Flashman's Lady

by George MacDonald Fraser

  [p. 136)

  21. The truth about Brooke’s Burmese wound is far from clear; all that can be said with certainty is that he received it during his service in the Bengal Army in the Assam campaign (1823-5) when he commanded a native cavalry unit and was shot while charging a stockade. Both his principal biographers, Gertrude Jacob and Spenser St John, say that he was hit in the lung; according to Miss Jacob the bullet was not extracted until more than a year later, when it was kept in a glass case by Brooke’s mother. On the other hand. Owen Rutter cites John Dill Ross, whose father knew Brooke well, as the authority for the story that the wound was in the genitals. If this is true it is certainly consistent with Brooke’s reputed refusal of Miss Burdett-Coutts, and with the fact that he never married.

  It is possible, of course, that Jacob and St John were unaware of the true nature of Brooke’s injury (although this seems unlikely in the case of St John, who was Brooke’s close friend and secretary at Sarawak), or that they were simply being tactful. Remarks occur in their biographies which are capable of varying interpretations; St John, for example, says that in convalescing from the wound Brooke was “absorbed in melancholy thoughts, and often longed to be at rest”, but that is not necessarily significant-any young man with a wound that had put paid to his military career might well be gloomy. Again, both Jacob and St John refer to Brooke being in love, and briefly engaged (to the daughter of a Bath clergyman) after he had been wounded, and St John adds that “he from that time seems to have withdrawn from female blandishments”. It would be dangerous to draw conclusions from such conflicting evidence, or from what is known of Brooke’s character and behaviour; Flashman, naturally, would be ready to believe the worst.

  (p. 137]

  22. Whatever Flashman’s opinion of Brooke, he has been an honest reporter of the White Raja’s background and conversation. The picture of The Grove—the furnishings and routine, the formal dinners, the reception of petitioners, even his interest in gardening, his pleasure in comfortable armchairs and home newspapers, and his eccentric habit of playing leap-frog—is confirmed by other sources. Much more important, virtually all the opinions which he expressed in Flashman’s presence, throughout this narrative, are to be found elsewhere in Brooke’s own writings. His views on native peoples, piracy, Borneo’s future, missionaries, colonial development, religion and ethics, honours and decorations, personal ambitions and private tastes—all the philosophy of this remarkable man, in fact, is contained at length in his journals and letters, and his conversation as reported by Flashman reflects it accurately, often in identical words. Even the style of his talk seems to have been like his writing, brisk, assertive, eager, and highly opinionated. (See Brooke’s papers, as quoted in St John, Jacob, et al.)

  [p. 139]

  23. Brooke had written these very words in his journal only a few days before.

  [p. 142]

  24. Charles Johnson (1829-1917) was Brooke’s nephew, and became the second White Raja on his uncle’s death in 1868. He took the name Brooke as his surname, reigned for almost 50 years, extended Sarawak’s boundaries, and earned a high reputation as a fighting man and just ruler. Despite his background, he was an unusually clearsighted colonialist who predicted at the beginning of this century the end of empire and the ascendancy of new Eastern Powers in the shape of China and Russia.

  [p. 151]

  25. W. E. Gladstone was one of several liberal politicians who pressed for charges to be brought against Brooke on the ground that his actions against the Borneo pirates were cruel, illegal, and excessive. St John comments bluntly: “James Brooke’s sympathies were with the victims, Gladstone’s with the pirates.” (See Gladstone’s article on “Piracy in Borneo, and the Operations of 1849”.)

  [p. 152]

  26. An excellent description of a sea-going pirate prau. These vessels, up to 70 feet long, heavily armed with cannon and carrying hundreds of fighting men, were the scourge of the East Indies until well into the nineteenth century. Cruising sometimes in fleets of hundreds from the great pirate nests of the Philippines and North Borneo, they preyed on shipping and coast towns alike in search of slaves and plunder, and set the small naval forces of Britain and Holland at defiance.

  While piracy was universal in the Islands, the principal fraternities were the Balagnini, subsidised by the Borneo princes in return for slaves and treasure; the wandering Maluku from Halmahera in the Moluccas; the Sea Dyaks of the Seribas and Skrang rivers who specialised in head-taking; and most feared of all, the Lanun or Illanun rovers, “the pirates of the lagoon”, from Mindanao, whose praus could cruise for three years at a time and who operated the great slave market on Sulu Island. Although most of the pirate leaders were Islanders, some of them, like Flashman’s friend, Sahib Suleiman Usman, were Arab half-breeds—Usman was held to be especially detestable because he did not scruple to sell fellow-Arabs into slavery, but he was extremely powerful as head of a strong confederacy of North Borneo pirates, and also through his marriage to the Sultan of Sulu’s daughter (See Brooke, Marryat, Keppel, Mundy, and F. J. Morehead, History of Malaya, vol ii.) [p. 155]

  27. “Jersey” can surely only refer to “New Jersey”, where the .40 five-shot muzzle-loading revolver known as the Colt Paterson was produced between 1836 and 1842. Some of these pistols had barrels a foot long.

