In themselves these instructions were not wholly clear.  An officer who is allowed to use troops for the settlement or pacification of a vast tract of country can hardly be the agent of a policy of mere “abandonment.”  Neither Gordon nor Baring seems at that time to have felt the incongruity of the two sets of duties, but before long it flashed across Gordon’s mind.  At Abu Hammed, when nearing Khartum, he telegraphed to Baring:  “I would most earnestly beg that evacuation but not abandonment be the programme to be followed.”  Or, as he phrased it, he wanted Egypt to recognise her “moral control and suzerainty” over the Sudan[385].  This, of course, was an extension of the programme to which he gave his assent at Cairo; it differed toto caelo from the policy of abandonment laid down at London.

[Footnote 385:  Egypt, No. 12 (1884), p. 133.]

Even now it is impossible to see why Ministers did not at once simplify the situation by a clear statement of their orders to Gordon, not of course as Governor-General of the Sudan, but as a British officer charged by them with a definite duty.  At a later date they sought to limit him to the restricted sphere sketched out at London; but then it was too late to bend to their will a nature which, firm at all times, was hard as adamant when the voice of conscience spoke within.  Already it had spoken, and against “abandonment.”

There were other confusing elements in the situation.  Gordon believed that the “full discretionary power” granted to him by Sir E. Baring was a promise binding on the British Government; and, seeing that he was authorised to perform such other duties as Sir Evelyn Baring would communicate to him, he was right.  But Ministers do not seem to have understood that this implied an immense widening of the original programme.  Further, Sir Evelyn Baring used the terms “evacuation” and “abandonment” as if they were synonymous; while in Gordon’s view they were very different.  As we shall see, his nature, at once conscientious, vehement, and pertinacious, came to reject the idea of abandonment as cowardly and therefore impossible.

Lastly, we may note that Gordon was left free to announce the forthcoming evacuation of the Sudan, or not, as he judged best[386].  He decided to keep it secret.  Had he kept it entirely so for the present, he would have done well; but he is said to have divulged it to one or two officials at Berber; if so, it was a very regrettable imprudence, which compromised the defence of that town.  But surely no man was ever charged with duties so complex and contradictory.  The qualities of Nestor, Ulysses, and Achilles combined in one mortal could scarcely have availed to untie or sever that knot.

[Footnote 386:  Ibid. p. 27.]