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The River War

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The Hadendoa tribe, infuriated by oppression and misgovernment,
had joined the rebellion under the leadership of the celebrated,
and perhaps immortal, Osman Digna. The Egyptian garrisons of Tokar and
Sinkat were beleaguered and hard pressed. Her Majesty's Government
disclaimed all responsibility. Yet, since these towns were not far from
the coast, they did not prohibit an attempt on the part of the Egyptian
Government to rescue the besieged soldiers. Accordingly an Egyptian
force 3,500 strong marched from Suakin in February 1884 to relieve Tokar,
under the command of General Baker, once the gallant colonel of the
1Oth Hussars. Hard by the wells of Teb they were, on the 5th of February,
attacked by about a thousand Arabs.

'On the square being only threatened by a small force of
the enemy. . . the Egyptian troops threw down their arms and ran,
carrying away the black troops with them, and allowing themselves
to be killed without the slightest resistance.' [General Baker to Sir
E. Baring, February 6 (official despatch), telegraphic.] The British and
European officers in vain endeavoured to rally them. The single Soudanese
battalion fired impartially on friend and foe. The general, with that
unshaken courage and high military skill which had already on the Danube
gained him a continental reputation, collected some fifteen hundred men,
mostly unarmed, and so returned to Suakin. Ninety-six officers and
2,250 men were killed. Krupp guns, machine guns, rifles, and a large
supply of ammunition fell to the victorious Arabs. Success inflamed their
ardour to the point of madness. The attack of the towns was pressed with
redoubled vigour. The garrison of Sinkat, 800 strong, sallied out and
attempted to fight their way to Suakin. The garrison of Tokar surrendered.
Both were destroyed.

The evil was done. The slaughter was complete. Yet the British Government
resolved to add to it. The garrisons they had refused to rescue they now
determined to avenge. In spite of their philanthropic professions,
and in spite of the advice of General Gordon, who felt that his position
at Khartoum would be still further compromised by operations on his only
line of retreat [Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville, Cairo, February 23.],
a considerable military expedition consisting of one cavalry and two
infantry brigades, was sent to Suakin. The command was entrusted to
General Graham. Troops were hurriedly concentrated. The 10th Hussars,
returning from India, were stopped and mounted on the horses of the
gendarmerie. With admirable celerity the force took the field. Within
a month of the defeat at Teb they engaged the enemy almost on the very
scene of the disaster. On the 4th of March they slew 3,000 Hadendoa
and drove the rest in disorder from the ground. Four weeks later a second
action was fought at Tamai. Again the success of the British troops was
complete; again the slaughter of the Arabs was enormous. But neither
victory was bloodless. El Teb cost 24 officers and 168 men; Tamai,
13 officers and 208 men. The effect of these operations was the dispersal
of Osman Digna's gathering. That astute man, not for the first
or last time, made a good retreat.

Ten thousand men had thus been killed in the space of three months
in the Eastern Soudan. By the discipline of their armies the Government
were triumphant. The tribes of the Red Sea shore cowered before them.
But as they fought without reason, so they conquered without profit.

As soon as Gordon had been finally refused the assistance of
Zubehr Pasha, it was evident that the rescue of the garrisons
was impossible. The General had been sent as the last hope. Rightly or
wrongly, his recommendations were ignored. His mission was an admitted
failure. After that the only question was how to bring him away as quickly
as possible. It was certain that he would not come willingly. Force was
necessary. Yet it was difficult to know how to apply it. After the
victories in the Eastern Soudan the opportunity presented itself.
The road was open. The local tribes were crushed. Berber had not then
fallen. The Mahdi was himself still on the road from El Obeid to Khartoum.
Sir Evelyn Baring saw the chance. He did not then occupy the formidable
and imposing position in Egyptian politics that he has since attained.
But with all his influence he urged the despatch of a small flying column
to Khartoum. His idea was simple. One thousand or twelve hundred men
were to mount on camels and ride thither via Berber. Those who fell ill or
whose camels broke down would have to take their chance by the roadside.
The plan, however, broke down in the military detail. Only one honourable
course remained--a regular expedition. This the British Agent at once
began to urge. This the Government obstinately refused to admit;
and meanwhile time was passing.

