near Souakim. This victory was won by Osman Digma, who had been sent by the Mahdi to rouse up the Eastern Soudan at the time of the threatened Hicks expedition. The result showed that the Mahdi had discovered a new lieutenant of great military capacity and energy, and that the Eastern Soudan was for the time as hopelessly lost to Egypt as Kordofan and Darfour.

The first task to which Gordon addressed himself was to place Khartoum and the detached work at Omdurman on the left bank of the White Nile in a proper state of defence, and he especially supervised the establishment of telegraphic communication between the Palace and the many outworks, so that at a moment’s notice he might receive word of what was happening. His own favourite position became the flat roof of this building, whence with his glass he could see round for many miles. He also laid in considerable stores of provisions by means of his steamers, in which he placed the greatest faith. In all these matters he was ably and energetically assisted by Colonel Stewart; and beyond doubt the other Europeans took some slight share in the incessant work of putting Khartoum in a proper state of defence; but even with this relief, the strain, increased by constant alarms of the Mahdi’s hostile approach, was intense, and Mr Power speaks of Gordon as nearly worn out with work before he had been there a month.

When Gordon went to the Soudan his principal object was to effect the evacuation of the country, and to establish there some administration which would be answerable for good order and good neighbourship. If the Mahdi had been a purely secular potentate, and not a fanatical religious propagandist, it would have been a natural and feasible arrangement to have come to terms with him as the conqueror of the country. But the basis of the Mahdi’s power forbade his being on terms with anyone. If he had admitted the equal rights of Egypt and the Khedive at any point, there would have been an end to his heavenly mission, and the forces he had created out of the simple but deep-rooted religious feelings of the Mahommedan clans of the Soudan would soon have vanished. It is quite possible that General Gordon had in his first views on the Mahdist movement somewhat undervalued the forces created by that fanaticism, and that the hopes and opinions he first expressed were unduly optimistic. If so, it must be allowed that he lost not a moment in correcting them, and within a week of his arrival at Khartoum he officially telegraphed to Cairo, that “if Egypt is to be quiet the Mahdi must be smashed up.”

When the British Government received that message, as they did in a few days, with, moreover, the expression of supporting views by Sir Evelyn Baring, they ought to have reconsidered the whole question of the Gordon mission, and to have defined their own policy. The representative they had sent on an exceptional errand to relieve and bring back a certain number of distressed troops, and to arrange if he could for the formation of a new government through the notabilities and ancient families, reports at an early stage of his mission that in his opinion there is no solution of the difficulty, save by resorting to offensive measures against the Mahdi as the disturber of the peace, not merely for that moment, but as long as he had to discharge the divine task implied by his title. As it was of course obvious that Gordon single-handed could not take the field, the conclusion necessarily followed that he would require troops, and the whole character of his task would thus have been changed. In face of that absolute volte-face, from a policy of evacuation and retreat to one of retention and advance, for that is what it signified, the Government would have been justified in recalling Gordon, but as they did not do so, they cannot plead ignorance of his changed opinion, or deny that, at the very moment he became acquainted with the real state of things at Khartoum, he hastened to convey to them his decided conviction that the only way out of the difficulty was to “smash up the Mahdi.”

All his early messages show that there had been a change, or at least a marked modification, in his opinions. At Khartoum he saw more clearly than in Cairo or in London the extreme gravity of the situation, and the consequences to the tranquillity of Lower Egypt that would follow from the abandonment of Khartoum to the Mahdi. He therefore telegraphed on the day of his arrival these words: “To withdraw without being able to place a successor in my seat would be the signal for general anarchy throughout the country, which, though all Egyptian element were withdrawn, would be a misfortune, and inhuman.” In the same message he repeated his demand for the services of Zebehr, through whom, as has been shown, he thought he might be able to cope with the Mahdi. Yet their very refusal to comply with that reiterated request should have made the authorities more willing and eager to meet the other applications and suggestion of a man who had thrust himself into a most perilous situation at their bidding, and for the sake of the reputation of his country. It must be recorded with feelings of shame that it had no such effect, and that apathy and indifference to the fate of its gallant agent were during the first few months the only characteristics of the Government policy.

At the same period all Gordon’s telegrams and despatches showed that he wanted reinforcements to some small extent, and at least military demonstrations along his line of communication with Egypt to prove that he possessed the support of his Government, and that he had only to call upon it to send troops, and they were there to come. He, naturally enough, treated as ridiculous the suggestion that he had bound himself to do the whole work without any support; and fully convinced that he had only to summon troops for them to be sent him in the moderate strength he alone cared for, he issued a proclamation in Khartoum, stating that “British troops are now on their way, and in a few days will reach Khartoum.” He therefore begged for the despatch of a small force to Wady Halfa, and he went on to declare that it would be “comparatively easy to destroy the Mahdi” if 200 British troops were sent to Wady Halfa, and if the Souakim-Berber route were opened up by Indian-Moslem troops. Failing the adoption of these measures, he asked leave to raise a sum, by appealing to philanthropists, sufficient to pay a small Turkish force and carry on a contest for supremacy with the Mahdi on his own behoof. All these suggestions were more or less supported by Sir Evelyn Baring, who at last suggested in an important despatch, dated 28th February, that the British Government should withdraw altogether from the matter, and “give full liberty of action to General Gordon and the Khedive’s Government to do what seems best to them.”

Well would it have been for Gordon and everyone whose reputation was concerned if this step had been taken, for the Egyptian Government, the Khedive, his ministers Nubar and Cherif, were opposed to all surrender, and desired to hold on to Khartoum and the Souakim-Berber route. But without the courage and resolution to discharge it, the Government saw the obligation that lay on them to provide for the security and good government of Egypt, and that if they shirked responsibility in the Soudan, the independence of Egypt might be accomplished by its own effort and success. They perceived the objections to giving Egypt a free hand, but they none the less abstained from taking the other course of definite and decisive action on their own initiative. As Gordon quickly saw and tersely expressed: “You will not let Egypt keep the Soudan, you will not take it yourself, and you will not permit any other country to occupy it.”

As if to give emphasis to General Gordon’s successive requests Zebehr, 200 men to Wady Halfa, opening of route from Souakim to Berber, presence of English officers at Dongola, and of Indian cavalry at Berber telegraphic communication with Khartoum was interrupted early in March, less than a fortnight after Gordons arrival in the town. There was consequently no possible excuse for anyone ignoring the dangerous position in which General Gordon was placed. He had gone to face incalculable dangers, but now the success of Osman Digma and the rising of the riparian tribes threatened him with that complete isolation which no one had quite expected at so early a stage after his arrival. It ought, and one would have expected it, to have produced an instantaneous effect, to have braced the Government to the task of deciding what its policy should be when challenged by its own representative to declare it. Gordon himself soon realised his own position, for he wrote: I shall be caught in Khartoum; and even if I was mean enough to escape I have not the power to do so. After a months interruption he succeeded in getting the following message, dated 8th April, through, which is significant as showing that he had abandoned all hope of being supported by his own Government:

“I have telegraphed to Sir Samuel Baker to make an appeal to British and American millionaires to give me L300,000 to engage 3000 Turkish troops from the Sultan and send them here. This would settle the Soudan and Mahdi for ever. For my part, I think you (Baring) will agree with me. I do not see the fun of being caught here to walk about the streets for years as a dervish with sandalled feet. Not that (D.V.) I will ever be taken alive. It would be the climax of meanness after I had borrowed money from the people here, had called on them to sell their grain at a low price, etc., to go and abandon them without using every effort to relieve them, whether those efforts are diplomatically correct or not; and I feel sure, whatever you may feel diplomatically, I have your support, and that of every man professing himself a gentleman, in private.”

Eight days later he succeeded in getting another message through, to the following effect:

“As far as I can understand, the situation is this. You state your intention of not sending any relief up here or to Berber, and you refuse me Zebehr. I consider myself free to act according to circumstances. I shall hold on here as long as I can, and if I can suppress the rebellion I shall do so. If I cannot, I shall retire to the Equator and leave you the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons of Senaar, Kassala, Berber, and Dongola, with the certainty that you will eventually be forced to smash up the Mahdi under greater difficulties if you wish to maintain peace in, and, indeed, to retain Egypt.”

Before a silence of five and a half months fell over Khartoum, Gordon had been able to make three things clear, and of these only one could be described as having a personal signification, and that was that the Government, by rejecting all his propositions, had practically abandoned him to his fate. The two others were that any settlement would be a work of time, and that no permanent tranquillity could be attained without overcoming the Mahdi.

Immediately on arriving at Khartoum he perceived that the evacuation of the Soudan, with safety to the garrison and officials, as well as the preservation of the honour of England and Egypt, would necessarily be a work of time, and only feasible if certain measures were taken in his support, which, considerable as they may have appeared at the moment, were small and costless in comparison with those that had subsequently to be sanctioned. Six weeks sufficed to show Gordon that he would get no material help from the Government, and he then began to look elsewhere for support, and to propound schemes for pacifying the Soudan and crushing the Mahdi in which England and the Government would have had no part. Hence his proposal to appeal to wealthy philanthropists to employ Turkish troops, and in the last resort to force his way to the Equator and the Congo. Even that avenue of safety was closed to him by the illusory prospect of rescue held out to him by the Government at the eleventh hour, when success was hardly attainable.

For the sake of clearness it will be well to give here a brief summary of the siege during the six months that followed the arrival of General Gordon and the departure of Colonel Stewart on 10th September. The full and detailed narrative is contained in Colonel Stewart’s Journal, which was captured on board his steamer. This interesting diary was taken to the Mahdi at Omdurman, and is said to be carefully preserved in the Treasury. The statement rests on no very sure foundation, but if true the work may yet thrill the audience of the English-speaking world. But even without its aid the main facts of the siege of Khartoum, down at all events to the 14th December, when Gordon’s own diary stops, are sufficiently well known for all the purposes of history.

