You can only govern men by imagination: without imagination they
are brutes.... ’Tis by speaking to the soul that you electrify
men.—NAPOLEON.
I
In the late summer of 1881 a certain native of Dongola, proclaiming
himself a heaven-inspired Mahdi, began to rally to his banner the wild
tribes of the southern Soudan. His mission was to confound the wicked, the
hypocrite, the unbeliever, and to convert the world to the true faith in
the one God and his prophet. The fame of the Mahdi’s eloquence, his piety,
his zeal, rapidly spread. At his ear he found a counsellor, so well known
to us after as the khalifa, and this man soon taught the prophet politics.
The misrule of the Soudan by Egypt had been atrocious, and the combination
of a religious revival with the destruction of that hated yoke swelled a
cry that was irresistible. The rising rapidly extended, for fanaticism in
such regions soon takes fire, and the Egyptian pashas had been sore
oppressors, even judged by the rude standards of oriental states. Never
was insurrection more amply justified. From the first, Mr. Gladstone’s
curious instinct for liberty disclosed to him that here was a case of “a
people rightly struggling to be free.” The phrase was mocked and derided
then and down to the end of the chapter. Yet it was the simple truth.
“During all my political life,” he said at a later stage of Soudanese
affairs, “I am thankful to say that I have never opened my lips in favour
of a domination such as that which has been exercised upon certain
countries by certain other countries, and I am not going now to begin.”
(M55) “I look upon the possession of the Soudan,” he proceeded, “as the
calamity of Egypt. It has been a drain on her treasury, it has been a
drain on her men. It is estimated that 100,000 Egyptians have laid down
their lives in endeavouring to maintain that barren conquest.” Still
stronger was the Soudanese side of the case. The rule of the Mahdi was
itself a tyranny, and tribe fought with tribe, but that was deemed an
easier yoke than the sway of the pashas from Cairo. Every vice of eastern
rule flourished freely under Egyptian hands. At Khartoum whole families of
Coptic clerks kept the accounts of plundering raids supported by Egyptian
soldiers, and “this was a government collecting its taxes.” The function
of the Egyptian soldiers “was that of honest countrymen sharing in the
villainy of the brigands from the Levant and Asia Minor, who wrung money,
women, and drink from a miserable population.”(82) Yet the railing against
Mr. Gladstone for saying that the “rebels” were rightly struggling to be
free could not have been more furious if the Mahdi had been for dethroning
Marcus Aurelius or Saint Louis of France.
The ministers at Cairo, however, naturally could not find in their hearts
to withdraw from territory that had been theirs for over sixty years,(83)
although in the winter of 1882-3 Colonel Stewart, an able British officer,
had reported that the Egyptian government was wholly unfit to rule the
Soudan; it had not money enough, nor fighting men enough, nor
administrative skill enough, and abandonment at least of large portions of
it was the only reasonable course. Such counsels found no favour with the
khedive’s advisers and agents, and General Hicks, an Indian officer,
appointed on the staff of the Egyptian army in the spring of 1883, was now
despatched by the government of the khedive from Khartoum, for the
recovery of distant and formidable regions. If his operations had been
limited to the original intention of clearing Sennaar of rebels and
protecting Khartoum, all might have been well. Unluckily some trivial
successes over the Mahdi encouraged the Cairo government to design an
advance into Kordofan, and the reconquest of all the vast wildernesses of
the Soudan. Lord Dufferin, Sir E. Malet, Colonel Stewart, were all of them
clear that to attempt any such task with an empty chest and a worthless
army was madness, and they all argued for the abandonment of Kordofan and
Darfur. The cabinet in London, fixed in their resolve not to accept
responsibility for a Soudan war, and not to enter upon that responsibility
by giving advice for or against the advance of Hicks, stood aloof.(84) In
view of all that followed later, and of their subsequent adoption of the
policy of abandoning the Soudan, British ministers would evidently have
been wiser if they had now forbidden an advance so pregnant with disaster.
Events showed this to have been the capital miscalculation whence all else
of misfortune followed. The sounder the policy of abandonment, the
stronger the reasons for insisting that the Egyptian government should not
undertake operations inconsistent with that policy. The Soudan was not
within the sphere of our responsibility, but Egypt was; and just because
the separation of Egypt from the Soudan was wise and necessary, it might
have been expected that England would peremptorily interpose to prevent a
departure from the path of separation. What Hicks himself, a capable and
dauntless man, thought of the chances we do not positively know, but he
was certainly alive to the risks of such a march with such material. On
November 5 (1883) the whole force was cut to pieces, the victorious
dervishes were free to advance northwards, and the loose fabric of
Egyptian authority was shattered to the ground.
II
(M56) The three British military officers in Cairo all agreed that the
Egyptian government could not hold Khartoum if the Mahdi should draw down
upon it; and unless a British, an Indian, or a Turkish force came to the
rescue, abandonment of the Soudan was the only possible alternative. The
London cabinet decided that they would not employ British or Indian troops
in the Soudan, and though they had no objection to the resort to the Turks
by Egypt, if the Turks would pay their own expenses (a condition fatal to
any such resort), they strongly recommended the khedive to abandon all
territory south of Assouan or Wady-Halfa. Sir Evelyn Baring, who had now
assumed his post upon a theatre where he was for long years to come to
play the commanding part, concurred in thinking that the policy of
complete abandonment was the best admitted by the circumstances. It is the
way of the world to suppose that because a given course is best, it must
therefore be possible and ought to be simple. Baring and his colleagues at
Cairo were under no such illusion, but it was the foundation of most of
the criticism that now broke forth in the English press.
