How Gordon Died

      Of all late Victorian heroes, probably none has captured the imagination more than General Charles Gordon. It is little wonder: a lone Englishman, hundreds of miles from civilisation, valiantly attempting to hold the line against a horde of barbaric religious fanatics, only to be slain at the fall of Khartoum, just two days before the arrival of the force sent to relieve him. I first heard about him in the 1966 film, Khartoum. Who could forget the climax, where Gordon strode out to confront the dervish army in the governor's palace, only to be killed with a spear? But did it happen that way?

'General Gordon's Last Stand' by George W. Jay (1893)

     I have in my possession a Life of General Gordon which, curiously, bears no authors' names, nor any date of publication, but only a hand written inscription dated 1892. It was clearly published before the liberation of the Sudan. In any case, it explained that the accounts of his death varied. One said that he surrendered to the Emir, but was killed by him. Another report stated that he walked, with about twenty of his men, down the stairs towards the church of the Austrian Mission, when he was slain by a volley of musketry. Another account, which sounded highly dubious, was that, as he went to inspect his troops, he was speared by them. 

      These, of course, are hearsay accounts, which drifted back to Egypt during the thirteen years when the Sudan was given over to slavery, rapine, and tyranny. But in 1898, when Kitchener's army annihilated the Mahdist forces and entered Omdurman, they found in prison, laden with chains, a German merchant, Charles Neufeld, who had been captured back in 1887, and had had plenty of time to interview fellow prisoners who has served under the previous government. His version was somewhat different. So let us look at  his 1899 memoir, A Prisoner of the Khaleefa, beginning at page 302.

     Those who knew Charles George Gordon, will believe me when I aver that he died, as they must all have believed that he died—in spite of the official and semi-official accounts to the contrary—as the soldier and lion-hearted man he was. Gordon did not rest his hand on the hilt of his sword and turn his back to his enemies to receive his mortal wound. Gordon drew his sword, and used it. When Gordon fell, his sword was dripping with the blood of his assailants, for no less than sixteen or seventeen did he cut down with it. When Gordon fell, his left hand was blackened with the unburned powder from his at least thrice-emptied revolver. When Gordon fell, his life’s blood was pouring from a spear and pistol-shot wound in his right breast. When Gordon fell, his boots were slippery with the blood of the crowd of dervishes he shot and hacked his way through, in his heroic attempt to cut his way out and place himself at the head of his troops. Gordon died as only Gordon could die. Let the world be misinformed and deceived about Soudan affairs with the tales of so-called guides and spies, but let it be told the truth of Gordon’s death.

  . . . . . 

     Each day at dawn, when he retired to rest, he bolted his door from the inside, and placed his faithful body-servant—Khaleel Agha Orphali—on guard outside it. On the fatal night, Gordon had as usual kept his vigil on the roof of the palace, sending and receiving telegraphic messages from the lines every few minutes, and as dawn crept into the skies, thinking that the long-threatened attack was not yet to be delivered, he lay down wearied out. The little firing heard a few minutes later attracted no more attention than the usual firing which had been going on continuously night and day for months, but when the palace guards were heard firing it was known that something serious was happening. By the time Gordon had slipped into his old serge or dark tweed suit, and taken his sword and revolver, the advanced dervishes were already surrounding the palace. Overcoming the guards, a rush was made up the stairs, and Gordon was met leaving his room. A small spear was thrown which wounded him, but very slightly, on the left shoulder. Almost before the dervishes knew what was happening, three of them lay dead, and one wounded, at Gordon's feet—the remainder fled. Quickly re- loading his revolver, Gordon made for the head of the stairs, and again drove the reassembling dervishes off. Darting back to reload, he received a stab in his left shoulder-blade from a dervish concealed behind the corridor door, and on reaching the steps the third time, he received a pistol-shot and spear-wound in his right breast, and then, great soldier as he was, he rose almost above himself. With his life’s blood pouring from his breast—not his back, remember—he fought his way step by step, kicking from his path the wounded and dead dervishes—for Orphali too had not been idle— and as he was passing through the doorway leading into the courtyard, another concealed dervish almost severed his right leg with a single blow. Then Gordon fell. The steps he had fought his way—not been dragged—down, were encumbered with the bodies of dead and dying dervishes. No dervish spear pierced the live and quivering flesh of a prostrate but still conscious Gordon, for he breathed his last as he turned to face his last assailant, half raised his sword to strike, and fell dead with his face to heaven.