At a very early stage of the siege General Gordon determined to try the metal of his troops, and the experiment succeeded to such a perfect extent that there was never any necessity to repeat it. On 16th March, when only irregular levies and detached bodies of tribesmen were in the vicinity of Khartoum, he sent out a force of nearly 1000 men, chiefly Bashi-Bazouks, but also some regulars, with a fieldpiece and supported by two steamers. The force started at eight in the morning, under the command of Colonel Stewart, and landed at Halfiyeh, some miles down the stream on the right bank of the Nile. Here the rebels had established a sort of fortified position, which it was desirable to destroy, if it could be done without too much loss. The troops were accordingly drawn up for the attack, and the gun and infantry fire commenced to cover the advance. At this moment about sixty rebel horsemen came out from behind the stockade and charged the Bashi-Bazouks, who fired one volley and fled. The horsemen then charged the infantry drawn up in square, which they broke, and the retreat to the river began at a run. Discouraging as this was for a force of all arms to retire before a few horsemen one-twentieth its number, the disaster was rendered worse and more disheartening by the conduct of the men, who absolutely refused to fight, marching along with shouldered arms without firing a shot, while the horsemen picked off all who straggled from the column. The gun, a considerable quantity of ammunition, and about sixty men represented the loss of Gordon’s force; the rebels are not supposed to have lost a single man. “Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men even on camels, pursuing close to troops who with shouldered arms plodded their way back.” Thus wrote Gordon of the men to whom he had to trust for a successful defence of Khartoum. His most recent experience confirmed his old opinion, that the Egyptian and Arab troops were useless even when fighting to save their own lives, and he could only rely on the very small body left of black Soudanese, who fought as gallantly for him as any troops could, and whose loyalty and devotion to him surpassed all praise. Treachery, it was assumed, had something to do with the easy overthrow of this force, and two Pashas were shot for misconduct on return to Khartoum.

Having no confidence in the bulk of his force, it is not surprising that Gordon resorted to every artifice within engineering science to compensate for the shortcomings of his army. He surrounded Khartoum which on one side was adequately defended by the Nile and his steamers on the remaining three sides with a triple line of land mines connected by wires. Often during the siege the Mahdists attempted to break through this ring, but only to meet with repulse, accompanied by heavy loss; and to the very last day of the siege they never succeeded in getting behind the third of these lines. Their efficacy roused Gordon’s professional enthusiasm, and in one passage he exclaims that these will be the general form of defence in the future. During the first months of the siege, which began rather in the form of a loose investment, the Nile was too low to allow of his using the nine steamers he possessed, but he employed the time in making two new ones, and in strengthening them all with bulwarks of iron plates and soft wood, which were certainly bullet-proof. Each of these steamers he valued as the equivalent of 2000 men. When it is seen how he employed them the value will not be deemed excessive, and certainly without them he could not have held Khartoum and baffled all the assaults of the Mahdi for the greater part of a year.

After this experience Gordon would risk no more combats on land, and on 25th March he dismissed 250 of the Bashi-Bazouks who had behaved so badly. Absolutely trustworthy statistics are not available as to the exact number of troops in Khartoum or as to the proportion the Black Soudanese bore to the Egyptians, but it approximates to the truth to say that there were about 1000 of the former to 3000 of the latter, and with other levies during the siege he doubled this total. For these and a civilian population of nearly 40,000 Gordon computed that he had provisions for five months from March, and that for at least two months he would be as safe as in Cairo. By carefully husbanding the corn and biscuit he was able to make the supply last much longer, and even to the very end he succeeded in partially replenishing the depleted granaries of the town. There is no necessity to repeat the details of the siege during the summer of 1884. They are made up of almost daily interchanges of artillery fire from the town, and of rifle fire in reply from the Arab lines. That this was not merely child’s play may be gathered from two of Gordon’s protected ships showing nearly a thousand bullet-marks apiece. Whenever the rebels attempted to force their way through the lines they were repulsed by the mines; and the steamers not only inflicted loss on their fighting men, but often succeeded in picking up useful supplies of food and grain. No further reverses were reported, because Gordon was most careful to avoid all risk, and the only misfortunes occurred in Gordon’s rear, when first Berber, through the treachery of the Greek Cuzzi, and then Shendy passed into the hands of the Mahdists, thus, as Gordon said, “completely hemming him in.” In April a detached force up the Blue Nile went over to the Mahdi, taking with them a small steamer, but this loss was of no great importance, as the men were of what Gordon called “the Arabi hen or hero type,” and the steamer could not force its way past Khartoum and its powerful flotilla. In the four months from 16th March to 30th July Gordon stated that the total loss of the garrison was only thirty killed and fifty or sixty wounded, while half a million cartridges had been fired against the enemy. The conduct of both the people and garrison had been excellent, and this was the more creditable, because Gordon was obliged from the very beginning, owing to the capture of the bullion sent him at Berber, to make all payments in paper money bearing his signature and seal. During that period the total reinforcement to the garrison numbered seven men, including Gordon himself, while over 2600 persons had been sent out of it in safety as far as Berber.

The reader will be interested in the following extracts from a letter written by Colonel Duncan, R.A., M.P., showing the remarkable way in which General Gordon organised the despatch of these refugees from Khartoum. The letter is dated 29th November 1886, and addressed to Miss Gordon:

“When your brother, on reaching Khartoum, found that he could commence sending refugees to Egypt, I was sent on the 3rd March 1884 to Assouan and Korosko to receive those whom he sent down. As an instance of your brother’s thoughtfulness, I may mention that he requested that, if possible, some motherly European woman might also be sent, as many of the refugees whom he had to send had never been out of the Soudan before, and might feel strange on reaching Egypt. A German, Giegler Pasha, who had been in Khartoum with your brother before, and who had a German wife, was accordingly placed at my disposal, and I stationed them at Korosko, where almost all the refugees arrived. I may mention that I saw and spoke to every one of the refugees who came down, and to many of the women and children. Their references to your brother were invariably couched in language of affection and gratitude, and the adjective most frequently applied to him was ‘just.’ In sending away the people from Khartoum, he sent away the Governor and some of the other leading Egyptian officials first. I think he suspected they would intrigue; he always had more confidence in the people than in the ruling Turks or Egyptians. The oldest soldiers, the very infirm, the wounded (from Hicks’s battles) were sent next, and a ghastly crew they were. But the precautions he took for their comfort were very complete, and although immediately before reaching me they had to cross a very bad part of the desert between Abou Hamed and Korosko, they reached me in wonderful spirits. It was touching to see the perfect confidence they had that the promises of Gordon Pasha would be fulfilled. After the fall of Khartoum, and your brother’s death, a good many of the Egyptian officers who had been with your brother managed to escape, and to come down the river disguised in many cases as beggars. I had an opportunity of talking to most of them, and there was no collusion, for they arrived at different times and by different roads. I remember having a talk with one, and when we alluded to your brother’s death he burst out crying like a child, and said that though he had lost his wives and children when Khartoum was taken, he felt it as nothing to the loss of ‘that just man.’”

The letters written at the end of July at Khartoum reached Cairo at the end of September, and their substance was at once telegraphed to England. They showed that, while his success had made him think that after all there might be some satisfactory issue of the siege, he foresaw that the real ordeal was yet to come. “In four months (that is end of November) river begins to fall; before that time you must settle the Soudan question.” So wrote the heroic defender of Khartoum in words that could not be misunderstood, and those words were in the hands of the British Ministers when half the period had expired. At the same time Mr Power wrote: “We can at best hold out but two months longer.” Gordon at least never doubted what their effect would be, for after what seemed to him a reasonable time had elapsed to enable this message to reach its destination, he took the necessary steps to recover Berber, and to send his steamers half-way to meet and assist the advance of the reinforcement on which he thought from the beginning he might surely rely.

On 10th September all his plans were completed, and Colonel Stewart, accompanied by a strong force of Bashi-Bazouks and some black soldiers, with Mr Power and M. Herbin, the French consul, sailed northwards on five steamers. The first task of this expedition was if possible, to retake Berber, or, failing that, to escort the Abbas past the point of greatest danger; the second, to convey the most recent news about Khartoum affairs to Lower Egypt; and the third was to lend a helping hand to any force that might be coming up the Nile or across the desert from the Red Sea. Five days after its departure Gordon knew through a spy that Stewart’s flotilla had passed Shendy in safety, and had captured a valuable Arab convoy. It was not till November that the truth was known how the ships bombarded Berber, and passed that place not only in safety, but after causing the rebels much loss and greater alarm, and then how Stewart and his European companions went on in the small steamer Abbas to bear the tale of the wonderful defence of Khartoum to the outer world a defence which, wonderful as it was, really only reached the stage of the miraculous after they had gone and had no further part in it. So far as Gordon’s military skill and prevision could arrange for their safety, he did so, and with success. When the warships had to return he gave them the best advice against treachery or ambuscade: “Do not anchor near the bank, do not collect wood at isolated spots, trust nobody.” What more could Gordon say? If they had paid strict heed to his advice, there would have been no catastrophe at Dar Djumna. These reflections invest with much force Gordon’s own view of the matter: “If Abbas was captured by treachery, then I am not to blame; neither am I to blame if she struck a rock, for she drew under two feet of water; if they were attacked and overpowered, then I am to blame.” So perfect were his arrangements that only treachery, aided by Stewart’s over-confidence, baffled them.

With regard to the wisdom of the course pursued in thus sending away all his European colleagues the Austrian consul Hensall alone refusing to quit Gordon and his place of duty opinions will differ to the end of time, but one is almost inclined to say that they could not have been of much service to Gordon once their uppermost thought became to quit Khartoum. The whole story is told very graphically in a passage of Gordons own diary:

“I determined to send the Abbas down with an Arab captain. 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 cannot go; but if you go you do 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 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 in honour. You can go in honour, for you can do nothing here; and if you go you do me service in telegraphing my views.’”

