Major-General Charles George Gordon CB (28 January 1833 – 26 January 1885), also known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, Gordon of Khartoum and General Gordon, was a British Army officer and administrator. He saw action in the Crimean War as an officer in the British Army. He made his military reputation in China, where he was placed in command of the "Ever Victorious Army", a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers that was instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname "Chinese Gordon" and honours from both the Emperor of China and the British.
He entered the service of the Khedive of Egypt in 1873 (with British government approval) and later became the Governor-General of the Sudan, where he did much to suppress revolts and the local slave trade. He resigned and returned to Europe in 1880.
A serious revolt broke out in the Sudan, led by a Muslim religious leader and self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. In early 1884, Gordon was sent to Khartoum with instructions to secure the evacuation of loyal soldiers and civilians and to depart with them. In defiance of those instructions, after evacuating about 2,500 civilians, he retained a smaller group of soldiers and non-military men. In the months before the fall of Khartoum, Gordon and Muhammad Ahmad corresponded; Gordon offered him the sultanate of Kordofan and Ahmad invited Gordon to convert to Islam and join him, which Gordon declined. Besieged by the Ahmad's forces, Gordon organised a citywide defence that lasted for almost a year. This gained him the admiration of the British public, but not of the government, which had not wanted him to become entrenched there. Only when public pressure to act had become irresistible did the government, with reluctance, send a relief force. It arrived two days after the city had fallen and Gordon had been killed.
Contents
Early life
Gordon was born in Woolwich, Kent, a son of Major General Henry William Gordon (1786–1865) and Elizabeth (1792–1873), daughter of Samuel Enderby Junior. The men of the Gordon family had served as officers in the British Army for four generations, and as a son of a general, Gordon was raised to be the fifth generation; the possibility that Gordon would pursue anything other than a military career seems never to have been considered by his parents. All of Gordon's brothers also became Army officers.
Gordon grew up in England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Ionian Islands (which were under British rule until 1864) as his father was moved from post to post. He was educated at Fullands School in Taunton, Taunton School, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
In 1843, Gordon was devastated when his favourite sibling, his sister Emily, died of tuberculosis, writing years later, "humanly speaking it changed my life, it was never the same since". After her death, her place as Gordon's favourite sibling was taken by his very religious older sister Augusta, who nudged her brother towards religion.
As a teenager and an army officer cadet, Gordon was known for his high spirits, a combative streak, and tendency to disregard authority and the rules if he felt them to be stupid or unjust, a personality trait that held back his graduation by two years when teachers decided to punish him for flouting the rules.
As a cadet, Gordon displayed exceptional talents at map-making and in designing fortifications, which led to his career choice of the Royal Engineers or "sappers" in the Army. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 23 June 1852, completing his training at Chatham, and he was promoted to full lieutenant on 17 February 1854. The sappers were an elite corps who performed reconnaissance work, led storming parties, demolished obstacles in assaults, and undertook rear-guard actions in retreats and other hazardous tasks.
As an officer, Gordon showed strong charisma and leadership, but his superiors distrusted him on account of his tendency to disobey orders if he felt them to be wrong or unjust. A man of medium stature, with striking blue eyes, the charismatic Gordon had the ability to inspire men to follow him anywhere.
From Crimea to the Danube
When the Crimean War began, Gordon was assigned to his boyhood home of Corfu, but after several letters to the War Office, he was sent to Crimea instead. He was sent to the Russian Empire, arriving at Balaklava in January 1855. He first displayed his death wish as he wrote at the time that he had gone "to the Crimea, hoping, without having a hand in it, to be killed".
In the 19th century, Russia was Britain's archenemy, with many people in both nations seeing an ideological conflict between Russian autocracy and British democracy, and Gordon was anxious to fight in the Crimea. He was put to work in the Siege of Sevastopol and took part in the assault of the Redan from 18 June to 8 September. As a sapper, Gordon had to map out the Russian fortifications at the city-fortress of Sevastopol, designed by the famous Russian military engineer, Eduard Totleben. It was a highly dangerous job that frequently put him under enemy fire, and led to him being wounded for the first time when a Russian sniper shot him. Gordon spent much time in "the Quarries", as the British called their section of the trenches, facing Sevastopol.
During his time in Crimea, Gordon made friendships that were to last for the rest of his life, most notably with Romolo Gessi, Garnet Wolseley, and Gerald Graham, all of whom would cross paths with Gordon several times in the future.
On 18 June 1855, the besieging British and French armies began what was intended to be the final assault that would take Sevastopol, which began with a huge bombardment. As a sapper, Gordon was in a front line trench where he was under intense fire; men fell all around him, and he was forced to take cover so often that he was covered literally from head to toe with mud and blood. Despite the best efforts of the Allies, the French failed to take the Malakhov fortress, while the British failed to take the Redan fortress on 18 June. The casualties on the Allied side were quite high that day.
Gordon spent thirty-four consecutive days in the trenches around Sevastopol, and earned a reputation as an able and brave young officer. It was said at the British HQ that, "If you want to know what the Russians are up to, send for Charlie Gordon."
China
Arrival in China
Gordon was bored with garrison duty in Chatham and often wrote to the War Office, begging them to send him anywhere in the world where British arms were seeing action. In 1860, Gordon volunteered to serve in China, in the Second Opium War. When Gordon arrived at Hong Kong, he was disappointed to learn he was "just too late for the fighting". Gordon had heard of the Taiping Rebellion long before he had set sail for China, and he was at first sympathetic towards the Taipings, led by Hong Xiuquan, who proclaimed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, viewing them as somewhat eccentric Christians.
After stopping in Shanghai, Gordon visited the Chinese countryside and was appalled at the atrocities committed by the Taipings against the local peasants, writing to his family he would love to smash this "cruel" army with its "desolating presence" that killed without mercy. He arrived at Tianjin in September 1860. He was present during the capture of Peking and at the destruction of the Summer Palace. Gordon agreed with Lord Elgin that after the Chinese authorities had murdered a group of British and French officers travelling under a white flag to parley that a reprisal was in order, but called the burning of the Summer Palace "vandal-like" and informed his sister in a letter that "it made one's heart sore" to burn it. The Anglo-French force remained in northern China until April 1862, then, under General Charles William Dunbar Staveley, withdrew to Shanghai to protect the European settlement from the rebel Taiping army.
