Chinese Gordon, a succinct record of his life;

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Chinese Gordon, a succinct -rprnrrl nf hi_s — life —

GORDON PASHA.

PHOTOGRArHF.P AT KHARTOUM.-

Chapter I. Early Days, And The Crimea

The character of Charles George Gordon is unique. As it unfolds itself in its curiously varied, but never contradictory aspects, the student is reminded of the attributes of Sir Lancelot, of Bayard, of Cromwell, of John Nicholson, of Arthur Connolly, of Havelock, of Balfour of Burley, of Livingstone, of Hedley Vicars ; but Gordon’s individuality stands out in its incomparable blending of masterfulness and tenderness, of strength and sweetness. His high nature is made the more chivalrous by his fervent piety. His absolute trust in God guides him serenely through the sternest difficulties. Because of that he is alone in no solitude, he is depressed in no extremity. The noble character has its complement in a

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keen sense of humour. No matter how sombre the situation, if there be a comic side to any incident, Gordon sees it and enjoys it. That he has lived through strain so intense, and toil so arduous, is probably due to the never-failing fountain of blitheness that wells up in his nature. He must be richly endowed with the rare gift of personal magnetism. Without that men have attained to greatness : but never with the scantiness of means at command, that has thrown Gordon back mainly on the resources of his own personality ; nor ever with the scrupulousness that has been one of the most strongly marked traits of his career. This may be a plodding and prosaic age ; but no age can be so conventionalised that a man of Gordon’s attributes may not find his opportunities to perform achievements the lustre of which stirs the astonishment and admiration of peoples who can yet appreciate the gifts that alone render those achievements possible. Gordon’s modesty is great, but it would be unnatural and impossible that he should not feel an honest pride in the implicit confidence that leans on his ability to perform, single-handed, the seemingly impossible. This unique una-

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nimity of confidence has been earned by deeds, not words ; no arts have fostered its growth ; it may be said to have come almost in spite of the man in whom it is reposed.

Gordon comes of a race of soldiers. His great-grandfather belonged to “Johnny Cope’s” hapless command, as an officer in Lascelles’ Regiment (now the ist Battalion Lancashire Regiment), and was taken prisoner at Prestonpans by Prince Charlie’s “highland host,” to find a kinsman, Sir William Gordon, of Park, fighting under the Stuart banner. He was paroled through the interposition of the Duke of Cumberland, who was his patron, and the godfather of the son of his who was the grandfather of “ Chinese Gordon.” That son naturally entered the army, and saw varied and plentiful service. He fought at Minorca, at the siege of Louisburg, in what was then French Canada, and on the Plains of Abraham with the gallant Wolfe. In 1773 he married a Miss Clarke, the sister of a Northumbrian clergyman. By her he had four sons, the third of whom, Henry William, born in 1786, was the father of Charles George Gordon, the subject of this memoir.

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Henry William Gordon was a gunner, a fine soldier, a man of the most scrupulous honour, of a temperament better suited, perhaps, for command than for obedience, but a man of remarkable geniality, and possessed of an inexhaustible fund of humour. He lived to be proud of his son, yet it has been told that so high was his ideal of the character of the British officer, that he had no pleasure in learning that his son had accepted the command of an alien and barbarian force, notwithstanding the honour of his selection therefor, and the brilliancy of his achievements in that position. He attained the rank of Lieutenant-General in the service in which he may be said to have been born, and in which he spent a long life. He was well mated in his wife, who had been a Miss Enderby, the daughter of a man of somewhat remarkable character. A London merchant and shipowner, some vessels of his mercantile fleet are historical. Those were two of Samuel Enderby’s ships, chartered by the East India Company, and laden with cargoes of tea, that lay at their moorings in Boston Harbour on that evening of 1773, when Charles Adams stood up in the Old South Church and uttered

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the words, “ This meeting can do nothing more to save the country ! ” That same night the sham Indians boarded Enderby’s ships, hauled on deck the chests of the tea that formed their cargo, broke them up and threw their contents overboard, while the approving citizens crowding the wharf listened in grim silence. When Phillip gave the signal to “ the first fleet ” to cast anchor in Sydney Cove, of the six transports that had carried the convicts to found the new settlement, some were ships chartered by the Government from Charles Gordon's maternal grandfather. His whalers opened up the fisheries in the Antarctic Ocean, among the Islands of the South Pacific, and in Japanese Waters, and made important geographical discoveries while they were cruising with intent to “ fill up ” with oil.

