The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  56. It is possible that Flashman heard the names of S. J. Tilden (Democrat) and R. B. Hayes (Republican) canvassed this far ahead of the 1876 election, but not for another fourteen months could he have been aware of W. G. Grace’s prodigious innings: the Doctor’s scores of 344 against Kent, 177 against Notts, and 318 not out against Yorkshire (all within six days), were not made until August of the following year. The contemplation of American politics has plainly clouded the author’s memory.

  57. Ulysses S. Grant’s dislike of hand-shaking was purely physical; at some functions, after his retirement, he asked to be exused it on the grounds that he found it positively painful. (See From the Tanyard to the White House, the story of President Grant’s life, by William M. Thayer, 1886.)

  58. Anson Mills, who commanded the escort, has left a vivid account of the council in the grove, which lies about eight miles from the present Fort Robinson, Nebraska, not far from the road beyond the modern town of Crawford. Mills tallies closely with Flashman, and corroborates even the detail of Standing Bear’s suggesting to a hostile Sioux that he should shoot a colt. The negotiations at Camp Robinson followed very much the line described by Flashman, although there are discrepancies about the timing of the various offers and their rejection. Anyone reading the histories of this period may be confused by the fact that both the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies shifted to different locations over the years; at this time Red Cloud was close to the present Fort Robinson, while Spotted Tail and Camp Sheridan were about 15 miles due east of the modern town of Chadron. (See Anson Mills, My Story, 1918; R. W. Frazer, Forts of the West, Roger T. Grange, Jr, Fort Robinson, 1978; Hyde; De Land; Poole.)

  59. The great Philadelphia Centennial exhibition was opened on May 10, 1876, at Fairmount Park, by President Grant. The foreign contributions included a belly-dancer from Tunisia, but it is unlikely that she was sponsored by the ladies’ committee, whose work was on an altogether more serious level. (See Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition, reproduced in 1974 with an introduction by Richard Kenin.)

  60. This gossipy summary of the Belknap case is true enough in its essentials, but what is still not clear is Custer’s motive in giving evidence at the time. He did have high political ambitions, and the corruption of the administration was no doubt a tempting target. But he was probably sincere in not wanting to leave his command to testify in person, for purely military reasons – and possibly also because he feared the consequences of embarrassing Grant at that particular moment. It was, perhaps, a question of timing – and Custer’s sense of timing could be deplorably bad. (For details of Custer’s correspondence with the Clymer committee, who summoned him to Washington, see A Complete Life of General George Armstrong Custer, by Frederic Whittaker, 1876; Dunn.)

  61. Tight waists were a fashionable joke at this time. Punch has a cartoon of three ladies who have dressed for the evening on the understanding that they will not even have to climb the stair.

  62. President Grant was an admirer of Tom Brown’s Schooldays and its author, Thomas Hughes, the Radical MP and social reformer, who (like his book) became extremely popular in the United States – Hughes even helped to found a model community in Tennessee, which was christened Rugby, after his old school. During Grant’s visit to England in 1877, Hughes proposed the former President’s health at a private dinner at the Crystal Palace; Grant had been told that a speech from him was not expected, but he insisted on rising to express his gratification at hearing “my health proposed in such kind words by Tom Brown of Rugby”. (See Thayer.)

  63. The name of Edwinton Landing was in fact changed to Bismarck in the hope that the German Chancellor might encourage financial help to the Northern Pacific railway, which was in difficulties.

  64. Captain Benteen’s famous holograph letter about Little Bighorn does, in fact, contain an incidental reference to cricket, but Flashman’s is the only evidence that he was an enthusiast.