Following the successes in the 1850s in the provinces of Guangxi, Hunan, and Hubei, and the capture of Nanjing in 1853, the rebel advance had slowed. For some years, the Taipings gradually advanced eastwards, but eventually they came close enough to Shanghai to alarm the European inhabitants. A militia of Europeans and Asians was raised for the defence of the city and placed under the command of an American, Frederick Townsend Ward, and occupied the country to the west of Shanghai. The British arrived at a crucial time. Staveley decided to clear the rebels within 30 miles (48 km) of Shanghai in co-operation with Ward and a small French force. Gordon was attached to his staff as engineer officer. Jiading, northwest suburb of present Shanghai, Qingpu, and other towns were occupied, and the area was fairly cleared of rebels by the end of 1862.
Ward was killed in the Battle of Cixi and his successor H. A. Burgevine, an American, was disliked by the Imperial Chinese authorities. Burgevine was an unsavory character known for his greed and alcoholism. Moreover, Burgevine made little effort to hide his racism, and his relations with the Chinese were very difficult at the best of times. Li Hongzhang, the governor of the Jiangsu province, requested Staveley to appoint a British officer to command the contingent. Staveley selected Gordon, who had been made a brevet major in December 1862 and the nomination was approved by the British government. Given Burgevine's alcoholism, open corruption, and tendency to engage in acts of mindless violence when drunk, the Chinese wanted "a man of good temper, of clean hands, and a steady economist" as his replacement. These requirements led Staveley to choose Gordon. Li was impressed with Gordon, writing:It is a direct blessing from Heaven, the coming of this British Gordon. ... He is superior in manner and bearing to any of the foreigners whom I have come into contact with, and does not show outwardly that conceit which makes most of them repugnant in my sight...What an elixir for a heavy heart-to see this splendid Englishman fight! ... If there is anything that I admire nearly as much as the superb scholarship of Zeng Guofan, it is the military qualities of this fine officer. He is a glorious fellow!...With his many faults, his pride, his temper, and his never-ending demand for money—but he is a noble man, and in spite of all I have said to him or about him, I will ever think most highly of him. ... He is an honest man, but difficult to get on with. Gordon was honest and incorruptible, and unlike many Chinese officers, did not steal the money that was meant to pay his men, but rather insisted on paying the Ever Victorious Army on time and in full. Gordon's insistence on paying his men meant that he was always pressing the Imperial government for money, something which often irritated the mandarins who did not understand why Gordon did not just let his men loot and plunder as a compensation for wages. Gordon designed the uniform for the Ever Victorious Army, which consisted of black boots together with turbans, jackets, and trousers that were all green, while his personal bodyguard of 300 men wore blue uniforms.
Command of the Ever Victorious Army
In March 1863, Gordon took command of the force at Songjiang, which had received the name of "Ever Victorious Army". Without waiting to reorganise his troops, Gordon led them at once to the relief of Changsu, a town 40 miles northwest of Shanghai. The relief was successfully accomplished and Gordon quickly won the respect of his troops. Gordon made a point of treating POWs well to encourage the Taipings to surrender, and many of his men were former Taipings who chose to enlist in the Ever Victorious Army. Unlike Ward and Burgevine, Gordon realised that the network of canals and rivers that divided the Chinese countryside were not obstacles blocking an advance, but were rather "arteries" for allowing an advance as Gordon decided to move his men and supplies via the waterways.
Gordon's task was made easier by innovative military ideas Ward had implemented in the Ever Victorious Army. Gordon was quite critical of the way Chinese generals fought the war, observing that the Chinese were willing to inflict and accept gargantuan losses in battle, an approach Gordon disapproved of. Gordon wrote: "The great thing...is to cut off their retreat, and the chances are they will go without trouble; but attack them in the front, and leave their rear open, and they fight most desperately". Gordon always preferred to outflank the Taiping lines rather than to take them on frontally, an approach that caused much tension with his counterparts in the Chinese Imperial Army who did not share Gordon's horror at the huge numbers of casualties caused by frontal assaults.
On the morning of 30 May 1863, the Taiping forces guarding the town of Quinsan were astonished to see an armoured paddle steamer, the Hyson, armed with a 32-pounder cannon on the bow, sailing up a canal, at whose prow stood Gordon. Following the Hyson was a fleet of 80 junks converted to gunboats. Aboard the Hyson were 350 men from the elite 4th Regiment of the Ever Victorious Army. Under fire from the Taiping forces, Gordon's men chopped up the wooden stakes the Taipings had placed in the canal, thereby allowing Gordon to outflank the main Taiping defence line and to enter the main canal connecting Quinsan to Suzhou.
Gordon's breakthrough caught the rebel army off guard and caused thousands of the enemy to panic and flee. Gordon disembarked the 4th Regiment with orders to take Quinsan while he sailed up and down the main canal in the Hyson, using the 32-pounder gun to blast apart the Taiping positions on the canal. At times, Gordon feared that assaults by the Taiping would take the Hyson, but all the attacks were repulsed. The next day, Quinsan fell to the 4th Regiment, which led a proud Gordon to write: "The rebels did not know its importance until they lost it".
Capture of Kunshan
Gordon then reorganised his force and advanced against Kunshan, which was captured at considerable loss. Gordon then took his force through the country, seizing towns until, with the aid of Imperial troops, he captured the city of Suzhou in November. After its surrender, Gordon personally guaranteed that any Taiping rebel who laid down his arms would be humanely treated. The Ever-Victorious Army—which was inclined to looting—had been ordered not to enter Suzhou, and only Imperial forces entered the city. Gordon was thus powerless when the Imperial forces executed all of the Taiping POWs, an act that enraged him.
A furious Gordon wrote that executing POWs was "stupid", writing, "if faith had been kept, there would have been no more fighting as every town would have given in". In China, the penalty for rebellion was death. Under the Chinese system of familial responsibility, all family members of a rebel were equally guilty even if they had nothing to do with the rebellious individual's acts. The mandarins were thus much inclined to execute not only Taipings, but also their spouses, children, parents, and siblings as being all equally guilty of treason.
Gordon believed this approach was militarily counterproductive, as it encouraged the Taipings to fight to the death, which Gordon felt to be very unwise as the Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan, had become murderously paranoid, conducting bloody purges of his followers. Many Taipings were willing to surrender only if the Imperial government would spare their lives and those of their families. Even more importantly, Gordon had given his word of honour that all of the Taipings who surrendered would be well-treated, and regarded the massacre as a stain on his honour.