Gordon’s mother, Mr. Hake, in his “Story of Chinese Gordon,” describes as “a remarkable woman. She possessed a perfect temper ; she was always cheerful under the most trying circumstances, and she was always thoughtful of others ; she contended with difficulty without the slightest display of effort ; and she had a genius for making the best of everything. During the Crimean War her anxieties were

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interminable ; she had three sons and several near kinsmen at the front. She was perfectly equal to the strain. Her hopefulness remained unclouded ; all day long did she busy herself with the wants of others at home and in the field ; while a duty remained to be done, or a kindness to be bestowed, her sunny energy maintained her at her work.” This admirable woman — worthy mother of a noble son — gave her husband eleven children, five sons and six daughters. Of the sons three entered the army, and two are living. Of these two the younger is Charles George Gordon, he who now at the age of fifty-one — he was born at Woolwich, January 28th, 1833 — is engaged in the work of the pacification of the Soudan.

Of Gordon’s boyhood there is little to relate. A soldier’s son, he shared some at least of the paternal migrations on military duty, for we hear of his having been in the Ionian Islands when his father was in command of the artillery there. He was prepared at Taunton for the Royal Military Academy, which he entered when as yet he had not completed his fifteenth year. H is health in youth gave no promise of the phenomenal endurance which later in life he

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has undergone with surprising immunity from serious illness. “He was not strong,” says Mr. Hake, “and this may account for his having done nothing really noteworthy either at school or at his later examinations. In this part of his story there was always humour, and now and then there were flashes of that resolution and energy which have since shown themselves in so many ways, and to such splendid purpose. Once, for instance, during his cadetship at the Academy, he was rebuked for incompetence, and told that he would never make an officer ; whereupon he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and flung them at his superior’s feet.” As an instance of ‘‘resolution and energy” the anecdote proves rather too much. General Gordon has still a temper, and can “ fly out ” on occasion, but he is too good a soldier to justify the insubordination which it discloses, assuming the anecdote to be true. He must have worked hard at the Academy, and “ incompetence ” could hardly have been chargeable against a lad who came out so well as to win his appointment to the Royal Engineers. To that distinguished scientific corps he was gazetted as second lieutenant in July, 1852 ; so that he was

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nineteen and a-half years of age when he began his military career.

For two years he was at desk duty at Pembroke, preparing the plans for the fortifications that have since been constructed about the entrance to Milford Haven. The lad must have been eating his heart as he worked with rule and pencil, while more fortunate fellows were sailing eastward to where Sevastopol frowned over the waters of the Black Sea ; but the time was coming when there should be other work than plan-making for a capable and resolute officer. He got the route for the Crimea in December, 1854, and on New Year’s Day, 1855, the Golden Fleece carried him into that maritime chaos, the harbour of Balaclava. He landed in the very middle of the terrible “ black winter.” Everywhere prevailed misery, disease, and discontent. The great storm of the 14th November had gone far to ruin the encampments, and had shipwrecked a great fleet of vessels laden with stores that would have mitigated the rigour of the bitter winter. What of the cavalry horses Balaclava had left were dying at their picket ropes of cold and inanition. Fuel was not less cruelly scarce than

