Gordon Charles George

Gordon, Charles George, General, was born in 1833, and received a commission in the Royal Engineers at the age of nineteen. In 1855 he was sent out to the Crimea, and took part in the siege of Kinburn and the destruction of Sebastopol.

He joined in 1860 the allied forces in China, being present at the capture of Pekin and aiding in the building of the Taku forts. The outbreak of the Tai-ping insurrection afforded him an opportunity for distinguishing himself by suppressing the rebels in the Shanghai district, and he was appointed to the command of the disorganised Chinese army, and in little more than a year the revolt was crushed. In 1874, at the invitation of the Khedive, he undertook the control of the Soudan with a view to the extirpation of the slave-trade. He resigned in 1876, but was reinstated in 1877 with fuller powers as Governor of the Soudan and the Equatorial Provinces. In 1884 he was entrusted with the dangerous and difficuly duty of the pacification of the Soudan, a task for which he felt himself to be specially qualified. Too confident, perhaps, in the prestige of his name, he hurried on singlehanded to Khartoum, the stronghold of Mahdisin. There he maintained himself amidst a wretched and untrustworthy garrison against a siege of 337 days. A relief expedition was sent out with Lord Wolseley in command, but on January 26, 1885, a few days before the advanced guard of the British force were in sight, Khartoum fell into the hands of the fanatics, and Gordon, who scorned to save himself by flight, was killed among the foremost.