Chapter IX. The Soudan. (1884-1885)
You can only govern men by imagination: without imagination they are brutes.... 'Tis by speaking to the soul that you electrify men.—Napoleon.
I
In the late summer of 1881 a certain native of Dongola, proclaiming himself a heaven-inspired Mahdi, began to rally to his banner the wild tribes of the southern Soudan. His mission was to confound the wicked, the hypocrite, the unbeliever, and to convert the world to the true faith in the one God and his prophet. The fame of the Mahdi's eloquence, his piety, his zeal, rapidly spread. At his ear he found a counsellor, so well known to us after as the khalifa, and this man soon taught the prophet politics. The misrule of the Soudan by Egypt had been atrocious, and the combination of a religious revival with the destruction of that hated yoke swelled a cry that was irresistible. The rising rapidly extended, for fanaticism in such regions soon takes fire, and the Egyptian pashas had been sore oppressors, even judged by the rude standards of oriental states. Never was insurrection more amply justified. From the first, Mr. Gladstone's curious instinct for liberty disclosed to him that here was a case of “a people rightly struggling to be free.” The phrase was mocked and derided then and down to the end of the chapter. Yet it was the simple truth. “During all my political life,” he said at a later stage of Soudanese affairs, “I am thankful to say that I have never opened my lips in favour of a domination such as that which has been exercised upon certain countries by certain other countries, and [pg 145] I am not going now to begin.”
The Mahdi
“I look upon the possession of the Soudan,” he proceeded, “as the calamity of Egypt. It has been a drain on her treasury, it has been a drain on her men. It is estimated that 100,000 Egyptians have laid down their lives in endeavouring to maintain that barren conquest.” Still stronger was the Soudanese side of the case. The rule of the Mahdi was itself a tyranny, and tribe fought with tribe, but that was deemed an easier yoke than the sway of the pashas from Cairo. Every vice of eastern rule flourished freely under Egyptian hands. At Khartoum whole families of Coptic clerks kept the accounts of plundering raids supported by Egyptian soldiers, and “this was a government collecting its taxes.” The function of the Egyptian soldiers “was that of honest countrymen sharing in the villainy of the brigands from the Levant and Asia Minor, who wrung money, women, and drink from a miserable population.”[82] Yet the railing against Mr. Gladstone for saying that the “rebels” were rightly struggling to be free could not have been more furious if the Mahdi had been for dethroning Marcus Aurelius or Saint Louis of France.
The ministers at Cairo, however, naturally could not find in their hearts to withdraw from territory that had been theirs for over sixty years,[83] although in the winter of 1882-3 Colonel Stewart, an able British officer, had reported that the Egyptian government was wholly unfit to rule the Soudan; it had not money enough, nor fighting men enough, nor administrative skill enough, and abandonment at least of large portions of it was the only reasonable course. Such counsels found no favour with the khedive's advisers and agents, and General Hicks, an Indian officer, appointed on the staff of the Egyptian army in the spring of 1883, was now despatched by the government of the khedive from Khartoum, for the recovery of distant and formidable regions. If his operations had been limited to the original intention of clearing Sennaar [pg 146] of rebels and protecting Khartoum, all might have been well. Unluckily some trivial successes over the Mahdi encouraged the Cairo government to design an advance into Kordofan, and the reconquest of all the vast wildernesses of the Soudan. Lord Dufferin, Sir E. Malet, Colonel Stewart, were all of them clear that to attempt any such task with an empty chest and a worthless army was madness, and they all argued for the abandonment of Kordofan and Darfur. The cabinet in London, fixed in their resolve not to accept responsibility for a Soudan war, and not to enter upon that responsibility by giving advice for or against the advance of Hicks, stood aloof.[84] In view of all that followed later, and of their subsequent adoption of the policy of abandoning the Soudan, British ministers would evidently have been wiser if they had now forbidden an advance so pregnant with disaster. Events showed this to have been the capital miscalculation whence all else of misfortune followed. The sounder the policy of abandonment, the stronger the reasons for insisting that the Egyptian government should not undertake operations inconsistent with that policy. The Soudan was not within the sphere of our responsibility, but Egypt was; and just because the separation of Egypt from the Soudan was wise and necessary, it might have been expected that England would peremptorily interpose to prevent a departure from the path of separation. What Hicks himself, a capable and dauntless man, thought of the chances we do not positively know, but he was certainly alive to the risks of such a march with such material. On November 5 (1883) the whole force was cut to pieces, the victorious dervishes were free to advance northwards, and the loose fabric of Egyptian authority was shattered to the ground.
II
Policy Of Evacuation
The three British military officers in Cairo all agreed that the Egyptian government could not hold Khartoum if the Mahdi should draw down upon it; and unless a British, an Indian, or a Turkish force came to the rescue, abandonment of the Soudan was the only possible alternative. The London cabinet decided that they would not employ British or Indian troops in the Soudan, and though they had no objection to the resort to the Turks by Egypt, if the Turks would pay their own expenses (a condition fatal to any such resort), they strongly recommended the khedive to abandon all territory south of Assouan or Wady-Halfa. Sir Evelyn Baring, who had now assumed his post upon a theatre where he was for long years to come to play the commanding part, concurred in thinking that the policy of complete abandonment was the best admitted by the circumstances. It is the way of the world to suppose that because a given course is best, it must therefore be possible and ought to be simple. Baring and his colleagues at Cairo were under no such illusion, but it was the foundation of most of the criticism that now broke forth in the English press.