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was food. On the squalor, hunger, and general wretchedness cholera had supervened, and the ranks were thinning faster than if every day had furnished a hard fought skirmish. The French were getting on with their trench work, but the English had to concentrate their attention on the too often unsuccessful effort to keep alive. So in the lull of work the young engineer officer seems to have been neglected if not forgotten, and it was not until he had been landed a month that he was detailed for his first turn of service in the trenches. His duties thenceforward until the fall of Sevastopol were simply those of a junior officer of engineers, consisting mainly in the superintendence of the execution of the plans for the details of the siege operations devised by the superior officers of the “ scientific corps.” This work entailed the most arduous and continuous labour, all but chronic exposure to hostile fire, not a little risk, when out to the front either reconnoitring for the site for a new parallel or a further advanced battery, or when engaged in laying out the “ trace ” with tape line and pegs, of being the recipient of an accidental bullet from our own side ; the danger also of being abandoned out in the front, because

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of a sudden scare in the advanced lines behind the adventurous pioneer, and of being either shot down or made prisoner by a sudden sortie. The earliest task set him, says Mr. Hake, was to effect a junction by means of rifle pits between the French and English sentries posted in advance of the trenches ; and in a letter home he describes how “ after being first fired upon by the English sentries, and then by the Russian pickets, and how often the working party and sentries under his command had bolted, he was able to carry out his first definite order on active service.”

The engineer service in the siege of Sevastopol never received the recognition which it most justly merited, because of the devotion, skill, and bravery of the officers who performed it. Kinglake scarcely refers to it, and William Howard Russell does not often allude to any engineer officer, except that most brilliant and ill-fated officer whose career the late Col. Chesney so vividly sketched in the paper entitled “ Gordon of Gordon’s Battery.” The same gifted author, in another paper, takes occasion to say something of the character his Crimean service earned for that gallant officer’s junior of the

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n same name. Of the latter Chesney writes : “ Gordon had first seen war in the hard school of the ‘black winter’ of the Crimean War. In his humble position as an engineer subaltern he had attracted the notice of his superiors, not merely by his energy and activity (for these are not, it may be asserted, uncommon characteristics of his class), but by an extraordinary aptitude for war, developing itself amid the trench-work before Sevastopol in a personal knowledge of the enemy’s movements such as no other officer attained. ‘We used always to send him out to find what new move the Russians were making,’ was the testimony given to his genius by one of the most distinguished officers he served under.”

It was in the acquisition of this knowledge in the course of sedulously constructing batteries that Charles Gordon spent the spring of 1855, on that bleak Crimean plateau. Russell thus speaks of the spectacle the front presented in March as the result of the labour expended on works and counter-works : — “ The front of Sevastopol, between English, French and Russians, looks like a large graveyard, covered as it is with freshly- made mounds of dark earth in all

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directions.” In the performance of duties involving so much exposure, he must have had innumerable narrow escapes. One of these, when a bullet from one of the Russian rifle-pits passed within an inch of his head, he dismisses in a letter home with the terse comment : “ They (the Russians) are very good marksmen ; their bullet is large and pointed.” The engineer officers were severely taxed and exceptionally exposed during the preparations for the second bombardment in April, for the fourth parallel had to be constructed within six paces of the Russian rifle-pits, and during its continuance, when an embrasure was struck and injured by the return cannonade, it devolved upon them to set an example by freely exposing themselves when repairs were being made under fire. Gordon escaped untouched, amid the numerous casualties in the trenches, although constantly in the forefront of danger, and engaged in the resistance made to sortie after sortie from the Redan position of the Russians. In a letter home written during the bombardment he expresses himself with some confidence in regard to what Russell calls the “ golden opportunity ” for an assault not taken advantage of when the

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mass of the Sevastopol garrison had been sent out to reinforce Liprandi, in anticipation of his being attacked, of which there was no intention in the allied camp. Gordon writes : “ I think we might have assaulted on Monday, but the French do not seem to care about it. The garrison is 25,000, and on that day we heard afterwards that only 8,000 were in the place, as the rest had gone to repel an attack (fancied) of ours at Inkermann.”

