Flashman on the March

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Napier asked Speedy and me aside what we thought. I said that if it came to a war Masteeat would eat her alive, having the men, the brains, and the will. Speedy agreed, adding that Masteeat had turned up trumps against Theodore, and should be recognised Queen of Galla, whoever had Magdala.

  So that was Warkite for the workhouse. When Napier asked if she couldn’t be reconciled with her sister, she let out a great screeching laugh and cried that if they made peace today, Masteeat would betray her tomorrow. Word came just then that Masteeat was expected hourly, and Warkite was off like a rising grouse, never to be seen again.

  I confess I was looking forward to my Lion Queen’s arrival, and she came in style, with an entourage of warriors and servants, sashaying along under a great brolly borne by minions, her imposing bulk magnificent in silks of every colour, festooned with jewellery, a turban with an aigret swathing her braids, and bearing a silver-mounted sceptre. The whole staff were on hand to gape at her, and she acknowledged them with a beaming smile and queenly incli nations, head high and hand extended in regal fashion as Napier came to greet her. She was overwhelming, and for a moment I thought he’d kiss her hand, but he checked in time and gave her a stiff bow, hat in hand.

  He was about to present his staff when she gave a great whoop of "Basha Fallakal” at the sight of Speedy, while I was favoured with a sleepy smile but no sign at all of recognition; since the last time we’d met had been at the gallop on the floor of her dining-room, I thought her demeanour was in quite the best taste, friendly but entirely decorous. To the others she was all dignified affability, being still sober. Napier clearly was impressed, and as Speedy remarked to me: “There’s our Queen of all Galla, what?”

  They gave her dinner, and she entranced and appalled the company by laying into the goods like a starving python; as Stanley reported: “She ate like a gourmande, disposing of what came before her without regard to the horrified looks… pudding before beef, blancmange with potatoes… emitting labial smacks like pistol cracks.” She also drank like a fish, shouting with laughter, more boisterous and vulgar with every draught… and no one, even Napier, seemed to mind a bit. It may have been her exotic novelty, or her undoubted sexual attraction, or simply the good nature that shone out of her, but I think there was also a recognition that despite her gross manners she was altogether too formidable to be over looked. [61]

  Speedy and I were the only ones present who could talk to her directly without an interpreter, and when she’d spoken with him a few minutes alone over the coffee, she beckoned me to take his place beside her. Watching her across the table during the meal, I’d been bound to wonder what she knew of the fate of Uliba-Wark, if anything, and if she might refer to it; now, she did, but in a most roundabout way, and to this day I can only guess how she came to learn what befell on that ghastly night. Perhaps some Galla escaped the massacre; I can only repeat what she said after I had filled her cup with tej, and she had gulped it down, wiped her lips with the tail of her turban, and smiled her fat-cheeked saucy smile.

  “The Basha Fallaka says I am to have my fifty thousand dollars. Your Dedjaz Napier—what a fine and courtly man he is!—has pledged his word. But", she pouted and took another swig, “he does not say whether I am to have Magdala.” She looked a question.

  “If my word goes for anything, you will. But you know it’s been offered to Gobayzy.”

  She giggled maliciously. “Gobayzy will shudder away like a frightened bride! What, accept an amba surrounded by my warriors? He’d sweat his fat carcase to a shadow at the mere thought. No, he will refuse, beyond doubt.”

  “Then Magdala’s yours, lion lady. There is no one else.”

  She nodded, sipped and wiped again, and sat for a moment. Then she spoke quietly: “Uliba-Wark is at peace now. My little Uliba, who loved and hated me. Perhaps she loved and hated you also. I do not know and I do not ask.” She took another sip and set down her cup. “You were there when she died. No, do not tell me of it. Some things are better not known. Enough that she is at peace.”

  That was all she said to me, and I saw her only once more, on the following day outside her splendid silk pavilion, when Gobayzy sent word that he was honoured by the offer of Magdala, but on the whole he’d rather not. So the amba was hers, says Napier, but she must understand that he was bound to destroy its defences and burn all its buildings, to mark the disapproval (that was the word he used, so help me) of its late ruler’s conduct in daring to imprison and maltreat British citizens. She assured him that fire could only purify the place, and departed with her retinue, borne in a palki and smiling graciously on the troops who cheered her away.

