Flashman and the Cobra

by Robert Brightwell

  “It was quick thinking to get the men lying down,” he told me later when he came by my tent just as the other officers were leaving. “It was unconventional, but you have not been influenced by army traditions. You realised that there was a chance the men could run with prolonged bombardment and solved two problems at once. We are fighting new enemies and must use new techniques; we cannot always fight by convention. Yes,” he mused, “you seem a very capable officer indeed, Flashman. Quick thinking, and you know the Mahratta as well as anyone on my staff.”

  Coming from Wellesley this was enough to send the hair on the back of my neck prickling with alarm. “Oh, it was no more than anyone would do in the same circumstances. I have just been in the right place at the right time. Your other officers are just as capable and I have had no proper army training.”

  Runjeet interrupted with glasses of Madeira he had found from somewhere. The other officers had gone and the two of us sat down at the camp table with the tent lit by the flickering light from the fire beyond the doorway and a dim lantern hanging from the roof.

  “Really?” said Wellesley, raising one eyebrow in mild amusement. “I suppose that Arab commander just threw himself on your sword point as he rode past, did he?” He gave another of his barks of laughter. “Your reticence goes too far, Thomas.”

  It was time to change the subject. “You must feel like this time it was a battle you won. You regrouped the sepoys, led the army in good order and routed the enemy as well as capturing all of their cannon. Are you satisfied with your victory this time?”

  “Yes, I feel I can look other commanders in the eye now. Of course back home the Mahratta are not seen as being in the same league as the French. Victories in India will only go some way to helping me get a command in the war against France. While a defeat here could destroy my recently earned reputation entirely.”

  “Is that what you want, to command an army against the French?”

  “Here a man can get rich if his health lasts, but he will get little recognition back in Britain. On my achievements so far I would be just known as a sepoy general. Europe is where reputations will really be made, and that is where I need to prove myself.”

  “So you are going to return to Europe then?” I asked.

  “Not until the Mahratta are properly subdued. I need to finish this job first.”

  “But surely they are subdued now – you have beaten Scindia at Assaye and he is suing for peace. You have just routed most of the raja of Berar’s forces and he was talking about truces before the battle. He is bound to sign a peace treaty now.”

  “Maybe, but Jock Malcolm thinks that the hardcore Mahratta will withdraw to a place called Gawilghur and hold out there. Have you been there when you were with the Mahratta?”

  “No, I have not heard of the place. But what makes them think that they can hold out against us at this Gawilghur?”

  “Quite simply because it is an impregnable fortress that has never been captured in hundreds of years. Legend has it that a child with a pile of rocks could hold off an army from its walls.”

  “I don’t believe that. It has not come up against modern artillery. We could pound it into submission.”

  “That might be difficult in this case as apparently the fort is built on the top of a high escarpment overlooking the Deccan Plain. There is a sheer drop around three sides of the fort and on the fourth side there is another outer fortress, with a ravine between that and the inner fort. In short, it will be something of a bastard if we have to capture it.”

  “Let’s hope that Berar’s people decide to give up then,” I said with feeling.

  Suddenly I felt a chill in the warm evening air. A few minutes ago I had assumed that the war was now largely over, but now I had a sinking feeling that this was not going to be the last I heard of Gawilghur.

  I have always thought that the best alarm clock in the world is a pig. Not alive, of course, but in slices frying in a pan, as the smell of bacon is a wondrous thing to awaken to. I had gone to bed with worries but awoke on my new soft bed in my new large tent with delicious aromas on the air and suddenly the world seemed a better place. After the battle the previous day no one was getting up early and the sun was well up when I sat at a crisply laundered table to break my fast. After bacon and eggs and proper raised bread I was in high spirits, which were enhanced when Runjeet brought in letters that had been sent to me over the last year from England. Even though he feared I was dead, he had kept them and maintained the bungalow, using the funds I had left him. He needed more money now, of course, but I was able to pay him from some of the gold I had just captured. Later I deposited the rest on account with the paymaster, but the gems I kept. Paymasters can give receipts for weighed gold but gems are too easy to lose or switch, and so I spent an evening sewing those into the lining of my jacket so that only I knew I had them.

  When I looked through my letters there were the expected ones from my father whom I had asked to manage my affairs while I was away. He updated me on my finances – healthy as I was not spending; on family – I was an uncle again; and politics – war had resumed with France. One letter I had not expected to receive, though, was from Louisa Berkeley. She wrote to tell me that Sarah had given birth to a ginger-haired baby six months after the Paris trip and had confessed that she had tried to seduce me to incriminate me as the father. The actual father seems to have been a ginger-haired coachman. She had been terrified of admitting to her aristocratic father that she had been rogering the servants – not that she was pregnant, mark you – which gives you some idea of scandal and snobbery in Georgian England. Berkeley had long since called off his thugs, who were now searching for the ginger coachman. She finished the letter by asking for my forgiveness and begging me to write if I had still had feelings for her. The letter was nearly a year old.