From April 30, the advance of trench-work in the English front was almost at a standstill until the Mamelon, which enfiladed our advance works, should fall ; but Gordon with his comrades was unremittingly busy in preparing for the third bombardment, which unprecedentedly stupendous artillery duel began on June 6. Naturally Gordon was in the trenches, and he was returned among the wounded, but his injury was merely a contusion from a stone which a round shot had thrown up, and he did not allow it to disable him from duty. On the following day the French carried the Mamelon, and were able to hold it, but they were repulsed in their effort to storm the Malakoff, and our attempt on the Redan, which was led by Sir John Campbell, and which Gordon accompanied, fared no better. Many shared Gordon’s opinion, expressed in a letter written after the fall of the Mamelon : “ I do not think the place can hold out for another ten days, and Sevastopol once taken, the Crimea is ours.” The Russian defence was more stubborn than the most competent judges had expected; technically, Sevastopol was never taken, and, since the Russians held the north shore till peace was signed, the Crimea was never ours. Although our people did not achieve the Redan on the day the Mamelon fell, they were successful in seizing and holding the important position of the “ Quarries,” in front of it ; and Gordon bore his share in the enterprise, escaping, more fortunate than many gallant comrades, without a scratch. Here is an extract from a letter written by his brother : — “ Only a few lines to say Charlie is all right, and has escaped amidst a terrific shower of grape and shells of all descriptions. You may imagine the suspense I was kept in until assured of his safety. He cannot write himself, and is now fast asleep in his tent, having been in the trenches from 2 o’clock yesterday morning during the can-

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nonade until seven last night, and again from 12.30 this morning until noon.”

The final bombardment began on September 5th; on the 8th the French took the Malakoff, while we were unsuccessful in getting and keeping a firm grip on the Redan. A second assault on that position was resolved on for the following day, but it was not necessary to deliver it. The Russians evacuated Sevastopol on the night between 8th and 9th September, and withdrew across the harbour to the north shore position. Gordon was for duty in the trenches on the morning of the 9th, and this is his account of what he saw : — “ During the night of the 8th I had heard terrific explosions, and going down to the trenches at four next morning, I saw a splendid sight. The whole of Sevastopol was in flames, and every now and then terrible explosions took place, while the rising sun shining on the place had a most beautiful effect. The Russians were leaving the town by the bridge ; all the three deckers were sunk, the steamers alone remaining. Tons and tons of powder must have been blown up. About eight o’clock I got an order to commence a plan of the works, for which purpose I went to the

Redan, where a dreadful sight was presented. The dead were buried in the ditch — the Russians with the English — Mr. Wright reading the burial service over them.”

Gordon went on duty with the expedition to K inburn, and participated in the reduction of that place ; after which he returned to the Crimea, where he remained until the evacuation in February, 1856, engaged in the duty, so distasteful to an engineer, of demolishing the defences, arsenal, and dockyard of the fallen stronghold. Mr. Hake quotes some letters written home by Gordon, chiefly between the third bombardment and the final stroke of good fortune. What is characteristic in these may be extracted here. Gordon clearly, and with justice, had a high respect for the soldierhood of the Russians ; and perhaps his idiosyncracy did not allow him to do adequate justice to the French. “The Russians,” says he, “are brave, better I think than the French, who begin to fear them.” Again, “ the Russians certainly are inferior to none ; their work is stupendous, and their shell practice beautiful.” And yet again, on June 15th, “the Russians are downhearted though determined ; they are much to be ad-

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mired, and their officers are quite as cool as our officers under fire.”

He thus refers to Lord Raglan’s death and character : — “Lord Raglan died of tear and wear and general debility. He was universally regretted, as he was so kind. His life has been entirely spent in the service of his country. I hope he was prepared, but do not know.” The last sentence indicates what ever has been uppermost in Gordon’s thoughts. Writing previously of the sudden end of Captain Craigie, a brother officer, he says, “ I am glad to say that he was a serious man. The shell burst above him, and by what is called chance, struck him in the back, killing him at once.” It is by such utterances that the reader can form for himself a better conception of the tenets of this remarkable man, than could be conveyed in pages of attempted characterisation ; a man’s own words, especially when they are not intended for effect, give the truest tracing of his mental and moral lineaments. On August 3rd he writes, “We are disappointed that General Jones did not mention Brown in the attack on the Quarries.” This is the esprit de corps ; but he goes on to guard himself individually against an appetite for milk

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tary glory — “ I, for one,” he adds, “do not care about being ‘lamented’ after death.” If he comments on neglect, it is no personal growl —

“ I am not ambitious,” he says, “but what easily earned C. B.’s and Majorities there are in some cases ! while men who have earned them, like poor Oldfield, get nothing. I am sorry for him. He was always squabbling about his batteries with us, but he got more done by his perseverance than any man before did.”

