several centuries ago. Its members had always been famous in battle.
Chinese Gordon's great-grandfather led a very eventful life. He was
taken prisoner in the battle of Prestonpans, and later went to Canada,
on the special expedition which wrested that Dominion from the French.
His son took part in many battles, and served with distinction.
The next in line, the father of Chinese Gordon, was Lieutenant-General
Henry William Gordon, a soldier of the highest type.
General Gordon lived at Woolwich, long noted for its arsenal. It is
only nine miles out from St. Paul's, and is an object of interest at
any time. But in times of war it fairly bristles with activity. Small
wonder, then, that a boy coming from such a line of ancestors and born,
almost, in a gun-carriage should have chosen to become a soldier. With
any other environment Chinese Gordon would have become a preacher.
Of course, the name "Chinese," was not the way he was christened.
"Charles George" are his baptismal names--but few people know that fact
now.
He was the youngest child in a large family, five sons and six
daughters. This calls to mind other large families from which sprang
famous soldiers--Napoleon, for example. Charles was born in 1833,
after his father had reached middle age, and had settled down in the
piping times of peace. The elder Gordon had won his spurs in the
Napoleonic Wars.
We know very little of the boyhood of Charles Gordon, beyond the fact
that during the first ten years of his life he lived at the Pigeon
House Fort, in Dublin Bay, next in the Fort of Leith, and later on the
Island of Corfu. All these places are spots of great natural beauty--a
vista of stretching sea or mountain-top which the frowning fortress
only aided in romance and charm. Many a long ramble must the boy have
had, storing his memory with these quiet, sylvan pictures.
Not far from Leith was the famous battlefield of Prestonpans, where,
nearly a century before, his great-grandfather had been taken prisoner.
From his father or brothers he must have heard many a wild tale of the
Highlanders and their exploits.
As a child, however, this did not appeal to him. He loved nature in
her quiet moods best. He was timid and nervous, to such an extent that
the firing off of the cannon, when the colors were lowered at sundown,
would make him jump half out of his boots. It was only by the sternest
sort of self-control that he obtained the mastery of himself.
Not that Charles Gordon was ever a coward. Morally he was
ever-unflinching. He abhorred a lie, and was always ready to stand up
for his convictions. But his physical frame was made of weaker
stuff--much to his own vexation.
One of the few early stories related of him is that he had difficulty
in learning to swim. He could not get the stroke and he had a horror
of being in water over his head. So he made a practise of deliberately
throwing himself into deep water, when out with his mates, knowing that
it was "sink or swim," or a case of getting pulled out. He was then
only nine.
A few years later, another instance reveals his determination. A great
circus was advertised in London, a novelty in those days, and the
Gordon boys had been promised the treat. But just before its arrival,
Charles fell into disgrace. He was charged with some fault which he
did not think should have been laid to his door. Later he was
forgiven, and told that he might attend the circus. But his pride was
aroused, and he refused to go.
When he was ten, the first definite step toward making him a soldier
was taken--for of course, being a Gordon, he must be a soldier. He was
sent to school at Taunton, preparatory to entering, as a cadet, the
Royal Military Academy, at Woolwich. At that time, its commandant was
a veteran of Waterloo, a peppery old chap who had left one of his legs
on the soil of France, as a souvenir. He was a martinet as to
discipline, and Charles, who had become accustomed to doing a good deal
of thinking for himself, came into frequent clashes with him.
One day, the old man said, "Gordon, I am tired of fooling with you.
You are incompetent; you will never make an officer."
The young cadet, a boy of sixteen, gave him look for look, without
quailing--then by way of reply tore his epaulettes from his shoulders,
turned on his heel, and strode out of the room.
Naturally, the guardhouse was next in order, where the culprit could
cool his heels and meditate upon the sinfulness of superior officers.
In this particular case he seems to have blamed it upon the missing
leg, for he remarked, long afterwards: "Never employ any one minus a
limb to be in authority over boys. They are apt to be irritable and
unjust."
