KHARTOUM
Gordon left Egypt in December 1879, "not a day too soon," the doctor
said, for he was ill, not only from hard work, but from overwork.
The burden he had carried on his shoulders through those years was the
burden of the whole of the Soudan.
He was ordered several months of complete rest. But those days of rest
were only castles that Gordon had built in his day-dreams, when burning
days and bitter nights had made him long for ease.
Early in 1880 he became Secretary to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. He
remained only a few months in India, and then went to China, in answer
to an urgent message from his old friend, Li Hung Chang.
China and Russia were on the brink of a great war. The Chinese
courtiers wished to fight, but Li Hung Chang longed for peace.
"Come and help me to keep peace," he said to Gordon. And "Chinese
Gordon" did not fail him.
"I cannot desert China in her present crisis," he wrote.
His stay in China was not long, but when he returned to England he had
made peace between two empires.
He had only been home for a short time when again he was on the wing.
One day at the War Office he met a brother officer, who complained of
his bad luck at having to go and command the Engineers at such a dull
place as the Island of Mauritius.
"Oh, don't worry yourself," said Gordon, "I will go for you: Mauritius
is as good for me as anywhere else."
For a year he remained there--a peaceful, if dull year, but in March
1882 he was made a Major-General, and relieved from his post.
For a short time he was in South Africa, trying to put to rights
affairs between the Basutos--a black race--and the Government at the
Cape. The Government, who had asked him to come, treated him badly,
and even put his life in danger. He made them very angry by telling
them that they were wholly in the wrong, and that he would not fight
the Basutos, who had right and justice on their side; and, having
failed in his mission, he returned to England.
To find the rest and peace he so much needed, Gordon now went to the
Holy Land.
Long ago, the day before a brave warrior was made a knight, he spent
the hours from sunset till dawn alone in a chapel beside his armour,
watching and praying. This was called "watching his armour."
Gordon was "watching his armour" now. Often he saw no one for weeks at
a time. He prayed much, and the books he read were his Bible, his
Prayer Book, Thomas à Kempis, and Marcus Aurelius. He wandered over
the ground where the feet of the Master he served so well had trod
before him. He was much in Jerusalem. He went to where the grey
olives grow in the Garden of Gethsemane. His own Gethsemane was still
to come.
In those quiet days he planned great work that he meant to do in the
East End of London.
But there was other work for him to do. "We have nothing to do when
the scroll of events is unrolled but to accept them as being for the
best," he once wrote.
In December 1883 he suddenly returned to London, and soon it was known
that he was going, at the request of the King of the Belgians, to the
Congo, to help to fight the slavers there. "We will kill them in their
haunts," said Gordon.
Meantime, fresh things had been happening in the Soudan.
When Gordon left Egypt in 1879, he said to an English official there:
"I shall go, and you must get a man to succeed me--if you can. But I
do not deny that he will want three qualifications which are seldom
found together. First, he must have my iron constitution; for Khartoum
is too much for any one who has not. Then, he must have my contempt
for money; otherwise the people will never believe in his sincerity.
Lastly, he must have my contempt for death."
Such a man was not found, and well might the black people long for the
return of Gordon Pasha, the only Christian for whom they offered
prayers at Mecca.
When he went away, under the rule of the greedy Egyptian pashas the
slave trade began again. Once more packed caravans of wretched slaves
dragged across the desert, and the land was full of misery and of
rebellion.
In 1881 the discontented Soudanese found a leader.
From the island of Abbas on the Nile, Mahommed Ahmed, a dervish or holy
man, from Dongola, proclaimed to the people of Egypt and of the Soudan
that he was a prophet sent from heaven to save them from the cruelty of
their rulers.
_El Mahdi el Muntazer_, or The Expected One, he called himself, and
said he was immortal and would never die.
Soon he had many followers. He was attended by soldiers, who stood in
his presence with drawn swords, and he had all the power of a king.