  65. Garryowen, the stirring march forever associated with Custer’s 7th Cavalry, dates from the late eighteenth century, when it was a drinking song of rich young roisterers in Limerick. It attained immediate popularity in the British Army and was played throughout the Napoleonic Wars, becoming the regimental march of the 18th Foot (The Royal Irish Regiment), and was a favourite in the Crimea; Fanny Duberly mentions it in connection with the Connaught Rangers (Devil’s Own), and the 8th (Irish) Hussars who were part of the Light Brigade. When it crossed the Atlantic is uncertain, but it was known during the Civil War, and quite probably caught Custer’s fancy at that time, despite the traditions that it was introduced later to the 7th either by the Irish Captain Keogh or the English Sergeant Butler. (See Lewis Winstock, Songs and Music of the Redcoats, 1642–1902, 1970; Walter Wood, The Romance of Regimental Marches, 1932.)

  66. As a guide to the character and psychological condition of George Armstrong Custer (1839–76), Flashman’s account of him is interesting and, in the light of published information, convincing. Custer was only 37; he had served with distinction in the Civil War, achieved general rank when he was 23, had ten horses shot under him, and was spectacular in an age which did not lack for heroes. After the war his career was less happy; his impulsive temper led to his court martial and suspension in 1867, and although Sheridan had him reinstated, his name was not free from controversy even in victory, as when he defeated Black Kettle’s Cheyenne on the Washita. That he was in an excitable state in the winter of 1875–6, and regarded the coming campaign as a last chance for distinction (and possible political advancement), as Flashman suggests, seems highly probable. The last-minute check received when Grant almost removed him from the expedition can have done nothing for his stability; as one eminent commentator puts it, Custer took the field “smarting”.

  Flashman’s record of Custer during the vital months before the campaign, while more personal than any other, accords with known facts. The general, a teetotal non-smoker who never swore, was highly emotional and easily moved to tears; the story of his weeping at the play Ours, at Wallack’s Theatre, is authentic, and he was known to choke when reading aloud some moving passage; he liked party games and amateur theatricals, and would sometimes lie on a bearskin rug listening to Swiss zither music played by a soldier of the 7th. He was an energetic writer and avid reader, British military history being one of his favourite studies. Unpopular with his officers (Benteen seems particularly to have detested him), he obviously had an engaging personality when he chose; secretive in planning, occasionally devious, proud to a fault, he could be embarrassingly open: Flashman was only one of the friends to whom he confessed his penury in New York. He appears to have been close to desperation during the Grant-Belknap episode, whose course Flashman charts fairly accurately, although in much greater detail than has been available hitherto. From all this Custer may appear, to say the least, eccentric. If so, it should be remembered that he was not alone in his time; he was a Victorian man of action, and a not untypical one, and as a soldier he should not be judged solely by his last campaign or the events that led up to it. (See Whittaker; Dunn; Boots and Saddles, 1885, and Following the Guidon, 1890, by Mrs E. B. Custer, his widow; My Life on the Plains, by George A. Custer, 1876; and works cited later in these Notes and Appendix B.)

  67. For a detailed account of Far West’s voyage up the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, including the movements of the military forces, see J. M. Hanson, The Conquest of the Missouri, 1909.

  68. There is no doubt that Terry wanted a combined operation (this was Marsh’s opinion) but that he could not lay down hard and fast restrictions on Custer. It has to be remembered that a principal concern was to prevent the Sioux escaping, and a strict prohibition on independent action might have resulted in Custer’s standing helplessly watching the hostiles melt away, simply because Gibbon had not appeared. No one envisaged the kind of situation that eventually faced Custer, because no one could guess that the number of hostiles had been badly underestimated. At the same time, there
is no doubt that if Terry had been able to foresee the concentration of Sioux that was waiting on the Little Bighorn, he would surely have forbidden Custer to attack it single-handed. Terry’s own report (curiously clumsily phrased for a lawyer) says in part “… that either of them which should be first engaged (Gibbon or Custer) might be a ‘waiting fight’ – give time for the other to come up”. Lieutenant Bradley’s aside is reflected in a note which he wrote after the Far West conference: “It is understood that Custer is at liberty to attack at once if he deems it prudent. We have little hope of being in at the death and Custer will undoubtedly exert himself to get there first and win the laurels for himself and his regiment.” Others thought so, too.