The unparalleled difficulties that ultimately attended the evacuation of
the Soudan naturally led inconsiderate critics,—and such must ever be the
majority,—to condemn the policy and the cabinet who ordered it. So apt are
men in their rough judgments on great disputable things, to mistake a mere
impression for a real opinion; and we must patiently admit that the
Result—success or failure in the Event—is the most that they have time
for, and all that they can go by. Yet two remarks are to be made upon this
facile censure. The first is that those who knew the Soudan best, approved
most. On January 22, 1884, Gordon wrote to Lord Granville that the Soudan
ever was and ever would be a useless possession, and that he thought the
Queen’s ministers “fully justified in recommending evacuation, inasmuch as
the sacrifices necessary towards securing good government would be far too
onerous to admit of such an attempt being made.” Colonel Stewart quite
agreed, and added the exclamation that nobody who had ever visited the
Soudan could escape the reflection, “What a useless possession and what a
huge encumbrance on Egypt!” As we shall see, the time soon came when
Gordon accepted the policy of evacuation, even with an emphasis of his
own. The second remark is that the reconquest of the Soudan and the
holding of Khartoum were for the Egyptian government, if left to its own
resources, neither more nor less than impossible; these objects, whether
they were good objects or bad, not only meant recourse to British troops
for the first immense operations, but the retention of them in a huge and
most inhospitable region for an indefinite time. A third consideration
will certainly not be overlooked by anybody who thinks on the course of
the years of Egyptian reform that have since elapsed, and constitute so
remarkable a chapter of British administration,—namely, that this
beneficent achievement would have been fatally clogged, if those who
conducted it had also had the Soudan on their hands. The renovation or
reconstruction of what is called Egypt proper, its finances, its army, its
civil rule, would have been absolutely out of reach, if at the same time
its guiding statesmen had been charged with the responsibilities
recovering and holding that vaster tract which had been so rashly acquired
and so mercilessly misgoverned. This is fully admitted by those who have
had most to do with the result.
III
The policy of evacuation was taken as carrying with it the task of
extricating the Egyptian garrisons. This aim induced Mr. Gladstone’s
cabinet once more to play an active military part, though Britain had no
share in planting these garrisons where they were. Wise men in Egypt were
of the same mind as General Gordon, that in the eastern Soudan it would
have been better for the British government to keep quiet, and “let events
work themselves out.” Unfortunately the ready clamour of headlong
philanthropists, political party men, and the men who think England
humiliated if she ever lets slip an excuse for drawing her sword, drove
the cabinet on to the rocks. When the decision of the cabinet was (M57)
taken (Feb. 12, 1883) to send troops to Suakin, Mr. Gladstone stood alone
in objecting. Many thousands of savages were slaughtered under
humanitarian pressure, not a few English lives were sacrificed, much
treasure flowed, and yet Sinkat fell, and Tokar fell, and our labours in
the eastern Soudan were practically fruitless.(85) The operations had no
effect upon the roll of the fierce mahdi wave over the Soudan.
In England, excitement of the unsound sort that is independent of
knowledge, consideration, or deliberation; independent of any weighing of
the actual facts and any forecast of latent possibilities, grew more and
more vociferous. Ministers quailed. Twice they inquired of their agent in
Egypt(86) whether General Gordon might not be of use, and twice they
received an adverse reply, mainly on the ground that the presence in
authority of a Christian officer was a dubious mode of confronting a
sweeping outbreak of moslem fanaticism, and would inevitably alienate
tribes that were still not caught by the Mahdi.(87) Unhappily a third
application from London at last prevailed, and Sir E. Baring, supported by
Nubar, by Sir Evelyn Wood, by Colonel Watson, who had served with Gordon
and knew him well, all agreed that Gordon would be the best man if he
would pledge himself to carry out the policy of withdrawing from the
Soudan as quickly as possible. “Whoever goes,” said Sir E. Baring in
pregnant words to Lord Granville, will “undertake a service of great
difficulty and danger.” This was on January 16th. Two days later the die
was cast. Mr. Gladstone was at Hawarden. Lord Granville submitted the
question (Jan. 14, 1884) to him in this form: “If Gordon says he believes
he could by his personal influence excite the tribes to escort the
Khartoum garrison and inhabitants to Suakin, a little pressure on Baring
might be advisable. The destruction of these poor people will be a great
disaster.” Mr. Gladstone telegraphed that to this and other parts of the
same letter, he agreed. Granville then sent him a copy of the telegram
putting “a little pressure on Baring.” To this Mr. Gladstone replied (Jan.
16) in words that, if they had only been taken to heart, would have made
all the difference:—
I can find no fault with your telegram to Baring _re_ Chinese
Gordon, and the main point that strikes me is this: While his
opinion on the Soudan may be of great value, must we not be very
careful in any instruction we give, that he does not shift the
centre of gravity as to political and military responsibility for
that country? In brief, if he reports what should be done, he
should not be the judge _who_ should do it, nor ought he to commit
us on that point by advice officially given. It would be extremely
difficult after sending him to reject such advice, and it should
therefore, I think, be made clear that he is not our agent for the
purpose of advising on that point.