The unparalleled difficulties that ultimately attended the evacuation of the Soudan naturally led inconsiderate critics,—and such must ever be the majority,—to condemn the policy and the cabinet who ordered it. So apt are men in their rough judgments on great disputable things, to mistake a mere impression for a real opinion; and we must patiently admit that the Result—success or failure in the Event—is the most that they have time for, and all that they can go by. Yet two remarks are to be made upon this facile censure. The first is that those who knew the Soudan best, approved most. On January 22, 1884, Gordon wrote to Lord Granville that the Soudan ever was and ever would be a useless possession, and that he thought the Queen's ministers “fully justified in recommending evacuation, inasmuch as the sacrifices necessary towards securing good government would be far too onerous to admit of such an attempt being made.” Colonel Stewart quite agreed, and added the exclamation [pg 148] that nobody who had ever visited the Soudan could escape the reflection, “What a useless possession and what a huge encumbrance on Egypt!” As we shall see, the time soon came when Gordon accepted the policy of evacuation, even with an emphasis of his own. The second remark is that the reconquest of the Soudan and the holding of Khartoum were for the Egyptian government, if left to its own resources, neither more nor less than impossible; these objects, whether they were good objects or bad, not only meant recourse to British troops for the first immense operations, but the retention of them in a huge and most inhospitable region for an indefinite time. A third consideration will certainly not be overlooked by anybody who thinks on the course of the years of Egyptian reform that have since elapsed, and constitute so remarkable a chapter of British administration,—namely, that this beneficent achievement would have been fatally clogged, if those who conducted it had also had the Soudan on their hands. The renovation or reconstruction of what is called Egypt proper, its finances, its army, its civil rule, would have been absolutely out of reach, if at the same time its guiding statesmen had been charged with the responsibilities recovering and holding that vaster tract which had been so rashly acquired and so mercilessly misgoverned. This is fully admitted by those who have had most to do with the result.
III
The policy of evacuation was taken as carrying with it the task of extricating the Egyptian garrisons. This aim induced Mr. Gladstone's cabinet once more to play an active military part, though Britain had no share in planting these garrisons where they were. Wise men in Egypt were of the same mind as General Gordon, that in the eastern Soudan it would have been better for the British government to keep quiet, and “let events work themselves out.” Unfortunately the ready clamour of headlong philanthropists, political party men, and the men who think England humiliated if she ever lets slip an excuse for drawing her sword, drove the cabinet on to the rocks. When the decision of the cabinet was [pg 149]
Despatch Of Gordon
taken (Feb. 12, 1883) to send troops to Suakin, Mr. Gladstone stood alone in objecting. Many thousands of savages were slaughtered under humanitarian pressure, not a few English lives were sacrificed, much treasure flowed, and yet Sinkat fell, and Tokar fell, and our labours in the eastern Soudan were practically fruitless.[85] The operations had no effect upon the roll of the fierce mahdi wave over the Soudan.
In England, excitement of the unsound sort that is independent of knowledge, consideration, or deliberation; independent of any weighing of the actual facts and any forecast of latent possibilities, grew more and more vociferous. Ministers quailed. Twice they inquired of their agent in Egypt[86] whether General Gordon might not be of use, and twice they received an adverse reply, mainly on the ground that the presence in authority of a Christian officer was a dubious mode of confronting a sweeping outbreak of moslem fanaticism, and would inevitably alienate tribes that were still not caught by the Mahdi.[87] Unhappily a third application from London at last prevailed, and Sir E. Baring, supported by Nubar, by Sir Evelyn Wood, by Colonel Watson, who had served with Gordon and knew him well, all agreed that Gordon would be the best man if he would pledge himself to carry out the policy of withdrawing from the Soudan as quickly as possible. “Whoever goes,” said Sir E. Baring in pregnant words to Lord Granville, will “undertake a service of great difficulty and danger.” This was on January 16th. Two days later the die was cast. Mr. Gladstone was at Hawarden. Lord Granville submitted the question (Jan. 14, 1884) to him in this form: “If Gordon says he [pg 150] 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. The destruction of these poor people will be a great disaster.” Mr. Gladstone telegraphed that to this and other parts of the same letter, he agreed. Granville then sent him a copy of the telegram putting “a little pressure on Baring.” To this Mr. Gladstone replied (Jan. 16) in words that, if they had only been taken to heart, would have made all the difference:—
I can find no fault with your telegram to Baring re Chinese Gordon, and the main point that strikes me is this: While his opinion on the Soudan may be of great value, must we not be very careful in any instruction we give, that he does not shift the centre of gravity as to political and military responsibility for that country? In brief, if he reports what should be done, he should not be the judge who should do it, nor ought he to commit us on that point by advice officially given. It would be extremely difficult after sending him to reject such advice, and it should therefore, I think, be made clear that he is not our agent for the purpose of advising on that point.
