Flashman and the Emperor

by Robert Brightwell

  Flashman and the Emperor

  © Robert Brightwell 2017

  Robert Brightwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. This ebook may not be reproduced or copied except for the use of the original purchaser.

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the largely forgotten Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. While part of his empire was secured by Cochrane for his father, it is Pedro II who made Brazil much of what it is today. Despite a sad, lonely upbringing, during his fifty-eight years ruling the country he provided political stability, freedom of speech and civil rights. He oversaw vibrant economic growth and achieved the abolition of slavery despite strong opposition from vested interests. Under his rule the country won three wars with its neighbours, with the emperor sometimes leading at the front. At the end of one conflict the General Assembly proposed a large bronze statue of him on horseback to commemorate the victory; in a typical gesture, he chose to use the money to build elementary schools instead.

  Introduction

  This seventh instalment in the memoirs of the Georgian rogue Thomas Flashman reveals that, despite his suffering through the Napoleonic Wars, he did not get to enjoy a quiet retirement. Indeed, middle age finds him acting just as disgracefully as in his youth, as old friends pull him unwittingly back into the fray.

  He re-joins his former comrade in arms, Thomas Cochrane, in what is intended to be a peaceful and profitable sojourn in South America. Instead, he finds himself enjoying drug-fuelled orgies in Rio, trying his hand at silver smuggling and escaping earthquakes in Chile before being reluctantly shanghaied into the Brazilian navy.

  Sailing with Cochrane again, he joins the admiral in what must be one of the most extraordinary periods of his already legendary career. With a crew more interested in fighting each other than the enemy, they use Cochrane’s courage, Flashman’s cunning and an outrageous bluff to carve out nothing less than an empire which will stand the test of time.

  Check out the other books in the series and a gallery of some of the historical characters featured (including a photograph of an elderly Thomas Cochrane) at www.robertbrightwell.com.

  As always, if you have not already read them, the tales of Thomas’s nephew, Harry Flashman, edited by George MacDonald Fraser are strongly recommended.

  Robert Brightwell

  Chapter 1

  I almost missed the grave as I walked through the overgrown valley. Only a lightly trodden path gave any clue it was there. There was not even a name on the slab of stone that marked it. Instead, lay just a withered bunch of wild flowers held in place by a rock against the wind. Considering the life of the occupant, it was a miserable end.

  There could not have been many visitors as it was one of the hardest to reach places on earth. But on learning that we would be passing close by, I was determined to see it. It was not so much to pay my respects as to apologise, for I had done more than most to bring the man down.

  “Have you found it?” called out my companion. “It’s a bloody disgrace planting him out here in the arse end of beyond.”

  “Yes, he is here. The grave is unmarked but the sentry told me that they could not agree what to write on his stone and so they left it blank.” I removed my hat and stared down at the smooth surface. The corpse beneath it had once stood astride the world. His abilities had awed and terrified me, but still he had earned my lifelong respect. That might seem strange as the last time I had seen him, he had been shrieking for my arrest and would doubtless have had me executed. Still, in my turn I had poisoned him, incapacitating him before the battle on which his future depended. So, all in all, his animosity was quite reasonable. Without my intervention, he might have been ruling Europe once again, instead of lying in this god-forsaken hole.

  My companion came and stood beside me. “Did you know my brother was planning to break him out of here and set him up as the ruler of Chile?”

  I smiled and shook my head in resignation. If anyone else had told me that, I would have dismissed them as a fool or a lunatic. Before he had ended up in this grave, Napoleon, emperor of the French and pariah to the crowned heads of Europe, had been the most guarded man on earth. He had escaped from an earlier captivity and plunged Europe back into war; no one was taking any chances that he could do so again. But if Thomas Cochrane said he would break him out, then I would not have bet against it.

  “He thought Bonaparte would have made a better ruler than the self-serving, corrupt politicians currently squabbling over the country,” claimed William Erskine Cochrane of his brother. “It seemed a waste of his talents to leave him in a glorified prison here.”

  “Did he actually contact Napoleon about ruling Chile?” I asked.

  “He sent one of his officers to St Helena to approach him about the plan, but it was clear by then that the emperor was too ill for it to succeed.”

  “Many of his old soldiers would have re-joined him wherever he ruled,” I pointed out. “With your brother and Napoleon working together, they could have made a new empire covering the whole of South America.”

  “Well it is too late for that now,” stated Erskine. “There is a new government in Chile and if I know my brother, he will have fallen out with most of their officials.”

  Cochrane certainly did have an uncanny knack of annoying his superiors. He had scuppered his career in the British navy by effectively accusing his commanding admiral of cowardice. Then he had set about upsetting the political establishment when, as a radical Member of Parliament, he kept highlighting the rampant corruption that benefited most of those in power. In the end, his enemies had got rid of him by framing him in a stock market fraud. He treated the legal system with similar contempt and as a result was sent to prison for a year.

