Flashman in the Great Game - Chapter 12

How long has it been since I've done one of these? Oh...right...that long. Sorry about that. I've had a lot to read and not enough time to do it, and there's been a waning of interest with this particular volume of Harry's adventures. I've never been the biggest fan of Flashman in the Great Game. Harry often seems to act in very unFlashmanlike ways at times. There's also the subject material itself, it's largely a series of unrelenting blood soaked atrocities by both sides. I know, aside from Flashman himself, that it's all real, but it's still rather tedious to read.

Chapter 12 is a little different, although it's still frustrating at times. Harry is sent back to Jhansi to finish off the mission he was originally dispatched to India to perform. Although the mutiny has largely been put down, Jhansi, or rather the Rani, is still a problem. Harry makes the remark that if Lakshmibai weren't so attractive or young then there may not have been an issue with killing her, but she is both beautiful and young, she's also beloved by her people. Simply killing her is only going to make a bad situation worse.

The British, under Hugh Rose, have Jhansi under bombardment. Flashman likens Rose to another of his brothers in arms General George Custer. According to Harry both men looked similar and acted alike, but that's where it ended. Rose was very competent, Harry didn't share that opinion of Custer. He goes on to intimate had Rose commanded at Little Big Horn, instead of Custer things may have turned out differently. Harry can comment, he was at Little Big Horn (see Flashman and the Redskins).

MacDonald Fraser has managed to dig out an obscure text that supports the book's idea that the plan was to let the Rani escape and take her into custody that way. Flashman's obsession with Lakshmibai resurfaces. They have no problems convincing him to put the plan to her. He does this largely because aside from Elspeth and Havvy, the only person in the world Harry has any real affection for is the Rani. This interest has, to me, never really been explained.

Harry does worry that something will go wrong, that's his nature, it however goes worse than he ever could have imagined. He's intercepted by, of all people, Ignatieff. The Russian plans to out Harry on the rack to get him to give up information, he knows that won't take long, given Flashman's aversion to physical pain, and then rack him to death, just for the fun of it. Before Flashman can break, the Rani's major domo, who knows Harry, runs and fetches his mistress, who orders the torture to stop and roundly scolds Ignatieff.

While she cuddles up to Harry and accepts his message, she won't untie him, and has him escorted somewhere he can be kept under guard by her loyal Pathan Sher Khan. The name always reminded me of the villainous tiger in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. I wondered if the writer had been influenced by Flashman. I eventually concluded that as there's no mention of it, and Harry never misses an opportunity to drop a name, that it's just a coincidence.

When the time comes to escape Harry is taken with the Rani, and he's manacled to the saddle. The penny finally drops and Harry wonders if in fact he ever did have an encounter with the Rani all that time ago, and if he's being used. He can't get past his love of her, though. Very odd.

Flashman in the Great Game Chapter 7

A lot of chapter 7 of Flashman in the Great Game is more of the same from the previous chapter.

Jhansi did not escape the conflagration that was engulfing India at the time. The first half of the chapter is given over to descriptions of the atrocities in Jhansi. They’re very similar to those Flashman has seen elsewhere in the country. The main difference with this one is that Flashman didn’t see it first hand, but has to settle for Ilderim’s lurid commentary, told in his lyrical middle ages Arabic. A point of interest was that Fraser chose to lay the blame for what actually did happen in Jhansi squarely at the feet of the Rani. In actual history she always protested her innocence in these matters, there is considerable doubt about her innocence, and obviously Fraser sides with that camp.