  The streets of London and Paris seemed another world away and suddenly I was feeling very homesick. I wanted to get back to Madras and board a ship more than ever. But India had not finished with me yet. The outcome of a battle, a campaign and Wellesley’s career was about to depend on me stumbling around in panic and, of all things, a bagpipe.

  I got the first inkling of this around three weeks later. The army had been marching east and had reached the town of Ellichpoor when I was summoned to Wellesley’s tent for a staff meeting. This in itself was worrying, as humble captains were not normally asked to join the general and his senior officers as they planned out their strategy.

  “Ah, Flashman, I think you know everyone here,” said Wellesley brusquely as I walked into his tent. Around a dozen other officers were standing around a map table, which was covered in maps and drawings.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, looking around. Swinton was not here as the 74th now had a new colonel called Wallace, a gruff but capable Scot who gave me a nod of greeting.

  “As you know,” said Wellesley, looking around the gathered faces, “a good number of the raja of Berar’s forces have retreated to their fortress at Gawilghur. There they seem to be being reinforced by some of Scindia’s chieftains, who are not happy about the truce we have agreed with their master. They believe that the fortress is impregnable and they can hold out there until our supplies fail and then recover their lost territory. Gentlemen, to finish this campaign we must take Gawilghur and destroy this last pocket of resistance.”

  “We have taken other fortresses that they thought were strong without difficulty,” said the new cavalry commander. “I am sure that we can take this one.”

  “That is easy for you to say, with your horses,” growled Chalmers of the 78th Highlanders. “You are not going to be the ones storming the breaches. This fortress is not just hard to take, it has never been taken.”

  “Gentleman,” said Jock Malcolm, “let us concentrate on what information we do have about the fortress. There are in fact two forts, a large inner one which contains the town and which is protected on three sides by a near-vertical drop, and an outer one on the flatter approach. If we
can get guns up there then we should be able to take the outer fort, but the real nut to crack is the inner fort. In between the inner and outer forts is a ravine with a narrow path around the edge, allowing access to the inner fort. There is another path up from the plain below which winds up the ravine and joins this path, but it is covered by the guns of both the inner and outer forts at the top. There is also a path from the Deccan Plain to the south directly up the cliff itself to a gate in the inner fort wall, but this is down to single file in some places and when you get to the top there is a fifty-yard flat expanse of land covered by several cannon to deter anyone trying to break down the gate.”

  He paused to allow us to absorb this and look at the plan he had been pointing at.

  “So,” said Chalmers, “we storm the outer fort, get a cannon to blow the gate off the inner fort and then we will have to go along the path that joins the forts to storm that gate. It will be bloody work, but we can do it.”

  “It is worse than that,” said Malcolm. “We think that there is a second gate in the inner fort. When people enter the fort there is a blank wall in front of them and they have to turn left. If there is another gate there then we will not be able to hit it with cannon and so it will have to be broken down with axes under fire.”

  “Christ, it will be hot work indeed,” muttered a Colonel Wallace.

  “Not for you, Wallace,” said Wellesley. “When we attack I plan to send the 74th up the cliff path directly to the southern gate of the inner fort. You can attack when the gates are opened, but I want you to distract the enemy into protecting that gate – we need to spread their forces. You can also stop any who try to escape that way. Your small numbers will not matter there, as only a handful can fight on that path at any one time. I am sending the 78th Highlanders up the path into the ravine, but the main attack will have to be through the outer fort.”

  “That is all assuming that we can get some guns up there to make the breeches in the outer fort,” said Captain Johnston of the engineers.

  “Yes,” said Wellesley. “That is our first objective; we need to reconnoitre the road up to the outer fort. If it cannot take guns then we will have to build a new road. Then we will need to site breaching batteries. Johnston, I want you to go up to the fort with young Blackiston. You must assess the road and, if you can see them well enough, the state of the walls. Meanwhile Blackiston is to prepare some drawings of the fort to help plan the attack. Don’t worry, you will have a cavalry escort to see you are not captured. Flashman, I would like you to go with them too. The escort commander suggested that you might be useful to talk to any Mahratta they meet.”

  “Did he?” I asked with a very forced smile. “I will be sure to thank him when I see him.”

  An hour later Johnston, Blackiston and I met our gallant escort commander at the front of a squadron of around eighty mounted troopers.

  “Hello, Flash,” called Carstairs from the head of his men. “This should be fun, eh!”

  Chapter 28

  In hindsight riding my captured white horse on the trip was a mistake. When we were travelling through dark forests it stood out and was easy to see. But it was fast, damned fast, and if we needed to make a run for it then it would go like the wind. There was every chance we might need to make a fast escape too for most of the country between Ellicpoor and Gawilghur was covered in tall crops and jungle so that we could not see far ahead. Remembering my time with Poorum, I suggested that we put small groups of riders on our flanks and in advance to scout for us. Only once did they see a Mahratta patrol, but that had over two hundred horsemen, armed to the teeth. Carstairs was all for attacking it; odds of nearly three to one seemed quite fair to him. It was only with some difficulty that Johnston and I were able to remind him of the secret nature of the mission.