On 1 January 1864, Gordon was informed that a messenger from the Tongzhi Emperor was coming to see him and that he should put on his finest uniform. When the Emperor's messenger arrived, he had with him servants carrying boxes of silver taels (coins) numbering 10,000 in total, together with banners written in the most eloquent calligraphy celebrating Gordon as a great general and a letter from the Emperor himself written in the best calligraphy on yellow silk thanking Gordon for taking Suzhou and offering all these presents as rewards.
Gordon refused all these gifts and wrote on the Emperor's silk message: "Major Gordon receives the approbation of His Majesty the Emperor with every gratification, but regrets most sincerely that owing to the circumstances which occurred since the capture of Soochow, he is unable to receive any mark of His Majesty the Emperor's recognition". The Emperor was much offended when he received Gordon's message at the Forbidden City, and Gordon's military career in China was effectively over for a time. A Scotsman who knew Gordon in China wrote: "he shows the Chinese that if even an able and reliable man, such as he is, is unmanageable". Following a dispute with Li over the execution of rebel leaders, Gordon withdrew his force from Suzhou and remained inactive at Kunshan until February 1864.
Capture of Yesing, Liyang, and Kitang
Instead, the Ever Victorious Army was given the task of taking the secondary cities of Yesing, Liyang, and Kitang. At Kitang, Gordon was wounded for the second time on 21 March 1864, when a Taiping soldier shot him in the thigh. The wound was only slight and Gordon was soon back in action, fighting his last battle at Chang-chou in May 1864. Gordon then returned to Kunshan and disbanded his army in June 1864. During his time with the Ever Victorious Army, Gordon had won thirty-three battles in succession. Gordon wrote a letter home that his losses were "no joke" as 48 of his 100 officers and about 1,000 of 3,500 soldiers had been killed or wounded in action.
The Emperor promoted Gordon to the rank of tidu (提督: "Chief commander of Jiangsu province" – a title equal to field marshal), decorated him with the imperial yellow jacket, and raised him to Qing's Viscount first class, but Gordon declined an additional gift of 10,000 taels of silver from the imperial treasury. Only forty men were allowed to wear the Yellow Jacket, which was the Emperor's ceremonial bodyguard, and it was thus a signal honour for Gordon to be allowed to wear it. The British Army promoted Gordon to lieutenant-colonel on 16 February 1864, and he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 9 December 1864.
The traders of Shanghai offered Gordon huge sums of money to thank him for his work commanding the Ever Victorious Army. Gordon declined all honours of financial gain, writing: "I know I shall leave China as poor as I entered it, but with the knowledge that, through my weak instrumentality, upwards of eighty to one hundred thousand lives have been spared. I want no further satisfaction than this". The British journalist Mark Urban, wrote: "People saw a brave man who acted with humanity in an otherwise ghastly conflict, standing out from the other mercenaries, adventurers, and cut-throats in wanting almost nothing for himself".
In a leader in August 1864, The Times wrote about Gordon: "the part of the soldier of fortune is in these days very difficult to play with honour...but if ever the actions of a soldier fighting in foreign service ought to be viewed with indulgence, and even with admiration, this exceptional tribute is due to Colonel Gordon". The Taiping Rebellion attracted much media attention in the West, and Gordon's command of the Ever Victorious Army received much coverage from British newspapers. Gordon also gained the popular nickname "Chinese" Gordon.
Service with the Khedive
From the Danube to the Nile
In October 1871, he was appointed British representative on the international commission to maintain the navigation of the mouth of the River Danube, with headquarters at Galatz. Gordon was bored with the work of the Danube commission, and spent as much time as possible exploring the Romanian countryside, whose beauty enchanted Gordon when he was not making visits to Bucharest to meet up with his old friend Romolo Gessi, who was living there at the time. During his second trip to Romania, Gordon insisted on living with ordinary people as he travelled over the countryside, commenting that Romanian peasants "live like animals with no fuel, but reeds", and spent one night at the home of a poor Jewish craftsman whom Gordon praised for his kindness in sharing the single bedroom with his host, his wife, and their seven children. Gordon seemed pleased by his simple lifestyle, writing in a letter that: "One night, I slept better than I have for a long time, by a fire in a fisherman's hut".
During a visit to Bulgaria, Gordon and Gessi become involved in an incident when a Bulgarian couple told them that their 17-year-old daughter had been abducted into the harem of an Ottoman pasha, and asked them to free their daughter. Popular legend has it that Gordon and Gessi broke into the pasha's palace at night to rescue the girl, but the truth is less dramatic. Gordon and Gessi demanded that Ahmed Pasha allow them to meet the girl alone, had their request granted after much arm-twisting, and then met the girl, who ultimately revealed she wanted to go home. Gordon and Gessi threatened to go to the British and Italian press if she was not released at once, a threat that proved sufficient to win the girl her freedom.
Gordon was promoted to colonel on 16 February 1872. In 1872, Gordon was sent to inspect the British military cemeteries in the Crimea, and when passing through Constantinople, he made the acquaintance of the Prime Minister of Egypt, Raghib Pasha. The Egyptian Prime Minister opened negotiations for Gordon to serve under the Ottoman Khedive, Isma'il Pasha, who was popularly called "Isma'il the Magnificent" on the account of his lavish spending. In 1869, Isma'il spent 2 million Egyptian pounds (the equivalent to $300 million U.S. dollars in today's money) just on the party to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, in what was described as the party of the century. In 1873, Gordon received a definite offer from the Khedive, which he accepted with the consent of the British government, and proceeded to Egypt early in 1874. After meeting Gordon in 1874, the Khedive Isma'il had said: "What an extraordinary Englishman! He doesn't want money!".
Equatoria: Building Egypt's empire in the Great Lakes region
The Egyptian authorities had been extending their control southwards since the 1820s. Right up to 1914, Egypt was officially a vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire, but after Mohammed Ali become the vali (governor) of Egypt in 1805, Egypt was a de facto independent state where the authority of the Ottoman Sultan was more nominal than real. An expedition was sent up the White Nile, under Sir Samuel Baker, which reached Khartoum in February 1870 and Gondokoro in June 1871. Baker met with great difficulties and managed little beyond establishing a few posts along the Nile.
The Khedive asked for Gordon to succeed Baker as the governor of Equatoria province that comprised much of what is today South Sudan and northern Uganda. Isma'il Pasha told Gordon that he wished to expand Equatoria into the rest of Uganda, with the ultimate aim of absorbing the entire Great Lakes region of East Africa into the empire that Isma'il wanted to build in Africa. Baker's annual salary as governor of Equatoria had been £10,000 (Egyptian pounds, about US$1 million in today's money) and Ismail was astonished when Gordon refused that salary, saying that £2,000 per year was more than enough for him.