On January 18, Lord Hartington (then secretary of state for war), Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke met at the war office in Pall Mall. The summons was sudden. Lord Wolseley brought Gordon and left him in the ante-room. After a conversation with the ministers, he came out and said to Gordon, “Government are determined to evacuate the Soudan, for they will not guarantee the future government. Will you go and do it?” “I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Go in.’ I went in and saw them. They said, ‘Did Wolseley tell you our orders?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘You will not guarantee future government of the Soudan, and you wish me to go up and evacuate now.’ They said, ‘Yes,’ and it was over, and I left at 8 p.m. for Calais.”[88] This graphic story does not pretend to be a full version of all that passed, though it puts the essential point unmistakably enough. Lord Granville seems to have drawn Gordon's [pg 151]
Character Of Gordon
special attention to the measures to be taken for the security of the Egyptian garrisons (plural) still holding positions in the Soudan and to the best mode of evacuating the interior.[89] On the other hand, according to a very authentic account that I have seen, Gordon on this occasion stated that the danger at Khartoum was exaggerated, and that he would be able to bring away the garrisons without difficulty.
Thus in that conclave of sober statesmen a tragedy began. The next day one of the four ministers met another; “We were proud of ourselves yesterday—are you sure we did not commit a gigantic folly?” The prime minister had agreed at once on receiving the news of what was done at the war office, and telegraphed assent the same night.[90] The whole cabinet met four days later, Mr. Gladstone among them, and the decision was approved. There was hardly a choice, for by that time Gordon was at Brindisi. Gordon, as Mr. Gladstone said, was a hero of heroes. He was a soldier of infinite personal courage and daring; of striking military energy, initiative, and resource; a high, pure, and single character, dwelling much in the region of the unseen. But as all who knew him admit, and as his own records testify, notwithstanding an under-current of shrewd common-sense, he was the creature, almost the sport, of impulse; his impressions and purposes changed with the speed of lightning; anger often mastered him; he went very often by intuitions and inspirations rather than by cool inference from carefully surveyed fact: with many variations of mood he mixed, as we often see in people less famous, an invincible faith in his own rapid prepossessions while they lasted. Everybody now discerns that to despatch a soldier of this temperament on a piece of business that was not only difficult and dangerous, as Sir E. Baring said, but profoundly obscure, and needing vigilant sanity and self-control, was little better than to call in a wizard with his magic. Mr. Gladstone always professed perplexity in understanding why the violent end of the gallant Cavagnari in Afghanistan, [pg 152] stirred the world so little in comparison with the fate of Gordon. The answer is that Gordon seized the imagination of England, and seized it on its higher side. His religion was eccentric, but it was religion; the Bible was the rock on which he founded himself, both old dispensation and new; he was known to hate forms, ceremonies, and all the “solemn plausibilities”; his speech was sharp, pithy, rapid, and ironic; above all, he knew the ways of war and would not bear the sword for nought. All this was material enough to make a popular ideal, and this is what Gordon in an ever-increasing degree became, to the immense inconvenience of the statesmen, otherwise so sensible and wary, who had now improvidently let the genie forth from the jar.
IV
It has been sometimes contended that all the mischief that followed was caused by the diversion of Gordon from Suakin, his original destination. If he had gone to the Red Sea, as originally intended, there to report on the state and look of things in the Soudan, instead of being waylaid and brought to Cairo, and thence despatched to Khartoum, they say, no catastrophe would have happened. This is not certain, for the dervishes in the eastern Soudan were in the flush of open revolt, and Gordon might either have been killed or taken prisoner, or else he would have come back without performing any part of his mission. In fact, on his way from London to Port Said, Gordon had suggested that with a view to carrying out evacuation, the khedive should make him governor-general of the Soudan. Lord Granville authorised Baring to procure the nomination, and this Sir Evelyn did, “for the time necessary to accomplish the evacuation.” The instructions were thus changed, in an important sense, but the change was suggested by Gordon and sanctioned by Lord Granville.[91]
Gordon's Instructions
When Gordon left London his instructions, drafted in fact by himself, were that he should “consider and report upon the best mode of effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan.” He was also to perform such duties as the Egyptian government might wish to entrust to him, and as might be communicated to him by Sir E. Baring.[92] At Cairo, Baring and Nubar, after discussion with Gordon, altered the mission from one of advice and report to an executive mission—a change that was doubtless authorised and covered by the original reference to duties to be entrusted to him by Egypt. But there was no change in the policy either at Downing Street or Cairo. Whether advisory or executive, the only policy charged upon the mission was abandonment. When the draft of the new instructions was read to Gordon at Cairo, Sir E. Baring expressly asked him whether he entirely concurred in “the policy of abandoning the Soudan,” and Gordon not only concurred, but suggested the strengthening words, that he thought “it should on no account be changed.”[93] This despatch, along with the instructions to Gordon making this vast alteration, was not received in London until Feb. 7. By this time Gordon was crossing the desert, and out of reach of the English foreign office.
