The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  All in all … not a bad little war, would you say? Everyone had got what they wanted, more or less … perhaps, in their own mad way, even the Khalsa. Twenty thousand dead, Sikh, Indian, and British … a lot of good men, as Gardner said. But … peace for the rest, and plenty for the few. Which reminds me, I never did discover what happened to the Soochet legacy.

  No one could foresee, then, that it would all be to do over, that in three short years the Sikhs would be in arms again, Paddy’s white coat would come out of the closet reeking of camphor, and the bayonets and tulwars would cross once more at Chillianwalla and Gujerat. And afterwards, the Union Flag would fly over the Punjab at last, Broadfoot could rest easy, and the twice-beaten but never-conquered Khalsa would be reborn in the regiments which stood fast in the Mutiny and have held the Raj’s northern border all through my time. For the White Queen … and for their salt. The little boy who’d exulted over my pepperbox and ridden laughing to Jupindar rocks would live out a wastrel life in exile, and Mai Jeendan, the dancing queen and Mother of all Sikhs, her appetite undiminished and her beauty undimmed, would pass away, of all places, in England.b

  But all that happened another day, when I was up the Mississippi with the bailiffs after me. My Punjab story ends here, and I can’t croak, for like all the others I too had my heart’s desire – a whole skin and a clear run home. I wouldn’t have minded a share of the credit, but I didn’t care that much. Most of my campaigns have ended with undeserved roses all the way to Buckingham Palace, so I can even smile at the irony that when, for once, I’d done good service (funking, squealing, and reluctant, I admit) and come close to lying in the ground for it, all I received was the cold shoulder, to be meekly endured … well, more or less.

  Lawrence and I walked over to the big marquee which served as mess and dining-room; everyone seemed to be there, for Hardinge had waited up for news of the treaty talk with Goolab, and he and the Calcutta gang were enjoying a congratulatory prose before turning in. Lawrence gave me a quick glance as we entered, as much as to say would I rather we went to his quarters, but I steered ahead; Gough and Smith and the best of the Army were there, too, and I chaffed with Hodson and Edwardes while Lawrence called up the shrub. I downed a glass to settle myself, and then took an amble over to where Hardinge was sitting, with Currie and the other diplomatics.

  “Good evening, sir,” says I, toady-like, “or good morning, rather. I’m off today, you know.”

  “Ah, yes,” says he, stuffy offhand. “Indeed. Well, good-bye, Flashman, and a safe journey to you.” He didn’t offer his hand, but turned away to talk to Currie.

  “Well, thank’ee, your excellency,” says I. “That’s handsome of you. May I offer my congratulations on a successful issue from our recent … ah, troubles, and so forth?”

  He shot me a look, his brow darkening, suspecting insolence but not sure. “Thank you,” snaps he, and showed me his shoulder.

  “Treaty all settled, too, I believe,” says I genially, but loud enough to cause heads to turn. Paddy had stopped talking to Gilbert and Mackeson, Havelock was frowning under his beetle-brows, and Nicholson and Hope Grant and a dozen others were watching me curiously. Hardinge himself came round impatiently, affronted at my familiarity, and Lawrence was at my elbow, twitching my sleeve to come away.

  “Good bandobast all round,” says I, “but one of the clauses will need a little arrangement, I fancy. Well, ’tain’t a clause, exactly … more of an understanding, don’t you know –”

  “Are you intoxicated, sir? I advise you to go to your quarters directly!”

  “Stone cold sober, excellency, I assure you. The Leith police dismisseth us. British constitution. No, you see, one of the treaty clauses – or rather the understanding I mentioned – can’t take effect without my assistance. So before I take my leave –”

  “Major Lawrence, be good enough to conduct this officer –”

  “No, sir, hear me out, do! It’s the great diamond, you see – the Koh-i-Noor, which the Sikhs are to hand over. Well, they can’t do that if they haven’t got it, can they? So perhaps you’d best give it ’em back first – then they can present it to you all official-like, with proper ceremony … Here, catch!”

