Flashman on the March

NOTES

[1] It is not entirely clear why the Maria Theresa dollar was so popular. Speedicut suggests that its silver was of unusual purity, but Samuel Baker, the hunter and explorer, noted that the effigy of the Empress "with a very low dress and a profusion of bust, is, I believe, the charm that suits the Arab taste.” {The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, 1867). [p. 3]

[2] “Dickey", meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency of centuries, but “in Dickie’s meadow", meaning in serious trouble is, or was, a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested (fancifully, no doubt) that since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his head-quarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial “meadow” may have been Bosworth Field, [p. 3]

[3] The mystery of Flashman’s service in the French Foreign Legion remains unsolved. It may have been after the U.S. Civil War, before his enlistment with Maximilian, or at some earlier date in North Africa, as references elsewhere in the Papers suggest. This is the first time desertion is mentioned, but without time and place. One thing is clear: he must have made his peace with the French authorities before 1877, the year in which he was awarded the Legion of Honour, [p. 4]

[4] Flashman is recalling another service to the Austrian royal family, when he foiled a plot by Hungarian nationalists to assassinate the Emperor Franz-Josef at his hunting lodge in Bad Ischl in 1883. He was rewarded with the Order of Maria Theresa and a waltz with the Empress Elisabeth. (See Flashman and the Tiger.) [p. 5]

[5] No doubt Flashman’s Mexican papers will have more to say of this remarkable and rather mysterious adventuress. All that we know of her origins is that she was probably American and had been a circus bareback rider before she met and married Prince Felix Salm-Salm, a German soldier of fortune, when he was serving in the U.S. Civil War. After the war the Salms’ taste for excitement took them to Mexico, where Felix became Maximilian’s chief a.d.c. and Flashman’s colleague. The three were involved in efforts to rescue the Emperor before his execu tion, and Princess Agnes has left some account of these in her Ten Years of my Life (1868), the frontispiece of which shows a handsome, striking lady of obvious intelligence and determina tion. Aside from these facts, and what Flashman writes of her, the only other detail that we have is that she owned a pet dog, Jimmy, who was her constant companion. (See Flashman and the Tiger, and Maximilian’s Lieutenant, A Personal History of the Mexican Campaign, 1864-7 by Ernst Pitner, tr. and edited by Gordon Etherington-Smith, 1993.) [p. 6]

[6] Details of the Emperor Maximilian’s last voyage may be found in newspapers of the day, and there is an excellent account in the Illustrated London News. Needless to say, Flashman has the cer emonial off pat, even to the curious triple coffin and the water front procession, [p. 9]

[7] There must have been 250 of these boxes, each containing 2000 dollars, according to the cash account of the Treasury Officer to the expedition, [p. 12]

[8] A Bootneck or Leatherneck is a Royal Marine, supposedly so-called from the leather tab securing the uniform collar in the nine teenth century, or possibly from the leather neck-stock. Leatherneck was adopted as a nickname for the U.S. Marines early in the twentieth century. Royal Marines were also known as Jollies, which according to Eric Partridge was once the nick name of the London Trained Bands, [p. 12]

[9] Work on the Suez Canal, the brainchild of the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, began in 1859, and the waterway was opened to navigation in 1869. It had cost almost £30 million, and in 1875 Disraeli acquired 176,602 shares for £4 million, giving Britain a 44% holding. The canal was indeed built by what amounted to slavery, the forced labour (corvee) of the Egyptian peasants being enforced by the rawhide whip of the overseers (courbash). (John Marlowe, The Making of the Suez Canal, 1964.) [p. 16]

[10] In fact, Flashman’s consignment of dollars was a modest part of Napier’s “war-chest", about one-ninth. The financial accounts of the expedition show a total of 4,530,000 dollars paid in numerous instalments up to May 14, 1868, which the accountants estimated as equivalent to £969,343.15.0, but these were only the shipments of silver; the total cost of the expedition was far higher. Disraeli, the Chancellor, originally asked the House of Commons for £2 million, with a further £1.5 million in the following year if the campaign was protracted; eventually the total cost was close to £9 million, a vast sum which appalled Parliament. In fairness to Disraeli, it was impossible to tell what such an expedition into unknown territory would cost; on the other hand, there was tremendous waste, partly because Napier was given carte blanche and gave no thought to economy. (See “Supply of Treasure and Financial Arrangements” in volume 1 of the official history, Record of the Expedition to Abyssinia by Major T. J. Holland and Captain H. M. Hozier, 1870; Prelude to Magdala by Percy Arnold, 1991.) [p. 16]

[11] This version of the Red Sea crossing by the Children of Israel is also to be found in Harper’s Hand-book for Travellers in Europe and the East, 1871 edition, a guide for American tourists compiled by W. Pembroke Fetridge. [p. 16]

[12] Seedeboy, sidiboy, Anglo-Indian slang for an African, usually a labourer (see Kipling, The Lost Legion, "We’ve starved on a Seedeboy’s pay"). Eric Partridge points out, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the irony that the word derives from sidi, a lord. [p. 20]

