THE DEFENCE 01' KHARTOUM.
-WE are unable to understand the popular view of the defence of Khartoum. In what way does the narra- tive of General Gordon's operations there prove that the Government were in the wrong, or that Khartoum ought to become a British" fortress, or that it will be wise to subordinate English policy to the views of General Gordon? That officer, as a soldier known to possess unusual and separate gifts, was sent to Khartoum to see if he could not, by the aid of his special genius for controlling dark men, and of his influence throughout the Soudan, avert the necessity for a military expedition against the Soud.anese Arabs and their leader. He was carefully informed, as Lord Hartington told the House, that he was to rely on his own resources, and to expect no aid from Great Britain, and he accepted the task upon those conditions. The single change made in them, after his departure, was that he was permitted to accept from Egypt the Governor-Generalship of the Soudan, and he arrived at Khartoum attended by a single British officer, Colonel Stewart. He was at first well received, and there was a chance of a com- promise; but the Mahdi decided to reject-all offers, and sent his agents to stir up the neighbouring tribes. The Arabs obeyed, and besieged the town in numbers which, though fluctuating, must have been considerable, for the investment was complete enough to stop all communication. Then General Gordon, as he has always done when driven from !speculation into action, showed at once that he had grounds for his superb self-reliance. To a less original and daring mind the situation would have looked desperate. The town of itself is nearly indefensible, the only great building—the Palace—is hardly bullet-proof, a great number of the citizens were hostile, and the garrison, though numerous and well armed, were either disaffected, afraid from superstitious reasons of the Mahdi, or hopelessly out of heart. There was
no season to expect aid from England, and Egypt was known to be quite powerless. General Gordon had, however, three advantages, and he used them all. He could draw bills, which were trusted by the merchants as British bills ;, he had large sup- plies of war materiel, and he had steamers against which the Arabs had nothing to oppose; He therefore kept his troops together by regular payments, maintaining such discipline that they would do anything except fight in the open ; he defended his lines by "three lines of land torpedoes, or percussion mines," which daunted the Arab besiegers, and he not only protected his steamers with bullet-proof shields of wood and iron, but built similar towers on his barges twenty feet high. He created, in fact, six floating forts. Moreover, by a stroke of genius, curiously at variance with another part of his policy, he offered freedom to all slaves who would join him, and so secured the services of negroes whose courage and trustworthiness are mentioned all through Mr. Power's despatch. The disaffected section of the citizens, 10,000 in number, joined the besiegers, thus averting all danger of an internal rising ; and General Gordon found him- self in a position which could not be attacked from without, the Arabs being afraid of the mines, and which was secure from within, while he himself could direct effective attacks along the whole course of the river, dispersing Arab gatherings, shelling them out of their fortifications, and reducing the siege to an almost harmless, though terribly long-continued, hail of bullets. So wretched were the Egyptian troops at his command, that hundreds of them, armed with Remington rifles, would on land fly before a few Arab spear- men, and one Arab horseman cut down seven soldiers ; but they would help to lay the mines, they would fire from behind walls, and they would stay on board the improvised ironclads where they were safe, and that was all that was required. With these unpromising and indeed hopeless materials, General Gordon, supporting the townspeople as well as the troops on rations, and we should suppose occasionally securing supplies of millet from distant points on the river, for five long -months kept the tribes at bay, repulsing every attack upon the Palace, and inflicting at times severe losses upon his irritated opponents, until at last, either made aware by mes- sages from Dongola that a white force was advancing, or wearied out by the calm pertinacity of their heroic opponent, or disheartened by intelligence from El Obeid of which we as yet know nothing, they raised the siege, and left General Gordon at liberty to communicate with Cairo. A more wonder- ful exhibition of courage, energy, and military resourcefulness was never made in war; nor, were General Gordon other than he is—an utterly separate, unaccountable, and uncontrollable man —would any Englishman doubt that in him the country pos- sessed an instrument of magnificent power. Clive at Arcot, who was in many respects similarly situated, had, at least, Englishmen under him, though they were mostly raw recruits, and Sepoys who were willing not only to die, but to starve for him ; General Williams at Kars had Turks, always the most resolute of garrisons ; and General Sir J. Inglis at Lucknow was supported by veterans, English and Indian. But General Gordon had only two white men, a few Egyptian officers, of whom he had to execute two for open treachery—thereby, there can be little doubt, making the re- mainder loyal—a few brave negroes, and some thousands of Egyptians, who, whatever the cause, could not be induced to fight in the open, or even to stand against any number what- ever of Arabs. If they themselves were ten to one, they ran away the faster. To keep such men together for five months, to utilise them by covering river steamers with armour, and with them to drive off besiegers probably five times their number, and as dreaded as if they had been beings of a higher order, was a feat beyond example, and which of itself justi- fies General Gordon's reputation alike for military genius and for the nerve which, when it rises to that height, is one of the noblest of man's qualities.