On his way from Brindisi, Gordon had prepared a memorandum for Sir E. Baring, in which he set out his opinion that the Soudan had better be restored to the different petty sultans in existence before the Egyptian conquest, and an attempt should be made to form them into some sort of confederation. These petty rulers might be left to accept the Mahdi for their sovereign or not, just as they pleased. But in the same document he emphasised the policy of abandonment. “I understand,” he says, “that H.M.'s government have come to the irrevocable decision not to incur the very onerous duty of granting to the peoples of the Soudan a just future government.” Left to their independence, the sultans “would doubtless fight among themselves.” As for future good government, it was evident that “this we could not [pg 154] secure them without an inordinate expenditure of men and money. The Soudan is a useless possession; ever was so, and ever will be so. No one who has ever lived in the Soudan, can escape the reflection, What a useless possession is this land.” Therefore—so he winds up—“I think H.M.'s government are fully justified in recommending the evacuation, inasmuch as the sacrifices necessary towards securing a good government would be far too onerous to admit of any such attempt being made. Indeed, one may say it is impracticable at any cost. H.M.'s government will now leave them as God has placed them.”[94]
It was, therefore, and it is, pure sophistry to contend that Gordon's policy in undertaking his disastrous mission was evacuation but not abandonment. To say that the Soudanese should be left in the state in which God had placed them, to fight it out among themselves, if they were so minded, is as good a definition of abandonment as can be invented, and this was the whole spirit of the instructions imposed by the government of the Queen and accepted by Gordon.
Gordon took with him instruments from the khedive into which, along with definite and specific statements that evacuation was the object of his mission, two or three loose sentences are slipped about “establishing organised government in the different provinces of the Soudan,” maintaining order, and the like. It is true also that the British cabinet sanctioned the extension of the area of evacuation from Khartoum to the whole Soudan.[95] Strictly construed, the whole body of instructions, including firmans and khedive's proclamations, is not technically compact nor coherent. But this is only another way of saying that Gordon was to have the widest discretionary powers as to the manner of carrying out the policy, and the best time and mode of announcing it. The policy itself, as well understood by Gordon as by everybody else, was untouched, and it was: to leave the Soudanese in the state in which God had placed them.
The hot controversy on this point is idle and without substance—the idlest controversies are always the hottest—for [pg 155]
Changes Of Policy
not only was Gordon the last man in all the world to hold himself bound by official instructions, but the actual conditions of the case were too little known, too shifting, too unstable, to permit of hard and fast directions beforehand how to solve so desperate a problem. Two things at any rate were clear—one, that Gordon should faithfully adhere to the policy of evacuation and abandonment which he had formally accepted; the other, that the British government should leave him a free hand. Unhappily neither of these two clear things was accepted by either of the parties.
V
Gordon's policies were many and very mutable. Viewing the frightful embarrassments that enveloped him, we cannot wonder. Still the same considerateness that is always so bounteously and so justly extended to the soldier in the field, is no less due in its measure to the councillor in the cabinet. This is a bit of equity often much neglected both by contemporaries and by history.
He had undertaken his mission without any serious and measured forecast, such as his comrade, Colonel Stewart, was well fitted to supply. His first notion was that he could restore the representatives of the old rulers, but when he got into the country, he found that there were none; with one by no means happy exception, they had all disappeared. When he reached Berber, he learned more clearly how the question of evacuation was interlaced with other questions. Once at Khartoum, at first he thought himself welcome as a deliverer, and then when new light as to the real feelings of the Soudanese broke upon him, he flung the policy of his mission overboard. Before the end of February, instead of the suzerainty of Egypt, the British government should control Soudanese administration, with Zobeir as their governor-general. “When Gordon left this country,” said Mr. Gladstone, “and when he arrived in Egypt, he declared it to be, and I have not the smallest doubt that it was—a fixed portion of his policy, that no British force should be employed in aid of his mission.”[96] When March came, he [pg 156] flung himself with ardour into the policy of “smashing up” the Mahdi, with resort to British and Indian troops. This was a violent reversal of all that had been either settled or dreamed of, whether in London or at Cairo. A still more vehement stride came next. He declared that to leave outlying garrisons to their fate would be an “indelible disgrace.” Yet, as Lord Hartington said, the government “were under no moral obligation to use the military resources of this empire for the relief of those garrisons.” As for Gordon's opinion that “indelible disgrace” would attach to the British government if they were not relieved, “I do not admit,” said the minister very sensibly, “that General Gordon is on this point a better authority than anybody else.”[97] All this illustrates the energy of Gordon's mental movements, and also, what is more important, the distracting difficulties of the case before him. In one view and one demand he strenuously persevered, as we shall now see.
Mr. Gladstone at first, when Gordon set all instructions at defiance, was for recalling him. A colleague also was for recalling him on the first instant when he changed his policy. Another important member of the cabinet was, on the contrary, for an expedition. “I cannot admit,” wrote a fourth leading minister, “that either generals or statesmen who have accepted the offer of a man to lead a forlorn hope, are in the least bound to risk the lives of thousands for the uncertain chance of saving the forlorn hope.” Some think that this was stern common sense, others call it ignoble. The nation, at any rate, was in one of its high idealising humours, though Gordon had roused some feeling against himself in this country (unjustly enough) by his decree formally sanctioning the holding of slaves.
The general had not been many hours in Khartoum (February 18) before he sent a telegram to Sir E. Baring, proposing that on his withdrawal from Khartoum, Zobeir Pasha should be named his successor as governor-general of the Soudan: he should be made a K.C.M.G., and have presents given to him. This request was strenuously pressed by Gordon. Zobeir had been a prime actor in the [pg 157]
Zobeir
devastations of the slave trade; it was he who had acquired Darfur for Egypt; he was a first-rate fighting man, and the ablest leader in the Soudan. He is described by the English officer who knows the Soudan best, as a far-seeing, thoughtful man of iron will—a born ruler of men.[98] The Egyptian government had desired to send him down to aid in the operations at Suakin in 1883, but the government in London vetoed him, as they were now to veto him a second time. The Egyptian government was to act on its own responsibility, but not to do what it thought best. So now with Gordon.
