Into the motives that filled him with a belief that he might inspire a Government, which had no policy, with one created by his own courage, confidence, and success, it would be impossible to enter, but it can be confidently asserted that, although they were drawn after him sed pede claudo to expend millions of treasure and thousands of lives, they were never inspired by his exhortations and example to form a definite policy as to the main point in the situation, viz., the defence of the Egyptian possessions. In the flush of the moment, carried along by an irresistible inclination to do the things which he saw could be done, he overlooked all the other points of the case, and especially that he was dealing with politicians tied by their party principles, and thinking more of the passage through the House of some domestic measure of fifth-rate importance than of the maintenance of an Imperial interest and the arrest of an outbreak of Mahommedan fanaticism which, if not checked, might call for a crusade. Gordon overlooked all these considerations. He never thought but that he was dealing with other Englishmen equally mindful with himself of their country's fame.
If Gordon, long before he took up the task, had been engrossed in the development of the Soudan difficulty and the Mahdi's power, those who had studied the question and knew his special qualifications for the task, had, at a very early stage of the trouble, called upon the Government to avail themselves of his services, and there is no doubt that if that advice had been promptly taken instead of slowly, reluctantly, and only when matters were desperate, there is no doubt, I repeat, remembering what he did later on, that Gordon would have been able, without a single English regiment, to have strangled the Mahdi's power in its infancy, and to have won back the Soudan for the Khedive.
But it may be said, where was it ever prominently suggested that General Gordon should be despatched to the Soudan at a time before the Mahdi had become supreme in that region, as he undoubtedly did by the overthrow of Hicks and his force?
I reply by the following quotations from prominent articles written by myself in The Times of January and February 1883. Until the capture of El Obeid at that period the movement of the Mahdi was a local affair of the importance of which no one, at a distance, could attempt to judge, but that signal success made it the immediate concern of those responsible in Egypt. On 9th January 1883, in an article in The Times on "The Soudan," occurs this passage: —
"It is a misfortune, in the interests of Egypt, of civilisation, and of the mass of the Soudanese, that we cannot send General Gordon back to the region of the Upper Nile to complete there the good work he began eight years ago. With full powers, and with the assurance that the good fruits of his labours shall not be lost by the subsequent acts of corrupt Pashas, there need be little doubt of his attaining rapid success, while the memory of his achievements, when working for a half-hearted Government, and with incapable colleagues, yet lives in the hearts of the black people of the Soudan, and fills one of the most creditable pages in the history of recent administration of alien races by Englishmen."
Again, on 17th February, in another article on the same subject: —
"The authority of the Mahdi could scarcely be preserved save by constant activity and a policy of aggression, which would constitute a standing danger to the tranquillity of Lower Egypt. On the other hand, the preservation of the Khedive's sovereign rights through our instrumentality will carry with it the responsibility of providing the unhappy peoples of Darfour, Dongola, Kordofan, and the adjacent provinces with an equitable administration and immunity from heavy taxation. The obligation cannot be avoided under these, or perhaps under any circumstances, but the acceptance of it is not a matter to be entertained with an easy mind. The one thing that would reconcile us to the idea would be the assurance that General Gordon would be sent back with plenary powers to the old scene of his labours, and that he would accept the charge."
As Gordon was not resorted to when the fall of El Obeid in the early part of the year 1883 showed that the situation demanded some decisive step, it is not surprising that he was left in inglorious inaction in Palestine, while, as I and others knew well, his uppermost thought was to be grappling with the Mahdi during the long lull of preparing Hicks's expedition, and of its marching to its fate. The catastrophe to that force on 4th November was known in London on 22nd November.
