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Charles George Gordon was an officer loved by his British contemporaries.
The son of a general took part in the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Second Opium War (1856-1860) in China, where he subsequently led a Foreign Legion against the Taiping.
In the service of the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, he rose to governor of Sudan (1877-1880).
And he was educated.
After visiting Jerusalem, he claimed to have discovered the true place of Jesus' crucifixion.
This war hero appeared to the British government in 1884 to be the man to avert the catastrophe that was emerging in the Empire's new acquisitions in the long Nile valley.
In order to outdo the French competition, British troops had invaded Egypt and Sudan two years earlier, which were formally still under the Ottoman Empire, but had become financially dependent on the two Western powers due to the policy of the de facto autonomous viceroys in Cairo.
The British were able to put down a first uprising quickly.
But the anger against their regime drove a charismatic and fanatical preacher to numerous new followers.
Although this Muhammad Ahmad was a Sunni influenced by Sufism, he posed as the Mahdi, the savior expected by the Shiites at the end of time.
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After the Mahdi supporters overturned a British contingent, London concentrated all forces on the defense of Egypt and put Gordon on the march to secure and evacuate the British colony in Khartoum.
He reached the Sudanese metropolis in February 1884 and organized the transport of women, children and the disabled to the north.
But he refused to withdraw the 7,000-strong garrison.
Sudan should not be tyrannized by "a weak collection of stinking dervishes," Gordon cabled to London.
"Could last for years": Charlton Heston as General Gordon in Basil Dearden's monumental film "Khartoum" (1966)
Source: picture alliance / United Archive
In mid-March, Abdallahi Bin Muhammad blocked the city with 50,000 fighters in the name of the Mahdi.
Since Gordon still refused to break out to the north, London grudgingly had to put an expeditionary force on the march.
However, it was not ready for use until the end of the year and slowly moved south.
Gordon's full-bodied assertion that he “could hold out for years” soon proved to be a fallacy.
Supplies ran out dramatically, and when the Nile floods receded, the Mahdists began the storm attack from the water in late January 1885.
On the 26th, Khartoum fell, and with the city of Gordon and all his people.
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When two British gunboats reached the city two days later, they found innumerable bodies.
Gordon's severed head was stretched between two trees across the main road.
It was to take until September 1898 for an Anglo-Egyptian army under Horatio Herbert Kitchener to crush the Mahdists at Omdurman.
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