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The state of feeling at Khartoum was one verging on panic. The richest townsmen had removed their property and families to Berber. Colonel de Coetlogon had the river boats with steam up ready to commence the evacuation, and while everyone thought that the place was doomed, the telegraph instrument was eagerly watched for the signal to begin the flight. The tension could not have lasted much longer--without the signal the flight would have begun--when on 24th January the brief message arrived: "General Gordon is coming to Khartoum." The effect of that message was electrical. The panic ceased, confidence was restored, the apathy of the Cairo authorities became a matter of no importance, for England had sent her greatest name as a pledge of her intended action, and the unreliable and insufficient garrison pulled itself together for one of the most honourable and brilliant defences in the annals of military sieges. Yet it was full time. Two months had been wasted, and, as Mr Power said, "the fellows in Lucknow did not look more anxiously for Colin Campbell than we are looking for Gordon." Gordon, ever mindful of the importance of time, and fully impressed with the sense of how much had been lost by delay, did not let the grass grow under his feet, and after his two days' delay at Cairo sent a message that he hoped to reach Khartoum in eighteen days. Mr Power's comment on that message is as follows: "Twenty-four days is the shortest time from Cairo to Khartoum on record; Gordon says he will be here in eighteen days; but he travels like a whirlwind." As a matter of fact, Gordon took twenty days' travelling, besides the two days he passed at Berber. He thus reached Khartoum on 18th February, and four days later Colonel de Coetlogon started for Cairo.

Difficult as it had been all along, it was rendered still more difficult by the decisive defeat of Baker Pasha and an Egyptian force of 4000 men at Tokar, near Souakim. This victory was won by Osman Digma, who had been sent by the Mahdi to rouse up the Eastern Soudan at the time of the threatened Hicks expedition. The result showed that the Mahdi had discovered a new lieutenant of great military capacity and energy, and that the Eastern Soudan was for the time as hopelessly lost to Egypt as Kordofan and Darfour.

The first task to which Gordon addressed himself was to place Khartoum and the detached work at Omdurman on the left bank of the White Nile in a proper state of defence, and he especially supervised the establishment of telegraphic communication between the Palace and the many outworks, so that at a moment's notice he might receive word of what was happening. His own favourite position became the flat roof of this building, whence with his glass he could see round for many miles. He also laid in considerable stores of provisions by means of his steamers, in which he placed the greatest faith. In all these matters he was ably and energetically assisted by Colonel Stewart; and beyond doubt the other Europeans took some slight share in the incessant work of putting Khartoum in a proper state of defence; but even with this relief, the strain, increased by constant alarms of the Mahdi's hostile approach, was intense, and Mr Power speaks of Gordon as nearly worn out with work before he had been there a month.

When Gordon went to the Soudan his principal object was to effect the evacuation of the country, and to establish there some administration which would be answerable for good order and good neighbourship. If the Mahdi had been a purely secular potentate, and not a fanatical religious propagandist, it would have been a natural and feasible arrangement to have come to terms with him as the conqueror of the country. But the basis of the Mahdi's power forbade his being on terms with anyone. If he had admitted the equal rights of Egypt and the Khedive at any point, there would have been an end to his heavenly mission, and the forces he had created out of the simple but deep-rooted religious feelings of the Mahommedan clans of the Soudan would soon have vanished. It is quite possible that General Gordon had in his first views on the Mahdist movement somewhat undervalued the forces created by that fanaticism, and that the hopes and opinions he first expressed were unduly optimistic. If so, it must be allowed that he lost not a moment in correcting them, and within a week of his arrival at Khartoum he officially telegraphed to Cairo, that "if Egypt is to be quiet the Mahdi must be smashed up."

All his early messages show that there had been a change, or at least a marked modification, in his opinions. At Khartoum he saw more clearly than in Cairo or in London the extreme gravity of the situation, and the consequences to the tranquillity of Lower Egypt that would follow from the abandonment of Khartoum to the Mahdi. He therefore telegraphed on the day of his arrival these words: "To withdraw without being able to place a successor in my seat would be the signal for general anarchy throughout the country, which, though all Egyptian element were withdrawn, would be a misfortune, and inhuman." In the same message he repeated his demand for the services of Zebehr, through whom, as has been shown, he thought he might be able to cope with the Mahdi. Yet their very refusal to comply with that reiterated request should have made the authorities more willing and eager to meet the other applications and suggestion of a man who had thrust himself into a most perilous situation at their bidding, and for the sake of the reputation of his country. It must be recorded with feelings of shame that it had no such effect, and that apathy and indifference to the fate of its gallant agent were during the first few months the only characteristics of the Government policy.

At the same period all Gordon's telegrams and despatches showed that he wanted reinforcements to some small extent, and at least military demonstrations along his line of communication with Egypt to prove that he possessed the support of his Government, and that he had only to call upon it to send troops, and they were there to come. He, naturally enough, treated as ridiculous the suggestion that he had bound himself to do the whole work without any support; and fully convinced that he had only to summon troops for them to be sent him in the moderate strength he alone cared for, he issued a proclamation in Khartoum, stating that "British troops are now on their way, and in a few days will reach Khartoum." He therefore begged for the despatch of a small force to Wady Halfa, and he went on to declare that it would be "comparatively easy to destroy the Mahdi" if 200 British troops were sent to Wady Halfa, and if the Souakim-Berber route were opened up by Indian-Moslem troops. Failing the adoption of these measures, he asked leave to raise a sum, by appealing to philanthropists, sufficient to pay a small Turkish force and carry on a contest for supremacy with the Mahdi on his own behoof. All these suggestions were more or less supported by Sir Evelyn Baring, who at last suggested in an important despatch, dated 28th February, that the British Government should withdraw altogether from the matter, and "give full liberty of action to General Gordon and the Khedive's Government to do what seems best to them."