Gordon in other days had caused Zobeir's son to be shot, and this was supposed to have set up an unquenchable blood-feud between them. Before reaching Cairo, he had suggested that Zobeir should be sent to Cyprus, and there kept out of the way. This was not done. On Gordon's way through Cairo, the two men met in what those present describe as a highly dramatic interview. Zobeir bitterly upbraided Gordon: “You killed my son, whom I entrusted to you. He was as your son. You brought my wives and women and children in chains to Khartoum.” Still even after that incident, Gordon declared that he had “a mystical feeling” that Zobeir and he were all right.[99] What inspired his reiterated demand for the immediate despatch of Zobeir is surmised to have been the conviction forced upon him during his journey to Khartoum, that his first idea of leaving the various petty sultans to fight it out with the Mahdi, would not work; that the Mahdi had got so strong a hold that he could only be met by a man of Zobeir's political capacity, military skill, and old authority. Sir E. Baring, after a brief interval of hesitation, now supported Gordon's request. So did the shrewd and expert Colonel Stewart. Nubar too favoured the idea. The cabinet could not at once assent; they were startled by the change of front [pg 158] as to total withdrawal from the Soudan—the very object of Gordon's mission, and accepted by him as such. On February 21 Mr. Gladstone reported to the Queen that the cabinet were of opinion that there would be the gravest objection to nominating by an assumption of British authority a successor to General Gordon in the Soudan, nor did they as yet see sufficient reasons for going beyond Gordon's memorandum of January 25, by making special provision for the government of that country. But at first it looked as if ministers might yield, if Baring, Gordon, and Nubar persisted.
As ill-fortune had it, the Zobeir plan leaked out at home by Gordon's indiscretion before the government decided. The omnipotent though not omniscient divinity called public opinion intervened. The very men who had most loudly clamoured for the extrication of the Egyptian garrisons, who had pressed with most importunity for the despatch of Gordon, who had been most urgent for the necessity of giving him a free hand, now declared that it would be a national degradation and a European scandal to listen to Gordon's very first request. He had himself unluckily given them a capital text, having once said that Zobeir was alone responsible for the slave trade of the previous ten years. Gordon's idea was, as he explained, to put Zobeir into a position like that of the Ameer of Afghanistan, as a buffer between Egypt and the Mahdi, with a subsidy, moral support, and all the rest of a buffer arrangement. The idea may or may not have been a good one; nobody else had a better.
It was not at all surprising that the cabinet should ask what new reason had come to light why Zobeir should be trusted; why he should oppose the Mahdi whom at first he was believed to have supported; why he should turn the friend of Egypt; why he should be relied upon as the faithful ally of England. To these and other doubts Gordon had excellent answers (March 8). Zobeir would run straight, because it was his interest. If he would be dangerous, was not the Mahdi dangerous, and whom save Zobeir could you set up against the Mahdi? You talked of slave-holding and slave-hunting, but would slave-holding and slave-hunting [pg 159]
Zobeir
stop with your own policy of evacuation? Slave-holding you cannot interfere with, and as for slave-hunting, that depended on the equatorial provinces, where Zobeir could be prevented from going, and besides he would have his hands full in consolidating his power elsewhere. As for good faith towards Egypt, Zobeir's stay in Cairo had taught him our power, and being a great trader, he would rather seek Egypt's close alliance. Anyhow, said Gordon, “if you do not send Zobeir, you have no chance of getting the garrisons away.”
The matter was considered at two meetings of the cabinet, but the prime minister was prevented by his physician from attending.[100] A difference of opinion showed itself upon the despatch of Zobeir; viewed as an abstract question, three of the Commons members inclined to favour it, but on the practical question, the Commons members were unanimous that no government from either side of the House could venture to sanction Zobeir. Mr. Gladstone had become a strong convert to the plan of sending Zobeir. “I am better in chest and generally,” he wrote to Lord Granville, “but unfortunately not in throat and voice, and Clark interdicts my appearance at cabinet; but I am available for any necessary communication, say with you, or you and Hartington.” One of the ministers went to see him in his bed, and they conversed for two hours. The minister, on his return, reported with some ironic amusement that Mr. Gladstone considered it very likely that they could not bring parliament to swallow Zobeir, but believed that he himself could. Whether his confidence in this was right or wrong, he was unable to turn his cabinet. The Queen telegraphed her agreement with the prime minister. But this made no difference. “On Saturday 15,” Mr. Gladstone notes, “it seemed as if by my casting vote Zobier was to be sent to Gordon. But [pg 160] on Sunday —— and —— receded from their ground, and I gave way. The nature of the evidence on which judgments are formed in this most strange of all cases, precludes (in reason) pressing all conclusions, which are but preferences, to extremes.” “It is well known,” said Mr. Gladstone in the following year when the curtain had fallen on the catastrophe, “that if, when the recommendation to send Zobeir was made, we had complied with it, an address from this House to the crown would have paralysed our action; and though it was perfectly true that the decision arrived at was the judgment of the cabinet, it was also no less the judgment of parliament and the people.” So Gordon's request was refused.