After a short stay in Cairo, Gordon proceeded to Khartoum via Suakin and Berber. In Khartoum, Gordon attended a dinner with the Governor-General, Ismail Aiyub Pasha, entertained with barely dressed belly dancers whom one of Gordon's officers drunkenly attempted to have sex with, leading to a disgusted Gordon walking out, saying he was shocked that Aiyub allowed these things to happen in his palace. Joining Gordon on the journey to Equatoria was his old friend Romolo Gessi and a former US Army officer, Charles Chaillé-Long, who did not get along well with Gordon.
From Khartoum, he proceeded up the White Nile to Gondokoro. During his time in Sudan, Gordon was much involved in attempting to suppress the slave trade while struggling against a corrupt and inefficient Egyptian bureaucracy that had no interest in suppressing the trade. Gordon soon learned that his superior, the Governor-General of the Sudan, Ismail Aiyub Pasha, was deeply involved in the slave trade and was doing everything within his power to sabotage Gordon's anti-slavery work by denying him supplies and leaking information to the slavers. Gordon also clashed with Chaillé-Long, whom he accused of working as an informant for Aiyub Pasha and called him to his face a "regular failure". Chaillé-Long in return painted a very unflattering picture of Gordon in his 1884 book The Three Prophets, whom he portrayed as a bully, a raging alcoholic, an incompetent leader, and a rank coward. Faught argued that since no one else who knew Gordon in Equatoria described him in these terms, and given that Gordon's accusation that Chaillé-Long was a spy for Aiyub Pasha seems to be justified, that Chaillé-Long was engaging in character assassination as an act of revenge.
Governor-General of the Sudan
Besides working to end slavery, Gordon carried out a series of reforms such as abolishing torture and public floggings where those opposed to the Egyptian state were flogged with a whip known as the kourbash made of buffalo hide.
The Europeans whom the Egyptians had hired to work as civil servants in the Sudan proved to be just as corrupt as the Egyptians. The bribes that the slave traders offered for bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to the slave trade had far more effect on the bureaucrats than did any of Gordon's orders to suppress the slave trade, which were simply ignored. Licurgo Santoni, an Italian hired by the Egyptian state to run the Sudanese post office, wrote about Gordon's time as Governor-General that:
as his exertions were not supported by his subordinates, his efforts remained fruitless. This man's activity with the scientific knowledge which he possesses is doubtless able to achieve much, but unfortunately, no one backs him up and his orders are badly carried out or altered in such a way as to render them without effect. All the Europeans, with some rare exceptions, whom he has honoured with his confidence have cheated him.
Relations between Egypt and Abyssinia (later renamed Ethiopia) had become strained due to a dispute over the district of Bogos, and war broke out in 1875. An Egyptian expedition was completely defeated near Gundet. A second and larger expedition under Prince Hassan was sent the following year and was routed at Gura. Matters then remained quiet until March 1877, when Gordon proceeded to Massawa, hoping to make peace with the Abyssinians. He went up to Bogos and wrote to the king proposing terms. He received no reply as the king had gone southwards to fight with the Shoa. Gordon, seeing that the Abyssinian difficulty could wait, proceeded to Khartoum.
In 1876, Egypt went bankrupt. A group of European financial commissioners led by Evelyn Baring took charge of the Egyptian finances in an attempt to pay off the European banks who had lent so much money to Egypt. With Egypt bankrupt, the money to carry out the reforms Gordon wanted was not there. With over half of Egypt's income going to pay the 7% interest on the debt worth 81 million Egyptian pounds that Isma'il had run up, the khedive was supportive of Gordon's plans for reform, but unable to do very much as he lacked the money to pay his civil servants and soldiers in Egypt, much less in the Sudan.
Other offers
On 2 March 1880, on his way from London to Switzerland, Gordon had visited King Leopold II of Belgium in Brussels and was invited to take charge of the Congo Free State. Leopold tried very hard to convince Gordon to enter his service, not least because Gordon was known to be modest in his salary demands, unlike Leopold's current agent in the Congo, Henry Morton Stanley, who received a monthly salary of 300,000 Belgian francs.
Gordon rejected Leopold's offers, partly because he was still emotionally attached to the Sudan and partly because he disliked the idea of working for Leopold's Congo Association, which was a private company owned by the King. In April, the government of the Cape Colony offered him the position of commandant of the Cape local forces, which Gordon declined. A deeply depressed Gordon wrote in his letter declining the offer that he knew, for reasons that he refused to explain, that he had only ten years left to live, and he wanted to do something great and grand in his last ten years.
In May, the Marquess of Ripon, who had been given the post of Governor-General of India, asked Gordon to go with him as private secretary. Gordon accepted the offer, but shortly after arriving in India, he resigned. In the words of the American historian Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, Gordon was a "man of action" unsuited to a bureaucratic job. Gordon found the life of a private secretary to be, in his words, a "living crucifixion" that was unbearably boring, leading him to resign with the intention of going to East Africa, particularly Zanzibar, to suppress the slave trade.
Hardly had Gordon resigned when he was invited to Beijing by Sir Robert Hart, inspector-general of customs in China, saying his services were urgently needed in China as Russia and China were on the verge of war. Gordon was nostalgic for China, and knowing of the Sino-Russian crisis, he saw a chance to do something significant. The British diplomat Thomas Francis Wade reported, "The Chinese government still holds Gordon Pasha in high regard", and were anxious to have him back to fight against Russia if war should break out.
An exchange of telegrams ensued between the War Office in London and Gordon in Bombay about just what exactly he was planning on doing in China, and when Gordon replied that he would find out when he got there, he was ordered to stay. He disobeyed orders and left on the first ship to China, an action that very much angered the Army's commander, the Duke of Cambridge. Gordon arrived in Shanghai in July and met Li Hongzhang, and learned that there was risk of war with Russia. After meeting his old friend, Gordon assured Li that if Russia should attack he would resign his commission in the British Army to take up a commission in the Chinese Army, an action that if taken, risked prosecution under the Foreign Enlistments Act.
Mahdist uprising
Mission to Khartoum
The Egyptian forces in the Sudan were insufficient to cope with the rebels, and the northern government was occupied with the suppression of the Urabi Revolt. By September 1882, the Egyptian position in the Sudan had grown perilous. In September 1883, an Egyptian Army force under Colonel William Hicks set out to destroy the Mahdi. The Egyptian soldiers were miserable fallāḥīn conscripts who had no interest in being in the Sudan, much less in fighting the Mahdi, and morale was so poor that Hicks had to chain his men together to prevent them from deserting.