I urged in every possible way the prompt employment of General Gordon, who could have reached Egypt in a very short time from his place of exile at Jaffa. But on this occasion I was snubbed, being told by one of the ablest editors I have known, now dead, that "Gordon was generally considered to be mad." However, at this moment the Government seem to have come to the conclusion that General Gordon had some qualifications to undertake the task in the Soudan, for at the end of November 1883, Sir Charles Dilke, then a member of the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, but whose special knowledge and experience of foreign affairs often led to his assisting Lord Granville at the Foreign Office, offered the Egyptian Government Gordon's services. They were declined, and when, on 1st December 1883, Lord Granville proposed the same measure in a more formal manner, and asked in an interrogatory form whether General Charles Gordon would be of any use, and if so in what capacity, Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer, threw cold water on the project, and stated on 2nd December that "the Egyptian Government were very much averse to employing him." Subsequent events make it desirable to call special attention to the fact that when, however tardily, the British Government did propose the employment of General Gordon, the suggestion was rejected, not on public grounds, but on private. Major Baring did not need to be informed as to the work Gordon had done in the Soudan, and as to the incomparable manner in which it had been performed. No one knew better than he that, with the single exception of Sir Samuel Baker, who was far too prudent to take up a thankless task, and to remove the mountain of blunders others had committed, there was no man living who had the smallest pretension to say that he could cope with the Soudan difficulty, save Charles Gordon. Yet, when his name is suggested, he treats the matter as one that cannot be entertained. There is not a word as to the obvious propriety of suggesting Gordon's name, but the objection of a puppet-prince like Tewfik is reported as fatal to the course. Yet six weeks, with the mighty lever of an aroused public opinion, sufficed to make him withdraw the opposition he advanced to the appointment, not on public grounds, which was simply impossible, but, I fear, from private feelings, for he had not forgotten the scene in Cairo in 1878, when he attempted to control the action of Gordon on the financial question. There would be no necessity to refer to this matter, but for its consequences. Had Sir Evelyn Baring done his duty, and given the only honest answer on 2nd December 1883, that if any one man could save the situation, that man was Charles Gordon, Gordon could have reached Khartoum early in January instead of late in February, and that difference of six weeks might well have sufficed to completely alter the course of subsequent events, and certainly to save Gordon's life, seeing that, after all, the Nile Expedition was only a few days too late. The delay was also attended with fatal results to the civil population of Khartoum. Had Gordon reached there early in January he could have saved them all, for as it was he sent down 2600 refugees, i.e. merchants, old men, women, and children, making all arrangements for their comfort in the very brief period of open communication after his arrival, when the greater part of February had been spent.
The conviction that Gordon's appointment and departure were retarded by personal animus and an old difference is certainly strengthened by all that follows. Sir Evelyn Baring and the Egyptian Government would not have Charles Gordon, but they were quite content to entrust the part of Saviour of the Soudan to Zebehr, the king of the slave-hunters. On 13th December Lord Granville curtly informed our representative at Cairo that the employment of Zebehr was inexpedient, and Gordon in his own forcible way summed the matter up thus: "Zebehr will manage to get taken prisoner, and will then head the revolt."
But while Sir Evelyn Baring would not have Gordon and the British Cabinet withheld its approval from Zebehr, it was felt that the situation required that something should be done as soon as possible, for the Mahdi was master of the Soudan, and at any moment tidings might come of his advance on Khartoum, where there was only a small and disheartened garrison, and a considerable defenceless population. The responsible Egyptian Ministers made several suggestions for dealing with the situation, but they one and all deprecated ceding territory to the Mahdi, as it would further alienate the tribes still loyal or wavering and create graver trouble in the future. What they chiefly contended for was the opening of the Berber-Souakim route with 10,000 troops, who should be Turks, as English troops were not available. It is important to note that this suggestion did not shock the Liberal Government, and on 13th December 1883 Lord Granville replied that the Government had no objection to offer to the employment of Turkish troops at Souakim for service in the Soudan. In the following month the Foreign Secretary went one step further, and "concurred in the surrender of the Soudan to the Sultan." In fact the British Government were only anxious about one thing, and that was to get rid of the Soudan, and to be saved any further worry in the matter. No doubt, if the Sultan had had the money to pay for the despatch of the expedition, this last suggestion would have been adopted, but as he had not, the only way to get rid of the responsibility was to thrust it on Gordon, who was soon discovered to be ready to accept it without delay or conditions.
