SIEGE OF KHARTOUM (1884)
Gordon invited to the Soudan--The Mahdi--Chinese Gordon--His
religious feeling--Not supported by England--Arabs attack--Blacks
as cowards--Pashas shot--The _Abbas_ sent down with Stewart--Her
fate--Relief coming--Provisions fail--A sick steamer--_Bordein_
sent down to Shendy--Alone on the house-top--Sir Charles Wilson
and Beresford steam up--The rapids and sand-bank--“Do you see the
flag?”--“Turn and fly”--Gordon’s fate.
In January, 1884, Charles Gordon was asked by the British Government
to go to Egypt and withdraw from the Soudan the garrisons, the civil
officials, and any of the inhabitants who might wish to be taken away.
It was a dangerous duty he had to perform, as the Mahdi, a religious
pretender in whom many believed, had just annihilated an Egyptian
army led by an Englishman, Hicks Pasha, and, supported by the Arab
slave-dealers, had revolted against Egyptian rule.
Gordon had some years before been Governor-General of the Soudan for
the Khedive Ismail. He had been then offered £10,000 a year, but would
not take more than £2,000, for he knew it would be “blood money wrung
from the wretches under his rule.” When previously “Chinese Gordon,”
as he was called, had put down the Taiping rebels for the Chinese
Government, he refused the enormous treasure which was offered him, in
order to mark his resentment at the treachery of the Emperor for having
executed the rebel chiefs after Gordon had promised them their lives.
Gordon was a man of simple piety. “God dwells in us”--this was the
doctrine he most valued. After the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,”
the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, seem to have been
his favourites. He once wrote: “Amongst troubles and worries no one
can have peace till he stays his soul upon his God. It gives a man
superhuman strength.... The quiet, peaceful life of our Lord was solely
due to His submission to God’s will.”
Such was the man whom England sent out too late to face the rising
storm of Arab rebellion. Gordon reached Khartoum on the 18th of
February, taking up his quarters in the palace which had been his home
in years before. He had come, he said, without troops, nor would he
fight with any weapons but justice. The chains were struck off from the
limbs of the prisoners in the dungeons.
“I shall make them love me,” he said; and the black people came in
their thousands to kiss his feet, calling him “the Sultan of the
Soudan.”
But time went by, and Gordon could not get the Government at home to
second his schemes, so that the natives began to lose confidence in
him, and sided with the Mahdi.
The Arabs began to attack Khartoum on the 12th of March, and from
that date until his death Gordon was engaged in defending the city.
Khartoum is situated on the western bank of the Blue Nile, on a spit
of sand between the junction of that river with the White Nile. Nearly
all the records of this period have been lost, but it is proved that
wire entanglements were stretched in front of the earthworks, mines
were laid down, the Yarrow-built steamers were made bullet-proof and
furnished with towers, guns were mounted on the public buildings, and
expeditions in search of food were sent out.
It was Gordon’s habit to go up on the roof at sunrise and scan the
country around.
“I am not alone,” he would say, “for He is ever with me.”
On the 16th of March he had to look upon his native troops retiring
before the rebel horsemen. He writes:
“Our gun with the regulars opened fire. Very soon a body of about sixty
rebel horsemen charged down upon my Bashi-Bazouks, who fired a volley,
then turned and fled. The horsemen galloped towards my square of
regulars, which they immediately broke. The whole force then retreated
slowly towards the fort with their rifles shouldered. The men made no
effort to stand, and the gun was abandoned. Pursuit ceased about a mile
from stockade, and there the men rallied. We brought in the wounded.
Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men
even on camels, pursuing close to troops, who with arms shouldered
plodded their way back.”
But Gordon was no weak humanitarian. Two Pashas were tried, and found
guilty of cowardice, and were promptly shot--_pour encourager les
autres_. After that he tried to train his men to face the enemy by
little skirmishes, and he made frequent sallies with his river steamers.
“You see,” he wrote, “when you have steam on the men can’t run away.”
Then began a long and weary waiting for the relief which came not until
it was too late. The Arabs kept on making attacks, which they never
pressed home, expecting to effect a surrender from scarcity of food.
[Illustration: A STRANGE WEAPON OF OFFENCE
Lieut. Herbert was ordered to paste some labels at the ambulance doors
in Plevna. In passing a dark lane someone sprang at him and seized his
paste-pot, no doubt taking it for food. To defend himself he belaboured
and plastered his opponents’ face with the paste-brush, and later on
those of two others. He then turned and ran.]