There are two points in this matter to which I must draw marked attention. The suggestion for any European leaving Khartoum came from M. Herbin, and when Gordon willingly acquiesced, Colonel Stewart asked leave to do likewise. Mr Power, whose calculation was that provisions would be exhausted before the end of September, then followed suit, and not one of these three of the five Europeans in Khartoum seem to have thought for a moment what would be the position of Gordon left alone to cope with the danger from which they ran away. The suggestion as to their going came in every case from themselves. Gordon, in his thought for others, not merely threw no obstacle in their way, but as far as he could provided for their safety as if they were a parcel of women. But he declined all responsibility for their fate, as they went not by his order but of their own free-will. He gave them his ships, soldiers, and best counsel. They neglected the last, and were taken in in a manner that showed less than a child’s suspicion, and were massacred at the very moment they felt sure of safety. It was a cruel fate, and a harsh Nemesis speedily befell them for doing perhaps the one unworthy thing of their lives leaving their solitary companion to face the tenfold dangers by which he would be beset. But it cannot be allowed any longer that the onus of this matter should rest in any way on Gordon. They went because they wanted to go, and he, knowing well that men with such thoughts would be of no use to him ("you can do nothing here”) let them go, and even encouraged them to do so. Under the circumstances he preferred to be alone. Colonel Donald Stewart was a personal friend of mine, and a man whose courage in the ordinary sense of the word could not be aspersed, but there cannot be two opinions that he above all the others should not have left his brother-in-arms alone in Khartoum.

After their departure Gordon had to superintend everything himself, and to resort to every means of husbanding the limited supply of provisions he had left. He had also to anticipate a more vigorous attack, for the Mahdi must quickly learn of the departure of the steamers, the bombardment of Berber, and the favourable chance thus provided for the capture of Khartoum. Nor was this the worst, for on the occurrence of the disaster the Mahdi was promptly informed of the loss of the Abbas and the murder of the Europeans, and it was he himself who sent in to Gordon the news of the catastrophe, with so complete a list of the papers on the Abbas as left no ground for hope or disbelief. Unfortunately, before this bad news reached Gordon, he had again, on 30th September, sent down to Shendy three steamers the Talataween, the Mansourah, and Saphia, with troops on board, and the gallant Cassim-el-Mousse, there to await the arrival of the relieving force. He somewhat later reinforced this squadron with the Bordeen; and although one or two of these boats returned occasionally to Khartoum, the rest remained permanently at Shendy, and when the English troops reached the Nile opposite that place all five were waiting them. Without entering too closely into details, it is consequently correct to say that during the most critical part of the siege Gordon deprived himself of the co-operation of these vessels, each of which he valued at 2000 men, simply and solely because he believed that reinforcements were close at hand, and that some troops at the latest would arrive before the end of November 1884. As Gordon himself repeatedly said, it would have been far more just if the Government had told him in March, when he first demanded reinforcements as a right, that he must shift for himself. Then he would have kept these boats by him, and triumphantly fought his way in them to the Equator. But his trust in the Government, notwithstanding all his experience, led him to weaken his own position in the hope of facilitating their movements, and he found their aid a broken reed. In only one passage of his journal does Gordon give expression to this view, although it was always present to his mind: “Truly the indecision of our Government has been, from a military point of view, a very great bore, for we never could act as if independent; there was always the chance of their taking action, which hampered us.” But in the telegrams to Sir Evelyn Baring and Mr Egerton, which the Government never dared to publish, and which are still an official secret, he laid great stress on this point, and on Sir Evelyn Baring’s message forbidding him to retire to the Equator, so that, if he sought safety in that direction, he would be indictable on a charge of desertion.

The various positions at Khartoum held by Gordon’s force may be briefly described. First, the town itself, on the left bank of the Blue Nile, but stretching almost across to the right bank of the White Nile, protected on the land side by a wall, in front of which was the triple line of mines, and on the water side by the river and the steamers. On the right bank of the Blue Nile was the small North Fort. Between the two stretched the island of Tuti, and at each end of the wall, on the White Nile as well as the Blue, Gordon had stationed a santal or heavy-armed barge, carrying a gun. Unfortunately, a large part of the western end of the Khartoum wall had been washed away by an inundation of the Nile, but the mines supplied a substitute, and so long as Omdurman Fort was held this weakness in the defences of Khartoum did not greatly signify. That fort itself lay on the left bank of the White Nile. It was well built and fairly strong, but the position was faulty. It lay in a hollow, and the trench of the extensive camp formed for Hicks’s force furnished the enemy with cover. It was also 1200 yards from the river bank, and when the enemy became more enterprising it was impossible to keep up communication with it. In Omdurman Fort was a specially selected garrison of 240 men, commanded by a gallant black officer, Ferratch or Faragalla Pasha, who had been raised from a subordinate capacity to the principal command under him by Gordon. Gordon’s point of observation was the flat roof of the Palace, whence he could see everything with his telescope, and where he placed his best shots to bear on any point that might seem hard pressed. Still more useful was it for the purpose of detecting the remissness of his own troops and officers, and often his telescope showed him sentries asleep at their posts, and officers absent from the points they were supposed to guard.

From the end of March until the close of the siege scarcely a day passed without the exchange of artillery and rifle fire on one side or the other of the beleaguered town. On special occasions the Khedive’s garrison would fire as many as forty or even fifty thousand rounds of Remington cartridges, and the Arab fire was sometimes heavier. This incessant fire, as the heroic defender wrote in his journal, murdered sleep, and at last he became so accustomed to it that he could tell by the sound where the firing was taking place. The most distant points of the defence, such as the santal on the White Nile and Fort Omdurman, were two miles from the Palace; and although telegraphic communication existed with them during the greater part of the siege, the oral evidence as to the point of attack was often found the most rapid means of obtaining information. This was still more advantageous after the 12th of November, for on that day communications were cut between Khartoum and Omdurman, and it was found impossible to restore them. The only communications possible after that date were by bugle and flag. At the time of this severance Gordon estimated that the garrison of Omdurman had enough water and biscuit for six weeks, and that there were 250,000 cartridges in the arsenal. Gordon did everything in his power to aid Ferratch in the defence, and his remaining steamer, the Ismailia, after the grounding of the Husseinyeh on the very day Omdurman was cut off, was engaged in almost daily encounters with the Mahdists for that purpose. Owing to Gordon’s incessant efforts, and the gallantry of the garrison led by Ferratch, Omdurman held out more than two months. It was not until 15th January that Ferratch, with Gordon’s leave, surrendered, and then when the Mahdists occupied the place, General Gordon had the satisfaction of shelling them out of it, and showing that it was untenable.

The severance of Omdurman from Khartoum was the prelude to fiercer fighting than had taken place at any time during the earlier stages of the siege, and although particulars are not obtainable for the last month of the period, there is no doubt that the struggle was incessant, and that the fighting was renewed from day to day. It was then that Gordon missed the ships lying idle at Shendy. If he had had them Omdurman would not have fallen, nor would it have been so easy for the Mahdi to transport the bulk of his force from the left to the right bank of the White Nile, as he did for the final assault on the fatal 26th January.

At the end of October the Mahdi, accompanied by a far more numerous force than Gordon thought he could raise, described by Slatin as countless, pitched his camp a few miles south of Omdurman. On 8th November his arrival was celebrated by a direct attack on the lines south of Khartoum. The rebels in their fear of the hidden mines, which was far greater than it need have been, as it was found they had been buried too deep, resorted to the artifice of driving forward cows, and by throwing rockets among them Gordon had the satisfaction of spreading confusion in their ranks, repulsing the attack, and capturing twenty of the animals. Four days later the rebels made the desperate attack on Omdurman, when, as stated, communications were cut, and the Husseinyeh ran aground. In attempting to carry her off and to check the further progress of the rebels the Ismailia was badly hit, and the incident was one of those only too frequent at all stages of the siege, when Gordon wrote: “Every time I hear the gun fire I have a twitch of the heart of gnawing anxiety for my penny steamers.” At the very moment that these fights were in progress he wrote, 10th November: “To-day is the day I expected we should have had some one of the Expedition here;” and he also recorded that we “have enough biscuit for a month or so” meaning at the outside six weeks. Throughout the whole of November rumours of a coming British Expedition were prevalent, but they were of the vaguest and most contradictory character. On 25th November Gordon learnt that it was still at Ambukol, 185 miles further away from Khartoum than he had expected, and his only comment under this acute disappointment was, “This is lively!”

Up to the arrival of the Mahdi daily desertions of his Arab and other soldiers to Gordon took place, and by these and levies among the townspeople all gaps in the garrison were more than filled up. Such was the confidence in Gordon that it more than neutralised all the intrigues of the Mahdis agents in the besieged town, and scarcely a man during the first seven months of the siege deserted him; but after the arrival of the Mahdi there was a complete change in this respect. In the first place there were no more desertions to Gordon, and then men began to leave him, partly, no doubt, from fear of the Mahdi, or awakened fanaticism, but chiefly through the non-arrival of the British Expedition, which had been so much talked about, yet which never came. Still to all the enemys invitations to surrender on the most honourable terms Gordon gave defiant answers. I am here like iron, and I hope to see the newly-arrived English; and when the situation had become little short of desperate, at the end of the year, he still, with bitter agony at his heart, proudly rejected all overtures, and sent the haughty message: Can hold Khartoum for twelve years. Unfortunately the Mahdi knew better. He had read the truth in all the papers captured on Stewarts steamer, and he knew that Gordons resources were nearly spent. Even some of the messages Gordon sent out by spies for Lord Wolseleys information fell into his hands, and on one of these Slatin says it was written: Can hold Khartoum at the outside till the end of January. Although Gordon may be considered to have more than held his own against all the power of the Mahdi down to the capture of Omdurman Fort on 15th January, the Mahdi knew that his straits must be desperate, and that unless the expedition arrived he could not hold out much longer. The first advance of the English troops on 3rd January across the desert towards the Nile probably warned the enemy that now was the time to renew the attack with greater vigour, but it does not seem that there is any justification for the entirely hypothetical view that at any point the Mahdi could have seized the unhappy town. Omdurman Fort itself fell, not to the desperate onset of his Ghazis, but from the want of food and ammunition, and with Gordons expressed permission to the commandant to surrender. Unfortunately the details of the most tragic part of the siege are missing, but Gordon himself well summed up what he had done up to the end of October when his position was secure, and aid, as he thought, was close at hand:

“The news of Hicks’s defeat was known in Cairo three weeks after the event occurred; since that date up to this (29th October 1884) nine people have come up as reinforcements myself, Stewart, Herbin, Hussein, Tongi, Ruckdi, and three servants, and not one penny of money. Of those who came up two, Stewart and Herbin, have gone down, Hussein is dead; so six alone remain, while we must have sent down over 1500 and 700 soldiers, total 2200, including the two Pashas, Coetlogon, etc. The regulars, who were in arrears of pay for three months when I came, are now only owed half a month, while the Bashi-Bazouks are owed only a quarter month, and we have some L500 in the Treasury. It is quite a miracle. We have lost two battles, suffering severe losses in these actions of men and arms, and may have said to have scrambled through, for I cannot say we can lay claim to any great success during the whole time. I believe we have more ammunition (Remington) and more soldiers now than when I came up. We have L40,000 in Treasury in paper and L500. When I came up there was L5000 in Treasury. We have L15,000 out in the town in paper money.”

