Great Britain and Her Queen

by Anne E. Keeling

The history of the Gladstone Ministry does not come well within the scope of this work. Certain very memorable events must be touched upon; there are dark chapters of our national story, stains and blots on our great name, which force themselves upon us. But to follow the Government through its years of struggle with the ever-growing bulk of Irish difficulty, and to track it through its various enactments designed still further to improve the condition of the English people, would require a small volume to itself. England still remembers the thrill, half fury, half anguish, which ran through her at the tidings that the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, charged with a message of peace and conciliation, had been stabbed to death within twenty-four hours of his landing on that unhappy shore. She cannot forego the deep instinctive feeling—so generally manifested at the time of Lincoln's murder—that the lawless spilling of life for any cause dishonours and discredits that cause; nor have various subsequent efforts made to terrorise public opinion here been differently judged.

But it was a far more cruel shock that was inflicted through the series of ill-advised proceedings that brought about the great disaster of Khartoum. Before we deal with these, we must glance at the African and Afghan troubles, again breaking out and again quieted, the first by a peace with the Boers of the Transvaal that awakened violent discussion not yet at an end, and the second, after some successes of the British arms, by a judicious arrangement designed to secure the neutrality of Afghanistan, interposed by nature as a strong, all but insurmountable, barrier between India and Central Asia. These transactions, the theme of sharp contention at the time, were cast into the shade by events in which we were concerned in Egypt, our newly acquired interests in the Suez Canal making that country far more important to us than of yore. Its condition was very wretched, its government at once feeble and oppressive, and, despite the joint influence which France and England had acquired in Egyptian councils, an armed rebellion broke out, under the leadership of Arabi Pasha. France declining to act in this emergency, the troops and fleet of England put down this revolt single-handed; and in their successes the Queen's third son, Arthur, Duke of Connaught, took his part, under the orders of Sir Garnet (afterwards Lord) Wolseley. There were again rejoicings in Balmoral, where the Queen, with her soldierly son's young wife beside her, was preparing to receive another bride—Princess Helen of Waldeck, just wedded to our youngest Prince, Leopold, Duke of Albany.

But this gleam of brightness was destined to be followed by darker disaster far than that which seemed averted for the moment. A mightier rebellion was arising in the Soudan, a vast tract of country annexed by the ambition of Ismail, the former Khedive of Egypt, to be ill governed by his officials and ravaged by the slave-trade. These evils were checked for a few years by the strong hand of Charles George Gordon, already famous through his achievements in China, and invested with unlimited power by Ismail; but, that potentate being overthrown, the great Englishman left his thankless post, no longer tenable by him. Then it seemed that chaos had come again; and a bold and keen, though probably hypocritical, dervish, self-styled the Mahdi, or Mohammedan Messiah, was able to kindle new flames of revolt, which burned with the quenchless fury of Oriental fanaticism. His Arab and negro soldiers made short work of the poor Egyptian fellaheen sent to fight them, though these were under the command of Englishmen. The army led by Hicks Pasha utterly vanished in the deserts, as that of Cambyses did of old. The army under Baker Pasha did not, indeed, disappear in the same mysterious manner, but it too was routed with great slaughter.

The English Government, willing to avoid the vast task of crushing the revolt, had counselled the abandonment of the Soudan, and the Khedive's Ministers reluctantly acquiesced. But there were Egyptian garrisons scattered throughout the Soudan which must not be abandoned with the country. Above all, there was Khartoum, an important town at the junction of the Blue and the White Nile, with a large European settlement and an Egyptian garrison, all in pressing danger, loyal as yet, but full of just apprehension. These troops, these officials, these women and children, who only occupied their perilous position through the action of the Khedive's Government, had a right to protection—a right acknowledged by Her Majesty's Ministers; but they wished to avoid hostilities. General Graham, left in command on the Red Sea littoral, was allowed to take action against the Mahdi's lieutenant who was threatening Suakim, and who was driven back with heavy loss; but he might not follow up the victory.

General Gordon

The English Government hoped to withdraw the garrisons in safety, without force of arms. They had been for some time urging on the Khedive that the marvellous influence which Gordon was known to have acquired in his old province should now be utilised, and that to him should be entrusted the herculean task of tranquillising the Soudan, by reinstating its ancient dynasties of tribal chiefs and withdrawing all Egyptian and European troops and officials. Their plan was at last accepted; then Gordon, hitherto unacquainted, like the public at large, with the Government designs, was informed of them and invited to carry them out. He consented; and, with the chivalric promptitude which essentially belonged to his character, he departed the same night on his perilous errand. Passing through Cairo, he received plenary powers from the Khedive, and went on almost alone to Khartoum, where he was received with an overflowing enthusiasm. But, with all his eager haste, he was too late to bring about the desired results by peaceful means. "He should have come a year ago," muttered his native well-wishers. Week after week and month after month, his position in Khartoum became more perilous; the Mahdi's power waxed greater, and his hordes drew round the city, which long defied them, while garrison after garrison fell into their hands elsewhere. It was in vain that General Gordon urged the despatch of British troops, a few hundred of whom would at one time have sufficed to turn the tide, and insure success in his enterprise. They were still withheld; and he would not secure his own safety by deserting the people whom his presence had induced to stand out against the impostor and his hosts. The city endured a long, cruel siege, and fell at last, reduced by hunger and treachery, just as a tardily despatched British force was making its way to relieve it—a force commanded by Lord Wolseley, who half a year before had been protesting against the "indelible disgrace" of leaving Gordon to his fate. He was not able even to bury his friend and comrade, slain by the fanatic enemy when they broke into the city in the early morning of January 26th, 1885.

Duke of Albany
(From a Photograph by A. BASSANO, Bond Street, W)

"I have done my best for the honour of our country," were the parting words of the dead hero. His country felt itself profoundly dishonoured by the manner in which it had lost this its famous son—a man distinguished at once by commanding ability, unsullied honour, heroic valour; a man full of tenderest beneficence towards his fellows, and of utter devotion to his God; "the grandest figure," said an American admirer, "that has crossed the disc of this planet for centuries." Him England had fatally delayed to help, withheld by the dread of costly and cruel warfare; and then just failed to save him by a war enormously costly and cruelly fatal indeed. A general lamentation, blent with cries of anger, rose up from the land. Her Majesty shared the common sorrow, as her messages of sympathy to the surviving relations of Gordon testified. Various charitable institutions, modelled on the lines which he had followed in his work among the poor, rose to keep his memory green; and thus the objects of his Christlike care during his life are now profiting by the world-famous manner of his death. But there is still a deep feeling that even time itself can hardly efface the stain that has been left on our national fame. An English expedition, well commanded, full of ardour and daring, sent to accomplish a specific object, and failing in that object; its commander, entirely guiltless of blame, having to abandon the scene of his triumphs to a savage, fanatic foe as was now the case—this was evil enough; but that our beloved countryman, a true knight without fear and without reproach, should have been betrayed to desertion and death through his own magnanimity and our sluggishness, added a rankling, poisonous sense of shame to our humiliation. That the same year saw further electoral privileges extended to the humble classes in England, beyond what even the last Reform Bill had conferred, which might prove of advantage afterwards, but was an imperfect consolation at the time. Another grief fell upon the Queen in this year in the early death of Leopold, Duke of Albany, a Prince whose intellectual gifts were nearly allied to those of his father, but on whom lifelong delicacy of health had enforced a life of comparative quietude. His widowed bride and infant children have ever since been cared for tenderly by his royal mother.