Born at Woolwich, son of an artillery officer; entered the Royal Engineers; served in the Crimea as an officer in that department, and was, after the war, employed in defining the boundaries of Asiatic Turkey and Russia; being employed in 1860 on a mission to square up matters with the Chinese, on the settlement of the quarrel lent himself to the Emperor in the interest of good order, and it was through him that the Taiping Rebellion in 1863-64 was extinguished, whereby he earned the title of "Chinese" Gordon; he returned to England in 1865, and was for the next six years engaged in completing the defences of the Thames at Gravesend; he was Vice-Consul of the delta of the Danube during 1871-73, at the end of which term he conducted an expedition into Africa under the Khedive of Egypt, and was in 1877 appointed governor of the Soudan, in which capacity, by the confidence his character inspired, he succeeded in settling no end of troubles and allaying lifelong feuds; he relinquished this post in 1880, and in 1884, the English Government having resolved to evacuate the Soudan, he was commissioned to superintend the operation; he started off at once, and arrived at Khartoum in February of that year, where, by the end of April, all communication between him and Cairo was cut off; an expedition was fitted out for his relief, but was too late in arriving, the place was stormed by the Arabs, and he with his comrades fell dead under a volley of Arab musketry, January 28; from the commencement to the close of his career he distinguished himself as a genuine Christian and a brave man (1833-1885).