On 22nd December 1883 Sir Evelyn Baring wrote: "It would be necessary to send an English officer of high authority to Khartoum with full powers to withdraw the garrisons, and to make the best arrangements possible for the future government of the country." News from Khartoum showed that everything there was in a state verging on panic, that the people thought they were abandoned by the Government, and that the enemy had only to advance for the place to fall without a blow. Lastly Colonel de Coetlogon, the governor after Hicks's death, recommended on 9th January the immediate withdrawal of the garrison from Khartoum, which he thought could be accomplished if carried out with the greatest promptitude, but which involved the desertion of the other garrisons. Abd-el-Kader, ex-Governor-General of the Soudan and Minister of War, offered to proceed to Khartoum, but when he discovered that the abandonment of the Soudan was to be proclaimed, he absolutely refused on any consideration to carry out what he termed a hopeless errand.
All these circumstances gave special point to Sir Evelyn Baring's recommendation on 22nd December that "an English officer of high authority should be sent to Khartoum," and the urgency of a decision was again impressed on the Government in his telegram of 1st January, because Egypt is on the point of losing the Soudan, and moreover possesses no force with which to defend the valley of the Nile downwards. But in the many messages that were sent on this subject during the last fortnight of the year 1883, the name of the one "English officer of high authority" specially suited for the task finds no mention. As this omission cannot be attributed to ignorance, some different motive must be discovered. At last, on 10th January, Lord Granville renews his suggestion to send General Gordon, and asks whether he would not be of some assistance under the altered circumstances. The "altered circumstances" must have been inserted for the purpose of letting down Sir Evelyn Baring as lightly as possible, for the only alteration in the circumstances was that six weeks had been wasted in coming to any decision at all. On 11th January Sir Evelyn Baring replied that he and Nubar Pasha did not think Gordon's services could be utilised, and yet three weeks before he had recommended that "an English officer of high authority" should be sent, and he had even complained because prompter measures were not taken to give effect to his recommendation. The only possible conclusion is that, in Sir Evelyn Baring's opinion, General Gordon was not "an English officer of high authority." As if to make his views more emphatic, Sir Evelyn Baring on 15th January again telegraphed for an English officer with the intentional and conspicuous omission of Gordon's name, which had been three times urged upon him by his own Government. But determined as Sir Evelyn Baring was that by no act or word of his should General Gordon be appointed to the Soudan, there were more powerful influences at work than even his strong will.
The publication of General Gordon's views in the Pall Mall Gazette of 9th January 1884 had roused public opinion to the importance and urgency of the matter. It had also revealed that there was at least one man who was not in terror of the Mahdi's power, and who thought that the situation might still be saved. There is no doubt that that publication was the direct and immediate cause of Lord Granville's telegram of 10th January; but Sir Evelyn Baring, unmoved by what people thought or said at home, coldly replied on 11th January that Gordon is not the man he wants. If there had been no other considerations in the matter, I have no doubt that Sir Evelyn Baring would have beaten public opinion, and carried matters in the high, dictatorial spirit he had shown since the first mention of Gordon's name. But he had not made allowance for an embarrassed and purposeless Government, asking only to be relieved of the whole trouble, and willing to adopt any suggestion – even to resign its place to "the unspeakable Turk" – so long as it was no longer worried in the matter.
At that moment Gordon appears on the scene, ready and anxious to undertake single-handed a task for which others prescribe armies and millions of money. Public opinion greets him as the man for the occasion, and certainly he is the man to suit "that" Government. The only obstruction is Sir Evelyn Baring. Against any other array of forces his views would have prevailed, but even for him these are too strong.
