Siege of Khartoum (1884-1885): General Gordon and the Mahdi

The Siege of Khartoum lasted from March 1884 to 26 January 1885, when forces of Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, stormed the Sudanese capital and killed its defender, the British general Charles Gordon. A British relief expedition arrived just two days too late. The fall of Khartoum caused outrage in Britain, damaged Gladstone’s government and turned Gordon into one of the most celebrated figures of the Victorian age.

Background

Since 1821 Sudan had been ruled by Egypt, itself nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1881 the religious teacher Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi and launched the revolt known as the Mahdist War. His followers, the Ansar, defeated one Egyptian force after another, captured El Obeid in January 1883 and destroyed an army of around 8,000-10,000 men under William Hicks at Shaykan in November 1883.

Britain had occupied Egypt after the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 and effectively controlled its government. William Gladstone’s Liberal ministry had no wish to fight in Sudan and pressed Egypt to abandon the territory. The problem was how to withdraw the thousands of Egyptian soldiers, officials and civilians scattered across the country.

Gordon’s mission

Charles George Gordon (1833-1885) was a Royal Engineers officer famous as “Chinese Gordon” for commanding the Ever Victorious Army against the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s. He had served as governor-general of Sudan from 1877 to 1879, campaigning against the slave trade. He was deeply religious, energetic and independent-minded.

After a press campaign led by W. T. Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette, the government sent Gordon to Sudan in January 1884. His instructions were to report on the situation and to carry out the evacuation, though their exact scope was ambiguous and has been argued over ever since. He left London on 18 January and, reappointed governor-general by the Khedive, reached Khartoum on 18 February 1884.

Gordon quickly concluded that a simple withdrawal would leave Sudan to the Mahdi and endanger Egypt. He proposed that Zubayr Pasha, a powerful former slave trader, be appointed to rule Sudan as a counterweight, but the government rejected the idea because of Zubayr’s past and public opinion in Britain.

The siege

In March 1884 tribes north of Khartoum joined the revolt, and on about 13 March the telegraph line to Egypt was cut. From then on Gordon could communicate only by occasional messengers. He sent some 2,500 women, children and sick people north by steamer while the river was still open, but Berber, the key town on the route to Egypt, fell to the Mahdists in May 1884.

Gordon organised the defence energetically. Khartoum was protected by the Blue Nile to the north and the White Nile to the west, and on the landward side by a long line of earthworks, ditches and mines. He armed a small fleet of river steamers with guns and used them to raid for grain and to keep contact with outposts. He printed his own paper currency, signed personally, to pay troops and buy supplies. The garrison consisted mostly of Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers, with no British troops.

In September 1884 Gordon sent his chief assistant, Colonel John Stewart, with the British consul Frank Power and the French consul Herbin, down the Nile on the steamer Abbas to carry news and his records to Egypt. The steamer ran aground near Abu Hamed, and all three were killed.

The Mahdi himself arrived near Omdurman, across the White Nile, in October 1884 with a large army, and the siege tightened. In a series of letters he urged Gordon to surrender and accept Islam; Gordon refused. Food ran out over the winter, and the population suffered severe hunger. The fort at Omdurman, held by Gordon’s troops on the west bank, surrendered on about 15 January 1885.

Gordon kept a journal of the siege. His last entry, dated 14 December 1884, warned that the town might fall within ten days if relief did not come.

The relief expedition

In Britain, newspapers, public meetings and Queen Victoria herself pressed the government to save Gordon. Gladstone, who believed Gordon had exceeded his instructions, resisted until August 1884, when Parliament voted funds for a relief expedition under Lord Wolseley.

Wolseley chose to advance up the Nile, as he had done on the Red River in Canada in 1870. Hundreds of specially built whaleboats were shipped to Egypt, and several hundred Canadian boatmen, the “Nile Voyageurs”, were hired to help take them through the cataracts. Progress was slow.

At Korti, in late December 1884, Wolseley split his force. A River Column continued up the Nile, while a Desert Column of roughly 1,500-1,800 men, mostly mounted on camels, under Sir Herbert Stewart set out across the Bayuda Desert to reach the Nile near Metemma. On 17 January 1885 at Abu Klea the column was attacked by a large Mahdist force, which briefly broke into the British square before being driven off. Colonel Fred Burnaby was among those killed. Two days later, near Abu Kru (Abu Kurru), Stewart was mortally wounded.

