Gordon then received a letter from a friend, the Inspector General of Imperial Customs in China, Sir Robert Hart, inviting him to return to China, which was on the verge of war with Russia over disputed border territories in Chinese Turkestan. Concerned about the Russian reaction to Gordon’s return to the scene of his greatest triumphs, the British Government refused permission, but Gordon boarded a ship bound for China anyway, wiring back: ‘Arrange retirement, commutation or resignation of service. My counsel, if asked, would be peace, not war.’30 By the time his ship reached Ceylon, the Government had changed its mind. Upon arrival, Gordon renewed old friendships, and plunged into court intrigues, counselling that, given the state of the Chinese army and Russia’s need to further restore its prestige by imperial expansion, going to war would be ‘idiocy’: he proposed a five-point peace plan.31 On 16 August, however, Gordon was ordered back to England. When he arrived home in October, he was sent on indefinite leave.
At a loose end and desperate for something to do in March 1881, Gordon chanced upon an old friend, Colonel Sir Howard Elphinstone, who complained that he had been posted as CRE on Mauritius, the Seychelles and Chagos Islands. Elphinstone considered it an exile to nowhere and offered £800 to anyone who would agree to go in his place. Since Gordon’s biblical and geographical studies had convinced him that the exact site of the Garden of Eden lay somewhere in the Seychelles, Gordon jumped at the chance to replace Elphinstone, while refusing the cash. While in Le Havre awaiting a ship to take him to Mauritius, Gordon received a letter detailing the terrible death of Gessi.32 By mid-May he had arrived at Port-Louis, Mauritius. He refused to become part of the social life of the island, swore off spirits, and vowed to reduce his smoking to only fifteen cigarettes a day. As quickly as possible, he turned his duties over to subordinates and set sail for the Seychelles, ostensibly to oversee repairs of the harbour facilities on Mahé, but really to fulfil his quest for Eden. He ‘discovered’ that the exact site was on the island of Praslin in the Vallée de Mai, and wrote an eight-page essay offering his proofs.
Meanwhile, in the Sudan, Muhammed Ahmed had publicly declared himself Mahdi in June 1881.33 Sent by Ra’úf Pasha, Muhammed Abù-al-Su’ùd met with Muhammed Ahmed at Jazíra Aba on 7 August 1881. The mission failed, and three days later when Su’úd returned to capture the ‘false prophet’ with 200 men, a cannon, and a government theologian, he was ambushed and killed. Over the next two years – with one exception: on May 3, 1882, when acting Governor General Carl Geigler34 defeated an Ansár35 force at Abú-Haráz – Ansár forces won a series of victories over Egyptian forces and won or forced the loyalty of many of the country’s clans, tribes and sheiks. Egyptian response was then hindered by growing nationalist pressure within the army led by Colonel Ahmed ‘Arábi, which ultimately led to Wolseley’s expedition to Egypt in August 1882. Wolseley destroyed ‘Arábi’s army at Tel el-Kebir. As a result, the Ottoman Sultan’s power over Egypt was limited to receiving Egypt’s annual tribute, France was frozen out completely and the British became the de facto rulers of the country. Major General Sir Evelyn Wood was appointed Sirdar (C in C) of the Egyptian army, and Sir Samuel Baker’s younger brother Valentine was appointed to train and lead the Egyptian police.
In March 1882 Gordon had received his promotion to Major General, which made him too senior for the Mauritius posting. Therefore, having expressed an interest in the Cape Colony posting he had previously declined, Gordon was invited on 2 April 1882 to advise the Cape authorities on resolving its BaSotho (Basuto) problem.36 Gordon was uncertain as to whether the Cape government wanted him to broker a peaceful solution to the Basuto problem or to lead a military expedition against them. He certainly tended to sympathise with the BaSotho. After receiving assurances from the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, John Merriman, that improving the quality and integration of the British, colonial, Boer and native forces would play an important role in resolving the Colony’s tribal questions, Gordon travelled the 700 miles by rail and cart to King William Town. There he ruffled feathers by his attitudes toward military decorum and his oft-stated belief that local people, born to the saddle, made better soldiers than British regulars. He further strained his relationship with the Cape government and Basuto Agent Joseph Orpen by sending them a mass of lengthy and sometimes contradictory memoranda, most referring to matters outside his areas of responsibility and which were rejected accordingly. Increasingly frustrated, and having, in July, received a glowing report on the Congo from the Scottish East African merchant and ship owner, Sir William Mackinnon, Gordon considered resigning.