[13] Flashman’s memory is playing him false. He may well have seen, in late January, 1868, the cartoon of Theodore, as well as Punch’s complaint about the cost of the expedition, since these appeared in early December, 1867, but the suggestion of exhibiting the Emperor in a cage is from Punch of May, 1868, when the campaign was over. [p. 21]

[14] Flashman’s experience of Abyssinia was brief, barely more than two months in which he saw comparatively little of the country and its people. What he did see he reported with his usual accuracy, and his descriptions of costume and racial characteristics are borne out by contemporary artists. His enthusiasm for the beauty of the people, especially the women of Galla, is shared by other travellers. Most early descriptions of the country dwell at length on its churches, and religious customs and artefacts, some of which are strange to European Christians, but while Flashman has little interest in these, his notice of curiosities is reliable. The Illustrated London News drawings are invaluable, as is J. C. Hotten’s Abyssinia and Its People, 1868, an anthology drawn from every traveller of note up to that time, including the first British Consul, Plowden, King Theodore’s friend and adviser, [p. 24]

[15] James Bruce (1730-94) was indeed something of an eccentric, a scholar, traveller, businessman, linguist, antiquary, and the first of a distinguished line of Scottish explorers in Africa. Born in Stirlingshire and educated at Harrow, he was a splendid athlete and horseman, six feet four inches tall, red-haired, reckless, com bative, and “swayed to an undue degree by self-esteem and the thirst for fame". In the course of an adventurous life Bruce was British Consul at Algiers, a perilous post when the Barbary pirates were still active, survived shipwreck by swimming ashore at Benghazi, explored Abyssinia and reached the source of the Blue Nile, won the confidence of the royal family (and the admiration of a beautiful princess) by using his amateur medical skill to treat smallpox and the plague, and astonished the warriors by showing them how to break wild horses and by his marksmanship. “His intrepid bearing and his great physical strength and agility fitted him,” says his biographer, “to overawe a barbarous people.”

His own countrymen were less easily impressed, and his account of his adventures was disbelieved by the educated (and caused some scandal) although it sold well in book form. Brace’s overbearing style and touchiness were no help, and Fanny Burney noted that “his grand air, gigantic height, and forbidding brow awed everybody into silence.” He retired to Scotland in dudgeon, and died when, hurrying to show a lady to her carriage, he tripped and fell downstairs, landing head first, and never regained consciousness. Since his death virtually everything that he related about Abyssinia has been proved to be true. (James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768-73; Dictionary of National Biography; Margery Perham and J. Simmons, African Discovery, 1942) [p. 24]

[16] The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, married Princess Alexandra of Denmark on March 10, 1863. Other matters which may have commanded the Foreign Office’s attention about this time were the Greek Assembly’s election of Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, as King of Greece (an honour which was declined); the division of Poland into provinces by Russia; Maori risings in New Zealand, and the advance of French troops on Mexico City which led to the installation of Maximilian as emperor. [p. 25]

[17] Public pessimism was such that Holland and Hozier devoted space to it in their official report. Letters to editors “drew ghastly pictures of the malaria of the coast and the insalubrity of the country. At one time the expedition was to die of thirst, at one time to be destroyed by hippopotami. Every beast antagonistic to the life of man was… to be found in the jungles or the swamps. Animals were to perish by flies, men by worms. The return of the expe dition was regarded as chimerical, the massacre of the prisoners as certain.” The report also noted the “merciless” rise in insurance companies’ rates for officers volunteering, “who were regarded as rushing blindfold into suicide.” But competition for places was fierce, and newspapers were besieged by would-be special correspondents, [p. 27]

[18] The 33rd Foot were the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, also known as the West Yorkshires, but consisting largely of Irishmen, and notoriously ill-disciplined. But they were to be, with the 4th Foot (King’s Own), and the 45th (Sherwood Foresters), the van guard of Napier’s force, [p. 30]

[19] George Alfred ("G.A.") Henty (1832-1902) shares with R. M. Ballantyne the leading place among writers for boys. He was born in Trumpington, educated at Westminster and Cambridge, and volunteered for hospital service in the Crimean War. This led to his appointment as organiser of the Italian hospitals in the 1859 war with Austria, but after a brief interval in which he worked as a mine manager in Wales and Sardinia, he returned to his first love, military journalism, and for ten years followed the drum with Garibaldi in the Tyrol, Napier in Abyssinia, Wolseley in Ashanti, the Russians at Khiva, and the Turks in the Serbian war of 1876. He covered the winter campaign in the Franco-Prussian war, was in Paris during the Commune, and in Spain with the guerrillas in the Carlist rebellion. Most of his work was for the Standard, but eventually the strain of campaigning told on his health and he devoted himself to more sedentary writing.

