Gordon of Khartoum
by From Epics of History: More Prisoners of Eternity.
He was a religious fanatic, arrogant, stubborn, and always convinced of the righteousness of his cause. He was also a hero of Victorian Britain and of the British Empire. Indeed, no one encapsulated the ethos of the Victorians more than Charles George Gordon, and his death was to cause a public outcry.
Charles George “Chinese” Gordon
Charles George Gordon is one of the great heroes of British history, an icon of Empire. Perhaps, no one better encapsulates the Victorian ethos of Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation, and the God-given right of Britain to bring it to the world, on the point of a bayonet, if need be.
He was born in Woolwich, south-east London, on 28 January, 1833, into a military family, his father was a General in the British army. Not considered a particularly outstanding student at school it nonetheless didn’t seem to matter as he was always going to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1854 and fought in the Crimean War. But he was from the outset a maverick and over the years was to become almost a roaming ambassador for British imperial and military might.
In 1860, he volunteered to fight in the Second Opium War in China. Following its successful conclusion he decided to stay on and fight for the Chinese Emperor against the rebels in the Taiping rebellion. His time as an officer in the Chinese Imperial Army was one long series of successes for his aptly named Ever Victorious Army as it swept all before it. A grateful Emperor showered him with honours and he was promoted to Lt-Colonel by the British Army. His escapades in China had made his reputation and he was thereafter to be known as “Chinese Gordon” to a Victorian public that was always in thrall to its “boy’s own heroes.”
In 1864, he returned to Britain and became an effective troubleshooter for the British Government, whether he was serving as the British representative on some International Commission or other, repairing fortifications, or maintaining British military cemeteries abroad, Gordon seemed to be everywhere. In 1873, he received a request from the Egyptian Khedive to serve in the troublesome region of the Sudan, with the permission of the British Government he accepted the offer. Despite falling out with his superiors in the immediate region and being seemingly incapable of cooperating with others he impressed his new employers. When he threatened to walk away from the job, the Egyptian Khedive, in 1876, offered him the Governorship of the Sudan with absolute control over its affairs. Though often at war during his time in charge, he still managed to bring some administrative order to a chaotic land, impose laws where previously there had been none, establish trading posts along the banks of the Nile, and suppress the slave trade. He was not a man to tolerate dissent and was not loathe to adopt brutal means to impose his will including a liberal use of the gallows. But then he never imagined for a moment that he wasn’t doing God’s work.
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