43. This scene is described in detail by Gardner. He gives the strength of the Rani's guard as four battalions.
44. "The Rani used to wonder why a matrimonial alliance was not , . : formed for her with some officer … who would then manage State affairs with her. She used to send for portraits of all the officers, and in one especially she took great inter-est, and said that he must be a lord. This fortunate individual's name has not transpired, and, much to the Maharani's mortification, the affair went no further. She considered that such a marriage would have secured the future of herself and her son." (See Gardner, Memoirs, p. 298.)
45. Plans of the Khalsa fortifications certainly reached the British, but they apparently added little to their knowledge.
46. This certainly refers to the curious case of Captain Battreau who, as a young private soldier in the French Army, carried a Chassepot rifle, serial number 187017, in the Franco-German War of 1870; in 1891, during a skirmish in the Dahomey jungle, Battreau, now an officer in the Foreign Legion, dis-armed an enemy and discovered that the weapon he had captured was the same Chassepot he had handed in at the end of the 1870 campaign. The story was verified by P. C. Wren, himself an ex-Legionnaire, who included it in his book, Flawed Blades (1932). Flashman died in 1915, and his own Legion service preceded Battreau's by many years, so it seems probable that he read the story in a French newspaper in 1891.
47. The private shelter which Tej Singh had built for himself at Sobraon was as Flashman describes it. It was constructed according to the specifications laid down by a Brahmin astrologer: the inner circumference was thirteen and a half times Tej's waist measurement, and the wall itself had a thickness of 333 long grains of rice laid end to end. Tej spent more time supervising its building than he did on his duties as commander-in-chief, retiring within it frequently to pray. Assistance in measurement was lent by a European engineer (probably Hurbon) with a foot-rule. (See Carmichael-Smyth.)
48. Colonel Hurbon, a Spaniard, was the only European officer who served against the British in the Sikh war. He is said to have designed the fortifications at Sobraon, which the historian Cunningham, who was also an engineer, dismissed as unscientific. Perhaps they were, since superior numbers did not suffice to hold them. Gardner describes him simply as "a fine soldier" and remarks on his bravery.
49. Almost certainly this was Sham Singh Attariwala, a veteran of more than forty years' service, who led the Khalsa's last stand at Sobraon. (See Khushwant Singh, M'Gregor.)
50. Sobraon was the decisive battle of the Sikh War -- perhaps one of the decisive battles of history, for it secured Britain in India for another century, with all that that implied for the future of Asia. Gough described it as the Indian Waterloo (an appellation which Flashman attaches to Ferozeshah) and there are few controversies about it: for once, treachery played little part in what was a straight contest between the Khalsa and the Company. Luck was against the Sikhs insofar as the unusual rise of the Sutlej denied them any possibility of retreat and fighting another day; hemmed in, they could only fight it out, which they did with a discipline and courage which excited unanimous admiration from their enemy, Gough in particular "Policy precluded me publicly recording my sentiments on the splendid gallantry , .. or the acts of heroism displayed …'By the Sikh army," he wrote. "I could have wept to have witnessed the fearful slaughter of so devoted a body of men They who led the British cavalry, said simply: They never ran." Hardinge wrote: "Few escaped; none, it may be said, surrendered." There is hning a difference of collapse of the bridge of boats. Many believe that it was destroyed deliberately' Tej Singh, who fled during the battle and supposedly had one of the middle barges removed; on the other hd id Charles Hardinge actually saw it collapse, and his accours' like Flashman's, suggests that it was unbroken until the Weight of the fugitives caused it to carry away: "I saw the ridge at that moment overcrowded with guns, horses, and soldiers of all arms, swaying to and fro, till at last with a flash it disappeared … The river seemed alive with a struggling mass of men."
The Sikh losses were /bout 10,000, against 320 dead and more than 2000 wounded on the British side, but it has to be remembered that most e~ the Khalsa died in the river, and for a time the battle ha~ been on a knife-edge. After the repulse of his first attack9 Gough launched an assault on the right and centre, and has recorded comment, as he watched Gilbert's men storming the ramparts, was: "Good God, they'll be annihilated!" (the Hardinge, Inns, Rait, Khushwant Singh, and others.)
