In January 1884 Gladstone consented to sending General Gordon to the Sudan to report on the best means of evacuating Egyptian garrisons there in the aftermath of the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad's rebellion. When Gordon arrived in the Sudan he wanted to hold the capital, Khartoum. At first Gladstone refused to send a relief expedition but a few months later he consented and in October 1884 General Wolseley embarked from Cairo to Khartoum but arrived there too late to save Gordon, who had died when Khartoum fell to the Mahdi. "No single event in Gladstone's career made him more unpopular" and a vote of censure in the Commons reduced the government's majority to fourteen.