Command passed to Sir Charles Wilson, who reached the Nile at Gubat and met four of Gordon’s steamers sent downriver. After delays to reconnoitre and prepare, Wilson set off upstream with two steamers and a small party of soldiers on 24 January.

The fall of Khartoum

The Mahdi learned that the relief force was close. Before dawn on 26 January 1885, the Ansar attacked. The falling Nile had exposed a stretch of ground near the southwestern end of the defences, by the White Nile, and the attackers broke through and poured into the exhausted and starving town.

Gordon was killed during the assault, most likely near or in the governor’s palace. Accounts of how he died vary: some say he was speared on the palace steps, others that he died fighting. His head was cut off and taken to the Mahdi’s camp; Rudolf Slatin, a former Austrian officer held prisoner by the Mahdists, later wrote that it was shown to him. Several sources state that the Mahdi had wanted Gordon captured alive.

Many soldiers and civilians were killed in the sack of the city, and many survivors were enslaved. Estimates of the number of dead vary widely and are uncertain, ranging from about 4,000 to 10,000 or more.

On 28 January Wilson’s steamers came within sight of Khartoum, saw that the Egyptian flag was no longer flying over the palace and came under heavy fire. They turned back.

Consequences

The government ordered Wolseley’s force to withdraw, and by mid-1885 British troops had left Sudan apart from the frontier and the Red Sea port of Suakin. The Mahdi died in Omdurman on 22 June 1885, and his successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi, ruled Sudan for thirteen more years.

In Britain the news caused a storm of anger. Queen Victoria sent Gladstone an uncoded telegram of rebuke. His popular nickname, the “G.O.M.” (Grand Old Man), was turned into “M.O.G.” (Murderer of Gordon). Gladstone’s government narrowly survived a vote of censure in February 1885 and resigned after a defeat on its budget in June.

Gordon became a national martyr. Memorials, statues, sermons and books celebrated him, and the Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum, founded after the reconquest, was named after him. In 1898 Herbert Kitchener’s army defeated the Khalifa at the Battle of Omdurman, and two days later a memorial service for Gordon was held in front of the ruins of the palace.

Key people

• Charles Gordon (1833-1885), governor-general of Sudan and defender of Khartoum.
• Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi (1844-1885), leader of the revolt, who directed the siege from his camp near Omdurman.
• Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913), commander of the relief expedition and Britain’s most prominent general of the period.
• Sir Herbert Stewart (1843-1885), commander of the Desert Column, mortally wounded near Abu Kru.
• Sir Charles Wilson (1836-1905), intelligence officer who led the steamers to Khartoum after Stewart was wounded and was later criticised, probably unfairly, for the delay.
• William Gladstone (1809-1898), prime minister, whose reluctance to intervene was widely blamed for Gordon’s death.

Myths and facts

“Gordon died standing calmly at the top of the stairs.” This image comes from George William Joy’s painting General Gordon’s Last Stand (c. 1893), painted years after the event. Eyewitness accounts are contradictory.

“Gordon and the Mahdi met face to face.” They never met. The dramatic encounters in the 1966 film Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, were invented.

“Gordon was ordered to hold Khartoum to the last.” His mission was to evacuate, not to defend Sudan. Whether he deliberately stayed to force the government’s hand, or was simply trapped, is still debated.

Timeline

• 1883, 3-5 November: Hicks’s army is destroyed at Shaykan.
• 1884, 18 January: Gordon leaves London for Sudan.
• 1884, 18 February: Gordon arrives in Khartoum.
• 1884, c. 13 March: Telegraph cut; the siege begins.
• 1884, May: Berber falls to the Mahdists.
• 1884, August: Parliament votes funds for the relief expedition.
• 1884, October: The Mahdi arrives near Omdurman.
• 1885, 17 January: Battle of Abu Klea.
• 1885, 26 January: Khartoum is stormed and Gordon killed.
• 1885, 28 January: Wilson’s steamers arrive and turn back.

Why it matters

The fall of Khartoum confirmed the Mahdist state as the master of Sudan and became one of the great political scandals of Victorian Britain. Gordon’s death created a powerful imperial legend that helped justify the reconquest of Sudan in 1898 and still shapes how the episode is remembered.