He remained in the Military Academy four years, having been put back
six months by way of discipline, and left it without any regrets. At
this time, indeed, he had a positive distaste for the army. It was all
drill and monotony. One day was too much like another. What was the
good of it all? Why did men have to learn to kill each other anyhow?
Were we not put on earth for a higher mission?
Thus reasoned the young man, who, all his life, was subject to moods of
introspection and intense religious thought--surely strange material
out of which to build a soldier! He sensed this fact himself and was
not at all anxious to enter the army; and frequently in later life
expressed a lively dissatisfaction for the service. He was an
exemplification of the poet's line:
"I feel two natures struggling within me."
When he entered the service, as a second lieutenant of the Engineers,
at the age of nineteen, there was little to attract one in the army
life. The long peace of Europe, which had followed the defeat of
Napoleon, seemed likely to last forever. Except for a relatively small
outbreak in France, in 1848, all Europe was quiet. Consequently, the
army held little attraction to an active young man. It was all drill
and the petty details of garrison life. But underneath the placid
surface, the political pot of Europe was really boiling furiously--only
waiting a chance to bubble over. That chance soon came.
Gordon's first assignment was to Pembroke, where plans were required
for the forts at Milford Haven. Here with other engineers he worked
for a few months, when he was ordered to the Island of Corfu. This was
not altogether to his liking. He had spent a part of his boyhood there
in the Ionian Islands, but felt that they were "off the map" so far as
real activity was concerned.
Then the bubbling pot at last boiled over. Russia, impatient of
bounds, had begun her march southward, past the Black Sea, and toward
the coveted lands of Turkey. The "balance of power," that precarious
something that has always kept Europe on edge--and particularly in the
Balkans--was upset. Whether England wanted to or not, she must get
into the breach.
Thus began the Crimean War, a desperate struggle that was to bear some
glorious pages in England's history, and some dark ones as well. It
was to see the "Charge of the Light Brigade"--splendid in itself, but
brought about because "some one had blundered." It was to produce a
Florence Nightingale--but also the hideous sufferings which she helped
to assuage.
For England was unprepared. Her years of idleness had broken down her
military organization. Splendid fighting men she still had, but the
fighting machine itself was rusty.
Young Gordon, perhaps through his father's influence, obtained a
transfer from Corfu to the Crimea. The father did not much like his
new billet. He may have sensed something of what was coming. But he
did not fear for his son.
"Get him into real action, _I_ say," he would remark. "That will show
whether there's any stuff in him. I guess there is," he added grimly,
thinking of Charles's troubles in college. "All the time he was in the
Academy, I felt like I was sitting on a powder barrel."
In mid-December, of 1854, Gordon set sail from England, on his first
real job as a soldier. He was going with the task of building some
wooden huts for the soldiers, and lumber was being shipped at the same
time. But the soldiers for whom these shelters were intended were even
then dying from exposure on the plains of Sebastopol. It was the first
lesson of unpreparedness.
Of this, however, the young engineer was then ignorant. He was in high
spirits over the prospect of action and seeing the world. He arrived
at Marseilles "very tired," as he writes to his mother, but not too
tired to give her a detailed description of what he has seen thus
far--"the pretty towns and villages, vineyards and rivers, with
glimpses of snowy mountains beyond."
On New Year's Day he reached his destination, Balaklava. It was the
depth of winter, and disaster stared the British in the face. The
Russians were having the best of it. They were out-generalling the
enemy at every turn. The British could do little more than dig in and
hang on, with the bull-dog stubbornness which has always marked them.
At first, the young lieutenant heard little of this. His duties as
construction engineer kept him busy six miles back of the battle line.
"I have not yet seen Sebastopol," he writes on January 3, "and do not
hear anything of the siege. We hear a gun now and then. No one seems
to interest himself about the siege, but all appear to be engaged in
foraging for grub." Two days later he writes: "We have only put up two
huts as yet, but hope to do better soon."
The army was suffering from both cold and hunger, and was in pitiable
plight. Again he writes: "Lieutenant Daunt, Ninth Regiment, and
another officer of some Sixtieth Regiment, were frozen to death last
night, and two officers of the Ninety-Third Regiment were smothered by
charcoal. The streets of Balaklava are a sight, with swell English
cavalry and horse-artillery carrying rations, and officers in every
conceivable costume foraging for eatables."