Henty’s boys’ stories were hugely popular, and in them he covered a vast range, mostly of military and naval campaigns, skilfully blending juvenile derring-do with well-researched back ground. As a typical Victorian, imbued with patriotic pride and holding by straight and sturdy old-fashioned values, he is well out of step with modern fashionable thought, but even today his books, antique in style and outlook though they are, can be of great value to the student of history. He was a good writer with a fine descriptive gift, and can give a more vivid and convincing picture of a period and its people than most academic historians; as an example I would cite his In Times of Peril, in which he brought day-to-day experience of the Indian Mutiny to life for his young readers—and not a few older ones. The late John Paul Getty owned a complete set of Henty, and was said to read them over and over again.

Henty’s memoir of the Abyssinian War, The March to Magdala, was published in 1868. [p. 30]

[20] This implied criticism does less than justice to Brigadier-General (later Sir) William Merewether, who was one of the stars of the expedition. An experienced frontier fighter in India, where he served in the Scinde Horse (Flashman’s “Scindees") he was also a shrewd and decisive political officer, and was agent at Aden when the Abyssinian crisis arose. It was as a result of his urgings that a reply to Theodore’s letter was eventually sent, and he kept in constant touch with the prisoners. He carried out the first recon naissance and chose Zoola as the beachhead, and as political officer was in charge of intelligence for the expedition, [p. 34]

[21] There is little to add to Flashman’s description and assessment of Captain Charles Speedy except to note that he was in fact six feet six inches in height and broad in proportion. A splendid picture of him in full Abyssinian costume is held by the Army Museums Ogilby Trust; he is indeed an overpowering sight, [p. 35]

[22] This suggests that a much greater quantity of silver was carried up to Napier with Flashman’s party than the contents of a single strong-box. Half a dozen riders would hardly be needed to carry 2000 dollars, large coins though they were. [p. 36]

[23] The flogging of the driver caused understandable indignation, but whether the Rev. Johann Krapf was responsible is unclear. He was an old Abyssinian “hand” with a great affection for the country, and it was for his long experience of Africa that he was enrolled in the expedition. He was apparently the first explorer to report snow in Africa, on Mount Kilimanjaro, [p. 43]

[24] The popular fame of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) rests on his memorable greeting to Dr Livingstone, and to a lesser extent on his African exploration, but he was also a first-class reporter, and his despatches from the campaigns which he covered for the New York Herald put him in the first rank of war corre spondents. Born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, he ran away from a workhouse, sailed to America as a cabin boy, and was adopted by a New Orleans merchant named Stanley. He served on both sides in the U.S. Civil War, and then became a journalist, covering the Abyssinian War, the Ashanti War, and the opening of the Suez Canal; his explorations included his finding Livingstone and leading an expedition to relieve Emin Pasha, who was “Chinese” Gordon’s governor of the Equatorial province of Sudan. Whether Emin or Livingstone needed or wanted to be found is a point still debated. Stanley settled back in Britain, was knighted, and was Unionist M.P. for Lambeth, 1895-1900. His account of the Abyssinian campaign, in Coomassie and Magdala (1874), is racy, colourful, packed with good detail, and essential for any study of the expedition.

Captain Speedy’s anxiety is a tribute to Stanley’s reporting skill, but it is not clear why he refers to him as “the Chicago wallah” when Stanley was working for a New York paper, [p. 47]

[25] George Broadfoot and Lord Elgin, Flashman’s political chiefs in the Punjab and China respectively, [p. 58]

[26] Napier was married twice. His first wife, by whom he had three sons and three daughters, died in 1849, and he married his second wife, Mary Cecilia Scott, in 1861, when he was 50 and she was 18. According to Alan Moorehead, “She appears to have run his household in Bombay—and it was an entertaining household where good dinners were served and French was spoken—with something of her husband’s air of quiet authority.” They had six sons and three daughters. (Moorehead, The Blue Nile, 1962.) [p. 58]

[27] Speedy here is referring to the Blue Nile, which flows from Lake Tana south-eastwards before looping west and north-west to join the White Nile at Khartoum in the Sudan. James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1770 and supposed he had reached the source of the main Nile river, but this (the White Nile) was not conclusively identified until 1860-2 when John Hanning Speke and James Grant traced its course from Lake Victoria, which Speke had discovered some years before. Grant served as a polit ical officer on Napier’s Abyssinian expedition. (See also Note to p. 131.) [p. 61]

[28] Several members of the expedition mention the lady in the tower as a mysterious figure, but there is much disagreement about her and the whereabouts of her captive husband. To one writer she is a “princess” whose husband is held by Kussai of Tigre; Stanley and another name the captor as King Theodore himself; Holland and Hozier’s official account agrees with Flashman that the per secutor is Gobayzy of Lasta. She is also variously described as "high-born and disconsolate", “inconsolable", and pining away her life “in incessant grief and pinching poverty"; there is general agreement about her vow of seclusion in her tower. Only Flashman gives her a name and personal description, and since he knew her intimately and none of the others seems even to have seen her, readers may be inclined to accept his account as authoritative. (Henty, Stanley, Holland and Hozier, and William Simpson, Diary of a Journey to Abyssinia, 1868. Simpson was a journalist and artist with the Illustrated London News whose diary has been edited and annotated by Richard Pankhurst, 2002.) [p. 63]

