Charles George Gordon was born on
January 28, 1833, at Woolwich, so that he began his
life among soldiers. He was the fourth son of
General Henry William Gordon, who was in the Royal
Artillery. His father came from a good family,
which for centuries had been associated with the army.
The old General appears to have been a good officer
and a kind-hearted man, and doubtless the son inherited
not only the instincts of a soldier, but a certain
nobility of character which was conspicuous in the
father. When the father held a high command at
Corfu, he made a point of seeking out and paying attention
to the forlorn and uninteresting, who are usually
overlooked by others. Those who have been richly
endowed by Nature have little difficulty in gaining
the smiles of society; but in all classes there are
a few unfortunate ones, who are not specially gifted
and attractive, and who consequently often have the
cold shoulder turned towards them. It was characteristic
of Charles Gordon’s father, as it was of himself
in later years, that these were the ones he befriended
and looked after.
If Charles Gordon inherited from his
father the instincts of a soldier, there can be little
doubt that on his mother’s side he inherited
a spirit of enterprise. His mother was Elizabeth
Enderby, the daughter of an enterprising merchant,
who had ships on every sea. It is men of this
class, quite as much as our soldiers and sailors, who
have made England what she is. Samuel Enderby
was one of the best-known among the great merchant-princes
of England, and he it was chiefly who opened to commerce
the previously unknown waters of the South Pacific,
after the exploring expeditions of Captain Cook.
It is supposed that the first batch of convicts sent
to Botany Bay were conveyed in one of his ships, and,
but for his whaling fleet, Australia might never have
been peopled by English emigrants. His ships
carried on a busy trade with America, and it was one
of his fleet that carried the historic cargo of tea
which was thrown into Boston harbour when the Americans
severed their connection with the mother country.
His daughter had a large family, numbering five sons
and six daughters. Three only of the sons survived,
and they all attained the rank of General in the army.
One of them became General Enderby Gordon, C.B., of
the Royal Artillery, who distinguished himself in
the Crimean War, and also in the Indian Mutiny.
Another became General Sir Henry William Gordon, already
alluded to as the author of “Events in the Life
of Charles George Gordon.” Charlie Gordon,
to use the name by which the subject of this memoir
was always known among his friends, was a delicate
lad, and, perhaps for this reason, was the special
favourite of his mother, who appears to have been
a fond parent and a sensible woman. She was always
proud of her boy, and once or twice even annoyed him
by speaking of him in terms of praise to others.
The Gordon family seems to have been
a very happy one, which to a great extent must have
been the result of the mother’s influence.
One only needs to read the published “Letters
of General Gordon to his Sister” to see how
passionately fond the two were of each other.
It might well have been Gordon that Browning had in
his mind when he said
“I think, am sure, a
brother’s love exceeds
All the world’s love
in its unworldliness.”
A few lines from a letter of one of
his brothers, written from the Crimea, show the fond
and almost parental care that the elder exhibited
on behalf of the younger brother. The extract
is as follows: “Only a few lines
to say Charlie is all right, and has escaped amidst
a terrific shower of grape and shells of every description.
You may imagine the suspense I was kept in until assured
of his safety.”
Like all soldiers’ sons, Gordon
when young had plenty of opportunities of moving about
and seeing different parts of the world. In many
ways this roving life is disadvantageous to a lad,
as in after years he can never look back to one spot
as his home, and consequently he can never localise
the charming associations connected with that word.
A boy also suffers considerably by being moved from
one school to another. On the other hand, his
wits, as a rule, get sharpened by contact with new
people and new circumstances. Before Gordon was
seven years old, he had accompanied his father on
successive moves to Dublin, and to Leith Fort.
In 1840 he went to Corfu, where his father was in command
of the Royal Artillery. It was here the Duke
of Cambridge first made his acquaintance, as they
occupied quarters next to each other, and His Royal
Highness, just forty-five years afterwards, after Gordon’s
death, said in a speech at the Mansion House, that
he remembered the little lad then. As Gordon
returned to England with his mother at the age of
ten, the fact that the Commander-in-Chief remembered
him at all is another proof of the wonderful faculty
of memory which the Royal Family are said to possess.