At the point (14th December) when the authentic history of the protracted siege and gallant defence of Khartoum stops, a pause may be made to turn back and describe what the Government and country which sent General Gordon on his most perilous mission, and made use of his extraordinary devotion to the call of duty to extricate themselves from a responsibility they had not the courage to face, had been doing not merely to support their envoy, but to vindicate their own honour. The several messages which General Gordon had succeeded in getting through had shown how necessary some reinforcement and support were at the very commencement of the siege. The lapse of time, rendered the more expressive by the long period of silence that fell over what was taking place in the besieged town, showed, beyond need of demonstration, the gravity of the case and the desperate nature of the situation. But a very little of the knowledge at the command of the Government from a number of competent sources would have enabled it to foresee what was certain to happen, and to have provided some remedy for the peril long before the following despairing message from Gordon showed that the hour when any aid would be useful had almost expired. This was the passage, dated 13th December, in the last (sixth) volume of the Journal, but the substance of which reached Lord Wolseley by one of Gordons messengers at Korti on 31st December:

“We are going to send down the Bordeen the day after to-morrow, and with her I shall send this Journal. If some effort is not made before ten days’ time the town will fall. It is inexplicable this delay. If the Expeditionary forces have reached the river and met my steamers, one hundred men are all that we require just to show themselves.... Even if the town falls under the nose of the Expeditionary forces it will not in my opinion justify the abandonment of Senaar and Kassala, or of the Equatorial Province by H.M.’s Government. All that is absolutely necessary is for fifty of the Expeditionary force to get on board a steamer and come up to Halfiyeh, and thus let their presence be felt. This is not asking much, but it must happen at once, or it will (as usual) be too late.”

The motives which induced Mr Gladstone’s Government to send General Gordon to the Soudan in January 1884 were, as has been clearly shown, the selfish desire to appease public opinion, and to shirk in the easiest possible manner a great responsibility. They had no policy at all, but they had one supreme wish, viz. to cut off the Soudan from Egypt; and if the Mahdi had only known their wishes and pressed on, and treated the Khartoum force as he had treated that under Hicks, there would have been no garrisons to rescue, and that British Government would have done nothing. It recked nothing of the grave dangers that would have accrued from the complete triumph of the Mahdi, or of the outbreak that must have followed in Lower Egypt if his tide of success had not been checked as it was single-handed by General Gordon, through the twelve months’ defence of Khartoum. Still it could not quite stoop to the dishonour of abandoning these garrisons, and of making itself an accomplice to the Mahdi’s butcheries, nor could it altogether turn a deaf ear to the representations and remonstrances of even such a puppet prince as the Khedive Tewfik. England was then far more mistress of the situation at Cairo than she is now, but a helpless refusal to discharge her duty might have provoked Europe into action at the Porte that would have proved inconvenient and damaging to her position and reputation. Therefore the Government fell back on General Gordon, and the hope was even indulged that, under his exceptional reputation, the evacuation of the Soudan might not only be successfully carried out, but that his success might induce the public and the world to accept that abnegation of policy as the acme of wisdom. In all this they were destined to a complete awakening, and the only matter of surprise is that they should have sent so well-known a character as General Gordon, whose independence and contempt for official etiquette and restraint were no secrets at the Foreign and War Offices, on a mission in which they required him not only to be as indifferent to the national honour as they were, but also to be tied and restrained by the shifts and requirements of an embarrassed executive.

At a very early stage of the mission the Government obtained evidence that Gordon’s views on the subject were widely different from theirs. They had evidently persuaded themselves that their policy was Gordon’s policy; and before he was in Khartoum a week he not merely points out that the evacuation policy is not his but theirs, and that although he thinks its execution is still possible, the true policy is, “if Egypt is to be quiet, that the Mahdi must be smashed up.” The hopes that had been based on Gordon’s supposed complaisance in the post of representative on the Nile of the Government policy were thus dispelled, and it became evident that Gordon, instead of being a tool, was resolved to be master, so far as the mode of carrying out the evacuation policy with full regard for the dictates of honour was to be decided. Nor was this all, or the worst of the revelations made to the Government in the first few weeks after his arrival at Khartoum. While expressing his willingness and intention to discharge the chief part of his task, viz. the withdrawal of the garrisons, which was all the Government cared about, he also descanted on the moral duty and the inevitable necessity of setting up a provisional government that should avert anarchy and impose some barrier to the Mahdi’s progress. All this was trying to those who only wished to be rid of the whole matter, but Gordon did not spare their feelings, and phrase by phrase he revealed what his own policy would be and what his inner wishes, however repressed his charge might keep them, really were.

Having told them that “the Mahdi must be smashed up,” he went on to say that “we cannot hurry over this affair” (the future of the Soudan) “if we do we shall incur disaster,” and again that, although “it is a miserable country it is joined to Egypt, and it would be difficult to divorce the two.” Within a very few weeks, therefore, the Government learnt that its own agent was the most forcible and damaging critic of the policy of evacuation, and that the worries of the Soudan question for an administration not resolute enough to solve the difficulty in a thorough manner were increased and not diminished by Gordon’s mission. At that point the proposition was made and supported by several members of the Cabinet that Gordon should be recalled. There is no doubt that this step would have been taken but for the fear that it would aggravate the difficulties of the English expedition sent to Souakim under the command of General Gerald Graham to retrieve the defeat of Baker Pasha. Failing the adoption of that extreme measure, which would at least have been straightforward and honest, and ignoring what candour seemed to demand if a decision had been come to to render Gordon no support, and to bid him shift for himself, the Government resorted to the third and least justifiable course of all, viz. of showing indifference to the legitimate requests of their emissary, and of putting off definite action until the very last moment.

We have seen that Gordon made several specific demands in the first six weeks of his stay at Khartoum that is, in the short period before communication was cut off. He wanted Zebehr, 200 troops at Berber, or even at Wady Halfa, and the opening of the route from Souakim to the Nile. To these requests not one favourable answer was given, and the not wholly unnatural rejection of the first rendered it more than ever necessary to comply with the others. They were such as ought to have been granted, and in anticipation they had been suggested and discussed before Gordon felt bound to urge them as necessary for the security of his position at Khartoum. Even Sir Evelyn Baring had recommended in February the despatch of 200 men to Assouan for the moral effect, and that was the very reason why Gordon asked, in the first place, for the despatch of a small British force to at least Wady Halfa. It is possible that one of the chief reasons for the Government rejecting all these suggestions, and also, it must be remembered, doing nothing in their place towards the relief and support of their representative, may have been the hope that this treatment would have led him to resign and throw up his mission. They would then have been able to declare that, as the task was beyond the powers of General Gordon, they were only coming to the prudent and logical conclusion in saying that nothing could be done, and that the garrisons had better come to terms with the Mahdi. Unfortunately for those who favoured the evasion of trouble as the easiest and best way out of the difficulty, Gordon had high notions as to what duty required. No difficulty had terrors for him, and while left at the post of power and responsibility he would endeavour to show himself equal to the charge.

Yet there can be no doubt that those who sent him would have rejoiced if he had formally asked to be relieved of the task he had accepted, and Mr Gladstone stated on the 3rd April that “Gordon was under no orders and no restraint to stay at Khartoum.” A significant answer to the fact represented in that statement was supplied, when, ten days later, silence fell on Khartoum, and remained unbroken for more than five months. But at the very moment that the Prime Minister made that statement as to Gordon’s liberty of movement, the Government knew of the candid views which he had expressed as to the proper policy for the Soudan. It should have been apparent that, unless they and their author were promptly repudiated, and unless the latter was stripped of his official authority, the Government would, however tardily and reluctantly, be drawn after its representative into a policy of intervention in the Soudan, which it, above everything else, wished to avoid. Gordon concealed nothing. He told them “time,” “reinforcements,” and a very considerable expenditure was necessary to honourably carry out their policy of evacuation. They were not prepared to concede any of these save the last, and even the money they sent him was lost because they would send it by Berber instead of Kassala. But they knew that “the order and restraint” which kept Gordon at Khartoum was the duty he had contracted towards them when he accepted his mission, and which was binding on a man of his principles until they chose to relieve him of the task. The fear of public opinion had more to do with their abstaining from the step of ordering his recall than the hope that his splendid energy and administrative power might yet provide some satisfactory issue from the dilemma, for at the very beginning it was freely given out that “General Gordon was exceeding his instructions.”

The interruption of communications with Khartoum at least suspended Gordon’s constant representations as to what he thought the right policy, as well as his demands for the fulfilment by the Government of their side of the contract. It was then that Lord Granville seemed to pluck up heart of grace, and to challenge Gordon’s right to remain at Khartoum. On 23rd April Lord Granville asked for explanation of “cause of detention.” Unfortunately it was not till months later that the country knew of Gordon’s terse and humorous reply, “cause of detention, these horribly plucky Arabs.” Lord Granville, thinking this despatch not clear enough, followed it up on 17th May by instructing Mr Egerton, then acting for Sir Evelyn Baring, to send the following remonstrance to Gordon:

“As the original plan for the evacuation of the Soudan has been dropped, and as aggressive operations cannot be undertaken with the countenance of H.M.’s Government, General Gordon is enjoined to consider, and either to report upon, or, if possible, to adopt at the first proper moment measures for his own removal and for that of the Egyptians at Khartoum who have suffered for him, or who have served him faithfully, including their wives and children, by whatever route he may consider best, having especial regard to his own safety and that of the other British subjects.”

