The Rest Is History - 142. General Gordon and the Siege of Khartoum

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

What happened to Gordon at Khartoum? Described by Dominic as the 'greatest media event of the Victorian era', this second parter is not to be missed. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. He always took the Bible for his guide, and he liked little boys to walk by his side. He preferred their company more so than men, because he knew there was less guile in them. And in his conversation he was modest and plain, denouncing all pleasures he considered sinful and vain, and in battle he carried no weapon but a small cane, whilst the bullets fell around him like a shower of rain. He burnt the debtors' books that were imprisoned in Khartoum, and freed them from a dismal prison gloom. Those that were imprisoned for debts they couldn't pay, and sent them rejoicing on their way.

Beautiful, Tom. Absolutely beautiful reading of a brilliant poem. Thank you very much. Further verses there from William McGonagall's great poem marking the death of General Gordon and Khartoum in 1885. And Dominic, in the first part, we were looking at the first part of Gordon's career up to the point where he goes to the Sudan for the first time. So he's a great hero. He's the Chinese Gordon, he's called. He spent six years in Gravesend helping the Wangs, the little boys who were mentioned in that poem there.

Yeah. And if you think that's suspicious, well, you can hear our that uh in in yesterday's episode if you haven't already um so dominic so february 1874 yes what's going on so there's this extraordinary situation um in the sudan basically so egypt which is nominally part of the ott Empire, but de facto kind of isn't, is pretty much, it has the Sudan almost as a kind of a possession of its own. But in turn, Egypt is kind of answering to Britain because it owes Britain loads of money. So what you have in the Sudan is the Sudanese economy. Sudan is incredibly poor. The Sudanese economy depends largely on slavery.

So the slavery is being abolished all over the world and the slave trade being stamped out. The East African slave trade is still going very strong. In fact, it's arguably stronger than ever because slavery has been stamped out elsewhere. So there's loads of money to be made from slavery and the the khedive of egypt the ruler of egypt i think basically uses the sort of anti-slavery sentiment he says well i want to stamp out slavery too actually what he really wants is to reassert his control over the Sudan. And what he wants to do is to get

somebody in, an outsider, a Brit, to come and run the Sudan for him and impose control, set up a whole trading network. And the Khedive says, I'd like you to stamp out the slave trade as well. So it's a bit, a bit, perhaps,

like the Iraqi exiles from Saddam Hussein's regime going to American neoconservatives and saying would you please come and would you please come and kick out Saddam I suppose that's a slightly yes it's a slight stretch but I can see what you're saying it's basically yes it's it's getting an outsider into that that so we've done an episode on on 9-11 we've done an episode on Napoleon in Egypt and this is kind of midway between that but it's getting an outsider into it. It's just that, so we've done an episode on 9-11, we've done an episode on Napoleon in Egypt, and this is kind of midway between that. But we are now moving into the very, very contested,

complex and very ambivalent history of the relationship of the West to Islam. That's right. I mean, and also the whole slavery issue right i mean yeah well well absolutely because um the the impetus for anti-slavery is christian it's absolutely powered by exactly the kind of experience of being born again of evangelical certitude that gordon has also bought into so gordon is passionately opposed to slavery. I mean, basically for the second half of his life, he spends all his time thinking about how he'd love to be a crusader against

slavery and stamp it out and so on. And that means he ends up being used or almost used by a succession of quite dodgy people. So one of those that could even later on Leopold II Belgian in the Congo who wants to use Gordon as a tool with anti-slavery being the pretext. And elements within British foreign policy establishment and military establishment as well. Because one of the paradoxes of Britain's absolutely key role in the abolition of the slave trade, which is done for overtly moralistic reasons. I mean, I say overtly, I mean, they are done for moral reasons. It's forced through and led and conducted

by people who passionately believe that they're doing God's will. But that very sense of moral agency then becomes a further tool of imperialism, because it provides a moral sanction for Britain to intervene. And of course, the Protestant evangelical motivation for this is not something that sits easily with Islam, which has a body of texts, of sayings, of prescriptions that, in the opinion of Muslims derive directly from God and so Gordon's understanding of God is written on his heart it's experienced as as a process of being born again he doesn't he reads the Bible but he understands the Bible through that prism for Muslims there is this great body of law that for centuries and centuries and centuries has said that slavery is legitimate.

And so there is, I mean, I suppose you'd call it a clash of civilizations. I mean, certainly a clash of moral perspectives. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think Gordon doesn't quite know, even at this stage. So this isn't the sort of fatal trip to the Sudan. This is a much earlier one. But even at this stage, there's a sense that he doesn't quite know what he's getting into. Well, he's actually he's going as governor general of the equator, isn't he?

Yeah. So it's quite a slightly weird story. So basically, one of the Khadive's ministers, who's a guy called Nubar Pasha, he meets Gordon at a dinner party in Constantinople. And he's impressed by him. And he asked somebody afterwards, who is that? And somebody says, oh, that's Chinese Chinese Gordon don't know who he is and he gets a book about him and he reads this book by written by a French royalist which says oh what a tremendous person Gordon is and the minister says oh this is a this is the kind of person we're looking for you know let's get him

in to come down and at first Gordon's as you say just sent down to what's called equatoria which is kind of now south sudan north uganda so it's the bottom bit of of the sudan and that's the bit that basically the sudanese slave hunters prey upon they they are looking for kind of black african slaves that they will send north and east and so on which again they've been doing since the eighth century but gordon thinks this is unconscionable he's there to stamp it out and to and in doing so to reassert the power of cairo so he goes down and he's basically ends up being given more and more power so by 1877 three years after he's arrived he's been made governor general of the whole of sudan that sounds like a very grand job but basically he's doing it on his own with a handful of people

kind of trudging around this colossal, colossal country. I mean, a country basically the size of Western Europe. And kind of horrible. Yeah. I mean, the conditions are unbelievably tough. They've got kind of permanent dysentery. There's no water.