It is true that, as a minister put it at the time, to send Zobeir would have been a gambler's throw. But then what was it but a gambler's throw to send Gordon himself? The Soudanese chieftain might possibly have done all that Gordon and Stewart, who knew the ground and were watching the quick fluctuation of events with elastic minds, now positively declared that he would have the strongest motives not to do. Even then, could the issue have been worse? To run all the risks involved in the despatch of Gordon, and then immediately to refuse the request that he persistently represented as furnishing him his only chance, was an incoherence that the parliament and people of England have not often surpassed.[101] All through this critical month, from the 10th until the 30th, Mr. Gladstone was suffering more or less from indisposition which he found it difficult to throw off.
VI
The chance, whatever it may have been, passed like a flash. Just as the proposal inflamed many in England, so it did mischief in Cairo. Zobeir like other people got wind of it; enemies of England at Cairo set to work with him; Sir E. Baring might have found him hard to deal with. It was Gordon's rashness that had made the design public. Gordon, too, as it happened, had made a dire mistake on his way up. At Berber he had shown the khedive's secret firman, [pg 161]
Condition Of The Soudan
announcing the intended abandonment of the Soudan. The news spread; it soon reached the Mahdi himself, and the Mahdi made politic use of it. He issued a proclamation of his own, asking all the sheikhs who stood aloof from him or against him, what they had to gain by supporting a pasha who was the next day going to give the Soudan up. Gordon's argument for this unhappy proceeding was that, the object of his mission being to get out of the country and leave them to their independence, he could have put no sharper spur into them to make them organise their own government. But he spoke of it after as the fatal proclamation, and so it was.[102]
What happened was that the tribes round Khartoum almost at once began to waver. From the middle of March, says a good observer, one searches in vain for a single circumstance hopeful for Gordon. “When the eye wanders over the huge and hostile Soudan, notes the little pin-point garrisons, each smothered in a cloud of Arab spears, and remembers that Gordon and Stewart proceeded to rule this vast empire, already given away to others, one feels that the Soudanese view was marked by common sense.”[103] Gordon's too sanguine prediction that the men who had beaten Hicks, and the men who afterwards beat Baker, would never fight beyond their tribal limits, did not come true. Wild forces gathered round the Mahdi as he advanced northwards. The tribes that had wavered joined them. Berber fell on May 26. The pacific mission had failed, and Gordon and his comrade Stewart—a more careful and clear-sighted man than himself—were shut up in Khartoum.
Distractions grew thicker upon the cabinet, and a just reader, now far away from the region of votes of censure, will bear them in mind. The Queen, like many of her subjects, grew impatient, but Mr. Gladstone was justified in reminding her of the imperfect knowledge, and he might have called it blank ignorance, with which the government was required on the shortest notice to form conclusions on a remote and more than half-barbarous region.
Gordon had told them that he wanted to take his steam vessels to Equatoria and serve the king of the Belgians. This Sir Evelyn Baring refused to allow, not believing Gordon to be in immediate danger (March 26). From Gordon himself came a telegram (March 28), “I think we are now safe, and that, as the Nile rises, we shall account for the rebels.” Mr. Gladstone was still unwell and absent. Through Lord Granville he told the cabinet (March 15) that, with a view to speedy departure from Khartoum, he would not even refuse absolutely to send cavalry to Berber, much as he disliked it, provided the military authorities thought it could be done, and provided also that it was declared necessary for Gordon's safety, and was strictly confined to that object. The cabinet decided against an immediate expedition, one important member vowing that he would resign if an expedition were not sent in the autumn, another vowing that he would resign if it were. On April 7, the question of an autumn expedition again came up. Six were favourable, five the other way, including the prime minister.
Almost by the end of March it was too probable that no road of retreat was any longer open. If they could cut no way out, either by land or water, what form of relief was possible? A diversion from Suakin to Berber—one of Gordon's own suggestions? But the soldiers differed. Fierce summer heat and little water; an Indian force might stand it; even they would find it tough. A dash by a thousand cavalry across two hundred miles of desert—one hundred of them without water; without communication with its base, and with the certainty that whatever might befall, no reinforcements could reach it for months? What would be your feelings, and your language, asked Lord [pg 163]
Question Of An Expedition
Hartington, if besides having Gordon and Stewart beleaguered in Khartoum, we also knew that a small force of British cavalry unable to take the offensive was shut up in the town of Berber?[104] Then the government wondered whether a move on Dongola might not be advantageous. Here again the soldiers thought the torrid climate a fatal objection, and the benefits doubtful. Could not Gordon, some have asked, have made his retreat at an early date after reaching Khartoum, by way of Berber? Answer—the Nile was too low. All this it was that at a later day, when the time had come to call his government to its account, justified Mr. Gladstone in saying that in such enterprises as these in the Soudan, mistakes and miscarriages were inevitable, for they were the proper and certain consequences of undertakings that lie beyond the scope of human means and of rational and prudent human action, and are a war against nature.[105] If anybody now points to the victorious expedition to Khartoum thirteen years later, as falsifying such language as this, that experience so far from falsifying entirely justifies. A war against nature demands years of study, observation, preparation, and those who are best acquainted with the conditions at first hand all agree that neither the tribes nor the river nor the desert were well known enough in 1885, to guarantee that overthrow in the case of the Mahdi, which long afterwards destroyed his successor.