Then followed suggestions and authority to pay so much a head for refugees safely escorted to Korosko. The comment Gordon made on that, and similar despatches, to save himself and any part of the garrison he could, was that he was not so mean as to desert those who had nobly stood by him and committed themselves on the strength of his word.

It is impossible to go behind the collective responsibility of the Government and to attempt to fix any special responsibility or blame on any individual member of that Government. The facts as I read them show plainly that there was a complete abnegation of policy or purpose on the part of the British Government, that Gordon was then sent as a sort of stop-gap, and that when it was revealed that he had strong views and clear plans, not at all in harmony with those who sent him, it was thought, by the Ministers who had not the courage to recall him, very inconsiderate and insubordinate of him to remain at his post and to refuse all the hints given him, that he ought to resign unless he would execute a sauve qui peut sort of retreat to the frontier. Very harsh things have been said of Mr Gladstone and his Cabinet on this point, but considering their views and declarations, it is not so very surprising that Gordon’s boldness and originality alarmed and displeased them. Their radical fault in these early stages of the question was not that they were indifferent to Gordon’s demands, but that they had absolutely no policy. They could not even come to the decision, as Gordon wrote, “to abandon altogether and not care what happens.”

But all these minor points were merged in a great common national anxiety when month after month passed during the spring and summer of 1884, and not a single word issued from the tomb-like silence of Khartoum. People might argue that the worst could not have happened, as the Mahdi would have been only too anxious to proclaim his triumph far and wide if Khartoum had fallen. Anxiety may be diminished, but is not banished, by a calculation of probabilities, and the military spirit and capacity exhibited by the Mahdi’s forces under Osman Digma in the fighting with General Graham’s well-equipped British force at Teb and Tamanieb revealed the greatness of the peril with which Gordon had to deal at Khartoum where he had only the inadequate and untrustworthy garrison described by Colonel de Coetlogon. During the summer of 1884 there was therefore a growing fear, not only that the worst news might come at any moment, but that in the most favourable event any news would reveal the desperate situation to which Gordon had been reduced, and with that conviction came the thought, not whether he had exactly carried out what Ministers had expected him to do, but solely of his extraordinary courage and devotion to his country, which had led him to take up a thankless task without the least regard for his comfort or advantage, and without counting the odds. There was at least one Minister in the Cabinet who was struck by that single-minded conduct; and as early as April, when his colleagues were asking the formal question why Gordon did not leave Khartoum, the Marquis of Hartington, then Minister of War, and now Duke of Devonshire, began to inquire as to the steps necessary to rescue the emissary, while still adhering to the policy of the Administration of which he formed part. During the whole of that summer the present Duke of Devonshire advocated the special claim of General Gordon on the Government, whose mandate he had so readily accepted, and urged the necessity of special measures being taken at the earliest moment to save the gallant envoy from what seemed the too probable penalty of his own temerity and devotion. But for his energetic and consistent representations the steps that were taken all too late as they proved never would have been taken at all, or deferred to such a date as to let the public see by the event that there was no use in throwing away money and precious lives on a lost cause.

If the first place among those in power for of my own and other journalists’ efforts in the Press to arouse public opinion and to urge the Government to timely action it is unnecessary to speak is due to the Duke of Devonshire, the second may reasonably be claimed by Lord Wolseley. This recognition is the more called for here, because the most careful consideration of the facts has led me to the conclusion, which I would gladly avoid the necessity of expressing if it were possible, that Lord Wolseley was responsible for the failure of the relief expedition. This stage of responsibility has not yet been reached, and it must be duly set forth that on 24th July Lord Wolseley, then Adjutant-General, wrote a noble letter, stating that, as he “did not wish to share the responsibility of leaving Charley Gordon to his fate,” he recommended “immediate action,” and “the despatch of a small brigade of between three and four thousand British soldiers to Dongola, so that they might reach that place about 15th October.” But even that date was later than it ought to have been, especially when the necessity of getting the English troops back as early in the New Year as possible was considered, and in the subsequent recriminations that ensued, the blame for being late from the start was sought to be thrown on the badness of the Nile flood that year. General Gordon himself cruelly disposed of that theory or excuse when he wrote, “It was not a bad Nile; quite an average one. You were too late, that was all.” Still, Lord Wolseley must not be robbed of the credit of having said on 24th July that an expedition was necessary to save Gordon, “his old friend and Crimean comrade,” towards whom Wolseley himself had contracted a special moral obligation for his prominent share in inducing him to accept the very mission that had already proved so full of peril. In short, if the plain truth must be told, Lord Wolseley was far more responsible for the despatch of General Gordon to Khartoum than Mr Gladstone.

The result of the early representations of the Duke of Devonshire, and the definite suggestion of Lord Wolseley, was that the Government gave in when the public anxiety became so great at the continued silence of Khartoum, and acquiesced in the despatch of an expedition to relieve General Gordon. Having once made the concession, it must be allowed that they showed no niggard spirit in sanctioning the expedition and the proposals of the military authorities. The sum of ten millions was devoted to the work of rescuing Gordon by the very persons who had rejected his demands for the hundredth part of that total. Ten thousand men selected from the elite of the British army were assigned to the task for which he had begged two hundred men in vain. It is impossible here to enter closely into the causes which led to the expansion of the three or four thousand British infantry into a special corps of ten thousand fighting men, picked from the crack regiments of the army, and composed of every arm of the service compelled to fight under unaccustomed conditions. The local authorities in particular Major Kitchener, now the Sirdar of the Egyptian army, who is slowly recovering from the Mahdi the provinces which should never have been left in his possession protested that the expedition should be a small one, and if their advice had been taken the cost would have been about one-fourth that incurred, and the force would have reached Khartoum by that 11th November on which Gordon expected to see the first man of it. But Major Kitchener, although, as Gordon wrote, “one of the few really first-class officers in the British army,” was only an individual, and his word did not possess a feather’s weight before the influence of the Pall Mall band of warriors who have farmed out our little wars India, of course, excepted of the last thirty years for their own glorification. So great a chance of fame as “the rescue of Gordon” was not to be left to some unknown brigadiers, or to the few line regiments, the proximity of whose stations entitled them to the task. That would be neglecting the favours of Providence. For so noble a task the control of the most experienced commander in the British army would alone suffice, and when he took the field his staff had to be on the extensive scale that suited his dignity and position. As there would be some reasonable excuse for the dispensation of orders and crosses from a campaign against a religious leader who had not yet known defeat, any friend might justly complain if he was left behind. To justify so brilliant a staff, no ordinary British force would suffice. Therefore our household brigade, our heavy cavalry, and our light cavalry were requisitioned for their best men, and these splendid troops were drafted and amalgamated into special corps heavy and light camelry for work that would have been done far better and more efficiently by two regiments of Bengal Lancers. If all this effort and expenditure had resulted in success, it would be possible to keep silent and shrug one’s shoulders; but when the mode of undertaking this expedition can be clearly shown to have been the direct cause of its failure, silence would be a crime. When Lord Wolseley told the soldiers at Korti on their return from Metemmah, “It was not your fault that Gordon has perished and Khartoum fallen,” the positiveness of his assurance may have been derived from the inner conviction of his own stupendous error.

The expedition was finally sanctioned in August, and the news of its coming was known to General Gordon in September, before, indeed, his own despatches of 31st July were received in London, and broke the suspense of nearly half a year. He thought that only a small force was coming, under the command of Major-General Earle, and he at once, as already described, sent his steamers back to Shendy, there to await the troops and convey them to Khartoum. He seems to have calculated that three months from the date of the message informing him of the expedition would suffice for the conveyance of the troops as far as Berber or Metemmah, and at that rate General Earle would have arrived where his steamers awaited him early in November. Gordons views as to the object of the expedition, which somebody called the Gordon Relief Expedition, were thus clearly expressed:

“I altogether decline the imputation that the projected expedition has come to relieve me. It has come to save our National honour in extricating the garrisons, etc., from a position in which our action in Egypt has placed these garrisons. I was Relief Expedition N; they are Relief Expedition N. As for myself, I could make good my retreat at any moment, if I wished. Now realise what would happen if this first relief expedition was to bolt, and the steamers fell into the hands of the Mahdi. This second relief expedition (for the honour of England engaged in extricating garrisons) would be somewhat hampered. We, the first and second expeditions, are equally engaged for the honour of England. This is fair logic. I came up to extricate the garrison, and failed. Earle comes up to extricate garrisons, and I hope succeeds. Earle does not come to extricate me. The extrication of the garrisons was supposed to affect our “National honour.” If Earle succeeds, the “National honour” thanks him, and I hope recommends him, but it is altogether independent of me, who, for failing, incurs its blame. I am not the rescued lamb, and I will not be.”

Lord Wolseley, still possessed with the idea that, now that an expedition had been sanctioned, the question of time was not of supreme importance, and that the relieving expedition might be carried out in a deliberate manner, which would be both more effective and less exposed to risk, did not reach Cairo till September, and had only arrived at Wady Halfa on 8th October, when his final instructions reached him in the following form: “The primary object of your expedition is to bring away General Gordon and Colonel Stewart, and you are not to advance further south than necessary to attain that object, and when it has been secured, no further offensive operations of any kind are to be undertaken.” These instructions were simple and clear enough. The Government had not discovered a policy. It had, however, determined to leave the garrisons to their fate, despite the National honour being involved, at the very moment that it sanctioned an enormous expenditure to try and save the lives of its long-neglected representatives, Gordon and Colonel Stewart. With extraordinary shrewdness, Gordon detected the hollowness of its purpose, and wrote: “I very much doubt what is really going to be the policy of our Government, even now that the Expedition is at Dongola,” and if they intend ratting out, “the troops had better not come beyond Berber till the question of what will be done is settled.”