  Disgraced, thrown out of the navy and stripped of his knighthood, it would have spelt the end for most people. Cochrane, however, was re-elected – unopposed – back into parliament by his Westminster constituency, who were convinced of his innocence. Released from gaol, he had found peacetime politics a frustrating experience, which was why he had accepted an invitation from the Chilean rebel forces to help them in their fight for independence from Spain.

  But don’t imagine that I was sailing to join him in that conflict. Christ no. My very first adventures had been with Cochrane, back in 1800 when I was a naïve innocent of just eighteen. I remembered all too well how close he had come to getting me killed on several occasions. I had declined all of his invitations until I heard that the war in Chile was effectively over; in no small part, due to Cochrane’s use of his sinking flagship to capture the city of Valdivia, the last stronghold held by the Spanish.

  As I stood by that graveside I was convinced that my fighting days were finished. The world was still largely at peace. There was little to indicate that, despite my caution, I would soon be plunged into Cochrane’s most audacious adventure yet and then, on another continent, a terror that to this day can still give me nightmares.

  I had sworn in the past that I would not leave Britain’s shores again, but you never know what the future will hold. After Waterloo, I was summoned back to France as a witness in the trial of Marshal Ney. I had been his staff officer for a while, but the poor bastard never stood a chance as that devil Fouché, the police minister, was pulling strings in the background to ensure his execution. Still, my old friend Robert Wilson and I got some manner of revenge, but that tale must be for another day. The year after Waterloo, 1816, was notorious for not having any summer at all. Heavy rains and wintry weather ruined harvests across Europe and North America, resulting in widespread famine. Some blamed a volcano on the other side of the world, while others thought it was due to the defeat of the man bu
ried in that grave. Whatever the cause, it damn near bankrupted me as my tenants had nothing to sell to pay their rent. The following year I sailed to India again, in part to raise some cash. Despite renewed fighting with the Mahratta warlords while I was there, it was a lot less dangerous than my previous visit. Perhaps it lulled me into a false sense of security to venture abroad once more.

  Cochrane had made Chile sound inviting, extolling the friendly people, the pretty girls and the hint of a fortune from silver mines in the north of the country. But the thing that clinched it for me was the means of getting there. When Cochrane was appointed as the First Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean navy, he had arranged for a new ship to be built, the Rising Star. It was a revolutionary design, intended to sweep the Spanish navy from the Pacific. But in typical fashion, Cochrane had not waited for the new vessel and had accomplished the task with more conventional craft.

  “I cannot believe that the bastards have been burning our coal,” Erskine said, interrupting my thoughts. He kicked a stone in irritation, which landed on top of the grave.

  “You can hardly blame them,” I laughed. “When the merchant ship delivered it and described the craft that would be following to use it, they probably thought we would not make it out of the Thames Estuary, never mind all the way to the middle of the South Atlantic.”

  “Still, there are only three tons left. That will keep the engines going for barely a few hours.”

  “They have given us firewood to replace some of what they have used and we can stop at Rio on the way to get more.”

  Erskine was still grumbling about the islanders of St Helena burning his coal in their hearths when we reached the headland overlooking the small harbour. There, at anchor down in the bay, lay his pride and joy. His brother had left him in charge of its construction and he had fussed over every detail. At first glance it appeared like any other naval sloop: a three-masted vessel with ten gun ports painted in black on the white stripe down each side of her hull. Only on closer inspection did you notice the two tall thin funnels between her main and foremast, which gave a clue to her secret.

  Remember that this was all happening back in 1822, nearly twenty years before screws and propellers began to appear on ships. All steam craft then were paddle steamers. The first of these to cross the Atlantic had done so only three years earlier and had used its engines for just a few hours on the journey. Cochrane wanted a fighting ship and he could not have his broadsides reduced by huge paddle wheels on either side of the hull, which would also have been vulnerable to enemy fire. With his chosen ship builder, he came up with an ingenious solution. The paddle wheel of the Rising Star was in the middle of the vessel, protruding through the keel. With four boilers and two engines, in her trials she achieved a speed of six knots under steam alone. Erskine was convinced that she topped eight knots when we were becalmed in the Doldrums, that area of sea between the north and south Atlantic trade winds.

  The Rising Star was the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic from east to west and we did not just cross it, we traversed its length as well, before rounding Cape Horn and going into the Pacific. But now I am anticipating my tale.

  The journey was not without incident. We encountered a violent storm in the Bay of Biscay which blew us north and carried away a topmast and a good amount of cordage. Given the distance to travel, Erskine decided to put into Cork for repairs. We steamed towards the harbour and when it came in sight, we were surprised to see a score of large boats set sail in our direction. It was not curiosity or even common humanity at seeing a vessel with broken masts and rigging coming towards them. No, the wily bastards had seen the smoke from the funnels and thought we were afire. They were all intent on securing the salvage rights on the craft and were most indignant to learn we were not in any great jeopardy. We even had to fire one of the cannon as a warning to get them to sheer off.