That's incredibly hot. Well, again, we've... So we've listened straight to his biography of him, which, you know, is in so many ways so damning of him so so negative and yet again and again there are phrases that that kind of are expressive of admiration so he just so straight she describes uh gordon in equatoria the confused and horrible country the appalling climate the maddening insects and the loathsome diseases the indifference of subordinates and superiors, the savagery of the slave traders and the hatred of the inhabitants. So a kind of a gruelling place for someone to be. And he's fascinating,

I mean, from contemporary sensibility. So obviously his role in stopping the slave trade, I mean, was not to approve really. But he's also very hostile to ivory trading. He is, because a lot of the slave trade is driven by ivory. So they need people. There's a huge demand for ivory in the West. And a lot of the slaves are carrying loads of ivory to the coast. Yeah. And stopping the two kind of goes hand in hand.

So actually, Gordon is a conservationist hero, as well as an anti-slavery one when he's worried he's worried that the um the rapacity for ivory will wipe elephants out and he's right seems a very 21st century perspective so but he's sort of he's a failure though isn't he ultimately he's disappointed he basically says i can't rely on any of the egyptians they're completely corrupt well because he he the only way to stop the slave trade is to stop it at source i sorry is to stop the market so he can try and you know basically he's kind of uh whack-a-mole yeah because you know he'll close off one avenue and another one will sprout up um you know it's got to be he recognizes it's got to be stopped in Arabia and Constantinople or whatever.

That's the only way to halt it. Yeah. And he's a very, something quite forlorn about him, I think, at this point. You know, as you say, he's in terrible conditions. He's very lonely. He's reading his Bible for three hours a day to kind of console himself as he's sort of riding his camels around the Sudan or taking ship down the Nile or whatever.

And then he basically resigns, doesn't he? At the end of 1879, early 1880, he says, I've had enough. I'm out. I'm not getting the support I need. But that's helped to make him even more of a celebrity, the fact that he's basically been running a massive country. So then Leopold ii this belgian bad guy i'm sorry to say uh asks him to come and run the congo for him but hasn't he

before that hasn't he gone off to be private secretary to the viceroy of india yeah i think he had an opening offer from leopold leopold keeps asking him okay but he does go to india you're right as the private secretary of lord rippon, who's the viceroy, and he hates it. Absolutely hates it. And he resigns after days. So he arrives in Bombay with the viceroy on kind of a week. And a Zoroastrian, a Parsi, hands over a book of poetry. And Gordon, as the private secretary, has to say,

yes, the viceroy will read it with great interest. But no, the viceroy will never read it. And Gordon is so tormented by having to lie about this yes, the viceroy will read it with great interest, but no, the viceroy will never read it. And Gordon is so tormented by having to lie about this that he resigns. Yeah, well, he's a very intense person. I mean, he's not the person you would employ as your PA, basically. Not the kind of person who you'd employ

as a spin doctor in Downing Street, certainly. No, no, that's definitely true. He wouldn't laugh about illicit parties. No. No, he wouldn't. That's definitely true. He wouldn't laugh about illicit parties. No. No, he wouldn't. Well, he hates dinner parties. I mean, that's the other thing. Well, he says, when he's in Khartoum at the end.

People are constantly asking him to dinner parties. When he's in Khartoum at the end of his story, he says, you know, one of the great things about being here is that I don't have to go to any dinner parties. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When is the famous thing where he meets up with a French guy who takes him to the opera house in Naples? Oh, I didn't see this.

Where they see female ballet dancers. And Gordon's so appalled. He says, if this is civilization, it can go. Keep it. And then according to the Frenchman, he comes round to see Gordon later. And Gordon is kind of sitting there with his trousers open, lying on the bed, drinking, necking brandy. I don't believe that. That's Rudolph Giuliani, surely.

But from your description. Well, it's a guy called Joseph Reinhardt. At the time, he was very enthusiastic about Gordon. But then 30 or 40 years. And this then. We haven't really mentioned very enthusiastic about Gordon, but then 30 or 40 years, and this then... We haven't really mentioned the issue about Gordon and drink. So there are stories that were put about later on. We had a question, actually.

One of our listeners asked us a question. Man of Gwent says, Winston Churchill, we're out of Gordon. Of course, there is no doubt that Gordon, as a political figure figure was absolutely hopeless. He was so erratic, capricious, utterly unreliable. His mood changed so often. His temper was abominable.

He was frequently drunk. And yet with all that, he had a tremendous sense of honour and great abilities. I mean, Churchill's basically talking about himself, isn't he? Yes, very much so. But you know where Churchill got that from? From Lord Cromer, Evelyn Baring. talking about himself isn't he yes very much so but you know where he got where churchill got that from from um uh lord cromer evelyn bearing evelyn bearing who's basically the guy who's running egypt yeah and who hated gordon hated gordon so bearing is a source for a lot of the stories that i mean actually most of the stories that um that gordon was a drunk and an alcoholic and also um that he perhaps wasn't entirely all that he should have been sexually.