The receipt of Gordon’s and Power’s despatches of July showed that there were, at the time of their being written, supplies for four months, which would have carried the garrison on till the end of November. As the greater part of that period had expired when these documents reached Lord Wolseley’s hands, it was quite impossible to doubt that time had become the most important factor of all in the situation. The chance of being too late would even then have presented itself to a prudent commander, and, above all, to a friend hastening to the rescue of a friend. The news that Colonel Stewart and some other Europeans had been entrapped and murdered near Merowe, which reached the English commander from different sources before Gordon confirmed it in his letters, was also calculated to stimulate, by showing that Gordon was alone, and had single-handed to conduct the defence of a populous city. Hard on the heels of that intelligence came Gordon’s letter of 4th November to Lord Wolseley, who received it at Dongola on 14th of the same month. The letter was a long one, but only two passages need be quoted: “At Metemmah, waiting your orders, are five steamers with nine guns.” Did it not occur to anyone how greatly, at the worst stage of the siege, Gordon had thus weakened himself to assist the relieving expedition? Even for that reason there was not a day or an hour to be lost.

But the letter contained a worse and more alarming passage: “We can hold out forty days with ease; after that it will be difficult.” Forty days would have meant till 14th December, one month ahead of the day Lord Wolseley received the news, but the message was really more alarming than the form in which it was published, for there is no doubt that the word “difficult” is the official rendering of Gordon’s, a little indistinctly written, word “desperate.” In face of that alarming message, which only stated facts that ought to have been surmised, if not known, it was no longer possible to pursue the leisurely promenade up the Nile, which was timed so as to bring the whole force to Khartoum in the first week of March. Rescue by the most prominent general and swell troops of England at Easter would hardly gratify the commandant and garrison starved into surrender the previous Christmas, and that was the exact relationship between Wolseley’s plans and Gordon’s necessities.

The date at which Gordon’s supplies would be exhausted varied not from any miscalculation, but because on two successive occasions he discovered large stores of grain and biscuits, which had been stolen from the public granaries before his arrival. The supplies that would all have disappeared in November were thus eked out, first till the middle of December, and then finally till the end of January, but there is no doubt that they would not have lasted as long as they did if in the last month of the siege he had not given the civil population permission to leave the doomed town. From any and from every point of view, there was not the shadow of an excuse for a moment’s delay after the receipt of that letter on 14th November.

With the British Exchequer at a commander’s back, it is easy to organise an expedition on an elaborate scale, and to carry it out with the nicety of perfection, but for the realisation of these ponderous plans there is one thing more necessary, and that is time. I have no doubt if Gordon’s letter had said “granaries full, can hold out till Easter,” that Lord Wolseley’s deliberate march Cairo, September 27; Wady Halfa, October 8; Dongola, November 14; Korti, December 30; Metemmah any day in February, and Khartoum, March 3, and those were the approximate dates of his grand plan of campaign would have been fully successful, and held up for admiration as a model of skill. Unfortunately, it would not do for the occasion, as Gordon was on the verge of starvation and in desperate straits when the rescuing force reached Dongola. It is not easy to alter the plan of any campaign, nor to adapt a heavy moving machine to the work suitable for a light one. To feed 10,000 British soldiers on the middle Nile was alone a feat of organisation such as no other country could have attempted, but the effort was exhausting, and left no reserve energy to despatch that quick-moving battalion which could have reached Gordon’s steamers early in December, and would have reinforced the Khartoum garrison, just as Havelock and Outram did the Lucknow Residency.

Dongola is only 100 miles below Debbeh, where the intelligence officers and a small force were on that 14th November; Ambukol, specially recommended by Gordon as the best starting-point, is less than fifty miles, and Korti, the point selected by Lord Wolseley, is exactly that distance above Debbeh. The Bayuda desert route by the Jakdul Wells to Metemmah is 170 miles. At Metemmah were the five steamers with nine guns to convoy the desperately needed succour to Khartoum. The energy expended on the despatch of 10,000 men up 150 miles of river, if concentrated on 1000 men, must have given a speedier result, but, as the affair was managed, the last day of the year 1884 was reached before there was even that small force ready to make a dash across the desert for Metemmah.

The excuses made for this, as the result proved, fatal delay of taking six weeks to do what the forward movement from Dongola to Korti, not of the main force, but of 1000 men ought to have been done in one week, were the dearth of camels, the imperfect drill of the camel corps, and, it must be added, the exaggerated fear of the Mahdi’s power. When it was attempted to quicken the slow forward movement of the unwieldy force confusion ensued, and no greater progress was effected than if things had been left undisturbed. The erratic policy in procuring camels caused them at the critical moment to be not forthcoming in anything approaching the required numbers, and this difficulty was undoubtedly increased by the treachery of Mahmoud Khalifa, who was the chief contractor we employed. Even when the camels were procured, they had to be broken in for regular work, and the men accustomed to the strange drill and mode of locomotion. The last reason perhaps had the most weight of all, for although the Mahdi with all his hordes had been kept at bay by Gordon single-handed, Lord Wolseley would risk nothing in the field. Probably the determining reason for that decision was that the success of a small force would have revealed how absolutely unnecessary his large and costly expedition was. Yet events were to show beyond possibility of contraversion that this was the case, for not less than two-thirds of the force were never in any shape or form actively employed, and, as far as the fate of Gordon went, might just as well have been left at home. They had, however, to be fed and provided for at the end of a line of communication of over 1200 miles.

Still, notwithstanding all these delays and disadvantages, a well-equipped force of 1000 men was ready on 30th December to leave Korti to cross the 170 miles of the Bayuda desert. That route was well known and well watered. There were wells at, at least, five places, and the best of these was at Jakdul, about half-way across. The officer entrusted with the command was Major-General Sir Herbert Stewart, an officer of a gallant disposition, who was above all others impressed with the necessity of making an immediate advance, with the view of throwing some help into Khartoum. Unfortunately he was trammelled by his instructions, which were to this effect he was to establish a fort at Jakdul; but if he found an insufficiency of water there he was at liberty to press on to Metemmah. His action was to be determined by the measure of his own necessities, not of Gordon’s, and so Lord Wolseley arranged throughout. He reached that place with his 1100 fighting men, but on examining the wells and finding them full, he felt bound to obey the orders of his commander, viz. to establish the fort, and then return to Korti for a reinforcement. It was a case when Nelson’s blind eye might have been called into requisition, but even the most gallant officers are not Nelsons.

The first advance of General Stewart to Jakdul, reached on 3rd January 1885, was in every respect a success. It was achieved without loss, unopposed, and was quite of the nature of a surprise. The British relieving force was at last, after many months’ report, proved to be a reality, and although late, it was not too late. If General Stewart had not been tied by his instructions, but left a free hand, he would undoubtedly have pressed on, and a reinforcement of British troops would have entered Khartoum even before the fall of Omdurman. But it must be recorded also that Sir Herbert Stewart was not inspired by the required flash of genius. He paid more deference to the orders of Lord Wolseley than to the grave peril of General Gordon.

General Stewart returned to Korti on the 7th January, bringing with him the tired camels, and he found that during his absence still more urgent news had been received from Gordon, to the effect that if aid did not come within ten days from the 14th December, the place might fall, and that under the nose of the expedition. The native who brought this intimation arrived at Korti the day after General Stewart left, but a messenger could easily have caught him up and given him orders to press on at all cost. It was not realised at the time, but the neglect to give that order, and the rigid adherence to a preconceived plan, proved fatal to the success of the whole expedition.

The first advance of General Stewart had been in the nature of a surprise, but it aroused the Mahdi to a sense of the position, and the subsequent delay gave him a fortnight to complete his plans and assume the offensive.

On 12th January that is, nine days after his first arrival at Jakdul General Stewart reached the place a second time with the second detachment of another 1000 men the total fighting strength of the column being raised to about 2300 men. For whatever errors had been committed, and their consequences, the band of soldiers assembled at Jakdul on that 12th of January could in no sense be held responsible. Without making any invidious comparisons, it may be truthfully said that such a splendid fighting force was never assembled in any other cause, and the temper of the men was strung to a high point of enthusiasm by the thought that at last they had reached the final stage of the long journey to rescue Gordon. A number of causes, principally the fatigue of the camels from the treble journey between Korti and Jakdul, made the advance very slow, and five days were occupied in traversing the forty-five miles between Jakdul and the wells at Abou Klea, themselves distant twenty miles from Metemmah. On the morning of 17th January it became clear that the column was in presence of an enemy.

At the time of Stewart’s first arrival at Jakdul there were no hostile forces in the Bayuda desert. At Berber was a considerable body of the Mahdi’s followers, and both Metemmah and Shendy were held in his name. At the latter place a battery or small fort had been erected, and in an encounter between it and Gordon’s steamers one of the latter had been sunk, thus reducing their total to four. But there were none of the warrior tribes of Kordofan and Darfour at any of these places, or nearer than the six camps which had been established round Khartoum. The news of the English advance made the Mahdi bestir himself, and as it was known that the garrison of Omdurman was reduced to the lowest straits, and could not hold out many days, the Mahdi despatched some of his best warriors of the Jaalin, Degheim, and Kenana tribes to oppose the British troops in the Bayuda desert. It was these men who opposed the further advance of Sir Herbert Stewart’s column at Abou Klea. It is unnecessary to describe the desperate assault these gallant warriors made on the somewhat cumbrous and ill-arranged square of the British force, or the ease and tremendous loss with which these fanatics were beaten off, and never allowed to come to close quarters, save at one point. The infantry soldiers, who formed two sides of the square, signally repulsed the onset, not a Ghazi succeeded in getting within a range of 300 yards; but on another side, cavalrymen, doing infantry soldiers’ unaccustomed work, did not adhere to the strict formation necessary, and trained for the close melee, and with the gaudia certaminis firing their blood, they recklessly allowed the Ghazis to come to close quarters, and their line of the square was impinged upon. In that close fighting, with the Heavy Camel Corps men and the Naval Brigade, the Blacks suffered terribly, but they also inflicted loss in return. Of a total loss on the British side of sixty-five killed and sixty-one wounded, the Heavy Camel Corps lost fifty-two, and the Sussex Regiment, performing work to which it was thoroughly trained, inflicted immense loss on the enemy at hardly any cost to itself. Among the slain was the gallant Colonel Fred. Burnaby, one of the noblest and gentlest, as he was physically the strongest, officers in the British army. There is no doubt that signal as was this success, it shook the confidence of the force. The men were resolute to a point of ferocity, but the leaders’ confidence in themselves and their task had been rudely tried; and yet the breaking of the square had been clearly due to a tactical blunder, and the inability of the cavalry to adapt themselves to a strange position.