  Carstairs was without doubt one of the most annoying people I have ever ridden with. I was already furious with him for roping me into this adventure, but he did not seem to notice my acid retorts. Instead he prattled on about our school days together and how pleased he was to join me on one of my adventures. He bounced around like a puppy that had been eating sugar and generally got on everyone’s nerves.

  “Your friend seems a little highly strung,” said Blackiston to me on the second morning while Carstairs held an impromptu kit inspection for his men.

  “He damn well would be if I had a rope,” retorted Johnston before I could respond. “Can’t we send him with the forward scouts this morning? With a bit of luck he will be captured.”

  “God, no,” said Blackiston, “he would probably attack any patrol he came across with just the scouts.”

  If they expected me to leap to the defence of Carstairs, they were disappointed, because I thought they were right. Carstairs was an incredibly dangerous man in one respect: he did not seem to have any fear. Remembering him at Assaye, he had talked of charging the begum’s infantry with the same concern as going into bat at cricket. He had gone out of his way to volunteer for this dangerous mission behind enemy lines because he thought it would be fun. Then he arranged for me to join because he genuinely thought I would not want to miss out. I began to wonder how we had been friends at school.

  It took us three days to reach the bottom of the broad track that led up to the outer fort. As well as maps we had a local guide who could be trusted and who knew the country around Gawilghur. He led us across the plain in front of the inner fort far above us at night and told us of a massive cannon in the fort that could terrorise all the villages for miles around. It did not fire and as far as we could tell we had not been spotted. By dawn we were safely back under cover. Now we started up the track, which was little more than a footpath and rugged going. Halfway up we had to dismount and, leaving the horses with some troopers hidden in some nearby jungle, we proceeded on foot until we reached an outcrop that finally offered us a view of the outer fortress. There was a broad expanse of land some three hundred yards wide approaching the large gate of the fort. Johnston, studying the walls through his telescope, reported that they looked several hundred years old and would offer little resistance to cannon. There were good places to site the siege guns nearby too. Looking beyond the outer fort, we could see the tops of some walls and a tower from the inner fort and remembered the hidden ravine between the two. It looked an intimidating place and I wondered how many others had sat there on that hillside over the centuries, making plans to capture it which had failed. As soon as Blackiston had finished his drawings we started on our way back down.

  It was close to dusk by the time we reached the place we had left the horses in the trees. Across the uneven ground we walked the horses towards the main path that led back to the plain. It was a half-mile walk and we were scattered through the trees as we picked our way around trees and rocks. Carstairs was walking beside me, chatting away about a fakir he had seen who had passed a spike through a hole in his leg when suddenly he was interrupted by shouts from ahead. A moment later there was the unmistakable crackle of musket fire. Through the trees we had no way of knowing if it was a small patrol or a regiment that our forward scouts had blundered into coming up the path.

  “Mount up,” called Johnston in the darkness. “But for Christ’s sake, don’t do anything until we know what we are up against.” This last comment was directed at Carstairs, who was now climbing onto his horse alongside me.

  “Well, Flash, it looks like we might see some action again, eh?”

  “Shh, I am trying to work out how many men they have. There must be at least twenty.”

  “Don’t worry, Flash, however many they have we can ride ’em down. Why back at...”

  His words were interrupted by a trumpet call from behind us. Looking over my shoulder, I saw horsemen silhouetted against the sky as they rode over a ridge a hundred yards to our rear. They had shields and lances, which our men did not. They were Mahratta and there were lots of them.

  “It’s a trap!” called Blackiston. “Ride for it down the hill.”

  Well
, I was ahead of him there, spurring my horse before the sentence was completed. It is not often that a Flashman bolt is sanctioned by army orders but I was making the most of it. I lay low in the saddle as more muskets flamed to my left, and while some of our troop charged the guns, drawing their sabres, I veered to the right where there were more trees and cover. Carstairs was with me along with five British cavalry troopers as we charged our horses, half-blind in the gloom down the hill. It was rough terrain and if a horse missed its footing it was likely to be fatal for both horse and rider. I glanced wildly around and the Mahratta horsemen seemed to have broken up to chase our scattered force and I saw a dozen heading in our direction. A big rock loomed out of the darkness in front of us, blocking the way down.

  “This way,” shouted Carstairs, pulling his horse round to the right and instinctively I followed him. A second later I realised that the rest of the troopers with us had gone to the left, but there were trees ahead and there was no time change my mind. My white horse must have stood out like a beacon to the Mahratta behind, for when they came to the rock all of them took the path to the right. We ploughed into the trees with arms over our faces to protect against low-hanging branches. I wanted to go to the left to rejoin the other troops, but there was a ridge of rock blocking the way.

  Looking behind, I saw the Mahratta were gaining on us. I followed Carstairs as we ran down what seemed to be a dry stream bed. It twisted and turned and I lost all sense of direction, but what I really needed was some open ground so that my horse could show its speed. If Carstairs could keep up, fine; if not then at least he would buy me some time as the fearless ass was bound to charge them single handed.