There was little military glamor in such sights as this. No wonder,
young Gordon felt sick of it all. But he never gave the slightest
indication of quitting. He only worked all the harder to help do his
bit. As Spring advanced, he had an opportunity to work closer to the
lines. He received orders to construct trenches and rifle pits, which
at times was extremely hazardous and brought him under fire. On one
occasion a Russian bullet missed his head by a scant inch.
At last, in the month of June, came his first chance to do some real
fighting. Every branch of the service was marshalled by the commanding
general, Lord Raglan, for a massed attack. What happened can best be
described in Gordon's own words:
"About three a. m. the French advanced on the Malakoff tower in three
columns, and ten minutes after this our signal was given. The Russians
then opened with a fire of grape that was terrific." And again: "They
mowed down our men in dozens, and the trenches, being confined, were
crowded with men who foolishly kept in them instead of rushing over the
parapet, and, by coming forward in a mass, trusting to some of them at
least being able to pass through untouched to the Redan, where, of
course, once they arrived, the artillery could not reach them, and
every yard nearer would have diminished the effect of the grape by
giving it less space for spreading. We could thus have moved up the
supports and carried the place. Unfortunately, however, our men
dribbled out of the ends of the trenches ten and twenty at a time, and
as soon as they appeared they were cleared away."
Thus ended the first engagement in which Gordon took part. The Allies
suffered defeat, and Lord Raglan died a few days later of a broken
heart. It was not an auspicious baptism of fire.
In August another assault was made, which also met defeat. Gordon ends
his account with the remark: "We should have carried everything before
us, if the men had only advanced."
Perchance one reason why the men failed to advance was that their
morale had been lowered, by reason of the privations they had
undergone. This was before the days of the Red Cross, the army
canteen, or the Y. M. C. A. with its homely comfort. The men had had
to shift for themselves. Nursing the sick and wounded was almost
unknown, until the white-clad figure of Florence Nightingale showed the
world its dereliction. Listen to what this devoted pioneer among
nurses has to say:
"Fancy working five nights out of seven in the trenches. Fancy being
thirty-six hours in them at a stretch, as they sometimes were, lying
down, or half-lying down often forty-eight hours with no food but raw
salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; nothing hot, because
the exhausted soldier could not collect his own fuel, as he was
expected to do, to cook his own rations; and fancy through all this,
the army preserving their courage and patience, as they have done, and
being now eager (the old ones as well as the young ones) to be led into
the trenches. There was something sublime in the spectacle."
Sublime? Granted. But no soldier fights well on an empty stomach.
Despite their hardships and reverses, however, the Allies were at last
successful in the capture of Sebastopol. But it was a barren victory,
as the Russians had set fire to the town and destroyed practically
everything of value. The war soon afterwards ceased, and with it the
first hard lesson in Charles Gordon's military training. He had
entered it a somewhat careless youth. He came out of it a seasoned
veteran.
That his government had learned to appreciate his services is shown by
the fact that he was soon afterward placed on a joint commission of the
English, French, Russians, and Austrians, to lay down a boundary line
between Russia and her neighbors at the southwest. It was only one of
many later attempts to define the Balkans.
"The newly-ceded territory is in great disorder," writes Gordon. "The
inhabitants refuse to obey the Moldaves and own nobody's authority.
This is caused, I suspect, by Russian intrigues."
Already cracks were beginning to show in the new boundary wall.
After three years of steady but interesting work following up the
ravages of war, Gordon returned home. It was a rest well earned, and
likewise needed, for there were still more strenuous days ahead. Then
back he went, in the Spring of 1858, to complete his work in the
Caucasus.
"I am pretty tired of my post as peacemaker," he writes; "for which I
am naturally not well adapted. . . . I am quite in the dark as to how
my mission has been fulfilled, but it is really immaterial to me, for I
will not accept other work of such an anomalous character."
The "other work" that was being stored up for him was of quite
different nature. He might have called it "anomalous," but it was to
tax and bring out every resource in him.