  The same afternoon Magdala was set on fire. The King’s Own had it cleared of its last inhabitants by four o’clock, the Sappers and Miners had laid their charges, and presently in a series of thun derous explosions the gates and defences were blown up, the last of the cannon destroyed, and the whole ramshackle town with its thatched palaces and prisons and houses put to the torch. It went up in a series of fiery jets which the wind levelled in a great rushing of flame which, as Stanley says, turned the whole top of the amba with its three thousand buildings into a huge lake of fire. The whole army watched, and I heard a fellow say that Hell must look like that, but he was wrong; the Summer Palace burning, that was Hell, wonderful beauty smashed and consumed in a mighty holocaust; Magdala was a vermin-ridden pest-hole which its dwellers had been only too glad to leave.

  Indeed, they couldn’t get far enough away from it, and it was a swarming multitude tens of thousands strong, men, women, chicos, beasts and all their paraphernalia, that set off from Arogee that same day, down the defile to the Bechelo; that was Napier’s other great concern, to see them safe beyond the reach of the Galla marauders who’d been denied the plunder of Magdala and were itching to make up for it at the expense of the fugitives. Our troops rode herd on them the whole way, but Napier would run no risks, and had cavalry patrols escort them for another twenty miles beyond the river.

  The next day, the eighteenth, the army set off north, with the Sherwood Foresters leading the way, their band thumping out “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” and “Brighton Camp", and behind them the Native Infantry sepoys swinging along followed by the jingling troopers, the Scindees and lancers and Dragoon Guards, and behind them the guns and the matlows of the Naval Brigade, and last of all the 33rd, the Irish hooligans of the Duke of Wellington’s, the long khaki column winding down the defile, dirty, bedraggled, tired, and happy, catching the drift of the music on the air and joining in:

  I seek no more the fine and gay, They serve but to remind me, How swift the hours did pass away With the girl I left behind me

  Napier sat his horse by the track, with Speedy and Charlie Fraser and Merewether and myself, watching them go by, and how they roared and cheered and waved their helmets at the sight of him, the old Bughunter who’d taken them there against all the odds and now was taking them back again. He smiled and nodded and raised his hat to them, looking ever so old and weary but content, turning in his saddle to gaze back at those three massive peaks where he’d wrought his military miracle—Selassie and Fala gilded in the morning sun, and beyond them Magdala like a huge smouldering volcano, the plume of black smoke towering up into the cloudless sky.

  “Going home now, gentlemen,” says he, and Merewether said something about a great feat of arms, and how the country would acclaim the army and its leader. Napier said he guessed the Queen and the people would be pleased, and H.M.G. also, no doubt, “but you may be sure it will not be all unalloyed satisfaction. It never is.”

  Speedy wasn’t having that. “Why, Sir Robert, who can complain except a few miserable croakers—no doubt the same Jeremiahs who swore the campaign was doomed in the first place—and now they’ll carp about the cost? As though such a thing was to be fought on the cheap with a scratch army and fleet! They’ve had it at bargain rates!”

  “I doubt if the Treasury will agree with you,” laughs Napier, in high
spirits. “No, I was thinking rather of the wiseacres in the clubs and newspapers who will find fault with us for doing no more than we were sent to do: rescue our countrymen. I dare say there will be voices raised in the House demanding to know why we have left a savage country in confusion and civil war—”

  “Which is how it was for centuries before we came!” cries Charlie. “And the Ethiopian can’t change his skin, can he? He’ll go murdering whether we’re here or not!”

  “The Chief’s right, though,” says Merewether. “There’s bound to be an outcry because we’re not leaving a garrison to pacify the tribes and police the country—oh, and distribute tracts to folk who were Christian before we were! As though Abyssinia were a country to be pacified and ruled with fewer than ten divisions and a great civil power!”

  “Which would call for an expenditure of many millions, far more than we have spent—and with no hope of return.” Napier was smiling as he said it, but I wondered if some hint of censure had already reached him from home. They’d given him a free hand, and he hadn’t stinted.