  [The ninth packet of the Flashman Papers ends here, with typical abruptness. A few weeks later the Koh-i-Noor was again in the possession of the Lahore durbar, and was shown round at the treaty ceremony, but it was not finally surrendered until the annexation of the Punjab in 1849 after the Second Sikh War. The diamond was then presented to Queen Victoria by Hardinge’s successor, Lord Dalhousie. Doubtless on Flashman’s advice, she did not wear it in her crown at the 1887 Jubilee. See Appendix III.]

  * * *

  a Inferior.

  b See Appendix II.

  APPENDIX I:

  The Sutlej Crisis

  The origins of the First Sikh War are not to be summed up in a few paragraphs. Flashman has given a reasonably fair account of the developing crisis, from close range, and perhaps all that can usefully be done is to stand farther back and try to balance some of the factors which seem specially important.

  It is easy to say that with a powerful, arrogant Khalsa bent on invasion, war was inevitable; no one in the Punjab could restrain them (or wanted to), so what could the British do but prepare to meet the storm? Something, according to Cunningham, a most respected historian, who believed that, while the Khalsa took the initiative, the British were “mainly to blame” for the war. His conclusion has been eagerly seized on in some quarters, but his argument boils down to the suggestion that Britain, “an intelligent power” faced with “a half barbarous military dominion”, should have acted with more wisdom and foresight. It is rather lofty, even for 1849, and perhaps “equally” or “partially” would be fairer than “mainly”. At the same time, George Bruce is certainly right when he accuses Hardinge of mental paralysis, and of making no rational move to prevent war; he points to the massive failure of communication. Still, considering the state of the Lahore durbar, and the motives at work among its principals, perhaps Britain should not be shouldered with too much of the responsibility.

  Granted that Broadfoot was not the ideal man for the sensitive post of North-west Agent. Like many Britons, he obviously felt that the sooner Britain was running the Punjab, the better – but then, considering what had been happening north of the Sutlej for years, can he be blamed for that? There is a tendency to cast him as the villain of the piece, and certainly he was belligerently ready to make the worst of the situation, but so were many on the other side. Jeendan and her associates wanted the Khalsa destroyed, and the Khalsa was ready to rush to destruction – it would have taken an Agent of massive forbearance, and a Governor-General of genius, which Hardinge certainly was not, to settle matters peacefully. The impression one gets of the British peace lobby, as personified by Hardinge, is that they wished the Punjab would go away – or rather that it would settle down into the strong, disciplined stability it had known under Runjeet Singh. But Hardinge had no idea of how that was to be achieved.

  On the Sikh side, one can understand their apprehension. Below the Sutlej, they were well aware, was a giant who had shown an alarming tendency to conquest – Sind was a recent, appalling example. The Sikh who did not take seriously the possibility that Britain was bent on swallowing the Punjab, would have been a fool; if he was objective, he would see the logic of it. That the Company had neither the power nor the inclination for farther expansion (for the moment, anyway) would not be evident in Lahore. And the Khalsa? Bellicose, and itching for a slap at the reigning champion as they were, they had some reason to suspect that if they didn’t start the fight, Britain would.

  These are very general observations, and to every one of them can be added the qualification “Yes, but …” One may scan Broadfoot’s correspondence, or the provocations offered from the Sikh side, in detail, but weighing all such things as evenly as one can, it seems that the war happened because it was actively desired by the Khalsa, with Jeend
an and others egging them on for deplorable reasons, while on the British side there were some, including Hardinge, who lacked foresight and flexibility, and others who were ready, with varying degrees of eagerness, to let it happen. It should be remembered, too, that the fighting men on either side underestimated each other; for all their fears, the British, with far greater experience, had a deep conviction of invincibility, and while it was rudely shaken in the field, it was justified in the end. The Khalsa seem to have had no doubts at all, and even with the treachery of their leaders stacked against them, they kept their confidence until the last moments of Sobraon.

