Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  Once Gordon’s steamers finally arrived in July 1875 and having, he thought, secured the north, Gordon now undertook what he regarded as his chief logistical responsibility in Equatoria. This was to build a string of forts one day apart southward from Gondokoro to Baker’s last surviving outposts at Foweira and Fatiko and thence, through Mrooli (deep in hostile Bunyoro country) to the northern end of the Great Lakes. His soldiers would then transport, in sections, metal steamers around Fola (Makada) Falls and their launch onto the lakes would open that region to Christianity and the ‘legitimate trade’ that were the harbingers of civilisation.14

  On 25 August 1875 Linant was killed, falling victim to a Bari ambush as he and forty-three men crossed the river to burn their village in retaliation for earlier attacks: only one survived. Within three months, seven of Gordon’s ten staff members – all alienated from him – died or returned to Khartoum and one of his captains committed suicide. Nonetheless, at the end of September, he established his first fort at Rejaf and by the year’s end, he succeeded in setting up forts at Bedden, Kerri, Dufilé, Moogie and Patiko. He also had the 50-ton steamer Nyanza assembled at Dufilé, and pushed southward to Lake Albert. Wishing to avoid ‘the inordinate praise which is given to an explorer’,15 Gordon gave Gessi the honour of sailing onto Lake Albert. Nuehr Agha, who had come with Gessi, was sent south in January to establish two new outposts at Urondogani (Murchison) Falls at Lake Albert and at Cositza (Ripon Falls) at Lake Victoria at the edge of Mutesa’s domain. Mutesa forced him to build his fort at his capital at Rubega instead and 160 of his men were kept virtual captives there.

  Nuehr got word back and himself reported to Gordon in mid-August. A German-Jewish doctor, Edouard Karl Oskar Theodor Schnitzer, who had entered Turkish service and converted (at least outwardly) to Islam, adopting the name Emin Pasha, had been invited by Gordon (in desperate need of a medical officer) to join him, despite his dislike of both Jews and apostates. Emin had arrived in May, and Gordon now sent him with Nuehr and ninety additional soldiers to Rubega to meet with the now thoroughly confused Mutesa, who had also received a British Christian mission sent by Stanley. Emin turned out to be a skilful negotiator, his mission ended successfully and they returned with the garrison stranded there earlier, but without a formal treaty. When, in 1878, Gordon concluded that the lakes region would never pay the costs of Egyptian control, he appointed Emin governor of Equatoria.

  Gordon went home in October 1876, leaving an American, Colonel Prout, in charge. In Cairo Gordon claimed he had accomplished his mission to the extent possible and tendered his resignation to the Khedive. The Khedive offered him the Governorship of the Sudan and Gordon promised to think it over while in England. As Governor of Equatoria for three years, Gordon had not eradicated the slave trade, though he had limited, albeit less so than he thought, the slavers’ access to riverine transport routes, and made the purchase of slaves less secure as an investment. The price of slaves declined in Khartoum during Gordon’s tenure, because the purchaser could not be sure that he could keep his investment in captivity. Nor had he secured Egyptian control over the Lakes or over the Buganda or Bunyoro peoples of that region, or imposed administrative or legal control over any of the territory he charted. But he had extended southward Egyptian control of the Nile from Sobat to within 60 miles of Lake Victoria, increased the ivory trade to make his administration more economically self-sustaining and, in immediately imperceptible ways, roused both the expectations and fears of the peoples he encountered about the impacts that the northern conquerors might bring with them. While there, bouts of melancholia afflicted him periodically, his relations with his own small cadre of officers remained for the most part formal and distant – that with his men mostly indifferent and condescending – and his willingness to learn about or establish direct relations with the native peoples virtually non-existent, although he admitted that ‘I cannot govern without knowing the language … I am quite like a blind man, I grope my way by instinct.’ All agreed that as a leader he was ‘incorruptible, conscientious, and even-handed’.16 Given the meagre resources at his disposal, and the climatic and ecological obstacles he faced, and the complex politics of the region, these were considerable accomplishments. Financially, he was still not rich, but his Equatoria service did enable him to endow the annuity paid to his brother’s widow and to buy his sister Victoria a small house.

  Gordon arrived back in England in December 1876 as the Turks suppressed a rebellion in Bulgaria. As the Tsar threatened to come to their aid, there was some talk of the British government looking for a way to thwart Russian Balkan ambitions by recommending Gordon, already technically in Turkish service, as temporary Governor of Bulgaria. He discussed the possibility with the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, but nothing came of it. Instead Disraeli, along with members of the royal family, supported the Khedive’s plea for Gordon to return.