So Baring said of Gordon that he was a queer fellow with a very feminine side to his character. Yes, I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Baring can't really be trusted, I think. And a lot of Gordon, I mean, Gordon wasn't a drunk. I think you can reasonably say he might sometimes have, you know, in stressful situations, necked a bit of brandy. But I think he was drunk with the Holy Spirit. Yeah, well, I think by and large,

most of the people who worked with him said, no, I don't think he was a drunk. I didn't see him drinking to excess. So I think we can probably put that one to bed a little bit. What is true is that Gordon, as time goes on, particularly because he's in these incredibly stressful situations, he is a bit cranky, isn't he? And he's alone with his Bible, and he just keeps reading the Bible.

And making up his own strange ideas. So he's been to the Sudan. I can't remember where. South Africa he goes. He's been to South Africa. He meets Ketoweo, doesn't he? There's this strange point where he goes to Mauritius with the royal engineers. Have you seen this?

Yeah. He goes to the Seychelles, to one of the islands of the Seychelles, where they have these sea coconuts, these double coconuts called Coco de Mer. And Gordon becomes convinced that the trees with the sea, the double coconuts, are the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the Garden of Eden. He thinks he's found the garden of eden because he says these double coconuts if they're attached to the tree they

look like the male organ of generation yeah and if you cut them open they look very much like the female organs of generation so these clearly are what eve and the serpent were getting stuck into or whatever so you can imagine you're getting telegrams about this in the residency at cairo what he tells people this is the thing so the governor of basuto land he told him he said he wrote gordon is as mad as a marcher he's certainly a military genius but about religious matters he is quite mad. And clearly, even Gordon's admiring biographers say, Gordon was going around telling people this. You know, stiff kind of Victorian,

worldly kind of governors and generals and stuff. And they're just absolutely bamboozled by it. Yeah, yeah. Well, and also he then goes to the Holy Land, doesn't he? He finds Golgotha, doesn't he?'t he and he finds Golgotha doesn't he he thinks he's found so he claims yes and you can still see it actually in Jerusalem so it's uh the the tomb in the garden so it's not the church of the holy sepulcher right it's basically skull hill is it called skull hill yeah so it's outside the old city and is there any credence for Gordon's

claim no I don't think so. But I've been there. I mean, it looks more like you would hope it would look. Right. So he's doing all that. And also, I think he's, I mean, he's just kind of, I mean, he's being mad. That's harsh, Tom. That's a bit harsh. He's just spending too much time on his own.

Well, there's a lot of that stuff that you get um you know where places in the holy land are kind of secret clues to lost civilizations all that kind of thing i mean he is an 1880s version of of those kind of books yeah um you know atlantis or aliens or something like that that's kind of what he's doing but then in 1884 he as you say he he signs up to go to the congo as an agent for leopold ii who is an out-and-out baddie. It's really interesting, isn't it, Tom, to think how different this podcast would be if he'd then gone to the Congo, isn't it?

I mean, our whole... Well, he would... Leopold II is basically using Gordon to try and kind of Christian wash it. Yeah. Isn't it? I mean, Victorian hero wash it. Yeah. Isn't it? I mean, Victorian hero wash it. Yeah. He wants him to go so that his, you know,

what is effectively a private estate that will be brutally, brutally run. He's doing the same with Stanley as well, the American explorer. I don't think Gordon would have tolerated that for a minute. No, he probably wouldn't have. I mean, he's not the man to do that at all. But he really thinks that he's going to go to the Congo and end slavery.

I mean, this is the sort of strange, twisted, as you said, the sort of weird contradictory nature of African-European high politics and diplomacy in the 1880s, that Leopold II tells Gordon, I want you to come and we can end the slave trade together. You can end it in the Congo. What he really wants to do is to use Gordon as the front man for his operation in which he will basically have Congolese slaves working for him. Yeah.

And I think Gordon is starting to rumble this before he goes, because he makes a comment, huge apologies to Bart Van Loo and to all our Belgian listeners. But Gordon says, I do not like Belgians. Yeah. And I think not like Belgians. Yeah. And I think that's... Hercule Poirot. Yes.

I think that's because he's starting to feel that Leopold perhaps is up to a dirty one. But he's been in Brussels, hasn't he? And then he comes home from Brussels in January 1884 when he's dithering about whether to accept these this offer of going to the congo and he arrives in england to find a telegram from a journalist called wt stead who is the by far the most famous kind of muckraking newspaper editor of the day this guy who runs the palma gazette and he's also a very keen spiritualist

do you know the story of his daughter and the ghost i don't would you like to tell me i'd love to so so their house was on smith square which is where tory central offices and now the european union embassy so sted and his daughter estelle lived there. And Sted then goes on to drown on the Titanic. But before he gets drowned on the Titanic, his daughter Estelle is, she's lying in bed. She gets woken up by a man who comes into her room, slams the door open, takes off his hat, sits down at a desk, begins writing uh ignores her completely and the same thing happens three nights in a row and estelle has no idea what's going on who is this strange guy who's wandering into her room and sitting down and writing so the father suggests

um that they get hold of a spirit indicator because the obvious solution is that it's a ghost and this spirit indicator is a kind of device for communicating with the dead so the cell does that sounds great and the spirit indicator reveals that this it is a ghost and he's a chap called gordon knight a minor poet who specialized in rollicking songs of the sea and like a sea shanty kind of character and he and Estelle get on tremendously well. And they're great pals. And they have a lovely time. And the ghost stops slamming the door. You know, he behaves very responsibly. And when Stead then drowns in the Titanic,

the ghost keeps her in touch with her dead father. He keeps in touch with Stead. So the ghost is seeing Sted, who's dead, because he's now drowned in the Titanic. And so he then comes and reassures Estelle that her dad's okay. Well, that's nice. So it's a very happy story.