On January 18, Lord Hartington (then secretary of state for war), Lord
Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke met at the war office in
Pall Mall. The summons was sudden. Lord Wolseley brought Gordon and left
him in the ante-room. After a conversation with the ministers, he came out
and said to Gordon, “Government are determined to evacuate the Soudan, for
they will not guarantee the future government. Will you go and do it?” “_I
said_, ‘Yes.’ _He said_, ‘Go in.’ _I went in and saw them. They said_,
‘Did Wolseley tell you our orders?’ _I said_, ‘Yes.’ _I said_, ‘You will
not guarantee future government of the Soudan, and you wish me to go up
and evacuate now.’ _They said_, ‘Yes,’ _and it was over, and I left at 8
p.m. for Calais_.”(88) This graphic story does not pretend to be a full
version of all that passed, though it puts the essential point
unmistakably enough. Lord Granville seems to have drawn Gordon’s (M58)
special attention to the measures to be taken for the security of the
Egyptian garrisons (plural) still holding positions in the Soudan and to
the best mode of evacuating the interior.(89) On the other hand, according
to a very authentic account that I have seen, Gordon on this occasion
stated that the danger at Khartoum was exaggerated, and that he would be
able to bring away the garrisons without difficulty.
Thus in that conclave of sober statesmen a tragedy began. The next day one
of the four ministers met another; “We were proud of ourselves
yesterday—are you sure we did not commit a gigantic folly?” The prime
minister had agreed at once on receiving the news of what was done at the
war office, and telegraphed assent the same night.(90) The whole cabinet
met four days later, Mr. Gladstone among them, and the decision was
approved. There was hardly a choice, for by that time Gordon was at
Brindisi. Gordon, as Mr. Gladstone said, was a hero of heroes. He was a
soldier of infinite personal courage and daring; of striking military
energy, initiative, and resource; a high, pure, and single character,
dwelling much in the region of the unseen. But as all who knew him admit,
and as his own records testify, notwithstanding an under-current of shrewd
common-sense, he was the creature, almost the sport, of impulse; his
impressions and purposes changed with the speed of lightning; anger often
mastered him; he went very often by intuitions and inspirations rather
than by cool inference from carefully surveyed fact: with many variations
of mood he mixed, as we often see in people less famous, an invincible
faith in his own rapid prepossessions while they lasted. Everybody now
discerns that to despatch a soldier of this temperament on a piece of
business that was not only difficult and dangerous, as Sir E. Baring said,
but profoundly obscure, and needing vigilant sanity and self-control, was
little better than to call in a wizard with his magic. Mr. Gladstone
always professed perplexity in understanding why the violent end of the
gallant Cavagnari in Afghanistan, stirred the world so little in
comparison with the fate of Gordon. The answer is that Gordon seized the
imagination of England, and seized it on its higher side. His religion was
eccentric, but it was religion; the Bible was the rock on which he founded
himself, both old dispensation and new; he was known to hate forms,
ceremonies, and all the “solemn plausibilities”; his speech was sharp,
pithy, rapid, and ironic; above all, he knew the ways of war and would not
bear the sword for nought. All this was material enough to make a popular
ideal, and this is what Gordon in an ever-increasing degree became, to the
immense inconvenience of the statesmen, otherwise so sensible and wary,
who had now improvidently let the genie forth from the jar.
IV
It has been sometimes contended that all the mischief that followed was
caused by the diversion of Gordon from Suakin, his original destination.
If he had gone to the Red Sea, as originally intended, there to report on
the state and look of things in the Soudan, instead of being waylaid and
brought to Cairo, and thence despatched to Khartoum, they say, no
catastrophe would have happened. This is not certain, for the dervishes in
the eastern Soudan were in the flush of open revolt, and Gordon might
either have been killed or taken prisoner, or else he would have come back
without performing any part of his mission. In fact, on his way from
London to Port Said, Gordon had suggested that with a view to carrying out
evacuation, the khedive should make him governor-general of the Soudan.
Lord Granville authorised Baring to procure the nomination, and this Sir
Evelyn did, “for the time necessary to accomplish the evacuation.” The
instructions were thus changed, in an important sense, but the change was
suggested by Gordon and sanctioned by Lord Granville.(91)
(M59) When Gordon left London his instructions, drafted in fact by
himself, were that he should “consider and report upon the best mode of
effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan.” He was also to
perform such duties as the Egyptian government might wish to entrust to
him, and as might be communicated to him by Sir E. Baring.(92) At Cairo,
Baring and Nubar, after discussion with Gordon, altered the mission from
one of advice and report to an executive mission—a change that was
doubtless authorised and covered by the original reference to duties to be
entrusted to him by Egypt. But there was no change in the policy either at
Downing Street or Cairo. Whether advisory or executive, the only policy
charged upon the mission was abandonment. When the draft of the new
instructions was read to Gordon at Cairo, Sir E. Baring expressly asked
him whether he entirely concurred in “the policy of abandoning the
Soudan,” and Gordon not only concurred, but suggested the strengthening
words, that he thought “it should on no account be changed.”(93) This
despatch, along with the instructions to Gordon making this vast
alteration, was not received in London until Feb. 7. By this time Gordon
was crossing the desert, and out of reach of the English foreign office.
On his way from Brindisi, Gordon had prepared a memorandum for Sir E.