Well would it have been for Gordon and everyone whose reputation was concerned if this step had been taken, for the Egyptian Government, the Khedive, his ministers Nubar and Cherif, were opposed to all surrender, and desired to hold on to Khartoum and the Souakim-Berber route. But without the courage and resolution to discharge it, the Government saw the obligation that lay on them to provide for the security and good government of Egypt, and that if they shirked responsibility in the Soudan, the independence of Egypt might be accomplished by its own effort and success. They perceived the objections to giving Egypt a free hand, but they none the less abstained from taking the other course of definite and decisive action on their own initiative. As Gordon quickly saw and tersely expressed: "You will not let Egypt keep the Soudan, you will not take it yourself, and you will not permit any other country to occupy it."

As if to give emphasis to General Gordon's successive requests--Zebehr, 200 men to Wady Halfa, opening of route from Souakim to Berber, presence of English officers at Dongola, and of Indian cavalry at Berber--telegraphic communication with Khartoum was interrupted early in March, less than a fortnight after Gordon's arrival in the town. There was consequently no possible excuse for anyone ignoring the dangerous position in which General Gordon was placed. He had gone to face incalculable dangers, but now the success of Osman Digma and the rising of the riparian tribes threatened him with that complete isolation which no one had quite expected at so early a stage after his arrival. It ought, and one would have expected it, to have produced an instantaneous effect, to have braced the Government to the task of deciding what its policy should be when challenged by its own representative to declare it. Gordon himself soon realised his own position, for he wrote: "I shall be caught in Khartoum; and even if I was mean enough to escape I have not the power to do so." After a month's interruption he succeeded in getting the following message, dated 8th April, through, which is significant as showing that he had abandoned all hope of being supported by his own Government:--

"I have telegraphed to Sir Samuel Baker to make an appeal to British and American millionaires to give me ?300,000 to engage 3000 Turkish troops from the Sultan and send them here. This would settle the Soudan and Mahdi for ever. For my part, I think you will agree with me. I do not see the fun of being caught here to walk about the streets for years as a dervish with sandalled feet. Not that I will ever be taken alive. It would be the climax of meanness after I had borrowed money from the people here, had called on them to sell their grain at a low price, etc., to go and abandon them without using every effort to relieve them, whether those efforts are diplomatically correct or not; and I feel sure, whatever you may feel diplomatically, I have your support, and that of every man professing himself a gentleman, in private."

Eight days later he succeeded in getting another message through, to the following effect:--

Before a silence of five and a half months fell over Khartoum, Gordon had been able to make three things clear, and of these only one could be described as having a personal signification, and that was that the Government, by rejecting all his propositions, had practically abandoned him to his fate. The two others were that any settlement would be a work of time, and that no permanent tranquillity could be attained without overcoming the Mahdi.

Immediately on arriving at Khartoum he perceived that the evacuation of the Soudan, with safety to the garrison and officials, as well as the preservation of the honour of England and Egypt, would necessarily be a work of time, and only feasible if certain measures were taken in his support, which, considerable as they may have appeared at the moment, were small and costless in comparison with those that had subsequently to be sanctioned. Six weeks sufficed to show Gordon that he would get no material help from the Government, and he then began to look elsewhere for support, and to propound schemes for pacifying the Soudan and crushing the Mahdi in which England and the Government would have had no part. Hence his proposal to appeal to wealthy philanthropists to employ Turkish troops, and in the last resort to force his way to the Equator and the Congo. Even that avenue of safety was closed to him by the illusory prospect of rescue held out to him by the Government at the eleventh hour, when success was hardly attainable.

For the sake of clearness it will be well to give here a brief summary of the siege during the six months that followed the arrival of General Gordon and the departure of Colonel Stewart on 10th September. The full and detailed narrative is contained in Colonel Stewart's Journal, which was captured on board his steamer. This interesting diary was taken to the Mahdi at Omdurman, and is said to be carefully preserved in the Treasury. The statement rests on no very sure foundation, but if true the work may yet thrill the audience of the English-speaking world. But even without its aid the main facts of the siege of Khartoum, down at all events to the 14th December, when Gordon's own diary stops, are sufficiently well known for all the purposes of history.

At a very early stage of the siege General Gordon determined to try the metal of his troops, and the experiment succeeded to such a perfect extent that there was never any necessity to repeat it. On 16th March, when only irregular levies and detached bodies of tribesmen were in the vicinity of Khartoum, he sent out a force of nearly 1000 men, chiefly Bashi-Bazouks, but also some regulars, with a fieldpiece and supported by two steamers. The force started at eight in the morning, under the command of Colonel Stewart, and landed at Halfiyeh, some miles down the stream on the right bank of the Nile. Here the rebels had established a sort of fortified position, which it was desirable to destroy, if it could be done without too much loss. The troops were accordingly drawn up for the attack, and the gun and infantry fire commenced to cover the advance. At this moment about sixty rebel horsemen came out from behind the stockade and charged the Bashi-Bazouks, who fired one volley and fled. The horsemen then charged the infantry drawn up in square, which they broke, and the retreat to the river began at a run. Discouraging as this was for a force of all arms to retire before a few horsemen one-twentieth its number, the disaster was rendered worse and more disheartening by the conduct of the men, who absolutely refused to fight, marching along with shouldered arms without firing a shot, while the horsemen picked off all who straggled from the column. The gun, a considerable quantity of ammunition, and about sixty men represented the loss of Gordon's force; the rebels are not supposed to have lost a single man. "Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men even on camels, pursuing close to troops who with shouldered arms plodded their way back." Thus wrote Gordon of the men to whom he had to trust for a successful defence of Khartoum. His most recent experience confirmed his old opinion, that the Egyptian and Arab troops were useless even when fighting to save their own lives, and he could only rely on the very small body left of black Soudanese, who fought as gallantly for him as any troops could, and whose loyalty and devotion to him surpassed all praise. Treachery, it was assumed, had something to do with the easy overthrow of this force, and two Pashas were shot for misconduct on return to Khartoum.