[29] Flashman does not exaggerate. Mr St John is an enthusiast whose observations are to be found in Hotten’s Abyssinia and Its People (see Note to p. 24). [p. 78]

[30] Readers of the Flashman Papers do not need to be told that his one real talent (aside from his boasted expertise with horses and women) was for languages. He was a brilliant linguist and an unusually quick study, often mastering a language in weeks; he was being modest in telling Napier that he could “scratch by” in a dozen but was fluent in only six, and it is not surprising that he quickly acquired enough Amharic for simple conversation. It has been the Abyssinian language since the late Middle Ages, when it replaced Ge’ez, the tongue of those Semitic people who crossed from Arabia to Ethiopia long ago. Ge’ez means literally "the free” and was applied to the people also; it is still used for liturgical purposes. An expert on Ethiopian languages, E. Ullendorf, says that Amharic bears the same kind of relation ship to Ge’ez as French does to Latin. (See E. Ullendorf, Exploration and Study of Abyssinia, 1945.) [p. 102]

[31] “Palmer’s Vesuvians", a patent match which burned with a sputtering flame, a favourite with cigar smokers, [p. 109]

[32] The atrocities described by Uliba-Wark are all well attested; indeed they are only part of the catalogue of horrors to be found in the histories written by two of the prisoners held by Theodore: Narrative of the British Mission to Theodore of Ethiopia by Hormuzd Rassam, 2 vols, 1869, and A Narrative of the Captivity in Abyssinia, 1868, by Dr Henry Blanc. These are two of the most essential works on the Abyssinian War, and between them give a graphic and detailed picture not only of the privations of their imprisonment, and of the plotting and politicking which took place between them and their captors, but are invaluable for their portraits of Theodore himself. They will be referred to frequently in these Notes, [p. Ill]

[33] Flashman is almost certainly referring to the First Sikh War of 1845-6 and the China War of 1860, which he has described in Flashman and the Mountain of Light and Flashman and the Dragon, [p. 111]

[34] The yellow scorpions of the genus Buthus are found in north-east Africa and the Sahara. Baby scorpions climb on the mother’s back after birth and remain there until they are big enough to fend for themselves, [p. 120]

[35] Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke attempted to find the source of the Nile in 1857-9, but Burton fell ill and Speke reached the source on Lake Victoria alone. Burton queried his findings, and after Speke and Grant in 1868 confirmed Speke’s original discovery (see Note to p. 61) Burton renewed the controversy. He and Speke were due to debate the question before the British Association on September 15, 1864, but on that same morning Speke was accidentally killed while partridge-shooting, [p. 131]

[36] Flashman’s cavalier attitude to dates is a vexation, but this passage gives some indication of his movements in the mid-1860s. The reference to Chancellorsville places him in the United States in May 1863, and we know he was at Gettysburg two months later, and in Washington when Lincoln was shot (April 1865). It is just possible, but highly unlikely, that his service (to both sides) in the U.S. Civil War was interrupted by a return to England in late 1863 or 1864. When he arrived in Mexico is uncertain, but his mention of Queretaro places him in the country between February and May of 1867, since that was the period in which Maximilian based himself at that royalist stronghold, where he was captured by the Juaristas. It seems plain, then, that between April 1865 and February 1867 Flashman returned to England at least once, and probably twice, since he speaks of “intervals” in the plural.

One would be inclined to commiserate with Elspeth if it were not clear from the Papers that, while they were deeply attached to each other, she bore his frequent absences with equanimity, [p. 135]

[37] It is not surprising that Flashman expected to be disbelieved, since in his day no one had survived such a plunge down a waterfall. Not until October, 2003, when an enterprising American deliber ately allowed himself to be borne over the Canadian section of Niagara Falls, and lived, did anyone make such a descent. The Canadian Fall is estimated at 158 ft; the Tisisat Fall which Flashman survived is approximately 150 ft. Tisisat is one of the most glo rious sights in Africa, the Blue Nile bordered by beautiful green banks and flowing smoothly past little jungly islands and rocks before it plunges over the lip. “It is an extraordinary thing that they should be so little known,” writes Alan Moorehead, “for they are, by some way, the grandest spectacle that either the Blue or the White Nile has to offer.” The Victoria Falls are considerably higher, and are known as “the smoke that thunders". Tisisat, “the silver smoke", was discovered by two Portuguese missionaries, Paez and Lobo, in the early seventeenth century. (Moorehead, The Blue Nile.) [p. 144]

[38] We cannot tell where this camp was, and must assume from Flashman’s account that it was less than a day’s ride from Tisisat, probably in the direction of Magdala. Queen Masteeat was evi dently on the move at this time, and a week or so later we know from Holland and Hozier that she was at a place called Lugot, not given on the maps but said to be only five miles from Magdala. [p. 147]

[39] Lucien Maxwell (1818-75), frontiersman and landowner, was one of a party of mountain men, led by Kit Carson, who rescued Flashman from Apaches in 1850 (see Flashman and the Redskins); he later became proprietor of one of the largest private estates ever known, the Maxwell Land Grant. The trick which he taught Flashman of proffering a pistol-butt in apparent surrender to an opponent and suddenly rolling it into the palm to cover him, was known to gunfighters as the road-agent’s spin; the border shift consisted simply of tossing a pistol from one hand to the other.