Baring, in which he set out his opinion that the Soudan had better be
restored to the different petty sultans in existence before the Egyptian
conquest, and an attempt should be made to form them into some sort of
confederation. These petty rulers might be left to accept the Mahdi for
their sovereign or not, just as they pleased. But in the same document he
emphasised the policy of abandonment. “I understand,” he says, “that
H.M.’s government have come to the irrevocable decision not to incur the
very onerous duty of granting to the peoples of the Soudan a just future
government.” Left to their independence, the sultans “would doubtless
fight among themselves.” As for future good government, it was evident
that “this we could not secure them without an inordinate expenditure of
men and money. The Soudan is a useless possession; ever was so, and ever
will be so. No one who has ever lived in the Soudan, can escape the
reflection, What a useless possession is this land.” Therefore—so he winds
up—“I think H.M.’s government are fully justified in recommending the
evacuation, inasmuch as the sacrifices necessary towards securing a good
government would be far too onerous to admit of any such attempt being
made. Indeed, one may say it is impracticable at any cost. _H.M.’s
government will now leave them as God has placed them._”(94)
It was, therefore, and it is, pure sophistry to contend that Gordon’s
policy in undertaking his disastrous mission was evacuation but not
abandonment. To say that the Soudanese should be left in the state in
which God had placed them, to fight it out among themselves, if they were
so minded, is as good a definition of abandonment as can be invented, and
this was the whole spirit of the instructions imposed by the government of
the Queen and accepted by Gordon.
Gordon took with him instruments from the khedive into which, along with
definite and specific statements that evacuation was the object of his
mission, two or three loose sentences are slipped about “establishing
organised government in the different provinces of the Soudan,”
maintaining order, and the like. It is true also that the British cabinet
sanctioned the extension of the area of evacuation from Khartoum to the
whole Soudan.(95) Strictly construed, the whole body of instructions,
including firmans and khedive’s proclamations, is not technically compact
nor coherent. But this is only another way of saying that Gordon was to
have the widest discretionary powers as to the manner of carrying out the
policy, and the best time and mode of announcing it. The policy itself, as
well understood by Gordon as by everybody else, was untouched, and it was:
to leave the Soudanese in the state in which God had placed them.
The hot controversy on this point is idle and without substance—the idlest
controversies are always the hottest—for (M60) not only was Gordon the
last man in all the world to hold himself bound by official instructions,
but the actual conditions of the case were too little known, too shifting,
too unstable, to permit of hard and fast directions beforehand how to
solve so desperate a problem. Two things at any rate were clear—one, that
Gordon should faithfully adhere to the policy of evacuation and
abandonment which he had formally accepted; the other, that the British
government should leave him a free hand. Unhappily neither of these two
clear things was accepted by either of the parties.
V
Gordon’s policies were many and very mutable. Viewing the frightful
embarrassments that enveloped him, we cannot wonder. Still the same
considerateness that is always so bounteously and so justly extended to
the soldier in the field, is no less due in its measure to the councillor
in the cabinet. This is a bit of equity often much neglected both by
contemporaries and by history.
He had undertaken his mission without any serious and measured forecast,
such as his comrade, Colonel Stewart, was well fitted to supply. His first
notion was that he could restore the representatives of the old rulers,
but when he got into the country, he found that there were none; with one
by no means happy exception, they had all disappeared. When he reached
Berber, he learned more clearly how the question of evacuation was
interlaced with other questions. Once at Khartoum, at first he thought
himself welcome as a deliverer, and then when new light as to the real
feelings of the Soudanese broke upon him, he flung the policy of his
mission overboard. Before the end of February, instead of the suzerainty
of Egypt, the British government should control Soudanese administration,
with Zobeir as their governor-general. “When Gordon left this country,”
said Mr. Gladstone, “and when he arrived in Egypt, he declared it to be,
and I have not the smallest doubt that it was—a fixed portion of his
policy, that no British force should be employed in aid of his
mission.”(96) When March came, he flung himself with ardour into the
policy of “smashing up” the Mahdi, with resort to British and Indian
troops. This was a violent reversal of all that had been either settled or
dreamed of, whether in London or at Cairo. A still more vehement stride
came next. He declared that to leave outlying garrisons to their fate
would be an “indelible disgrace.” Yet, as Lord Hartington said, the
government “were under no moral obligation to use the military resources
of this empire for the relief of those garrisons.” As for Gordon’s opinion
that “indelible disgrace” would attach to the British government if they
were not relieved, “I do not admit,” said the minister very sensibly,
“that General Gordon is on this point a better authority than anybody
else.”(97) All this illustrates the energy of Gordon’s mental movements,
and also, what is more important, the distracting difficulties of the case
before him. In one view and one demand he strenuously persevered, as we
shall now see.
Mr. Gladstone at first, when Gordon set all instructions at defiance, was
for recalling him. A colleague also was for recalling him on the first
instant when he changed his policy. Another important member of the
cabinet was, on the contrary, for an expedition. “I cannot admit,” wrote a
fourth leading minister, “that either generals or statesmen who have
accepted the offer of a man to lead a forlorn hope, are in the least bound
to risk the lives of thousands for the uncertain chance of saving the
forlorn hope.” Some think that this was stern common sense, others call it
ignoble. The nation, at any rate, was in one of its high idealising
humours, though Gordon had roused some feeling against himself in this
country (unjustly enough) by his decree formally sanctioning the holding
of slaves.
The general had not been many hours in Khartoum (February 18) before he
sent a telegram to Sir E. Baring, proposing that on his withdrawal from
Khartoum, Zobeir Pasha should be named his successor as governor-general
of the Soudan: he should be made a K.C.M.G., and have presents given to
him. This request was strenuously pressed by Gordon. Zobeir had been a
prime actor in the (M61) devastations of the slave trade; it was he who
had acquired Darfur for Egypt; he was a first-rate fighting man, and the
ablest leader in the Soudan. He is described by the English officer who
knows the Soudan best, as a far-seeing, thoughtful man of iron will—a born
ruler of men.(98) The Egyptian government had desired to send him down to
aid in the operations at Suakin in 1883, but the government in London
vetoed him, as they were now to veto him a second time. The Egyptian
government was to act on its own responsibility, but not to do what it
thought best. So now with Gordon.
