son of his endeavour to reach Kartoum in a steamer for the purpose of communicating with General Gordon. Attached to this report is an interesting diary of events, and Sir Charles Wilson's proceedings upon that occasion. "It is sad to think of how nearly averted was the fall of Kartoum, and how short was the interval of time between the death of General Gordon and the arrival of those steamers whose appearance before Kartoum with a few British soldiers on board would, he said, ensure his safety and that of the city also. This opinion so expressed by General Gordon, and other evidence lately obtained, leave little doubt that had Sir C. Wilson's steamers, with the small detachment of British soldiers they carried, reached Kartoum on the 25th instead of the 28th January, the place would not have been surrendered. "In justice to the soldiers and sailors whom I have the honour to command, I feel bound to add that it was not through any lack of zeal or want of energy on their part that these steamers only reached Kartoum two days after it had fallen. I have no hesitation in saying that all ranks worked as hard as human beings could, hoping to render the earliest possible assistance to their heroic comrade who was besieged in Kartoum." Alongside these passages, implying such a heavy charge against Wilson, we will place some others from the end of Gordon's dairy, and, therefore, containing the last of his recorded opinions on the subject. Halfiyeh is an Arab village and fort on the right (east) bank of the Nile, about 8 to 10 miles below Kartoum, and Wilson's steamers had sustained a heavy fire from it in running past. Under date of the 28th November, Gordon's diary says— "If the steamers do come up, and have not the sense to stop at Halfiyeh, I shall endeavour to warn them by a tremendous fire on the Arabs at Omdurman. The danger is at this point. [This is where Wilson stopped.] The proper thing to do would be to clear Halfiyeh camp of the Arabs before coming up here. You would then communicate with Kartoum by land, and avoid having to run the gauntlet of Arab guns in penny steamers." And on the 14th December, when he wrote the last words of the Diary which has reached us, he says "If I were in command of the two hundred men of the expeditionary force which are all that are necessary for the movement, I should stop just at that place before I came on here to below Halfiyeh, and attack the Arabs Kartoum. I should then communicate with the North Fort [an outwork of Kartoum on the other side of the Blue Nile], and act according to circumstances." Such was Gordon's plan for the action of the expeditionary force for his relief. It is entirely contradictory of the opinions which Lord Wolseley attributes to him. It does not relate at all to the attempt to communicate with him, of which he knew nothing, and which was Lord Wolseley's alone. Whether Wilson knew of these opinions of Gordon is doubtful: if he did, he could not have acted on them, his force on the Nile being already dangerously weak. It is impossible for us to reconcile, or to attempt to reconcile, Lord Wolseley's version of Gordon's opinions with Gordon's own. As to the supposition, "had Sir C. Wilson's steamers reached Kartoum on the 25th instead of the 28th January," what possible object can be gained by stating it, when we know that the steamers were not reported by Lord C. Beresford as repaired and ready for a fresh start till 3 P.M. on the 22d, the House of Commons on the 14th as testified by Lord Hartington in April last?—and on that day they were used for the most necessary trip down the river. It was im possible, therefore, that they could reach Kartoum on the 25th; and the imputation on Wilson conveyed by the passage is, in any case, without foundation. But it is to be noted that here Lord Wolseley is taking absolutely new ground; for, having sent Wilson to communicate with Gordon, he is here implying that his duty was to relieve him. At this time the Government seems to have become alive to the careful avoidance by Lord Wolseley of all approval of Wilson: not one word of commendation had he given to the victor of Gubat,- -a fact which had been noticed early in February in the London press. On the 11th February Lord Hartington telegraphs to Lord Wolseley: "Express warm recognition of Government of brilliant services of Sir Charles Wilson, and satisfaction at gallant rescue of his party." Now it is a remarkable fact that this telegram is omitted from the published parliamentary papers. More than a month later, Wilson seems to have been called on for a statement of the occupation of the interval between his arrival on the Nile and his departure for Kartoum. Accordingly, on the 23d March he wrote the report