China, that land of distance and mystery, was undergoing a period of
upheaval. A usurper had tried to seize the reins of government, and
the French and British ships had been attacked. The British sent a
force of reprisal, somewhat like that sent against the Boxer rebellion
in recent years. This was in 1860; and Gordon was sent out with the
rank of captain.
The first work of this expeditionary force was scarcely worthy of a
civilized country. They set fire to a summer palace and gardens of a
prince who had mistreated some English prisoners. It was a piece of
vandalism that went against the grain with Gordon.
"You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the palaces we
burnt," he writes. "It made one's heart sore to destroy them. It was
wretchedly demoralizing work."
In the Spring of 1862, Gordon had become a major, and was ordered, with
a Lieutenant Carden, to explore the Great Wall of China. This was more
to his liking. The two men were congenial and well fitted by
temperament and experience for the task. They penetrated provinces in
the interior never before entered by a white man, and had a variety of
adventures, some amusing, others exciting.
During the winter it grew extremely cold, high up in the mountains. He
relates that eggs were frozen as hard as if they had been boiled. At
another time they are caught in a terrific dust storm, which he thus
describes:
"The sky was as dark as night; huge columns of dust came sweeping down,
and it blew a regular hurricane, the blue sky appearing now and then
through the breaks. The quantity of dust was indescribable. A canal,
about fifty miles long and eighteen feet wide, and seven deep, was
completely filled up."
From these more or less peaceful incidents, Gordon was presently called
to more exciting events. The great Tai-ping rebellion had been raging
for some months. It was the work of a Chinese schoolmaster, who said
that Heaven had sent him to rescue China. He chose for title "The
Heavenly King," and with some thousands of fanatical followers, overran
a large part of the interior. His seat of government was in Nanking.
In his first clashes with the small British army, in 1862, his troops
had the better of the argument. They spoke with open contempt of the
foreigners, and all English, whether soldiers or missionaries, were in
imminent danger. Things came to such a pass that an American, named
Ward, obtained permission to organize a band of volunteers for mutual
protection. This band did remarkable work, and soon grew from a force
of two hundred, to two thousand--every man of them ready to die in his
tracks.
They met the fanatical followers of "The Heavenly King" more than
half-way, and gave them such thorough doses of hot shot and cold steel,
that the rebels finally ran at sight of them. It is said that Ward's
men fought seventy engagements in one year, and won every fight. The
Imperial Chinese Government was very grateful for their aid, and
conferred upon them a high-sounding name which meant, "Ever-Victorious
Army."
Unluckily, Ward lost his life in leading an assault, and left his army
without a general. Li Hung Chang, the statesman, who was later known
as the Grand Old Man of China, came to the British commander General
Stavely, and asked him to appoint a British officer to lead the
Ever-Victorious Army.
Stavely cast about him, and his eye fell upon Major Gordon, who was
then engaged upon a survey of the defenses of Shanghai. He had known
Gordon and admired him. He believed that here was the man for the task.
"What he was before Sebastopol he has been since--faithful, trusty, and
successful," reasoned the General. "Before Pekin and Shanghai he has
evinced just the qualities that are needed now. Although he has never
been in command, he will rise to this occasion, to which he is more
fitted than any other man whom I know."
Gordon at first declined the honor, perhaps through false modesty, and
the command was given to a Captain Holland, with bad results. Holland
traded too much on the invincibility of the Ever-Victorious Army, and
attacked a strongly fortified position at Taitsan. His forces were
driven off with a loss of three hundred men. It was a grievous loss,
but the moral loss was far deeper. His men lost spirit, while the
rebels were extravagant in their glee.
Something had to be done at once. Again they came to Gordon with the
offer of leadership, and this time, he accepted--but not without some
misgiving. In a letter home, dated March 24, 1863, he writes:
"I am afraid you will be much vexed at my having taken the command of
the Sung-kiang force, and that I am now a Mandarin. I have taken the
step on consideration. I think that any one who contributes to putting
down this rebellion fulfils a humane task, and I also think tends a
great deal to open China to civilization."