The Las Vegas referred to is not the Nevada gambling resort, but an earlier settlement in New Mexico, [p. 147]

[40] Flashman was not exaggerating. His account of an Abyssinian orgy is almost identical to that of James Bruce a century earlier, the chief difference being that at the feast Bruce attended in Gondar, the steaks were cut from a living cow indoors in the pres ence of the guests, the beast’s bellowing being the summons to table. Both sexes were present, and Bruce describes how, after the banquet, “Love lights all its fires, and everything is permitted with absolute freedom. There is no coyness, no delays, no need of… retirement to gratify their wishes… they sacrifice both to Bacchus and to Venus. The two men nearest the vacuum a pair have made on the bench by leaving their seats, hold their upper garment like a screen before the two… and if we may judge by sound, they seem to think it as great a shame to make love in silence as to eat. Replaced in their seats again, the company drink the happy couple’s health, and their example is followed… as each couple is disposed. All this passes without remark or scandal, not a licentious word is uttered, nor the most distant joke upon the transaction.” [p. 176]

[41] Theodore used guerrilla raiding parties during his march from Debra Tabor, and after his arrival in Magdala, and prominent among them were his “Amazons". Dr Blanc writes: “He had formed the strongest and hardiest of the women of his camp into a plundering band; he was much pleased with their bravery, and one of them having killed a petty chief… he was so delighted that he gave her a title of rank and presented her with one of his own pistols.” This description seems to fit Flashman’s “Diana", with her silver shield and pistol, [p. 189]

[42] The “falling out” had taken place when Theodore’s troops plundered the villagers of the Dalanta plateau, who had previously helped him as road-makers and porters on his march from Debra Tabor to Magdala. Furious at his betrayal, they gave their assistance to Napier’s advance. It is estimated that Theodore destroyed no fewer than 47 villages around Magdala, massacring 7000 people and pressing men into his service. According to Blanc, he was concluding a final raid in person at the time of Napier’s arrival at the Bechelo river (April 6-7); this must have been the raid, which was partly a foray for supplies as well as a scouting operation against the Gallas, which resulted in Flashman’s rescue and capture. (See Note to p. 221, which confirms the date.) [p. 195]

[43] If Theodore’s conversational flights seem outlandish, they are nevertheless authentic. He obviously had a habit of repeating himself, and giving free rein to his paranoia, during his drinking bouts, and his curious comparison of himself to an expectant mother, his allusions to the sword of Damocles, and the Scriptures, and making a great bloodbath, are all to be found in Blanc and Rassam. His attitude towards Britain was a mixture of genuine admiration (he seems to have been truly excited at the prospect of seeing her army in action, even against himself) and deep resentment, for which he can hardly be blamed, at her apparent contempt for him; he seems to have suspected that he was despised for being primitive and black, [p. 207]

[44] Hormuzd Rassam, an Iraqi Christian born in Mosul, was considered an odd choice as envoy to Theodore by his contemporaries, and by historians since. He had worked with the archaeologist Sir Henry Layard in what was then Mesopotamia, studied at Oxford, became a British citizen, and was assistant to Merewether at Aden when he was sent to Abyssinia to try to persuade Theodore to release the prisoners. The general opinion of him seems to have been that he was altogether too submissive in his dealings with the Emperor; “too soft, too compliant, too yielding,” says Moorehead; Stanley was not favourably impressed, and there were many who thought a tough senior soldier would have been a better choice. Maybe; in Rassam’s defence it has to be pointed out that while he may have been deferential, and caused Theodore to treat him more as a courtier than an envoy, it worked; a tougher and more outspoken ambassador might well have provoked the Emperor into much harsher measures against the prisoners.

Prideaux and Blanc had been in Rassam’s mission and were taken prisoner with him; the other captives apart from Cameron were German and other European missionaries, with their wives and servants, and the German artisans already in Theodore’s employ were prisoners in all but name. The total of Europeans held prisoner has been put at 60, of whom only Cameron and Rassam can be said to have had diplomatic status, [p. 215]

[45] For once Flashman gives an exact date, and we can deduce his movements for the previous week at least. He must have arrived at Queen Masteeat’s camp on April 6, been kidnapped the same night and rescued by Theodore’s women, arrived in Theodore’s camp at Islamgee on April 7 and spent the night in chains, and met Rassam and the other prisoners on April 8.