On 15th January Gordon saw Lord Wolseley, as described in the last chapter, and then and there it is discovered and arranged that he will go to the Soudan, but only at the Government's request, provided the King of the Belgians will consent to his postponing the fulfilment of his promise, as Gordon knows he cannot help but do, for it was given on the express stipulation that the claim of his own country should always come first. King Leopold, who has behaved throughout with generosity, and the most kind consideration towards Gordon, is naturally displeased and upset, but he feels that he cannot restrain Gordon or insist on the letter of his bond. The Congo Mission is therefore broken off or suspended, as described in the last chapter. In the evening of the 15th Lord Granville despatched a telegram to Sir Evelyn Baring, no longer asking his opinion or advice, but stating that the Government have determined to send General Gordon to the Soudan, and that he will start without delay. To that telegram the British representative could make no demur short of resigning his post, but at last the grudging admission was wrung from him that "Gordon would be the best man." This conclusion, to which anyone conversant with the facts, as Sir Evelyn Baring was, would have come at once, was therefore only arrived at seven weeks after Sir Charles Dilke first brought forward Gordon's name as the right person to deal with the Soudan difficulty. That loss of time was irreparable, and in the end proved fatal to Gordon himself.
In describing the last mission, betrayal, and death of Gordon, the heavy responsibility of assigning the just blame to those individuals who were in a special degree the cause of that hero's fate cannot be shirked by any writer pretending to record history. Lord Cromer has filled a difficult post in Egypt for many years with advantage to his country, but in the matter of General Gordon's last Nile mission he allowed his personal feelings to obscure his judgment. He knew that Gordon was a difficult, let it be granted an impossible, colleague; that he would do things in his own way in defiance of diplomatic timidity and official rigidity; and that, instead of there being in the Egyptian firmament the one planet Baring, there would be only the single sun of Gordon. All these considerations were human, but they none the less show that he allowed his private feelings, his resentment at Gordon's treatment of him in 1878, to bias his judgment in a matter of public moment. It was his opposition alone that retarded Gordon's departure by seven weeks, and indeed the delay was longer, as Gordon was then at Jaffa, and that delay, I repeat it solemnly, cost Gordon his life. Whoever else was to blame afterwards, the first against whom a verdict of Guilty must be entered, without any hope of reprieve at the bar of history, was Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer.
Mr Gladstone and his Government are certainly clear of any reflection in this stage of the matter. They did their best to put forward General Gordon immediately on the news coming of the Hicks disaster, and although they might have shown greater determination in compelling the adoption of their plan, which they were eventually obliged to do, this was a very venial fault, and not in any serious way blameworthy. Nor did they ever seek to repudiate their responsibility for sending Gordon to the Soudan, although a somewhat craven statement by Lord Granville, in a speech at Shrewsbury in September 1885, to the effect that "Gordon went to Khartoum at his own request," might seem to infer that they did. This remark may have been a slip, or an incorrect mode of saying that Gordon willingly accepted the task given him by the Government, but Mr Gladstone placed the matter in its true light when he wrote that "General Gordon went to the Soudan at the request of H.M.'s Government."
Gordon, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Stewart, an officer who had visited the Soudan in 1883, and written an able report on it, left London by the Indian mail of 18th January 1884. The decision to send Colonel Stewart with him was arrived at only at the very last moment, and on the platform at Charing Cross Station the acquaintance of the two men bound together in such a desperate partnership practically began. It is worth recalling that in that hurried and stirring scene, when the War Office, with the Duke of Cambridge, had assembled to see him off, Gordon found time to say to one of Stewart's nearest relations, "Be sure that he will not go into any danger which I do not share, and I am sure that when I am in danger he will not be far behind."