The close of the Crimean War saw Gordon’s status defined among his comrades and superiors as an officer of adequate parts and of sterling trustworthiness. He had no opportunities to give earnest of his great future, but as Chesney has recorded, his “special aptitude for war ” had been recognized by the men who had the best means of forming the judgment. Sir Harry Jones reported of him as an officer who had done gallant service, and indicated that he had earned promotion; if the regulations of his corps had permitted that advancement. And he was awarded the Legion of Honour, a token of distinction conferred on few officers of his rank, for as yet he was a subaltern. His promotion as first lieutenant had come to him

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in February, 1855, just as he began his trench work, but he was not to get his captaincy until three years after the Crimean War had ended.

By the Treaty of Paris Russia lost what she has since regained by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, a slice of territory the possession of which carries with it a control over the lower .Danube. Until 1812 this territory had been part of the Turkish Empire, when it fell to Russia among the spoils of Kutusoff’s successful campaign. By the Treaty of Bucharest Russian Bessarabia had been advanced to the Pruth, and the principality of Moldavia proportionately curtailed. Now there was to be the retrocession to Moldavia of what had been taken from it forty-five years before. A commission, consisting of English, French, Russian, and Austrian officers, was appointed to lay down the new frontier line, and the British commissioner was Major Stanton (now Sir Edward Stanton). Lieutenants Gordon and James, both engineers, as was their principal, were assistant commissioners, and their duties began in the summer of 1856. There was plenty of variety in the work. If the salt marshes bordering- the Black Sea are detestable and noxious, if life about the

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Kilia mouth of the Danube is amphibious, and presents the added joy of mosquitoes whose size and viciousness are only to be found equalled in Manitoba, if Kischeneff, the headquarters of the commission, was and is one of the most commonplace, sordid, and unattractive of the huge villages which in Southern Russia pass for towns ; there was life and colour and picturesqueness in the quaint semi-oriental towns of the Principality. Jassy, the Moldavian capital, thirty years ago was even a quainter field for ethnological study than it is to-day. Ismail, on the Danube, still then showed in its shattered walls the print of Potemkin’s furious attacks, and the not less memorable stubbornness of its defence. Gordon and James “rode the marches” for nearly a year, verifying or correcting the Russian maps, surveying the boundary line, and carrying despatches. We are told that Gordon, in this work, so different from that in which he had been engaged in the Crimea, enjoyed himself greatly, and took a keen interest in all that he saw. It was finished at length, after multitudinous disputes, for the Russians begrudged the surrender ; but Gordon was not free to return to England. He was

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ordered instead, to transfer himself to similar work in another continent. There was a delimitation commission in Asia Minor as well as in Bessarabia, at the head of which Colonel Simmons (now Sir Lintorn Simmons) was engaged. Him Gordon was ordered to join. Gordon was home-sick, and telegraphed to solicit that another officer might be substituted. But he was a proven useful man, and the peremptory answer came back, “ Lieutenant Gordon must go.” In Armenia he first came into contact with wild uncivilised peoples, and learned to understand their complex yet simple nature. His duties on the commission took him to the historic places of the land so teeming with associations, and he ascended Mount Ararat. Mr. Hake writes, “After six months spent in these regions he went back to Constantinople, to be present at a conference of the commission. Here he remained longer than he had expected, to nurse his chief, who had fallen ill. This done, he was not sorry to return to England after his three years’ absence. Another six months in England, and he was once more sent to Armenia as commissioner. Here he remained from the spring of 1858 until nearly

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the end of the year, employed in verifying the frontier he had taken so active a part in laying down, and in examining the new road between the Russian and Turkish dominions.”