Having no confidence in the bulk of his force, it is not surprising that Gordon resorted to every artifice within engineering science to compensate for the shortcomings of his army. He surrounded Khartoum--which on one side was adequately defended by the Nile and his steamers--on the remaining three sides with a triple line of land mines connected by wires. Often during the siege the Mahdists attempted to break through this ring, but only to meet with repulse, accompanied by heavy loss; and to the very last day of the siege they never succeeded in getting behind the third of these lines. Their efficacy roused Gordon's professional enthusiasm, and in one passage he exclaims that these will be the general form of defence in the future. During the first months of the siege, which began rather in the form of a loose investment, the Nile was too low to allow of his using the nine steamers he possessed, but he employed the time in making two new ones, and in strengthening them all with bulwarks of iron plates and soft wood, which were certainly bullet-proof. Each of these steamers he valued as the equivalent of 2000 men. When it is seen how he employed them the value will not be deemed excessive, and certainly without them he could not have held Khartoum and baffled all the assaults of the Mahdi for the greater part of a year.

The reader will be interested in the following extracts from a letter written by Colonel Duncan, R.A., M.P., showing the remarkable way in which General Gordon organised the despatch of these refugees from Khartoum. The letter is dated 29th November 1886, and addressed to Miss Gordon:--

"When your brother, on reaching Khartoum, found that he could commence sending refugees to Egypt, I was sent on the 3rd March 1884 to Assouan and Korosko to receive those whom he sent down. As an instance of your brother's thoughtfulness, I may mention that he requested that, if possible, some motherly European woman might also be sent, as many of the refugees whom he had to send had never been out of the Soudan before, and might feel strange on reaching Egypt. A German, Giegler Pasha, who had been in Khartoum with your brother before, and who had a German wife, was accordingly placed at my disposal, and I stationed them at Korosko, where almost all the refugees arrived. I may mention that I saw and spoke to every one of the refugees who came down, and to many of the women and children. Their references to your brother were invariably couched in language of affection and gratitude, and the adjective most frequently applied to him was 'just.' In sending away the people from Khartoum, he sent away the Governor and some of the other leading Egyptian officials first. I think he suspected they would intrigue; he always had more confidence in the people than in the ruling Turks or Egyptians. The oldest soldiers, the very infirm, the wounded were sent next, and a ghastly crew they were. But the precautions he took for their comfort were very complete, and although immediately before reaching me they had to cross a very bad part of the desert between Abou Hamed and Korosko, they reached me in wonderful spirits. It was touching to see the perfect confidence they had that the promises of Gordon Pasha would be fulfilled. After the fall of Khartoum, and your brother's death, a good many of the Egyptian officers who had been with your brother managed to escape, and to come down the river disguised in many cases as beggars. I had an opportunity of talking to most of them, and there was no collusion, for they arrived at different times and by different roads. I remember having a talk with one, and when we alluded to your brother's death he burst out crying like a child, and said that though he had lost his wives and children when Khartoum was taken, he felt it as nothing to the loss of 'that just man.'"

With regard to the wisdom of the course pursued in thus sending away all his European colleagues--the Austrian consul Hensall alone refusing to quit Gordon and his place of duty--opinions will differ to the end of time, but one is almost inclined to say that they could not have been of much service to Gordon once their uppermost thought became to quit Khartoum. The whole story is told very graphically in a passage of Gordon's own diary:--

There are two points in this matter to which I must draw marked attention. The suggestion for any European leaving Khartoum came from M. Herbin, and when Gordon willingly acquiesced, Colonel Stewart asked leave to do likewise. Mr Power, whose calculation was that provisions would be exhausted before the end of September, then followed suit, and not one of these three of the five Europeans in Khartoum seem to have thought for a moment what would be the position of Gordon left alone to cope with the danger from which they ran away. The suggestion as to their going came in every case from themselves. Gordon, in his thought for others, not merely threw no obstacle in their way, but as far as he could provided for their safety as if they were a parcel of women. But he declined all responsibility for their fate, as they went not by his order but of their own free-will. He gave them his ships, soldiers, and best counsel. They neglected the last, and were taken in in a manner that showed less than a child's suspicion, and were massacred at the very moment they felt sure of safety. It was a cruel fate, and a harsh Nemesis speedily befell them for doing perhaps the one unworthy thing of their lives--leaving their solitary companion to face the tenfold dangers by which he would be beset. But it cannot be allowed any longer that the onus of this matter should rest in any way on Gordon. They went because they wanted to go, and he, knowing well that men with such thoughts would be of no use to him let them go, and even encouraged them to do so. Under the circumstances he preferred to be alone. Colonel Donald Stewart was a personal friend of mine, and a man whose courage in the ordinary sense of the word could not be aspersed, but there cannot be two opinions that he above all the others should not have left his brother-in-arms alone in Khartoum.

The severance of Omdurman from Khartoum was the prelude to fiercer fighting than had taken place at any time during the earlier stages of the siege, and although particulars are not obtainable for the last month of the period, there is no doubt that the struggle was incessant, and that the fighting was renewed from day to day. It was then that Gordon missed the ships lying idle at Shendy. If he had had them Omdurman would not have fallen, nor would it have been so easy for the Mahdi to transport the bulk of his force from the left to the right bank of the White Nile, as he did for the final assault on the fatal 26th January.