Gordon's journey to Egypt was uneventful, but after the exciting events that preceded his departure he found the leisure of his sea-trip from Brindisi beneficial and advantageous, for the purpose of considering his position and taking stock of the situation he had to face. By habit and temperament Gordon was a bad emissary to carry out cut-and-dried instructions, more especially when they related to a subject upon which he felt very strongly and held pronounced views. The instructions which the Government gave him were as follows, and I quote the full text. They were probably not drawn up and in Gordon's hands more than two hours before he left Charing Cross, and personally I do not suppose that he had looked through them, much less studied them. His view of the matter never varied. He went to the Soudan to rescue the garrisons, and to carry out the evacuation of the province after providing for its administration. The letter given in the previous chapter shows how vague and incomplete was the agreement between himself and Ministers. It was nothing more than the expression of an idea that the Soudan should be evacuated, but how and under what conditions was left altogether to the chapter of accidents. At the start the Government's view of the matter and his presented no glaring difference. They sent General Gordon to rescue and withdraw the garrisons if he could do so, and they were also not averse to his establishing any administration that he chose. But the main point on which they laid stress was that they were to be no longer troubled in the affair. Gordon's marvellous qualities were to extricate them from the difficult position in which the shortcomings of the Egyptian Government had placed them, and beyond that they had no definite thought or care as to how the remedy was to be discovered and applied. The following instructions should be read by the light of these reflections, which show that, while they nominally started from the same point, Gordon and the Government were never really in touch, and had widely different goals in view: —
"Foreign Office, January 18th, 1884.
"Her Majesty's Government are desirous that you should proceed at once to Egypt, to report to them on the military situation in the Soudan, and on the measures which it may be advisable to take for the security of the Egyptian garrisons still holding positions in that country, and for the safety of the European population in Khartoum.
"You are also desired to consider and report upon the best mode of effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan, and upon the manner in which the safety and the good administration by the Egyptian Government of the ports on the sea-coast can best be secured.
"In connection with this subject, you should pay especial consideration to the question of the steps that may usefully be taken to counteract the stimulus which it is feared may possibly be given to the Slave Trade by the present insurrectionary movement and by the withdrawal of the Egyptian authority from the interior.
"You will be under the instructions of Her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at Cairo, through whom your Reports to Her Majesty's Government should be sent, under flying seal.
"You will consider yourself authorized and instructed to perform such other duties as the Egyptian Government may desire to entrust to you, and as may be communicated to you by Sir E. Baring. You will be accompanied by Colonel Stewart, who will assist you in the duties thus confided to you.
"On your arrival in Egypt you will at once communicate with Sir E. Baring, who will arrange to meet you, and will settle with you whether you should proceed direct to Suakin, or should go yourself or despatch Colonel Stewart to Khartoum viâ the Nile."
General Gordon had not got very far on his journey before he began to see that there were points on which it would be better for him to know the Government's mind and to state his own. Neither at this time nor throughout the whole term of his stay at Khartoum did Gordon attempt to override the main decision of the Government policy, viz. to evacuate the Soudan, although he left plenty of documentary evidence to show that this was not his policy or opinion. Moreover, his own policy had been well set forth in the Pall Mall Gazette, and might be summed up in the necessity to keep the Eastern Soudan, and the impossibility of fortifying Lower Egypt against the advance of the Mahdi. But he had none the less consented to give his services to a Government which had decided on evacuation, and he remained loyal to that purpose, although in a little time it was made clear that there was a wide and impassable gulf between the views of the British Government and its too brilliant agent.
The first doubt that flashed through his mind, strangely enough, was about Zebehr. He knew, of course, that it had been proposed to employ him, and that Mr Gladstone had not altogether unnaturally decided against it. But Gordon knew the man's ability, his influence, and the close connection he still maintained with the Soudan, where his father-in-law Elias was the Mahdi's chief supporter, and the paymaster of his forces. I believe that Gordon was in his heart of the opinion that the Mahdi was only a lay figure, and that the real author of the whole movement in the Soudan was Zebehr, but that the Mahdi, carried away by his exceptional success, had somewhat altered the scope of the project, and given it an exclusively religious or fanatical character. It is somewhat difficult to follow all the workings of Gordon's mind on this point, nor is it necessary to do so, but the fact that should not be overlooked is Gordon's conviction in the great power for good or evil of Zebehr. Thinking this matter over in the train, he telegraphed from Brindisi to Lord Granville on 30th January, begging that Zebehr might be removed from Cairo to Cyprus. There is no doubt as to the wisdom of this suggestion, and had it been adopted the lives of Colonel Stewart and his companions would probably have been spared, for, as will be seen, there is good ground to think that they were murdered by men of his tribe. In Cyprus Zebehr would have been incapable of mischief, but no regard was paid to Gordon's wish, and thus commenced what proved to be a long course of indifference.