On April 14 Sir E. Baring, while as keenly averse as anybody in the world to an expedition for the relief of Khartoum if such an expedition could be avoided, still watching events with a clear and concentrated gaze, assured the government that it was very likely to be unavoidable; it would be well therefore, without loss of time, to prepare for a move as soon as ever the Nile should rise. Six days before, Lord Wolseley also had written to Lord Hartington at the war office, recommending immediate and active preparations for an exclusively British expedition to Khartoum. Time, he said, is the most important element in this [pg 164] question; and in truth it was, for time was flying, and so were events. The cabinet were reported as feeling that Gordon, “who was despatched on a mission essentially pacific, had found himself, from whatever cause, unable to prosecute it effectually, and now proposed the use of military means, which might fail, and which, even if they should succeed, might be found to mean a new subjugation of the Soudan—the very consummation which it was the object of Gordon's mission to avert.” On June 27 it was known in London that Berber had fallen a month before.
VII
Lord Hartington, as head of the war department, had a stronger leaning towards the despatch of troops than some of his colleagues, but, says Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville in a letter of 1888, “I don't think he ever came to any sharp issue (like mine about Zobeir); rather that in the main he got what he wanted.” Wherever the fault lay, the issue was unfortunate. The generals in London fought the battle of the routes with unabated tenacity for month after month. One was for the approach to Khartoum by the Nile; another by Suakin and Berber; a third by the Korosko desert. A departmental committee reported in favour of the Nile as the easiest, safest, and cheapest, but they did not report until July 29. It was not until the beginning of August that the House of Commons was asked for a vote of credit, and Lord Hartington authorised General Stephenson at Cairo to take measures for moving troops southward. In his despatch of August 8, Lord Hartington still only speaks of operations for the relief of Gordon, “should they become necessary”; he says the government were still unconvinced that Gordon could not secure the withdrawal of the garrison from Khartoum; but “they are of opinion that the time had arrived for obtaining accurate information as to his position,” and, “if necessary, for rendering him assistance.”[106] As soon as the decision was taken, preparations were carried out with rapidity and skill. In the same month Lord Wolseley was [pg 165]
The Expedition Starts
appointed to command the expedition, and on September 9 he reached Cairo. The difficulties of a military decision had been great, said Lord Hartington, and there was besides, he added, a difference of opinion among the military authorities.[107] It was October 5 before Lord Wolseley reached Wady-Halfa, and the Nile campaign began.
Whatever decision military critics may ultimately form upon the choice of the Nile route, or upon the question whether the enterprise would have been any more successful if the route had been by Suakin or Korosko, it is at least certain that no position, whether strategically false or no, has ever evoked more splendid qualities in face of almost preterhuman difficulties, hardship, and labour. The treacherous and unknown river, for it was then unknown, with its rapids, its shifting sandbanks and tortuous channels and rocky barriers and heart-breaking cataracts; the Bayuda desert, haunted by fierce and stealthy enemies; the trying climate, the heat, the thirst, all the wearisome embarrassments of transport on camels emaciated by lack of food and water—such scenes exacted toil, patience, and courage as worthy of remark and admiration as if the advance had successfully achieved its object. Nobody lost heart. “Everything goes on swimmingly,” wrote Sir Herbert Stewart to Lord Wolseley, “except as to time.” This was on January 14, 1885. Five days later, he was mortally wounded.
The end of it all, in spite of the gallantry of Abu Klea and Kirbekan, of desert column and river column, is only too well known. Four of Gordon's small steamers coming down from Khartoum met the British desert column at Gubat on January 21. The general in command at once determined to proceed to Khartoum, but delayed his start until the morning of the 24th. The steamers needed repairs, and Sir Charles Wilson deemed it necessary for the safety of his troops to make a reconnaissance down the river towards Berber before starting up to Khartoum. He took with him on two of Gordon's steamers—described as of the dimensions of the penny boats upon the Thames, but bullet proof—a force of twenty-six British, and two hundred and forty Soudanese. [pg 166] He had also in tow a nugger laden with dhura. This was what, when Khartoum came in sight (Jan. 28) the “relief force” actually amounted to. As the two steamers ran slowly on, a solitary voice from the river-bank now and again called out to them that Khartoum was taken, and Gordon slain. Eagerly searching with their glasses, the officers perceived that the government-house was a wreck, and that no flag was flying. Gordon, in fact, had met his death two days before.
Mr. Gladstone afterwards always spoke of the betrayal of Khartoum. But Major Kitchener, who prepared the official report, says that the accusations of treachery were all vague, and to his mind, the outcome of mere supposition. “In my opinion,” he says, “Khartoum fell from sudden assault, when the garrison were too exhausted by privations to make proper resistance.”[108] The idea that the relieving force was only two days late is misleading. A nugger's load of dhura would not have put an end to the privations of the fourteen thousand people still in Khartoum; and even supposing that the handful of troops at Gubat could have effected their advance upon Khartoum many days earlier, it is hard to believe that they were strong enough either to drive off the Mahdi, or to hold him at bay until the river column had come up.