Did Estelle and the ghost keep in touch for the rest of Estelle's life? I don't know. Wow. That's an unexpected byway of the John Gordon story. But I suppose in a way it is, because it does show that people are believing quite a lot of old stuff at this point.

Anyway, so Stead says to Gordon, I'd really like to talk to you. So Gordon, I think the next day after he's arrived, or a couple of days, says, yeah, fine, all right, we'll meet up for this interview. And at the interview, Gordon gets out a map of the Congo to show Stead all his plans for the Congo, and Stead says, well, I'm not interested in the Congo.

Are you not keeping up with, you know, the big news is the Sudan. So basically, it's all kicked off in the Sudan. Egypt has been embroiled in a nationalist uprising, which the British have helped to put down. And in this sort of general sort of chaos and fragmentation of egypt and also in the huge disruption in the in the sudan caused by the attempts to suppress slave hunting and the slave trade there has begun this great islamist uprising that's what we call it now, isn't it? Under a guy called Muhammad Ahmad, who basically says, I am the Mahdi.

Now, Tom, you will know far better than me what all this is about, the Mahdi business. So it's this idea that there's a kind of succession of significant figures who will, in the long run, herald the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world. And it's, it's,

so it kind of has the same kind of apocalyptic expression that you get with the Islamic state. Or the type being rebellion. Yeah, but this is, yes, yes. But this is,

it's Islamic. Yeah. And so it's expressive of that kind of same yearning for an establishment of a perfect Islamic order that has been massively, massively enhanceddi is expressive of that in the same way that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and the Islamic State in more recent years have been. We've talked about lots of similar things on this podcast, haven't we, Tom? Like the Taiping, Al-Qaeda, the ghost dance, exactly, in the United States and I think I think that um Taiping uh jihadism I think we can legitimately call it that um in the 19th century um the ghost dance all of these are expressions of a kind of spiritual anguish in the face of the power of the western empires um and it's it's an anguish that different societies evolve different ways to cope you know how deal with it. And in the Muslim world, Islam has remained the great wellspring for yearnings and dreams of ending Western intrusion and authority and power right the way up to the

present. So that's why, you know, we said, I think in the first episode that this is a punctuation point in the story that leads from Napoleon's intrusion into Egypt, which we've done an episode on right the way up to the story of 9-11 and its aftermath.

And it's, it kind of, you see, because Gordon does not think that the mardi is religious that's the fascinating thing he's so religious himself but he says to stead well the mardi is not really a religious figure i think basically because gordon is so fixated on ending the slave trade and he he knows that there's a lot of discontent in the sudan about about that from the slave hunters. So I think he thinks that the Mahdi is merely the sort of figurehead

for a local uprising against the Egyptians, you know, fuelled by kind of slave hunters, and he thinks, if I can get, if you can sort out their grievances, then the Mahdi will kind of go away. I think that's what he

thinks, isn't it? And it will provide an opportunity to get back to Khartoum and perhaps with British muscle behind, then we can crack on with suppressing the slave trade. Yeah. Well, this is now, this gets so confused, doesn't it? And strange, this kind of story. Okay, well, I think we should take a break there. I think when we come back,

we will look at the broader political context in Britain, which is quite complicated. And then we will go into the dramatic final year and final days of Gordon of Khartoum. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. hello welcome back um we are into the end game with our uh special on gordon of cartoon and dominic um we're gearing up to send gordon to cartoon a second time uh we're still in britain

what's the political context for what is happening? So Britain has a liberal government under Gladstone the liberal party is a kind of very strongly anti-slavery party but it's also a non-interventionist party in many ways compared with

the Tories. So again it's kind of like people who are very against NATO's military intervention in Afghanistan, but also are very much in favour of stopping the Taliban from approaching. Exactly. So there's a real ambivalence there. Gladstone doesn't like the idea of sending armies to overthrow regimes and so on. He's a bit ambivalent about that, not least because it's expensive and Gladstone's all about kind of keeping costs down. But there are people in the Liberal Party who think,

there are some who think, you know, we should definitely shore up the Egyptian regime and shoring up the Sudan is part of that. There are some who passionately want to end slavery and see it as an opportunity to do that. So while they're all sort of debating, what are we going to do about the Sudan, where there's this big uprising, this sort of, as you say,

jihadist uprising, and the Egyptian regime wants to do something about it. While they're doing that, W.T. Stead publishes his article, his interview with Gordon. The interview is called Chinese Gordon on the Sudan, and there's an accompanying editorial entitled Chinese Gordon for the Sudan. And Stead basically says, I've interviewed Gordon. He's clearly the man. Send him immediately.