Due to his attachment to Lakshmibai and his encounter with her Harry says that what Ilderim is telling him can’t be true. Ilderim puts Harry’s reluctance to believe down to his infatuation with the Rani. What he doesn’t understand is why Flashman is besotted with Lakshmibai when she’s one of Harry’s many conquests and he doesn’t feel that way about all of them. This brings up two points. My belief is that of all the many women Harry has encountered and bedded he only really had feelings of love for three of them. Elspeth of course, Lola Montez and Lakshmibai. Takes Away Clouds Woman may also qualify, but it’s hard to tell with her.  That feeling is why he can’t believe Lakshmibai would preside over the sort of massacre, which included women and children, that Ilderim tells him about. The other point is that I think it’s highly unlikely Harry ever slept with the Rani. He was very drunk that night and she was veiled for much of it. Even he says she moved like a nautch dancer, and I think that’s what she was. A lady Lakshimbai hired to impersonate her and make it easy for her assassins to take care of the British diplomat she saw as a threat. Harry would however go to his grave believing he shared a night of passion with Lakshimbai herself.

Harry, Ilderim and the big Pathan’s men decide to go to Cawnpore to join the British garrison there fighting against the mutiny. On the way they encounter a group of irregulars. They’re composed of former civilian British clerks and businessmen and a handful of loyal Sikhs. They’ve banded together for the express purpose of hunting down and killing mutineers. They initially think Harry’s an enemy, and dressed and looking the way he is, along with the company he’s keeping, little wonder. He’s only able to escape becoming one of their victims by remembering the first name of the son of one of the band, whom he was named as the godfather of in Flashman, young Flashman O’Toole, that was a nice little touch, putting that in.

It’s rather disturbing to see the relish with which these civilized men pursue their vengeance. Understandable, but still disturbing. They’re attacked when not far from Cawnpore and only the courage and strength of Ilderim Khan saves Harry’s life. Once safe behind British lines Harry is offered that most genteel of British customs; nuts or a cigar as a rifle is thrust into his hands. Flashman looks down the line, and wonders if he’s not dreaming, because not too far from him is Harry ‘Scud’ East.

Flashman in the Great Game - Chapter 3

Harry finally gets to India in the 3^rd chapter of Flashman in the Great Game. The opening of this chapter is one of the very few knocks I have on George MacDonald Fraser. Before heading off on his actual mission in Jhansi Flashman spends time in what he regards as the more civilised parts of the country and largely repeats what he said in Flashman about India being a great place to serve. It was just unnecessary. Perhaps Fraser thought he had to put it in because he was writing an episode of what was a largely self contained series and couldn’t trust that readers would have already have read Flashman.

Things pick up when he gets on the road to Jhansi and meets with Johnny Nicholson on the way. Nicholson was one of those extraordinary frontier soldiers that seem larger than life and have lived an adventure that can’t possibly be true, but is. He and Flashman were comrades in arms from Flashman and he may have also appeared in Flashman and Flashman and the Mountain of Light. He agrees that trouble could be brewing in India from what he’s seen and leaves Flashman wondering. There’s a rather sober note at the end of this encounter that Nicholson was killed by a mutineer during the conflagration that enveloped the country not longer after the meeting.

Flashman tries to get some information about the Rani from Skene, the diplomat stationed there, but as he’s never seen the woman (she conducts all her business with the British from behind a screen) he isn’t a lot of help, although he too is worried about the situation. There’s this whole sense of doom hanging over everything. Flashman has formed the opinion that the Rani is a sour embittered widow and even the Flash Harry charm with his dashing cavalry whiskers may have trouble winning her over.

He goes to meet the Rani the following day. He likes the women he does see and even befriends one of the Rani’s guards, who has heard the Bloody Lance legends and knows ‘Iflassman’ is someone to meet. Something he can dine out on for some time.

The meeting is conducted behind the screen and Harry keeps hearing this rustling noise that he can’t identify. The Rani gives him fairly short shrift and is unimpressed by the picture of the royal family that he presents her. He couldn’t blame her here, he didn’t think much of it himself. He plays an ace in the hole by saying that he has another gift, but he can only present it face to face. Harry is ushered behind the screen and into the presence of Laskhmibai the Rani of Jhansi. She’s not a sour old widow, she’s a stunningly beautiful young woman seated on a hanging swing, which was what created the rustling noise and even the great Harry Flashman is taken by her beauty.