  Gordon accepted his commission and sailed from England on 31 January. In Cairo, the Khedive informed him that he was now a Field Marshal of the Egyptian army, that Egypt was about to conclude an anti-slavery treaty with Britain and that he hoped that Gordon would assist in carrying out its terms. But the Khedive had a more urgent matter for Gordon. In 1874 the Swiss governor of Massawa, on the Red Sea across from Aden and technically part of the territory that Gordon was to administer, took advantage of a succession crisis in Abyssinia to seize one of its northern provinces, Bogos, and convinced the Khedive to seize the neighbouring Hamaçem province. The new Abyssinian Negus (King), Johannes, who also laid claim to Massawa, defeated the invading Egyptian force and sent an envoy to Cairo to negotiate the restoration of the antebellum boundary. The Egyptians imprisoned him until the British Consul secured his release, further angering Johannes. At the same time, a nominally Egyptian chieftain, Walid al-Michael, who controlled territory on both sides of the border, launched raids into Abyssinia, killing a district governor. Johannes demanded that the Egyptians turn him over for punishment. The Khedive made extricating Egypt from this quagmire Gordon’s first assignment. Gordon thus travelled to meet with Walid, offering him, on Egypt’s behalf, either an Abyssinian or an Egyptian governorship in return for his good behaviour. With nothing resolved, but with Johannes’s attention turning to internal problems – chiefly an ongoing campaign against the Shoa – and Walid promising to stand down, Gordon left for Khartoum.

  On 5 May 1877 Gordon was formally installed as Governor General. He initiated a series of proposals and reforms, promising, after he surveyed the deplorable state of the city’s sewers, that pumps would be installed to bring river water into the city, abolishing flogging (though he retained the right to punish miscreants according to Islamic law), restoring privileges to the ulema, and making himself accessible to the public by placing a locked complaint box outside his office where anyone could anonymously make a complaint or report official misconduct. Despite these reforms, and much to Gordon’s chagrin, administrative corruption continued, even within his own palace.

  Gordon also wrote to Johannes offering to confirm the border and promising Egyptian neutrality in his war against the Shoa, but Johannes angrily rejected the offer, though the next year he accepted the terms. Gordon was immediately confronted with several pressing issues. There were 6,000 Bashi-Bazouk mercenary frontier guards who were out of control; and there was a threat of an uprising against them. Egyptian authority in general in Darfur and Bahr al-Ghazil, where Haroun al Rashid, the nephew of the slain Sultan of Darfur, was leading a Baggara rebellion in northern Darfur, was under pressure. In the south, Suleiman bin Zubeir, 22-year-old son of Zubeir Pasha, was threatening to join the rebellion with a bazinger slave army – they were also slave hunters – he had raised at his slaving capital of Shaka.

  Faced with this rebellion and a complete lack of response by the Egyptian garrisons there, Gordon, his staff and his 300-man camel corps set out for Darfur. Arriving at the Egyptian border fort of Foggia, several hours in advance of his support force, on 7 June, he impresse
d its governor and garrison with his bearing, splendid uniform, and medals, and browbeat them into compliance. Gordon next led 150 men to relieve the siege at El Fasher. Learning of his advance, Haroun withdrew to Jebel Mara. Gordon had no wish to confront the rebel horsemen even with the whole of his ‘rag-bag and bob-tail’ force of 2,700 second-rate Egyptian soldiers, Bashi-Bazouks, and ‘loyal’ Sudanese tribesmen. With the siege lifted, Gordon moved to secure the road between Foggia and El Fasher and, between June and early October, secured most of the oases that slave caravans might frequent.

  Desperate to find an effective administrator for Darfur, Gordon wrote to the explorer Richard Burton in June 1877. Burton, who was working in a British consular office in Trieste, refused, saying ‘you and I are too much alike. I could not work under you, nor you under me’.17 In September Gordon returned to Dara to confront Suleiman, who had pillaged his way there with his army. Again resplendent in his Egyptian uniform, Gordon used broken Arabic, body language and hand gestures to berate the chieftains. When they submitted to his authority, convinced that attacking an Englishman would unleash perpetual vengeance against them by the British, Suleiman had no choice but to do the same. Despite Suleiman’s pleas for the position, Gordon made one of Zubeir’s now ‘reformed’ officers, Idris Abtar, governor of Bahr al-Ghazil, with the disgraced and disgruntled Suleiman his second in command.