To forestall his resignation, Merriman, an advocate of the ‘divide and conquer’ approach to tribal relations, suggested in July that Gordon, along with the Cape’s Secretary of Native Affairs, J W Sauer, go on a fact-finding mission to Basutoland. Sauer pressed Paramount Chief Lestie to organise an attack on the hostile chief Masupha, while Gordon claimed that he was there to find a peaceful resolution. Gordon offered to visit Masupha and Sauer agreed, but insisted that Gordon sign an agreement that this would be a private visit, with no authority to negotiate or reach agreements. Gordon informed Masupha of the personal nature of his visit, assured him that he would never wage war on him, warned him that divisions among the BaSotho would leave them vulnerable to the Boers, and, contrary to his instructions, offered, both orally and in writing, his suggestions for a peaceful resolution.
On 26 September 1882 Lestie unexpectedly launched an attack on Masupha led by his son, Lerothodi. Sauer, who did not believe that a negotiated settlement was possible and had pushed Lestie to take action, sent instructions to Gordon to leave Masupha’s camp just before Lerothodi’s attack, but Masupha received information during the night and accused Gordon of perfidy, claiming that he had been ready to accept Gordon’s terms. Gordon convinced Masupha that he knew nothing about the raid and that he had not betrayed him and Masupha permitted him to leave. The attack petered out and Gordon returned to Cape Town and, convinced that he had been betrayed by Sauer, resigned his position.37
After returning to England, where businessmen who were Liberal Party supporters unhappy with Gordon’s South African activities ensured that no new work was offered to him, and without a specific offer from Belgian King Leopold, Gordon left for Palestine in January 1883 to complete his biblical mapping project. From there – after weathering another bout of depression – he travelled to Haifa, where he visited with an old friend, Laurence Oliphant. He expressed his views that British policy in Egypt was sheer folly, and that the emerging problem with the Mahdi could be settled by the intervention of a British Commissioner who might negotiate some independence formula, using the threat of a rebellion by riverine sheikhs to force a compromise on him.38 Moving on to Jerusalem, he lived in the house of an American missionary, and took communion in a nearby Greek-Russian Orthodox church. The result of his introspection, researches, travels and surveys was a series of letters to his friend, the Reverend R H Barnes, who turned them into a book, Reflections in Palestine 1883.39 Encouraged by Mackinnon, King Leopold II telegraphed a firm offer to Gordon on 15 October 1883 to become Governor of the Congo. Upset by Gladstone’s Liberal imperialism, and hopeful that the Congo might provide an alternative means for interdicting the slave trade, Gordon accepted.
Affairs in the Sudan, meanwhile, were causing concern with the outgoing British Consul, Sir Edward Malet, recommending on 4 November 1882 that Egypt should be encouraged to take all measures to repress the rebellion, but ‘without aid or advice from Her Majesty’s Government’.40 Having decided to replace Ra’úf Pasha as Governor General in December, the British sent Lieutenant Colonel J D H Stewart of the 11th Hussars on a secret fact-finding mission to the Sudan. In January 1883 ‘Abd-al-Qádir Hilmi was formally replaced as Sudanese Governor General by ‘Alá-al Dín Siddíq, a Circassian Major General who had been governor of the Sudan’s eastern region. Shortly thereafter, another Circassian, 75-year-old Major General Suleimán Niyázi, was appointed to oversee mi
litary affairs. At the same time a new and even more motley and disaffected military force was assembled by the Egyptians to reclaim the Sudan from Ansár forces. A 53-year-old retired Bombay army officer, Colonel William Hicks, was suggested, almost by chance, by Valentine Baker and was appointed to lead this force, without in any way implying support by the British government for this effort. Upon accepting the appointment, Hicks was made a Major General in the Egyptian army and Chief of Staff to Niyázi.