51. Later Field-Marshal Lord Napier of Magdala (1810-90), famous for perhaps the most successful campaign in British imperial history, the maI h on Magdala, Abyssinia (1868), in which Flashman is believed to have taken part. Napier was a brilliant soldier, organiser, and engineer, but his great devotion was to art, and he was still taking lessons at the age of 78.
52. Sir Henry Lawrence (1810`57) best known for his defence of Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny, in which he was killed, but he previously had a distinguished career in the army and the political service, serving in Burma and in the Afghan and Sikh wars. Tall, gaunt, hot-tempered and impatient of contradiction, he also had a romantic side, and was the author of a love story, Adventurer in the Punjaub, which, according to Dr M'Gregor, was also a mine of information about the country and its politics. And he succeeded in seeing the Maharani Jeendan in Lahore after the war, when Gardner persuaded her to show her head and shoulders over a garden wall, "to the gratification of the officers [Lawrence and Robert Napier]". (See M'Gregor, Gardner, D. N. B. )
53. As in previous volumes of the Papers, one is reminded of how small was the group of officers who shaped the course of empire in Africa and the Far East; the same names cross Flashman's path again and again—Napier, Havelock, Broadfoot, Lawrence; Herbert Edwardes, who was Lawrence's assistant and won great fame in the Mutiny; wild John Nicholson, who was literally worshipped as a divinity by a frontier sect, the Nickleseynites; Hope Grant, the monosyllabic, 'cello-playing Scot who led the march to Peking and was rated by Flashman the most dangerous fighting man alive; "Rake" Hodson, the violent ruffian who commanded the famous Guides and founded Hodson's Horse; and others whom he knew elsewhere, but not in the Punjab—Frederick ("Bobs") Roberts; Garnet Wolseley, the original "model of a modern major-general"; "Chinese" Gordon of Khartoum, and one-armed Sam Browne whose belt has made him the most famous of them all. A distinguished company who tended to go one of two ways: knighthood (or peerage) and general rank, or a grave in the outposts.
54. Dr W. L. M'Gregor, who served throughout the Sikh War, is one of its major historians, and an enthusiast on military medicine. Anyone wishing to study the war is recommended to him, and to Captain J. D. Cunningham, who also served in the campaign, and was in political intelligence. They do not always agree with each other, but their knowledge of the Punjab and its personalities makes them invaluable sources.
55. The terms of the first Treaty of Lahore, March 9, 1846, are to be found in Cunningham, M'Gregor, and Hardinge. They are as Goolab Singh predicted, with additional clauses giving Britain passage for troops through the Punjab, a pledge not to interfere in Punjabi internal affairs, and a prohibition on the enlistment of European or American mercenaries in the Punjab without British consent. Supplementary articles provided for the stationing of a British force at Lahore for one year—this was at the request of the Lahore durbar, who rightly conceived themselves to be in need of protection.
56. Goolab Singh, the "Golden Hen" and stormy petrel of Kashmir, was every bit as deplorable, and quite as personally engaging, as Flashman portrays him. He was born about 1788, and to describe his career of intrigue, murder, warfare, and knavery would take a long chapter; it suffices to say that as a leading light of the Dogra Hindus who opposed the Sikhs in the power struggle following Runjeet Singh's death, he not only survived but ended with a kingdom of his own, Kashmir. He did it by shameless duplicity, conspiring with the British while pretending sympathy for the Punjab cause, and no one was ever more expert at playing both ends against the m
iddle. His character was admirably summed up by his friend and agent, Colonel Gardner, who described it as repulsive, ambitious, avaricious, and capable of the most inhuman systematic cruelty simply to invest his name with terror; at the same time he was charming, genial, opium-addicted, given to telling long stories, and hail-fellow with the poorest of his subjects. A fine soldier and sturdy fighter, he was also a wise and careful ruler, and perhaps the most revealing thing about him is that while Gardner published his character study in Goolab's lifetime, they remained the best of friends, (See Gardner, Carmichael Smyth, and others.)
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The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light fp-9 Page 38