  Map to illustrate General Gordon’s Journals. (From A. Egmont Hake, The Journals of Major-General C.G. Gordon CB, at Khartoum, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885)

  Uninterested in, and bored by, the tedium of day-to-day administration, Gordon embarked on a northern inspection tour in October 1877. He then received reports that trouble had again broken out along the Abyssinian border and set off for Suakin. Once there, he unsuccessfully attempted to communicate with Johannes and then, with a ten-man escort, visited Walid’s camp. To keep him from marauding across the Abyssinian border, Gordon increased Walid’s ‘subvention’ to £1,000 per year and suggested that he might seek Johannes’ pardon for his prior bad acts so that Abyssinia might be available as a sanctuary if Sudanese forces attacked him later. On his return, Gordon was summoned to Cairo to help the Khedive sort out his financial problems.18

  Gordon took up his new duties as Chairman of the Khedive’s Commission of Inquiry in March 1878. He took an instant dislike to the young British Controller General, Evelyn Baring. Without experience in financial affairs, Gordon defended the Khedive’s initial position, objecting to the presence of the Debt Commissioners on the Commission and insisting that current-year debt payments be suspended to permit the Egyptian government to continue functioning. When, under pressure from all of the European representatives in Cairo, the Khedive gave in, Gordon’s position became untenable. Disillusioned, he resigned from the Commission and left Cairo, reducing his own salary from £6,000 to £3,000 in recognition of Egypt’s financial crisis, and successfully protesting to the British Foreign Office about the Commission’s proposal to double Sudan’s annual tribute payment to Egypt.

  In July, 1878 Romolo Gessi sailed from Khartoum with 2,800 dragooned, unwilling and long-unpaid men on the steamer Bordein, under orders from Gordon to suppress Suleiman Zubeir’s revolt and to eject his 6,000 fighters from their strongholds at Dem Suleiman and Dem Idris, in Bahr al-Ghazal.19 Gessi’s orders were to recruit some 5,000 additional men en route and to offer £1,000 for Suleiman’s capture. Privately, Gordon wrote, ‘I hope he will hang him.’20 Gordon had written to the Egyptian government for reinforcements, but to his horror was offered Zubeir Pasha instead. By a combination of deception and force, Gessi captured Dem Idris in December. Over the next three weeks, Suleiman’s men engaged in unsuccessful and suicidal attacks to recapture the stockade, defended by Gessi’s new artillery. Despite Gessi’s reported victories, Gordon worried over the possibility that Suleiman and Haroun would join forces and that a third rebellion brewing in Kordofan might signal a more general Sudanese-wide rebellion. Gessi, however, routed Suleiman’s forces, Suleiman barely escaping with his life. Gessi then began moving toward Shaka to rendezvous with Gordon.21

  Based on what he saw of the slave trade and in order to tighten the noose around Bahr al-Ghazal, Gordon abandoned his policy of condoning small-scale trading by Jalaba families, operating on behalf of the riverine tribes, and ordered the Baggara to arrest all participants. This antagonised virtually all of the riverine tribes. On top of this, the slaves liberated by the Beggara were left without food or water wandering in the desert. Suleiman sent emissaries, including his chief secretary, to convince Gordon that he had never been disloyal to the Khedive. If Suleiman had not massacred Sudanese soldiers in the Bahr al-Ghazal as part of his take-over, Gordon ‘might have pardoned [Suleiman’s emissaries], but no, I shall not do so’.22 Gordon had them court martialled and shot. In Cairo on the same day, Khedive Ismail moved to control simmering Egyptian nationalist unrest by dismissing Sir Rivers Wilson, the European controller, and appointing an all-Egyptian cabinet.23 Britain and France then turned to the Ottoman Sultan for redress and the Sultan deposed Ismail on 25 June and appointed his son, Mohammed Tawfíq, in his place.

  On 25 June 1879 Gordon and Gessi, now governor of Bahr el-Ghazal, rendezvoused north of Shaka. Gordon was informed that Ismail had been deposed and was ordered to proclaim Tawfíq’s succession throughout the Sudan. On his way back to Khartoum, Gordon also met with Rudolph Slatin, an Austrian who had arrived in Khartoum in January 1879 as Finance Inspector and had been touring the provinces getting a first-hand education on Egyptian governmental corruption. Gordon appointed him Mudir of Darfur. The Darfur rebellion collapsed shortly thereafter and Haroun fled. Slatin caught up with him in March 1880, and shot him dead when he attempted to flee.