On 3–5 November 1883, the Ansar (whom the British called "Dervishes"), as the Mahdi's followers were known, destroyed the Egyptian army of 8,000 under Colonel Hicks at El Obeid, with only about 250 Egyptians surviving and Hicks being one of the slain. The Ansar captured a large number of Remington rifles and ammunition cases together with many Krupp artillery guns and their shells. After the Battle of El Obeid, Egyptian morale, never high to begin with, simply collapsed, and the black flag of the Mahdi soon flew over many towns in the Sudan. By the end of 1883, the Egyptians held only the ports on the Red Sea and a narrow belt of land around the Nile in northern Sudan. In both cases, naval power was the key factor, as gunboats in the Red Sea and on the Nile provided a degree of firepower with which the Ansar could not cope.
The only other place to hold out for a time was a region in the south held by the Governor of Equatoria, Emin Pasha. Following the destruction of Hicks's army, the Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, decided that the Sudan was not worth the trouble it would take to keep, and that the region should be abandoned to the Mahdi. In December 1883, the British government ordered Egypt to abandon the Sudan, but that was difficult to carry out, as it involved the withdrawal of thousands of Egyptian soldiers, civilian employees, and their families.
At the beginning of 1884, Gordon had no interest in the Sudan and had just been hired to work as an officer with the newly-established Congo Free State. Gordon — despite or rather, because of his war hero status — disliked publicity and tried to avoid the press when he was in Britain. While staying with his sister in Southampton, Gordon received an unexpected visitor, namely William Thomas Stead, the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, to whom Gordon reluctantly agreed to give an interview. Gordon wanted to talk about the Congo, but Stead kept on pressing him to talk about the Sudan. Finally, after much prompting on Stead's part, Gordon opened up and attacked Gladstone's Sudan policy, coming out for an intervention to defeat the Mahdi. Gordon offered up a 19th-century anticipation of the domino theory, claiming: The danger arises from the influence which the spectacle of a conquering Mahometan Power established close to your frontiers will exercise upon the population which you govern. In all the cities of Egypt, it will be felt that what the Mahdi has done, they may do; and, as he has driven out the intruder, they may do the same. Stead published his interview on 9 January 1884, on the front page of the Pall Mall Gazette alongside an editorial of his titled, "Chinese Gordon for the Sudan". Urban wrote: "With this leader, William Stead's real motive in going to Southampton revealed itself at last. As to who tipped him off that the general would be staying here for just a couple of nights, we can only speculate".
Preparing the defence of Khartoum
After arriving in Khartoum, Gordon announced that on the grounds of honour, he would not evacuate Khartoum, but rather, would hold the city against the Mahdi. Gordon was well-received by a crowd of about 9,000 during his return to Khartoum where the crowd continually chanted, "Father!" and "Sultan!" Gordon assured the people of Khartoum in a speech delivered in his rough-hewn Arabic that the Mahdi was coming with his Army of Islam marching under their black banners, but to have no fear as here he would be stopped. Gordon had a garrison of about 8,000 soldiers armed with Remington rifles, together with a colossal ammunition dump containing millions of rounds.
Gordon commenced the task of sending the women, the children, the sick, and the wounded to Egypt. About 2,500 people had been removed before the Mahdi's forces closed in on Khartoum. Gordon hoped to have the influential local leader, Sebehr Rahma, appointed to take control of Sudan, but the British government refused to support a former slaver. During this time in Khartoum, Gordon befriended Irish journalist Frank Powers, The Times (London) correspondent in the Sudan. Powers was delighted that the charismatic Gordon had no anti-Catholic prejudices and treated him as an equal. The hero-worshiping Powers wrote about Gordon: "He is indeed I believe the greatest man of this century". Gordon granted Powers privileged access and in return, Powers started to write a series of popular articles for The Times depicting Gordon as the solitary hero taking on a vast horde of fanatical Muslims.
Gordon made all of his personal dispatches to London public (there was no Official Secrets Act at the time) in attempts to win public opinion over to his policy, writing on one dispatch: "Not secret as far as I am concerned". At one point, Gordon suggested in a telegram to Gladstone that the notoriously corrupt Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid II could be bribed into sending 3,000 Ottoman troops for the relief of Khartoum and if the British government was unwilling and/or unable to pay that amount, he was certain that either Pope Leo XIII or a group of American millionaires would be.
The advance of the rebels against Khartoum was combined with a revolt in the eastern Sudan. Colonel Valentine Baker led an Egyptian force out of Suakin and was badly defeated by 1,000 Haddendowa warriors who declared their loyalty to the Mahdi under Osman Digna at Al-Teb with 2,225 Egyptian soldiers and 96 officers killed. Because the Egyptian troops at Suakin were repeatedly defeated, a British force was sent to Suakin under General Sir Gerald Graham, which drove the rebels away in several hard-fought actions. At Tamai on 13 March 1884, Graham was attacked by the Haddendowa (whom the British nicknamed "Fuzzy Wuzzies") whom he defeated, but in the course of the battle, the Haddendowa broke a Black Watch square, an action later celebrated in the Kipling poem "Fuzzy-Wuzzy".
The siege of Khartoum
The siege of Khartoum by the Mahdist forces, commanded by the Mahdi himself, started on 18 March 1884. Initially, the siege was more in nature a blockade rather than a true siege, as the Mahdi's forces lacked the strength to wage a proper siege, for example, cutting the telegraphy lines only in April 1884. The British government had decided to abandon the Sudan, but it was clear that Gordon had other plans, and the public increasingly called for a relief expedition. Gordon's last telegrams were clearly meant for the British public, with one message addressed to Baring reading: "You state your intention of not sending any relief force up here to Berber ... I shall hold on here as long as I can, and if I can suppress the rebellion, I shall do so. If I cannot, I shall retire to the Equator and leave you with the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons".
Gladstone was opposed to hanging onto the Sudan, saying in a speech in the House of Commons that sending a relief force to Khartoum would be "a war of conquest against a people struggling to be free. Yes, these are people struggling to be free and rightly struggling to be free". Khartoum was surrounded by the Ansar in March 1884, but was not cut off from the outside world for a considerable time afterward. Gordon's armoured steamers continued to sail in and out of Khartoum with little difficulty for the first six months of the siege, and it was not until September 1884 that the armoured steamers first had trouble reaching the city.