which, in reply to a question, Lord Hartington, on 15th May, said should be laid on the table, and which is now before us. In it Wilson sets forth the situation of his force on the 21st, when the steamers reached him. It had been much weakened by the heavy losses of the 17th and 19th: it was to be further diminished by the return of the convoy and escort to Gakdul, and it was hampered by the large number of wounded. The men, too, we know from other sources, were quite exhausted with the fight ing and want of sleep-horses and camels were knocked up. And besides the presence of the enemy's garrison in Metammeh, there were rumours of hostile forces advancing on both sides. He had, therefore, urgently to provide for the defence of his camp. This anxious condition of affairs continued up to the afternoon of the 22d, when the steamers were repaired and ready. "The only day," says Wilson, "that might have been saved was the 22d, as the reconnaissance showed that the force had nothing to fear from the Berber direction." He means that it might have been saved had he known the real state of the case; but he did not know it, and it was most necessary to ascertain it. There remains the 23d. Of this day he says "General Gordon, in a most characteristic letter, addressed to the Chief of the Staff or to the Officer Commanding the British advanced-guard, insisted strongly on our taking actual command of the steamers, and removing from them all Pashas, Beys, and men of Turk, or Egyptian, origin. He wrote in strong terms of the uselessness of these men in action, and begged that, if the boats were not manned by British sailors, they should be sent back to him with none but Soudanese crews and soldiers. It was originally intended that the steamers should be manned by the Naval Brigade, but Lord Charles Beresford was in hospital, unable to walk, and all the other officers of the Brigade, and several of the best petty officers and men, had been killed or wounded. It was therefore impossible to carry out the original plan; and though Lord Charles Beresford, in the most gallant way, offered to accompany me, I felt that I could not deprive the force of the only naval officer with it, especially as the steamers left behind might be called upon at any time to take part in active operations against the enemy. It was therefore necessary to select Soudanese officers, crews, and soldiers from the four ships, and to transfer them to the two steamers going to Kartoum. This was the chief reason for the delay on the 23d." Now, even supposing that a few hours of daylight could have been saved on the 23d-and we do not know that they could; on the contrary, we gather from the report that they could not-yet, even then, the steamers could not have reached Kartoum till late on the 27th, the day after the fall of the place. The point is therefore of absolutely no importance to the issue. Unless Wilson had left his exhausted force unfortified and exposed to attack, and had embarked in steamers unprepared for the voyage, which Gordon held to be so perilous, he could not have reached Kartoum even on the 26th. It appears not only an absurdity, but a mischievous absurdity, to charge a man who had done so much in such harassing circumstances with not doing more. To our mind he needed no defence, and ought not to have undergone the imputation implied in the demand for explanation. This report was sent home by Lord Wolseley, with a letter from himself, which we here give entire. is implied in Lord Wolseley's despatch of the 15th February, and must be read as declining to say a word which might tend to absolve Wilson. We need hardly say that the whole theory that Gordon's rescue was possible, even by Wolseley's whole force, had it reached the Nile before Wilson's scanty column got there, rests upon nothing but wild assumption. The truth of the matter is, we doubt not, that put forth as his opinion by Lord Granville in the House of Lords on the 18th May. He said : "The noble earl said it did not signify what the cause was that took us to the Soudan. I am bound to say it signifies very much. It was, if possible, to save General Gordon. I do not believe it was a question of time that is purely a matter of opinion. I believe that treachery would have had effect at whatever time the relief expedition might have arrived.