The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  47. Reading between the lines of Blanc’s memoir, one is inclined to agree with Flashman that Theodore’s German artisans may have sabotaged his great mortar. In describing the Emperor’s raid on the island of Metraha, where he burned most of the population alive, Blanc mentions that some fugitives took to their canoes, but when Theodore ordered his Europeans to fire on them with small cannon, “they complied, but to Theodore’s great disappointment, failed to hit any of the fugitives.” In his next paragraph Blanc writes of the artisans’ failure to cast Sevastopol at their first attempt, and their eventual success only after Theodore himself had (with some technical skill, it must be said) redesigned the smelting process. Taking these two incidents together, it seems that the Germans were by no means eager to make a success of casting or operating Theodore’s ordnance; the artillery of which they had the loading on Fala was singularly ineffective, and the bursting of Sevastopol was a huge blow to Theodore’s morale; he had hoped it would have a shattering effect on his enemies. Estimates of its weight vary, one saying only five tons, others seventy. Rassam’s book has a fine illustration showing the enormous bell-like contraption being dragged uphill by hordes of workers, and it is said to be still lying half-buried in the ground at Magdala today.

  48. The battle of Arogee is well described in Holland and Hozier, and by Stanley and Henty. The latter wrote a separate account in greater detail for Battles of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, 1890, and there is an admirable essay on the battle, D. G. Chandler’s “The Expedition to Abyssinia, 1867–8”, which is to be found in Victorian Military Campaigns, edited by Brian Bond. Flashman’s version is sound, but he adds nothing to the one point of controversy, the exposure of the army’s baggage to attack, which Theodore fortunately delayed. Henty was in no doubt that if Napier had been facing a European enemy, disaster must have followed; as it was, Napier was quick to retrieve the position. What seems to have happened is that Colonel Phayre, the Quartermaster-General, had reported the defile from which the baggage was emerging to be safe and guarded, when it was not; it has also been suggested that Napier himself had miscalculated the speed of his own advance, and that the baggage got ahead of him. Holland and Hozier tactfully glide over the incident.

  49. The feeling in Napier’s army is reflected in Henty, who pays tribute to the bravery of the Abyssinians, emphasising that they retreated, but did not fly, and that not a spear or a gun was thrown away. He writes of “a slaughter, hardly a fight, between disciplined well-armed men and scattered parties of savages scarcely armed at all.” The firearms of the Abyssinians were certainly inferior to the Sniders and Enfields, but Henty is not quite fair to the Sikh Pioneers who enjoyed no advantage of weaponry against the enemy spear and swordsmen, were outnumbered, and still won a decisive victory with their bayonets, as Flashman, a veteran of the Sikh War, notes with satisfaction. For the rest, his account of the battle is well corroborated on the British side, and by those who were with Theodore.

  50. When Blanc came face to face with Theodore, “I was quite prepared for the worst, and, at that moment, had no doubt in my mind that our last hour had come.” Theodore reached for the musket of the nearest soldier, “looked at me for a second or two, dropped his hand, and in a low sad voice asked me how I was, and bade me good-bye.” This accords with Flashman, but Blanc is modest about outfacing the Emperor, saying that it was mere accident that he was first to approach Theodore, who had no animosity towards him; “the result would have been quite different had his anger been roused by the sight of those he hated.”

  51. There is an interesting group photograph of the principal prisoners taken after their release. It includes Cameron wearing his cap and holding a crutch; Dr Blanc, burly and serious; Rassam quite brisk and dapper; Prideaux lounging on the ground, arms folded and looking both languid and jaundiced; and the two missionaries, the Rev. Stern whose alleged criticism of Theodore helped to start the crisis, and the Rev. Rosenthal with Mrs Rosenthal and their baby. Blanc and Prideaux are wearing their shackles. (Army Museums Ogilby Trust.)

  52. This was a letter of apology for what Flashman calls Theodore’s “lunatic message” of the previous day. Both are quoted in full in Holland and Hozier, and there can be no better evidence of Theodore’s violent swings of mood. They are truly extraordinary productions, and Napier can have been in no doubt that he was dealing with a highly unstable and dangerous man. It may be significant of how Theodore saw himself that the first letter, an astonishing rant, is headed from “Kasa, whose trust is in Christ, thus speaks”, while the apology, much more moderate in tone and accompanied by the gift of cattle, comes from “the King of Kings Theodorus”. Kasa was his name before he assumed the title of Emperor, the name of his humble beginnings. Flashman’s account of Theodore’s behaviour at this time, his relations with his own leading men, his diplomatic exchanges with Napier, and his inability to decide whether to fight or surrender, are confirmed in Rassam and Blanc, and by his valet Wald Gabr (see Note 54).

