Flashman Papers Omnibus

by Fraser George MacDonald

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

  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 clear-sighted 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.

  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”.)

  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, subsidized 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 specialized 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.)

  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.

  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.

  29. The storming of Patusan, where five pirate forts were burned, took place on 7 August. 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 headquarters (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.

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

  31. The Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21 July 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.

  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.)

  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.

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

  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.”

  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.

  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.

  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.

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

  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

  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.

  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.

  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.

  44. It was Flashman’s good fortune to arrive at Tamitave on the very morning (15 June 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.)

  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.

  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.

  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 in Great Britain by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd 1977

  Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1977

  George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

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  Source ISBN: 9780006513018

  Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007449491

  Version: 2013–09–17

  FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT

  From The Flashman Papers, 1845–46

  Edited and Arranged by

  GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER

  Dedication

  For Kath, as always, and with salaams to Shadman Khan and Sardul Singh, wherever they are.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Explanatory Note

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Appendix I: The Sutlej Crisis

  Appendix II: Jeendan and Mangla

  Appendix III: The Koh-i-Noor

  Glossary

  Notes

  Copyright

  Explanatory Note

  The life and conduct of Sir Harry Flashman, VC, were so irregular and eccentric that it is not surprising that he was also erratic in compiling his memoirs, that picturesque catalogue of misadventure, scandal, and military history which came to light, wrapped in oilskin packets, in a Midlands saleroom
more than twenty years ago, and has since been published in a series of volumes, this being the ninth. Beginning, characteristically, with his expulsion from Rugby in 1839 for drunkenness (and thus identifying himself, to the astonishment of literary historians, with the cowardly bully of Tom Brown’s Schooldays), the old Victorian hero continued his chronicle at random, moving back and forth in time as the humour took him, until the end of his eighth packet found him, again the worse for drink, being shanghaied from a Singapore billiard-room after the China War of 1860. Along the way he had ranged from the First Afghan War of 1842 to the Sioux campaign of 1876 (with a brief excursion, as yet unpublished, to a brawl in Baker Street as far ahead as 1894, when he was in his seventy-second year); it goes without saying that many gaps in his story remain to be filled, but with the publication of the present volume, which reverts to his early manhood, the first half of his life is almost complete; only an intriguing gap in the early 1850s remains, and a few odd months here and there.

  Thus far, it is not an improving tale, and this latest chapter is consistent in its depiction of an immoral and unscrupulous rascal whose only commendable quality (terms like “virtue” and “saving grace” are not to be applied to one who gloried in having neither) was his gift of accurate observation; it was this, and the new and often unexpected light which it enabled him to cast on great events and famous figures of his time, that excited the interest of historians, and led to comparison of his memoirs with the Boswell Papers. Be that as it may, it was a talent fully if nervously employed in the almost forgotten imperial campaign described in this volume – “the shortest, bloodiest … and strangest, I think, of my whole life”. Indeed it was strange, not least in its origins, and Flashman’s account is a remarkable case-history of how a war can come about, and the freaks and perfidies and intrigues of its making and waging. It is also the story of a fabulous jewel, and of an extraordinary quartet – an Indian queen, a slave-girl, and two mercenary adventurers – who would be dismissed as too outlandish for fiction (although Kipling seems to have made use of one of them) if their careers were not easily verifiable from contemporary sources.