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General Gordon meanwhile was sent to Khartoum to rescue the garrisons there - he expected the Government to send a relief force. Gladstone's Cabinet dithered. Gordon held out for 10 months but shortly before the force finally arrived Gordon was killed. The British people held Gladstone responsible. The Sudan remained in rebel hands until General Kitchener was victorious at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

General Charles Gordon

GENERAL CHARLES GORDON (1833-1885)

• Known as Chinese Gordon, he fought in the Crimean War, in China and Egypt
• Was an explorer in China before commanding a force that defeated the Taiping Rebellion in 1864
• In the 1860s, while serving in Britain, he spent much time working for the relief of the poor
• He went to Egypt to set up staging posts along the Nile and attempted to crush the slave trade
• In the late 1870s, he became an international figure as stories of his work in Egypt-Sudan were retold in Europe and America
• He found time to go to Mauritius and to the Seychelles, which he described as the Garden of Eden
• Returned to Sudan in 1884 to put down the Mahdi rebellion and relieve the British garrison
• But the British Government vacillated and failed to send reinforcements in time
• When the advance party of the relief arrived in January 1885, it was to find that the garrison had been overwhelmed two days earlier and Gordon killed

Paul Kruger gave his name to the Kruger Rand.

THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES ON QUEEN VICTORIA'S GOLDEN JUBILEE

"No scene was ever depicted on canvas, narrated by historian, or conjured up by a poet's fancy, more pathetic, or more august than the spectacle of Victoria, Queen and Empress, kneeling yesterday at the foot of the throne to thank Heaven for her reign, with all its joys and all its griefs, of fifty marvellous years.

"The eye wandered over groups of statesmen, writers, orators, famous soldiers and sailors, ermine-clad judges, divines in rarely-worn vestments, Asiatic princes gleaming with jewels, forms and faces as fair as they were royal and noble, a bench crowded with Kings and the heirs of Kings.

"The centre to which the gaze constantly returned as the reason and interpretation of the whole was the figure seated, solitary [still dressed in mourning for her husband], in all that sunshine of splendour, on her chair of state. On her account alone, the rest were there, whatever their degree.

"They were met together to attest the judgement of Great Britain and the world that Queen Victoria had redeemed the pledge she accepted on that throne, beside the altar, half a century ago."

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1837	Victoria becomes Queen
1859	Palmerston becomes Prime Minister
1861	Prince Albert dies
1865	Palmerston dies Russell becomes Prime Minister
1868	Disraeli becomes Prime Minister Gladstone becomes Prime Minister
1870	Franco-Prussian War First Irish Land Act
1874	Disraeli becomes Prime Minister
1877	Victoria becomes Empress of India
1880	Gladstone becomes Prime Minister
1881	Disraeli dies Second Irish Land Act
1885	Salisbury becomes Prime Minister
1887	Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee
1892	Gladstone becomes Prime Minister
1894	Rosebery becomes Prime Minister
1895	Salisbury becomes Prime Minister
1897	Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
1898	Gladstone dies
1899	Second Boer War breaks out
1901	Queen Victoria dies Edward VII becomes king