  An often-quoted passage is the supposed last-minute instruction given verbally by Terry to Custer: “Use your own judgement, and do what you think best if you strike the trail; and whatever you do, Custer, hold on to your wounded.” But whether Terry ever did say this is open to question. (See The Field Diary of General A. H. Terry, 1970; General Nelson Miles, Personal Recollections, 1897; Dunn; Hanson; Whittaker; and other Custer authorities cited below.)

  69. It is difficult to estimate times and distances from the sketchy details of the narrative, but this sounds like the big bluff overlooking the modern town of Forsyth. The Rosebud creek, referred to earlier, still looks rather like an English brook near its junction with the Yellowstone, and the hedgerow remains, but it is not an easy stream to find from the highway, and the marker which once showed Custer’s campsite has disappeared.

  70. The Navajo were unusual in the high position they accorded to their women-folk, who could own property of their own; thus Cleonie presumably passed into the possession of her owner’s widows, which might not have happened in another tribe. As a slave, her position must have been dreadful; Mayne Reid, who knew the Navajo, was in no doubt of their cruelty to captives, and their eagerness to capture white females. On the other hand, Hyde singles out the Navajo as jovial and progressive people, not given to torture and more averse to warfare than their fellow-Indians, so there are, as usual, two sides to the question.

  71. Estimates of the number of Indians in the Little Bighorn encampment vary, but ten to twelve thousand is a popular figure. It was not by any means the largest assembly of Indians ever known, although other writers than Flashman have made this error; the largest gathering of so-called hostiles it may have been, but there were twice as many Indians present during the Camp Robinson council of the previous year. (See Anson Mills.) The size of the village itself has been variously estimated at from three to five miles long; bearing in mind that the Little Bighorn is an extremely winding river, and that its course varies slightly today from that of 1876, it seems unlikely that the distance from the Hunkpapa camp at the upstream end of the village to the Cheyenne at its other extremity was more than a bare three miles.

  72. There can be no doubt that this Indian was Crazy Horse. While the one unauthenticated photograph of him is too vague for comparison, Flashman’s description tallies fairly well with others, and the design of the medicine shirt puts the wearer’s identity beyond question; it corresponds exactly with the shirt belonging to Crazy Horse which was presented by Little Big Man to Captain John G. Bourke of the 3rd Cavalry, the well-known Indian authority and historian. (See Bourke, Medicine-Men.)

  73. Walking Blanket Woman, the Oglala girl, fought at Little Bighorn. She rode in full war-dress, carrying the war-staff which her brother had borne on the Rosebud. (See Custer’s Fall, by David Humphreys Miller, 1957.)

  74. This passage substantiates one of the most cherished traditions of Little Bighorn: that four Cheyenne warriors – Bobtail Horse, Calf, Roan Horse, and one unidentified brave – advanced to the river alone to oppose Custer’s five troops. Some versions say they took cover behind a ridge, and were joined by a party of Sioux, who helped them to check Custer’s advance by rifle fire. One theory is that Custer, unable to believe that four men would ride out against him unsupported, halted and dismounted because he expected a large force to be following the four. It is fairly certain that Custer did halt and dismount, for whatever reason, and there are those who believe that if he had continued to advance he would have won across the ford and possibly overrun the village before Crazy Horse and Gall, who had been fighting Reno upstream, had regrouped. Again, some versions have Custer actually reaching the river before being forced back; one belief is that he himself was killed there. These are matters of controversy; the one thing that now appears to have been settled is the identity of the fourth mysterious Cheyenne.

  75. This sounds like Boyer, one of the scouts, repeating the warning which he had given to Custer when the Indian camp was first sighted.