How differently the Duke would have thought of that
little fair-haired boy with the blue penetrating eyes
could he have looked into the future! It was
in 1843 that Mrs. Gordon brought her son to England
for the sake of his education. He went to school
at Taunton for a few years, and then to Mr. Jeffery’s,
Shooters Hill, Woolwich, preparatory to entering the
Royal Military Academy. His father had been given
an appointment at the Arsenal at Woolwich, so that
his holidays, as well as much of his school life, were
spent at that great garrison town. There was
nothing about the youth at this time that indicated
what his future would be. Indeed, the very energies
which in after life made him undertake so much, finding
no other vent, gave him a turn for mischief and fun
of all sorts. Later in life, and even amid all
his troubles in the Soudan, he would in his letters
recall with pleasure the boyish days spent at Woolwich.
In 1848 he entered the Royal Military
Academy at Woolwich, where he remained till 1852,
when, at the age of nineteen, he received his commission
in the Royal Engineers. Although he was an adept
at surveying and at fortification, two branches of
military knowledge which served him well in after
years, he was deficient in mathematics, and consequently
did not make much progress. An event which took
place here might have had very serious consequences,
and shows that even then he had the daring nature
which afterwards characterised him. For some
reason it became necessary to restrain the cadets when
leaving the dining-hall, the approach to which was
by a narrow staircase. At the top of this staircase
stood the senior corporal, with outstretched arms,
facing the cadets. This was too much for one so
full of fun and energy and so reckless of consequences
as Gordon; so, putting down his head, he charged,
and butting the corporal in the pit of the stomach,
sent him flying down the staircase and through a window
beyond. Fortunately the corporal was unhurt,
but Gordon was perilously near dismissal, and having
his military career cut short. The act of insubordination
was, however, overlooked by the authorities, but that
it did not subdue his spirit is evident from the fact
that on another occasion, when told by Captain Eardley
Wilmot that he would never make an officer, he tore
the epaulets from his shoulders and threw them at
the feet of his superior. This officer, afterwards
General Eardley Wilmot, became one of his greatest
friends. Later on, for another offence, in which
many were concerned, and of which it is doubtful if
Gordon really was guilty, he was deprived of half a
year’s seniority in the army. This punishment
really did him a good turn, for it enabled him to
secure a commission in the Royal Engineers instead
of the Royal Artillery, to which he would otherwise
have been posted.
On the 23rd June 1852 Gordon was gazetted
to the Engineers, and on the 29th November 1854 he
was ordered to Corfu. As the Crimean War was
going on he was much disappointed at this order, and
at first attributed it to his mother’s influence,
who, he thought, wanted him to be sent to a safe place.
Through the influence of Sir John Burgoyne, an old
family friend, his destination was changed, and on
the 4th of December, during that bitterly cold winter,
he writes, “I received my orders for the Crimea,
and was off the same day.” This was not
the only time that he exhibited such promptitude in
leaving his native land at the call of his country.
Thirty years afterwards he left England for the Soudan
the very day he received his orders.
He arrived in the Crimea on New Year’s
Day 1855, when all the celebrated historical battles
were over. His martial ardour had doubtless been
stirred by hearing how bravely our men swarmed up the
heights at Alma, charged the Russian gunners at Balaklava,
and drove back the sortie at Inkerman. When he
arrived, the siege of Sebastopol had commenced in
earnest, and for some time it was an engineer’s
campaign, in which the spade did more than the rifle,
or, to speak more correctly, the musket; for very
few of our men had rifles then. Disease and exhaustion
from hardship slew far more than the bullet. Altogether,
it was rather a trying time for a young officer full
of fire and spirit, anxious to see service of that
more dashing kind that appeals to the imagination.