  But once repairs were effected, it was literally plain sailing most of the way. With favourable winds, the sails were faster than the engine and the paddle wheel could be retracted, so that the hull would move smoothly through the sea. Only when we reached the Doldrums did we fire up the boilers again. In the past I have sat on ships there becalmed for days. It is a miserable existence in the baking heat, not knowing when the wind will return. But this time the deck was soon vibrating with the movement of the engines and we pushed our way over the glassy surface until we found favourable winds once more. We had used most of our coal by then, for no ship could carry enough for the whole journey. But Erskine had already arranged for more supplies to be left for us on the island of St Helena.

  As we made our way down the hillside, we spotted a young man running up the slope towards us.

  “Jackson is leaping across those rocks as though he has a wasp down his trousers,” chuckled Erskine. “God knows where he gets the energy. He can see us walking down, why does he not wait for us down there?”

  I liked Jackson. He had a boyish enthusiasm about most things and was joining Cochrane in Chile as his secretary. He looked on his new employer with awe and as Erskine was another member of the family and I an old shipmate, we were also treated with due reverence. “He must be relishing the opportunity to get away from his books,” I replied. “He has had his nose stuck in them for most of the trip.” When he had not been reading – tomes on accountancy were his current passion – he had been pestering me to teach him Spanish. He wanted to be as fluent as possible by the time we reached Valparaíso, so that he could better serve his chief.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Jackson called as he got closer. “See what I have bought,” he gasped, coming to a stop in front of us. He was holding a small metal case on a string, but had to catch his breath before he could explain further.

  “Is it a watch?” asked Erskine.

  “Far better, it is a piece of history,” he enthused as he pressed on the catch and held the little compartment open for our inspection. Inside was a lock of ginger hair, held in place with a blob of sealing wax into which a roughly hewn ‘N’ had been pressed. “Behold, a lock of the Emperor Napoleon’s hair!”

  “That is impressive,” I declared while supressing a grin. “And how much did you have to pay for this treasure, may I enquire?”

  “Three guineas,” he declared before adding proudly, “I beat them down from five.” The cheap casket did not even look silver and was only worth a shilling, but he was so pleased with his purchase that I did not have the heart to disillusion him.

  “Well it is certainly a memento to pass on down your family,” I agreed. Having forged and sold antiquities myself in the past, I could hardly blame the local man for trying to gull visitors. There was precious little else on this wretched island that people would want to buy.

  Erskine shot me a curious glance before asking Jackson, “Is the coal and wood loaded aboard?”

  “Yes sir and sailing master asks if you plan to stay here tonight or drift out of the bay on the tide this evening?”

  “There is damn all to do here,” stated Erskine. “Tell him we will leave this evening, will you?”

  “Yes sir.” And with that Jackson was away again, bounding over the rocks, back down the hill.

  Erskine turned to me. “I did not know that the emperor had ginger hair.”

  I laughed. “He didn’t. It was fine and dark brown when I last saw it. God knows where that tuft came from, but it certainly was not the emperor’s head. If we search carefully on the way down the hill, we may spot a ginger cat with a shaved backside.”

  Chapter 2

  Erskine had something of the showman about him. He liked to make a good entrance and he certainly achieved that in Rio. The winds had been favourable and he had saved the coal so that we could arrive in the huge natural harbour under steam power alone.

  Little of the city could be seen from the sea, but the huge rock that they call the Sugar Loaf was unmistakable. It stuck up in the air like the Rock of Gibraltar, just to the left of the harbour entrance. The chart
showed sandbars around the neck of the bay and so we waited until the tide was high before engaging the engines. If the paddlewheel had smashed itself to pieces against the bottom, it would have rather ruined the effect we wanted to achieve.

  With sails tightly furled to the yardarms, we slowly made our way into the bay. It was probably the smoke from the funnels that attracted attention first. As we came into the harbour, we imagined dozens of telescopes being aimed in our direction. By then we were moving forward against both the wind and the tide, with no apparent means of propulsion. To further add to the confusion, we were flying the British flag over that of Chile. At least with gun ports closed, it was hopefully clear we had no hostile intent.

  I watched as several of the vessels anchored nearby started to lower boats so that their crews could take a closer inspection of our ship, but one launch was already well on the way towards us, flying the Portuguese flag. A dozen blacks were bent over its oars, slaves from the look of them, while three officers stood unsteadily in the stern, to study us over the heads of the rowers. I assumed that it was a boat from the port admiral, with a pilot aboard who would guide us to an anchorage. But instead of hooking onto our chains and coming aboard, they made to go about our stern.

  Erskine and I watched curiously, in no way displeased at the consternation we were causing. As they crossed our wake one of the officers pointed to the disturbed water that was thrown back from the paddle wheel and absolutely crossed himself as though our movement was due to some divine influence. The others seemed more surprised to find that there was no paddle wheel on the far side of the hull. They set to jabbering amongst themselves and pointing at the wake and the funnels, while showing no intention of coming closer.