Christmas Every Day

1885 The death of General Gordon 

Charles George Gordon, aka “Chinese” Gordon, aka “Gordon of Khartoum” (1833-1885) was a charismatic and controversial military leader during the explosion of European imperialism in the last half of the 19th century.

Gordon was born into an English military family and joined the British army as an engineering officer. He saw action in the Crimean War at the siege of Sebastopol and then was sent to China which was then in the midst of the worst civil war in history, the Taiping Rebellion. He won lasting fame serving with the Chinese army against the rebels, building a reputation for incorruptibility, charismatic leadership and bravery. He led a mercenary force called the “Ever Victorious Army” to a number of victories, winning honours from the Chinese emperor, promotion from the British army, and a world-wide reputation.

In 1874 he entered the service of the Khedive of Egypt, on paper an official of the Turkish government, in his own mind the ruler of an independent Egypt, and to the British, a puppet ruler through whom they could control the Suez canal. The Egyptians wished to expand their control down the Nile, through Sudan toward equatorial Africa which was rife with the Arab slave trade in black natives. Gordon as Governor-General on the upper Nile, worked to suppress the slave trade and keep the corruption of the Egyptian army and officials to a minimum. In 1880 he returned to England.

About that time a remarkable rebel leader arose in the Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad (1844-85), who declared himself the Mahdi, a figure in Muslim eschatology who was expected to usher in the End Times.  Using messianic expectations he raised an army that scoured the countryside and threatened to cut off the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. He proclaimed: “I  am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels.”

Gordon was sent by the British government with instructions from Prime Minister Gladstone to evacuate British and Egyptian troops and civilians from Khartoum. However, after successfully extracting the majority of evacuees Gordon announced he would stay and defend Khartoum. The Mahdi’s army laid siege to the city and greatly outnumbering their enemies they took Khartoum, killed Gordon and beheaded him. His head was stuck on a tree “where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above.” A relief army sent to his rescue arrived two days too late and finding only a massacred garrison in a destroyed city withdrew. The news was received with enormous anger in Britain and Queen Victoria publicly chastised Gladstone.

The Mahdi died a few months after his conquest of Khartoum and the harsh rule of his fundamentalist regime led to the sending another British army in 1898 under General Kitchener. The Mahdist caliphate was destroyed and the Mahdi’s body dug up and thrown into the Nile.

On January 22, 1879 the British army had been dealt a stinging defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana, losing over 1,000 troops to a Zulu army of 20,000. In the aftermath of the massacre, as Zulu detachments pursued those fleeing the battle, 4 regiments of warriors encountered a British outpost at a medical mission at Rorke’s Drift.

The detachment there consisted of engineers detailed to repair a bridge over the Buffalo River, a cavalry unit, Natal militia and regular infantry there to guard the supplies. Some time after noon, two British refugees from the disaster at Isandlwana brought the news to Rorke’s Drift and the officers in charge had to decide whether to retreat — a dicey proposition moving in daylight through enemy territory, burdened by hospital patients — or to fortify the camp and resist the Zulu force they had been told was coming their way. They decided to stay and fight, a decision which caused the native horse and infantry to desert, leaving about 150 men to face 3-4,000 Zulus.

These Zulu regiments had not fought at Isandlwana, only serving as a reserve force, and they may have been looking for a little action, because their commander disobeyed orders. Instead of sweeping past the post to block reinforcements, they attacked the outpost. There they discovered that the British had created high walls out of grain sacks. In 12 hours of hand-to-hand combat the hospital was set on fire and the patients there murdered in their beds, hundreds of Zulus were killed by British rifle fire, and the red-coats suffered 17 dead. On January 23, the Zulus withdrew.

To celebrate the bravery of the men at Rorke’s Drift, and to distract public attention from the defeat at Isandlwana, 12 Victoria Crosses were awarded. Cinematic treatments of the battle and its prelude are Zulu and Zulu Dawn, both well worth watching.

In January 1879 the British Empire went to war against the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa. The alleged cause was the brutish treatment of two women who fled the territory but in fact the British could not tolerate any obstacle to their expansion in the area (as the white Boer republics would soon find out.) Three columns of regular troops, some native auxiliaries and local militia invaded Zululand hoping to bring the Zulu army to a pitched battle where the superior firepower of a modern Western army would crush the spear and shield warriors.

