Description:

Gordon Charles G. "Chinese" 1833 - 1885 Charles "Chinese" Gordon from Khartoum! Days before the Siege of Khartoum, in the midst of evacuating the city, he quotes from the Book of Chronicles, praying to the Lord, "We have no might against this multitude we know not what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee and God's answer, the battle is not yours but God's‰Û_" - Gordon was killed on the last day of the siege.


Autograph Letter Signed "C.G. Gordon," two pages, 5.25" x 8.25". Kartoum [sic], March 6, 1884. To "My dear Aunt Amy." Professionally restored with tissue. Fine condition.

Chinese Gordon thanks his aunt for sending him "the nice verses you copied out," then ostensibly paraphrases them, from II Chronicles. His intense religious devotion comes through powerfully in this letter to his Aunt Amy penned from Khartoum. Lytton Strachey in "Eminent Victorians" (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918) writes that at Pembroke, where [Gordon] was sent to work at the erection of fortifications, "those religious convictions, which never afterwards left him, first gained a hold upon his mind. Under the influence of his sister Augusta and of a ‰Û÷very religious captain of the name of Drew', he began to reflect upon his sins, look up texts, and hope for salvation. Though he had never been confirmed ‰Û_ he took the sacrament every Sunday." From www.victorianweb.org, "Gordon was first posted to the Engineers depot at Brompton near Gillingham and then to Pembroke Dock in Wales, which were then being built by the Royal Engineers. It was here in 1853 that Gordon was converted to faith in Christ under the ministry of a fellow Engineer officer who became one of his closest friends ‰Û_ In 1884, when the Mahdi, a Muslim fundamentalist leader, led a revolt in the Sudan against Anglo-Egyptian rule, the British Government needed someone to conduct an orderly withdrawal of British and Egyptian troops down the Nile. In England, everyone except the government saw Gordon, a Major General by this time, as the natural choice to go to the Sudan as Governor General‰Û_"

The public clamor of "Gordon for the Sudan" forced the government to appoint him as Governor General. His orders were to conduct an orderly evacuation of the troops. Major General Gordon reached Khartoum on February 18, 1884, just 17 days before he received and answered the letter from Aunt Amy. He began to organize an evacuation. About 2000 people, mostly women, children and the sick, had left by the time the Mahdi's forces began the siege of Khartoum on March 13th, just a week after Gordon wrote this letter. After a ten-month siege, on January 26, 1885, the Mahdists finally broke into Khartoum and the entire garrison was killed, including Gordon, two days before his 52nd birthday.

In full, "Thank you for your kind letter 4-2 [February 4th] which I received today with the nice verses you copied out. Thank you for so much trouble. I am quite well, and our Lord has & will bless me, for my desire is that His will be done. Things are daily improving, though they are checquered. I like Asa's prayer Lord, it is nothing to Thee, to help with many, or with them that have no power. Let not mortal man prevail agst Thee, and Jehosophat's prayer. We have no might agst this multitude we know not what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee and God's answer, the battle is not yours but God's. 2 Ch. XIV.XX. I am quit[e] comforted, and feel rather ashamed so much solitude should be felt for such a poor worm as I am. As you say, with me are the prayers of many, & these are all powerful with He who rules Heaven & Earth. This gives me great confidence. I fear Asa's fault, a lifted up heart, but I trust God will humble me to dust, & will glorify His name & bless these people. Goodbye, my dear Aunt Amy with kindest love to you & Uncle George & thanks for your prayers. Believe me, Your affect nephew C.G. Gordon."

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