The situation at Khartoum became grave even before the breach between
General Gordon and Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was complete. While the British
Government was indulging in vengeful operations in the Eastern Soudan,
the Mahdi advanced slowly but steadily upon the town with a following
variously estimated at from fifteen to twenty thousand men. On the 7th
of March Colonel Stewart telegraphed from Khartoum: 'The Mahdi has
attempted to raise the people of Shendi by an emissary. . . . We may be
cut off;' [Lieut.-Colonel Stewart to Sir E. Baring, March 7, 1884.]
and on the 11th Gordon himself reported: 'The rebels are four hours
distant on the Blue Nile.' [Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring,
March 11, 1884.] Thereafter no more telegrams came, for on the 15th
the wire was cut between Shendi and Berber, and the blockade
had commenced.

The long and glorious defence of the town of Khartoum will always
fascinate attention. That one man, a European among Africans, a Christian
among Mohammedans, should by his genius have inspired the efforts of 7,000
soldiers of inferior race, and by his courage have sustained the hearts
of 30,000 inhabitants of notorious timidity, and with such materials and
encumbrances have offered a vigorous resistance to the increasing attacks
of an enemy who, though cruel, would yet accept surrender, during a period
of 317 days, is an event perhaps without parallel in history. But it may
safely be predicted that no one will ever write an account which will
compare in interest or in detail with that set forth by the man himself
in the famous. 'Journals at Khartoum.'

The brief account has delighted thousands of readers in Europe and
America. Perhaps it is because he is careless of the sympathy of men
that Charles Gordon so readily wins it. Before the first of the six parts
into which the Journals were divided is finished, the reader has been won.
Henceforth he sees the world through Gordon's eyes. With him he scoffs
at the diplomatists; despises the Government; becomes impatient--
unreasonably, perhaps--with a certain Major Kitchener in the Intelligence
Branch, whose information miscarried or was not despatched; is wearied by
the impracticable Shaiggia Irregulars; takes interest in the turkey-cock
and his harem of four wives; laughs at the 'black sluts' seeing their
faces for the first time in the mirror. With him he trembles for the fate
of the 'poor little beast,' the Husseinyeh, when she drifts stern foremost
on the shoal, 'a penny steamer under cannon fire'; day after day he gazes
through the General's powerful telescope from the palace roof down the
long brown reaches of the river towards the rocks of the Shabluka Gorge,
and longs for some sign of the relieving steamers; and when the end of
the account is reached, no man of British birth can read the last words,
'Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force--and I ask for no more than
two hundred men--does not come within ten days, the town may fall;
and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye,' without
being thrilled with vain regrets and futile resolutions. And then the
account stops short. Nor will the silence ever be broken. The sixth
instalment of the Journals was despatched on the 14th of December;
and when it is finished the reader, separated suddenly from the pleasant
companionship, experiences a feeling of loss and annoyance. Imagination,
long supported, is brushed aside by stern reality. Henceforward Gordon's
perils were unrecorded.

I would select one episode only from the Journals as an example of the
peculiarity and the sternness of Charles Gordon's character--his
behaviour towards Slatin. This Austrian officer had been Governor of
Darfur with the rank in the Egyptian service of Bey. For four years he
had struggled vainly against the rebellion. He had fought numerous
engagements with varied success. He had been several times wounded.
Throughout his province and even beyond its limits he bore the reputation
of a brave and capable soldier. The story of his life of suffering and
adventure, written by himself, is widely known, and he is thought by
those who have read it to be a man of feeling and of honour. By those
who enjoy his personal acquaintance this belief is unhesitatingly
confirmed. He had, however, committed an act which deprived him of
Gordon's sympathy and respect. During the fighting in Darfur, after
several defeats, his Mohammedan soldiers were discouraged and attributed
their evil fortune to the fact that their commander was an infidel under
the curse of the Almighty. Slatin therefore proclaimed himself a follower
of the Prophet, and outwardly at least adopted the faith of Islam.
The troops, delighted at his conversion and cheered by the hope of
success, renewed their efforts, and the resistance of the Governor of
Darfur was prolonged. The end, however, was deferred, not averted.
After the destruction of General Hicks's army Slatin was compelled to
surrender to the Dervishes. The religion he had assumed to secure victory
he observed to escape death. The Arab leaders, who admired his courage,
treated him at first with respect and kindness, and he was conducted to
the Mahdi in his encampment before Khartoum. There during the siege he
remained, closely watched but not imprisoned. Thence he wrote letters
to Gordon explaining his surrender, excusing his apostacy, and begging
that he might be allowed--not even assisted--to escape to Khartoum.
The letters are extant, and scarcely anyone who reads them, reflecting
on the twelve years of danger and degradation that lay before this man,
will refuse their compassion.