  53. What Flashman was seeing was the first breaching of Magdala’s defences. The attack had proceeded as he describes, with the British advancing en masse across Islamgee and the artillery barrage covering the troops as they climbed up the narrow track leading to the Kobet Bar Gate. Some were wounded by the fire of Theodore’s defenders, but the Sappers reached the gate, only to discover that the powder charges needed to blow it in had been forgotten. The Duke of Wellington’s 33rd had come up, and a party of them ran along the wall to a point where Private Bergin and Drummer Magner forced a way through the thorn hedge and scaled the wall. Ensign Wynter was boosted on to the wall carrying the 33rd’s Regimental Colour, and waved it to signal that the wall had been carried. This was the last time the Colour of the 33rd was carried into action. (See Chandler.)

  There is general agreement with Flashman’s view that if Magdala had been properly defended with artillery, the British attack – and indeed the war – might have ended very differently. Whether Theodore’s gunners would have been capable of mounting such a defence is another matter; they had made poor work of it on Fala at the battle of Arogee, and one concludes that, for all his military talents, Theodore was not a master of the art of gunnery.

  54. The best corroboration for Flashman’s account of Theodore’s suicide, and indeed for his description of the Emperor’s movements and behaviour in the week they were together, is Theodore’s valet and gun-bearer, Wald Gabr. In a statement made to Speedy, the valet recounted his service with Theodore over a period of five years; he was obviously deeply devoted to his master, but made no attempt to gloss over his atrocities, and indeed confessed his share in them (see Note 52). He describes Theodore’s attempted suicide, his release of the prisoners, his hopes of a peaceful settlement, his attempt to escape from Magdala, his galloping on the plain and challenging the British cavalry, and the bombardment and storming of the amba. Finally, he tells how Theodore released him from his allegiance and then shot himself, precisely as Flashman says, before the arrival of the first British troops. Stanley, in one of his more colourful passages, gives a romanticised account of the two Irishmen of the 33rd who were the first soldiers on the scene. Wald Gabr’s statement is quoted in full by Holland and Hozier.

  Stanley has a slightly purple description of the body, which he viewed soon after Theodore’s death: “His eyes, now fading, gave evidence yet of … piercing power … the lower lip seemed adapted to express scorn.” The features showed “great firmness and obstinacy mingled with ferocity”, but Stanley admits he may have been influenced by Theodore’s shocking reputation. Compare the Times’ description of “bloated sensual indulgence about the face, by no means heroic or kingly”, but “the forehead intellectual and the mouth singularly determined and cruel.” It was also noted that “a strange smile lingered about the lips”

  55. It is not clear whether Speedy is referring to James Gordon Bennett, founder and publisher of the New York Herald, or his son and namesake who succeeded him in control of the paper in 1867, the year i
n which H. M. Stanley was sent to cover the Abyssinian War. Bennett junior later sent Stanley to the Ashanti War of 1873–4, and, most memorably, in search of Dr Livingstone. If either of the Bennetts was an Anglophobe, it evidently did not influence Stanley’s reporting, which is not only meticulous in its detail but eminently fair.

  56. This explains why Flashman is not mentioned in Napier’s reports, or in Holland and Hozier, and the credit is given to Mir Akbar Ali, a subject of the Nizam of Hyderabad, who was attached to the expedition because, as a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, it was thought he would make an ideal envoy to Queen Masteeat and the Gallas. Plainly Flashman’s advent on the scene caused Napier to change his mind and send him in Mir Akbar’s place, as a far more experienced intelligence agent whose military seniority would also impress the Galla queen and her generals; it was, as Napier said, a task tailor-made for Flashman’s supposed talents. Since he was to travel in native disguise, he was given the name of Khasim Tamwar, and in inventing a background and history for him, Napier simply used that of Mir Akbar Ali. Then, when Flashman was captured by Theodore, Mir Akbar was despatched at the last minute to complete the work of organising the Galla encirclement of Magdala.