But magnificent as General Gordon's action has been, it does not modify the situation. He has done a splendid thing, but it is not the thing which he was sent to Khartoum to do. Khartoum is safe for the time, but its safety does not advance the policy in pursuit of which General Gordon was despatched. He has not organised Governments for the Soudan ; he has not released the garrisons there imprisoned ; he has not relieved Egypt and Britain of a burden which arrests all efforts for a final or even lasting settlement. Indeed, he has involuntarily increased that burden, for, by refusing to withdraw with as many of the garrison as his steamers could carry—a refusal which may be quite justiged on humanitarian grounds, for the siege has probably made the peaceful entrance of the Arabs impossible, they having now hundreds of blood-feuds to avenge—he has ren- dered the Nile Expedition a necessity, and seriously increased the difficulty of abandoning Khartoum. The original pro- blem, which was bad enough, has become definitely worse. When General Wolseley arrives at Khartoum, and the Arabshave
retired with their initial calm contempt of time to wait till the "legions have thundered past," the British Government will have to decide, as before, what is to become of the city, and what is to be the permanent relation of Egypt to the Soudan. The grandeur of General Gordon's defence makes it no easier to create an independent Government for Khartoum ; his genius for improvising means of warfare does not reduce the costliness of the huge dependency ; nor does his defeat of the Arabs render the Pashas, through whom alone Egypt could administer it, less cruel or less corrupt. Now, as before, the Soudan must either be abandoned, to create for itself a Government through the survival of the fittest, or it must be held and managed, as best may be, by officials from Cairo. Every reason which induced the British Government to prefer abandonment is as strong as ever, with this addi- tional one,—that whereas the Soudan formerly could be governed by Egyptians alone, it now cannot. The sheep have found out that if they butt, the dogs will run away, and sheep-driving by dogs is henceforward a hopeless device. If the work is to be commenced again, it must be done by Englishmen, and why Englishmen should neglect their duties all over the world and burden themselves with taxes in order to prevent vast provinces in Equatorial Africa from going their own way, even if it is a bad way, we confess we do not perceive.
The Times argues strongly, even wrathfully, that England can hold Khartoum as a sort of watch-tower on the Nile or emporium of African goods without much difficulty ; and that may be true if we are to govern Egypt,—but suppose we are not ? It might, we can readily conceive, be wise for the British protectors of Egypt to keep Khartoum as a depot or post of observation, to post a garrison there as we do at Aden, and to spend two or three millions in removing or turning the rapids till we made of the Nile from the Mediterranean to the Lakes a navigable stream. That would be a grand work, and it is one which, if Egypt is ever ours for a long term of years, is certain to be undertaken. But to hold a place like Khartoum by itself, with no free right of access to it, or right only through a railway from the Red Sea twice the length of that from London to Leeds, which could never pay the cost of renewing its rails, and could be blocked at any point by an Arab with a big boulder, is more than Quixotic. We might as well hold Timbuctoo, or establish a grand defensible outpost North of the Zambesi. The fate of Khartoum, if it is not to be abandoned, depends upon the fate of Egypt, and towards the settlement of the fate of Egypt General Gordon's heroism and resourcefulness give us no help whatever. His action has solved no problem, and his one suggestion, to give the Soudan to the Turk, is not only inadmissible, but impracticable. The Turk would take fat Egypt with pleasure, because he could plunder there, but he would not take the lean Soudan unless secured a subsidy which there is nobody to pay.
Previous page
