England's Pride: the story of the Gordon Relief Expedition by Julian Symons
London: White Lion Publishers, 1974 (first published by Hamish Hamilton 1965)
ISBN 085617548X
Many years ago I, like tens of thousands of other Melburnians, emerged from the underground railway station at Parliament and walked past a statue of General Gordon on my way to work. Paid for by public subscription, it is an indicator of how shocking to the Empire his death was, and in how much esteem he was held. I wonder how many commuters today even know who he is?
Certainly in 1884 everyone in England knew him - a hero from his service in China, and seen as a moral exemplar owing to his efforts to eradicate slavery in Africa, "Chinese" Gordon seems the quintessential Victorian hero - doing good work in far-flung places, wildly eccentric, and a favourite of the Queen.
Gordon ended up in the Sudan mainly owing to Gladstone's unwillingness to spend money on a military intervention there. In fact he had decided that the Anglo-Egyptian force in Khartoum should be withdrawn, rather than face the forces of the Mahdi, who's rebellion was gathering strength. The newspapers were pushing for a relief force to be sent, but the Government decided that they could just send Gordon, hoping his cachet would be enough to enable an orderly withdrawal, assuage public opinion, and curtail any unnecessary expense.
Unfortunately for Gladstone and his government, Gordon was a poor choice for such an assignment. Firstly, Gordon was a Christian visionary: hardly a good choice to try and pacify an Islamic insurgency. Secondly, he followed his own path, revealed to him by God, as he thought. Sent to arrange a retreat he instead fortified Khartoum and set himself to withstand a siege.
Soon enough he was surrounded by Mahdist forces, and it was public opinion - whipped up again by the newspapers - that forced the Government to send an expedition to relieve Gordon and bring him safely back to Egypt. If the Mahdi was defeated in the process, all the better.... so much for saving money!
England's Pride is the story of the expeditionary force that was sent up the Nile to relieve Gordon: a story of success and failures, of battles and massacres, and of Victorian attitudes and characters such as Generals Wolseley, Buller and Stewart, Colonels Barnaby and Butler, Lord Charles Beresford and most famous probably today Kitchener, who played a minor but important role in what came to pass in 1884-5.
Once Gladstone was finally convinced that rescue of Gordon was needed, the army decided the best course of action was to trans-ship the force up the Nile in small whaling boats to a forward base at Korti, and then send a force across the desert on camel to Metemmeh before continuing on to Khartoum.
The story therefore is mainly one of logistics and movement rather than fighting: the logistics and movement were in fact bigger obstacles to the army than any of the Arab warriors that they met on the battlefield. Moving thousands of men up the Nile over multiple cataracts (some of which were at the time un-mapped) was a huge undertaking, requiring mammoth efforts not only from the troops themselves, by the boatbuilders who built over 400 whalers in quick time, and also the Canadian guides (voyageurs) who were employed to manoeuvre the boats up the river safely to their destination (which in great part they managed).
The provision of camels proved to be a major problem. There were never enough for the army's needs and those they did have became severely over-worked. In fact one of the main reasons that reprisal against the Mahdi's forces for his sack of Khartoum (which occurred two days before the first British steamer came in sight of the town) was discontinued was that the British had too few camels to engage in effective campaigning.
Symons maps all this out well, and also provides a good synopsis of the final days of Gordon and the battle of Abu Klea. He charts the fate of those involved in the expedition - who prospered and who didn't, and a useful chapter speculating whether there was any chance that relief of Gordon was ever a realistic prospect. Symons thinks that those who became scapegoats at the time were unfairly treated and concludes that if anyone was to blame, it was Gordon for not communicating his position effectively enough to Wolseley, and Gladstone for delaying his decision to send a relief force. Wolseley's army, all things considered, did about as well as it could have in the situation.
What struck me most in this retelling of a great Victorian epic was how the situation rings through the ages - vacillating politicians and bickering military leaders leading to disaster is a story as old as time, and as recent and tomorrow's news.
England's Pride is a solid exposition of an interesting, if now semi-forgotten, piece of Empire history.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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