  [p. 160]

  28. Flashman is definitely mistaken. If any pirates were executed at Linga—and there is no supporting evidence, although the methods of execution which Flashman describes here were common among the Dyaks—Makota could not have been among them, since he was with the pirates at Patusan on the following day.

  [p. 161]

  29. The storming of Patusan, where five pirate forts were burned, took place on August 7. If Flashman’s account does not give prominence to the part played by Wade and Keppel, or to the outstanding bravery of the loyal Dyaks and Malays, it is understandable; river-fighting was more confused than most, and he was obviously fully occupied by his own share of it. On some details he is exact—Seaman Ellis was killed in the Jolly Bachelor while loading the bow gun, for example—and other accounts also refer to the plundering of Sharif Sahib’s head-quarters (where his “curious and extensive wardrobe” was discovered) and to the fact that his harem escaped unscathed from the battle. Plainly the other reporters did not consult Flashman on this last point, or if they did, he was prudently reticent.

  [p. 179]

  30. The fort of Sharif Muller (or Mullah) was taken on August 14, and a great force of pirate praus destroyed. The death of Lt. Wade, and Muller’s escape, took place as Flashman describes.

  [p. 182]

  31. The Battle of the Pyramids, fought on July 21, 1798, was one of Napoleon’s most complete victories. He beat and captured an Egyptian-Turkish army more than 20,000 strong under the Circassian, Murad Bey. St John tells us that one of Brooke’s people had taken part in the battle, on the Turkish side, but refers to him merely as “an old Malay”; Flashman is the only source for the suggestion that this anonymous veteran was Paitingi Ali; it is possible, assuming that Paitingi was in his 60s at the time Flashman knew him.

  (p. 188]

  32. Like Flashman, other participants in the battle on Skrang river thought it the most hectic and bloody of all the encounters fought by Brooke’s force in their passage up the Batang Lupar. Six hundred pirates in six praus attacked Paitingi’s spy-boat, overwhelming its crew of seventeen; Keppel’s account, quoted by Flashman, testifies to the viciousness of the fighting in the waterway choked by a mass of foundering craft and bodies which broke in two as it floated downstream, enabling Brooke and Keppel to drive their gig through the gap, followed by a rocket-firing boat. In addition to Paitingi’s crew, the expedition lost 29 other dead, with 56 wounded, in the battle.

  Although Flashman was in no position to appreciate it, this action marked the end of the Batang Lupar operation. With the stream too heavy against them, Brooke’s fleet returned to Patusan, having effectively destroyed or dispersed
the pirates along the river in the fortnight’s campaign. Much of the credit for this undoubtedly belonged to Keppel, whose role in the leadership Flashman tends to underrate; otherwise, his account of the expedition is on the whole accurate and fair, although it is as usual a highly individual view, and while he is reliable on dates, names of people, places, and vessels, and the broad conduct of operations, there is no way of verifying his more personal recollections. He seems to have magnified the action at Fort Linga (in which by his own account he played no part), but there is no reason to suppose that the gruesome picture which he paints of Borneo river-fighting, or of conditions along the pirate coast, is in any way exaggerated. (See Keppel, Jacob, St John, Marryat, and Sir George Mundy’s Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes, 1848.)

  [p. 192]

  33. So hostile to foreigners was Madagascar that comparatively few written authorities exist for the first half of the last century, and those named by Flashman are the principal ones in English; they bear out virtually every detail which he gives about that astonishing island and its appalling ruler, Ranavalona I, James Hastie (1786-1826) was a soldier, not a missionary; he was tutor to two Malagassy princes and British agent on the island at a time when Europeans were still tolerated there. His journal is in the Public Record Office. W. Ellis’s Three Visits to Madagascar, 1858, Madagascar Revisited, 1867, and The Martyr Church of Madagascar, 1870, are invaluable sources for Queen Ranavalona’s reign, and the island background and people, as is S. P. Oliver’s Madagascar, 1886. See also H. W. Little’s Madagascar. 1884, J. Sibree’s The Great African Island, 1880, and L. McLeod’s Madagascar and its people, 1865. But none compares with the indomitable and entertaining Ida Pfeiffer, that great tourist whose Last Travels contains a wealth of informative detail recorded at first hand.

  [p. 210]

  34. Curiously enough, this barbarous custom was abolished by Queen Ranavalona. It was said to be her only humane act.

  [p. 212]

  35. Flashman’s is possibly the only eye-witness account of the fearful cruelties and varied means of execution practised in Madagascar at this time, but the other authorities quote evidence in detail to support him, and there can be no doubt that such atrocities as he describes took place, and were part of the Queen’s policy. Ida Pfeiffer, having confirmed Flashman’s figures of tens of thousands dying annually from execution, massacre, and forced labour, sums up: “If this woman’s rule lasts much longer, Madagascar will be depopulated…Blood—and always blood—is the maxim of Queen Ranavalona, and every day seems lost to this wicked woman on which she cannot sign at least half a dozen death-warrants.”