Up to the arrival of the Mahdi daily desertions of his Arab and other soldiers to Gordon took place, and by these and levies among the townspeople all gaps in the garrison were more than filled up. Such was the confidence in Gordon that it more than neutralised all the intrigues of the Mahdi's agents in the besieged town, and scarcely a man during the first seven months of the siege deserted him; but after the arrival of the Mahdi there was a complete change in this respect. In the first place there were no more desertions to Gordon, and then men began to leave him, partly, no doubt, from fear of the Mahdi, or awakened fanaticism, but chiefly through the non-arrival of the British Expedition, which had been so much talked about, yet which never came. Still to all the enemy's invitations to surrender on the most honourable terms Gordon gave defiant answers. "I am here like iron, and I hope to see the newly-arrived English;" and when the situation had become little short of desperate, at the end of the year, he still, with bitter agony at his heart, proudly rejected all overtures, and sent the haughty message: "Can hold Khartoum for twelve years." Unfortunately the Mahdi knew better. He had read the truth in all the papers captured on Stewart's steamer, and he knew that Gordon's resources were nearly spent. Even some of the messages Gordon sent out by spies for Lord Wolseley's information fell into his hands, and on one of these Slatin says it was written: "Can hold Khartoum at the outside till the end of January." Although Gordon may be considered to have more than held his own against all the power of the Mahdi down to the capture of Omdurman Fort on 15th January, the Mahdi knew that his straits must be desperate, and that unless the expedition arrived he could not hold out much longer. The first advance of the English troops on 3rd January across the desert towards the Nile probably warned the enemy that now was the time to renew the attack with greater vigour, but it does not seem that there is any justification for the entirely hypothetical view that at any point the Mahdi could have seized the unhappy town. Omdurman Fort itself fell, not to the desperate onset of his Ghazis, but from the want of food and ammunition, and with Gordon's expressed permission to the commandant to surrender. Unfortunately the details of the most tragic part of the siege are missing, but Gordon himself well summed up what he had done up to the end of October when his position was secure, and aid, as he thought, was close at hand:--

At the point when the authentic history of the protracted siege and gallant defence of Khartoum stops, a pause may be made to turn back and describe what the Government and country which sent General Gordon on his most perilous mission, and made use of his extraordinary devotion to the call of duty to extricate themselves from a responsibility they had not the courage to face, had been doing not merely to support their envoy, but to vindicate their own honour. The several messages which General Gordon had succeeded in getting through had shown how necessary some reinforcement and support were at the very commencement of the siege. The lapse of time, rendered the more expressive by the long period of silence that fell over what was taking place in the besieged town, showed, beyond need of demonstration, the gravity of the case and the desperate nature of the situation. But a very little of the knowledge at the command of the Government from a number of competent sources would have enabled it to foresee what was certain to happen, and to have provided some remedy for the peril long before the following despairing message from Gordon showed that the hour when any aid would be useful had almost expired. This was the passage, dated 13th December, in the last volume of the Journal, but the substance of which reached Lord Wolseley by one of Gordon's messengers at Korti on 31st December:--

The motives which induced Mr Gladstone's Government to send General Gordon to the Soudan in January 1884 were, as has been clearly shown, the selfish desire to appease public opinion, and to shirk in the easiest possible manner a great responsibility. They had no policy at all, but they had one supreme wish, viz. to cut off the Soudan from Egypt; and if the Mahdi had only known their wishes and pressed on, and treated the Khartoum force as he had treated that under Hicks, there would have been no garrisons to rescue, and that British Government would have done nothing. It recked nothing of the grave dangers that would have accrued from the complete triumph of the Mahdi, or of the outbreak that must have followed in Lower Egypt if his tide of success had not been checked as it was single-handed by General Gordon, through the twelve months' defence of Khartoum. Still it could not quite stoop to the dishonour of abandoning these garrisons, and of making itself an accomplice to the Mahdi's butcheries, nor could it altogether turn a deaf ear to the representations and remonstrances of even such a puppet prince as the Khedive Tewfik. England was then far more mistress of the situation at Cairo than she is now, but a helpless refusal to discharge her duty might have provoked Europe into action at the Porte that would have proved inconvenient and damaging to her position and reputation. Therefore the Government fell back on General Gordon, and the hope was even indulged that, under his exceptional reputation, the evacuation of the Soudan might not only be successfully carried out, but that his success might induce the public and the world to accept that abnegation of policy as the acme of wisdom. In all this they were destined to a complete awakening, and the only matter of surprise is that they should have sent so well-known a character as General Gordon, whose independence and contempt for official etiquette and restraint were no secrets at the Foreign and War Offices, on a mission in which they required him not only to be as indifferent to the national honour as they were, but also to be tied and restrained by the shifts and requirements of an embarrassed executive.

At a very early stage of the mission the Government obtained evidence that Gordon's views on the subject were widely different from theirs. They had evidently persuaded themselves that their policy was Gordon's policy; and before he was in Khartoum a week he not merely points out that the evacuation policy is not his but theirs, and that although he thinks its execution is still possible, the true policy is, "if Egypt is to be quiet, that the Mahdi must be smashed up." The hopes that had been based on Gordon's supposed complaisance in the post of representative on the Nile of the Government policy were thus dispelled, and it became evident that Gordon, instead of being a tool, was resolved to be master, so far as the mode of carrying out the evacuation policy with full regard for the dictates of honour was to be decided. Nor was this all, or the worst of the revelations made to the Government in the first few weeks after his arrival at Khartoum. While expressing his willingness and intention to discharge the chief part of his task, viz. the withdrawal of the garrisons, which was all the Government cared about, he also descanted on the moral duty and the inevitable necessity of setting up a provisional government that should avert anarchy and impose some barrier to the Mahdi's progress. All this was trying to those who only wished to be rid of the whole matter, but Gordon did not spare their feelings, and phrase by phrase he revealed what his own policy would be and what his inner wishes, however repressed his charge might keep them, really were.

