The current of events now divides, one leading to Khartoum, the other still flowing in the Eastern Soudan. The British Government, hopelessly at fault, turned to General Charles Gordon, as the one man in the world who could apparently perform miracles. Ten years previously, "Chinese" Gordon, as Governor-General of the Soudan, and again in 1877, as Governor-General of the Soudan, Darfur and the Equatorial Provinces, had freed the country from Turkish rule, broken the slave trade, established peace, opened trade routes, and laid the foundations of civilisation. Since 1877 he had been engaged in setting wrong things right in Egypt { 215} in the Soudan again, in Abyssinia, in China, in the Mauritius, at the Cape, in Palestine, and in the Congo.
On 18th January, 1884, Gordon was instructed by the British Government to report upon the best method of evacuating the Soudan. When he arrived at Cairo, these instructions were radically altered by Sir Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer), who, on the 25th January, informed Gordon that he was required actually to direct the evacuation of Khartoum and of the whole Soudan, and afterwards to establish an organised government in that country. Gordon arrived at Khartoum on the 18th February, where he was hailed as the father and saviour of the people.
On the same day, Major-General Sir Gerald Graham left Suez to join at Souakim the force which had been placed under his command. That force was chiefly drawn from the British Army of Occupation in Egypt. The object of the expedition was the relief of Tokar, or, if that place had already fallen, the protection of Souakim, an alternative which involved an attack upon Osman Digna's victorious army. Tokar was in fact taken by the enemy before the expedition started.
The British Government, whose original intention had been to refrain from any action in the Soudan whatsoever; which had been compelled by force of circumstances, including the most frightful bloodshed, to change a wholly negative policy to a definite scheme of evacuation; now perceived, of course too late, that if the European population was to be brought away, at least some measure of military force must be employed. What Her Majesty's Ministers were unable to see, or what, if they saw, they chose to ignore, was the plain fact that the same force and the same measures and the same promptitude would be required for the salvation of Europeans in face of the enemy, as for the reconquest and reoccupation of the country. In this delusion, or dereliction, resides the explanation of an affair which has left an indelible stain upon British honour.
