That he was not detained the whole day in the Barracks is shown in the following letter, now published for the first time, which gives the only account of his interview with the members of the Government that sent him out: —
"19. 1, 1884.
"My Dear Augusta, – I arrived in town very tired, at 6 a. m. yesterday, went with Brocklehurst to Barracks, washed, and went to Wolseley. He said Ministers would see me at 3 p. m. I went back to Barracks and reposed. At 12.30 p. m. Wolseley came for me. I went with him and saw Granville, Hartington, Dilke, and Northbrook. They said, 'Had I seen Wolseley, and did I understand their ideas?' I said 'Yes,' and repeated what Wolseley had said to me as to their ideas, which was 'they would evacuate Soudan.' They were pleased, and said 'That was their idea; would I go?' I said 'Yes.' They said 'When?' I said 'To-night,' and it was over. I started at 8 p. m. H.R.H. The Duke of Cambridge and Lord Wolseley came to see me off. I saw Henry and Bob (R. F. Gordon); no one else except Stokes – all very kind. I have taken Stewart with me, a nice fellow. We are now in train near Mont Cenis. I am not moved a bit, and hope to do the people good. Lord Granville said Ministers were very much obliged to me. I said I was much honoured by going. I telegraphed King of the Belgians at once, and told him 'Wait a few months.' Kindest love to all. – Your affectionate brother,
"C. G. Gordon.
As further evidence of the haste of his departure, I should like to mention that he had hardly any clothes with him, and that Mrs Watson, wife of his friend Colonel Watson, procured him all he required – in fact, fitted him out – during the two days he stayed at Cairo. These kindly efforts on his behalf were thrown away, for all his baggage – clothes, uniforms, orders, etc. – was captured with the money at Berber and never reached him. His only insignia of office at Khartoum was the Fez, and the writer who described him as putting on his uniform when the Mahdists broke into the town was gifted with more imagination than love of truth.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST NILE MISSION
When Gordon left Egypt, at the end of the year 1879, he was able to truthfully declare in the words of his favourite book: "No man could lift his hand or his foot in the land of the Soudan without me." Yet he was fully alive to the dangers of the future, although then they were no more than a little cloud on the horizon, for he wrote in 1878: "Our English Government lives on a hand-to-mouth policy. They are very ignorant of these lands, yet some day or other, they or some other Government, will have to know them, for things at Cairo cannot stay as they are. The Khedive will be curbed in, and will no longer be absolute Sovereign. Then will come the question of these countries… There is no doubt that if the Governments of France and England do not pay more attention to the Soudan – if they do not establish at Khartoum a branch of the mixed tribunals, and see that justice is done – the disruption of the Soudan from Cairo is only a question of time. This disruption, moreover, will not end the troubles, for the Soudanese through their allies in Lower Egypt – the black soldiers I mean – will carry on their efforts in Cairo itself. Now these black soldiers are the only troops in the Egyptian service that are worth anything." The gift of prophecy could scarcely have been demonstrated in a more remarkable degree, yet the Egyptian Government and everybody else went on acting as if there was no danger in the Soudan, and treated it like a thoroughly conquered province inhabited by a satisfied, or at least a thoroughly subjected population. From this dream there was to be a rude and startling awakening.
It is impossible to say whether there was any connection direct or indirect between the revolt of Arabi Pasha and the military leaders at Cairo and the rebellion in the Soudan, which began under the auspices of the so-called Mahdi. At the very least it may be asserted that the spectacle of successful insubordination in the Delta – for it was completely successful, and would have continued so but for the intervention of British arms – was calculated to encourage those who entertained a desire to upset the Khedive's authority in the upper regions of the Nile. That Gordon held that the authors of the Arabi rising and of the Mahdist movement were the same in sympathy, if not in person, cannot be doubted, and in February 1882, when the Mahdi had scarcely begun his career, he wrote: "If they send the Black regiment to the Soudan to quell the revolt, they will inoculate all the troops up there, and the Soudan will revolt against Cairo, whom they all hate." It will be noted that that letter was written more than twenty months before the destruction of the Hicks Expedition made the Mahdi master of the Soudan.
