His first decisions were to reduce the injustices caused by the Egyptian colonial administration: arbitrary imprisonments were cancelled, torture instruments were destroyed, and taxes were remitted. To enlist the support of the population, Gordon legalised slavery, despite the fact that he himself had abolished it a few years earlier. This decision was popular in Khartoum, where the economy still rested on the slave trade, but caused controversy in Britain.
The British public opinion was shaken again shortly after by Gordon's demand that Zubayr Pasha be sent to help him. Zubayr, as a former slave trader, was very unpopular in Britain; the Anti-Slavery Society contested this choice, and Zubayr's appointment was denied by the government.[7] Despite this setback, Gordon was still determined to "smash up the Mahdi". He requested that a regiment of Turkish soldiers be sent to Khartoum as Egypt was still nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire. When this was refused, Gordon asked for a unit of Indian Muslim troops and later for 200 British soldiers to strengthen the defenses of Khartoum. All these proposals were rejected by the Gladstone cabinet, which was still intent on evacuation and refused absolutely to be pressured into military intervention in Sudan. This drove Gordon to resent the government's policy, and his telegrams to Cairo became more acrimonious. On April 8, he wrote: "I leave you with the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons" and added that such a course would be "the climax of meanness".[8] When these criticisms were made public in Britain, the conservative opposition seized on them and moved a vote of censure in the House of Commons. The government won by only 28 votes.[9]
Knowing that the Mahdists were closing in, Gordon ordered the strengthening of the fortifications around Khartoum. The city was protected to the north by the Blue Nile and to the west by the White Nile. To defend the river banks, he created a flotilla of gunboats from nine small paddle-wheel steamers, until then used for communication purposes, which were fitted with guns and protected by metal plates. In the southern part of the town, which faced the open desert, he prepared an elaborate system of trenches, makeshift Fougasse-type land mines, and wire entanglements. Also, the surrounding country was controlled by the Shagia tribe, which was hostile to the Mahdi.[2]
By early April 1884, the tribes north of Khartoum rose in support of the Mahdi, and cut the Egyptian traffic on the Nile and the telegraph to Cairo. Communications were not entirely cut, as runners could still get through, but the siege had begun and Khartoum could only rely on its own food stores, which could last five or six months.
On March 16, an abortive sortie from Khartoum was launched, which led to the death of 200 Egyptian troops as the combined forces besieging Khartoum grew to over 30,000 men. Through the months of April, May, June, and July, Gordon and the garrison dealt with being cut off as food stores dwindled and starvation began to set in for both the garrison and the civilian population. Communication was kept through couriers while Gordon also kept in contact with the Mahdi, who rejected his offers of peace and to lift the siege.
On September 16, an expedition sent from Khartoum to Sennar was defeated by the Mahdists which resulted in the death of over 800 garrison troops at Al Aylafuh. By the end of the month, the Mahdi moved the bulk of his army to Khartoum, more than doubling the number already besieging it. As of September 10, 1884, the civilian population of Khartoum was about 34,000.[10]
Fall of Khartoum
George W. Joy's portrayal of Gordon's death
Gordon's plight excited great concern in the British press, and even Queen Victoria intervened on his behalf. The government ordered him to return, but Gordon refused, saying he was honour-bound to defend the city. By July 1884, Gladstone reluctantly agreed to send an expedition to Khartoum. However, the expedition, led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, took several months to organise and only entered Sudan in January 1885. By then, Gordon's situation had become desperate, with the food supplies running low, many inhabitants dying of hunger and the defenders' morale at its lowest.
The Nile Expedition for the relief of Gordon
The relief expedition was attacked at Abu Klea on January 17, and two days later at Abu Kru. Though their square was broken at Abu Klea, the British managed to repel the Mahdists. The Mahdi, hearing of the British advance, decided to press the attack on Khartoum. On the night of January 25–26, an estimated 50,000 Mahdists attacked the city wall just before midnight. The Mahdists took advantage of the low level of the Nile, which could be crossed on foot, and rushed around the wall on the shores of the river and into the town. The details of the final assault are vague, but it is said that by 3:30 am, the Mahdists managed to concurrently outflank the city wall at the low end of the Nile while another force, led by Al Nujumi, broke down the Massalamieh Gate despite taking some casualties from mines and barbed wire obstacles laid out by Gordon's men. The entire garrison, physically weakened by starvation, offered only patchy resistance and were slaughtered to the last man within a few hours, as were 4,000 of the town's inhabitants, while many others were carried into slavery. Accounts differ as to how Gordon was killed. According to one version, when Mahdist warriors broke into the governor's palace, Gordon came out in full uniform, and, after disdaining to fight, he was speared to death—in defiance of the orders of the Mahdi, who had wanted him captured alive.[11] In another version, Gordon was recognised by Mahdists while making for the Austrian consulate and shot dead in the street.[12] What appears certain is that his head was cut off, stuck on a pike, and brought to the Mahdi as a trophy and his body dumped in the Nile.
Advance elements of the relief expedition arrived within sight of Khartoum two days later. After the fall of the city, the surviving British and Egyptian troops withdrew from the Sudan, with the exception of the city of Suakin on the Red Sea coast and the Nile town of Wadi Halfa at the Egyptian border, leaving Muhammad Ahmad in control of the entire country.
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