Before April 6 we can only estimate that he spent about a week with the fisher-folk who nursed him through his fever, so he probably went over the Tisisat Falls near the end of March. Working back, we place him at the Zaze monastery about March 24, which does not accord with his statement that it was then a week before Palm Sunday, which in that year fell on April 5. Plainly this was just a mistake on his part; for Flashman, an error of four days more or less is nothing, and we can only be grateful that he deigned to make a note of April 9 when it arrived. Since he was with Napier on February 25, his journey with Uliba-Wark must have taken about four weeks, [p. 221]

[46] Of the many atrocities committed by Theodore, the massacre of prisoners at Islamgee is by far the best documented. The principal witness is his valet and gun-bearer, Wald Gabr, who in a state ment taken by Speedy testified that he himself had shot three of the victims on the Emperor’s orders. His account bears Flashman out entirely; indeed he is if anything more horrific, for he says that the first victim, the bound woman, was actually cut in two by Theodore, who then shot two more women before ordering the other prisoners to be thrown over the cliff alive, those who sur vived the fall being shot. Blanc and Rassam both describe the cold-blooded examination of the prisoners remaining after Theodore’s first drunken rage had subsided, each person being asked for name, country, and crime, many of which were utterly trivial; the great majority were then flung over the cliff. Blanc and Rassam differ on the numbers killed; Wald Gabr says simply: “No one counted the victims, we were all afraid.” (Blanc, Rassam, Wald Gabr’s statement to Speedy, in Holland and Hozier.) [p. 231]

[47] Reading between the lines of Blanc’s memoir, one is inclined to agree with Flashman that Theodore’s German artisans may have sabotaged his great mortar. In describing the Emperor’s raid on the island of Metraha, where he burned most of the population alive, Blanc mentions that some fugitives took to their canoes, but when Theodore ordered his Europeans to fire on them with small cannon, “they complied, but to Theodore’s great disap pointment, failed to hit any of the fugitives.” In his next para graph Blanc writes of the artisans’ failure to cast Sevastopol at their first attempt, and their eventual success only after Theodore himself had (with some technical skill, it must be said) redesigned the smelting process. Taking these two incidents together, it seems that the Germans were by no means eager to make a success of casting or operating Theodore’s ordnance; the artillery of which they had the loading on Fala was singularly ineffective, and the bursting of Sevastopol was a huge blow to Theodore’s morale; he had hoped it would have a shattering effect on his enemies. Estimates of its weight vary, one saying only five tons, others seventy. Rassam’s book has a fine illustration showing the enor mous bell-like contraption being dragged uphill by hordes of workers, and it is said to be still lying half-buried in the ground at Magdala today, [p. 240]

[48] The battle of Arogee is well described in Holland and Hozier, and by Stanley and Henty. The latter wrote a separate account in greater detail for Battles of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, 1890, and there is an admirable essay on the battle, D. G. Chandler’s “The Expedition to Abyssinia, 1867-8", which is to be found in Victorian Military Campaigns, edited by Brian Bond. Flashman’s version is sound, but he adds nothing to the one point of controversy, the exposure of the army’s baggage to attack, which Theodore fortu nately delayed. Henty was in no doubt that if Napier had been facing a European enemy, disaster must have followed; as it was, Napier was quick to retrieve the position. What seems to have happened is that Colonel Phayre, the Quartermaster-General, had reported the defile from which the baggage was emerging to be safe and guarded, when it was not; it has also been suggested that Napier himself had miscalculated the speed of his own advance, and that the baggage got ahead of him. Holland and Hozier tact fully glide over the incident, [p. 243]

[49] The feeling in Napier’s army is reflected in Henry, who pays tribute to the bravery of the Abyssinians, emphasising that they retreated, but did not fly, and that not a spear or a gun was thrown away. He writes of “a slaughter, hardly a fight, between disci plined well-armed men and scattered parties of savages scarcely armed at all.” The firearms of the Abyssinians were certainly infe rior to the Sniders and Enfields, but Henty is not quite fair to the Sikh Pioneers who enjoyed no advantage of weaponry against the enemy spear and swordsmen, were outnumbered, and still won a decisive victory with their bayonets, as Flashman, a veteran of the Sikh War, notes with satisfaction. For the rest, his account of the battle is well corroborated on the British side, and by those who were with Theodore, [p. 243]

[50] When Blanc came face to face with Theodore, “I was quite pre pared for the worst, and, at that moment, had no doubt in my mind that our last hour had come.” Theodore reached for the musket of the nearest soldier, “looked at me for a second or two, dropped his hand, and in a low sad voice asked me how I was, and bade me good-bye.” This accords with Flashman, but Blanc is modest about outfacing the Emperor, saying that it was mere accident that he was first to approach Theodore, who had no animosity towards him; “the result would have been quite different had his anger been roused by the sight of those he hated.” [p. 254]