On the 18th January the march, rendered slower by the conveyance of the wounded, was resumed, but no fighting took place on that day, although it was clear that the enemy had not been dispersed. On the 19th, when the force had reached the last wells at Abou Kru or Gubat, it became clear that another battle was to be fought. One of the first shots seriously wounded Sir Herbert Stewart, and during the whole of the affair many of our men were carried off by the heavy rifle fire of the enemy. Notwithstanding that our force fought under many disadvantages and was not skilfully handled, the Mahdists were driven off with terrible loss, while our force had thirty-six killed and one hundred and seven wounded. Notwithstanding these two defeats, the enemy were not cowed, and held on to Metemmah, in which no doubt those who had taken part in the battles were assisted by a force from Berber. The 20th January was wasted in inaction, caused by the large number of wounded, and when on 21st January Metemmah was attacked, the Mahdists showed so bold a front that Sir Charles Wilson, who succeeded to the command on Sir Herbert Stewart being incapacitated by his, as it proved, mortal wound, drew off his force. This was the more disappointing, because Gordon’s four steamers arrived during the action and took a gallant part in the attack. It was a pity for the effect produced that that attack should have been distinctly unsuccessful. The information the captain of these steamers, the gallant Cassim el Mousse, gave about Gordon’s position was alarming. He stated that Gordon had sent him a message informing him that if aid did not come in ten days from the 14th December his position would be desperate, and the volumes of his journal which he handed over to Sir Charles Wilson amply corroborated this statement the very last entry under that date being these memorable words: “Now, mark this, if the Expeditionary Force and I ask for no more than 200 men does not come in ten days, the town may fall, and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye.”

The other letters handed over by Cassim el Mousse amply bore out the view that a month before the British soldiers reached the last stretch of the Nile to Khartoum Gordon’s position was desperate. In one to his sister he concluded, “I am quite happy, thank God, and, like Lawrence, have tried to do my duty,” and in another to his friend Colonel Watson: “I think the game is up, and send Mrs Watson, yourself, and Graham my adieux. We may expect a catastrophe in the town in or after ten days. This would not have happened (if it does happen) if our people had taken better precautions as to informing us of their movements, but this is ‘spilt milk.’” In face of these documents, which were in the hands of Sir Charles Wilson on 21st January, it is impossible to agree with his conclusion in his book “Korti to Khartoum,” that “the delay in the arrival of the steamers at Khartoum was unimportant” as affecting the result. Every hour, every minute, had become of vital importance. If the whole Jakdul column had been destroyed in the effort, it was justifiable to do so as the price of reinforcing Gordon, so that he could hold out until the main body under Lord Wolseley could arrive. I am not one of those who think that Sir Charles Wilson, who only came on the scene at the last moment, should be made the scapegoat for the mistakes of others in the earlier stages of the expedition, and I hold now, as strongly as when I wrote the words, the opinion that, “in the face of what he did, any suggestion that he might have done more would seem both ungenerous and untrue.” Still the fact remains that on 21st January there was left a sufficient margin of time to avert what actually occurred at daybreak on the 26th, for the theory that the Mahdi could have entered the town one hour before he did was never a serious argument, while the evidence of Slatin Pasha strengthens the view that Gordon was at the last moment only overcome by the Khalifa’s resorting to a surprise. On one point of fact Sir Charles Wilson seems also to have been in error. He fixes the fall of Omdurman at 6th January, whereas Slatin, whose information on the point ought to be unimpeachable, states that it did not occur until the 15th of that month.

When Sir Herbert Stewart had fought and won the battle of Abou Klea, it was his intention on reaching the Nile, as he expected to do the next day, to put Sir Charles Wilson on board one of Gordon’s own steamers and send him off at once to Khartoum. The second battle and Sir Herbert Stewart’s fatal wound destroyed that project. But this plan might have been adhered to so far as the altered circumstances would allow. Sir Charles Wilson had succeeded to the command, and many matters affecting the position of the force had to be settled before he was free to devote himself to the main object of the dash forward, viz. the establishment of communications with Gordon and Khartoum. As the consequence of that change in his own position, it would have been natural that he should have delegated the task to someone else, and in Lord Charles Beresford, as brave a sailor as ever led a cutting-out party, there was the very man for the occasion. Unfortunately, Sir Charles Wilson did not take this step for, as I believe, the sole reason that he was the bearer of an important official letter to General Gordon, which he did not think could be entrusted to any other hands. But for that circumstance it is permissible to say that one steamer there was more than enough wood on the other three steamers to fit one out for the journey to Khartoum would have sailed on the morning of the 22nd, the day after the force sheered off from Metemmah, and, at the latest, it would have reached Khartoum on Sunday, the 25th, just in time to avert the catastrophe.

But as it was done, the whole of the 22nd and 23rd were taken up in preparing two steamers for the voyage, and in collecting scarlet coats for the troops, so that the effect of real British soldiers coming up the Nile might be made more considerable. At 8 A.M. on Saturday, the 24th, Sir Charles Wilson at last sailed with the two steamers, Bordeen and Talataween, and it was then quite impossible for the steamers to cover the ninety-five miles to Khartoum in time. Moreover, the Nile had, by this time, sunk to such a point of shallowness that navigation was specially slow and even dangerous. The Shabloka cataract was passed at 3 P.M. on the afternoon of Sunday; then the Bordeen ran on a rock, and was not got clear till 9 P.M. on the fatal 26th. On the 27th, Halfiyeh, eight miles from Khartoum, was reached, and the Arabs along the banks shouted out that Gordon was killed and Khartoum had fallen. Still Sir Charles Wilson went on past Tuti Island, until he made sure that Khartoum had fallen and was in the hands of the dervishes. Then he ordered full steam down stream under as hot a fire as he ever wished to experience, Gordon’s black gunners working like demons at their guns. On the 29th the Talataween ran on a rock and sank, its crew being taken on board the Bordeen. Two days later the Bordeen shared the same fate, but the whole party was finally saved on the 4th February by a third steamer, brought up by Lord Charles Beresford. But these matters, and the subsequent progress of the Expedition which had so ignominiously failed, have no interest for the reader of Gordon’s life. It failed to accomplish the object which alone justified its being sent, and, it must be allowed, that it accepted its failure in a very tame and spiritless manner. Even at the moment of the British troops turning their backs on the goal which they had not won, the fate of Gordon himself was unknown, although there could be no doubt as to the main fact that the protracted siege of Khartoum had terminated in its capture by the cruel and savage foe, whom it, or rather Gordon, had so long defied.

I have referred to the official letter addressed to General Gordon, of which Sir Charles Wilson was the bearer. That letter has never been published, and it is perhaps well for its authors that it has not been, for, however softened down its language was by Lord Wolseley’s intercession, it was an order to General Gordon to resign the command at Khartoum, and to leave that place without a moment’s delay. Had it been delivered and obeyed (as it might have been, because Gordon’s strength would probably have collapsed at the sight of English soldiers after his long incarceration), the next official step would have been to censure him for having remained at Khartoum against orders. Thus would the primary, and, indeed, sole object of the Expedition have been attained without regard for the national honour, and without the discovery of that policy, the want of which was the only cause of the calamities associated with the Soudan.

After the 14th of December there is no trustworthy, or at least, complete evidence, as to what took place in Khartoum. A copy of one of the defiant messages Gordon used to circulate for the special purpose of letting them fall into the hands of the Mahdi was dated 29th of that month, and ran to the effect, Can hold Khartoum for years. There was also the final message to the Sovereigns of the Powers, undated, and probably written, if at all, by Gordon, during the final agony of the last few weeks, perhaps when Omdurman had fallen. It was worded as follows:

“After salutations, I would at once, calling to mind what I have gone through, inform their Majesties, the Sovereigns, of the action of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire, who appointed me as Governor-General of the Soudan for the purpose of appeasing the rebellion in that country.

“During the twelve months that I have been here, these two Powers, the one remarkable for her wealth, and the other for her military force, have remained unaffected by my situation perhaps relying too much on the news sent by Hussein Pasha Khalifa, who surrendered of his own accord.

“Although I, personally, am too insignificant to be taken into account, the Powers were bound, nevertheless, to fulfil the engagement upon which my appointment was based, so as to shield the honour of the Governments.

“What I have gone through I cannot describe. The Almighty God
will help me.”

Although this copy was not in Gordon’s own writing, it was brought down by one of his clerks, who escaped from Khartoum, and he declared that the original had been sent in a cartridge case to Dongola. The style is certainly the style of Gordon, and there was no one in the Soudan who could imitate it. It seems safe, as Sir Henry Gordon did, to accept it as the farewell message of his brother.

Until fresh evidence comes to light, that of Slatin Pasha, then a chained captive in the Mahdi’s camp, is alone entitled to the slightest credence, and it is extremely graphic. We can well believe that up to the last moment Gordon continued to send out messages false, to deceive the Mahdi, and true to impress Lord Wolseley. The note of 29th December was one of the former; the little French note on half a cigarette paper, brought by Abdullah Khalifa to Slatin to translate early in January, may have been one of the latter. It said: “Can hold Khartoum at the outside till the end of January.” Slatin then describes the fall of Omdurman on 15th January, with Gordon’s acquiescence, which entirely disposes of the assertion that Ferratch, the gallant defender of that place during two months, was a traitor, and of how, on its surrender, Gordon’s fire from the western wall of Khartoum prevented the Mahdists occupying it. He also comments on the alarm caused by the first advance of the British force into the Bayuda desert, and of the despatch of thousands of the Mahdi’s best warriors to oppose it. Those forces quitted the camp at Omdurman between 10th and 15th January, and this step entirely disposes of the theory that the Mahdi held Khartoum in the hollow of his hand, and could at any moment take it. As late as the 15th of January, Gordon’s fire was so vigorous and successful that the Mahdi was unable to retain possession of the fort which he had just captured.

