One of the best known figures in the Victorian military during life, he would become even more famous after his death at the fall of Khartoum during the first Sudan War.
The Early Life of Charles Gordon
Charles Gordon was born in London in 1833, the son of an artillery officer and a shipping magnate's daughter. When he was fifteen, he entered the Military Academy at Woolwich. Brave, argumentative, and extremely critical of perceived injustice, Gordon was often in trouble at school. In one incident he pushed a classmate through a window, and in another beat a classmate with a hairbrush. After four years of school, he was given a commission in the Royal Engineers.
Charles Gordon's Kings
Two years later, in 1854, Gordon was sent to the Crimea where he served with distinction at the battle of Svestapol and displayed a remarkable calmness under fire. After the war, he was sent on a surveying mission to Armenia. It is during this time, that Charles Gordon adopted the first of his kings. These were young boys, usually orphans, that Charles Gordon would take under his wing, feed, clothe, and attempt to educate. Charles Gordon was also a born again Christian who took the teachings of the bible with a literal seriousness.
Chinese Gordon
In 1860, Charles Gordon was sent to China to help the Imperial forces that were battling against the Taiping rebels. Gordon was soon promoted to the head of a ragtag mercenary army defending the city of Shanghai. After securing the defence of the city, Gordon went on the offensive. In a series of battles, Gordon beat the rebels back. The Taiping rebellion ended in 1864. In England, Charles Gordon was lauded as a hero and given the nickname "Chinese Gordon".
Charles Gordon in Sudan
In 1872, Charles Gordon was offered a place as Governor of a province of Sudan (then under the rule of Egypt). In 1877 he was promoted to the Governor-General of the whole of Sudan. In this post, Gordon won many friends by battling for the common man, often against the corrupt Egyptian officials. He also gained many enemies, mostly through his strong attempts to bring an end to the slave trade in Sudan. A change in power in Egypt caused Gordon to resign his position in 1880 and return to England.
Charles Gordon and the fall of Khartoum 1885
Soon after Gordon left Sudan, the country rose up in rebellion under a religious leader called the Mahdi. Several Egyptian armies were wiped out, and many foreigners were murdered. Although most people in the British Government didn't want to get involved, the strange tangles of diplomacy at the time meant that Britain had a duty to Egypt. In a strange compromise, it was decided to send Charles Gordon alone to the capital city of Khartoum to arrange for the evacuation of all foreign troops. Arriving in the city in late February, Charles Gordon found himself immediately cut off by the forces of the Mahdi. Nearly a year later, in the early days of 1885, Khartoum was sacked by the forces of the Mahdi and Charles Gordon was killed. The next day, the first elements of a British relief expedition reached the city.
Sources:
Asher, Michael. Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure. Penguin. London. 2005.
Featherstone, Donald. Khartoum 1885: General Gordon's Last Stand. Osprey. Oxford. 1993