[51] There is an interesting group photograph of the principal prisoners taken after their release. It includes Cameron wearing his cap and holding a crutch; Dr Blanc, burly and serious; Rassam quite brisk and dapper; Prideaux lounging on the ground, arms folded and looking both languid and jaundiced; and the two missionaries, the Rev. Stern whose alleged criticism of Theodore helped to start the crisis, and the Rev. Rosenthal with Mrs Rosenthal and their baby. Blanc and Prideaux are wearing their shackles. (Army Museums Ogilby Trust.) [p. 254]

[52] This was a letter of apology for what Flashman calls Theodore’s "lunatic message” of the previous day. Both are quoted in full in

Holland and Hozier, and there can be no better evidence of Theodore’s violent swings of mood. They are truly extraordinary productions, and Napier can have been in no doubt that he was dealing with a highly unstable and dangerous man. It may be sig nificant of how Theodore saw himself that the first letter, an aston ishing rant, is headed from “Kasa, whose trust is in Christ, thus speaks", while the apology, much more moderate in tone and accompanied by the gift of cattle, comes from “the King of Kings Theodorus". Kasa was his name before he assumed the title of Emperor, the name of his humble beginnings. Flashman’s account of Theodore’s behaviour at this time, his relations with his own leading men, his diplomatic exchanges with Napier, and his inability to decide whether to fight or surrender, are confirmed in Rassam and Blanc, and by his valet Wald Gabr (see Note to p. 270). [p. 255]

[53] What Flashman was seeing was the first breaching of Magdala’s defences. The attack had proceeded as he describes, with the British advancing en masse across Islamgee and the artillery barrage covering the troops as they climbed up the narrow track leading to the Kobet Bar Gate. Some were wounded by the fire of Theodore’s defenders, but the Sappers reached the gate, only to discover that the powder charges needed to blow it in had been forgotten. The Duke of Wellington’s 33rd had come up, and a party of them ran along the wall to a point where Private Bergin and Drummer Magner forced a way through the thorn hedge and scaled the wall. Ensign Wynter was boosted on to the wall car rying the 33rd’s Regimental Colour, and waved it to signal that the wall had been carried. This was the last time the Colour of the 33rd was carried into action. (See Chandler.)

There is general agreement with Flashman’s view that if Magdala had been properly defended with artillery, the British attack—and indeed the war—might have ended very differently. Whether Theodore’s gunners would have been capable of mounting such a defence is another matter; they had made poor work of it on Fala at the battle of Arogee, and one concludes that, for all his military talents, Theodore was not a master of the art of gunnery, [p. 266]

[54] The best corroboration for Flashman’s account of Theodore’s suicide, and indeed for his description of the Emperor’s move ments and behaviour in the week they were together, is Theodore’s valet and gun-bearer, Wald Gabr. In a statement made to Speedy, the valet recounted his service with Theodore over a period of five years; he was obviously deeply devoted to his master, but made no attempt to gloss over his atrocities, and indeed confessed his share in them (see Note to p. 255). He describes Theodore’s attempted suicide, his release of the prisoners, his hopes of a peaceful settlement, his attempt to escape from Magdala, his gal loping on the plain and challenging the British cavalry, and the bombardment and storming of the amba. Finally, he tells how Theodore released him from his allegiance and then shot himself, precisely as Flashman says, before the arrival of the first British troops. Stanley, in one of his more colourful passages, gives a romanticised account of the two Irishmen of the 33rd who were the first soldiers on the scene. Wald Gabr’s statement is quoted in full by Holland and Hozier.

Stanley has a slightly purple description of the body, which he viewed soon after Theodore’s death: “His eyes, now fading, gave evidence yet of… piercing power… the lower lip seemed adapted to express scorn.” The features showed “great firmness and obstinacy mingled with ferocity", but Stanley admits he may have been influenced by Theodore’s shocking reputation. Compare the Times’ description of “bloated sensual indulgence about the face, by no means heroic or kingly", but “the forehead intellec tual and the mouth singularly determined and cruel.” It was also noted that “a strange smile lingered about the lips", [p. 270]

[55] It is not clear whether Speedy is referring to James Gordon Bennett, founder and publisher of the New York Herald, or his son and namesake who succeeded him in control of the paper in 1867, the year in which H. M. Stanley was sent to cover the Abyssinian War. Bennett junior later sent Stanley to the Ashanti War of 1873 —4, and, most memorably, in search of Dr Livingstone. If either of the Bennetts was an Anglophobe, it evidently did not influence Stanley’s reporting, which is not only meticulous in its detail but eminently fair. [p. 275]

[56] This explains why Flashman is not mentioned in Napier’s reports, or in Holland and Hozier, and the credit is given to Mir Akbar Ali, a subject of the Nizam of Hyderabad, who was attached to the expedition because, as a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, it was thought he would make an ideal envoy to Queen Masteeat and the Gallas. Plainly Flashman’s advent on the scene caused Napier to change his mind and send him in Mir Akbar’s place, as a far more experienced intelligence agent whose mili tary seniority would also impress the Galla queen and her gen erals; it was, as Napier said, a task tailor-made for Flashman’s supposed talents. Since he was to travel in native disguise, he was given the name of Khasim Tamwar, and in inventing a background and history for him, Napier simply used that of Mir Akbar Ali. Then, when Flashman was captured by Theodore, Mir Akbar was despatched at the last minute to complete the work of organising the Galla encirclement of Magdala.

