While he was there, a war that had been going on for some years between Britain and China grew very serious.

Gordon volunteered for service, but when he reached China, in September 1860, the war was nearly at an end. "I am rather late for the amusement, which won't vex mother," he wrote. He found, however, that a number of Englishmen, some of them friends of his, were being kept as prisoners in Pekin by the Chinese. The English and their allies at once marched to Pekin, and demanded that the prisoners should be given up.

The Chinese, scared at the sight of the armies and their big guns, opened the gates. But in the case of many of the prisoners, help had come too late. The Chinese had treated them most brutally, and many had died under torture.

Nothing was left for the allied armies to do but to punish the Chinese for their cruelty, and especially to punish the Emperor for having allowed such vile things to go on in his own great city.

The Emperor lived in a palace so gorgeous and so beautiful that it might have come out of the Arabian Nights. This palace the English general gave orders to his soldiers to pillage and to destroy. Four millions of money could not have replaced what was destroyed then. The soldiers grew reckless as they went on, and wild for plunder. Quantities of gold ornaments were burned for brass. The throne room, lined with ebony, was smashed up and burned. Carved ivory and coral screens, magnificent china, gorgeous silks, huge mirrors, and many priceless things were burned or destroyed, as a gardener burns up heaps of dead leaves and garden rubbish.

Treasures of every kind, and thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of exquisite jewels were looted by common soldiers Often the men had no idea of the value of the things they had taken. One of them sold a string of pearls for 16s. to an officer, who sold it next day for £500. From one of the plunderers Gordon bought the Royal Throne, a gorgeous seat, supported by the Imperial Dragon's claws, and with cushions of Imperial yellow silk. You may see it if you go some day to the headquarters of the Royal Engineers at Chatham, and you will be told that it was given to his corps by General Gordon.

After the sack of the Summer Palace Gordon had a very busy time, providing quarters for the English troops, helping to distribute the money collected for the Chinese who had suffered from the war, and doing surveying and exploring work. On horseback he and a comrade explored many places which no European had visited before, and many were their adventures.

But it was in work greater than this that "Chinese Gordon" was to win his title. While Gordon was a little boy of ten, a Chinese village schoolmaster, Hung-Tsue-Schuen, who came of a low half-gipsy race, had told the people of China that God had spoken to him, and told him that he was to overthrow the Emperor and all those who governed China, and to become the ruler and protector of the Chinese people.

Soon he had many followers, who not only obeyed him as their king, but who prayed to him as their god. He called himself a "Wang," or king, and his followers called him their "Heavenly King." He made rulers of some thousands of his followers—most of them his own relations—and they also were named Wangs, or kings. They also had their own special names, "The Yellow Tiger," "The One-Eyed Dog," and "Cock-Eye" were amongst these. Twenty thousand of his own clansmen, many of them simple country people, who believed all that he told them, joined him. There also joined him fierce pirates from the coast, robbers from the hills, murderous members of secret societies, and almost every man in China who had, or fancied he had, some wrong to be put right.

His army rapidly grew into hundreds of thousands.

When this host of savage—looking men, with their long lank hair, their gaudy clothes and many-coloured banners, their cutlasses and long knives, marched through the land, plundering, burning, and murdering, the hard-working, harmless little Chinamen, with their smooth faces and neat pigtails, fled before them in terror.

The Tae-Pings, as they came to be called, robbed them, slew them, burned their houses and their rice fields, and took their little children away from them. They flayed people alive; they pounded them to death. Ruin and death were left behind them as they marched on. Those who escaped were left to starvation. In some places so terrible was the hunger of the poor people that they became cannibals, for lack of any other food.

In one city which they destroyed, out of 20,000 people not 100 escaped.

"We killed them all to the infant in arms; we left not a root to sprout from; and the bodies of the slain we cast into the Yangtse,"—so boasted the rebels.

A march of nearly 700 miles brought this great, murdering, plundering army to Nanking, a city which the Wangs took, and made their capital. The frightened peasants were driven before them down to the coast, and took refuge in the towns there. Many of them had crowded into the port of Shanghai, and round Shanghai came the robber army. They wanted more money, more arms, and more ammunition, and they knew they could find plenty of supplies there. So likely did it seem that they would take the port, that the Chinese Government asked England and France to help to drive them away.