After his return to England from this frontier delimitation service, Gordon had a turn of “ duty soldiering ” at home, in the capacity of Instructor of Fieldworks and Adjutant at Chatham. He attained the rank of Captain on April ist, 1859. He had then been a soldier for seven years, less two months. His age was twenty-six.

Chapter II. Chinese Gordon In China

Leaving England for China in July, i860, Captain Gordon did not reach the scene of our military operations there in time to participate in the capture of the Taku Forts. But September saw him at Tientsin, whence the allied forces had already commenced (September 9) their advance on Pekin, since the Chinese Commissioners were shuffling in the Chinese manner in regard to compliance with the conditions on which the allies were prepared to suspend hostilities and conclude peace. It was in the course of this movement, while negotiations were still proceeding, and had suddenly seemed prospering when indeed a basis of arrangement had been agreed to, that the representatives of the British Ambassador with their escort, while on their way back to the army from Tungchow after a not unsatisfactory conference with the

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Chinese Commissioners, were beset, made prisoners, vilely maltreated, and finally carried off to dungeons in Pekin, whence few of the party emerged alive. This outrage made further negotiations out of the question until satisfaction had been exacted. Lord Elgin informed the Chinese authorities that he would sign no convention with the Imperial Commissioners except within the walls of Pekin ; and the stern pronouncement was made good. But as the advance was now to be an avowedly hostile one, certain additional military preparations had to be made which detained the allied armies near T ungchow until the beginning of October. This pause gave Captain Gordon the opportunity of joining the British force which the late Sir Hope Grant so ably commanded. Pekin was reached on 6th October, and during the two following days the army confronted the north wall of the capital, with the principal concentration directed against the An-ting Gate.

The allied commanders had given the Chinese authorities until noon on the 1 3th to surrender the gate, failing which immediate hostile action would be resorted to. The artillery and engineers were in possession of a temple close to the

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gate, and under cover of its courtyard were busying themselves in getting the siege train ready for action. In this work Gordon participated. “We were sent down,” he writes, “ in a great hurry to throw up works and batteries against the town, as the Chinese refused to give up the gate we required them to surrender before we would treat with them. The Chinese were given until noon, on the 1 3th (October) to give up the (An- ting) gate. We made a lot of batteries, and everything was ready for the assault of the wall, which is battlemented, and forty feet high, but of inferior masonry. At 1 1.30 p.m. (12th), however, the gate was opened, and we took possession, so our work was of no avail.” It became a problem for Lord Elgin, in what manner to inflict an adequate punishment for the treacherous seizure of Parkes and his companions, the murders wrought on so many of the party, and the diabolical cruelty inflicted on all its members. To burn the capital would have been to punish a vast population guiltless of complicity in the outrage. Yet the penalty had to be one that would ring throughout the whole empire. The complicity of the Emperor and the Government in the treatment of the prisoners stood proven. These had been taken in the first instance to the Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the celebrated “Summer Palace,” and there had been begun the ill-usage which resulted in so many deaths. The clothing of the victims had been found in the palace, and their horses in the imperial stables. So the orders were given for the destruction of the “Summer Palace” by fire. The vast and costly bonfire was kindled on the 1 8th October, and during the whole of the next day Yuen-Ming-Yuen was still burning ; the clouds of smoke, driven by the wind, hung like a vast pall over Pekin. Next day Prince Yung intimated absolute submission to all the demands of the allies, and four days later a treaty was signed with much pomp in the Hall of Ceremonies, around which bristled British bayonets in the very heart of the Imperial City. At this scene Gordon was not present, “ as all officers commanding companies were obliged to remain in camp, owing to the ill-teatment the prisoners experienced at the Summer Palace.” The men were vicious, and needed controlling from exacting revenge. But he saw, and deplores, the destruction of the “Summer Palace.” He writes : — “We went out, and after pillaging it,