  Even then, after the peace, with the Punjab a British protectorate, the spirit of the Khalsa remained: they would come again. The fuel was there, in the British presence at Lahore which began by protecting the position of the Punjab’s nominal rulers and ended by assuming power; in the intrigues of Jeendan and Lal Singh who found the new order of things less rewarding than they had expected (both were eventually exiled); but most of all, perhaps, in the abiding belief of the Sikh soldiery that what they had nearly done once could be done at the second attempt. The result was the Second Sikh War of 1848–9, which ended in complete British victory – Gough, hesitant for once, fought a costly action at Chillianwalla, and was about to be replaced, but before his successor arrived he had won the decisive victory at Gujerat. The Punjab was annexed, Dalip Singh was deposed, and as Gardner had foretold, Britain inherited something infinitely more valuable than the Punjab or the Koh-i-Noor – those magnificent regiments whose valour and loyalty became a byword for a hundred years, from the Great Mutiny to Meiktila and the Rangoon road.

  APPENDIX II:

  Jeendan and Mangla

  There is no way of verifying all Flashman’s recollections of Maharani Jeendan (Jindan, Chunda) and her court; one can say only that they are entirely consistent with the accounts of reputable contemporary writers. “A strange blend of the prostitute, the tigress, and Machiavelli’s Prince”, Henry Lawrence called her, and he was right on all three counts. Strikingly beautiful, brave, wanton, and dissipated, a brilliant and unscrupulous politician and a quite shameless exhibitionist, she would have been a darling of the modern tabloid press, who could have invented nothing more sensational than the story of her rise to power, and her exploitation of it.

  She was born apparently about 1818, the daughter of Runjeet Singh’s kennel-keeper, and for the lurid details of her early life we are indebted to Carmichael Smyth; he had much of his information from Gardner, who knew her well and greatly admired her, and who has left an account of his own. Jeendan’s father was a sort of unlicensed jester to Runjeet, and pestered the Maharaja with his daughter, then only a child, suggesting jokingly that she would make a suitable queen. Gardner’s version has Runjeet taking her into his harem, “where the little beauty used to gambol and frolic and tease … and managed to captivate him in a way that smote the real wives with jealousy.” She was sent to a guardian in Amritsar when she was thirteen, and went through a series of lovers before being brought back to Lahore “to enliven the night scenes of the palace”. In 1835 she went through a form of marriage with Runjeet, but continued to take other lovers, with the Maharaja’s knowledge and even (according to Smyth) his encouragement – “to give a detail … of scenes acted in the presence of the old Chief himself and at his instigation, would be an outrage on common decency.” Not surprisingly, when Dalip was born in 1837, there were doubts about his paternity, but Runjeet was happy to acknowledge him.

  After the old Maharaja’s death, little is heard of Jeendan until Dalip’s accession in 1843 (he was eight, not seven, when Flashman knew him). Thereafter, as Queen Mother and co-regent with her brother, she was occupied with intrigue, pacifying the Khalsa, and what Broadfoot, agog for scandal, called her misconduct and notorious immorality. The Agent said he felt more like a parish constable outside a brothel than a government representative, compared her to Messalina, and was in no doubt that drink and debauchery had turned her mind (“What do you think … of four young fellows changed as they cease to give satisfaction passing every night with the Rani?”). No doubt he was ready to retail all the salacious gossip he could get, with the implication that such a corrupt regime called out for British intervention, but even allowing for exaggeration there is no doubt that, as Khushwant Singh puts it, the durbar “abandoned itself to the delights of the flesh”. And even before her brother’s murder Jeendan and her confederates were conspiring to betray the country for their safety and profit; Jawaheer’s death was what finally determined her to launch the Khalsa to destruction – “thus did the Rani … plan to avenge herself on the murderers.”