It was in the year 1880 that the movements of a Mahommedan dervish, named Mahomed Ahmed, first began to attract the attention of the Egyptian officials. He had quarrelled with and repudiated the authority of the head of his religious order, because he tolerated such frivolous practices as dancing and singing. His boldness in this matter, and his originality in others, showed that he was pursuing a course of his own, and to provide for his personal security, as well as for convenience in keeping up his communications with Khartoum and other places, he fixed his residence on an islet in the White Nile near Kawa. Mahomed Ahmed was a native of the lower province of Dongola, and as such was looked upon with a certain amount of contempt by the other races of the Soudan. When he quarrelled with his religious leader he was given the opprobrious name of "a wretched Dongolawi," but the courage with which he defied and exposed an arch-priest for not rigidly abiding by the tenets of the Koran, redounded so much to his credit that the people began to talk of this wonderful dervish quite as much as of the Khedive's Governor-General. Many earnest and energetic Mahommedans flocked to him, and among these was the present Khalifa Abdullah, whose life had been spared by Zebehr, and who in return had wished to proclaim that leader of the slave-hunters Mahdi. To his instigation was probably due not merely the assumption of that title by Mahomed Ahmed, but the addition of a worldly policy to what was to have been a strictly religious propaganda.
Little as he deemed there was to fear from this ascetic, the Egyptian Governor-General Raouf, Gordon's successor, and stigmatised by him as the Tyrant of Harrar, became curious about him, and sent someone to interview and report upon this new religious teacher. The report brought back was that he was "a madman," and it was at once considered safe to treat him with indifference. Such was the position in the year 1880, and the official view was only modified a year later by the receipt of information that the gathering on the island of Abba had considerably increased, and that Mahomed Ahmed was attended by an armed escort, who stood in his presence with drawn swords. It was at this time too that he began to declare that he had a divine mission, and took unto himself the style of Mahdi – the long-expected messenger who was to raise up Islam – at first secretly among his chosen friends, but not so secretly that news of his bold step did not reach the ears of Raouf. The assumption of such a title, which placed its holder above and beyond the reach of such ordinary commands as are conveyed in the edicts of a Khedive or a Sultan, convinced Raouf that the time had come to put an end to these pretensions. That conviction was not diminished when Mahomed Ahmed made a tour through Kordofan, spreading a knowledge of his name and intentions, and undoubtedly winning over many adherents to his cause. On his return to Abba he found a summons from the Governor-General to come to Khartoum. That summons was followed by the arrival of a steamer, the captain of which had orders to capture the False Mahdi alive or dead.
Mahomed Ahmed received warning from his friends and sympathisers that if he went to Khartoum he might consider himself a dead man. He probably never had the least intention of going there, and what he had seen of the state of feeling in the Soudan, where the authority of the Khedive was neither popular nor firmly established, rendered him more inclined to defy the Egyptians. When the delegate of Raouf Pasha therefore appeared before him, Mahomed Ahmed was surrounded by such an armed force as precluded the possibility of a violent seizure of his person, and when he resorted to argument to induce him to come to Khartoum, Mahomed Ahmed, throwing off the mask, and standing forth in the self-imposed character of Mahdi, exclaimed: "By the grace of God and His Prophet I am the master of this country, and never shall I go to Khartoum to justify myself."
After this picturesque defiance it only remained for him and the Egyptians to prove which was the stronger.
It must be admitted that Raouf at once recognised the gravity of the affair, and without delay he sent a small force on Gordon's old steamer, the Ismailia, to bring Mahomed Ahmed to reason. This was in August 1881. By its numbers and the superior armament of the troops this expedition should have proved a complete success, and a competent commander would have strangled the Mahdist phenomenon at its birth. Unfortunately the Egyptian officers were grossly incompetent, and divided among themselves. They attempted a night attack, and as they were quite ignorant of the locality, it is not surprising that they fell into the very trap they thought to set for their opponents.
