A. Col. Frank Rhodes. B. General Sir Herbert Stewart (mortally wounded). C. Col. Talbot.
_R. Caton Woodville._} { _From the Royal Collection, by permission of the Artist._
After a gallant dash across the desert, the small force under General Stewart arrived within striking distance of Khartoum only to find that Gordon was dead.]
Too late! Help had been withheld too long. On the last day of the year a tiny scrap of paper reached the British head-quarters on the Nile--"Khartoum all right. C. G. Gordon. December 14, 1884"; but on February 5, 1885, arrived a telegram in London announcing that the place had fallen. When Parliament opened, on the 19th, Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to excuse the Government for their undoubted share in the disaster. "General Gordon contentedly forbore," he said, "indeed more than contentedly--he determinedly forebore--to make use of the means of personal safety which were at all times open to him." The words seemed to be swept from the Prime Minister's lips by a hurricane of indignant exclamations, and he withdrew them. They meant that Gordon might have escaped down the river in a steamer, leaving the loyal Egyptians in Khartoum to their fate. He was not that kind of man. Party discipline prevailed to protect the Government from overthrow on a vote of censure: they managed to put into their lobby 302 against 288.
Khartoum fell on January 26, 1885, after a siege of 317 days, and after the garrison and townsfolk had endured extreme privations for several weeks. Gordon was shot down near the palace, and a horrible massacre followed, in which it was reckoned about 4,000 people were butchered.
[Illustration: _Lowes Dickinson._} { _By permission of the Artist._
Served in the Crimean War, and in China in 1860-62. In 1862 he took command of a small and heterogeneous force which, as "The Ever-victorious Army," suppressed the Tai-ping rebellion and saved the Chinese empire. The story of his mission to Khartoum in 1884 is told in these pages.]
Lord Wolseley's expeditionary force, amounting to about 14,000 men, inflicted several defeats on the Mahdi's troops, notably at Abu Klea and Gubat. But the British losses were exceptionally severe, not only on account of the invincible courage of the Arabs and their desperate mode of fighting, but because of sickness and climate. For example, out of General Stewart's desert force of 2,000, no less than thirty officers, including General Stewart himself and 450 men perished. The Mahdi died of fever in July, and the Government decided on withdrawing from the Soudan and fixing the frontier of Egypt at the second Nile cataract.