The slow advance of the trenches must have tried his
somewhat impatient spirit, which, even in later years,
when it might have been modified by time, was always
more ready for a rapid march, a brilliant flank movement,
or something of that kind. But though the trench-work
must have been wearisome and distasteful to a degree,
he threw himself heart and soul into it, meriting the
following praise from Colonel Chesney, an eminent
engineer officer: “In his humble position
as an engineer subaltern he had attracted the notice
of his superiors, not merely by his energy and activity
(for these are not, it may be asserted, uncommon characteristics
of his class), but by an extraordinary aptitude for
war, developing itself amid the trench-work before
Sebastopol in a personal knowledge of the enemy’s
movements such as no other officer attained. ’We
always used to send him out to find what new move
the Russians were making,’ was the testimony
given to his genius by one of the most distinguished
officers he served under.” He not only
exhibited the “aptitude for war” of which
Colonel Chesney speaks, but it appears that he also
displayed on several occasions a great deal of that
personal courage for which he afterwards became so
renowned. A single incident may be taken as a
specimen of many. One day as he was passing along
the trenches, he overheard a heated altercation between
a sapper and a corporal, both belonging to his own
corps. On inquiring into the cause, he discovered
that the corporal had ordered a man to stand on the
parapet, where he was exposed to the enemy’s
fire, while the corporal, under cover, was going to
hand him some gabions for repairing the parapet.
Gordon at once jumped on to the parapet himself and
called the corporal to join him, letting the sapper
hand up the gabions from a place of safety.
Gordon remained until the work was completed, in spite
of the fire of the Russians, and then turning to the
corporal said, “Never order a man to do anything
you are afraid to do yourself.”
His warlike genius and his courage
were by no means his only remarkable characteristics,
and it may not be out of place to mention here a trifling
event, which possibly had a marked influence on his
whole life. It so happened that Colonel Staveley,
an officer who afterwards attained to some eminence,
but who at that time was of no great note beyond being
the second in command of a distinguished corps, the
44th Regiment, mentioned in Gordon’s hearing
that he had been appointed field-officer of the day
for the trenches for the following day, but owing
to his having been on sick leave, was ignorant of the
geography of the place. Now considering that
Gordon was at this time greatly overworked in the
trenches, he might well have been excused had he allowed
Colonel Staveley’s remark to pass; for it must
be remembered that it is no part of the duty of a
young engineer officer to instruct infantry field-officers
in their duties. But this was not Gordon’s
style. He, at all events, never limited himself
to a strict routine of mere duty, and so he cheerfully
volunteered assistance, saying, “Oh! come down
with me to-night after dark, and I will show you over
the trenches.” Colonel Staveley says, “He
drew me out a very clear sketch of the lines (which
I have now), and down I went accordingly. He
explained every nook and corner, and took me along
outside our most advanced trench, the bouquets and
other missiles flying about us in, to me, a very unpleasant
manner; he taking the matter remarkably coolly.”
Napoleon somewhere remarked that “the smallest
trifles produce the greatest results,” an expression
to which Gordon himself once referred. This Colonel
Staveley afterwards became General Sir Charles Staveley,
and he it was who first recommended Gordon, when quite
a young captain in China, to take command of that
army for which he did so much, and with which he acquired
such renown. Had it not been for Sir Charles
Staveley, possibly Gordon would never have had the
opportunity he needed to show of what good stuff he
was made; and who but the General himself can tell
how much that night adventure in the trenches had to
do with his selection later on?
As I have taken a later opportunity
to enlarge on Gordon’s simple faith, I will
only say here that up to this period there are no
indications that he was very decided. It appears
that during the year 1854, when stationed at Pembroke,
a distinct spiritual change came over him; and if
we may judge from one of his letters to his sister
Augusta, it was she who influenced him for good.
But there can be no question that he did not at this
time enter into that full assurance of faith which
afterwards characterised him; still, his faith at this
period, though weak, was real. In a letter home,
referring to the death of a Captain Craigie, who was
killed by a splinter from a shell, he says, “I
am glad to say that he was a serious man. The
shell burst above him, and by what is called chance
struck him in the back, killing him at once.”
It is interesting to note from the words “what
is called chance” that he had already learnt
to recognise the hand of God in everything, and that
even at this early stage of his career there existed
the germs of that doctrine on which he spoke and wrote
so much later on. It has been said by some that
his so-called fatalistic views were imbibed from the
Mohammedans in the Soudan. This sentence in a
letter written by him before he had ever held an intimate
conversation with a Mohammedan shows that such was
not the case. Allusion is made to the incident
here merely to show what the condition of faith and
state of mind of Charles Gordon were during the Crimean
War. There is one other letter on record, written
about this time, which is worthy of mention here.
When the Commander-in-chief of the Crimean army died,
Gordon wrote, “Lord Raglan died of tear and
wear and general debility. He was universally
regretted, as he was so kind. His life has been
entirely spent in the service of his country.