  Gessi also eventually ran down Suleiman and he and his principal officers were summarily sentenced to death and shot. Gessi telegraphed the news to Gordon at Foggia and Gordon reported that ‘Gessi only obeyed my orders in shooting him; I have no compunction about his death.’24 Among papers captured, Gessi found a letter from Zubeir to his son which purported to confirm his instigating role in the rebellion. Based on this evidence, the Egyptian government tried Zubeir in absentia for treason, convicted him, and sentenced him to death. Gordon himself requested that the Khedive pardon Zubeir, and nothing was done about the verdict or the sentence. Later, Gordon modestly summed up his work in the Sudan: ‘I do not profess to have been either a great ruler or a great financier; but I can say this – I have cut off the slave-dealers in their strongholds and I have made all my people love me.’25 During his tenure, he had succeeded in cutting major slave-trading routes and making the trade much more difficult. He left, not loved, but respected by many as an honest man and resented by many others as an infidel, a tool of Egyptian imperialism or as a destroyer of what had by then become traditional ways of life.26

  Having decided to resign his post, Gordon left Khartoum for Cairo in July. Arriving there, Tawfíq accepted his resignation, but asked him to undertake a last mission, to calm the renewed Abyssinian belligerency in Bogos province without ceding Egyptian claims or involving Egypt in a war. Gordon agreed and did a diplomatic dance with the King, who was at first aware neither of Tawfíq’s accession nor of Gordon’s appointment as his envoy. The King demanded territory, an indemnity, an Egyptian Coptic Bishop (to insure his own people’s religious purity) and international guarantees as the price for peace, and Gordon agreed to carry a letter containing the demands back to Egypt.

  Convinced that Johannes was ‘rapidly going mad’,27 Gordon left Debra Tabor on 8 November 1879. His trip back to Massawa was difficult and frequently interrupted by tribesmen arresting, plundering and releasing him. Returning to Egypt, he was accused of failing to collect sufficient taxes in the Sudan, of using the succession crisis to detach the Sudan from Egyptian control, and of plotting to cede Egypt’s Red Sea provinces to Abyssinia and Italy, since he had recommended both seek Italian diplomatic support and also some territorial concessions along the Red
Sea coast as a possible path to maintaining peace with Abyssinia in a confidential ciphered telegram to the Khedive. He also confronted Baring, who had resigned from the Debt Commission to become British Comptroller General, over the relative importance of restoring Egyptian solvency and eradicating the Egyptian-controlled Sudanese slave trade. Gordon had recommended strongly that his predecessor, the Circassian officer, Ismail Ayúb, replace him and the appointment was actually recorded on 15 January, but his appointment was cancelled in favour of Ra’úf Pasha, a man he had twice fired for malfeasance. Gordon was enraged. He was in poor health and bad humour and was dissuaded by British Consul General, Edward Malet, from challenging the Egyptian Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, to a duel over comments he made about Malet’s predecessor. In early January 1880, he sailed for England. In Naples he visited the deposed Khedive, hoped in Rome to convince the Pope to preach a crusade against the influx of Jews into Jerusalem, and in Paris berated the British ambassador over Ra’úf’s appointment, and shocked him by saying that perhaps a Frenchman ought to have been appointed. In accepting his resignation, Tawfíq publicly stated that: ‘I have pleasure in once more acknowledging the loyalty with which you have always served the Government…. I should have liked to retain your service, but, in view of your persistent tender of resignation, I am obliged to accept it. I regret, my dear Pasha, losing your co-operation.’28

  After a short stay in England, Gordon again travelled to the continent for a holiday in Switzerland, meeting with the Belgian King Leopold II in Brussels to discuss the Congo. While on holiday, Gordon was offered the command of the Cape Colony military forces to put down Boer and native unrest by force but declined the offer. In April 1880 Gladstone appointed the Marquis of Ripon as Viceroy of India and Ripon offered the post of Private Secretary to Gordon, for reasons that remain unclear.29 Ripon asked Gordon to review the evidence concerning Afghan Emir Mohammed Yaqub Khan’s complicity in the 1879 murder of Louis Cavagnari, the British Resident in Kabul. Gordon concluded that the Emir was not responsible and recommended that he be restored. Indian government officials disagreed and Ripon supported them so, on 2 June, Gordon resigned his post.