Part 9

Soon all that had been in the commissariat was finished, and then the inhabitants and the soldiers had to eat dogs, donkeys, skins of animals, gum, and palm fibre, and famine prevailed. The soldiers stood on the fortifications like pieces of wood. The civilians were even worse off. Many died of hunger, and corpses filled the streets; no one had even energy to bury them.... We were heartbroken; the people and soldiers began to lose faith in Gordon's promises, and they were terribly weak from famine. At last Sunday morning broke, and Gordon Pasha, who used always to watch the enemy's movements from the top of the palace, noticed a considerable movement in the south, which looked as if the Arabs were collecting at Kalakala. He at once sent word to all of us who had attended the previous meeting, and to a few others, to come at once to the palace. We all came, but Gordon Pasha did not see us. We were again addressed by Giriagis Bey, who said he had been told by Gordon Pasha to inform us that he noticed much movement in the enemy's lines, and believed an attack would be made on the town; he therefore ordered us to collect every male in the town from the age of eight, even to the old men, and to line all the fortifications, and that if we had difficulty in getting this order obeyed we were to use force. Giriagis said that Gordon Pasha now appealed to us for the last time to make a determined stand, for in twenty-four hours' time he had no doubt the English would arrive; but that if we preferred to submit then, he gave the commandant liberty to open the gates, and let all join the rebels. He had nothing more to say. I then asked to be allowed to see the Pasha, and was admitted to his presence. I found him sitting on a divan, and as I came in he pulled off his tarboush (fez) and flung it from him, saying, "What more can I say? I have nothing more to say; the people will no longer believe me; I have told them over and over again that help would be here, but it has never come, and now they must see I tell them lies. If this, my last promise, fails, I can do nothing more. Go and collect all the people you can on the lines, and make a good stand. Now leave me to smoke these cigarettes." (There were two full boxes of cigarettes on the table.) I could see he was in despair, and he spoke in a tone I had never heard before. I knew then that he had been too agitated to address the meeting, and thought the sight of his despair would dishearten us. All the anxiety he had undergone had gradually turned his hair to a snowy white. I left him, and this was the last time I saw him alive.... It was a gloomy day, that last day in Khartoum; hundreds lay dead and dying in the streets from starvation, and there were none to bury them. At length the night came, and, as I afterwards learnt, Gordon Pasha sat up writing till midnight, and then lay down to sleep. He awoke some time between two and three a.m. The wild war-cries of the Arabs were heard close at hand. A large body of rebels had crept in the dark close up to the broken-down parapet and filled-up ditch, between the White Nile and the Messalamieh Gate. The soldiers never knew of the enemy's approach until about twenty minutes before they were actually attacked, when the tramp of feet was heard, and the alarm was sounded; but they were so tired out and exhausted that it was not until the sentries fired that the rest of the men suddenly started up surprised, to find swarms of Arabs pouring over the ditch and up the parapet, yelling and shouting their war-cries. Here they met with little resistance, for most of the soldiers were four or five paces apart, and were too feeble to oppose such a rush. The Arabs were soon within the lines, and thus able to attack the rest of the soldiers from behind. They were opposed at some points, but it was soon all over.... Meanwhile Gordon Pasha, on being roused by the noise, went on to the roof of the palace in his sleeping clothes. He soon made out that the rebels had entered the town, and for upwards of an hour he kept up a hot fire in the direction of the attack. I heard that he also sent word to get up steam in the steamer, but the engineer was not there; he had been too frightened to leave his house. As dawn approached Gordon Pasha could see the Arab banners in the town, and soon the gun became useless, for he could not depress it enough to fire on the enemy. By this time the Arabs had crowded round the palace in thousands, but for a time no one dared enter, for they thought mines were laid to blow them up. Meanwhile Gordon Pasha had left the roof; he went to his bedroom, which was close to the divan, and there he put on a white uniform, his sword, which he did not draw, and, carrying his revolver in his right hand, stepped out into the passage in front of the entrance to the office, and just at the head of the staircase. During this interval four men, more brave than the rest, forced their way into the palace, and once in were followed by hundreds of others. Of these latter, the majority rushed up the stairs to the roof, where, after a short resistance, the palace guard, servants, and cavasses were all killed; while the four men--Taha Shahin, a Dongolawi, whose father was formerly in my service; Ibrahim Abu Shanab, servant of George Angelleto; Hamad Wad Ahmed Jar en Nebbi, Hassani; and a fourth, also a Dongolawi, servant to Fathallah Jehami--followed by a crowd of others, knowing Gordon Pasha's room, rushed towards it. Taha Shahin was the first to encounter Gordon beside the door of the divan, apparently waiting for the Arabs, and standing with a calm and dignified manner, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Shahin, dashing forward with the curse "Mala' oun el yom yomek!" (O cursed one, your time is come!), plunged his spear into his body. Gordon, it is said, made a gesture of scorn with his right hand, and turned his back, where he received another spear wound, which caused him to fall forward, and was most likely his mortal wound. The other three men, closely following Shahin, then rushed in, and, cutting at the prostrate body with their swords, must have killed him in a few seconds. His death occurred just before sunrise. He made no resistance, and did not fire a shot from his revolver. From all I knew, I am convinced that he never intended to surrender. I should say he must have intended to use his revolver only if he saw it was the intention of the Arabs to take him prisoner alive; but he saw such crowds rushing on him with swords and spears, and there being no important emirs with them, he must have known that they did not intend to spare him, and that was most likely what he wanted.... Gordon Pasha's head was immediately cut off and sent to the Mahdi at Omdurman, while his body was dragged downstairs and left exposed for a time in the garden, where many Arabs came to plunge their spears into it. I heard that the Mahdi had given orders for Gordon to be spared, but what I have stated was told me by the four men I have mentioned, and I believe the Mahdi pardoned them for their disobedience of orders.... I saw Gordon Pasha's head exposed in Omdurman. It was fixed between the branches of a tree, and all who passed by threw stones at it.