Gordon was inflexible. Before the arrival of the letters his allusions
to Slatin are contemptuous: 'One cannot help being amused at the Mahdi
carrying all the Europeans about with him--nuns, priests, Greeks,
Austrian officers--what a medley, a regular Etat-Major!' [JOURNALS AT
KHARTOUM.] He is suspicious of the circumstances of his surrender.
'The Greek. . . says Slatin had 4,000 ardebs of dura, 1,500 cows, and
plenty of ammunition: he has been given eight horses by the Mahdi.'
He will not vouch for such a man; but he adds, with characteristic
justice, 'all this information must be taken with reserve.'

At length the letters came. At the peril of his life, when ordered to
write and demand the surrender of the town, Slatin substituted an appeal
to Gordon to countenance his escape. This is the uncompromising minute
in the Journals: 'Oct. 16. The letters of Slatin have arrived. I have
no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.'
In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of
a man for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan. . . he will want some
quarantine . . . one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again
inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do
with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive
leave, which he is not likely to get; his doing so would be the breaking
of his parole which should be as sacred when given to the Mahdi as to any
other power, and it would jeopardise the safety of all these Europeans,
prisoners with Mahdi.'

Slatin's position, it should be observed, was not that of an officer
released on parole, but of a prisoner of war in durance in the enemy's
camp. In such circumstances he was clearly entitled to escape at his own
proper risk. If his captors gave him the chance, they had only themselves
to blame. His position was not dissimilar from that of the black soldiers
who had been captured by the Dervishes and were now made to serve against
the Government. These deserted to Khartoum daily, and the General fully
acquiesced in their doing so. As to Slatin's escape affecting the
treatment of the other European prisoners, it must be observed that when
at various times escapes were effected from Omdurman, and ultimately when
Slatin himself escaped, no ill-treatment was inflicted on the rest of the
prisoners; and even had such ill-treatment been the certain consequence
of an escape, that need not have debarred a man, according to the customs
of war, from attempting to regain his liberty. Nothing but his free and
formal promise, obtained in return for favours received, can alienate
that right. If the Mahdi chose to slaughter the remaining prisoners,
the responsibility rested with the Mahdi.

Slatin was, however, in no position to argue his case. His correspondence
with Gordon was discovered. For some days his life hung on a thread.
For several months he was heavily chained and fed on a daily handful of
uncooked doura, such as is given to horses and mules. Tidings of these
things were carried to Gordon. 'Slatin,' he observes icily, 'is still in
chains.' He never doubted the righteousness of the course he had adopted,
never for an instant. But few will deny that there were strong arguments
on both sides. Many will assert that they were nicely balanced. Gordon
must have weighed them carefully. He never wavered. Yet he needed Slatin.
He was alone. He had no one in whose military capacity he could put the
slightest confidence. Again and again in the Journals he expresses his
want of trustworthy subordinates. He could not be everywhere, he said.
'Nearly every order has to be repeated two or three times. I am weary
of my life.' 'What one has felt so much here is the want of men
like Gessi, or Messadaglia, or Slatin, but I have no one to whom
I could entrust expeditions. . . . .'

This was the man who would have employed Zubehr and bowed to expediency.
But Zubehr had never 'denied his Lord.'