VIII
The prime minister was on a visit to the Duke of Devonshire at Holker, where he had many long conversations with Lord Hartington, and had to deal with heavy post-bags. On Thursday, Feb. 5, after writing to the Queen and others, he heard what had happened on the Nile ten days before. “After 11 a.m.,” he records, “I learned the sad news of the fall or betrayal of Khartoum. H[artington] and I, with C [his wife], went off by the first train, and reached Downing Street soon after 8.15. The circumstances are sad and trying. It is one of the least points about them that they may put an end to this government.”[109] The next day the cabinet met; [pg 167]
Mr. Gladstone's Vindication
discussions “difficult but harmonious.” The Queen sent to him and to Lord Hartington at Holker an angry telegram—blaming her ministers for what had happened—a telegram not in cipher as usual, but open. Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Queen in reply (Feb. 5, 1885) a vindication of the course taken by the cabinet; and it may be left to close an unedifying and a tragic chapter:—
To the Queen.
Mr. Gladstone has had the honour this day to receive your Majesty's telegram en clair, relating to the deplorable intelligence received this day from Lord Wolseley, and stating that it is too fearful to consider that the fall of Khartoum might have been, prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier action. Mr. Gladstone does not presume to estimate the means of judgment possessed by your Majesty, but so far as his information and recollection at the moment go, he is not altogether able to follow the conclusion which your Majesty has been pleased thus to announce. Mr. Gladstone is under the impression that Lord Wolseley's force might have been sufficiently advanced to save Khartoum, had not a large portion of it been detached by a circuitous route along the river, upon the express application of General Gordon, to occupy Berber on the way to the final destination. He speaks, however, with submission on a point of this kind. There is indeed in some quarters a belief that the river route ought to have been chosen at an earlier period, and had the navigation of the Nile in its upper region been as well known as that of the Thames, this might have been a just ground of reproach. But when, on the first symptoms that the position of General Gordon in Khartoum was not secure, your Majesty's advisers at once sought from the most competent persons the best information they could obtain respecting the Nile route, the balance of testimony and authority was decidedly against it, and the idea of the Suakin and Berber route, with all its formidable difficulties, was entertained in preference; nor was it until a much later period that the weight of opinion and information warranted the definitive choice of the Nile route. Your Majesty's ministers were well aware that climate and distance were far more formidable than the sword of the enemy, and they deemed it right, while providing [pg 168] adequate military means, never to lose from view what might have proved to be the destruction of the gallant army in the Soudan. It is probable that abundant wrath and indignation will on this occasion be poured out upon them. Nor will they complain if so it should be; but a partial consolation may be found on reflecting that neither aggressive policy, nor military disaster, nor any gross error in the application of means to ends, has marked this series of difficult proceedings, which, indeed, have greatly redounded to the honour of your Majesty's forces of all ranks and arms. In these remarks which Mr. Gladstone submits with his humble devotion, he has taken it for granted that Khartoum has fallen through the exhaustion of its means of defence. But your Majesty may observe from the telegram that this is uncertain. Both the correspondent's account and that of Major Wortley refer to the delivery of the town by treachery, a contingency which on some previous occasions General Gordon has treated as far from improbable; and which, if the notice existed, was likely to operate quite independently of the particular time at which a relieving force might arrive. The presence of the enemy in force would naturally suggest the occasion, or perhaps even the apprehension of the approach of the British army. In pointing to these considerations, Mr. Gladstone is far from assuming that they are conclusive upon the whole case; in dealing with which the government has hardly ever at any of its stages been furnished sufficiently with those means of judgment which rational men usually require. It may be that, on a retrospect, many errors will appear to have been committed. There are many reproaches, from the most opposite quarters, to which it might be difficult to supply a conclusive answer. Among them, and perhaps among the most difficult, as far as Mr. Gladstone can judge, would be the reproach of those who might argue that our proper business was the protection of Egypt, that it never was in military danger from the Mahdi, and that the most prudent course would have been to provide it with adequate frontier defences, and to assume no responsibility for the lands beyond the desert.
One word more. Writing to one of his former colleagues long after Mr. Gladstone says:—
Jan. 10, '90.—In the Gordon case we all, and I rather prominently, [pg 169] must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was a hero, and a hero of heroes; but we ought to have known that a hero of heroes is not the proper person to give effect at a distant point, and in most difficult circumstances, to the views of ordinary men. It was unfortunate that he should claim the hero's privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and intention with which he had left England, and for which he had obtained our approval. Had my views about Zobeir prevailed, it would not have removed our difficulties, as Forster would certainly have moved, and with the tories and the Irish have carried, a condemnatory address. My own opinion is that it is harder to justify our doing so much to rescue him, than our not doing more. Had the party reached Khartoum in time, he would not have come away (as I suppose), and the dilemma would have arisen in another form.
In 1890 an application was made to Mr. Gladstone by a certain foreign writer who had undertaken an article on Gordon and his mission. Mr. Gladstone's reply (Jan. 11, '90) runs to this effect:—
I am much obliged by your kind letter and enclosure. I hope you will not think it belies this expression when I say that I feel myself precluded from supplying any material or entering upon any communications for the purpose of self-defence against the charges which are freely made and I believe widely accepted against myself and against the cabinet of 1880-5 in connection with General Gordon. It would be felt in this country, by friends I think in many cases as well as adversaries, that General Gordon's much-lamented death ought to secure him, so far as we are concerned, against the counter-argument which we should have to present on his language and proceedings. On this account you will, I hope, excuse me from entering into the matter. I do not doubt that a true and equitable judgment will eventually prevail.[110]