Hicks soon found himself at odds with both ‘Abd-al-Qádir and Niyázi, whose Chief of Staff he technically was, over his proposed Kordofan expedition. With respect to continued Egyptian control of the Sudan, Stewart’s report to his superiors recommended that all of the provinces south and west of Khartoum be abandoned.41 The Khedive refused to abandon any part of the Sudan. Accordingly, Hicks assembled a force of 3,200 Egyptian infantry, 300 Albanian cavalry and 2 artillery batteries and was relatively successful in a preliminary campaign on the east bank of the White Nile. In the eastern Sudan, however, the Mahdi’s Emir, Osmán Digna, received support from the already converted Majdhúbia, converted the Hadendawa clan, the Erkowit, and, most importantly, Sheikh al-Táhir al-Tayyib at Suakin. By November, Ansár were besieging towns along the Red Sea coast. On 4 November, the British Consul in Suakin, Commander Lynedoch Moncrieff RN, was killed near Tokar, heightening British concerns over the security of the coast. With the Egyptian garrison near Suakin also badly mauled by Osman Digna, the Egyptian government assembled an expeditionary force of 3,715 Egyptian police recruits, led by Valentine Baker, and 6,000 black Sudanese, to be led by Zubeir Pasha, to reinforce Suakin and open a route from Suakin to Berber. When news of Zubeir’s role became public, it caused public outrage and it was cancelled. Baker’s troops, forced to board their Red Sea transport, arrived at Suakin on 27 December 1883 and received a change to their orders from Wood, giving them the smaller task of relieving the Sinkat and Tokar, and to do so only if Baker was convinced that his troops were reliable.
Meanwhile, urged on by the Egyptian Prime Minister, Sharíf Pasha, Hicks led some 10,000 men and an enormous baggage train from Khartoum in September. At around the same time as Hicks’ departure, Sir Evelyn Baring (later Lord Cromer) arrived in Cairo as British Agent General, replacing Malet. On 19 November, he advised the British government that the Egyptians should ‘fall back on any points on the Nile they can hold with confidence’,42 but was enjoined by his instructions from advising the Egyptians on matters pertaining to the Sudan. What Baring did not yet know was that on 5 November Hicks’s force had been trapped in a densely clustered area of thorn bushes called Shaykan and destroyed, virtually to the last man. Lieutenant Colonel Henry de Coëtlogon, who had been left in charge at Khartoum by Hicks, reported to Cairo that, if the Mahdi continued to advance, Khartoum could not hold out for more than two months. Similarly, The Times correspondent (and honorary British consul) in Khartoum, Frank Power, whose dysentery had compelled him to return early from Hicks’s campaign, reported that it was ‘perfectly useless to attempt to hold this place, where the population is a slumbering volcano’.43 Egyptian troops fleeing from southern garrisons soon began to arrive in Khartoum. After fighting off Ansár attacks for over a year, converting to Islam, experiencing rebellions and betrayals by his own troops and officers, and discovering that the Hicks’s expedition had been destroyed, Rudolf Slatin, the Governor of Darfur, surrendered on 23 December.
Hoping to placate British public opinion and believing that his name carried weight in the Sudan, the British government asked Baring on 1 December if Gordon would be ‘of any use to you or to the Egyptian Government, and, if so, in what capacity?’44 Concerned both about his eccentricities and his tendency to obey orders only if they suited him, Baring finessed by replying that the Egyptian government thought it unwise to send a Christian to suppress a Muslim revolt. Gladstone and Granville instructed Baring, who had been pleading for specific guidance for the last six weeks, to inform the Egyptians that Britain would not condone wasting Egyptian revenues on military expeditions ‘of doubtful advantage to Egypt’.45 While the British undertook to maintain internal order and safeguard her Red Sea ports, Egypt must withdraw its troops from the Sudan and ‘abandon all territory south of Aswan, or at least of Wadi Halfa’.46 Sharif Pasha proposed to return the eastern Sudan and Red Sea coast to direct Ottoman rule, but refused to order the withdrawal and, informed of Granville’s conclusion that ministers ‘must carry out this [British] advice or forfeit their offices’, he resigned in protest on 4 January 1884.47
Three days earlier, Gordon arrived in Brussels. The next day, he met with King Leopold. He believed that there would be no problem with the British War Office, since he was no longer on the active list, but wanted to go back to England to wind up his affairs – arranging for the publication of his religious explorations and completing the transfer of the house in Southampton to his sister – before leaving for the Congo some time in February. On 6 January The Times reported that Gordon had accepted the Congo commission and Wolseley cabled him to ‘come to London’. On the following day Gordon arrived at Southampton and discovered that the War Office refused him leave to go to the Congo. The next day he sent a letter of resignation – his nineteenth – to the War Office.