He'll sort it out. And newspaper boys are sort of shouting these on the streets of London. All the other papers pile in. Say, yes, yes, yes. Send Chinese Gordon. He's the man. So this is the British tabloid press. The tabloid press, well, the equivalent to the tabloid press,

absolutely sort of stir this up. press the tabloid press except well the equivalent to the tabloid press absolutely kick you know sort of stir this up now you mentioned i think in our first podcast about gordon's great mate garnet walsley who had he'd become pals with in the crimea and garnet walsley is the number two man in the army to friend of the show the duke of Cambridge, who is totally useless. The most incompetent commander-in-chief ever. So Garnet Worsley despises the Duke of Cambridge. Worsley is Britain's top general, but he wants to really run the army himself. He's got a whole network of other generals called the Worsley Ring around him who are kind of modernisers and so on.

I think, and I think quite a few historians take the view, that Worsley wants to use Gordon to go to the Sudan. He wants to send Gordon to the Sudan and then go and rescue him. That's always Wolseley's plan. He's always thinking, this would be a great opportunity for us to use the army to go and sort this out. And is Wolseley doing that? What's his motivation for that?

It'll make his name. It'll allow him to cement his control over the army it'll and over sudan i mean is it i don't think nobody wants nobody wants sudan for the sudan there's nothing there that people want there's no i mean the only later on the french the french and the british want sudan to complete the jigsaw puzzle of their African empires. But nobody wants it for that reason at this point. I think it's more about prestige and status than anything else. So basically, Wolseley helps to persuade the Liberal government, not Gladstone, because Gladstone's away.

Gladstone's private secretary, W.W. Hamilton, he seems to be a half-cracked fatalist. And that's before Gordon's even gone. Lots of Gladstone's people say, sending Gordon is absolutely demented. He's the worst possible person you could send because he's all about the Garden of Eden and stuff these days.

And also, he doesn't follow orders. He's reading his Bible and making up his own mind, and he doesn't do orders. You know, he's reading his Bible and making up his own mind and he doesn't do as he's told. But he gets summoned to the war office on the 18th of January and there are four different cabinet ministers there. There's Lord Hartington,

there's a guy called Charles Dilker, there's Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook. And they basically say to him, well, we've heard you're the man, you know, are you going to go to the Sudan and all this sort of thing. Now what? Was Churchill there then? No, that's why generic. Well, Churchill've heard you're the man. Are you going to go to the Sudan and all this sort of thing? Now, what? Was Churchill there then?

No. That's why generic. Well, Churchill was a liberal. He was a senior liberal minister too, Tom, only a few years later. That's just a generic late Victorian Edwardian minister's voice. Hello, Gordon. Come in. Sit down.

So go on. Anyway, there he is. What's not clear is what they tell him to do so they think they've told gordon go to the sudan bite them on the beaches no they say find out it's a fact-finding mission only so they think he's going to go and report back on the situation. What's going on in Khartoum? Report back. He seems to have thought that it's his job to evacuate the Khartoum garrison and everybody in Khartoum and get them out before the Mahdi arrives. But what also seems to be the case is that at some point in his mind, the idea takes shape. He could just go down there and run it.

Yeah. And some people think he gets that idea later, but some people think he had that idea from the very beginning. He basically thinks, I should be in charge from the start. But it's floating around in London even before he leaves because there's a Tory peer who says of what Gordon is planning to do. Since the days of Knight Errantry, never was such an expedition taken. So there's clearly all kinds of different perspectives on what's going to happen in London.

Just as maybe there are in Gordon's head. That's the thing. Nobody really has ironed out why Gordon is going and what he's going to do. And what they're going to do and what is going you know what they're going to do once he gets there would it be uh going too far to say that the the uncertainty reflects the massive kind of moral uncertainty that britain feels about what the purpose of the british empire is is it maybe does it you know does the british Empire exist to do good, to suppress slavery, to stop elephants being wiped out? Or does it exist to stop the French from occupying territory?

Or does it exist to serve the interests of realpolitik and ensure that the Egyptian government stays in place so that they continue to screw it with money? Maybe all those things. And in a sense, Gordon is he's such a loose cannon yeah but maybe this is why it has the impact that it does because his expedition focuses all the tensions and ambivalences and contradictions that are that british imperialism particularly in africa is generating but not just british imperialism right i mean do you not think there are elements of this when you you think about our podcast that we did about afghanistan um yes we've talked about the 9-11 and the rear the yeah i'm just saying specifically africa because it's it because slavery is so

important to the story yeah i think that's fair enough and and and the anti-slavery thing by the way will be a feature a little bit later because there's an unexpected irony of this because of the anti-slavery cause gordon's not allowed to have the allies that he wants to have but anyway they've had this meeting they sent a telegram to the queen we'd like to send chinese gordon the queen loves this idea queen victoria she thinks it's absolutely brilliant she's a great fan lots of underlinings and her yeah she's like absolutely hurrah this is he's a marvelous man yes that was almost my bit of margaret thatcher there i thought tom um it's absolutely marvelous of underlinings in her letters. Yeah, she's like, absolutely, hurrah, this is the best thing you can do. He's a marvellous man. Yes. That was almost a bit of Margaret Thatcher there, I thought, Tom.

It's absolutely marvellous. Right, so they take him. I mean, I think this story may be a bit apocryphal, but it's worth telling anyway because it's such a good story. They're supposed to have taken him to Charing Cross Station, basically that day,

and put him on the eight o'clock mail train to the continent. You know, off you go. Go now. Lord Granville is reputed to have bought him his ticket. I think this turns out not to be true, but it's a good story. And the other thing is that Gordon had no money with him. He didn't carry money. So his mate, Wolseley, gives him his cash and gives him his gold watch.