Gordon soon proved that he had both courage and resourcefulness. He
did not risk another assault upon Taitsan, as the rebels expected, but
decided to attack them in another quarter. He took one thousand men by
river to an inland town, Chanzu. Here was a loyal Chinese garrison
which had been besieged by the rebels and was in sore straits.
The coming of Gordon was a bold and unexpected move, as the rebels must
have outnumbered his force five to one. But Gordon had brought two
field pieces along, and at once opened fire. By night-fall the enemy
had enough of it, and retreated. The next morning the Ever-Victorious
Army marched triumphantly into Chanzu, where they received a great
welcome. Gordon thus received reinforcements not only from this
garrison, but also from some of the rebel forces who had begun to
"smell a mouse" and decided to come over while the coming was good.
Gordon was much interested in some of these young rebel chiefs. He
says that they were very intelligent, and were splendidly dressed in
their silks, and had big pearls in their caps. The head man was about
thirty-five years old, and was ill and worn with anxiety.
"He was so very glad to see me, and chin-chinned most violently,
regretting his inability to give me a present, which I told him was not
the custom of our people."
This rapid victory was productive of several good results. It once
more put the rebels "on the run," it restored the morale of his troops
and gave them confidence in their new leader, and it brought him many
recruits. One especially gratifying result was that several British
officers asked leave to serve under him.
Gordon had made a firm friend of Li Hung Chang, who aided him in every
possible way. He introduced much-needed discipline into his troops,
who had been at first mere adventurers, and also established regular
grades of pay. The Chinese Government was glad to assume these
payments; while the English authorities were well content with the
unique arrangement. Whether or not, Gordon would have called it
"anomalous"--it was working, and that was the main thing.
Gordon saw to it that his men were well armed, well paid, well dressed,
and well fed. Always he had the horrible example of the Crimean
campaign before his eyes, and he was resolved that never again, if he
could help it, should such conditions recur. He was thus one of the
first of our generals to meet the need of a modern army in a modern
way. As he wrote, at the destruction of Sebastopol, "The old army is
dead."
After Gordon had got his new army in readiness--and not until then--he
launched his systematic campaign against the rebels. First he moved
against Quinsan, an important stronghold. It was a large city, some
four or five miles in circumference, and clustered about a commanding
hill. This city and its approaches were held by a force of about
twelve thousand. Against them Gordon brought a force of two thousand
infantry and six hundred artillery.
On the east side of the city was a considerable body of water, Lake
Yansing, and on the other side of the lake, the village of Soochow,
also occupied by the rebels. Gordon brought up his fleet of small
ships and one steamboat on which he had placed guns, and, running in
between the two towns, cut the enemy in two, throwing them into such
confusion that both towns were soon taken by assault.
Gordon wrote home an amusing account of this battle. It seems that the
rebels inland were unused to steamboats, and when this vessel charged
up with whistle going, they thought it some sort of wrathful god or
demon.
"The horror of the rebels at the steamer is very great. When she
whistles they cannot make it out," he says; and adds that because of
this victory he has been given the rank of Tsung-ping, or Red Button
Mandarin--about equivalent to brigadier general.
These engagements were but the forerunner of many similar ones. His
army took town after town until order was once more restored, and
"broke the back of the rebellion."
The grateful Chinese Government showered him with titles. He was made
a "Ti-tu," which gave him the highest rank in the Chinese army. The
Emperor himself commanded that he should be rewarded with "a yellow
riding jacket, to be worn on his person, and a peacock's feather to be
carried on his cap; also, that there be bestowed on him four suits of
the uniform proper to his rank of Ti-tu, in token of our favor and
desire to do him honor."
It must not be inferred that Gordon came into his high honors in China
easily. He was constantly beset by difficulties. His own men on more
than one occasion tried to start a mutiny, and it was only by a display
of his highest and sternest qualities of leadership, that he restored
order. The Chinese officials, also, had to be handled with diplomacy.
They were accustomed to bargaining, and could not believe at first that
Gordon was not working for selfish ends. It was only when they
realized the true character of the man, that their esteem and affection
were fully enlisted.