Gordon had a low opinion of his enemy, writing that the Ansar besieging him were "some 500 determined men and some 2,000 rag-tag Arabs". Nutting wrote that Gordon "could have withdrawn at almost any moment between March and May" if only he had been willing. American historian James Perry wrote: "But instead of following instructions, he stayed put, longing for martyrdom. It wasn't exactly fair to the Egyptian garrisons he had been sent to evacuate; they had no death wish". On 25 July 1884, the Cabinet, over the objections of the Prime Minister, voted to send a relief expedition to Khartoum. On 5 August 1884, the House of Commons voted to send the relief force with a budget of £300,000.
During this time, Gordon, when he was not organising the besieged garrison with incredible energy, spent his time writing a somewhat rambling diary containing his reflections on the siege, life, fate, and his own intense, idiosyncratic version of Protestantism. Gordon waged a very vigorous defence, sending out his armoured steamers to engage the Ansar camps along the Blue Nile while he regularly made raids on the besiegers that often gave the Madhi's forces a "bloody nose". Elated by these successes, Gordon wrote in his diary: "We are going to hold out here forever".
On the brink
On 4 September 1884, Gordon's fortunes took a turn for the worse when the most able of his subordinates, Mohammed Aly, together with about 1,000 of Gordon's best troops, were killed in an ambush while conducting a raid. Gordon wrote in his diary that Mohammed Aly had captured "a lad of 12 or 14 years of age, and the little chap spoke out boldly, and said he believed Mohamed Ahmed was the Mahdi and that we were dogs. He was shot! Before I heard of our defeat I heard of this, and I thought, 'THAT will not pass unavenged'."
On 9 September 1884, an armoured steamer, the Abbas, on its way to Cairo, was captured by the Ansar for the first time and all aboard were killed. Among the dead were Gordon's unofficial spokesman, the passionate wordsmith and Times journalist Frank Powers, Gordon's Chief of Staff, Colonel Stewart, and the French consul in Khartoum, Léon Herbin, all of whom Gordon was sending to Cairo to plead for relief. Gordon received a letter from the Mahdi taunting him over the murders of his friends Powers and Stewart, warning that he would be next if he did not surrender. Bitterly, Gordon wrote in his diary: "It is impossible to have any more words with Mohammed Achmed, only lead."
Among the papers captured on the Abbas was the cipher key Gordon used to code his messages in and out of Khartoum, which meant he could no longer read the messages he received, leading him to write in his diary: "I think cipher-messages are in some countries, like this, a mistake". During this period, Gordon was lionised by the British press, which portrayed him as a latter-day Christian crusader and a saint, a man of pure good, heroically battling the Mahdi, who was depicted as a man of pure evil. The Pall Mall Gazette, in a front page leader, wrote that Gordon stood "out in clear relief against the Eastern sky. Alone in [Africa], dauntless and unfaltering, he discharges his great trust, holding the capital of the Sudan against the beleaguering hordes". The defences Gordon had built with lines of earthwork, mines, and barbed wire presented the Ansar with much difficulty and their attempts to storm Khartoum failed, but the Ansar made good use of their Krupp artillery to gradually batter down the defences. To counter Gordon's armoured steamers, the Mahdi built a series of forts along the Nile equipped with Krupp guns that over time proceeded to make it almost impossible for Gordon's navy to operate.
By the end of 1884, both the garrison and the population of Khartoum were starving to death; there were no horses, donkeys, cats, or dogs left in Khartoum as the people had eaten all of them. Gordon told the civilians of Khartoum that anyone who wished to leave, even to join the Mahdi's army, were free to do so. About half of the population took up his offer to promptly leave the city. A note written by Gordon and dated 14 December was sent out by a messenger from Khartoum, who reached Wolseley's army on 30 December 1884.
The capture of Khartoum
The relief force under General Wolseley, which set out from Wadi Halfa, was divided into two columns at Korti—a 1,200-strong "flying column" or "desert column" of camel-borne troops which would cross the Bayuda desert to reach Metmemma on the Nile and meet Gordon's gunboats there, and the main column which would continue to advance along the Nile heading for Berber. The troops reached Korti towards the end of December, the small "Desert Column" reaching Metemma on 20 January 1885, fighting the Battle of Abu Klea on 18 January and Abu Kru (or Gubat) en route. There they found four gunboats which had been sent north by Gordon four months earlier, and prepared them for the trip back up the Nile. When the news of the defeats reached Ansar besieging Khartoum, terrible cries of lamentation rose from the besieging force, which led Gordon to guess that the Ansar had been defeated in battle and that Wolseley must be close.
On 24 January, two of the steamers, under Sir Charles Wilson, carrying 20 soldiers of the Sussex Regiment wearing red tunics to clearly identify them as British, were sent on a purely reconnaissance mission to Khartoum, with orders from Wolseley not to attempt to rescue Gordon or bring him ammunition or food. On the evening of 24 January 1885, the Mahdi met with his generals, whose leading spokesman was his uncle Muhammad Abd al-Karim, who told him that, with the Nile low and Wolseley close, it was time to either storm Khartoum or retreat. As dawn broke on the morning of 26 January 1885, the Ansar regiments, led by their riflemen and followed by their spearmen, marched out of their camps under their black banners.
The Ansar began their final attack by storming the city via the gap in the defence caused by the low Nile and after an hour's fighting, the starving defenders had abandoned the fight and the city was theirs. The Ansar took no prisoners and all of the approximately 7,000 defenders were killed. On arriving at Khartoum on 28 January, the reconnaissance gunboats found that the city had been captured and Gordon had been killed just two days before, coincidentally, two days before his 52nd birthday. Under heavy fire from Ansar warriors on the bank, the two steamers turned back downriver.
The British press criticised the relief force for arriving two days late, but the main relief force was nowhere near Khartoum by then and only the reconnaissance party under Sir Charles Wilson on two gunboats had attempted to reach Khartoum, though it was later argued that the Mahdi's forces had good intelligence, and if the camel corps had advanced earlier, the final attack on Khartoum would also have come earlier. Finally, the boats sent were not there to relieve Gordon, who was not expected to agree to abandon the city, and the small force and limited supplies on board could have offered scant military support for the besieged in any case.
Death
The manner of Gordon's death is uncertain, but it was romanticised in a popular painting by George William Joy — General Gordon's Last Stand (1893, currently in the Leeds City Art Gallery), and again in the film Khartoum (1966) with Charlton Heston as Gordon. The most popular account of Gordon's death was that he put on his ceremonial gold-braided blue uniform of the Governor-General together with the Pasha's red fez and that he went out unarmed, except with his rattan cane, to be cut down by the Ansar. This account was very popular with the British press as it contained much Christian imagery with Gordon as a Christlike figure dying passively for the sins of all humanity.
