A report has been circulated that he was offered the command of the Ashantee Expedition and declined it. This report has absolutely no foundation. The truth of the matter is that he never was offered a command on active service of any kind by the British authorities. Those who manage the affairs of other nations were able to recognise the merits of this remarkable man, and to find opportunities for him to exercise his powers, but our own authorities seem to have been absolutely blind to his qualities. Yet this was he of whom Colonel Chesney, a great writer on military matters, said, "If there is a man in the world who can conduct a war with honour, thoroughness, and humanity, and bring it to a satisfactory close without needless delay or expense, England has that man in 'Chinese Gordon.'" It is, of course, quite possible that every army has some men of military genius, whose services are never utilised in positions of importance, for the simple reason that they are unknown to the authorities. There is no profession in which it is more difficult to pick out the born leaders than is the case in the army. Plenty of men who promise well when in a subordinate position prove miserable failures when in command. Men who can pass examinations with flying colours are not always able to make use of their knowledge in the field. A foreign power had, however, provided a field in which one of our officers was able to show what wonderful military instincts he possessed. It is therefore all the more difficult to find excuses for those who were responsible for the fact that, as far as England was concerned, Gordon was allowed to live in obscurity, and was never even offered a command of any sort in any of the campaigns in which his countrymen were engaged. CHAPTER VII AT GRAVESEND When Lord John Russell visited Elba, he was asked by Napoleon, then a prisoner there, whether he thought that his rival, the Duke of Wellington, would be able to live without the excitement of war, which Napoleon used to call "a splendid game." It seemed incredulous to Napoleon that a man who had shown himself so good a soldier as Wellington should retire into the position of a simple citizen, and Napoleon, little knowing the great man, thought that he would probably use his influence as a statesman to involve his country in war again. To some it may possibly seem strange that Gordon, who had distinguished himself as a soldier, and had saved an empire, should again take up the humble avocation of an engineer officer, but so he did. He was in reality only a captain of engineers, though a brevet lieutenant-colonel in the army, when in February 1865 he returned home. He took a few months' leave, which he spent quietly at Southampton with his father and mother, shunning all publicity.