The actual defence of Khartoum is within the province of the Journals,
nor shall I attempt a chronological account. After the 1Oth of September,
when General Gordon sent Colonel Stewart and Messrs. Power and Herbin
down the river in the ill-fated Abbas steamer, he was altogether alone.
Many men have bowed to the weight of responsibility. Gordon's
responsibility was undivided. There was no one to whom he could talk
as an equal. There was no one to whom he could--as to a trusty
subordinate--reveal his doubts. To some minds the exercise of power
is pleasant, but few sensations are more painful than responsibility
without control. The General could not supervise the defence. The officers
robbed the soldiers of their rations. The sentries slumbered at their
posts. The townspeople bewailed their misfortunes, and all ranks and
classes intrigued with the enemy in the hope of securing safety when the
town should fall. Frequent efforts were made to stir up the inhabitants
or sap their confidence. Spies of all kinds pervaded the town.
The Egyptian Pashas, despairing, meditated treason. Once an attempt was
made to fire the magazine. Once no less than eighty thousand ardebs of
grain was stolen from the arsenal. From time to time the restless and
ceaseless activity of the commander might discover some plot and arrest
the conspirators; or, checking some account, might detect some robbery;
but he was fully aware that what he found out was scarcely a tithe of
what he could not hope to know. The Egyptian officers were untrustworthy.
Yet he had to trust them. The inhabitants were thoroughly broken by war,
and many were disloyal. He had to feed and inspirit them. The town itself
was scarcely defensible. It must be defended to the end. From the flat
roof of his palace his telescope commanded a view of the forts and lines.
Here he would spend the greater part of each day, scrutinising the
defences and the surrounding country with his powerful glass. When he
observed that the sentries on the forts had left their posts, he would
send over to have them flogged and their superiors punished. When his
'penny steamers' engaged the Dervish batteries he would watch, 'on
tenter-hooks,' a combat which might be fatal to the defence, but which,
since he could not direct it, must be left to officers by turns timid and
reckless: and in the dark hours of the night he could not even watch.
The Journals, the only receptacle of his confidences, display the
bitterness of his sufferings no less than the greatness of his character.
'There is no contagion,' he writes, 'equal to that of fear. I have been
rendered furious when from anxiety I could not eat, I would find those at
the same table were in like manner affected.'

To the military anxieties was added every kind of worry which may weary
a man's soul. The women clamoured for bread. The townsfolk heaped
reproaches upon him. The quarrel with the British Government had cut him
very deeply. The belief that he was abandoned and discredited, that
history would make light of his efforts, would perhaps never know of them,
filled his mind with a sense of wrong and injustice which preyed upon his
spirits. The miseries of the townsfolk wrung his noble, generous heart.
The utter loneliness depressed him. And over all lay the shadow of
uncertainty. To the very end the possibility that 'all might be well'
mocked him with false hopes. The first light of any morning might reveal
the longed-for steamers of relief and the uniforms of British soldiers.
He was denied even the numbing anaesthetic of despair.

Yet he was sustained by two great moral and mental stimulants:
his honour as a man, his faith as a Christian. The first had put all
courses which he did not think right once and for all out of the question,
and so allayed many doubts and prevented many vain regrets. But the
second was the real source of his strength. He was sure that beyond this
hazardous existence, with all its wrongs and inequalities, another life
awaited him--a life which, if he had been faithful and true here
upon earth, would afford him greater faculties for good and wider
opportunities for their use. 'Look at me now,' he once said to a
fellow-traveller, 'with small armies to command and no cities to govern.
I hope that death will set me free from pain, and that great armies will
be given me, and that I shall have vast cities under my command.'
[Lieut.-Colonel N. Newham Davis, 'Some Gordon Reminiscences,' published
in THE MAN OF THE WORLD newspaper, December 14, 1898.] Such was
his bright hope of immortality.

As the severity of military operations increases, so also must the
sternness of discipline. The zeal of the soldiers, their warlike
instincts, and the interests and excitements of war may ensure obedience
of orders and the cheerful endurance of perils and hardships during a
short and prosperous campaign. But when fortune is dubious or adverse;
when retreats as well as advances are necessary; when supplies fail,
arrangements miscarry, and disasters impend, and when the struggle is
protracted, men can only be persuaded to accept evil things by the lively
realisation of the fact that greater terrors await their refusal. The ugly
truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience. It is certain
that the influence of General Gordon upon the garrison and townspeople
of Khartoum owed its greatest strength to that sinister element. 'It is
quite painful,' he writes in his Journals in September, 'to see men
tremble so, when they come and see me, that they cannot hold the match to
their cigarette.' Yet he employed all other methods of inspiring
their efforts. As the winter drew on, the sufferings of the besieged
increased and their faith in their commander and his promises of relief
diminished. To preserve their hopes--and, by their hopes, their courage
and loyalty--was beyond the power of man. But what a great man in the
utmost exercise of his faculties and authority might do, Gordon did.