Having told them that "the Mahdi must be smashed up," he went on to say that "we cannot hurry over this affair" "if we do we shall incur disaster," and again that, although "it is a miserable country it is joined to Egypt, and it would be difficult to divorce the two." Within a very few weeks, therefore, the Government learnt that its own agent was the most forcible and damaging critic of the policy of evacuation, and that the worries of the Soudan question for an administration not resolute enough to solve the difficulty in a thorough manner were increased and not diminished by Gordon's mission. At that point the proposition was made and supported by several members of the Cabinet that Gordon should be recalled. There is no doubt that this step would have been taken but for the fear that it would aggravate the difficulties of the English expedition sent to Souakim under the command of General Gerald Graham to retrieve the defeat of Baker Pasha. Failing the adoption of that extreme measure, which would at least have been straightforward and honest, and ignoring what candour seemed to demand if a decision had been come to to render Gordon no support, and to bid him shift for himself, the Government resorted to the third and least justifiable course of all, viz. of showing indifference to the legitimate requests of their emissary, and of putting off definite action until the very last moment.

We have seen that Gordon made several specific demands in the first six weeks of his stay at Khartoum--that is, in the short period before communication was cut off. He wanted Zebehr, 200 troops at Berber, or even at Wady Halfa, and the opening of the route from Souakim to the Nile. To these requests not one favourable answer was given, and the not wholly unnatural rejection of the first rendered it more than ever necessary to comply with the others. They were such as ought to have been granted, and in anticipation they had been suggested and discussed before Gordon felt bound to urge them as necessary for the security of his position at Khartoum. Even Sir Evelyn Baring had recommended in February the despatch of 200 men to Assouan for the moral effect, and that was the very reason why Gordon asked, in the first place, for the despatch of a small British force to at least Wady Halfa. It is possible that one of the chief reasons for the Government rejecting all these suggestions, and also, it must be remembered, doing nothing in their place towards the relief and support of their representative, may have been the hope that this treatment would have led him to resign and throw up his mission. They would then have been able to declare that, as the task was beyond the powers of General Gordon, they were only coming to the prudent and logical conclusion in saying that nothing could be done, and that the garrisons had better come to terms with the Mahdi. Unfortunately for those who favoured the evasion of trouble as the easiest and best way out of the difficulty, Gordon had high notions as to what duty required. No difficulty had terrors for him, and while left at the post of power and responsibility he would endeavour to show himself equal to the charge.

Yet there can be no doubt that those who sent him would have rejoiced if he had formally asked to be relieved of the task he had accepted, and Mr Gladstone stated on the 3rd April that "Gordon was under no orders and no restraint to stay at Khartoum." A significant answer to the fact represented in that statement was supplied, when, ten days later, silence fell on Khartoum, and remained unbroken for more than five months. But at the very moment that the Prime Minister made that statement as to Gordon's liberty of movement, the Government knew of the candid views which he had expressed as to the proper policy for the Soudan. It should have been apparent that, unless they and their author were promptly repudiated, and unless the latter was stripped of his official authority, the Government would, however tardily and reluctantly, be drawn after its representative into a policy of intervention in the Soudan, which it, above everything else, wished to avoid. Gordon concealed nothing. He told them "time," "reinforcements," and a very considerable expenditure was necessary to honourably carry out their policy of evacuation. They were not prepared to concede any of these save the last, and even the money they sent him was lost because they would send it by Berber instead of Kassala. But they knew that "the order and restraint" which kept Gordon at Khartoum was the duty he had contracted towards them when he accepted his mission, and which was binding on a man of his principles until they chose to relieve him of the task. The fear of public opinion had more to do with their abstaining from the step of ordering his recall than the hope that his splendid energy and administrative power might yet provide some satisfactory issue from the dilemma, for at the very beginning it was freely given out that "General Gordon was exceeding his instructions."

The interruption of communications with Khartoum at least suspended Gordon's constant representations as to what he thought the right policy, as well as his demands for the fulfilment by the Government of their side of the contract. It was then that Lord Granville seemed to pluck up heart of grace, and to challenge Gordon's right to remain at Khartoum. On 23rd April Lord Granville asked for explanation of "cause of detention." Unfortunately it was not till months later that the country knew of Gordon's terse and humorous reply, "cause of detention, these horribly plucky Arabs." Lord Granville, thinking this despatch not clear enough, followed it up on 17th May by instructing Mr Egerton, then acting for Sir Evelyn Baring, to send the following remonstrance to Gordon:

"As the original plan for the evacuation of the Soudan has been dropped, and as aggressive operations cannot be undertaken with the countenance of H.M.'s Government, General Gordon is enjoined to consider, and either to report upon, or, if possible, to adopt at the first proper moment measures for his own removal and for that of the Egyptians at Khartoum who have suffered for him, or who have served him faithfully, including their wives and children, by whatever route he may consider best, having especial regard to his own safety and that of the other British subjects."

Then followed suggestions and authority to pay so much a head for refugees safely escorted to Korosko. The comment Gordon made on that, and similar despatches, to save himself and any part of the garrison he could, was that he was not so mean as to desert those who had nobly stood by him and committed themselves on the strength of his word.