In May 1862 Gordon was one of the English officers who helped to do this. For thirty miles round Shanghai, the rebels, who were the fiercest of fighters, were driven back. In his official despatch Gordon's general wrote of him:—"Captain Gordon was of the greatest use to me." But he also said that Gordon often made him very anxious because of the daring way in which he would go dangerously near the enemy's lines to gain information. Once when he was out in a boat with the general, reconnoitring a town they meant to attack, Gordon begged to be put ashore so that he might see better what defences the enemy had. To the general's horror, Gordon went nearer and nearer the town, by rushes from one shelter to another. At length he sheltered behind a little pagoda, and stood there quietly sketching and making notes. From the walls the rebels kept on firing at him, and a party of them came stealing round to cut him off, and kill him before he could run back to the boat. The general shouted himself hoarse, but Gordon calmly finished his sketch, and got back to the boat just in time.

The Tae-Pings used to drag along with them many little boys whose fathers and mothers they had killed, and whom they meant to bring up as rebels. After the fights between the English troops and the Tae-Pings, swarms of those little homeless creatures were always found.

Gordon writes: "I saved one small creature who had fallen into the ditch in trying to escape, for which he rewarded me by destroying my coat with his muddy paws in clinging to me."

In December 1862 Gordon, for his good service in China, was raised to the rank of major.

Very soon afterwards the Chinese Government asked the English Government to give them an English officer to lead the Chinese army that was to fight with, and to conquer, the Tae-Ping rebels.

Already the Chinese soldiers had been commanded by men who spoke English. One of these, an American adventurer, named Burgevine, was ready to dare anything for power and money.

To his leadership flocked scoundrels of every nation, hoping to enrich themselves by plundering the rebels.

Before long, Governor Li Hung Chang found that Burgevine was not to be trusted, and the command was taken from him.

It was then that the Chinese Government asked England to give them a leader for their untrained army of Chinese and of adventurers gathered from all lands. This collection of rag, tag, and bobtail had been named, to encourage it, and before it had done anything to deserve the name, the "Chun Chen Chun," or the Ever-Victorious Army.

But "The Almost Always Beaten Army" would have been a much truer name for it, and the victorious Tae-Pings scornfully laughed at it.

The English general in China had no doubt who was the best man for the post.

He named Major Charles Gordon, and on 25th March 1863 Gordon took command, and was given the title of Mandarin by the Chinese.

He knew that the idea of serving under any other monarch than his own Queen would be a sorrow to his father. He wrote home begging his father and mother not to be vexed, and telling them how deeply he had thought before he accepted the command.

By taking the command, he said, he believed he could help to put an end to the sufferings of the poor people of China. Were he not to have taken it, he feared that the rebels might go on for years spreading misery over the land. "I keep your likeness before me," wrote this young Major who had been trusted with so great a thing to do, to the mother whom he loved so much. "I can assure you and my father I will not be rash. . . . I really do think I am doing a good service in putting down this rebellion."

"I hope you do not think that I have got a magnificent army," he wrote to a soldier friend. "You never did see such a rabble as it was; and although I think I have improved it, it is still sadly wanting. Now, both men and officers, although ragged and perhaps slightly disreputable, are in capital order and well disposed."

Before his arrival, the soldiers had had no regular pay. They were allowed to "loot," or plunder, the towns they took, and for each town taken they were paid so much. At once Gordon began to get his ragamuffin army into shape.

He arranged that the soldiers were to get their pay regularly, but were to have no extra pay for the places which they took. Any man caught plundering a town that was taken was to be shot. He replaced the adventurers of all nations, many of them drunken rogues, who were the army's officers, by English officers lent by the British Government. He drilled his men well. He practised them in attacking fortified places, and he formed a little fleet of small steamers and Chinese gunboats. The chief of these was the Hyson, a little paddle steamer that could move over the bed of a creek on its wheels when the water was too shallow to float it.

The army, too, was given a uniform, at which not only the rebels but the Chinese themselves at first mocked, calling the soldiers who wore it "Sham Foreign Devils."

But soon so well had Gordon's army earned its name of "The Ever-Victorious Army," that the mere sight of the uniform they wore frightened the rebels.

In one month Gordon's army was an army and not a rabble, and the very first battles that it fought were victories.

With 3000 men he attacked a garrison of 10,000 at Taitsan, and after a desperate fight the rebels were driven out.

From Taitsan the victorious army went on to Quinsan, a large fortified city, connected by a causeway with Soochow, the capital of the province.