Because he was Mahdi, his followers all had to obey him. And as he was
Mahdi, he himself did exactly as he pleased, and what he liked to do
was all that was wicked and cruel.
The Governor-General at Khartoum, seeing that the Mahdi was growing
much too powerful, sent two companies of soldiers to take him prisoner.
The Mahdists made a trap for them, fell on them with their swords and
short stabbing spears, and destroyed them. More troops were sent, and
also destroyed. Then came a small army, and of that army almost no man
escaped.
"This is in truth our Deliverer, sent from Heaven," said the wild
people of the Soudan, and they flocked in tribes to join the Mahdi.
It was not long before he owned a great army, and there have never been
any soldiers who fought more fiercely and with more magnificent
courage, and who feared death less, than those followers of a savage
dervish.
The Mahdi laid siege to one of the chief cities of the Soudan. It fell
before him, and sack and massacre followed.
An army of 11,000, under the command of a brave English officer, was
then sent to attack the Mahdi. Like all the troops that had gone
before them, they were led into a trap, and, out of 11,000 men, only
eleven returned to Egypt.
From one victory to another went the Mahdi. His troops, armed with
weapons taken from those they had slain, were rich with plunder.
Only two Englishmen were now left in the Soudan. At Khartoum were
Colonel Coëtlogan and Mr. Frank Power, correspondent of the _Times_.
Colonel Coëtlogan telegraphed that it was hopeless for the Egyptian
troops in the Soudan to hold out against the Mahdi. Soldiers were
deserting daily, and people on every hand were joining the victorious
army of the ruffian who claimed to have been sent from Heaven. Colonel
Coëtlogan begged for orders for the loyal troops to leave the Soudan
and seek safety in Egypt.
Gordon believed that if the Soudan were given up to the Mahdi, there
would presently be no limit to the tyrant's power. All the slavery and
misery from which Gordon had tried to free the land would be worse than
ever before. Egypt and Arabia might also, before long, take as their
king the Mahdi who ruled the Soudan.
He held that at all costs Khartoum must be defended, and not handed
over to the Mahdi, as Colonel Coëtlogan and many others advised.
In England this belief of General Gordon, who knew more about the
Soudan than any other living man, soon became known.
All his plans for going to the Congo were made, and he had gone to
Brussels to take leave of the King of the Belgians when a telegram came
to him from the English Government.
"Come back to London by evening train," it said. And, leaving all his
luggage behind him, Gordon went.
Next morning he interviewed Lord Wolseley and some members of the
Cabinet. He was asked if he would undertake a mission to the Soudan,
to try to resettle affairs there, to bring away the Egyptian garrisons,
and to divide, if possible, the country amongst the petty sultans whom
he thought strong and wise enough to keep order.
Gordon was ready to go, and, to go at once. "I would give my life for
these poor people of the Soudan," he said.
Late that afternoon he started.
Lord Wolseley has told the story of his going:--
"There he stood, in a tall silk hat and frock coat. I offered to send
him anything he wanted.
"'Don't want anything,' he said.
"'But you've got no clothes.'
"'I'll go as I am!' he said, and he meant it.
"He never had any money; he always gave it away. I know once he had
£7000. It all went in the establishment of a ragged school for boys.
"I asked him if he had any cash.
"'No,' was his calm reply. 'When I left Brussels I had to borrow £25
from the King to pay my hotel bill with.'
"'Very well,' I said, 'I'll try and get you some, and meet you at the
railway station with it.'
"I went round to the various clubs, and got £300 in gold. I gave the
money to Colonel Stewart, who went with him: Gordon was not to be
trusted with it. A week or so passed by, when I had a letter from
Stewart. He said, 'You remember the £300 you gave me? When we arrived
at Port Said a great crowd came out to cheer Gordon. Amongst them was
an old Sheikh to whom Gordon was much attached, and who had become poor
and blind. Gordon got the money, and gave the whole of it to him!'" [1]
Before he started, he gave away some trinkets and things that he
prized. It was as if he knew something of what lay before him.