But all these minor points were merged in a great common national anxiety when month after month passed during the spring and summer of 1884, and not a single word issued from the tomb-like silence of Khartoum. People might argue that the worst could not have happened, as the Mahdi would have been only too anxious to proclaim his triumph far and wide if Khartoum had fallen. Anxiety may be diminished, but is not banished, by a calculation of probabilities, and the military spirit and capacity exhibited by the Mahdi's forces under Osman Digma in the fighting with General Graham's well-equipped British force at Teb and Tamanieb revealed the greatness of the peril with which Gordon had to deal at Khartoum where he had only the inadequate and untrustworthy garrison described by Colonel de Coetlogon. During the summer of 1884 there was therefore a growing fear, not only that the worst news might come at any moment, but that in the most favourable event any news would reveal the desperate situation to which Gordon had been reduced, and with that conviction came the thought, not whether he had exactly carried out what Ministers had expected him to do, but solely of his extraordinary courage and devotion to his country, which had led him to take up a thankless task without the least regard for his comfort or advantage, and without counting the odds. There was at least one Minister in the Cabinet who was struck by that single-minded conduct; and as early as April, when his colleagues were asking the formal question why Gordon did not leave Khartoum, the Marquis of Hartington, then Minister of War, and now Duke of Devonshire, began to inquire as to the steps necessary to rescue the emissary, while still adhering to the policy of the Administration of which he formed part. During the whole of that summer the present Duke of Devonshire advocated the special claim of General Gordon on the Government, whose mandate he had so readily accepted, and urged the necessity of special measures being taken at the earliest moment to save the gallant envoy from what seemed the too probable penalty of his own temerity and devotion. But for his energetic and consistent representations the steps that were taken--all too late as they proved--never would have been taken at all, or deferred to such a date as to let the public see by the event that there was no use in throwing away money and precious lives on a lost cause.

If the first place among those in power--for of my own and other journalists' efforts in the Press to arouse public opinion and to urge the Government to timely action it is unnecessary to speak--is due to the Duke of Devonshire, the second may reasonably be claimed by Lord Wolseley. This recognition is the more called for here, because the most careful consideration of the facts has led me to the conclusion, which I would gladly avoid the necessity of expressing if it were possible, that Lord Wolseley was responsible for the failure of the relief expedition. This stage of responsibility has not yet been reached, and it must be duly set forth that on 24th July Lord Wolseley, then Adjutant-General, wrote a noble letter, stating that, as he "did not wish to share the responsibility of leaving Charley Gordon to his fate," he recommended "immediate action," and "the despatch of a small brigade of between three and four thousand British soldiers to Dongola, so that they might reach that place about 15th October." But even that date was later than it ought to have been, especially when the necessity of getting the English troops back as early in the New Year as possible was considered, and in the subsequent recriminations that ensued, the blame for being late from the start was sought to be thrown on the badness of the Nile flood that year. General Gordon himself cruelly disposed of that theory or excuse when he wrote, "It was not a bad Nile; quite an average one. You were too late, that was all." Still, Lord Wolseley must not be robbed of the credit of having said on 24th July that an expedition was necessary to save Gordon, "his old friend and Crimean comrade," towards whom Wolseley himself had contracted a special moral obligation for his prominent share in inducing him to accept the very mission that had already proved so full of peril. In short, if the plain truth must be told, Lord Wolseley was far more responsible for the despatch of General Gordon to Khartoum than Mr Gladstone.

The expedition was finally sanctioned in August, and the news of its coming was known to General Gordon in September, before, indeed, his own despatches of 31st July were received in London, and broke the suspense of nearly half a year. He thought that only a small force was coming, under the command of Major-General Earle, and he at once, as already described, sent his steamers back to Shendy, there to await the troops and convey them to Khartoum. He seems to have calculated that three months from the date of the message informing him of the expedition would suffice for the conveyance of the troops as far as Berber or Metemmah, and at that rate General Earle would have arrived where his steamers awaited him early in November. Gordon's views as to the object of the expedition, which somebody called the Gordon Relief Expedition, were thus clearly expressed:--

Lord Wolseley, still possessed with the idea that, now that an expedition had been sanctioned, the question of time was not of supreme importance, and that the relieving expedition might be carried out in a deliberate manner, which would be both more effective and less exposed to risk, did not reach Cairo till September, and had only arrived at Wady Halfa on 8th October, when his final instructions reached him in the following form:--"The primary object of your expedition is to bring away General Gordon and Colonel Stewart, and you are not to advance further south than necessary to attain that object, and when it has been secured, no further offensive operations of any kind are to be undertaken." These instructions were simple and clear enough. The Government had not discovered a policy. It had, however, determined to leave the garrisons to their fate, despite the National honour being involved, at the very moment that it sanctioned an enormous expenditure to try and save the lives of its long-neglected representatives, Gordon and Colonel Stewart. With extraordinary shrewdness, Gordon detected the hollowness of its purpose, and wrote:--"I very much doubt what is really going to be the policy of our Government, even now that the Expedition is at Dongola," and if they intend ratting out, "the troops had better not come beyond Berber till the question of what will be done is settled."

The receipt of Gordon's and Power's despatches of July showed that there were, at the time of their being written, supplies for four months, which would have carried the garrison on till the end of November. As the greater part of that period had expired when these documents reached Lord Wolseley's hands, it was quite impossible to doubt that time had become the most important factor of all in the situation. The chance of being too late would even then have presented itself to a prudent commander, and, above all, to a friend hastening to the rescue of a friend. The news that Colonel Stewart and some other Europeans had been entrapped and murdered near Merowe, which reached the English commander from different sources before Gordon confirmed it in his letters, was also calculated to stimulate, by showing that Gordon was alone, and had single-handed to conduct the defence of a populous city. Hard on the heels of that intelligence came Gordon's letter of 4th November to Lord Wolseley, who received it at Dongola on 14th of the same month. The letter was a long one, but only two passages need be quoted:--"At Metemmah, waiting your orders, are five steamers with nine guns." Did it not occur to anyone how greatly, at the worst stage of the siege, Gordon had thus weakened himself to assist the relieving expedition? Even for that reason there was not a day or an hour to be lost.

But the letter contained a worse and more alarming passage:--"We can hold out forty days with ease; after that it will be difficult." Forty days would have meant till 14th December, one month ahead of the day Lord Wolseley received the news, but the message was really more alarming than the form in which it was published, for there is no doubt that the word "difficult" is the official rendering of Gordon's, a little indistinctly written, word "desperate." In face of that alarming message, which only stated facts that ought to have been surmised, if not known, it was no longer possible to pursue the leisurely promenade up the Nile, which was timed so as to bring the whole force to Khartoum in the first week of March. Rescue by the most prominent general and swell troops of England at Easter would hardly gratify the commandant and garrison starved into surrender the previous Christmas, and that was the exact relationship between Wolseley's plans and Gordon's necessities.