In his report to Napier, Mir Akbar claims sole credit for per suading the Gallas, so there is a considerable discrepancy between his version and Flashman’s, and readers must decide for them selves which to accept. There is no doubt that Mir Akbar did valu able work in the last days of the campaign, for which he was paid at the far from generous rate of £25 a month, roughly the same as the expedition’s lower-grade interpreters. (See Holland and Hpzier.) [p. 275]

[57] Looting at Magdala was on a small scale compared to the orgies of plunder and destruction which Flashman witnessed in the Mutiny and in China. There was plenty of glitter among the stuff strewn on the ground, according to Stanley, but much of it was of little value, and he noted that some of the prisoners (he does not name any) were foremost among the looters. But some treas ures there were: gold, silver, silk, furs and skins, carpets, weapons, and quantities of manuscript. Mr Holmes of the British Museum was “in his glory” when the precious things were auc tioned off, his only rival in the bidding being Flashman’s friend Fraser, who had the wealth of the 11th Hussars’ mess. The auction realised £5000, the proceeds being divided among the non-commissioned troops who had crossed the Bechelo; each man received about four dollars. The elephants which carried it away, and which had played such a vital part in the campaign, carrying guns and mortars, were 39 in number; five had died on the march, [p. 280]

[58] This casual reference to the death of Colonel Robert Alexander Dunn, V.C., suggests that Flashman can only have heard of it at vague second-hand without knowing who was involved. Dunn was from his old regiment, the 11th Hussars, and had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, where he won the only V.C. awarded in that action, for saving the lives of a troop sergeant-major and a trooper. He was CO. of the notorious 33rd Regiment, the Duke of Wellington’s, and died on January 25, 1868, in a shooting accident, [p. 280]

[59] Flashman does not mention Abyssinian casualties in the brief battle for Magdala. More than 60 died in the fighting for the first gate, with about twice as many wounded. Even with the 700 dead and 1400 wounded at Arogee, the total of casualties in the campaign is unusually low for a nineteenth-century war. [p. 280]

[60] Queen Tooroo-Wark ("pure gold") died of consumption a month later on the journey north, and was buried by Coptic priests, the King’s Own providing a guard of honour and music. She was only 18. She had not been happy with Theodore, and is said to have conspired against him, but something like a reconciliation seems to have taken place in the last days of the war. In accor dance with Theodore’s wishes their son Alamayo went to England with Napier, and was educated at Rugby. He died when he was 19, and is buried at Windsor, [p. 281]

[61] “Fat, fair, and forty” was how Stanley described Queen Masteeat, possibly misquoting Speedy, and from his account it is obvious that he liked her for much the same reasons as Flashman: she was handsome, gaudy, jolly, given to “hearty, boisterous guffaws", and had a gargantuan appetite. For the rest, we have only Flashman’s description of her court and conduct; that in spite of her self-indulgence she was a shrewd and formidable personality we may judge from the fact that Napier had no hes itation in preferring her to Warkite and assigning Magdala to her.

As to Flashman’s description of her pet lions, it is interesting that King Theodore had a similar menagerie; a picture in L ’Annee Illustre, 1868, reproduced in Prelude to Magdala shows him sur rounded by them. [p. 283]

[62] Britain’s intervention had done little to change the pattern of civil war and near-anarchy prevailing before 1867, and this continued after the British withdrawal. Kussai, King of Tigre, whose neutrality had been of considerable help, was rewarded with gifts of ordnance, small arms, and supplies, which helped him establish himself in the north of the country; he aspired to overall monarchy, and for twenty years fought rivals and foreign invaders, defeating Gobayzy and repelling Egyptians, Italians and Dervishes. He was killed in battle against the Dervishes in 1889, and succeeded by the despised Menelek; the “fat boy” achieved supreme power and inflicted a crushing defeat on Italian invaders at Adowa in 1896. This was not forgotten, and Abyssinia was briefly conquered by Mussolini’s forces before the Second World War, which effec tively destroyed Italy’s empire.

The brief exchanges among Napier’s staff have echoes which continue to be heard today. Should Britain have stayed, and paci fied the country, assuming the white man’s burden? There are those who think so; one writer accuses Napier of dodging the issue, and holds that Britain’s leaving Abyssinia did not become her as well as her manner of entering it. This seems rather hard, when it is remembered that Britain had no wish to invade Abyssinia, and did so only on gross provocation. Looking back, it is difficult to see why the pacification of a country to which Britain owed nothing should have been thought (to paraphrase Bismarck) worth the bones of a single British soldier or Indian sepoy. Of one thing we can be sure: if Britain had stayed, revisionist historians would certainly have condemned it as another act of selfish imperialism, [p. 287]