“ So say we, and we will give a reason for the belief which Lord Granville would naturally abstain from. The Mahdi (as will be found, we believe, in Gordon's diary) knew of our declared intention to abandon the Soudan after the rescue of Gordon. He had means of constantly communicating with the troops in Kartoum. He would therefore argue with them in this cogent fashion: "The English are coming to take away Gordon, and will then quit the Soudan. The defence of the place depends upon Gordon. Without him and without the English, you cannot keep me out. If I capture the place by force, I will kill every man. But if you agree to admit me when I shall desire it, I will spare you and take you into my service." It is no wonder that these poor Egyptians, who owed no fealty to us, or even to Gordon, if he should depart and leave them, took this proposal into serious consideration, and that some at least were ready to accept the conditions. And as to the time, the Mahdi desired to defer the surrender till some of our troops should be lured to cross the desert, when he hoped to destroy thema result nearly accomplished. The city, with Gordon in it, was used as a bait. What finally decided him was the arrival of our troops on the Nile. For all he knew, we might advance in force to raise the siege-and thereupon he put his foot down. It is fortunate for Sir Charles Wilson that the vague charges against him have been brought to a head in a cruel and unwarrantable attack published in a monthly periodical. A Mr Williams, the correspondent with Stewart's column of the Daily Chronicle,' has written a paper ascribing to Sir Charles Wilson the whole blame for the failure to rescue Gordon, in language so injurious that nobody can suppose it to be inspired only by a desire to impart unbiassed facts. All the delays that took place in resolving on the expedition, in starting it, and in conducting it, so far as it went, are as nothing (according to this writer) compared with the space of two days between the time of the arrival of the steamers at Gubat and Wilson's departure in them to Kartoum. The most offensive charges are made with reference to his conduct both at Gubat and in sight of Kartoum. But this Mr Williams is actually the same person who has already written accounts of the expedition to the Daily Chronicle,' speaking of the object of his spite in very that paper of January 29th: "Sir C. Wilson was now in command, cool, collected, meeting each move of the enemy, noting weak points. A commander of weaker fibre might well have hesitated, but not so Colonel Wilson, who did not fear to realise that the risk must be taken." Will it be believed that he now writes in the periodical: "A soldier should not have hesitated; Sir Charles Wilson hesitated"! Again, he said in the Daily Chronicle' of February 12: "Sir Charles Wilson, with that boldness and resolution which characterised his conduct at the battle of Gubat"; but now in the periodical: "If I differ from this, it is only in wondering if he had any nerve to lose." Lieutenant Stuart-Wortley's diary, published in the 'London Gazette,' says: "January 24.-Left Metammeh at 8 A.M. in steamers." Mr Williams says: "It was high noon on Saturday the 24th before he went." But it is unnecessary to pursue this distasteful subject further. No one who has read what we have written will think the attack worthy of the slightest credit, and its readers will be disposed to agree with us that nothing but the competition for notoriety could have induced a periodical which valued its own self-respect to be made the vehicle of such aspersions on a brave and devoted officer. We trust we have said enough to induce any reader, even if prejudiced on the other side, to pause before imputing any failure to perform his duty to an officer whose devotion to Gordon was well known, and who would have rejoiced to make any sacrifice in his behalf. INDEX TO VOL. CXXXVII. A BLACK YEAR FOR INVESTORS, 269. Afghans, advantages of alliance with, Alchohol and epidemics, 528. AN EXCURSION TO SOLOMON'S THRONE, ANGLER'S GARLAND, AN: The Angler's April, 492-The Angler's Wish, 496- Annual procession of mail-coaches, 623. Armstrong, Sir W., and the Government, Assize gossip and penalties, 545. Beam-trawling, 671. Beatrice, by Lady Martin, 203. Beers, M. Van, Belgian painter, 699. Cant, the employment of, in public Carlyle on Mr Gladstone, 558. Carmel, Mount, the vineyards of, 242. Chamberlain, Mr, and the rights of pro- 433-secret of his admission to the CHEAP TELEGRAMS, 707-French, Ger- Childers, Mr, his "sweating" scheme, 270. Clock, the new round of the, 548. Colombi, Marchesa, review of her works, COLONIAL AND FOREIGN FAILURES, 298. 'Compleat Angler,' Song from the, 498. Birmingham and Ipswich speeches of Country or the Ministry: which shall we Mr Chamberlain, 423, 435. Bohemian gipsy singers, 825. Boxer shrapnel-shell, 580. "Brevet" system, result of the, 35- British influence, the waning of, in BY THE MARL PIT, 62. Camp defence, an old system of, 477. save? 733. DANGER, WITHIN HIS: a Tale from the Dante, the "other poet" of Shake- Dash Kepri incident, the, 857. |