  How she did it Flashman recounts fairly and in greater detail than is to be found elsewhere. It was a delicate, dangerous operation which she managed with considerable skill, and unlike many later war criminals, she got away with it, for a time at least. After the war she continued as Regent until the end of 1846, when under a new treaty the British Resident at Lahore (Lawrence) was given full authority, and Jeendan was pensioned off. She did not take it meekly, and had to be removed from court – “dragged out by the hair”, in her own words – and kept under guard. Suspected of conspiracy, she was deported from the Punjab – and suddenly, with discontent against the British rising, she was a national heroine, and the darling of the Khalsa again. But there was to be no happy return, and when the Second Sikh War ended and Dalip had gone into English exile, she followed him. She was only in her mid-forties when she died, in 1863, and her son took her ashes back to India.

  Mangla (or Mungela) was perhaps a more important influence on the Lahore durbar than Flashman realised. The child of white-slavers, she was born about 1815, and sold by her parents when she was ten. She worked in a brothel at Kangra and was bought by (or ran away with) a munshi, as his concubine, before setting up as a prostitute on her own account in Lahore. She prospered, and became the mistress of one Gulloo Mooskee, a personal attendant of Runjeet Singh’s. He passed her on to his nephew, a lover of Jeendan’s. This was in 1835, and the two young women began a partnership in intrigue which was to last for many years. Mangla became a member of Runjeet’s harem, and played a leading role in convincing him that he was the father of Dalip Singh. In the next ten years she made herself indispensable to Jeendan as adviser and go-between, became the lover of Jawaheer Singh, and after his death obtained control of the treasury, adding to her already considerable fortune. Less beautiful than her friend and mistress, Mangla had “a pair of fine hazel eyes of which she could make a most effective use, and an easy, winning carriage and address”.

  (See Carmichael Smyth, Gardner, Khushwant Singh, Bruce.)

  APPENDIX III:

  The Koh-i-Noor

  The Koh-i-Noor has the longest and most exotic history of any existing jewel and, until the discovery of the Cullinan diamond in 1905, was the largest and most precious stone in the world. It is believed to have been mined from Golconda, Hyderabad, in or before the 12th century, and subsequently passed through the hands of the Sultan Alaed-din, the Mogul Emperors, the Persian conqueror Nadir Shah (who is said to have named it “Mountain of Light” in 1730), the rulers of the Punjab, and Queen Victoria, before coming to rest among the British Crown Jewels in the present century. Death, torture, imprisonment, ruin, and exile befell so many of its Eastern owners that its ill-luck (for male wearers) became proverbial; in its time it was hidden, unsuccessfully, in the turban of a defeated monarch, and in the mud wall of another’s prison cell, and for a time it lay forgotten in the pocket, and later the stud-box, of John Lawrence, Henry’s brother.

  Despite its fame, the Koh-i-Noor has never been considered an especially fine stone. Originally it was almost 800 carats (the Cullinan was 3106 carats, about 22 oz) but was later recut more than once to increase its brilliance. In 1852 a Dutch cutter began work in the presence of Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington, and recut it to 108 carats; the result was a stone about 1½ by 1¼ in, much improved but still considere
d too shallow.

  Only female members of the British Royal Family have worn the Koh-i-Noor. Queen Victoria wore it as a brooch at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, and in Paris, and it has been in the crowns of Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), who wore it at the coronation of her husband, George VI. It is now in her platinum crown in the Tower.

  The last male to wear the Koh-i-Noor, little Maharaja Dalip Singh, had his share of misfortune. Deposed and exiled, he saw the great diamond again when it was shown to him by Queen Victoria on his arrival in England, and expressed pleasure that she should wear it. He was sixteen at the time, and unusually handsome, and the Queen (no doubt unaware that one of his relatives was referring to her as “Mrs Fagin”) was much taken with him; unfortunately his good looks were not Jeendan’s only legacy, for he became a noted libertine, to the Queen’s distress, and died, “poor, portly, and promiscuous”, in 1893. He is buried in the grounds of his home, Elveden Hall, Suffolk.

  (See The Queen’s Jewels, by Leslie Field, 1987; Weintraub.)

  Glossary

  Babu Clerk