At Charing Cross, the Duke of Cambridge (who had known him since he was
a merry little boy at Corfu), Lord Wolseley, and others, came to bid
him Godspeed.
He took with him Colonel Donald Stewart, whom he had chosen as his
military secretary. Even in the rush before the train started he found
time to say to one of Colonel Stewart's relations: "Be sure that he
will not go into any danger which I do not share, and I am sure that
when I am in danger he will not be far behind."
When, on January 18, 1884, Gordon went out to the Soudan like one of
the Crusaders of old, all England was proud and glad.
In Egypt the people were gladder still.
Said the Arabs who had served under him: "The Mahdi's hordes will melt
away like dew, and the Pretender will be left like a small man standing
alone, until he is forced to flee back to his island of Abbas."
The Khedive again made him Governor-General of the Soudan, and, on the
26th of January 1884, Gordon started for Khartoum.
At Khartoum the people were in a panic. Colonel Coëtlogan had his
troops in readiness for flight. The rich people had already escaped.
The poor who had not fled were in terror lest the Mahdi and his hosts
might come any day and massacre them.
Across the desert spread the telegraph message: "_General Gordon is
coming to Khartoum_."
"_You are men, not women. Be not afraid; I am coming,_" followed
Gordon's own message to the terrified garrison.
More swiftly than ever before, he crossed the lonely desert. Many
skeletons of men and of camels, of oxen and of horses, now lay
bleaching in the scorching sun on that dreary waste of treeless
desolation.
On 18th February he reached Khartoum, and was greeted as their
deliverer by the people, who flocked around him in hundreds, trying to
kiss his hands and feet.
"I come without soldiers," he said to them, "but with God on my side,
to redress the evils of the land."
At once he was ready, as in past days, to listen to tales of wrong from
the poorest, and to try to set them right. He had all the whips and
instruments of torture that Egyptian rulers had used piled up outside
the Palace and burned. In the gaol he found two hundred men, women,
and children lying in chains and in the most dismal plight. Some were
innocent, many were prisoners of war. Of many their gaolers could give
no reason for their being there. One woman had been imprisoned for
fifteen years for a crime committed when she was a child.
Gordon had their chains struck off, and set them free. At nightfall he
had a bonfire made of the prison, and men, women, and children danced
round it in the red light of the flames, laughing and clapping their
hands.
All the sick in the city he sent by the river down to Egypt.
In Khartoum itself, by the mercy of its Governor, peace soon reigned.
"Gordon is working wonders," was the message Mr. Power sent to England.
But the Mahdi's power was daily growing, and he feared no one. When
Gordon sent him messages of peace he sent back insolent answers,
calling upon Gordon to become a Mussulman, and to come and serve the
Mahdi.
"If Egypt is to be quiet, the Mahdi must be smashed up," Gordon
telegraphed to the English Government.
By means of his steamers he laid in stores. The defences of Khartoum
he strengthened by mines and wire entanglements. He made some steamers
bullet-proof, and on 24th August was able to write that they were doing
"splendid work." His poor "sheep," as he called his troops, were being
turned into tried soldiers. "You see," he wrote, "when you have steam
on, the men can't run away, and must go into action."
Daily, from the top of a tower that he had built, he would gaze long
with his glass down the river and into the country round. From there
he could see if the Mahdi's armies were approaching, or if help were
coming to save Khartoum and the Soudan. All the time he kept up the
hearts of the people, and encouraged work at the school and everywhere
else.
In his journal he wrote: "I toss up in my mind, whether, if the place
is to be taken, to blow up the Palace and all in it, or else to be
taken, and, with God's help, to maintain the faith, and if necessary
suffer for it (which is most probable). The blowing up of the Palace
is the simplest, while the other means long and weary humiliation and
suffering of all sorts. I think I shall elect for the last, not from
fear of death, but because the former is, in a way, taking things out
of God's hands."