[NOTE.--This account is from the journal of Bordeini Bey, an eminent Khartoum merchant, who willingly gave up his large stores of grain to Gordon for the supply of the garrison. He was taken prisoner at the fall of the city.]

THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY (1885).

=Source.=--Lord Cromer's _Modern Egypt_, vol. i., p. 589. (Macmillans.)

It has been already shown that General Gordon paid little heed to his instructions, that he was consumed with a desire to "smash the Mahdi," and that the view that he was constrained to withdraw everyone who wished to leave from the most distant parts of the Soudan was, to say the least, quixotic. The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that it was a mistake to send General Gordon to the Soudan. But do they afford any justification for the delay in preparing and in despatching the relief expedition? I cannot think that they do so. Whatever errors of judgment General Gordon may have committed, the broad facts, as they existed in the early summer of 1884, were that he was sent to Khartoum by the British Government, who never denied their responsibility for his safety, that he was beleaguered, and that he was, therefore, unable to get away. It is just possible that he could have effected his retreat, if, having abandoned the southern posts, he had moved northward with the Khartoum garrison in April or early in May. As time went on, and nothing was heard of him, it became more and more clear that he either could not or would not--probably that he could not--move. The most indulgent critic would scarcely extend beyond June 27 the date at which the Government should have decided on the question of whether a relief expedition should or should not be despatched. On that day the news that Berber had been captured on May 26 by the Dervishes was finally confirmed. Yet it was not till six weeks later that the Government obtained from Parliament the funds necessary to prepare for an expedition.

THE VOTE OF CENSURE (1885).

=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 294, col. 1311. (House of Lords debate on Egypt, February 26, 1885.)

THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY: ... The conduct of Her Majesty's Government has been an alternation of periods of slumber and periods of rush, and the rush, however vehement, has always been too unprepared and too unintelligent to repair the damage which the period of slumber has effected.... The case of the bombardment of Alexandria, the case of the abandonment of the Soudan, the case of the mission of General Graham's force--they are all on the same plan, and all show you that remarkable characteristic of torpor during the time when action was needed, and hasty, impulsive, ill-considered action when the time for action had passed by. Their further conduct was modelled on their action in the past. So far was it modelled that we were able to put it to the test which establishes a scientific law. I should like to quote what I said on the 4th of April, when discussing the prospect of the relief of General Gordon. What I said was this: "Are these circumstances encouraging to us when we are asked to trust that, on the inspiration of the moment, when the danger comes, Her Majesty's Government will find some means of relieving General Gordon? I fear that the history of the past will be repeated in the future; and just again, when it is too late, the critical resolution will be taken; some terrible news will come that the position of Gordon is absolutely a forlorn and hopeless one, and then, under the pressure of public wrath and Parliamentary censure, some desperate resolution of sending an expedition will be formed too late to achieve the object which it is desired to gain." I quote these words to show that by that time we had ascertained the laws of motion and the orbits of those erratic comets who sit on the Treasury Bench. Now the terrible responsibility and shame rests upon the Government, because they were warned in March and April of the danger to General Gordon, because they received every intimation which men could reasonably look for that his danger would be extreme, and because they delayed from March and April right down to the 15th of August before they took a single measure to relieve him. What were they doing all that time? It is very difficult to conceive. What happened during those eventful months? I suppose some day the memoirs will tell our grandchildren, but we shall never know. Some people think there were divisions in the Cabinet, and that after division on division a decision was put off, lest the Cabinet be broken up. I am rather inclined to think it was due to the peculiar position of the Prime Minister. He came in as the apostle of the Midlothian campaign, loaded with all the doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage. We have seen on each occasion, after one of these mishaps, when he has been forced by events and by the common sense of the nation to take some active steps--we have seen his extreme supporters falling foul of him, and reproaching him with having deserted their opinions and disappointed the ardent hopes which they had formed of him as the apostle of absolute negation in foreign affairs. I think he has always felt the danger of that reproach. He always felt the debt he had incurred to those supporters. He always felt a dread lest they should break away; and he put off again and again to the last practical moment any action which might bring him into open conflict with the doctrine by which his present eminence was gained. At all events, this is clear--that throughout those six months the Government knew perfectly well the danger in which General Gordon was placed. It has been said that General Gordon did not ask for troops. I am surprised at that defence. One of the characteristics of General Gordon was the extreme abnegation of his nature. It was not to be expected that he should send home a telegram to say, "I am in great danger, therefore send me troops"--he would probably have cut off his right hand before he would have sent a telegram of that sort. But he sent home telegrams through Mr. Power, telegrams saying that the people of Khartoum were in great danger; that the Mahdi would succeed unless military succour was sent forward; urging at one time the sending forward of Sir Evelyn Wood and his Egyptians, and at another the landing of Indians at Suakin and the establishment of the Berber route, and distinctly telling the Government--and this is the main point--that unless they would consent to his views the supremacy of the Mahdi was assured.... Well, now, my Lords, is it conceivable that after two months, in May, the Prime Minister should have said that they were waiting to have reasonable proof that Gordon was in danger? By that time Khartoum was surrounded, the Governor of Berber had announced that his case was hopeless, which was too surely proved by the massacre which took place in June; and yet in May Mr. Gladstone was still waiting for "reasonable proof" that the men who were surrounded, who had announced that they had only five months' food, were in danger.... It was the business of the Government not to interpret General Gordon's telegrams as if they had been statutory declarations, but to judge for themselves of the circumstances of the case, and to see that those who were surrounded, who were only three Englishmen among such a vast body of Mohammedans, and who were already cut off from all communications with the civilized world by the occupation of every important town upon the river, were really in danger, and that if they meant to answer their responsibilities they were bound to relieve them. I cannot tell what blindness fell over the eyes of some members of Her Majesty's Government....

MORE FENIANISM (1885).

=Source.=--_The Times_, January 26.