Gordon in other days had caused Zobeir’s son to be shot, and this was
supposed to have set up an unquenchable blood-feud between them. Before
reaching Cairo, he had suggested that Zobeir should be sent to Cyprus, and
there kept out of the way. This was not done. On Gordon’s way through
Cairo, the two men met in what those present describe as a highly dramatic
interview. Zobeir bitterly upbraided Gordon: “You killed my son, whom I
entrusted to you. He was as your son. You brought my wives and women and
children in chains to Khartoum.” Still even after that incident, Gordon
declared that he had “a mystical feeling” that Zobeir and he were all
right.(99) What inspired his reiterated demand for the immediate despatch
of Zobeir is surmised to have been the conviction forced upon him during
his journey to Khartoum, that his first idea of leaving the various petty
sultans to fight it out with the Mahdi, would not work; that the Mahdi had
got so strong a hold that he could only be met by a man of Zobeir’s
political capacity, military skill, and old authority. Sir E. Baring,
after a brief interval of hesitation, now supported Gordon’s request. So
did the shrewd and expert Colonel Stewart. Nubar too favoured the idea.
The cabinet could not at once assent; they were startled by the change of
front as to total withdrawal from the Soudan—the very object of Gordon’s
mission, and accepted by him as such. On February 21 Mr. Gladstone
reported to the Queen that the cabinet were of opinion that there would be
the gravest objection to nominating by an assumption of British authority
a successor to General Gordon in the Soudan, nor did they as yet see
sufficient reasons for going beyond Gordon’s memorandum of January 25, by
making special provision for the government of that country. But at first
it looked as if ministers might yield, if Baring, Gordon, and Nubar
persisted.
As ill-fortune had it, the Zobeir plan leaked out at home by Gordon’s
indiscretion before the government decided. The omnipotent though not
omniscient divinity called public opinion intervened. The very men who had
most loudly clamoured for the extrication of the Egyptian garrisons, who
had pressed with most importunity for the despatch of Gordon, who had been
most urgent for the necessity of giving him a free hand, now declared that
it would be a national degradation and a European scandal to listen to
Gordon’s very first request. He had himself unluckily given them a capital
text, having once said that Zobeir was alone responsible for the slave
trade of the previous ten years. Gordon’s idea was, as he explained, to
put Zobeir into a position like that of the Ameer of Afghanistan, as a
buffer between Egypt and the Mahdi, with a subsidy, moral support, and all
the rest of a buffer arrangement. The idea may or may not have been a good
one; nobody else had a better.
It was not at all surprising that the cabinet should ask what new reason
had come to light why Zobeir should be trusted; why he should oppose the
Mahdi whom at first he was believed to have supported; why he should turn
the friend of Egypt; why he should be relied upon as the faithful ally of
England. To these and other doubts Gordon had excellent answers (March 8).
Zobeir would run straight, because it was his interest. If he would be
dangerous, was not the Mahdi dangerous, and whom save Zobeir could you set
up against the Mahdi? You talked of slave-holding and slave-hunting, but
would slave-holding and slave-hunting (M62) stop with your own policy of
evacuation? Slave-holding you cannot interfere with, and as for
slave-hunting, that depended on the equatorial provinces, where Zobeir
could be prevented from going, and besides he would have his hands full in
consolidating his power elsewhere. As for good faith towards Egypt,
Zobeir’s stay in Cairo had taught him our power, and being a great trader,
he would rather seek Egypt’s close alliance. Anyhow, said Gordon, “if you
do not send Zobeir, you have no chance of getting the garrisons away.”
The matter was considered at two meetings of the cabinet, but the prime
minister was prevented by his physician from attending.(100) A difference
of opinion showed itself upon the despatch of Zobeir; viewed as an
abstract question, three of the Commons members inclined to favour it, but
on the practical question, the Commons members were unanimous that no
government from either side of the House could venture to sanction Zobeir.
Mr. Gladstone had become a strong convert to the plan of sending Zobeir.
“I am better in chest and generally,” he wrote to Lord Granville, “but
unfortunately not in throat and voice, and Clark interdicts my appearance
at cabinet; but I am available for any necessary communication, say with
you, or you and Hartington.” One of the ministers went to see him in his
bed, and they conversed for two hours. The minister, on his return,
reported with some ironic amusement that Mr. Gladstone considered it very
likely that they could not bring parliament to swallow Zobeir, but
believed that he himself could. Whether his confidence in this was right
or wrong, he was unable to turn his cabinet. The Queen telegraphed her
agreement with the prime minister. But this made no difference. “On
Saturday 15,” Mr. Gladstone notes, “it seemed as if by my casting vote
Zobier was to be sent to Gordon. But on Sunday —— and —— receded from
their ground, and I gave way. The nature of the evidence on which
judgments are formed in this most strange of all cases, precludes (in
reason) pressing all conclusions, which are but preferences, to extremes.”
“It is well known,” said Mr. Gladstone in the following year when the
curtain had fallen on the catastrophe, “that if, when the recommendation
to send Zobeir was made, we had complied with it, an address from this
House to the crown would have paralysed our action; and though it was
perfectly true that the decision arrived at was the judgment of the
cabinet, it was also no less the judgment of parliament and the people.”
So Gordon’s request was refused.