In the confusion the divided Egyptian forces fired upon each other, and the Mahdists with their swords and short stabbing spears completed the rest. Of two whole companies of troops only a handful escaped by swimming to the steamer, which returned to Khartoum with the news of this defeat. Even this reverse was very far from ensuring the triumph of Mahomed Ahmed, or the downfall of the Egyptian power; and, indeed, the possession of steamers and the consequent command of the Nile navigation rendered it extremely doubtful whether he could long hold his own on the island of Abba. He thought so himself, and, gathering his forces together, marched to the western districts of Kordofan, where, at Jebel Gedir, he established his headquarters. A special reason made him select that place, for it is believed by Mahommedans that the Mahdi will first appear at Jebel Masa in North Africa, and Mahomed Ahmed had no scruple in declaring that the two places were the same. To complete the resemblance he changed with autocratic pleasure the name Jebel Gedir into Jebel Masa.
During this march several attempts were made to capture him by the local garrisons, but they were all undertaken in such a half-hearted manner, and so badly carried out, that the Mahdi was never in any danger, and his reputation was raised by the failure of the Government.
Once established at Jebel Gedir the Mahdi began to organise his forces on a larger scale, and to formulate a policy that would be likely to bring all the tribes of the Soudan to his side. While thus employed Rashed Bey, Governor of Fashoda, resolved to attack him. Rashed is entitled to the credit of seeing that the time demanded a signal, and if possible, a decisive blow, but he is to be censured for the carelessness and over-confidence he displayed in carrying out his scheme. Although he had a strong force he should have known that the Mahdi's followers were now numbered by the thousand, and that he was an active and enterprising foe. But he neglected the most simple precautions, and showed that he had no military skill. The Mahdi fell upon him during his march, killed him, his chief officers, and 1400 men, and the small body that escaped bore testimony to the formidable character of the victor's fighting power. This battle was fought on 9th December 1881, and the end of that year therefore beheld the firm establishment of the Mahdi's power in a considerable part of the Soudan; but even then the superiority of the Egyptian resources was so marked and incontestable that, properly handled, they should have sufficed to speedily overwhelm him.
At this juncture Raouf was succeeded as Governor-General by Abd-el-Kader Pasha, who had held the same post before Gordon, and who had gained something of a reputation from the conquest of Darfour, in conjunction with Zebehr. At least he ought to have known the Soudan, but the dangers which had been clear to the eye of Gordon were concealed from him and his colleagues. Still, the first task he set himself – and indeed it was the justification of his re-appointment – was to retrieve the disaster to Rashed, and to destroy the Mahdi's power. He therefore collected a force of not less than 4000 men, chiefly trained infantry, and he entrusted the command to Yusuf Pasha, a brave officer, who had distinguished himself under Gessi in the war with Suleiman. This force left Khartoum in March 1882, but it did not begin its inland march from the Nile until the end of May, when it had been increased by at least 2000 irregular levies raised in Kordofan. Unfortunately, Yusuf was just as over-confident as Rashed had been. He neglected all precautions, and derided the counsel of those who warned him that the Mahdi's followers might prove a match for his well-armed and well-drilled troops. After a ten days' march he reached the neighbourhood of the Mahdi's position, and he was already counting on a great victory, when, at dawn of day on 7th June, he was himself surprised by his opponent in a camp that he had ostentatiously refused to fortify in the smallest degree. The Egyptian force was annihilated. Some of the local irregulars escaped, but of the regular troops and their commanders not one. This decisive victory not merely confirmed the reputation of the Mahdi, and made most people in the Soudan believe that he was really a heaven-sent champion, but it also exposed the inferiority of the Government troops and the Khedive's commanders.
The defeat of Yusuf may be said to have been decisive so far as the active forces of the Khedive in the field were concerned, but the towns held out, and El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, in particular defied all the Mahdi's efforts to take it. The possession of this and other strong places furnished the supporters of the Government with a reasonable hope that on the arrival of fresh troops the ground lost might be recovered, and an end put to what threatened to become a formidable rebellion. A lull consequently ensued in the struggle. Unfortunately, it was one that the Mahdi turned to the best advantage by drilling and arming his troops, and summoning levies from the more distant parts of the provinces, while the Khedive's Government, engrossed in troubles nearer home – the Arabi revolt and the intervention of England in the internal administration – seemed paralysed in its efforts to restore its authority over the Soudan, which at that moment would have been comparatively easy. The only direct result of Yusuf's defeat in June 1882 was that two of the Black regiments were sent up to Khartoum, and as their allegiance to the Government was already shaken, their presence, as Gordon apprehended, was calculated to aggravate rather than to improve the situation.
