Such, in brief, was the state of affairs between Kartoum and the Lakes when Gordon made his journey thither; yet it afforded in no way the only instance of oppression, anarchy or misrule in these lands. In Kordofan and Darfour the slave-traffic was even more formidable than here. In the latter province a war between the slave-dealers and the Sultan’s troops was just concluded, and the two vast lands, with Darfertit, had been made into a Homkumdircat, or Governor-General’s district responsible to Cairo, and separated from the Soudan. But Gordon’s work was for the present confined to laying down a chain of posts between Gondokoro and the Lakes, and by this and other means contributing to the welfare of the tribes and the confusion of the slavers. To gain the confidence of the natives was his first care; and to this end he ventured alone and unarmed into those isolated spots, whither not less than a hundred men had dared to go. Then he showed the people how they might sow their grain without fear, supplying them with enough to live on until their wants were met; he also taught them the use of money, and gave them task-work. It was infinitely little, he said, among such a mass, but it was at any rate something, and might perhaps enable him to solve the question whether the negroes would work sufficiently to keep themselves if life and property were secured. To give them this protection, he seized all convoys of slaves, and ivory and cattle coming from the south, punished the slave-dealers, or converted them into troops, for they were hard, active fellows, the remnant of an ancient race; and designing and despotic governors he despatched to Cairo or Kartoum. The slaves themselves, until he could deliver them over to their kinsfolk, he kept, the cattle and the ivory he confiscated, and with the proceeds swelled the Government treasury.
It would seem the fate of those who devote their lives to the cause of humanity to be foiled instead of aided in their aim. In all his efforts for the good of these blacks Gordon met with every form of interference whence he might at least expect support. Ismail Pasha Yacoub, the Governor-General of the Soudan, jealous of the new Governor of the Equator and fearful of exposure from so conscientious a servant of the State, put every obstacle in Gordon’s way; and the Khedive himself was not always mindful of the many difficulties to be encountered. But Gordon said, to blame the Khedive for his actions you must blame his people, and blame their Creator; they act after their kind, and in the fashion they were made. So that he took little heed of all this. He was content to let it be widely known that the motto of his province would henceforth be Hurryat (liberty); and this meant that no man should interfere with another, that there should be an end to kidnapping and all plunder, an end to despotic Pashas; and those who objected were told that the motto included their liberty to quit. Moreover, he was of opinion that those who annexed the province needed as much civilisation as those they attempted to civilise; and, whenever it was necessary, in the interests of his people, he never hesitated to show them that this was his view.
Still, though he succeeded in giving peace and happiness to the people, in reforming the cruelties of Mudirs and Pashas, in settling the disputes of warring chiefs, and in laying down the chain of posts between Gondokoro and the Lakes: in making all these beneficent reforms, his heart was ever burdened with the thought of how this new and unaccustomed good would affect the people and their lands when, as time went on, himself and his influence were removed, and his successors, who understood his high intent as little as they understood the people themselves, ruled in his stead. “I think, what right have I to coax the natives to be quiet for them to fall into the hands of rapacious Pashas? I think sometimes that through my influence I am seducing the natives into a position where they will be a prey to my Arab successor. They would never do for an Arab what they do for me. I make friends with the tribes right and left.”
But, apart from these feelings, he was not satisfied; his success in his own province had been complete, but, instead of meeting with co-operation from the adjoining Soudan, he had encountered nothing but interference from its then Governor-General, Ismail Pasha Yacoub, to whose interests it was to let slavery go on. For this reason, therefore, Gordon, after three years’ labour, resigned his post as Governor of the Equator. But the step was taken in a wavering spirit; and these are among his last words ere he left: “By retiring I do not aid anything; by staying I keep my province safe from injustice and cruelty in some degree. Why should I fear? Is man stronger than God? Things have come to such a pass in these Mussulman countries that a crisis must come about soon.”
These significant words, so terribly confirmed less then ten years later, were uttered in September of 1876.
Gordon’s resignation soon led to his reinstatement on terms more fitted to his views. In the new position he felt strongly that, great as was the trust and the almost superhuman work expected of him, if he did not entirely succeed at least he would not be hampered. He was not only appointed Governor-General of the Soudan in Ismail Pasha Yacoub’s stead; he was given authority such as none had previously enjoyed—complete power, civil and military, with the life or death of his subjects in his hand; and no man dare enter his dominions without special leave. He had stipulated that this supreme command should be independent of Cairo, for he knew the Egyptian authorities to be in favour of the slave-trade. The undefined territory now his had hitherto been subject to several governments—Arab, Egyptian, Turkish. Henceforth Soudan was to mean the vast territory limited on the north by Upper Egypt, on the south by the Lakes, on the east by Abyssinia and the Red Sea, and on the west extending beyond Kordofan and the newly acquired sultanate of Darfour—the whole roughly estimated at more than 1600 miles in length, and 700 miles in width. There were to be three Vakeels or Sub-Governors: one for the original Soudan, another for Darfour, and a third for the Red Sea, or Eastern Soudan.