It is true that, as a minister put it at the time, to send Zobeir would
have been a gambler’s throw. But then what was it but a gambler’s throw to
send Gordon himself? The Soudanese chieftain might possibly have done all
that Gordon and Stewart, who knew the ground and were watching the quick
fluctuation of events with elastic minds, now positively declared that he
would have the strongest motives not to do. Even then, could the issue
have been worse? To run all the risks involved in the despatch of Gordon,
and then immediately to refuse the request that he persistently
represented as furnishing him his only chance, was an incoherence that the
parliament and people of England have not often surpassed.(101) All
through this critical month, from the 10th until the 30th, Mr. Gladstone
was suffering more or less from indisposition which he found it difficult
to throw off.
VI
The chance, whatever it may have been, passed like a flash. Just as the
proposal inflamed many in England, so it did mischief in Cairo. Zobeir
like other people got wind of it; enemies of England at Cairo set to work
with him; Sir E. Baring might have found him hard to deal with. It was
Gordon’s rashness that had made the design public. Gordon, too, as it
happened, had made a dire mistake on his way up. At Berber he had shown
the khedive’s secret firman, (M63) announcing the intended abandonment of
the Soudan. The news spread; it soon reached the Mahdi himself, and the
Mahdi made politic use of it. He issued a proclamation of his own, asking
all the sheikhs who stood aloof from him or against him, what they had to
gain by supporting a pasha who was the next day going to give the Soudan
up. Gordon’s argument for this unhappy proceeding was that, the object of
his mission being to get out of the country and leave them to their
independence, he could have put no sharper spur into them to make them
organise their own government. But he spoke of it after as the fatal
proclamation, and so it was.(102)
What happened was that the tribes round Khartoum almost at once began to
waver. From the middle of March, says a good observer, one searches in
vain for a single circumstance hopeful for Gordon. “When the eye wanders
over the huge and hostile Soudan, notes the little pin-point garrisons,
each smothered in a cloud of Arab spears, and remembers that Gordon and
Stewart proceeded to rule this vast empire, already given away to others,
one feels that the Soudanese view was marked by common sense.”(103)
Gordon’s too sanguine prediction that the men who had beaten Hicks, and
the men who afterwards beat Baker, would never fight beyond their tribal
limits, did not come true. Wild forces gathered round the Mahdi as he
advanced northwards. The tribes that had wavered joined them. Berber fell
on May 26. The pacific mission had failed, and Gordon and his comrade
Stewart—a more careful and clear-sighted man than himself—were shut up in
Khartoum.
Distractions grew thicker upon the cabinet, and a just reader, now far
away from the region of votes of censure, will bear them in mind. The
Queen, like many of her subjects, grew impatient, but Mr. Gladstone was
justified in reminding her of the imperfect knowledge, and he might have
called it blank ignorance, with which the government was required on the
shortest notice to form conclusions on a remote and more than
half-barbarous region.
Gordon had told them that he wanted to take his steam vessels to Equatoria
and serve the king of the Belgians. This Sir Evelyn Baring refused to
allow, not believing Gordon to be in immediate danger (March 26). From
Gordon himself came a telegram (March 28), “I think we are now safe, and
that, as the Nile rises, we shall account for the rebels.” Mr. Gladstone
was still unwell and absent. Through Lord Granville he told the cabinet
(March 15) that, with a view to speedy departure from Khartoum, he would
not even refuse absolutely to send cavalry to Berber, much as he disliked
it, provided the military authorities thought it could be done, and
provided also that it was declared necessary for Gordon’s safety, and was
strictly confined to that object. The cabinet decided against an immediate
expedition, one important member vowing that he would resign if an
expedition were not sent in the autumn, another vowing that he would
resign if it were. On April 7, the question of an autumn expedition again
came up. Six were favourable, five the other way, including the prime
minister.
Almost by the end of March it was too probable that no road of retreat was
any longer open. If they could cut no way out, either by land or water,
what form of relief was possible? A diversion from Suakin to Berber—one of
Gordon’s own suggestions? But the soldiers differed. Fierce summer heat
and little water; an Indian force might stand it; even they would find it
tough. A dash by a thousand cavalry across two hundred miles of desert—one
hundred of them without water; without communication with its base, and
with the certainty that whatever might befall, no reinforcements could
reach it for months? What would be your feelings, and your language, asked
Lord (M64) Hartington, if besides having Gordon and Stewart beleaguered in
Khartoum, we also knew that a small force of British cavalry unable to
take the offensive was shut up in the town of Berber?(104) Then the
government wondered whether a move on Dongola might not be advantageous.
Here again the soldiers thought the torrid climate a fatal objection, and
the benefits doubtful. Could not Gordon, some have asked, have made his
retreat at an early date after reaching Khartoum, by way of Berber?
Answer—the Nile was too low. All this it was that at a later day, when the
time had come to call his government to its account, justified Mr.
Gladstone in saying that in such enterprises as these in the Soudan,
mistakes and miscarriages were inevitable, for they were the proper and
certain consequences of undertakings that lie beyond the scope of human
means and of rational and prudent human action, and are a war against
nature.(105) If anybody now points to the victorious expedition to
Khartoum thirteen years later, as falsifying such language as this, that
experience so far from falsifying entirely justifies. A war against nature
demands years of study, observation, preparation, and those who are best
acquainted with the conditions at first hand all agree that neither the
tribes nor the river nor the desert were well known enough in 1885, to
guarantee that overthrow in the case of the Mahdi, which long afterwards
destroyed his successor.
