Not long after his
return home, in 1860, war was declared upon China. Captain Gordon
was dispatched to the scene of operations, but the fighting was
over before he arrived. Nevertheless, he was to remain for the
next four years in China, where he was to lay the foundations of
extraordinary renown.
Though he was too late to take part in the capture of the Taku
Forts, he was in time to witness the destruction of the Summer
Palace at Peking--the act by which Lord Elgin, in the name of
European civilisation, took vengeance upon the barbarism of the
East.
The war was over; but the British Army remained in the country,
until the payment of an indemnity by the Chinese Government was
completed. A camp was formed at Tientsin, and Gordon was occupied
in setting up huts for the troops. While he was thus engaged, he
had a slight attack of smallpox. 'I am glad to say,' he told his
sister, 'that this disease has brought me back to my Saviour, and
I trust in future to be a better Christian than I have been
hitherto.'
Curiously enough a similar circumstance had, more than twenty
years earlier, brought about a singular succession of events
which were now upon the point of opening the way to Gordon's
first great adventure. In 1837, a village schoolmaster near
Canton had been attacked by illness; and, as in the case of
Gordon, illness had been followed by a religious revulsion.
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