  76. This clarifies, if it does not settle, one of the controversies of Little Bighorn – where and how Custer himself died. Indian accounts of his death have been so varied as to be almost useless; he has been killed by many different hands, in several places, including the ford at the very start of the battle. If that were true, then his body must have been carried almost a mile to where it was found on the site of the “Last Stand” on the slope below the present Monument, which seems highly unlikely. Flashman’s account suggests that he died on the spot where his body was found, and indeed where the greatest concentration of 7th Cavalry appear to have been killed in the final desperate struggle, with the remnants of Yates’s, Tom Custer’s, and Smith’s three troops scattered down the north side of the long gully below. It is worth noting, though, that Flashman’s recollections are (not unreasonably) somewhat confused; in what he calls the “slow moment” he saw Yates and Custer together; in the hand-to-hand combat that followed, the fight must have surged some distance uphill to the point where Custer died, since Custer’s body and Yates’s were found about three hundred yards apart. One point at least may be regarded as settled; however he died, Custer did not commit suicide.

  77. Sergeant Butler’s body was discovered, alone and surrounded by spent cartridges, more than a mile from his own troop’s last stand. This has been one of the mysteries of Little Bighorn. The explanation that he had been despatched, when all was obviously lost, to carry word of the disaster if not to get help, is one that must have occurred even without Flashman’s corroboration. Butler was, after all, a trusted and experienced soldier, and no one in the regiment would have been more likely to win through, a point acknowledged by the Sioux themselves. Sitting Bull, Gall, and many others paid tribute to the courage with which the 7th Cavalry fought its last action, and singled out some for special mention, but above all the rest they praised “the soldier with braid on his arms” as the bravest man at Greasy Grass.

  78. Flashman’s ride clean across the battlefield, from the point where Keogh’s troop fell until he must have been close to the river, might seem improbable if it were not corroborated by an unimpeachable source of which Flashman himself was probably never aware. In a magazine article published in 1898, the Cheyenne chief Two Moon, who played a leading part in the battle, and is regarded as one of the most reliable Indian witnesses, had this to say of the final moments of the struggle:

  “One man rides up and down the line – all the time shouting. He rode a sorrel horse … I don’t know who he was. He was a very brave man … (a) bunch of men, maybe some forty, started towards the river. The man on the sorrel horse led them, shouting all the time. He wore buckskin shirt and had long black hair and moustache. He fought hard with a big knife …”

  Except for the buckskin shirt (and Two Moon admits that the soldiers were white with dust, which might easily have misled him) this description fits Flashman exactly, even to the sound effects. And historians have been at a loss to identify the black-moustached rider until now, since his appearance does not tally with that of any known officer of the 7th. One theory is that he was a scout, and De Land considers the possibility that it was Boyer, but dismisses it on the ground that Boyer was clean-shaven. It is also worth noting Two Moon’s statement that the man “fought hard with a big knife”,
by which he probably meant a sabre (the chief Gall also confirmed that one of the white men definitely used a sabre). Since the 7th Cavalry carried no sabres in the battle, but we know that at least one Sioux warrior did (having captured it from Crook’s forces on the Rosebud), and since Flashman describes how he took a sabre from a Sioux, it seems safe to say that the identity of the mysterious rider with the black moustache has at last been established. As to the only other inconsistency between the versions of Flashman and Two Moon – that the moustached rider was at the head of a bunch of fugitives – nothing in Flashman’s writing has ever suggested that, in the heat of flight, he paid much attention to any other unfortunates behind him.

  79. When the Custer part of the battle began, and how long it lasted, has never been satisfactorily settled. Reno went into action (the first shots heard by Flashman) apparently at about 3.15 p.m., and according to Sgt Martini, the last messenger from Custer on the bluffs, Custer first came under fire at about 3.20 (sooner than Flashman’s estimate). It seems the fighting on the Greasy Grass was over by about 5 p.m., if not earlier, but it is impossible to tell how much time Custer’s force took to get out on to the slope, and how long the action there lasted. Not more than an hour, certainly, and probably a good deal less. General Edgerly, who as a subaltern was in the Reno part of the fight, is said to have estimated the Custer action at fifteen minutes, or thirty at the outside; Gall, who was in the action throughout, put it at half an hour, and a Cheyenne estimated twenty minutes. So Flashman may not be far out. Differing figures have also been given for the numbers of casualties. Custer lost about 200 dead on the hill, and Gall put the Indian dead at 43, which seems rather low, although his statement suggests that many others died of wounds.