In September only three months’ food remained. No news came from
England; they knew not if England even thought of them. The population
of Khartoum was at first about 60,000 souls; nearly 20,000 of these
were sent away as the siege went on as being friends of the Mahdi.
On the 9th of September Gordon sent down the Nile, in a small
paddle-boat named the _Abbas_, Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, M. Herbin,
the French Consul, some Greeks, and about fifty soldiers. They took
with them letters, journals, dispatches which were to be sent from
Dongola. The _Abbas_ drew little water, the river was in full flood,
and they seemed likely to be able to get over the rapids with safety.
Henceforth Gordon was alone with his black and Egyptian troops. One
might have thought that his heart would have sunk within him at the
loneliness of his situation, at the feeling of desertion by England,
and of treachery in his own garrison. He had no friend to speak to, no
sympathetic companion left at Khartoum. Yes, he had one Friend left,
and in his journal he tells us that he was happier and more peaceful
now than in the earlier months of the siege.
“He is always with me. May our Lord not visit us as a nation for our
sins, but may His wrath fall on me, hid in Christ. This is my frequent
prayer, and may He spare these people and bring them to peace.”
The ill-fated _Abbas_ was wrecked, her passengers and crew were
murdered, her papers were taken to the Mahdi, who now knew exactly how
long Khartoum could hold out against famine.
On the 21st of September Gordon first heard the news of a relief
expedition being sent from England, and three days later he resolved to
dispatch armed steamers to Metemma down the Nile to await the arrival
of our troops. They started on the 30th, taking with them many of
Gordon’s best men; but Gordon went on, drilling, feeding the hungry,
visiting the sick, writing hopefully, and sometimes merrily, in his
journals. For instance, writing of an official who had telegraphed,
“I should like to be informed exactly when Gordon expects to be in
difficulties as to provisions and ammunition,” Gordon remarks:
“This man must be preparing a great statistical work. If he will only
turn to his archives he will see we have been in difficulties for
provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, having seen
his friend in a river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, ‘I
say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life-buoy.
I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to
throw you the life-buoy until you are _in extremis_, and I want to know
exactly.’”
On the 21st of October the Mahdi arrived before Khartoum, and Gordon
was informed of the loss of the _Abbas_ and the death of his friends.
To this Gordon replied:
“Tell the Mahdi that it is all one to me whether he has captured 20,000
steamers like the _Abbas_--I am here like iron.”
On the 2nd of November there were left provisions for six weeks, and he
could not put the troops on half rations, lest they should desert.
On the 12th an attack was made upon Omdurman, a little way down the
river, and on Gordon’s steamers _Ismailia_ and _Hussineyeh_. The latter
was struck by shells, and had to be run aground. In the journal we read:
“From the roof of the palace I saw that poor little beast _Hussineyeh_
fall back, stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breechloaders. I
saw a shell strike the water at her bows; I saw her stop and puff off
steam, and then I gave the glass to my boy, _sickened unto death_. My
boy (he is thirty) said, ‘_Hussineyeh_ is sick.’ I knew it, but said
quietly, ‘Go down and telegraph to Mogrim, “Is _Hussineyeh_ sick?”’”
On the 22nd of November Gordon summed up his losses. He had lost
nearly 1,900 men, and 242 had been wounded. And where were the English
boats that were to hurry up the Nile to his rescue?
On the 30th of November only one boat had passed the third cataract,
the remaining 600 were creaking and groaning under the huge strain that
was hauling them painfully through the “Womb of Rocks.”
In December the desertions from the garrison increased, as the
food-supply decreased. There was not fifteen days’ food left now in
Khartoum. So the steamer _Bordein_ was sent down to Shendy with letters
and his journal. In a letter to his sister he writes:
“I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have _tried_ to do
my duty.”
The last entry in his journal runs as follows:
“I have done the best for the honour of our country. Good-bye. You send
me no information, though you have lots of money.”
Evidently this high-souled man was cut to the heart by what he thought
was the ingratitude and neglect of England. He could not know that
thousands of Englishmen and Canadians were toiling up the Nile flood
to save him, if it were possible. But alas! they all started too late,
since valuable time had been wasted in long arguments held in London as
to which might be the best route to Khartoum.