Matters remained very much in this state until the Mahdi's capture of the important town of El Obeid. Notwithstanding the presence within the walls of an element favourable to the Mahdi, the Commandant, Said Pasha, made a valiant and protracted defence. He successfully repelled all the Mahdi's attempts to take the place by storm, but he had to succumb to famine after all the privations of a five months' siege. If there had been other men like Said Pasha, especially at Khartoum, the power of the Mahdi would never have risen to the height it attained. The capture of an important place like El Obeid did more for the spread of the Mahdi's reputation and power than the several victories he had gained in the field. This important event took place in January 1883. Abd-el-Kader was then removed from the Governor-Generalship, and a successor found in Alla-ed-din, a man of supposed energy and resource. More than that, an English officer – Colonel Hicks – was given the military command, and it was decided to despatch an expedition of sufficient strength, as it was thought, to crush the Mahdi at one blow.
The preparations for this fresh advance against the Mahdi were made with care, and on an extensive scale. Several regiments were sent from Egypt, and in the spring of the year a permanent camp was established for their accommodation at Omdurman, on the western bank of the Nile, opposite Khartoum. Here, by the end of June 1883, was assembled a force officially computed to number 7000 infantry, 120 cuirassiers, 300 irregular cavalry, and not fewer than 30 pieces of artillery, including rockets and mortars. Colonel Hicks was given the nominal command, several English and other European officers were appointed to serve under him, and the Khedive specially ordered the Governor-General to accompany the expedition that was to put an end to the Mahdi's triumph. Such was the interest, and, it may be added, confidence, felt in the expedition, that two special correspondents, one of whom was Edmond O'Donovan, who had made himself famous a few years earlier by reaching the Turcoman stronghold of Merv, were ordered to accompany it, and report its achievements.
The Mahdi learnt in good time of the extensive preparations being made for this expedition, but he was not dismayed, because all the fighting tribes of Kordofan, Bahr Gazelle, and Darfour were now at his back, and he knew that he could count on the devotion of 100,000 fanatical warriors. Still, he and his henchman Abdullah, who supplied the military brains to the cause, were not disposed to throw away a chance, and the threatening appearance of the Egyptian military preparations led them to conceive the really brilliant idea of stirring up trouble in the rear of Khartoum. For this purpose a man of extraordinary energy and influence was ready to their hand in Osman Digma, a slave-dealer of Souakim, who might truly be called the Zebehr of the Eastern Soudan. This man hastened to Souakim as the delegate of the Mahdi, from whom he brought special proclamations, calling on the tribes to rise for a Holy War. Although this move subsequently aggravated the Egyptian position and extended the military triumphs of the Mahdi, it did not attain the immediate object for which it was conceived, as the Hicks Expedition set out on its ill-omened march before Osman had struck a blow.
The power of the Mahdi was at this moment so firmly established, and his reputation based on the double claim of a divine mission and military success so high that it may be doubted whether the 10,000 men, of which the Hicks force consisted when the irregulars raised by the Governor-General had joined it at Duem, would have sufficed to overcome him even if they had been ably led, and escaped all the untoward circumstances that first retarded their progress and then sealed their fate. The plan of campaign was based on a misconception of the Mahdi's power, and was carried out with utter disregard of prudence and of the local difficulties to be encountered between the Nile and El Obeid. But the radical fault of the whole enterprise was a strategical one. The situation made it prudent and even necessary for the Government to stand on the defensive, and to abstain from military expeditions, while the course pursued was to undertake offensive measures in the manner most calculated to favour the chances of the Mahdi, and to attack him at the very point where his superiority could be most certainly shown.