  In his report to Napier, Mir Akbar claims sole credit for persuading the Gallas, so there is a considerable discrepancy between his version and Flashman’s, and readers must decide for themselves which to accept. There is no doubt that Mir Akbar did valuable work in the last days of the campaign, for which he was paid at the far from generous rate of £25 a month, roughly the same as the expedition’s lower-grade interpreters. (See Holland and Hozier.)

  57. Looting at Magdala was on a small scale compared to the orgies of plunder and destruction which Flashman witnessed in the Mutiny and in China. There was plenty of glitter among the stuff strewn on the ground, according to Stanley, but much of it was of little value, and he noted that some of the prisoners (he does not name any) were foremost among the looters. But some treasures there were: gold, silver, silk, furs and skins, carpets, weapons, and quantities of manuscript. Mr Holmes of the British Museum was “in his glory” when the precious things were auctioned off, his only rival in the bidding being Flashman’s friend Fraser, who had the wealth of the 11th Hussars’ mess. The auction realised £5000, the proceeds being divided among the non-commissioned troops who had crossed the Bechelo; each man received about four dollars. The elephants which carried it away, and which had played such a vital part in the campaign, carrying guns and mortars, were 39 in number; five had died on the march.

  58. This casual reference to the death of Colonel Robert Alexander Dunn, V.C., suggests that Flashman can only have heard of it at vague second-hand without knowing who was involved. Dunn was from his old regiment, the 11th Hussars, and had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, where he won the only V.C. awarded in that action, for saving the lives of a troop sergeant-major and a trooper. He was C.O. of the notorious 33rd Regiment, the Duke of Wellington’s, and died on January 25, 1868, in a shooting accident.

  59. Flashman does not mention Abyssinian casualties in the brief battle for Magdala. More than 60 died in the fighting for the first gate, with about twice as many wounded. Even with the 700 dead and 1400 wounded at Arogee, the total of casualties in the campaign is unusually low for a nineteenth-century war.

  60. Queen Tooroo-Wark (“pure gold”) died of consumption a month later on the journey north, and was buried by Coptic priests, the King’s Own providing a guard of honour and music. She was only 18. She had not been happy with Theodore, and is said to have conspired against him, but something like a reconciliation seems to have taken place in the last days of the war. In accordance with Theodore’s wishes their son Alamayo went to England with Napier, and was educated at Rugby. He died when he was 19, and is buried at Windsor.

  61. “Fat, fair, and forty” was how Stanley described Queen Masteeat, possibly misquoting Speedy, and from his account it is obvious that he liked her for much the same reasons as Flashman: she was handsome, gaudy, jolly, given to “hearty, boisterous guffaws”, and had a gargantuan appetite. For the rest, we have only Flashman’s description of her court and conduct; that in spite of her self-indulgence she was a shrewd and formidable personality we may judge from the fact that Napier had no hesitation in preferring her to Warkite and assigning Magdala to her. As to Flashman’s description of her pet lions, it is interesting that King Theodore had a similar menagerie; a picture in L’Annee IIlustre, 1868, reproduced in Prelude to Magdala shows him surrounded by them.

  62. Britain’s intervention had done little to change the pattern of civil war and near-anarchy prevailing before 1867, and this continued after the British withdrawal. Kussai, King of Tigre, whose neutrality had been of considerable help, was rewarded with gifts of ordnance, small arms, and supplies, which helped him establish himself in the north of the country; he aspired to overall monarchy, and for twenty years fought rivals and foreign invaders, defeating Gobayzy and repelling Egyptians, Italians and Dervishes. He was killed in battle against the Dervishes in 1889, and succeeded by the despised Menelek; the “fat boy” achieved supreme power and inflicted a crushing defeat on Italian invaders at Adowa in 1896. This was not forgotten, and Abyssinia was briefly conquered by Mussolini’s forces before the Second World War, which effectively destroyed Italy’s empire.

  The brief exchanges among Napier’s staff have echoes which continue to be heard today. Should Britain have stayed, and pacified the country, assuming the white man’s burden? There are those who think so; one writer accuses Napier of dodging the issue, and holds that Britain’s leaving Abyssinia did not become her as well as her manner of entering it. This seems rather hard, when it is remembered that Britain had no wish to invade Abyssinia, and did so only on gross provocation. Looking back, it is difficult to see why the pacification of a country to which Britain owed nothing should have been thought (to paraphrase Bismarck) worth the bones of a single British soldier or Indian sepoy. Of one thing we can be sure: if Britain had stayed, revisionist historians would certainly have condemned it as another act of selfish imperialism.