  “And if we were to occupy the confounded place, Mr Gladstone would never forgive us!” says Merewether. “What, enlarge the empire, bring indigenous peoples to subjection, and exploit them for our profit! Rather not!”

  There was general laughter at this, and Napier said with his quiet smile that we must resign ourselves to being regarded as callously irresponsible or rapaciously greedy. “Brutal indifference or selfish imperialism; those are the choices. As an old Scotch maidservant of my acquaintance used to say: ‘Ye canna dae right for daein’ wrang!’” [62]

  More laughter, and Charlie said, well, thank goodness at least no one could complain that there had been dreadful slaughter of helpless aborigines by the weapons of civilisation. “Twasn’t our fault jolly old Theodore kicked the bucket!” he added. Merewether said thank goodness for that, and I could feel the uneasy silence of Napier and Speedy. No doubt it was out of consideration for me that Napier checked his mount until I was alongside, and then says cheerily: “You’re very silent, Harry. Have you no philosophic reflec tions on the campaign? No views on what should or should not be done now that it’s over?”

  I glanced back at the smoke rising from Magdala like some huge genie escaping from his bottle, and then at the long dusty column of horse, foot, and guns swinging down the defile. And I thought of that hellish beautiful land and its hellish beautiful people, of Yando’s cage and the horrors of Gondar, of bandit treasure aswarm with scorpions, of the terrifying thunder of descent into a watery maelstrom, of a raving lunatic slaughtering helpless captives, of fighting women drunk on massacre, of a graceful she-devil aglow with love and ice-cold in hate… and was finally aware of the gently smiling old soldier waiting for an answer as we rode in sun light down from Arogee.

  “My views, sir? Can’t think I have many… oh, I don’t know, though. Wouldn’t mind suggesting to Her Majesty’s ministers that next time they get a letter from a touchy barbarian despot, it might save ’em a deal of trouble and expense if they sent him a civil reply by return of post…”

  [On which characteristically. caustic note

  the twelfth packet of the Flashman Papers

  comes to an end.]

  APPENDIX I: The Road to Magdala

  Perhaps because it was so unusual, perhaps because it was such a triumph, the Abyssinian War has attracted an embarrassment of authors, who have covered every aspect of the campaign. Holland and Hozier’s official report is the main source work, dealing with everything from the overall narrative of operations to the rates of pay of native water-carriers; Blanc and Rassam have described the experiences of the prisoners, and the march has been covered in detail by Stanley, Henty, C. R. Markham’s History of the Abyssinian Expedition, 1869, A. F. Shepherd’s The Campaign in Abyssinia, 1868, and others. But for those who would like good shorter works by later historians, they cannot do better than Frederick Myatt’s The March to Magdala, 1970, and Moorehead’s The Blue Nile, which in its portrait of the river and its history includes an account of Napier’s march. The Diary of William Simpson of the Illustrated London News has been previously mentioned, and one cannot omit the week by week coverage which that paper gave to the campaign, with excellent illustrations.

  Finally, whoever wishes to understand events which led up to the war, and the history of the country in which it was fought, will find Frank R. Cana’s essay in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910, most helpful, while Percy Arnold’s Prelude to Magdala, 1991, is invaluable as a detailed and author itative work on the diplomatic preliminaries to the war.

  APPENDIX II: Theodore and Napier

  It is curious that although Flashman’s involvement in the war was peripheral, he probably knew Theodore, the man in the eye of the storm, better than anyone except perhaps Rassam and Speedy. He is also the foremost authority for those remarkable sister-queens, Masteeat and the mysterious Uliba-Wark, and for the conduct of the Galla part of the campaign. No one saw the Abyssinian side of the crisis as closely as Flashman.