But quite apart from any original error as to the inception of the campaign, which may fairly be deemed a matter of opinion, there can be no difference between any two persons who have studied the facts that the execution of it was completely mismanaged. In the first place the start of the expedition was delayed, so that the Mahdi got ample warning of the coming attack. The troops were all in the camp at Omdurman in June, but they did not reach Duem till September, and a further delay of two months occurred there before they began their march towards El Obeid. That interval was chiefly taken up with disputes between Hicks and his Egyptian colleagues, and it is even believed that there was much friction between Hicks and his European lieutenants.
The first radical error committed was the decision to advance on El Obeid from Duem, because there were no wells on that route, whereas had the northern route via Gebra and Bara been taken, a certain supply of water could have been counted on, and still more important, the co-operation of the powerful Kabbabish tribe, the only one still hostile to the Mahdi, might have been secured. The second important error was not less fatal. When the force marched it was accompanied by 6000 camels and a large number of women. Encumbered in its movements by these useless impedimenta, the force never had any prospect of success with its active enemy. As it slowly advanced from the Nile it became with each day's march more hopelessly involved in its own difficulties, and the astute Mahdi expressly forbade any premature attack to be made upon an army which he clearly saw was marching to its doom.
On the 1st November 1883, when the Egyptians were already disheartened by the want of water, the non-arrival of reinforcements from the garrisons near the Equator, which the Governor-General had rashly promised to bring up, and the exhausting nature of their march through a difficult country, the Mahdi's forces began their attack. Concealed in the high grass, they were able to pour in a heavy fire on the conspicuous body of the Egyptians at short range without exposing themselves. But notwithstanding his heavy losses, Hicks pressed on, because he knew that his only chance of safety lay in getting out of the dense cover in which he was at such a hopeless disadvantage. But this the Mahdi would never permit, and on 4th November, when Hicks had reached a place called Shekan, he gave the order to his impatient followers to go in and finish the work they had so well begun. The Egyptian soldiers seem to have been butchered without resistance. The Europeans and the Turkish cavalry fought well for a short time, but in a few minutes they were overpowered by superior numbers. Of the whole force of 10,000 men, only a few individuals escaped by some special stroke of fortune, for nearly the whole of the 300 prisoners taken were subsequently executed. Such was the complete and appalling character of the destruction of Hicks's army, which seemed to shatter at a single blow the whole fabric of the Khedive's power in the Soudan, and rivetted the attention of Europe on that particular quarter of the Dark Continent.
The consequences of that decisive success, which became known in London three weeks after it happened, were immediate throughout the region wherein it occurred. Many Egyptian garrisons, which had been holding out in the hope of succour through the force that Hicks Pasha was bringing from Khartoum, abandoned hope after its destruction at Shekan, and thought only of coming to terms with the conqueror. Among these was the force at Dara in Darfour under the command of Slatin Pasha. That able officer had held the place for months under the greatest difficulty, and had even obtained some slight successes in the field, but the fate of the Hicks expedition convinced him that the situation was hopeless, and that his duty to the brave troops under him required the acceptance of the honourable terms which his tact and reputation enabled him to secure at the hands of the conqueror. Slatin surrendered on 23rd December 1883; Lupton Bey, commander in the Bahr Gazelle, about the same time, and these successes were enhanced and extended by those achieved by Osman Digma in the Eastern Soudan, where, early in February 1884, while Gordon was on his way to Khartoum, that leader inflicted on Baker Pasha at Tokar a defeat scarcely less crushing than that of Shekan.