Gordon was apparently killed at the Governor-General's palace about an hour before dawn. The Mahdi had given strict orders to his three Khalifas not to kill Gordon. The orders were not obeyed. Gordon's Sudanese servants later stated that Gordon for once did not go out armed only with his rattan cane, but also took with him a loaded revolver and his sword, and died in mortal combat fighting the Ansar.
Gordon died on the steps of a stairway in the northwestern corner of the palace, where he and his body servant, Agha Khalil Orphali, had been firing at the enemy. Orphali was knocked unconscious and did not see Gordon die. When he woke up again that afternoon, he found Gordon's body covered with flies and the head cut off.
A merchant, Bordeini Bey, glimpsed Gordon standing on the palace steps in a white uniform looking into the darkness. The best evidence suggests that Gordon went out to confront the enemy, gunned down several of the Ansar with his revolver and, after running out of bullets, drew his sword only to be shot down.
Reference is made to an 1889 account of the general surrendering his sword to a senior Mahdist officer, then being struck and subsequently speared in the side as he rolled down the staircase. Rudolf Slatin, the Austrian governor of Darfur who had been taken prisoner by the Ansar, wrote that three soldiers showed him Gordon's head at his tent before delivering it to the Mahdi. When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree "where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it, and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." His body was desecrated and thrown down a well.
Personal life
Personal beliefs
Gordon had been born into the Church of England, but he never quite trusted the Anglican Church, instead preferring his own personal brand of Protestantism. The Romanian historian Eric Tappe described Gordon as a man who developed his own "very personal peculiar variety of Protestantism". In his worn-out state, Gordon had some sort of religious rebirth, leading him to write to his sister Augusta: "Through the workings of Christ in my body by His Body and Blood, the medicine worked. Ever since the realisation of the sacrament, I have been turned upside down". The eccentric Gordon was very religious, but he departed from Christian orthodoxy on a number of points. Gordon believed in reincarnation. In 1877, he wrote in a letter: "This life is only one of a series of lives which our incarnated part has lived. I have little doubt of our having pre-existed; and that also in the time of our pre-existence we were actively employed. So, therefore, I believe in our active employment in a future life, and I like the thought." Gordon was an ardent Christian cosmologist, who also believed that the Garden of Eden was on the island of Praslin in the Seychelles. Gordon believed that God's throne from which He governed the universe rested upon the earth, which was further surrounded by the firmament.
Gordon believed in both predestination—writing that, "I believe that not a worm is picked up by a bird without the direct intervention of God"—and free will with humans choosing their own fate, writing, "I am now, thank God, so far from the least thought of man's free will that it never enters into my calculation in these thoughts, however it may guide me as Governor-General or as fellow man." These religious beliefs mirrored differing aspects of Gordon's personality as he believed that he could choose his own fate through the force of his personality and a fatalistic streak often ending his letters with D.V (Deo volente – Latin for "God willing", i.e. whatever God wants will be). Whilst believing in predestination and free will, he wrote, "I cannot and do not pretend to reconcile the two".
Gordon's evangelistic fervour led him to stick Christian tracts onto city walls and to throw them out of a train window.
Personality
In his book Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey portrays Gordon in the following manner:
Gordon possessed an inherently reclusive nature; he had an aversion to social gatherings and formal attire, particularly in the presence of women, especially those of high society. He was unfamiliar with the comfortable indulgences typical of his social class and status; his clothing bordered on being threadbare, and he partook in frugal meals at a table equipped with a drawer, where he hastily concealed his bread and plate when impoverished visitors approached. The sole book he engaged with was the Bible.
Strachey continued by highlighting the fear his subordinates held for Gordon's temper:
There were instances when his anger became utterly uncontrollable, and the gentle servant of God, who spent his days quoting religious texts... would, in fits of sudden rage, strike his Arab aide-de-camp across the face or assault his Alsatian servant, subjecting him to kicks until he screamed
Sexuality
Gordon's charitable work for the boys of Gravesend led to assertions later in the 20th century that he was homosexual. The Dictionary of National Biography described Gordon as a great "boy lover". Mark Urban wrote:
It is possible that he had sexual feelings for these urchins, but there is no evidence that he ever acted upon them. We can only speculate that his increasing religious devotion may have been an outward manifestation of an internal struggle against sexual temptation.
Gordon never married and is not known to have had a sexual or romantic relationship with anyone. He asserted that his army service and frequent travels to dangerous places made it impossible for him to marry and that he could only hurt a potential wife as it was inevitable that he would die in battle. Gordon's parents expected him to marry, and were disappointed about his lifelong bachelorhood. Urban wrote that the best evidence suggests Gordon was a latent homosexual, whose sexual repression led him to funnel his aggression into a military career with a special energy. The British historian Denis Judd wrote about Gordon's sexuality:
Like two other great Imperial heroes of his time, Kitchener and Cecil Rhodes, Gordon was a celibate. What this almost certainly meant was that Gordon had unresolved homosexual inclinations which, like Kitchener, but unlike Rhodes, he kept savagely repressed. The repression of Gordon's sexual instincts helped to release a flood of celibate energy which drove him into weird beliefs, eccentric activities, and a sometimes misplaced confidence in his own judgement.
The American historian Byron Farwell strongly implied in his 1985 book Eminent Victorian Soldiers that Gordon was a homosexual, for instance writing of Gordon's "unwholesome" interest in the boys he took in to live with him at the Fort House, and his fondness for the company of "handsome" young men.
Gordon, at the age of 14, said that he wished he had been born a eunuch, which has been taken to suggest that he wanted to annihilate all of his sexual desires and, indeed, his sexuality altogether. Together with his sister Augusta, Gordon often prayed to be released from their "vile bodies" in which their spirits were "imprisoned" so that their souls might be joined with God. Faught argued that no-one at the time suspected Gordon of having sexual relations with the legions of teenage boys living with him at the Fort House. Faught also pointed out that the first hints that Gordon might secretly have been having sex with the boys of the Fort House were made by Lytton Strachey in his book Eminent Victorians (published 1918) which, in Faught's opinion, may have said more about Strachey than it did about Gordon.