Meanwhile, starvation was beginning: strange things were eaten by
those who still remained faithful to the last. Only 14,000 now were
left in the city. But Omdurman had been taken, the Arabs were pressing
closer and fiercer, and Egyptian officers came to Gordon clamouring
for surrender. Then he would go up upon the roof, his face set, his
teeth clenched. He would strain his eyes in looking to the north for
some sign, some tiny sign of help coming. He cared not for his own
life--“The Almighty God will help me,” he wrote--but he did care for
the honour of England, and that honour seemed to him to be sullied by
our leaving him here at bay--and all alone!
Meanwhile, the English had fought their way to Gubat, where they found
the steamers which Gordon had sent to meet them. So tired were the men
that, after a drink of river-water, they fell down like logs. Four of
Gordon’s steamers, with Sir Charles Wilson and Captain C. Beresford,
started from Gubat on the 24th of January with twenty English
soldiers and some undisciplined blacks. They were like the London
penny steamers, that one shell would have sent to the bottom. They
were heavily laden with Indian corn, fuel, and dura for the Khartoum
garrison. Each steamer flew two Egyptian flags, one at the foremast and
one at the stern. Every day they had to stop for wood to supply the
engines, when the men would be off after loot or fresh meat.
When they reached the cataract and rapids the _Bordein_ struck on a
rock, and could not be moved for many hours, the Nile water running
like a mill-race under her keel. Arabs on the bank were taking
pot-shots at her, and the blacks on board grinned good-humouredly, and
replied with a wasteful fusillade. After shifting the guns and stores,
the crew got the _Bordein_ to move on the 26th of January, but only to
get fast upon a sand-bank. Precious time was thus lost, and on the 27th
of January a camel man shouted from the bank that Khartoum was taken
and Gordon killed. No one believed this news.
Near Halfiyeh a heavy fire was opened upon them at 600 yards from four
guns and many rifles. The gunners on the steamers were naked, and
looked like demons in the smoke.
“One huge giant was the very incarnation of savagery drunk with war,”
writes Sir Charles Wilson.
When the steamers had passed the batteries the Soudanese crews screamed
with delight, lifting up their rifles and shaking them above their
heads.
Soon they saw the Government House at Khartoum above the trees, and
excitement stirred every heart. The Soudanese commander, Khashm el Mus,
kept on saying, “Do you see the flag?”
No one could see the flag.
“Then something has happened!” he muttered.
However, there was no help for it; they had to go on past Tuti Island
and Omdurman, spattered and flogged with thousands of bullets.
“It is all over--all over!” groaned Khashm, as to the sound of the
Nordenfeldt was added the deeper note of the Krupp guns from Khartoum
itself.
As they reached the “Elephant’s Trunk”--so the sand-spit was called
below Khartoum--they saw hundreds of Dervishes ranged under their
banners in order to resist a landing; so the order was given with a
heavy heart: “Turn her, and run full speed down.” Then the Soudanese on
board, who till now had been fighting enthusiastically, collapsed and
sank wearily on the deck. The poor fellows had lost their all--wives,
families, houses!
“What is the use of firing? I have lost all,” said Khashm, burying his
face in his mantle.
But they got him upon his legs, and the moment of sorrowful despair
changed again to desperate revenge. After all the steamers got safely
back.
And General Gordon--we left him alone in command of a hungry
garrison--what of him? From examinations of Gordon’s officers taken
later it seems that before daylight on the 26th of January the Arabs
attacked one of the gates, and met with little or no resistance. There
was reason to fear treachery. For some three hours the Arabs went
through the city killing every one they met. Some of them went to the
palace, and there met Gordon walking in front of a small party of men.
He was probably going to the church, where the ammunition was stored,
to make his last stand. The rebels fired a volley, and Gordon fell
dead. It is reported that his head was cut off and exposed above the
gate at Omdurman. We may be glad that it was a sudden death--called
away by the God in whom he trusted so simply. Thus died one of
England’s greatest heroes, one of the world’s most holy men.
The siege had lasted 317 days, nine days less than the siege of
Sebastopol, and the Mahdi ascribed the result to his God. In a letter
sent to the British officers on the steamers he says:
“God has destroyed Khartoum and other places by our hands. Nothing can
withstand His power and might, and by the bounty of God all has come
into our hands. There is no God but God.
“MUHAMMED, THE SON OF ABDULLAH.”