On 9 January, the Pall Mall Gazette, which opposed Gladstone’s policy and had already run a story about the proposed evacuation, published a version of an interview that its editor, W T Stead, had had with Gordon when he saw him with or immediately after – the relationship between them remains controversial – a War Office delegation who visited him the day before. According to Stead, Gordon spoke out against the evacuation. Gordon regarded the rebellion as ‘not really religious, but an outbreak of despair’ that an uncorrupted government and amnesty could resolve: ‘If this were done and the government entrusted to a man whose word was truth, all might yet be re-established.’ Gordon suggested Sir Samuel Baker for the job, but Stead published under the headline: ‘Chinese Gordon for the Sudan’.
Pressed by the Queen and by other Cabinet members, Granville again wired Baring about Gordon. After consulting Nubar, Baring again refused. Meanwhile, Sir Samuel Baker also urged Gordon to accept the assignment if it were to be offered and he and Gordon wrote coordinated letters to The Times attacking the government’s proposed policy. On 15 January Gordon visited Wolseley at the War Office, ostensibly to discuss his resignation, and agreed to go to Suakin to ‘inquire into the condition of affairs in the Sudan’.48 Responding to the groundswell of both popular and influential support for Gordon, Granville wrote to Gladstone, ‘If Gordon says he believes he could by his personal influence excite the tribes to escort the Khartoum garrison and inhabitants to Suakin, a little pressure on Baring might be advisable.’49 Baring was then asked, for the third time, to accept Gordon. Now aware that Gordon was the only choice, Baring reluctantly agreed.
Baring’s new choice for Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, ordered all non-military residents of Khartoum to proceed northward by whatever means they could find. The order was received by garrisons south of Khartoum and, by 22 January some 6,100 troops defended the city and de Coëtlogon had begun digging a ditch between the Blue and White Niles. At the same time, Baring wired Granville that ‘The Egyptian Government would feel obliged if Her Majesty’s Government would send at once a qualified British officer to go to Khartoum with full power, civil and military, to conduct the retreat.’50
On 18 January 1884 Gordon was called to the War Office to meet with Cabinet members. There was no secretary available for this and subsequent meetings and the only record is a letter of 22 January by Gordon to Barnes. According to Gordon, while waiting to go in, Wolseley, who had been asked to obtain his answer in advance, asked Gordon to accept the principle on which the whole Cabinet had agreed: ‘Her Majesty’s Government want you to understand this Government are determined to evacuate the Sudan, for it will not guarantee future government … Will you go and do it?’ Gordon replied ‘Yes’ and then met with Lords
Granville, Secretary of State for War Hartington, First Lord of the Admiralty Northbrook, and the radical MP, Sir Charles Dilke, the President of the Local Government Board: ‘Did Wolseley tell you our ideas?’ ‘Yes. He said you will not guarantee future government of the Sudan, and you wish me to go and evacuate it?’51 The cabal of ministers then attached Colonel Stewart as Gordon’s staff officer and hustled him off on his journey. At Charing Cross Station, Granville bought his ticket, Wolseley took charge of his bag and the Duke of Cambridge ushered him into his carriage for Dover. That night, Northbrook, who was Baring’s cousin, cabled Gordon’s agreement:
The upshot of the meeting was that he leaves by tonight’s mail for Suakim to report on the best way of withdrawing the garrisons, settling the country, and to perform such other duties as may be entrusted to him by the khedive’s government through you…. does not believe in the great power of the Mahdi. Does not think the tribes will go much beyond their own confines, and does not see why the garrison should not get off. He did not seem at all anxious to retain the Sudan; and agreed heartily to accept the policy of withdrawal.52
Granville’s more formal instruction to Baring reported that Gordon would advise on ‘the best mode of evacuating the interior of the Sudan, and of securing the safety and good administration by the Egyptian Government of the ports of the Red Sea [and to counter] the possible stimulus to the slave trade which may be given by the revolution which has taken place’. Echoing Northbrook, he concluded that ‘Gordon will be under the orders of H.M.’s Minister in Cairo [Baring], and will report through him to H.M.’s Government, and perform such other duties as may be entrusted to him by the Egyptian Government through Sir Evelyn Baring.’53 Neither Granville nor Hartington advised Gladstone of the meeting until after Gordon’s departure, and then only reported narrowly of his advisory role. Almost immediately thereafter Granville expressed his nervousness to Hartington: ‘We were very proud of ourselves yesterday. Are you sure we did not commit a gigantic folly?’54
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