Home › G › Gordon (CHARLES GEORGE called Chinese)

Gordon (CHARLES GEORGE called Chinese)

CHARLES GEORGE, called "Chinese Gordon" and "Gordon Pasha," an English soldier; born in Woolwich, England, Jan. 28, 1833. He entered the Royal Engineers in 1852, and served in the Crimea (1854-1856). The Taeping rebellion in China he completely crushed by means of a specially trained corps of Chinese. On his return to England with the rank of colonel, he was appointed chief engineer officer at Gravesend. From 1874 to 1879 he was governor of the Sudan under the khedive. For a few months in 1882 he held an appointment at the Cape, and had just accepted a mission to the Kongo from the King of the Belgians when he was sent to withdraw the garrisons in the Sudan, which were at the mercy of the insurgent mahdi. He was shut up in Khartum by the rebels, and gallantly held that town for a whole year. A British expeditionary force under Lord Wolseley was dispatched for his relief; an advance corps of which sighted Khartum, Jan. 24, 1885, to find that the town had been treacherously delivered into the hands of the mahdi two days before, and Gordon murdered. His character was marked by strong religious feelings, which made him somewhat of a fatalist. ne