His extraordinary spirit never burned more brightly than in these last,
gloomy days. The money to pay the troops was exhausted. He issued notes,
signing them with his own name. The citizens groaned under the triple
scourge of scarcity, disease, and war. He ordered the bands to play
merrily and discharged rockets. It was said that they were abandoned,
that help would never come, that the expedition was a myth--the lie of
a General who was disavowed by his Government. Forthwith he placarded the
walls with the news of victories and of the advance of a triumphant
British army; or hired all the best houses by the river's bank for the
accommodation of the officers of the relieving force. A Dervish shell
crashed through his palace. He ordered the date of its arrival to be
inscribed above the hole. For those who served him faithfully he struck
medals and presented them with pomp and circumstance. Others less
laudable he shot. And by all these means and expedients the defence of
the city was prolonged through the summer, autumn, and winter of 1884
and on into the year 1885.

All this time the public anxiety in England had been steadily growing.
If Gordon was abandoned, he was by no means forgotten. As his mission had
been followed with intense interest throughout the whole country, so its
failure had caused general despondency. Disappointment soon gave place
to alarm. The subject of the personal safety of the distinguished envoy
was first raised in the House of Commons on the 16th of March by Lord
Randolph Churchill. Availing himself of the opportunities provided by
Supply, he criticised the vacillating policy of the Government, their
purposeless slaughter in the Eastern Soudan, and their failure
to establish the Suakin-Berber route. He proceeded to draw attention to
the perilous position of General Gordon at Khartoum.

'Colonel Coetlogon has stated that Khartoum may be easily captured;
we know that General Gordon is surrounded by hostile tribes and cut off
from communications with Cairo and London; and under these circumstances
the House has a right to ask her Majesty's Government whether they are
going to do anything to relieve him. Are they going to remain indifferent
to the fate of the one man on whom they have counted to extricate them
from their dilemmas, to leave him to shift for himself, and not make a
single effort on his behalf?' [HANSARD'S PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES,
March 16, 1884.]

The Government remained impassive. Lord E. Fitzmaurice made some sort
of reply, and there were Ministerial cheers. But the subject, Once raised,
was not allowed to drop. Inspired and animated by the earnest energy of
a young man, the Opposition were continually growing stronger. The conduct
of Egyptian affairs afforded ample opportunity for criticism and attack.
All through the summer months and almost every night Ministers were
invited to declare whether they would rescue their envoy or leave him to
his fate. Mr. Gladstone returned evasive answers. The Conservative Press
took the cue. The agitation became intense. Even among the supporters of
the Government there was dissatisfaction. But the Prime Minister was
obdurate and unflinching. At length, at the end of the Session, the whole
matter was brought forward in the gravest and most formal way by the
moving of a vote of censure. The debate that followed Sir Michael Hicks
Beach's motion was long and acrimonious. Mr. Gladstone's speech only
increased the disquietude of his followers and the fury of the Opposition.
Mr. Forster openly declared his disagreement with his leader; and although
Lord Hartington in winding up the debate threw out some hopes of an
expedition in the autumn, the Government majority fell on the division to
twenty-eight. And after the prorogation the controversy was carried on
with undiminished vigour outside the walls of Parliament, and the clamour
in the country grew louder and louder.

It is usual to look upon Mr. Gladstone's conduct in the matter of the
relief of Gordon as dictated by benevolent weakness. History may take
another view. Strong and stubborn as was the character of the General,
that of the Minister was its equal. If Gordon was the better man,
Gladstone was incomparably the greater. It was easy for the First
Minister of the Crown to despatch an expedition against savages. He was
accustomed to the exercise of power. Compared with the resources of the
Empire, the enterprise was insignificant. Few men have feared
responsibility less than Gladstone. On the other hand, the expressed
desire of the nation was a force to which he had always bowed--to which,
indeed, he owed his political existence. Yet, in spite of the growing
agitation throughout the land, he remained stern and silent. Most men do
what is right, or what they persuade themselves is right; nor is it
difficult to believe that Mr. Gladstone did not feel justified in
involving the nation in operations in the heart of the Soudan for the
purpose, not of saving the life of the envoy--for Gordon had but to embark
on his steamers and come home--but simply in order to vindicate the
personal honour of a man. And it is possible that a feeling of resentment
against the officer whose intractable nature was bringing such odium upon
the Government may have coloured his resolution with a darker tinge.

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