The date at which Gordon's supplies would be exhausted varied not from any miscalculation, but because on two successive occasions he discovered large stores of grain and biscuits, which had been stolen from the public granaries before his arrival. The supplies that would all have disappeared in November were thus eked out, first till the middle of December, and then finally till the end of January, but there is no doubt that they would not have lasted as long as they did if in the last month of the siege he had not given the civil population permission to leave the doomed town. From any and from every point of view, there was not the shadow of an excuse for a moment's delay after the receipt of that letter on 14th November.

With the British Exchequer at a commander's back, it is easy to organise an expedition on an elaborate scale, and to carry it out with the nicety of perfection, but for the realisation of these ponderous plans there is one thing more necessary, and that is time. I have no doubt if Gordon's letter had said "granaries full, can hold out till Easter," that Lord Wolseley's deliberate march--Cairo, September 27; Wady Halfa, October 8; Dongola, November 14; Korti, December 30; Metemmah any day in February, and Khartoum, March 3, and those were the approximate dates of his grand plan of campaign--would have been fully successful, and held up for admiration as a model of skill. Unfortunately, it would not do for the occasion, as Gordon was on the verge of starvation and in desperate straits when the rescuing force reached Dongola. It is not easy to alter the plan of any campaign, nor to adapt a heavy moving machine to the work suitable for a light one. To feed 10,000 British soldiers on the middle Nile was alone a feat of organisation such as no other country could have attempted, but the effort was exhausting, and left no reserve energy to despatch that quick-moving battalion which could have reached Gordon's steamers early in December, and would have reinforced the Khartoum garrison, just as Havelock and Outram did the Lucknow Residency.

Dongola is only 100 miles below Debbeh, where the intelligence officers and a small force were on that 14th November; Ambukol, specially recommended by Gordon as the best starting-point, is less than fifty miles, and Korti, the point selected by Lord Wolseley, is exactly that distance above Debbeh. The Bayuda desert route by the Jakdul Wells to Metemmah is 170 miles. At Metemmah were the five steamers with nine guns to convoy the desperately needed succour to Khartoum. The energy expended on the despatch of 10,000 men up 150 miles of river, if concentrated on 1000 men, must have given a speedier result, but, as the affair was managed, the last day of the year 1884 was reached before there was even that small force ready to make a dash across the desert for Metemmah.

The excuses made for this, as the result proved, fatal delay of taking six weeks to do what--the forward movement from Dongola to Korti, not of the main force, but of 1000 men--ought to have been done in one week, were the dearth of camels, the imperfect drill of the camel corps, and, it must be added, the exaggerated fear of the Mahdi's power. When it was attempted to quicken the slow forward movement of the unwieldy force confusion ensued, and no greater progress was effected than if things had been left undisturbed. The erratic policy in procuring camels caused them at the critical moment to be not forthcoming in anything approaching the required numbers, and this difficulty was undoubtedly increased by the treachery of Mahmoud Khalifa, who was the chief contractor we employed. Even when the camels were procured, they had to be broken in for regular work, and the men accustomed to the strange drill and mode of locomotion. The last reason perhaps had the most weight of all, for although the Mahdi with all his hordes had been kept at bay by Gordon single-handed, Lord Wolseley would risk nothing in the field. Probably the determining reason for that decision was that the success of a small force would have revealed how absolutely unnecessary his large and costly expedition was. Yet events were to show beyond possibility of contraversion that this was the case, for not less than two-thirds of the force were never in any shape or form actively employed, and, as far as the fate of Gordon went, might just as well have been left at home. They had, however, to be fed and provided for at the end of a line of communication of over 1200 miles.

Still, notwithstanding all these delays and disadvantages, a well-equipped force of 1000 men was ready on 30th December to leave Korti to cross the 170 miles of the Bayuda desert. That route was well known and well watered. There were wells at, at least, five places, and the best of these was at Jakdul, about half-way across. The officer entrusted with the command was Major-General Sir Herbert Stewart, an officer of a gallant disposition, who was above all others impressed with the necessity of making an immediate advance, with the view of throwing some help into Khartoum. Unfortunately he was trammelled by his instructions, which were to this effect--he was to establish a fort at Jakdul; but if he found an insufficiency of water there he was at liberty to press on to Metemmah. His action was to be determined by the measure of his own necessities, not of Gordon's, and so Lord Wolseley arranged throughout. He reached that place with his 1100 fighting men, but on examining the wells and finding them full, he felt bound to obey the orders of his commander, viz. to establish the fort, and then return to Korti for a reinforcement. It was a case when Nelson's blind eye might have been called into requisition, but even the most gallant officers are not Nelsons.

The first advance of General Stewart to Jakdul, reached on 3rd January 1885, was in every respect a success. It was achieved without loss, unopposed, and was quite of the nature of a surprise. The British relieving force was at last, after many months' report, proved to be a reality, and although late, it was not too late. If General Stewart had not been tied by his instructions, but left a free hand, he would undoubtedly have pressed on, and a reinforcement of British troops would have entered Khartoum even before the fall of Omdurman. But it must be recorded also that Sir Herbert Stewart was not inspired by the required flash of genius. He paid more deference to the orders of Lord Wolseley than to the grave peril of General Gordon.

General Stewart returned to Korti on the 7th January, bringing with him the tired camels, and he found that during his absence still more urgent news had been received from Gordon, to the effect that if aid did not come within ten days from the 14th December, the place might fall, and that under the nose of the expedition. The native who brought this intimation arrived at Korti the day after General Stewart left, but a messenger could easily have caught him up and given him orders to press on at all cost. It was not realised at the time, but the neglect to give that order, and the rigid adherence to a preconceived plan, proved fatal to the success of the whole expedition.