By New Year's Day, 1884, therefore, the power of the Mahdi was triumphantly established over the whole extent of the Soudan, from the Equator to Souakim, with the exception of Khartoum and the middle course of the Nile from that place to Dongola. There were also some outlying garrisons, such as that at Kassala, but the principal Egyptian force remaining was the body of 4000 so-called troops, the less efficient part, we may be sure, of those available, left behind at Khartoum, under Colonel de Coetlogon, by Hicks Pasha, when he set out on his unfortunate expedition. If the power of the Mahdi at this moment were merely to be measured by comparison with the collapse of authority, courage, and confidence of the titular upholders of the Khedive's Government, it might be pronounced formidable. It had sufficed to defeat every hostile effort made against it, and to practically annihilate all the armies that Egypt could bring into the field. Its extraordinary success was no doubt due to the incompetency, over-confidence, and deficient military spirit and knowledge of the Khedive's commanders and troops. But, while making the fullest admission on these points, it cannot be disputed that some of the elements in the Mahdi's power would have made it formidable, even if the cause of the Government had been more worthily and efficiently sustained. There is no doubt that, in the first place, he appealed to races which thought they were overtaxed, and to classes whose only tangible property had been assailed and diminished by the Anti-Slavery policy of the Government. Even if it would be going too far to say that Mahomed Ahmed, the long-looked-for Mahdi, was only a tool in the hands of secret conspirators pledged to avenge Suleiman, to restore Zebehr, and to bring back the good old times, when a fortune lay in the easy acquisition of human ivory, there is no doubt that the backbone of his power was provided by those followers of Suleiman, whom Gordon had broken up at Shaka and driven from Dara. But the Mahdi had supplied them in religious fanaticism with a more powerful incentive than pecuniary gain, and when he showed them how easily they might triumph over their opponents, he inspired them with a confidence which has not yet lost its efficacy.
In 1884 all these inducements for the tribes of the Soudan to believe in their religious leader were in their pristine strength. He had succeeded in every thing he undertook, he had armed his countless warriors with the weapons taken from the armies he had destroyed, and he had placed at the disposal of his supporters an immense and easily-acquired spoil. The later experiences of the Mahdists were to be neither so pleasant nor so profitable, but at the end of 1883 they were at the height of their confidence and power. It was at such a moment and against such a powerful adversary that the British Government thought it right to take advantage of the devotion and gallantry of a single man, to send him alone to grapple with a difficulty which several armies had, by their own failure and destruction, rendered more grave, at the same time that they established the formidable nature of the rebellion in the Soudan as an unimpeachable fact instead of a disputable opinion. I do not think his own countrymen have yet quite appreciated the extraordinary heroism and devotion to his country which Gordon showed when he rushed off single-handed to oppose the ever-victorious Mahdi at the very zenith of his power.
In unrolling the scroll of events connected with an intricate history, it next becomes necessary to explain why Gordon voluntarily, and it may even be admitted, enthusiastically, undertook a mission that, to any man in his senses, must have seemed at the moment at which it was undertaken little short of insanity. Whatever else may be said against the Government and the military authorities who suggested his going, and availed themselves of his readiness to go, to Khartoum, I do not think there is the shadow of a justification for the allegation that they forced him to proceed on that romantic errand, although of course it is equally clear that he insisted as the condition of his going at all that he should be ordered by his Government to proceed on this mission. Beyond this vital principle, which he held to all his life in never volunteering, he was far too eager to go himself to require any real stirring-up or compulsion. It was even a secret and unexpressed grievance that he should not be called upon to hasten to the spot, which had always been in his thoughts since the time he had left it. He could think of nothing else; in the midst of other work he would turn aside to discuss the affairs of Egypt and the Soudan as paramount to every other consideration; and when a great mission, like that to the Congo, which he could have made a turning-point in African history, was placed in his hands, he could only ask for "a respite," and, with the charm of the Sphinx strong upon him, rushed on his fate in a chivalrous determination to essay the impossible. But was it right or justifiable that wise politicians and experienced generals should take advantage of such enthusiasm and self-sacrifice, and let one man go unaided to achieve what thousands had failed to do?
It is necessary to establish clearly in the first place, and beyond dispute, the frame of mind which induced Gordon to take up his last Nile mission in precisely the confiding manner that he did. Gordon left Egypt at the end of 1879. Although events there in 1880 were of interest and importance, Gordon was too much occupied in India and China to say anything, but in October 1881 he drew up an important memorandum on affairs in Egypt since the deposition of Ismail. Gordon gave it to me specially for publication, and it duly appeared in The Times, but its historical interest is that it shows how Gordon's thoughts were still running on the affairs of the country in which he had served so long. The following is the full text: —