On April 14 Sir E. Baring, while as keenly averse as anybody in the world
to an expedition for the relief of Khartoum if such an expedition could be
avoided, still watching events with a clear and concentrated gaze, assured
the government that it was very likely to be unavoidable; it would be well
therefore, without loss of time, to prepare for a move as soon as ever the
Nile should rise. Six days before, Lord Wolseley also had written to Lord
Hartington at the war office, recommending immediate and active
preparations for an exclusively British expedition to Khartoum. Time, he
said, is the most important element in this question; and in truth it was,
for time was flying, and so were events. The cabinet were reported as
feeling that Gordon, “who was despatched on a mission essentially pacific,
had found himself, from whatever cause, unable to prosecute it
effectually, and now proposed the use of military means, which might fail,
and which, even if they should succeed, might be found to mean a new
subjugation of the Soudan—the very consummation which it was the object of
Gordon’s mission to avert.” On June 27 it was known in London that Berber
had fallen a month before.
VII
Lord Hartington, as head of the war department, had a stronger leaning
towards the despatch of troops than some of his colleagues, but, says Mr.
Gladstone to Lord Granville in a letter of 1888, “I don’t think he ever
came to any sharp issue (like mine about Zobeir); rather that in the main
he got what he wanted.” Wherever the fault lay, the issue was unfortunate.
The generals in London fought the battle of the routes with unabated
tenacity for month after month. One was for the approach to Khartoum by
the Nile; another by Suakin and Berber; a third by the Korosko desert. A
departmental committee reported in favour of the Nile as the easiest,
safest, and cheapest, but they did not report until July 29. It was not
until the beginning of August that the House of Commons was asked for a
vote of credit, and Lord Hartington authorised General Stephenson at Cairo
to take measures for moving troops southward. In his despatch of August 8,
Lord Hartington still only speaks of operations for the relief of Gordon,
“should they become necessary”; he says the government were still
unconvinced that Gordon could not secure the withdrawal of the garrison
from Khartoum; but “they are of opinion that the time had arrived for
obtaining accurate information as to his position,” and, “if necessary,
for rendering him assistance.”(106) As soon as the decision was taken,
preparations were carried out with rapidity and skill. In the same month
Lord Wolseley was (M65) appointed to command the expedition, and on
September 9 he reached Cairo. The difficulties of a military decision had
been great, said Lord Hartington, and there was besides, he added, a
difference of opinion among the military authorities.(107) It was October
5 before Lord Wolseley reached Wady-Halfa, and the Nile campaign began.
Whatever decision military critics may ultimately form upon the choice of
the Nile route, or upon the question whether the enterprise would have
been any more successful if the route had been by Suakin or Korosko, it is
at least certain that no position, whether strategically false or no, has
ever evoked more splendid qualities in face of almost preterhuman
difficulties, hardship, and labour. The treacherous and unknown river, for
it was then unknown, with its rapids, its shifting sandbanks and tortuous
channels and rocky barriers and heart-breaking cataracts; the Bayuda
desert, haunted by fierce and stealthy enemies; the trying climate, the
heat, the thirst, all the wearisome embarrassments of transport on camels
emaciated by lack of food and water—such scenes exacted toil, patience,
and courage as worthy of remark and admiration as if the advance had
successfully achieved its object. Nobody lost heart. “Everything goes on
swimmingly,” wrote Sir Herbert Stewart to Lord Wolseley, “_except as to
time_.” This was on January 14, 1885. Five days later, he was mortally
wounded.
The end of it all, in spite of the gallantry of Abu Klea and Kirbekan, of
desert column and river column, is only too well known. Four of Gordon’s
small steamers coming down from Khartoum met the British desert column at
Gubat on January 21. The general in command at once determined to proceed
to Khartoum, but delayed his start until the morning of the 24th. The
steamers needed repairs, and Sir Charles Wilson deemed it necessary for
the safety of his troops to make a reconnaissance down the river towards
Berber before starting up to Khartoum. He took with him on two of Gordon’s
steamers—described as of the dimensions of the penny boats upon the
Thames, but bullet proof—a force of twenty-six British, and two hundred
and forty Soudanese. He had also in tow a nugger laden with dhura. This
was what, when Khartoum came in sight (Jan. 28) the “relief force”
actually amounted to. As the two steamers ran slowly on, a solitary voice
from the river-bank now and again called out to them that Khartoum was
taken, and Gordon slain. Eagerly searching with their glasses, the
officers perceived that the government-house was a wreck, and that no flag
was flying. Gordon, in fact, had met his death two days before.
Mr. Gladstone afterwards always spoke of the betrayal of Khartoum. But
Major Kitchener, who prepared the official report, says that the
accusations of treachery were all vague, and to his mind, the outcome of
mere supposition. “In my opinion,” he says, “Khartoum fell from sudden
assault, when the garrison were too exhausted by privations to make proper
resistance.”(108) The idea that the relieving force was only two days late
is misleading. A nugger’s load of dhura would not have put an end to the
privations of the fourteen thousand people still in Khartoum; and even
supposing that the handful of troops at Gubat could have effected their
advance upon Khartoum many days earlier, it is hard to believe that they
were strong enough either to drive off the Mahdi, or to hold him at bay
until the river column had come up.