The first advance of General Stewart had been in the nature of a surprise, but it aroused the Mahdi to a sense of the position, and the subsequent delay gave him a fortnight to complete his plans and assume the offensive.

On 12th January--that is, nine days after his first arrival at Jakdul--General Stewart reached the place a second time with the second detachment of another 1000 men--the total fighting strength of the column being raised to about 2300 men. For whatever errors had been committed, and their consequences, the band of soldiers assembled at Jakdul on that 12th of January could in no sense be held responsible. Without making any invidious comparisons, it may be truthfully said that such a splendid fighting force was never assembled in any other cause, and the temper of the men was strung to a high point of enthusiasm by the thought that at last they had reached the final stage of the long journey to rescue Gordon. A number of causes, principally the fatigue of the camels from the treble journey between Korti and Jakdul, made the advance very slow, and five days were occupied in traversing the forty-five miles between Jakdul and the wells at Abou Klea, themselves distant twenty miles from Metemmah. On the morning of 17th January it became clear that the column was in presence of an enemy.

The other letters handed over by Cassim el Mousse amply bore out the view that a month before the British soldiers reached the last stretch of the Nile to Khartoum Gordon's position was desperate. In one to his sister he concluded, "I am quite happy, thank God, and, like Lawrence, have tried to do my duty," and in another to his friend Colonel Watson: "I think the game is up, and send Mrs Watson, yourself, and Graham my adieux. We may expect a catastrophe in the town in or after ten days. This would not have happened if our people had taken better precautions as to informing us of their movements, but this is 'spilt milk.'" In face of these documents, which were in the hands of Sir Charles Wilson on 21st January, it is impossible to agree with his conclusion in his book "Korti to Khartoum," that "the delay in the arrival of the steamers at Khartoum was unimportant" as affecting the result. Every hour, every minute, had become of vital importance. If the whole Jakdul column had been destroyed in the effort, it was justifiable to do so as the price of reinforcing Gordon, so that he could hold out until the main body under Lord Wolseley could arrive. I am not one of those who think that Sir Charles Wilson, who only came on the scene at the last moment, should be made the scapegoat for the mistakes of others in the earlier stages of the expedition, and I hold now, as strongly as when I wrote the words, the opinion that, "in the face of what he did, any suggestion that he might have done more would seem both ungenerous and untrue." Still the fact remains that on 21st January there was left a sufficient margin of time to avert what actually occurred at daybreak on the 26th, for the theory that the Mahdi could have entered the town one hour before he did was never a serious argument, while the evidence of Slatin Pasha strengthens the view that Gordon was at the last moment only overcome by the Khalifa's resorting to a surprise. On one point of fact Sir Charles Wilson seems also to have been in error. He fixes the fall of Omdurman at 6th January, whereas Slatin, whose information on the point ought to be unimpeachable, states that it did not occur until the 15th of that month.

When Sir Herbert Stewart had fought and won the battle of Abou Klea, it was his intention on reaching the Nile, as he expected to do the next day, to put Sir Charles Wilson on board one of Gordon's own steamers and send him off at once to Khartoum. The second battle and Sir Herbert Stewart's fatal wound destroyed that project. But this plan might have been adhered to so far as the altered circumstances would allow. Sir Charles Wilson had succeeded to the command, and many matters affecting the position of the force had to be settled before he was free to devote himself to the main object of the dash forward, viz. the establishment of communications with Gordon and Khartoum. As the consequence of that change in his own position, it would have been natural that he should have delegated the task to someone else, and in Lord Charles Beresford, as brave a sailor as ever led a cutting-out party, there was the very man for the occasion. Unfortunately, Sir Charles Wilson did not take this step for, as I believe, the sole reason that he was the bearer of an important official letter to General Gordon, which he did not think could be entrusted to any other hands. But for that circumstance it is permissible to say that one steamer--there was more than enough wood on the other three steamers to fit one out for the journey to Khartoum--would have sailed on the morning of the 22nd, the day after the force sheered off from Metemmah, and, at the latest, it would have reached Khartoum on Sunday, the 25th, just in time to avert the catastrophe.

I have referred to the official letter addressed to General Gordon, of which Sir Charles Wilson was the bearer. That letter has never been published, and it is perhaps well for its authors that it has not been, for, however softened down its language was by Lord Wolseley's intercession, it was an order to General Gordon to resign the command at Khartoum, and to leave that place without a moment's delay. Had it been delivered and obeyed , the next official step would have been to censure him for having remained at Khartoum against orders. Thus would the primary, and, indeed, sole object of the Expedition have been attained without regard for the national honour, and without the discovery of that policy, the want of which was the only cause of the calamities associated with the Soudan.

After the 14th of December there is no trustworthy, or at least, complete evidence, as to what took place in Khartoum. A copy of one of the defiant messages Gordon used to circulate for the special purpose of letting them fall into the hands of the Mahdi was dated 29th of that month, and ran to the effect, "Can hold Khartoum for years." There was also the final message to the Sovereigns of the Powers, undated, and probably written, if at all, by Gordon, during the final agony of the last few weeks, perhaps when Omdurman had fallen. It was worded as follows:--

"After salutations, I would at once, calling to mind what I have gone through, inform their Majesties, the Sovereigns, of the action of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire, who appointed me as Governor-General of the Soudan for the purpose of appeasing the rebellion in that country.

"During the twelve months that I have been here, these two Powers, the one remarkable for her wealth, and the other for her military force, have remained unaffected by my situation--perhaps relying too much on the news sent by Hussein Pasha Khalifa, who surrendered of his own accord.

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