Major-General Charles George Gordon, C.B., R.E.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4743, 20 March 1884, Page 2

Major-General Charles George Gordon, C.8., R.E.

" Chinese Gordon " is the most notable of living Englishmen. He comes of a soldier race. His great-grandfather fought against the Pretender for King George; his grandfather was at the taking of Quebec; his father was a general of artillery, served in Sicilly and Italy, and fought in the battle of Maida in 1806 when British soldiers first in this century sKbwed, by beating a superior force y( them, that French soldiers were not in* vincible. He himself was born one and fifty years ago. He .was,,, schooled, at. Taunton and Woolwich, till at fourteen he entered the Military Academy, where he remained for five years a hopeless " pickle "; who once received • a .special rebnke and reduction to the ranks from Lord Anglesey. He was longer getting through his examination than any other cadet had ever been ; and he only passed into the Engineers at last by dint of the painful experience of examiners' little ways which he had acquired in a long course of plucking.

In 1852, however he got his commission in the Engineers. He went to ..the Crimea, was wounded in the> trenches, and was in the attack on the Bedan. He was aftewards employed on,the>Bonndary Commission' in Bessarabia and Asia. ■ Bat . while he was in the trenches before Sebastopol The great Tapping inrarrec* tion was making such way in China as threatened to bring to an end the Manchoo dynasty which bad lasted 200, and the Chinese empire which had .lasted 4COO years. This insurrection was headed by Hung-Sow-tsen, w^ho styled himself the Tien Wang, or Heavenly King, and professed ft kind of Christianity. In 1853 he had captured Nanking, the ancient capital of China, and had barely failed to capture Fekin, the modern oapitaU Then the Manchoo dynasty fell - upon troubles with the Crimean allies; and because the English insisted on selling opium in China, and Admiral Hope had got beaten at the Taku Forts, Fekin was captured in 1890 by the English 'and French, instead of by the Tai-pings. Meantime a force of rowdies had been organised by the Chinese merchants of Shanghai against these same Tai-pings, and had been put under the command : first of one Ward, an American adventurer who was killed fighting, and then of Burgevine, another American. In January, 1863, the English decided to act; against the Tai-pings, I who hid aj>«X proached towards Shanghai. Captain. Holland, an English officer, was therefore-| appointed on Burgevine's dismissal, to command the Shanghai force, now called the •" Ever Victorious Army." Holland;» got repulsed by••the Tai-pings. Thereupon Gordon, who|had been travelling and triangulating about the Great Wall was pot at the head of the force, and Charlie Gordon became "Chinese" Gordon. He addressed himself to the business with rare energy, ability, and single-mindedness. He reorganised the force which had always been, and always continued to be prone to disorder and mutiny; he launched a flotilla, and entered upon a campaign in which he captured many cities, fought orer thirty desperate battles, and finally was found in May, 1864, to hare reconquered China with his 3000 men, for the Manohoo dynasty. He was wounded once, and had the most marveUouit escapes, jfet be [ never went armed himself with more than a bamboo stick ; except upon one occasion when he raged about to 'ake the life of bis Chinese superior officer for a breach of faith towards the enemy in haying executed eight of the insurgent chiefs who had surrendered to Gordon's own protection. , - ,- The Chinese Government were most grateful for these, services. They gare him the rank of iTi4.Ti,sr provincial corner mander-in-chief; they gave him, the Yellow Jacket, which answers to our Order of the Garter, only, that it is far more ancient; and they offered him a gift ■■ of £17,0%, But Gordon would not hare ' it said that he had sold his blcod. He refused the £17j000 for himself, and demanded instead, and got, £30,000 for his army, which he paid off and disbanded. ;,;

The English Government were likewise grateful. They nrade him a C.8., that raising him to .the same rank with Mr Creppy Vivian and Mr Phillip Ctmle, the Foreign Office clerks, Sir Bernard Burke, the compiler of pearagesj ; and - other eminent persons. It was felt that a man of bis power should be appropriately employed. As, however, the drains and outhouses at Wcaiwich were considered' for the moment safe, he was necessarily left aside till 1871, when he was appointed Vice-Consul of theDeUabf the Danube. , In 1873, however, a man was wanted in Egypt. The Eg/ptian Government applied fo Gordon to govern its equatorial provinces. They offered him tbe same salary as had been given to his predecessor, Sir Samuel Baker, £10,000 a year, Gordon declined this, declaring that it wii too much, and took £2000 a year. : Again he governed, fought, and ; conquered, showing himself a true master of men. At the end of 1876 he came to England for a few weeks, and then returned to the gorernorship of - the Soudaa. and* the suppression of the slave trade. 'In ' August, 1879, he went to Abyssinia, ceded to the King of that country a. province which in right belonged to it, had a quarrel with the Egyptian Government, because they Would not recognise the right, and in January 1880 abandoned Egypt and want again to England..

In May, 1880, he unwisely; Jaltowed himself to be seduced into becoming private secretary to Lord Ripon. A fewweeks this showed him, what one better acquainted with official ways would haret, known, that an honest man cannot do the dirty werk required of a Viceroy's prirate secretary. He resigued the post, therefore, and not only generously forebore to tell the world the true reason of his resignation,, bub took all the blame upon himseif in a letter which made him appear to be merely headstrong and crotchety. Yet he acted rightly, and as an honourable and honeßt man only could act Having resigbed, he was at once inrited to China to advise on the quarrel of that country with Russia. Thither he weoffc instantly in. spite of the prohibition of amazed Horse Guards authorities, which n.e answered by resigning his commission —a resignation which there was still sense enough left in London to refuse to accept. He gave, excellent counsel to the Chinese. Gorernment; he returned again to, Eagtand; he went to South Africa to try «nd make peace for the Basutos—in which he naturally failed, because his honest straightforwardness would not square with the tortuous policy of the colonial Qoreroment—ao<J fee if now fo»

grandest Englishman alive, and a majorgeneral in the English Army. General Gordon is the most conscientions, simple*minded, ' unselfish, and honest of men. He has a complete contempt for money, and after having again and again rejected opportunities of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he remains a poor man with nothing in the world but his sword and his honor. The official mind, being incapable of understanding this, regards it as a sign of madness. And as it is found that besides being utterly without greed he is also entirely without vanity or selfassertion, he is set down by the official as being " cracky" and unsafe to employ in comparison with such great men as Lord Chelmsford and Lord Wolseley. When there was easy work to do in Egypt, and cheap honour to be gained, Chinese Gordon Mas not so much as thought of. Then it was a royal prince, a favored admiral, and a favorite general who went, crowned with the cock's feathers of war, surrounded by the might ,of England, with all the pick of the British army and nary at their side, and all the power of the British Empire behind them, to reap medals and, titles from the blood of the fellah. But bow

that there is real danger and real difficulty, and no prospect of honor, nor e?en so much as a probability of success—now the real man is sent forth alone by the Calais night mail to retrieve by a single hand a situation which all others hare only rendered more.and more hopeless. A terrified Government, which but a week before had ordered him to resign the commission in the army rather than allow him to go to the Congo, which had then allowed him to retain his commission and to go all the same, and which had seen him actually depart on his mission, now telegraphed in hot haste to him to come back and to go for them to the Soudan on his own terms, on any terms so that he would go, and accordingly he has gone. He is very modest and very gentle, yet full of enthusiasm for what he holds to be right.

This enthusiasm often leads him to interfere in matters which he does not under-

stand, and to make in haste statements he has to correct at leisure. But he is a fine, noble, knightly gentleman, such as is found but once in many generations.— Vanity Fair.