The suppression of slavery, in which he had been so far successful in his own province, and the improvement of communications, which he had long declared to be the one means by which that traffic could be effectually checked, were the two objects to which Gordon was to specially direct his aim.
Remembering his recent experiences, he was fully prepared for the condition of his new subjects. In his predecessor, Ismail Pasha Yacoub, he had already recognised the quintessence of Egyptian cupidity and Turkish misrule—the main cause of the people’s ruin. The experiences of the first months of his administration only served to confirm his worst fears; whithersoever he looked he saw an enlarged picture of native misery and destitution, of alien cruelty and oppression he had before witnessed. He saw that the Circassian Pashas, the Bashi-Bazouks, the Arab soldiery, the slave-hunters, were by their acts fast goading the people to revolt; that tribes which without their interference would have been at peace were now at war; that towns which under proper rule would have flourished were starving or besieged; and that the land, otherwise fertile, was a waste. On every hand he found caravans of packed slaves hungering and parching in the sun, far from their homes and far from their goal, unless that goal were death; deserts strewn with innumerable bones; armed bands of slave-hunters, dogged by the vulture-like dealers, waiting and watching for further prey; and over all these reigned the miscreant spirit of Zubair, the slave-king, now ostensibly a prisoner at Cairo for past deeds, but actually aiding and abetting this cruel war against man through his son Suleiman, the chief of his deserted band. To remove Zubair’s influence was as impossible of achievement as to cut off the demand for slaves at Cairo, Constantinople, or Stamboul; but to break up Suleiman and his band lay within Gordon’s grasp, and, as one of the main causes of trouble, he made it his foremost aim. How he did this by the simple power of his presence, and how Suleiman and his six thousand, after signal submission, again broke out into open revolt so soon as Gordon’s presence was required elsewhere, affords one of the most striking examples of the personal influence he had acquired. Alone and himself unarmed he had temporarily succeeded in disarming these rebels; but, this failing in permanent use, he effectually quelled them in battle; then, to show his people, his Government, and the world how great a wrong this slavery was, he ordered the summary execution of the ringleaders. “With the death of Zubair’s son,” he said, “there is an end of the slave-trade.” Never had the Government such a chance of preventing its renewal. He had disbanded the Bashi-Bazouks, he had dismissed the peculating Mudirs and Pashas; and when he left the country, after a three years’ reign, the people blessed him, and begged him to return.
Had he been allowed to act according to the letter and the spirit of the Firman he received, it is most probable that he would never this second time have resigned; but the overthrow of Ismail at Cairo and the dissolution of the Dual Control had with other changes brought new law-makers for the Soudan. Ismail, though in many respects an imprudent ruler, had at least the merit of believing in his English Governor-General, and of supporting him whenever it lay in his power. Gordon’s lonely ride into the slavers’ camp at Shaka had fired the ex-Khedive’s imagination, and it was observed that, whenever the Court Pashas attempted to criticise Gordon’s methods of rule, the Khedive referred them to this deed. Moreover, he openly acknowledged him as his superior, and fought his battles as those of one who was above the murmur of men. Gordon has, indeed, himself recorded how the Khedive sent him a congratulatory letter on the suppression of Suleiman, adding that during the time of his rule the ex-Khedive supported him through thick and thin against his own Pashas and his own people; and certain it is that to the files of petitions sent to him against Gordon he would never listen. But when Towfik was set up it was a different affair. Never was he heard to mention Zubair’s name. As for the slave-trade, it was equally ignored. Nay, worse than this, the Cairo Pashas, powerless in Ismail’s time, had now full sway, and it being in their interests that the slave-trade should revive, the choice of Gordon’s successor was settled among themselves. It fell to Réouf Pasha, a man whom Sir Samuel Baker had already exposed as a murderer, and whom Gordon had in 1877 turned out of Harrat for acts of oppression. The appointment, therefore, meant nothing more nor less than a declaration in favour of the slavers; and it was because Gordon feared this result that he had said six months before, viz., in April 1879, that “If the liberation of slaves takes place in 1884, and if the present system of government goes on, there cannot fail to be a revolt of the whole country.” And again he says in 1878, “There is no doubt that if the Government of France and England pay more attention to the Soudan and see that justice is done, the disruption of the Soudan from Cairo is only a matter of time. This disruption, moreover, will not end the troubles for the Soudanese, though their allies in Lower Egypt will carry on their efforts in Cairo itself.”[1]