And they sort of wave him off. Off you go, good chap. Good luck. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Gordon, who was going to go to the Congo, is on his way to the Sudan. But he doesn't go straight there, which was the original plan. He stops in Cairo. And this adds another level of complexity because when he gets to Cairo, he's brought in to see Evelyn Baring, who is the British agent in Egypt,

who basically is running Egypt, and the Khedive, the ruler of Egypt. And they say to him, don't go to Khartoum to just evacuate the garrison or to do a fat-finding mission. Go to be governor general. Go and run it. And at that point, obviously, in his own mind,

the meaning of his mission has changed, hasn't it? Yeah. So a lot of people would say that's the moment at which the sort of the fatal melodrama is prepared. But we should also, I mean, we said in the first part that there is a kind of a part of him that has always yearned for martyrdom. Yeah. So he's not afraid of death because death will lead him to heaven. What he keeps saying during the course of this expedition, you know, things are absolutely going to pot around me.

It's absolute disaster. But I can't question God's plan. This is what God wants. And it would be wrong for me to try to change anything or to escape or any of these things, because that's clearly not what God is intending. So I think when he leaves... And that's very clear.

I mean, so the French guy whose name I can't remember who also subsequently accused him of being drunk. Yeah. But says that what he did, he never did anything for political reasons. It was always for Christ and the Gospels. Yeah, everybody knows that. And that's why quite a lot of people, when they say we're sending Gordon,

are like, what? He's the worst person you could possibly send. I mean, you know, you're sending a sort of, people sort of say you're sending this kind of evangelical Puritan to try to save the Sudan against the Mahdi. I mean, that's completely demented. The last person, Gordon's not a pragmatist, he's not Realpolitik,

he's none of these things. Anyway, off he goes. He goes on with his mate Colonel Stewart, who's his chosen second-in-command. They go south from Egypt. They go up the Nile by steamer, by railway, horses. He

arrives at the second city of Sudan, which is called Berber in February 1884 and at that point he's told the Mahdi's troops have basically cut off the route from the coast from the Red Sea so you can't evacuate Khartoum that way

then you can't expect rescue that way so the job is going to be much much harder but he says you know fine we'll just keep going um yeah so they arrive at khartoum on the 18th of february 1884 and uh you at the very beginning of this epic you read out the thing from he burns all the debtors books yeah and he sort of you know he says doesn't he yeah and um the stocks and so this commits of torture he's a great performer he's a great kind of political performer and he arrives in cartoon and he clearly sees himself i mean this is what

lytton straight he brings out in his essay in eminent victorians that he sees himself as a bit of a kind of very small M, Messiah of a kind. Well, he's Christ clearing the temple. But straight away, it's obvious he's not there to report back to the liberal government in London. He's there for the long haul. So he starts to evacuate Egyptian women and children and European women and children by steamer.

But he kind of settles into the palace. He walks around in his fez. He keeps saying, you know, this is all god's plan so he writes all things are ruled by him for his glory it is rebellion to murmur against his will he's writing all this on telegrams as well isn't he yeah to bearing these telegrams what's're like, what's going on? Yes. So please advise estimated arrival of steamer and loads of quotations from the Bible. I mean, not what you want, really.

But all the time this has been followed by the British newspapers. So they know that Gordon has gone. And they're like, you know, Gordon is the great hero. We've got to rescue him gordon well because he doesn't doesn't stewart he gets massacred yes he does so a series of things start to go wrong so first of all gordon has said i want this guy called zubair who's a sort of a local

chief a warlord basically he is the man i need at my side to run the sudan because i've been to the sudan before and i know he has all the contacts. But Zubair is a slave hunter and a slave trader. And also the father of someone who Gordon had killed. That is also a problem. But the anti-slavery society in Britain says under no circumstances can he have Zubair. Because Zubair is a bad guy because he's a slaver. So Gladstone is told by other liberal politicians, oh, it'll cause a lot of trouble for us with the liberal grassroots.

So Gladstone says, well, he can't have Zubair. No good. So at that point, Gordon doesn't really have any local allies. And the Mahdi's army is closing in the whole time. And Bering in Cairo keeps saying to Gordon, well, you could evacuate. You could send... Well, it's very like the Taliban, isn't it?

I mean, it's the reports coming back from Kabul saying the Taliban are closing in. But what was the analogy? Who would we send or the Americans send to Kabul that would be the equivalent of General Gordon? I mean, Tony Blair, if he'd gone personally. People would be saying, we must rescue Tony Blair before the time closes in.

Who would it be? Meghan Markle. Oh my God, Tom. Prince Harry. It would be Prince Harry. Would it be? It would be someone like Prince Harry. It's such a bizarre scenario.

I don't know. Well, because Prince Harry. It's such a bizarre scenario. I don't know. Well, because Prince Harry served in Afghanistan. He did. Yeah, I think that's the... If we sent him to be governor general and also Prince Harry... But also because he's been born again. Yeah, into whiteness.

Yes. And he's refusing to come because he's got to save... He's got to decolonise the Afghan curriculum. He's got to decolonize the Afghan curriculum. He's got to decolonize the Afghan curriculum. Exactly. That's the analogy. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what's going on.