  [p. 217]

  36. Flashman’s estimate of Laborde was sound; the Frenchman was a tough and resourceful soldier of fortune who in his time had been a cavalry trooper, steam engineer in Bombay, and (according to some sources) a slave-trader. He was shipwrecked in Madagascar in 1831, enslaved, bought by the Queen and became a favourite. Subsequently he was liberated and married a Malagassy girl, but he was still kept in Madagascar where he served the Queen as engineer and cannon-maker. He became an influential figure at court, and was active in promoting French interest.

  [p. 224]

  37. The few Europeans who met Queen Ranavalona face to face and lived to write impressions of her, confirm what Flashman says of her appearance, although most of them saw her much later in her reign than he did. Ellis, giving a description which is very close to Flashman’s, adds that “the whole head and face is small, compact and well proportioned; her expression…agreeable, although at times indicating great firmness.” Ida Pfeiffer, who apparently did not see her close to, noted that she was “of strong and sturdy build, rather dark”. Both she and Mr Ellis seem to have thought the Queen rather older than she probably was; there is no reliable evidence of her birth-date, and although the Nouvelle Biographie Générale says “about 1800”, which would make her 44 when Flashman met her, it seems more likely that she was in her early fifties.

  [p. 229]

  38. Flashman’s virtuosity on the keyboard was either highly eccentric or less memorable than he imagined, for years later when Ida Pfeiffer was invited to play the palace piano, she understood Ranavalona to say that she “had never seen anyone play with their hands”. Mme Pfeiffer found the piano sadly out of tune.

  [p. 232]

  39. Despite her suspicion of Europeans and their ways, the Queen did in fact employ an English-educated secretary.

  [p. 234]

  40. These peculiar divination-boards were known as sikidy. According to Sibree, there were three of them, one of four squares by sixteen, a second four by four, and a third four by eight.

  [p. 248]

  41. An unflattering description of Prince Rakota, although not unlike his portrait, which survives. Oliver described him as being like a Greek god, with dark curls and light gold skin, but agrees with Flashman’s estimate of his character, and confirms that he was a moderating influence on his mother.

  [p. 251]

  42. Flashman is the only survivor of the tanguin, or tangena, ordeal to have written of the experience. His account varies from other descriptions only on minor points—it was customary, when time was available, to starve the patient for 24 hours before the scraped stone of the tanguin fruit was administered, and some historians say that in order to pass the test the pieces of chicken skin had to be regurgitated in a particular direction. The deposit of 28 dollars (Flashman says 24) was normally put up by the accuser of the person undergoing the test—if the accused failed the test, the accuser got his money back, but if he passed, the accuser recovered only one-third of the deposit, the other thirds going to the accused and the Queen.

  [p. 278]

  43. As a result of its separate evolution, the plant and animal life of Madagascar is unique, and it has been estimated that ninety per cent of its living things exist nowhere else on earth. Among its more celebrated fabulous monsters was the giant Roc bird which carried off Sinbad. The “apes” which Flashman saw were probably sifakas, a type of lemur capable of prodigious jumps.

  [p. 294]

  44. It was Flashman’s good fortune to arrive at Tamitave on the very morning (June 15, 1845) when three European warships, the French Berceau and Zelée and the British frigate Conway, made a concerted attack on the fort and town. The punitive expedition was in retaliation for Ranavalona’s ill-treatment of Europeans—she had recently decreed that those trading with the island were liable to Malagassy law (slavery for debt, forced labour, trial by tanguin, etc.), there had been fatal incidents between British ships and Malagassy troops, and a British shipmaster of American origin, Jacob Heppick, had been enslaved after his barque, the Marie Laure, was shipwrecked. Captain Kelly of the Conway was sent to Tamitave to demand redress early in June, and when this was not forthcoming the Anglo-French bombardment followed a few days later. (See Oliver, the “Memorial of Jacob Heppick, mariner, to the Governor of Mauritius”, and the Annual Register.)

  [p. 301]

  45. The unsuccessful storming of Tamitave fort by landing parties from the Anglo-French squadron took place as Flashman says. The outer palisade was carried under a hail of grapeshot and musketry, the battery overrun and guns spiked, but the attackers failed to carry the main fort and retired after a brisk fight. The British lost four dead and 12 wounded, and the French 17 dead and 43 wounded. Both the Zelée and Berceau lost topmasts in the gun-battle with the fort.

  The incident of the flag is true, although not all the details are clear. It appears that it was shot away from the outer wall, and caught by a Malagassy soldier who put it on a spear. It fell again, and was captured by a British midshipman and two sailors; there was a tussle for it between French and British under Malagassy fire, and the matter was only resolved when someone—the Annual Register says Lt Kennedy, but doubtless Flashman knows best—cut it in two. The French received the half bearing the legend “Ranavalona” and the British the piece inscribed “Manjaka”. Most of Tamitave town was burned during the attack.


  [p. 309]

  46. After a long period of political unrest and violence in the Punjab, the Sikhs finally invaded British-controlled territory in December, 1845, and the First Sikh War began.

  [p. 310]