The warlike tribes to the north and the northeast
of Khartoum had long been wavering. They now hesitated no longer,
and joined the Mahdi. From that moment-- it was less than a month
from Gordon's arrival at Khartoum-- the situation of the town was
desperate. The line of communications was cut. Though it still
might be possible for occasional native messengers, or for a few
individuals on an armed steamer, to win their way down the river
into Egypt, the removal of a large number of persons--the loyal
inhabitants or the Egyptian garrison-- was henceforward an
impossibility. The whole scheme of the Gordon mission had
irremediably collapsed; worse still, Gordon himself, so far from
having effected the evacuation of the Sudan, was surrounded by
the enemy. 'The question now is,' Sir Evelyn Baring told Lord
Granville, on March 24th, 'how to get General Gordon and Colonel
Stewart away from Khartoum.'
The actual condition of the town, however, was not, from a
military point of view, so serious as Colonel Coetlogon, in the
first moments of panic after the Hicks disaster, had supposed.
Gordon was of opinion that it was capable of sustaining a siege
of many months. With his usual vigour, he had already begun to
prepare an elaborate system of earthworks, mines, and wire
entanglements. There was a five or six months' supply of food,
there was a great quantity of ammunition, the garrison numbered
about 8,000 men.
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