Charity work
Gordon returned to Britain and commanded the Royal Engineers' project around Gravesend, Kent, to erect forts for the defense of the River Thames. After he arrived in Britain, Gordon announced to the press that he "did not want to board the tram of the world" and asked to be left alone. Gordon disapproved of the forts he was building at the mouth of Thames to guard against a possible French invasion, regarding them as expensive and useless. When the Duke of Cambridge, the Army's commander, visited one of the forts under construction and praised Gordon for his work, he received the reply: "I had nothing to do with it, sir; it was built regardless of my opinion, and, in fact, I entirely disapprove of its arrangement and position". Gordon's father was against his son working in Chinese service, an estrangement that had not been settled at the time of his death, and Gordon felt immense guilt that his father had died before they were reconciled.
Following the death of his father, he undertook extensive social work in Gravesend, feeding homeless boys whom he found begging on the street while also attempting to find them homes and jobs. Many of the "scuttlers", as Gordon fondly called the homeless boys, were lodged at his own home, the Fort House. Together with Mrs. Sarah Mackley, his housekeeper, he adapted two rooms at Fort House to serve as classrooms and basic needs resource rooms for boys living on the streets. He also rented a small house in East Terrace for working boys to be taught for free. Gordon's closest friends were a couple, Frederick and Octavia Freese, whose son Edward, became Gordon's surrogate son. Persuaded by his friends in 1867, he became a trustee for the local Ragged school committee. Before 1870, there was no universal school system in Britain, and the Ragged Schools were a network of privately-funded schools that gave a free education to children whose parents were too poor to afford the school fees. Outside of the Fort House were graffito written on the wall by one of the evidently less-educated boys that read: "God Bless the Kernel". Another "scuttler" later recalled: "He made me feel, first of all, the meaning of the phrase, the Goodness of God. Goodness become to me, through Gordon, the most desirable of ideas...We were under the spell of Gordon's personality. We lived in the magic of his mystery-enchanted".
Octavia Freese published a book in 1894 about his charity work and Christian beliefs. The council subsequently acquired the gardens of his official residence, Fort House (now a museum), for the town.
His favourite books were The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, Christ Mystical by Joseph Hall, and the poem The Dream of Gerontius by John Henry Newman.
Memorials
News of Gordon's death caused an outpouring of public grief across Britain. A memorial service, conducted by the Bishop of Newcastle, was held at St. Paul's Cathedral on 14 March. The Lord Mayor of London opened a public subscription to raise funds for a permanent memorial to Gordon; this eventually materialised as the Gordon Boys Home, now Gordon's School, in West End, Woking.
Days after Gordon's death at a meeting on 24 March 1885, Reverend Edward Stuart, a missionary in Africa, proposed that a Gordon Memorial Mission be built in the Eastern Sudan in honour of Major-General Charles George Gordon, killed by the Ansar at Khartoum in January. Stuart's proposal was met with cheers and overwhelming support by the hundreds of people present.
Statues were erected in Trafalgar Square, London, in Chatham, Gravesend, Melbourne (Australia), and Khartoum. Southampton, where Gordon had stayed with his sister, Augusta, in Rockstone Place before his departure to the Sudan, erected a memorial in Porter's Mead, now Queen's Park, near the town's docks. On 16 October 1885, the structure was unveiled; it comprises a stone base on which there are four polished red Aberdeen granite columns, about twenty feet high. The columns are surmounted by carved capitals supporting a cross. The pedestal bears the arms of the Gordon clan and of the borough of Southampton, and also Gordon's name in Chinese. Around the base is an inscription referring to Gordon as a soldier, philanthropist, and administrator and mentions those parts of the world in which he served, closing with a quotation from his last letter to his sisters: "I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty." The memorial is a Grade II listed building.
Gordon's memory, as well as his work in supervising the town's riverside fortifications, is commemorated in Gravesend; the embankment of the Riverside Leisure Area is known as the Gordon Promenade, while Khartoum Place lies just to the south. Located in the town centre of his birthplace of Woolwich is General Gordon Square, formerly known as General Gordon Place until a major urban landscaped area was developed and the road name changed. In addition, one of the first Woolwich Free Ferry vessels was named Gordon in his memory.
A tall, elegant gas lamp fitted with a plaque commemorating Gordon stands in Cheltenham. Funded by public subscription and erected in 1887, it was converted to electricity in 1900 and refurbished by the Cheltenham Civic Society in 2013 to its present working state. A tablet fitted to the base reads, 'In memory of Major-General Charles George Gordon CBRE 1833-1885.'
Media portrayals and legacy
Charlton Heston played Gordon in the 1966 epic film Khartoum, which deals with the siege of Khartoum. Laurence Olivier played Muhammad Ahmad. The British historian Alex von Tunzelmann criticised the film for portraying Gordon and the Mahdi regularly meeting and as frères ennemis, though she added that it is true that Gordon and the Mahdi did exchange letters.
For the six months after the British public learned of Gordon's death, newspapers and journals published hundreds of articles celebrating Gordon as a "saint". The American historian Cynthia Behrman wrote that the articles all commented upon "Gordon's religious faith, his skill with native peoples, his fearlessness in the face of danger (a recurrent motif is Gordon's habit of leading his troops into battle armed with no more than a rattan cane), his honor, his resourcefulness, his graciousness to subordinates, his impatience with cant and hypocrisy, his hatred of glory and honors, his dislike of lionization and social rewards, and on and on. One begins to wonder whether the man had any faults at all". "The reading public wanted heroes, it wanted to read about one lone Englishmen sacrificing himself for glory, honour, God, and the Empire."
Such was the popularity of Gordon that the first critical book by a British author was not published until 1908, when Baring—by this time raised to the peerage as Viscount Cromer—published his autobiography, which was notable as the first British book to portray Gordon in an unflattering manner, though Lord Cromer also tried to be fair and emphasised what he felt were Gordon's positive, as well as his negative, traits. About the charge that if only Gladstone had listened to Gordon, the disaster would have been avoided, Cromer wrote that in the course of one month, he received five telegrams from Gordon offering his advice, each one of which completely contradicted the previous telegram, leading Cromer to charge that Gordon was too mercurial a figure to hold command.
As a young man, Winston Churchill shared in the national consensus that Gordon was one of Britain's greatest heroes. During a meeting in 1898 in Cairo where Churchill interviewed Baring to gather material for his 1899 book The River War, Baring challenged Churchill about his belief that Gordon was a hero. After his conversation with Baring, Churchill wrote: "Of course there is no doubt that Gordon as a political figure was absolutely hopeless. He was so erratic, capricious, utterly unreliable, his mood changed so often, his temper was abominable, he was frequently drunk, and yet with all that, he had a tremendous sense of honour and great abilities".