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]