MEN OF THE DAY. No. 241.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CHARLES GEORGE GORDON, C.B., R.E.

"CHINESE GORDON" is the most notable of living Englishmen. He comes of a soldier race. His great-grandfather fought against the Pretender for King George; his grandfather was at the taking of Quebec; his father was a General of Artillery, serving in Sicily and Italy, and fought in that battle of Maida in 1806 when British soldiers first in this century showed, by beating a superior force of them, that French soldiers were not invincible.

He himself was born eight-and-forty years ago. He was schooled at Taunton and Woolwich, till at fourteen he entered the Military Academy, where he remained for five years, a hopeless "pickle" who once received a special rebuke and reduction to the ranks from Lord Anglesey. He was longer getting through his examinations than any other cadet had ever been; and he only passed into the Engineers at last by dint of the painful experience of examiners' little ways which he had acquired in a long course of plucking.

In 1852, however, he got his commission in the Engineers. He went to the Crimea, was wounded in the trenches, and was in the attack on the Redan. He was afterwards employed on the Boundary Commissions in Bessarabia and Asia.

But while he was in the trenches before Sebastopol the great Tai-ping insurrection was making such way in China as threatened to bring to an end the Manchoo dynasty which had lasted two hundred and the Chinese empire which had lasted four thousand years. This insurrection was headed by Hung-Sew-tsuen, who styled himself the Tien Wang or Heavenly King, and professed a kind of Christianity. In 1853 he had captured Nanking, the ancient capital of China, and had barely failed to capture Peking, the modern capital. Then the Manchoo dynasty fell upon troubles with the Crimean allies; and because the English insisted on selling opium in China, and Admiral Hope had got beaten at the Taku Forts, Peking was captured in 1860 by the English and French instead of by the Tai-pings.

Meantime a force of rowdies had been organised by the Chinese merchants of Shang-hai against these same Tai-pings, and had been put under the command first of one Ward, an American adventurer who was killed fighting, and then of Burgevine, another American. In January, 1863, the English decided to act against the Tai-pings, who had approached towards Shang-hai. Captain Holland, an English officer, was therefore appointed, on Burgevine's dismissal, to command the Shang-hai force, now called the "Ever-Victorious Army." Holland got repulsed by the Tai-pings. Thereupon Colonel Gordon, who had been travelling and triangulating about the Great Wall, was put at the head of the force, and Charlie Gordon became "Chinese" Gordon.

He addressed himself to the business with rare energy, ability, and single-mindedness. He re-organised the force, which had always been and always continued to be prone to disorder and mutiny; he launched a flotilla, and entered upon a campaign in which he captured many cities, fought over thirty desperate battles, and finally was found in May, 1864, to have reconquered China with his three thousand men for the Manchoo dynasty. He was wounded once, and had the most marvellous escapes, yet he never went armed himself with more than a bamboo stick; except upon the one occasion when he raged about to take the life of his Chinese superior officer for a breach of faith towards the enemy in having executed eight of the insurgent chiefs who had surrendered to Gordon's own protection.

The Chinese Government were most grateful for these services. They gave him the rank of Ti-ti, provincial commander-in-chief; they gave him the Yellow Jacket, which answers to our Order of the Garter, only that it is far more ancient; and they offered him a gift of £17,000. But Gordon would not have it said that he had sold his blood. He refused the £17,000 for himself, and demanded instead, and got, £30,000 for his army, which he paid off and disbanded.

The English Government were likewise grateful. They made him a C.B., thus raising him to the same rank with Mr. Creppy Vivian and Mr. Philip Currie the Foreign Office clerks, Sir Bernard Burke the compiler of peerages, and other eminent persons.

It was felt that a man of his power should be appropriately employed. As however the drains and outhouses at Woolwich were considered for the moment safe, he was necessarily left aside till 1871, when he was appointed—Vice-Consul of the Delta of the Danube.

In 1873 however a Man was wanted in Egypt. The Egyptian Government applied to Gordon to govern its Equatorial provinces. They offered him the same salary as had been given to his predecessor, Sir Samuel Baker, £10,000 a year. Gordon declined this, declaring that it was too much, and took £2000 a year. Again he governed, fought, and conquered, showing himself a true master of men. At the end of 1876 he came to England for a few weeks, and then returned to the governorship of the Soudan and the suppression of the slave trade. In August, 1879, he went to Abyssinia, ceded to the king of that country a province which of right belonged to it, had a quarrel with the Egyptian Government because they would not recognise the right, and in January last year abandoned Egypt and came again to England.

Last May he unwisely allowed himself to be seduced into becoming private secretary to Lord Ripon. A few weeks of this showed him, what one better acquainted with official ways would have known, that an honest man cannot do the dirty work required of a Viceroy's private secretary. He resigned the post therefore, and not only generously forbore to tell the world the true reason of his resignation, but took all the blame upon himself in a letter which made him appear to be merely headstrong and crotchety. Yet he acted rightly and as an honourable and honest man only could act. Having resigned, he was at once invited to China to advise on the quarrel of that country with Russia. Thither he went instantly, in spite of the prohibition of amazed Horse Guards authorities, which he answered by resigning his commission—a resignation which there was still sense enough left in London to refuse to accept. He gave excellent counsel to the Chinese Government, returned again to England, and is now the grandest Englishman alive, and a Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in the English Army waiting for his promotion.

Colonel Gordon is the most conscientious, simple-minded, unselfish, and honest of men. He has a complete contempt for money, and after having again and again rejected opportunities of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he remains a poor man with nothing in the world but his sword and his honour. The official mind, being incapable of understanding this, regards it as a sign of madness. And as it is found that besides being utterly without greed he is also entirely without vanity or self-assertion, he is set down by the officials as being "cracky" and unsafe to employ in comparison with such great men as Lord Chelmsford, Sir Garnet Wolseley, and Sir George Colley.

He is very modest and very gentle, yet full of enthusiasm for what he holds to be right. This enthusiasm often leads him to interfere in matters which he does not understand, and to make in haste statements he has to correct at leisure. But he is a fine, noble, knightly gentleman, such as is found but once in many generations.

MEN OF THE DAY. No. 241.

Meantime a force of rowies had been organised by the Chinese merchants of Shang-hai against these same Tai-pings, and had been put under the command first of one Ward, an American adventurer who was killed fighting, and then of Burgevine, another American. In January, 1863, the English decided to act against the Tai-pings, who had approached towards Shang-hai. Captain Holland, an English officer, was therefore appointed, on Burgevine's dismissal, to command the Shang-hai force, now called the "Ever-Victorious Army." Holland got repulsed by the Tai-pings. Thereupon Colonel Gordon, who had been travelling and triangulating about the Great Wall, was put at the head of the force, and Charlie Gordon became "Chinese" Gordon.

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Yale Center for British Art, 2013