The story had best be continued in the words used by the witness. Six days after the fall of Omdurman loud weeping and wailing filled the Mahdi’s camp. As the Mahdi forbade the display of sorrow and grief it was clear that something most unusual had taken place. Then it came out that the British troops had met and utterly defeated the tribes, with a loss to the Mahdists of several thousands. Within the next two or three days came news of the other defeat at Abou Kru, and the loud lamentations of the women and children could not be checked. The Mahdi and his chief émirs, the present Khalifa Abdullah prominent among them, then held a consultation, and it was decided, sooner than lose all the fruits of the hitherto unchecked triumph of their cause, to risk an assault on Khartoum. At night on the 24th, and again on the 25th, the bulk of the rebel force was conveyed across the river to the right bank of the White Nile; the Mahdi preached them a sermon, promising them victory, and they were enjoined to receive his remarks in silence, so that no noise was heard in the beleaguered city. By this time their terror of the mines laid in front of the south wall had become much diminished, because the mines had been placed too low in the earth, and they also knew that Gordon and his diminished force were in the last stages of exhaustion. Finally, the Mahdi or his energetic lieutenant decided on one more arrangement, which was probably the true cause of their success. The Mahdists had always delivered their attack half an hour after sunrise; on this occasion they decided to attack half an hour before dawn, when the whole scene was covered in darkness. Slatin knew all these plans, and as he listened anxiously in his place of confinement he was startled, when just dropping off to sleep, by “the deafening discharge of thousands of rifles and guns; this lasted for a few minutes, then only occasional rifle shots were heard, and now all was quiet again. Could this possibly be the great attack on Khartoum? A wild discharge of firearms and cannon, and in a few minutes complete silence!” He was not left long in doubt. Some hours afterwards three black soldiers approached, carrying in a bloody cloth the head of General Gordon, which he identified. It is unnecessary to add the gruesome details which Slatin picked up as to his manner of death from the gossip of the camp. In this terrible tragedy ended that noble defence of Khartoum, which, wherever considered or discussed, and for all time, will excite the pity and admiration of the world.

There is no need to dwell further on the terrible end of one of the purest heroes our country has ever produced, whose loss was national, but most deeply felt as an irreparable shock, and as a void that can never be filled up by that small circle of men and women who might call themselves his friends. Ten years elapsed after the eventful morning when Slatin pronounced over his remains the appropriate epitaph, “A brave soldier who fell at his post; happy is he to have fallen; his sufferings are over!” before the exact manner of Gordon’s death was known, and some even clung to the chance that after all he might have escaped to the Equator, and indeed it was not till long after the expedition had returned that the remarkable details of his single-handed defence of Khartoum became known. Had all these particulars come out at the moment when the public learnt that Khartoum had fallen, and that the expedition was to return without accomplishing anything, it is possible that there would have been a demand that no Minister could have resisted to avenge his fate; but it was not till the publication of the journals that the exact character of his magnificent defence and of the manner in which he was treated by those who sent him came to be understood and appreciated by the nation.

The lapse of time has been sufficient to allow of a calm judgment being passed on the whole transaction, and the considerations which I have put forward with regard to it in the chronicle of events have been dictated by the desire to treat all involved in the matter with impartiality. If they approximate to the truth, they warrant the following conclusions. The Government sent General Gordon to the Soudan on an absolutely hopeless mission for any one or two men to accomplish without that support in reinforcements on which General Gordon thought he could count. General Gordon went to the Soudan, and accepted that mission in the enthusiastic belief that he could arrest the Mahdi’s progress, and treating as a certainty which did not require formal expression the personal opinion that the Government, for the national honour, would comply with whatever demands he made upon it. As a simple matter of fact, every one of those demands, some against and some with Sir Evelyn Baring’s authority, were rejected. No incident could show more clearly the imperative need of definite arrangements being made even with Governments; and in this case the precipitance with which General Gordon was sent off did not admit of him or the Government knowing exactly what was in the other’s mind. Ostensibly of one mind, their views on the matter in hand were really as far as the poles asunder.

There then comes the second phase of the question the alleged abandonment of General Gordon by the Government which enlisted his services in face of an extraordinary, and indeed unexampled danger and difficulty. The evidence, while it proves conclusively and beyond dispute that Mr Gladstone’s Government never had a policy with regard to the Soudan, and that even Gordon’s heroism, inspiration, and success failed to induce them to throw aside their lethargy and take the course that, however much it may be postponed, is inevitable, does not justify the charge that it abandoned Gordon to his fate. It rejected the simplest and most sensible of his propositions, and by rejecting them incurred an immense expenditure of British treasure and an incalculable amount of bloodshed; but when the personal danger to its envoy became acute, it did not abandon him, but sanctioned the cost of the expedition pronounced necessary to effect his rescue. This decision, too late as it was to assist in the formation of a new administration for the Soudan, or to bring back the garrisons, was taken in ample time to ensure the personal safety and rescue of General Gordon. In the literal sense of the charge, history will therefore acquit Mr Gladstone and his colleagues of the abandonment of General Gordon personally.

With regard to the third phase of the question viz. the failure of the attempt to rescue General Gordon, which was essentially a military, and not a political question the responsibility passes from the Prime Minister to the military authorities who decided the scope of the campaign, and the commander who carried it out. In this case, the individual responsible was the same. Lord Wolseley not only had his own way in the route to be followed by the expedition, and the size and importance attached to it, but he was also entrusted with its personal direction. There is consequently no question of the sub-division of the responsibility for its failure, just as there could have been none of the credit for its success. Lord Wolseley decided that the route should be the long one by the Nile Valley, not the short one from Souakim to Berber. Lord Wolseley decreed that there should be no Indian troops, and that the force, instead of being an ordinary one, should be a picked special corps from the elite of the British army; and finally Lord Wolseley insisted that there should be no dash to the rescue of Gordon by a small part of his force, but a slow, impressive, and overpoweringly scientific advance of the whole body. The extremity of Gordon’s distress necessitated a slight modification of his plan, when, with qualified instructions, which practically tied his hands, Sir Herbert Stewart made his first appearance at Jakdul.

It was then known to Lord Wolseley that Gordon was in extremities, yet when a fighting force of 1100 English troops, of special physique and spirit, was moved forward with sufficient transport to enable it to reach the Nile and Gordon’s steamers, the commander’s instructions were such as confined him to inaction, unless he disobeyed his orders, which only Nelsons and Gordons can do with impunity. It is impossible to explain this extraordinary timidity. Sir Herbert Stewart reached Jakdul on 3rd January with a force small in numbers, but in every other respect of remarkable efficiency, and with the camels sufficiently fresh to have reached the Nile on 7th or 8th January had it pressed on. The more urgent news that reached Lord Wolseley after its departure would have justified the despatch of a messenger to urge it to press on at all costs to Metemmah. In such a manner would a Havelock or Outram have acted, yet the garrison of the Lucknow Residency was in no more desperate case than Gordon at Khartoum.

It does not need to be a professor of a military academy to declare that, unless something is risked in war, and especially wars such as England has had to wage against superior numbers in the East, there will never be any successful rescues of distressed garrisons. Lord Wolseley would risk nothing in the advance from Korti to Metemmah, whence his advance guard did not reach the latter place till the 20th, instead of the 7th of January. His lieutenant and representative, Sir Charles Wilson, would not risk anything on the 21st January, whence none of the steamers appeared at Khartoum until late on the 27th, when all was over. Each of these statements cannot be impeached, and if so, the conclusion seems inevitable that in the first and highest degree Lord Wolseley was alone responsible for the failure to reach Khartoum in time, and that in a very minor degree Sir Charles Wilson might be considered blameworthy for not having sent off one of the steamers with a small reinforcement to Khartoum on the 21st January, before even he allowed Cassim el Mousse to take any part in the attack on Metemmah. He could not have done this himself, but he would have had no difficulty in finding a substitute. When, however, there were others far more blameworthy, it seems almost unjust to a gallant officer to say that by a desperate effort he might at the very last moment have snatched the chestnuts out of the fire, and converted the most ignominious failure in the military annals of this country into a creditable success.

The tragic end at Khartoum was not an inappropriate conclusion for the career of Charles Gordon, whose life had been far removed from the ordinary experiences of mankind. No man who ever lived was called upon to deal with a greater number of difficult military and administrative problems, and to find the solution for them with such inadequate means and inferior troops and subordinates. In the Crimea he showed as a very young man the spirit, discernment, energy, and regard for detail which were his characteristics through life. Those qualities enabled him to achieve in China military exploits which in their way have never been surpassed. The marvellous skill, confidence, and vigilance with which he supplied the shortcomings of his troops, and provided for the wants of a large population at Khartoum for the better part of a year, showed that, as a military leader, he was still the same gifted captain who had crushed the Taeping rebellion twenty years before. What he did for the Soudan and its people during six years’ residence, at a personal sacrifice that never can be appreciated, has been told at length; but pages of rhetoric would not give as perfect a picture as the spontaneous cry of the blacks: “If we only had a governor like Gordon Pasha, then the country would indeed be contented.”

“Such examples are fruitful in the future,” said Mr Gladstone in the House of Commons; and it is as a perfect model of all that was good, brave, and true that Gordon will be enshrined in the memory of the great English nation which he really died for, and whose honour was dearer to him than his life. England may well feel proud of having produced so noble and so unapproachable a hero. She has had, and she will have again, soldiers as brave, as thoughtful, as prudent, and as successful as Gordon. She has had, and she will have again, servants of the same public spirit, with the same intense desire that not a spot should sully the national honour. But although this breed is not extinct, there will never be another Gordon. The circumstances that produced him were exceptional; the opportunities that offered themselves for the demonstration of his greatness can never fall to the lot of another; and even if by some miraculous combination the man and the occasions arose, the hero, unlike Gordon, would be spoilt by his own success and public applause. But the qualities which made Gordon superior not only to all his contemporaries, but to all the temptations and weaknesses of success, are attainable; and the student of his life will find that the guiding star he always kept before him was the duty he owed his country. In that respect, above all others, he has left future generations of his countrymen a great example.