"Haunting the Palace are a lot of splendid hawks. I often wonder
whether they are destined to pick out my eyes."
Gradually the Mahdi's forces were gathering round the city. Their
drums rang in the ears of the besieged like the sound of a gathering
storm. The outlying villages were besieged, and many of those
villagers went over to the enemy. In some cases Gordon managed to
drive back the rebels from the parts they attacked, and bring back arms
and stores taken from them. More often the troops that were expected
to defend Khartoum put Gordon to shame by their feebleness and
cowardice, and suffered miserable defeat. Once, when attacking the
Mahdists, five of Gordon's own commanders deserted, and helped to drive
their own soldiers back to Khartoum.
As the year wore on, the siege came closer. Daily the Palace and the
Mission House were shelled, and men were killed as they walked in the
streets.
Money was scarce, and Gordon had little bank-notes made and used in
place of money, so that business still went on. But food grew scarcer
than money. Biscuits were the officers' chief food; dhoora that of the
men.
Again and again news was sent to him: "The English are coming."
Again and again he found that the English army that was to relieve
Khartoum had not yet started.
"The English are coming!" mocked the dervishes.
Day by day, Gordon's glass would sweep the steely river and the yellow
sand for the first sight of the men who were coming to save him and his
people.
At last, with sinking heart, he wrote: "The Government having abandoned
us, we can only trust in God."
"When our provisions, which we have, at a stretch, for two months, are
eaten, we must fall," wrote, to the _Times_, Frank Power, a brave man
and a true friend of Gordon.
In April the telegraph wires were cut by the enemy. After that, news
from England was only rarely to be had, and only through messengers who
were not often to be trusted.
Still hoping that an English army was coming, Gordon determined to send
his steamers half way to meet it. It meant that his garrison would be
weaker, should the Mahdi make any great attack, but Gordon felt that
England _could_ not fail him, and that in a very short time the
steamers would return, bringing a splendid reinforcement.
On September 10th, three steamers, with Colonel Stewart and Frank Power
in command, sailed down the Nile.
Gordon was left the only Englishman in Khartoum.
"I am left alone . . . but not alone," he wrote.
The steamer with Stewart and Power on board ran aground. The crew was
treacherously taken by a native sheikh, and Stewart, Power, and almost
all the others were cruelly murdered and their bodies thrown into the
Nile.
The news of the death of his two friends, and the ruin of his plan to
hasten on the relief of Khartoum, cut Gordon's brave heart to the quick.
Before Mr. Power left, Gordon had given him a little book that he
loved. It is called _The Dream of S. Gerontius_. Gordon had marked
many passages in it.
Here are some:--
"_Pray for me, O my friends._"
"Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled . . ."
"Into thy hands
O Lord, into Thy hands . . ."
So it seemed that even then Gordon knew that Death was drawing near
him, and was greeting with a fearless face the martyrdom that he was
soon to endure.
Yet all the while he never wavered, and his bravery seemed to give
courage to the feeblest hearted.
He who had never taken any pride in decorations or in medals--save
one--tried to cheer his soldiers by having a decoration made and
distributed--"three classes: gold, silver, pewter."
A Circassian in the Egyptian Service, speaking of Gordon in after
years, said: "He never seemed to sleep. He was always working and
looking after the people."
In the early days of those dark months, Frank Power had written of him
that all day he was cheering up others, but that through the night he
heard his footfall overhead, backwards and forwards, backwards and
forwards, sleepless, broken in heart, bearing on his soul the burden of
those he had no power to save.
At dawn he slept. All day he went the rounds, cheering up the people,
seeing to the comfort of every one, feeding the starving as well as he
could. For two days at a time he would go without food, that his
portion might go to others. They were living on roots and herbs when
the siege was done.
All the night he spent on the top of his tower, watching and praying.