VIII
The prime minister was on a visit to the Duke of Devonshire at Holker,
where he had many long conversations with Lord Hartington, and had to deal
with heavy post-bags. On Thursday, Feb. 5, after writing to the Queen and
others, he heard what had happened on the Nile ten days before. “After 11
A.M.,” he records, “I learned the sad news of the fall or betrayal of
Khartoum. H[artington] and I, with C [his wife], went off by the first
train, and reached Downing Street soon after 8.15. The circumstances are
sad and trying. It is one of the least points about them that they may put
an end to this government.”(109) The next day the cabinet met; (M66)
discussions “difficult but harmonious.” The Queen sent to him and to Lord
Hartington at Holker an angry telegram—blaming her ministers for what had
happened—a telegram not in cipher as usual, but open. Mr. Gladstone
addressed to the Queen in reply (Feb. 5, 1885) a vindication of the course
taken by the cabinet; and it may be left to close an unedifying and a
tragic chapter:—
_To the Queen._
Mr. Gladstone has had the honour this day to receive your
Majesty’s telegram _en clair_, relating to the deplorable
intelligence received this day from Lord Wolseley, and stating
that it is too fearful to consider that the fall of Khartoum might
have been, prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier
action. Mr. Gladstone does not presume to estimate the means of
judgment possessed by your Majesty, but so far as his information
and recollection at the moment go, he is not altogether able to
follow the conclusion which your Majesty has been pleased thus to
announce. Mr. Gladstone is under the impression that Lord
Wolseley’s force might have been sufficiently advanced to save
Khartoum, had not a large portion of it been detached by a
circuitous route along the river, upon the express application of
General Gordon, to occupy Berber on the way to the final
destination. He speaks, however, with submission on a point of
this kind. There is indeed in some quarters a belief that the
river route ought to have been chosen at an earlier period, and
had the navigation of the Nile in its upper region been as well
known as that of the Thames, this might have been a just ground of
reproach. But when, on the first symptoms that the position of
General Gordon in Khartoum was not secure, your Majesty’s advisers
at once sought from the most competent persons the best
information they could obtain respecting the Nile route, the
balance of testimony and authority was decidedly against it, and
the idea of the Suakin and Berber route, with all its formidable
difficulties, was entertained in preference; nor was it until a
much later period that the weight of opinion and information
warranted the definitive choice of the Nile route. Your Majesty’s
ministers were well aware that climate and distance were far more
formidable than the sword of the enemy, and they deemed it right,
while providing adequate military means, never to lose from view
what might have proved to be the destruction of the gallant army
in the Soudan. It is probable that abundant wrath and indignation
will on this occasion be poured out upon them. Nor will they
complain if so it should be; but a partial consolation may be
found on reflecting that neither aggressive policy, nor military
disaster, nor any gross error in the application of means to ends,
has marked this series of difficult proceedings, which, indeed,
have greatly redounded to the honour of your Majesty’s forces of
all ranks and arms. In these remarks which Mr. Gladstone submits
with his humble devotion, he has taken it for granted that
Khartoum has fallen through the exhaustion of its means of
defence. But your Majesty may observe from the telegram that this
is uncertain. Both the correspondent’s account and that of Major
Wortley refer to the delivery of the town by treachery, a
contingency which on some previous occasions General Gordon has
treated as far from improbable; and which, if the notice existed,
was likely to operate quite independently of the particular time
at which a relieving force might arrive. The presence of the enemy
in force would naturally suggest the occasion, or perhaps even the
apprehension of the approach of the British army. In pointing to
these considerations, Mr. Gladstone is far from assuming that they
are conclusive upon the whole case; in dealing with which the
government has hardly ever at any of its stages been furnished
sufficiently with those means of judgment which rational men
usually require. It may be that, on a retrospect, many errors will
appear to have been committed. There are many reproaches, from the
most opposite quarters, to which it might be difficult to supply a
conclusive answer. Among them, and perhaps among the most
difficult, as far as Mr. Gladstone can judge, would be the
reproach of those who might argue that our proper business was the
protection of Egypt, that it never was in military danger from the
Mahdi, and that the most prudent course would have been to provide
it with adequate frontier defences, and to assume no
responsibility for the lands beyond the desert.
One word more. Writing to one of his former colleagues long after Mr.
Gladstone says:—
_Jan. 10, ’90._—In the Gordon case we all, and I rather
prominently, must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was a
hero, and a hero of heroes; but we ought to have known that a hero
of heroes is not the proper person to give effect at a distant
point, and in most difficult circumstances, to the views of
ordinary men. It was unfortunate that he should claim the hero’s
privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and
intention with which he had left England, and for which he had
obtained our approval. Had my views about Zobeir prevailed, it
would not have removed our difficulties, as Forster would
certainly have moved, and with the tories and the Irish have
carried, a condemnatory address. My own opinion is that it is
harder to justify our doing so much to rescue him, than our not
doing more. Had the party reached Khartoum in time, he would not
have come away (as I suppose), and the dilemma would have arisen
in another form.
In 1890 an application was made to Mr. Gladstone by a certain foreign
writer who had undertaken an article on Gordon and his mission. Mr.
Gladstone’s reply (Jan. 11, ’90) runs to this effect:—
I am much obliged by your kind letter and enclosure. I hope you
will not think it belies this expression when I say that I feel
myself precluded from supplying any material or entering upon any
communications for the purpose of self-defence against the charges
which are freely made and I believe widely accepted against myself
and against the cabinet of 1880-5 in connection with General
Gordon. It would be felt in this country, by friends I think in
many cases as well as adversaries, that General Gordon’s
much-lamented death ought to secure him, so far as we are
concerned, against the counter-argument which we should have to
present on his language and proceedings. On this account you will,
I hope, excuse me from entering into the matter. I do not doubt
that a true and equitable judgment will eventually prevail.(110)