Well, anyway, this situation has now got completely out of control. People are saying to Gordon, you could go north, you could go south, you could get out of Khartoum. And under no circumstances am I leaving. He says, I'm not going to leave Khartoum and leave people behind. Absolutely not. I'm here for the long haul. The Mahdi, so he's the leader of the jihad,

he starts sending Gordon all these letters saying, why don't you surrender and embrace Islam? It'll be fine. We can be great pals. And in the film, Kh lawrence olivier as the mardi and charlton heston yeah don't they meet up um the gordon and the mardi actually it's not a film that gets shown a lot these days no because lawrence olivier is blacked up you see to play the uh to play the mardi charlton heston as yeah i think charlton is quite good as gordon actually

in the film anyway that's by the by so gordon says no i'm not going to convert to islam you know i'm i'm still here so you know uh the margie's closing in and in britain more people getting more and more agitated and gladstone is digging his heels in gladstone says no no i'm not going to send a relief force then eventually he agrees he has to and woolsey gets what he's always wanted, which is the chance to lead the rescue, but much too late, because Gladstone has delayed and delayed. So the Wolsey expedition

only arrives in Cairo on the 9th of September, 1884. So at this point, Gordon has been in Khartoum for, what, seven months or so? But at this point, the Mahdi is really quite close to Khartoum. So Gordon has had to put chains across rivers,

and he's basically formed the people of Khartoum into a kind of defence. He's giving them little metal stars for good conduct and so on. He's running the whole thing as a kind of military operation. A month afterwards, he's landed in Cairo. The kind of as a kind of military operation a month afterwards he's landed in cairo the mardi arrives outside khartoum and then you have this you know for day days and days and days the um the dervishes as they were the british called them the ansar i think as they call themselves the mardiist army they're bombarding Khartoum with cannons and rockets and so on and

sort of rifle fire and things. And then the waters drop, don't they? They do. They do. So it's all... So, you know, it suddenly gets to the point where like, okay, this is really serious now. If the British don't arrive

you know... Now. Now. Gordon is doomed. Gordon is up there on the roof of his palace reading his bible writing letters constantly writing you know god's will will be done and all this i thank god i don't have to go to any dinner parties this kind of stuff i don't know how the wangs are getting on the people of Khartoum have been reduced to eating dogs. It's all going horribly wrong. The British are coming south. On, I think, the 17th of January, 1885,

the British fight the first, the sort of vanguard, the advance guard. So the British have come in this long, long column. They have to come so slowly because they need water and they can't outpace their supply train. So it's taking forever. It's taking months. They fight the Mardiists at a place called Abu Claire, but their commander is killed.

This is the place, Tom. You know the poem that we read out in the cricket episode, my favourite poem. Oh, about the play up, play up and play the game. Play up, play up and play the game, Vita Lampada. So the square that broke, the colonel's dead, you know, all that sort of stuff. This sort of great poem of empire that's written about this battle,

the square broke and, you know, there's all carnage. So they're going very slowly now, the relief force. Then on the 25th of January, I think it is, Gordon's up smoking on his roof, reading the Bible. But down below, the Mardius have identified, as you said, the waters have receded. And they've identified that a ditch has been left undefended or something. They can see a weakness in the defences.

And first thing the next morning the 26th of january two days before gordon's birthday yeah they break into cartoon what follows is utter utter carnage thousands of people being massacred being beheaded all europeans basically being one of them Gordon. Well, we don't know what happens to Gordon. So the famous story... Well, we know he got beheaded. We know that, but... And we know he died. We don't know how. And the famous, the image that became one of the absolute defining images,

not just of Victorian Britain, but of European Empire, I would say. And the relationship between Europe and Africa or Asia and so on is George William Joy's painting which you can see online if you don't know it of Gordon standing there imperturbable in his fez in his suit um on the steps of the palace and this sort of great crowd of dervishes with spears facing him and that's the like that the image at the end of the charlton heston film which recreates it to the letter charlton heston

looks regal you know he looks but there are there are reports aren't there that he he he he fights yeah until he runs out of ammunition and then gets overwhelmed. But isn't it further complicating it? I mean, he writes, he's debating whether he should accept death or if he gets captured, what should he then do? And he says that perhaps capture will be a kind of calvary for him, a kind of... What an extraordinary thing to be thinking though, Tom, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. To be weighing up in your mind. Yeah. I mean, there are some accounts, aren't there, that he... Well, the Mahdi wanted him alive. He did. There's one account

that Gordon bared his breast to the dervishes and shouted, strike, and one of them plunged a spear into his chest. I mean, there are numerous different versions.

But we know he does die against the Mahdi's wishes who wanted him captured. And he does get beheaded. And the head gets taken to the Mahdi. Yeah. And the body is thrown down a well, I think. And never gets found. And two days later, the British steamers turn up outside Khartoum.

Two days, Tom. And they don't even land, do they? No, they arrive and I think they realise. And Wolves' great expedition, he's called home. He sends a furious, furious telegram to Queen Victoria and blames Gladstone for the whole thing. So Gladstone, the grand old man, the GOM, gets inverted to become MOG, the murder of Gordon.

I mean, when the news reached Britain, there was a Princess Diana style. And around the world, I think. Explosion. I mean, am I not right in thinking that there were signs with black borders in Boston and New York and so on? All around the world.