Many times in the day did men see the spare figure standing on that
yellow-white tower, staring, with eyes that grew tired with longing,
into the far-away desert, looking for the help that never came.
[Illustration: Looking for the help that never came]
But, after many delays, an English army was actually on the march.
It was a race of about 1800 miles up the Nile from the sea--a race
between Victory and the Salvation of the beleaguered city and its
defender on one side, and Defeat, Death, and the Mahdi on the other.
Lord Wolseley, who commanded the expedition, offered £100 to the
regiment that covered the distance first.
Some fierce battles were fought on the way, and many brave lives were
lost.
On 14th December 1884, Gordon wrote to his sister: "This may be the
last letter you will receive from me, for we are on our last legs,
owing to the delay of the expedition. However, God rules all, and, as
He will rule to His glory and our welfare, His will be done. . . .
"I am quite happy, thank God, and, like Lawrence, I have '_tried_ to do
my duty.'"
On the same day he wrote in his journal:
"I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye.--C. G.
Gordon."
The last message of all was one that bore no date, and was smuggled out
of Khartoum in a cartridge case by one who had been his servant:--
"What I have gone through I cannot describe. The Almighty God will
help me."
In the camp of the Mahdi lay an Austrian prisoner, Slatin Pasha.
On the 15th of January 1885 he heard vigorous firing from Khartoum.
Gordon and his garrison were preventing the Mahdists from keeping in
their possession a fort which they had just taken.
In the days that followed, the firing went on, but Gordon's ammunition
was nearly done, and he and his men were weak and spent with hunger.
On the night of the 25th Slatin heard "the deafening discharge of
thousands of rifles and guns; this lasted for a few minutes, then only
occasional shots were heard, and now all was quiet again."
He lay wide awake, wondering if this was the great attack on Khartoum
that the Mahdi had always planned.
A few hours later, three black soldiers entered the prison bearing
something in a bloody cloth. They threw it at the prisoner's feet, and
he saw that it was the head of General Gordon.
When the relieving army reached Khartoum, they found the Mahdi's
banners of black and green flaunting from its walls, and the guns that
had so bravely defended it turned against them. They had come too late.
A traitor in the camp had hastened the end, and Gordon had fallen,
hacked to pieces, while trying to rally his troops.
For hours after he fell, massacre and destruction went on in the city.
Fourteen years later, Lord Kitchener and his soldiers avenged that
massacre, and marched into Khartoum.
The Mahdi was dead. He who boasted that he was immortal had died from
poison given him by a woman whom he had cruelly used. The Mahdi's
successors had fallen before a conquering English army.
When the Mahdists sacked and burned the Governor's Palace, they forgot
to destroy the trees and the rose bushes that Gordon with his own hands
had planted.
And in a new and lovely garden, beside a new Palace from which a brave
Scottish soldier rules the Soudan, the roses grow still, fragrant and
beautiful.
Khartoum is a great town now, peaceful and prosperous.
The Gordon College, where the boys of the Soudan are taught all that
English schoolboys learn, is the monument that England gave to a hero.
A statue of him stands in one of the squares, and to it came a poor old
black woman to whom Gordon had been very kind.
"God be praised!" she cried, "Gordon Pasha has come again!"
For a whole day she sat beside the statue, longing for a look from him
who had never before passed her without a friendly nod.
"Is he tired? or what is it?" she asked.
After many visits, she came home one evening quite happy.
"The Pasha has nodded his head to me!" she said.
And so, in the hearts of the people of the Soudan, Gordon Pasha still
lives.
Winds carry across the desert the scent of the roses that he planted,
and that drop their fragrant leaves near where his blood was shed.
And to the Eastern country for whose sake he died, and to our own land
for whose honour his life was given, he has left a memory that must be
like the roses--for ever fragrant, and for ever sweet.
[1] _Strand Magazine_, May 1892. By kind permission of Messrs. Newnes.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of General Gordon, by Jeanie Lang