On January 20, the main body of the British force under Lord Chelmsford camped under the mountain known as Isandlwana. Though in enemy territory, he did not take any serious defensive precautions such as creating a wagon fort laager, and, just as foolishly, split his forces, leaving behind some 1,300 men and two artillery pieces to defend the camp. Unbeknownst to them, 20,000 Zulus, superbly disciplined and brave, have marched against the camp; on January 22, they launched an attack into the teeth of rifle fire. The Zulus suffered 1,000 casualties in their charge but succeeded in wiping out the position, taking no prisoners and seriously denting Chelmsford’s invasion plans. The defeat, and several other lesser ones inflicted by Zulu regiments, enraged the British who were in no mood to listen to Zulu King Cetshwayo’s talk of a negotiated settlement. A second invasion defeated the Zulu Kingdom by July.

1726 Birth of James Watt 

James Watt (1736-1819) was a native of the  small seaport of Greenock, on the Firth of Clyde. His grandfather was a teacher of mathematics. His father was a builder and contractor—also a merchant,—a man of superior sagacity, if not ability, prudent and benevolent. The mother of Watt was noted as a woman of fine aspect, and excellent judgment and conduct. When boatswains of ships came to the father’s shop for stores, he was in the habit of throwing in an extra quantity of sail-needles and twine, with the remark, ‘See, take that too; I once lost a ship for want of such articles on board.’ The young mechanician received a good elementary education at the schools of his native town. It was by the overpowering bent of his own mind that he entered life as a mathematical-instrumentmaker.

When he attempted to set up in that business at Glasgow, he met with an obstruction from the corporation of Hammermen, who looked upon him as an intruder upon their privileged ground. The world might have lost Watt and his inventions through this unworthy cause, if he had not had friends among the professors of the University,—Muirhead, a relation of his mother, and Anderson, the brother of one of his dearest school-friends,—by whose influence he was furnished with a workshop within the walls of the college, and invested with the title of its instrument-maker. Anderson, a man of an advanced and liberal mind, was Professor of Natural Philosophy, and had, amongst his class apparatus, a model of Newcomen’s steam-engine. He required to have it repaired, and put it into Watt’s hands for the purpose. Through this trivial accident it was that the young mechanician was led to ‘make that improvement of the steam-engine which gave a new power to civilized man, and has revolutionised the world. The model of Newcomen has very fortunately been preserved, and is now in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow College.

Watt’s career as a mechanician, in connection with Mr. Boulton, at the Soho Works, near Birmingham, was a brilliant one, and ended in raising him and his family to fortune. Yet it cannot be heard without pain, that a sixth or seventh part of his time was diverted from his proper pursuits, and devoted to mere ligitation, rendered unavoidable by the incessant invasions of his patents.

He was often consulted about supposed inventions and discoveries, and his invariable rule was to recommend that a model should be formed and tried. This he considered as the only true test of the value of any novelty in mechanics.

Death of a Peasant Countess

On January 18, 1797, Sarah Countess of Exeter passed away at the age of 23.

Mr. Henry Cecil, while his uncle held the family title of Earl of Exeter, married a lady of respectable birth, from whom, after fifteen years of wedded life, he sought a divorce — the woman had fallen in love with the vicar and eloped with him. Deeply in debt, he put on a disguise, and came to live as a poor and humble man, at Bolas Common, an obscure village in Shropshire. No one came to inquire after him; be had vanished from the gaze and the knowledge of all his relatives.

He was known to none, and having no ostensible means of living, there were many surmises as to who and what he was. The general belief at one moment was, that he gained his bread as a highwayman. He lodged with a cottage labourer named Hoggins, whose daughter Sarah, a plain but honest girl, next drew the attention of the noble refugee. He succeeded, notwithstanding the equivocal nature of his circumstances, in gaining her heart and hand. It has been set forth that Mr. Cecil, disgusted with the character of his fashionable wife, resolved to seek some peasant mistress who should love him for his own sake alone; but the probability is that the young noble was simply eccentric, or that a craving for sympathy in his solitary life had disposed him to take up with the first respectable woman who should come in his way. Under the name of Mr. John Jones, he purchased a piece of land near Hodnet, and built a house upon it, in which he lived for some years with his peasant bride, who never all that time knew who he really was. His marriage was bigamous but after his divorce they renewed their vows.

Two years after the marriage (December 27^th, 1793), Mr. Cecil succeeded to the peerage and estates on death of his uncle; and it became necessary that he should quit his obscurity at Hodnet and move to lavish Burleigh House, near Stamford. The “Cottage Countess” as she was called, did not prove quite up to the part she had been unwittingly drawn into. After having borne her husband three children (amongst whom was the peer who succeeded), she sickened and died, near having quite accustomed herself to the life of an aristocrat. 

Tennyson’s poem “The Lord of Burleigh” tells the tale rather more romantically.