Even in Germany. You know, that Gordon, the hero of Christian Western civilization, had been abandoned and betrayed and left to die in Khartoum, killed by the dervishes. You know, it's a story that could have been dreamed up by some sort of... By the enemies of slave traders and so many knots of paradox and complexity. And then further adding to that is then what happens in 1898 when... Yeah, the British return.

The British return and wipe the Maldives army out of the Battle of Omdurman on the other side of the Nile from Khartoum. Which Churchill is present at. Churchill writes about Omdurman brilliantly, by the way, in his book, The River War, because he was with the 21st Lancers. So they think they're there. I mean, they're not really there to avenge Gordon. That's what they're told, aren't they? They're there to stymie the French. And isn't it right that it's commanded by Kitchener, who had known Gordon?

Yes, that's right. And after the battle, he opens up the orders and gets told, actually, it's nothing to do with Gordon. You've got to go and stop the French. But Kitchener made a point of despoiling the tomb of the Mahdi. The Mahdi was dead by this point. Kitchener had the Mahdi's tomb kind of, you know, his bones destroyed or thrown into a river or something. And as vengeance.

Yeah. And who is it? Reginald Wingate, who was another one of the officers. And Douglas Haig as well, wasn't he? He, exactly. He supposedly got hold of the skull of the martyr's successor, who was called the Khalifa, and he had it made into a cup. And he used to drink champagne out of it, Tom,

on the anniversary of the Battle of Omdurman every year until 1953. Goodness. And they were able to do that what is it? Because we have got... The Gatling Gum. And they have not. But the shock of Gordon's death

the way in which he was turned into a martyr so Robert Louis Stevenson said, England stands before the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. And this sort of sense that Gordon was, he's not just a martyr, he's not a hero, he's positively a saint. I mean, this is what...

Christ-like, Christ-like. Genuinely Christ-like. So this is what Wolseley said. Wolseley, where are you? Wolseley said Wolseley um where Wolseley said he's gone from amongst us and I shall never know his like again indeed many generations may come and go without producing a Charlie Gordon his example will be one that fathers will hold up to their sons in England and as long as any faith in God remains to us as a nation and that we continue to be manly enough to revere the highest

form of courage and devotion to duty. This is a letter to Gordon's brother. So long will your brother be quoted and referred to as the human embodiment of all manly and Christian virtues. And this was, I mean, widespread in Britain and the English-speaking world in the 1880s, the sense that Gordon was the embodiment of Western civilization and Christian civilization. Do you not think, Tom? I do. And I also think that that is then what gets reacted against, most famously by Strachey.

Yes. So the last lines of his biography of Gordon, the future lay with Major Kitchener and his Maxim Nordenfelt guns. 13 years later, the Mahdi's empire was abolished forever in the gigantic Hecatomb of Omdurman. And then he has this very famous last line. At any rate, it had all ended very happily in a glorious slaughter of 20,000 Arabs,

a vast addition to the British Empire and a step in the peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring. And I guess that that would be the kind of default attitude now that anything involving British military expeditions to up the Nile is to be viewed in those terms. But I think it is much more complicated.

Well, partly because of the slavery aspect, right? Absolutely, yes. And I think that if we're saying, well, who are Gordon's heirs today in contemporary Britain? I mean, they're to be found among people who are campaigning to return looted artefacts to Nigeria and condemning slavery and campaigning to save wildlife in Africa, as they are among the more jingoistic, perhaps. But Gordon would be a complete liberal interventionist wouldn't he i mean he would be uh you know we should be in afghanistan um protecting women from the taliban yeah he'd be all about that wouldn't he there really is his heirs i would say people who look at you know

other parts of the world and say we have a duty to bring them into the light i would say that christian motivation is as which might be secularized now, but it's absolutely there in kind of lots of Western societies. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's why it's such a fascinating topic. And I thoroughly commend you having picked on it. So, so we've done.

So that's a general Gordon. Shall I reach, shall I take us out by reading? I feel very bad because you, you, you actually, you sent the poem to me and I enjoyed it so much that I said, could I read it? And I've read

five of the verses and I know that you were dying to. So why don't you take us out with the last few verses? Okay. I won't do it in my Scottish accent, my McGonagall accent, because I think that would be disrespectful to General Gordon. Just don't do it in your inverted commas Churchill. Oh, indeed.

Yeah, well, I could do it in your Neanderthal voice, I suppose, but that definitely would be disrespectful to General Gordon. It would be very disrespectful. OK, here we go. He was always willing to conduct meetings for the poor, also meat and clothing for them he tried to procure. And he always had little humorous speeches at command, for that's not true.

And to hear him deliver them, it must have been grand. In military life his equal couldn't be found, not if you were to search the wide world around, and tis pitiful to think he is met with such a doom by a base traitor knave while in Khartoum. Yes, the black-hearted traitor opened the gates of Khartoum, and through that the Christian hero has met his doom. For when the gates were opened, the Arabs rushed madly in, and foully murdered him, while they laughingly did grin. But he defended himself nobly with axe and sword in hand. But alas, he was soon overpowered by that savage band, and his body received a hundred spear- and more while his murderers exultingly did loudly shriek and roar.

But heaven's will, it is said, must be done and according to his own opinion his time was come. But I hope he's now in heaven reaping his reward although his fate on earth was really very hard. I hope the people will his memory revere and take an example from him and worship God in fear and never be too fond of worldly gear and walk in General Gordon's footsteps while they are here. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.