All round Quinsan the country was cut up in every direction with creeks and canals. But Gordon knew every creek and canal in that flat land. He knew more now than any other man, native or foreigner, where there were swamps, where there were bridges, which canals were choked with weeds, and which were easily sailed up. He made up his mind that the rebels in Quinsan must be cut off from those in Soochow.

At dawn, one May morning, eighty boats, with their large white sails spread out like the wings of big sea-birds, and with many-coloured flags flying from their rigging, were seen by the rebel garrison at Quinsan sailing up the canal towards the city. In the middle of this fleet the plucky little Hyson, with Gordon on board, came paddling along.

By noon they reached a barrier of stakes placed across the creek. These they pulled up, sailed to the shore, and landed their troops close to the rebel stockades. For a minute the Tae-Pings stood and stared, uncertain what to do, and then, in terror, ran before Gordon's army.

There had been many boats in the creek, but the rebels had sprung out of them and left them to drift about with their sails up, so that it was no easy work for the Hyson  to thread her way amongst them. Still the little boat steamed slowly and steadily on towards Soochow. Along the banks of the canal the rebels, in clusters, were marching towards safety. On them the Hyson  opened fire, puffing and steaming after them, and battering them with shells and bullets.

Like an angry little sheep-dog driving a mob of sheep, it drove the rebels onwards. Many lay dead on the banks, or fell into the water and were drowned. One hundred and fifty of them were taken as prisoners on board the Hyson.

When they were less than a mile from Soochow, as night was beginning to fall, Gordon decided to turn back and rejoin the rest of his forces. Some of the rebels, thinking that the Hyson  was gone for good, had got into their boats again, and were gaily sailing up the creek when they saw the steamer's red and green lights, and heard her whistle.

The mere glare of the lights and hoot of the whistle seemed to throw them into a panic. In the darkness the flying mobs of men along the canal banks met other rebels coming to reinforce them, and in the wild confusion that followed the guns of the Hyson  mowed them down. About 10.30 P.M. the crew of the Hyson  heard tremendous yells and cheers coming from a village near Quinsan, where the rebels had made a stand. Gordon's gunboats were firing into the stone fort, and from it there came a rattle and a sparkle of musketry like fireworks, and wild yells and shouts from the rebels. The gun-boats were about to give in and run away when the little Hyson  came hooting out of the darkness. Gordon's army welcomed him with deafening cheers, and the rebels threw down their arms and fled. The Hyson  steamed on up the creek towards Quinsan, and in the darkness Gordon saw a huge crowd of men near a high bridge. It was too dark to see clearly, but the Hyson  blew her whistle. At once from the huddled mass of rebels came yells of fear. It was the garrison of Quinsan, some seven or eight thousand, trying to escape to Soochow. In terror they fled in every direction—8000 men fleeing before thirty. The Hyson  fired as seldom as she could, but even then, that day the rebels must have lost from three to four thousand men, killed, drowned, and prisoners. All their arms also, they lost, and a great number of boats.

Next morning at dawn, Gordon and his army took possession of Quinsan. They had fought almost from daybreak until "The rebels certainly never got such a licking before," wrote Gordon.

The Ever-Victorious Army was delighted with itself, and very proud of its leader. But they were less well-pleased with Gordon when they found that instead of going on to a town where they could sell the things they had managed to loot, they were to stay at Quinsan.

They were so angry that they drew up a proclamation saying that unless they were allowed to go to a town they liked better, they would blow their officers to pieces with the big guns. Gordon felt sure that the non-commissioned officers were at the bottom of the mischief. He made them parade before him, and told them that if they did not at once tell him the name of the man who had written the proclamation, he would have one out of every five of them shot. At this they all groaned, to show what a monster they thought Gordon. One corporal groaned louder than all the rest, and Gordon turned on him, his eyes blazing. So sure was Gordon that this was their leader that, with his own hands, he dragged him from the ranks.

"Shoot this fellow!" he said to two of his bodyguard. The soldiers fired, and the corporal fell dead.

The other non-commissioned officers he sent into imprisonment for one hour.

"If at the end of that time," said he, "the men do not fall in at their officers' commands, and if I am not given the name of the writer of that proclamation, every fifth man of you shall be shot."

At the end of the hour the men fell in, and the name of the writer of the proclamation was given to Gordon. The man had already been punished. It was the corporal who had groaned so loud an hour before.