I hope he was prepared, but do not know.”
Beyond a few deeds of personal daring,
there is not much to record of Gordon during the Crimean
War. He went out, as has already been said, when
the principal battles were over, and his position being
quite a subordinate one, he had no opportunities of
distinguishing himself. He gained the esteem
of all those who did come in contact with him; he
took every opportunity of gaining a professional insight
into the science of war; he had many narrow escapes
of being wounded, and once he was struck on the head
by a stone thrown up by a round shot. He formed
a high estimate of the Russians as soldiers, with a
correspondingly low one of our allies the French.
Writing home of a favourable opportunity lost of assaulting
Sebastopol, he says, “I think we might have
assaulted on Monday, but the French do not seem to
care about it. The garrison is 25,000, and on
that day we heard afterwards that only 8000 were in
the place, as the rest had gone to repel an attack
(fancied) of ours at Inkerman.”
The history of the Crimean War has
been written so often, that it is unnecessary to occupy
much space with detail, especially in view of the
unimportant part Gordon had to play. On June 7th
he accompanied the attacking force under Sir John
Campbell, which was severely repulsed in the assault
upon the Great Redan. A delay of over two months
took place, and then the French attacked the Malakoff,
and the English again attempted to seize the Redan.
The French were successful, but we failed, and so
it was decided to renew the attack on the following
day. The Russians, however, seeing it was useless
to continue the struggle, evacuated the post on the
night of the 8th September. As Gordon was on
duty in the trenches that night, his account of what
he witnessed is interesting. “During the
night of the 8th I had heard terrific explosions,
and going down to the trenches at 4 A.M., I saw a splendid
sight. The whole of Sebastopol was in flames,
and every now and then terrible explosions took place,
while the rising sun shining on the place had a most
beautiful effect. The Russians were leaving the
town by the bridge; all the three-deckers were sunk,
the steamers alone remaining. Tons and tons of
powder must have been blown up. About 8 A.M.
I got an order to commence a plan of the works, for
which purpose I went to the Redan, where a dreadful
sight was presented. The dead were buried in
the ditch the Russians with the English Mr.
Wright reading the burial service over them.”
On the fall of Sebastopol Gordon joined
the force that besieged Kinburn, and was present at
the fall of that fortress in October. He then
returned to Sebastopol, and was engaged in destroying
the defences of that place, remaining there till the
evacuation in February 1856. Although he received
no promotion at the end of the war, he was selected
for the French Legion of Honour, a distinction given
to very few subalterns. Apparently, however,
he had already formed to some extent the opinion which
became more decided in later years on the subject
of decorations, for he said in a letter written home
a month before the fall of Sebastopol, “I for
one do not care about being ‘lamented’
after death. I am not ambitious, but what easily
earned C.B.’s and Majorities there are in some
cases! while men who have earned them, like poor Oldfield,
get nothing. I am sorry for him. He was
always squabbling about his batteries with us, but
he got more by his perseverance than any man before
did.” Although Gordon was only twenty-two
years of age at this time, we see the germs of the
characteristics which later in life marked him so prominently.
He was even then indifferent to earthly distinctions;
he had a simple faith in his Saviour; he had repeatedly
exhibited courage; and men of eminence who came in
contact with him had recognised indications of peculiar
military aptitude. Though he had had no opportunity
of making a great name for himself at that early date,
he had stood the severe test of his first campaign
under great hardships, and while he had not been found
wanting in a single respect, he had gained the professional
respect and esteem of all.
It is unnecessary to enlarge on the
time between the Crimean War and the China War.
Suffice it to say briefly, that instead of being sent
home, Gordon had to remain as an assistant-commissioner
to settle the frontier line; for Russia had to give
up a piece of territory that in 1812 she had taken
from the Turks. For a whole year he was engaged
on this task, and then, when he thought that he was
to be allowed to return home, he was sent to Asia
Minor to perform a similar duty, and was not able
to return till he had been abroad three years.
He was then granted leave for six months, and afterwards
returned to his work in Armenia, where he remained
till the spring of 1858, thus missing all chance of
being employed in the Indian Mutiny, which broke out
in 1857. On his return to England in 1858, he
went to Chatham, where he was promoted to the rank
of captain the following year.