During the voyage from Brindisi to Port-Said Gordon drew up a memorandum on his instructions, correcting some of the errors that had crept into them, and explaining what, more or less, would be the best course to follow. One part of his instructions had to go by the board – that enjoining him to restore to the ancient families of the Soudan their long-lost possessions, for there were no such families in existence. One paragraph in that memorandum was almost pathetic, when he begged the Government to take the most favourable view of his shortcomings if he found himself compelled by necessity to deviate from his instructions. Colonel Stewart supported that view in a very sensible letter, when he advised the Government, "as the wisest course, to rely on the discretion of General Gordon and his knowledge of the country."
General Gordon's original plan was to proceed straight to Souakim, and to travel thence by Berber to Khartoum, leaving the Foreign Office to arrange at Cairo what his status should be, but this mode of proceeding would have been both irregular and inconvenient, and it was rightly felt that he ought to hold some definite position assigned by the Khedive, as the ruler of Egypt. On arriving at Port-Said he was met by Sir Evelyn Wood, who was the bearer of a private letter from his old Academy and Crimean chum, Sir Gerald Graham, begging him to "throw over all personal feelings" and come to Cairo. The appeal could not have come from a quarter that would carry more weight with Gordon, who had a feeling of affection as well as respect for General Graham; and, moreover, the course suggested was so unmistakably the right one, that he could not, and did not, feel any hesitation in taking it, although he was well aware of Sir Evelyn Baring's opposition, which showed that the sore of six years before still rankled. Gordon accordingly accompanied Sir Evelyn Wood to Cairo, where he arrived on the evening of 24th January. On the following day he was received by Tewfik, who conferred on him for the second time the high office of Governor-General of the Soudan. It is unnecessary to lay stress on any minor point in the recital of the human drama which began with the interview with Lord Wolseley on 15th January, and thence went on without a pause to the tragedy of 26th January in the following year; but it does seem strange, if the British Government were resolved to stand firm to its evacuation policy, that it should have allowed its emissary to accept the title of Governor-General of a province which it had decided should cease to exist.
This was not the only nor even the most important consequence of his turning aside to go to Cairo. When there, those who were interested for various reasons in the proposal to send Zebehr to the Soudan, made a last effort to carry their project by arranging an interview between that person and Gordon, in the hope that all matters in dispute between them might be discussed, and, if possible, settled. Gordon, whose enmity to his worst foe was never deep, and whose temperament would have made him delight in a discussion with the arch-fiend, said at once that he had no objection to meeting Zebehr, and would discuss any matter with him or any one else. The penalty of this magnanimity was that he was led to depart from the uncompromising but safe attitude of opposition and hostility he had up to this observed towards Zebehr, and to record opinions that were inconsistent with those he had expressed on the same subject only a few weeks and even days before. But even in what follows I believe it is safe to discern his extraordinary perspicuity; for when he saw that the Government would not send Zebehr to Cyprus, he promptly concluded that it would be far safer to take or have him with him in the Soudan, where he could personally watch and control his movements, than to allow him to remain at Cairo, guiding hostile plots with his money and influence in the very region whither Gordon was proceeding.
This view is supported by the following Memorandum, drawn up by General Gordon on 25th January 1884, the day before the interview, and entitled by him "Zebehr Pasha v. General Gordon": —