E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Richard J. Shiffer, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 26419-h.htm or 26419-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/4/1/26419/26419-h/26419-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/4/1/26419/26419-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this e-book. THE LIFE OF GORDON MAJOR-GENERAL, R.E., C.B.; TURKISH FIELD-MARSHAL, GRAND CORDON MEDJIDIEH, AND PASHA; CHINESE TITU (FIELD-MARSHAL), YELLOW JACKET ORDER. "_'Tis a name which ne'er hath been dishonour'd, And never will, I trust--most surely never By such a youth as thou._" --SWINTON ON ADAM GORDON. by DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER Author of "The History of China;" "England and Russia in Central Asia;" "Lord William Bentinck," Etc., Etc. With Portrait VOLUME I London T. Fisher Unwin Paternoster Square MDCCCXCVI [All rights reserved.] [Illustration: GENERAL GORDON A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN SHORTLY AFTER THE CRIMEA AND LENT BY HIS NIECE, MISS DUNLOP.] PREFACE. As so many books of a more or less biographical nature have been written about General Charles Gordon, it is both appropriate and natural that I should preface the following pages with a statement of a personal character as to how and why I have written another. In the year 1881 I told General Gordon that I contemplated describing his career as soon as I had finished writing my "History of China." His laughing reply was: "You know I shall never read it, but you can have all my papers now in the possession of my brother, Sir Henry Gordon." My history took a very long time to write, and the third volume was not published until April 1884, when General Gordon was hemmed in, to use his own words, at Khartoum.