The "dynamite war," as it is called by the disloyal Irish and the Irish-American outrage-mongers, was continued in London on Saturday with some success to the perpetrators. Accepting the privilege accorded to all comers to view the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London, they cunningly placed charged machines of dynamite in the Crypt leading out of Westminster Hall, in the House of Commons chamber itself, and caused, almost at the same time, an explosion in the Tower of London. The first explosion at Westminster was in the Hall itself. Some visitors were passing through the Crypt, when one noticed a parcel on the ground. It is described as the usual "black bag." ... The nearest police-constable, Cole by name, picked up the smoking parcel, and brought it to the entrance of the Crypt, where, from its heat or some other cause, he dropped it. It was fortunate for him that he did so, for in an instant a terrific explosion burst from the parcel.... The stone flooring was shattered, and the rails round the Crypt were somewhat twisted by the immediate blow of the explosion. Its secondary effect was to break some of the windows, and shake down from the vast beams of Irish oak, forming the roof, the accumulated dust of ages.... The chamber of the House of Commons presented the scene of a complete wreck from the second explosion. The benches of the Government side were torn up, and some of the seats had been hurled up into the gallery above.... The explosion at the Tower of London was the most serious in its effects of the three, for several persons were injured, some damage was done to the building, and a fire ensued, lasting an hour.... The explosive was placed between the stands of arms in the ancient banqueting-room of the Tower.

NEW LABOUR MOVEMENTS (1885).

=Source.=--_The Times_, January 31.

_Industrial Remuneration Conference._

Yesterday the delegates held their concluding sitting at Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, when the subject set down for discussion was: Would the more general distribution of capital or land, or the State management of capital or land, promote or impair the production of wealth and the welfare of the community?...

The discussion on the papers was begun by Mr. Williams (Social Democratic Federation), who said that if they left all the machinery, all the railways, and all the mines in the hands of the rich capitalists, the working classes would still continue to be oppressed. They must either say that the Government had no right to interfere with anything, or they must admit that the State must equally interfere between the landlord, the capitalist, and the labourer. He compared the part played by politicians like Mr. Chamberlain, who directed their attacks exclusively against the landlords, and spared the rich capitalists, to that sustained by the Artful Dodger in "Oliver Twist."

Mr. B. Shaw (Fabian Society) said he had no desire to give pain to the burglar--if any of that trade were in the room--or to the landlord or the capitalist, pure and simple; all he could say was that all three belonged to the same class, and that the injury each inflicted on the community was precisely of the same nature.

[NOTE.--The Social Democratic Federation had been founded in 1881; the Fabian Society, a few weeks before this conference met.]

THE UNEMPLOYED (1885).

=Source.=--_The Times_, February 17.

Yesterday afternoon three or four thousand of the unemployed of London held a demonstration on the Embankment near Cleopatra's Needle, and afterwards marched to Westminster, carrying banners. From Whitehall a large number of the crowd passed into Downing Street near the Premier's residence, where a Cabinet meeting was being held at the time, but at the request of the police, of whom an extra force were in attendance, the crowd moved round to King Street, where they were addressed in somewhat inflammatory terms by some of their speakers, who wore red badges. One speaker clung to the top of a lamp-post, and thence harangued the crowd; another spoke from a window-sill. Meantime, in the absence of Sir Charles Dilke, who was at the Cabinet Meeting, Mr. G. W. E. Russell, Parliamentary Secretary of the Local Government Board, received a small deputation of the leaders.... At the close of the interview the crowd marched back to the Embankment, where the following resolution was passed unanimously: "That this meeting of the Unemployed, having heard the answer given by the Local Government Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to start public works to be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of work, and the recommendation to bring pressure to bear on the local bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the members of the Government, individually and collectively, guilty of the murder of those who may die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would have been saved had the suggestions of the deputation been acted on."

(Signed) JOHN BURNS, ENGINEER. JOHN E. WILLIAMS, LABOURER. WILLIAM HENRY, FOREMAN. JAMES MACDONALD, TAILOR.

WORKING MEN MAGISTRATES (1885).

=Source.=--_The Manchester Guardian_, May 14.

We understand that it is in contemplation to raise a number of workmen to the magisterial bench in the Duchy of Lancaster. The first of the appointments is that of Mr. H. R. Slatter to the Commission of the peace for the City of Manchester. He is Secretary to the Provincial Typographical Association, and a member of the Manchester School Board. It is understood that similar offers of appointment to the magistracy have been made to Mr. T. Birtwistle, of Accrington, Secretary to the Operative Weavers' Association of North and North-east Lancashire, and Mr. Fielding, of Bolton, who holds the post of Secretary to the local branch of the Operative Cotton Spinners' Association.

TORY OLIVE-BRANCH TO IRELAND (1885).

=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 298, col. 1658. (House of Lords, July 6, 1885.)