  Trying to make sense of the Emperor is really a waste of time. He is beyond the reach of psychiatrists and psychologists, and even if he were not it is doubtful if they could understand let alone explain him. Flashman does not try, and one can say only that his portrait of Theodore, drawn at close range if on brief acquaintance, tallies closely with those which have come to us from Blanc, Rassam, and other contemporary authorities. Almost all the thoughts and ideas, and even the very words, which Flashman attributes to him, are to be found elsewhere, in the reports of other witnesses, and in Theodore’s own letters. His massively split personality, his wild swings of mood, his periods of rational, even light-hearted conver sation contrasted with his ungovernable rages, his benevolent impulses, his evident urge to self-destruction, his drunkenness, his restless energy, his undoubted abilities, and his truly devilish wicked ness—all these things which Flashman describes are echoes of what others saw in this strange, gifted, proud, and all too horrible man.

  For when all’s said, when his undoubted virtues have been admitted, his courage, his generosity, his patriotism, his educated intelligence, his devotion to his faith, his military prowess and personal attractions ("the best shot, the best spearman, the best runner, the best horseman in Abyssinia"), and when allowance has been made for the difficulties he faced in trying to rule an ungovernable country, the provocations to a haughty spirit inflicted by British bad manners, the crippling loss of his adored wife and best friends, and the intoxicating effect of absolute power—after all this, there is no escape from the conclusion that Theodore of Abyssinia was a monster to rank with the worst in history.

  His atrocities, his slaughters and tortures and mass executions, his deliberate sadistic orgies carried out in cold blood as well as hot, are well attested, and leave one with the same dumfounded horror produced by the first pictures of Belsen, the same disbelief that human beings can do such things, and inevitably one falls back on the word applied to the Hitlers and Stalins and Ivans and Attilas: madness.

  It is a useless term, of course. Whether Theodore was clinically certifiable or not is beside the point; he was mad in any usual sense of the word. The difficulty, for the layman at any rate, is that he was also undoubtedly sane, at least occasionally. His early life, if stained with the ruthlessness and cruelty which later became obsessive, was in other ways a model of enlightened rule. He tried to abolish slavery and reform taxation, but given the anarchy prevailing in the country, and the difficulty of controlling his defeated rivals, his efforts to drag the country out of its medieval state were bound to fail. His ambitions, his vision of himself as a crusader of destiny who would rebuild the Abyssinian empire and extend it to Jerusalem, proved to be his undoing, and he made a mistake which was to prove his ruin by making war on the Wollo Gallas in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. He won Magdala, and by his murderous cruelty created the mortal enemy who would help Napier to bring him down.

&nb
sp; His reputation has been so appalling that it has caused a kind of reaction, and he has had, if not apologists, at least compassionate writers trying to understand him. Alan Moorehead, for example, writes of the accepted view that he was a mad dog let loose, but adds that while this was true in many ways, the appalling reputation does not fit him absolutely. “A touch of nobility intervenes.” Describing Theodore as an elemental figure defying destiny, he goes on to say that “if one can overlook his brutalities for a moment, one can see that he was an utterly displaced person, a Caliban with power but none to guide him; he had no place.” Unfortunately the brutalities cannot be overlooked, and any attempt to make sense of Theodore can only end in the simple banal conclusion that there was real evil in the heart of him, and that the best thing he did in his life was to end it.

  Flashman’s precis of his early years, and of the causes and course of his quarrel with Britain, are accurate so far as they go, and for those who seek more detail, or are interested in Theodore as a case for the consulting room couch, the works cited in the Notes will be of interest.

  Robert Cornelis Napier (1810-1890) was born in Ceylon into one of the great military families. He entered Addiscombe, the East India Company College, when he was 14, was commissioned into the Royal Engineers, and in half a century of soldiering built a reputation second to none in the Victorian army. He and Flashman had served together in the First Sikh War, the Indian Mutiny, and the China War of 1860, and Flashman is hardly exaggerating when he credits his friend with “half the canals and most of the roads” in Northern India. For Napier’s engineering was quite as distinguished as his fighting record; he was a friend of Brunel and Stephenson, and when he was forced to take three years’ leave after a serious illness when he was only 20, he spent much of it studying railway and canal building. He was a fine landscape and portrait painter, and at the age of 78 was still taking lessons in colour mixing. He was also a geologist and student of fossils, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, which may be why Flashman christened him the Bughunter.