Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
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for the supreme atrocity. Ironic, ain’t it?
The letter he’d been dictating had been yet another demand to the local Manchoo governor for free passage to Pekin, which the Chinks had previously agreed to – and were now hindering for all they were worth, as at Sinho and Tang-ku.
“Perhaps when we’ve stormed the forts they may realise the folly of resistance,” says Loch. He was a tall, grave young file with a great beard, who looked a muff until you learned he’d been a Navy middy at 13, aide to Gough at 17, adjutant of Skinner’s Horse at 23, and come through Sutlej and Crimea. Parkes laughed.
“Why should they? The Emperor’s not there; he won’t suffer. Nor his ministers, Prince Sang and the like, who feed him vain lies about sweeping us into the sea. The Emperor believes them, the decree goes forth, the local commanders put up a futile fight, and send wild accounts to Pekin of how they’ve licked us. So the fool’s encouraged in his folly, and all his concubines clap their little hands and tell him he’s lord of creation.”
“He’s bound to learn the truth eventually, though.”
“In the Imperial Palace? My dear Loch, it’s another world! Suppose they do learn they’ve lost Sinho, for example – it won’t have happened before their eyes, at Pekin, so … it simply didn’t happen, you see? That’s Chinese Imperial logic.”
“Who’s Prince Sang?” I asked, remembering the swine who’d had Moyes butchered – and to whom I’d kow-towed.
“A brute and a firebrand,” grunts Elgin. “Prince Sang-kol-in-sen – our fellows call him Sam Collinson. Mongol general commanding the Emperor’s forces; he’s in the Taku Forts this minute, which is why we’ll certainly have to fight for them.” ’Nuff said; I’d met Prince Sang.
I asked when we’d advance on the forts, and he glowered and said, in a week, twiddling his scanty wing of hair, a sure sign of irritation.
“We’re too damned cumbersome by half!” says he. “I told Palmerston five thousand men would do; but no, Parliament thinks we’re still fighting the damned Bengal sepoys, so we must have three times that number.” He champed and snorted, tugging away. “A confounded waste of men, material, and time! Wait till the Commons get the bill, though! And to be sure, the fools of public will ask what it was for – they’ll expect victories, a dozen V.C.s, and enough blood and massacre to make their flesh creep. Well, they’ll not get ’em if I can help it! This is not a war, but an embassy. And this is not an expeditionary force, it’s an escort!”
He’d gone quite pink, and by the way Parkes was pulling his nose and Loch studying the distance, I could guess it was a well-played air. After a moment he left off trying to pull his hair loose.
“Our assault on Taku will take a week to prepare because the field command changes daily, to keep the French happy – Grant handed over to Montauban during our attack on Sinho, if you please! Oh, ’twas safe enough, and Montauban’s a sensible man – but it’s not a system that makes for expedition. We’d have been better with a small, mobile force – and no French.26 Ah, well!” He gave his hair a final wrench and suddenly grinned. “We shall have to see. Eh, Loch? As our old nurses would have said, ‘a sair fecht’. For your benefit, Parkes, that means a long, weary struggle.”
How long, I asked Parkes when he showed me to my billet, and he pursed his lips officially.
“To Pekin? Oh, a month, perhaps … six weeks?”
“God save us – you ain’t serious?”
“I try to be. Elgin’s perfectly correct – we’re too many, and Sir Hope, with his many fine qualities is … methodical. What with the French, and the Manchoos lying and procrastinating at every step … well, as his lordship’s interpreter, I expect to be chin-chinning to Chinamen quite excessively.” He paused in my doorway and gave a resigned sigh. “Ah, well … at least it should be a quiet little war. We dine at six, by the way; a coat is sufficient.”
a Time for action. Rosalie was the long French sword-bayonet.
The great Taku Forts went down on the 21st, as advertised, to the astonishment of the Manchoos, who thought them impregnable, and the chagrin of the Frogs, who had violently opposed Grant’s plan of attack. They wanted to assail the forts on both sides of the river; Grant said no, settle the Great North Fort and the job’s done. Montauban squawked and hooted, saying it was an affront to military science, but Grant just shook his head: “North fort goes, rest’ll submit. You’ll see. Bonjour,” and carried on, humming bull-fiddle tunes. His force might be unwieldy, as Elgin said, but it was damned expert: he built two miles of road to the approaches, had volunteers swimming the river by night to mine the defences, hammered the place with siege guns and a naval bombardment, and sent in the infantry with pontoons and ladders to carry the walls – and sure enough, the infuriated Crapauds made sure they got in first.
Your correspondent bore no part beyond loafing up, when the Chinese guns had been safely silenced, to offer cheer and comfort to Major Temple before the final assault. A week ago he’d been damning his coolies for useless, but now he was in a desperate fret for their welfare – they were to carry in the scaling ladders in the teeth of cannon, jingal-fire, spears, stinkpots and whatever else the Manchoos were hurling from the walls, and Temple, the ass, was determined to go in with them. I found him croaking under his brolly, waiting for the word, but for once his complaint wasn’t a military one.
“These bloody magistrates!” cries he. “Have you seen the China Mail? Heenan’s been held to bail at Derby, an’ he an’ Sayers are to be charged with assault! Damned nonsense! Why can’t they leave sport alone?27 Ahah!” he roars, waving to the Frog colonel. “Ready, are we? Sortons, is that it? Come on, you chaps! China forever!” And he was away, bounding over the ditches, with his yellow mob at his heels and the Frog infantry in full cry, bursting with la gloire. They had warm work crossing the moats and canals, but they and our own 44th and 67th carried the walls with the bayonet – and as Grant had said, out came the white silk flags on the other forts. Four hundred Manchoos were killed out of five hundred; we lost about 30, and ten times as many wounded. The coolies behaved famously, Temple said.
Parkes and Loch and I were in the party sent across the river to arrange terms with Hang-Fu, the local mandarin, a leery ancient with the opium shakes who received us in a garden, sitting on a chair of state with a mighty block of ice underneath to keep him cool, and his minions carrying his spectacles and chopsticks and silver watch in embroidered cases. He served us champagne, but when Parkes demanded a signed surrender the old fox said he daren’t, not being military, and Prince Sang had already left up-river.
Parkes then came all over diplomatic, promising to blow the forts to kingdom come, at which Hang-Fu said, well, the Emperor would be graciously pleased to give us temporary occupation of them (which we already had) and we could take our gunboats up to Tientsin. Parkes almost had to take him by the throat to get it in writing, and then we ploughed back to the boat in the dark, past the huge gloomy fort-buildings, with slow-fuse mines which the Chinks had thoughtfully left behind exploding here and there. (Another trick was to bury cocked gun-locks with bags of powder, for the unwary to tread on; subtle, eh? – and yet some of their fort guns were wooden dummies.) I was never so glad to get back to a boat in my life.
So now the way was clear, and with the gunboats leading the way up the twisty moonlit river, it began: the famous march on Pekin, the last great stronghold on earth that had never seen a white soldier, the Forbidden City of the oldest of civilisations, the capital of the world, to the Chinese, having dominion over all mankind. And now the foreign devils were coming, the whining pipes echoing out across the sodden plain, the jaunty little poilus with their