Lesley's day by day

By lesleydiack

Lost General

This is the statue to General Gordon of Khartoum lost in the greenery in the triangle at Schoolhill.

Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB (28 January 1833 - 26 January 1885), also known as Chinese Gordon and Gordon Pasha was a British army officer and administrator.
He saw action in the Crimean War, but he made his military reputation in China, where he was placed in command of the "Ever Victorious Army", a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers. In the early 1860s, Gordon and his men were instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname "Chinese" Gordon and honours from both the Emperor of China and the British.
He entered the service of the Khedive in 1873 (with British government approval) and later became the Governor-General of the Sudan, where he did much to suppress revolts and the slave trade. Exhausted, he resigned and returned to Europe in 1880.
Then a serious revolt broke out in the Sudan, led by a Muslim reformer and self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. At the request of the British government, Gordon went to Khartoum to see to the evacuation of Egyptian soldiers and civilians. Besieged by the Mahdi's forces, Gordon organized a city-wide defense lasting almost a year that gained him the admiration of the British public, though not the government, which had not wished to become involved. Only when public pressure to act had become too great was a relief force reluctantly sent. It arrived two days after the city had fallen and Gordon had been beheaded.

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