  Copyright

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Harper

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  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005

  Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 2005

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  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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  Source ISBN: 9780007197408

  Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007325627

  Version: 2013–09–17

  FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER

  and other extracts from The Flashman Papers

  Edited and Arranged by

  GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER

  Dedication

  For Kath, a
memento of Ischl and the salt-mine

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Biographical Note

  Explanatory Note

  Part 1: The Road to Charing Cross (1878 and 1883–4)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Appendix: The Emperor Franz-Josef (1830–1916) and Empress Elisabeth (1837–1898)

  Notes

  Part 2: The Subtleties of Baccarat (1890 and 1891)

  Chapter 11

  Appendix

  Part 3: Flashman and the Tiger (1879 and 1894)

  Chapter 12

  Notes

  Copyright

  Biographical Note

  FLASHMAN, Harry Paget, brigadier-general, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.I.E.: Chevalier, Legion of Honour; Order of Maria Theresa, Austria; Order of the Elephant, Denmark (temporary); U.S. Medal of Honor; San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth, 4th class; b. May 5, 1822, s. of H. Buckley Flashman, Esq., Ashby, and Hon. Alicia Paget; m. Elspeth Rennie Morrison, d. of Lord Paisley, one s., one d. Educ. Rugby School. 11th Hussars, 17th Lancers. Served Afghanistan 1841–2 (medals, thanks of Parliament); chief of staff to H.M. James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, Batang Luper expedn, 1844; milit. adviser with unique rank of sergeant-general to H.M. Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, 1844–5; Sutlej campaign, 1845–6 (Ferozeshah, Sobraon, envoy extraordinary to Maharani Jeendan, Court of Lahore); polit. adviser to Herr (later Chancellor Prince) von Bismarck, Schleswig-Holstein, 1847–8; Crimea, staff (Alma, Sevastopol, Balaclava), prisoner of war, 1854; artillery adviser to Atalik Ghazi, Syr Daria campaign, 1855; India, Sepoy Mutiny, 1857–8, dip, envoy to H.R.H. the Maharani of Jhansi, trooper 3rd Native Cavalry, Meerut, subseq. att. Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, Cawnpore, (Lucknow, Gwalior, etc., V.C.); adjutant to Captain John Brown, Harper’s Ferry, 1859; China campaign 1860, polit. mission to Nanking, Taiping Rebellion, polit. and other services, Imperial Court, Pekin; U.S. Army (major, Union forces, 1862, colonel (staff) Army of the Confederacy, 1863); a.d.c. to H.I.M. Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 1867; interpreter and observer Sioux campaign, U.S., 1875–6 (Camp Robinson conference, Little Big Horn, etc.); Zulu War, 1879 (Isandhlwana, Rorke’s Drift); Egypt 1882 (Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir); personal bodyguard to H.I.M. Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria, 1883; Sudan 1884–5 (Khartoum); Pekin Legations, 1900. Travelled widely in military and civilian capacities, among them supercargo, merchant marine (West Africa), agriculturist (Mississippi valley), wagon captain and hotelier (Santa Fe Trail); buffalo hunter and scout (Oregon Trail); courier (Underground Railroad); majordomo (India), prospector (Australia); trader and missionary (Solomon Islands, Fly River, etc.), lottery supervisor (Manila), diamond broker and horse coper (Punjab), dep. marshal (U.S.), occasional actor and impersonator. Hon. mbr of numerous societies and clubs, including Sons of the Volsungs (Strackenz), Mimbreno Apache Copper Mines band (New Mexico), Khokand Horde (Central Asia), Kit Carson’s Boys (Colorado), Brown’s Lambs (Maryland), M.C.C., White’s and United Service (London, both resigned), Blackjack (Batavia). Chmn, Flashman and Bottomley, Ltd; dir. British Opium Trading Co.; governor, Rugby School; hon. pres. Mission for Reclamation of Reduced Females. Publications: Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life; Twixt Cossack and Cannon; The Case Against Army Reform. Recreations: oriental studies, angling, cricket (performed first recorded “hat trick”, wickets of Felix, Pilch, Mynn, for 14 runs, Rugby Past and Present v. Kent, Lord’s 1842; five for 12, Mynn’s Casuals v. All-England XI, 1843). Add: Gandamack Lodge, Ashby, Leics.