[12]Flashman's account of this important meeting between Raglan and Sir George Brown is largely corroborated by Brown's own version in Kinglake. Both Newcastle's despatch and his personal note to Raglan were definite on the need to besiege Sevastopol, while leaving' the final responsibility with Raglan and his French colleagues.
[13]Mrs Duberly, wife of an officer of the 8th Hussars, and an old friend of Flashman's (see Flash for Freedom!), left a vivid journal of her experiences in the Crimea, including the incident described here, when she boarded a transport "wrapped up in an old hat and shawl … an extraordinary figure" to avoid detection by Lord Lucan. (See E. E. P. Tisdall's Mrs Duberly's Campaigns.)
[14]"The policeman at Herne Bay". This mythical policeman was a humorous by-word of the time.
[15]It is interesting to note that William Howard Russell, in his original despatch to The Times, made the mistake of reporting that the Highlanders were involved in the attack on the Redoubt, but corrected this in later despatches. His histories of the Crimea are the work of a brilliant newspaperman, and even those who question his criticism of Raglan and other British leaders (see Colonel Adye's The Crimean War) acknowledge the quality of his reporting. Anyone interested in verifying Flashman's statements cannot do better than refer to Russell, or to Kinglake, who was also an eye-witness. Incidentally, Flashman's account of the Alma action is extremely accurate, especially where Lord Raglan's movements are concerned, but his memory has surely played him false in a slightly earlier passage when he suggests that the Russian gunners fired on the army at the start of its march down the Crimea coast: this took place some hours later.
[16]For an account of this incident, see Russell's The War from the landing at Gallipoli to the death of Lord Raglan (1855).
[17]Generally Flashman disagrees with other eye-witnesses no more than they disagree among themselves, and these discrepancies are minor ones. For example, some authorities suggest that the Highlanders fired three volleys against the Russian cavalry, not two, and at fairly long range (E. H. Nolan actually says that there was properly speaking "no cavalry charge upon the Highlanders", but this is not borne out by others). Again, as to casualties in the Heavy Brigade charge, Flashman saw comparatively few, but Trooper Farquharson of the 4th Light Dragoons, who rode over the ground immediately afterwards, "saw dozens … with the ugliest gashes about their heads and faces." (See R. S. Farquharson, Reminiscences of Crimean Campaigning.)
[18]The original pencilled order, scribbled by Airey, is still preserved. It reads: "Lord Raglan wishes the Cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the Enemy event the Enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Attily may accompany. French Cavalry is on yr left. Immediate." As to what verbal instructions may have been added, there is no certainty, but one of the rumours which later arose (see H. Moyse-Bartlett's Louis Edward Nolan) was that Nolan had been told to tell Lucan to act on the defensive, but had passed on the vital word as offensive.
[19]It is one of the true curiosities of the charge of the Light Brigade that Lord George Paget rode into action smoking a cheroot—obviously the one which Flashman gave him—and did not actually draw his sabre until the moment of entering the battery, when his orderly, Parkes, advised him to do so. Paget's coolness, which as much as anything saved the remnants of the Light Brigade, was notorious: Trooper Farquharson, who rode with him in the charge, recalled how earlier in the battle Paget was hit by a shell splinter, and reacted only by telling his orderly to collect it as a souvenir.
[20]The recklessness of the British cavalry charge so amazed the Russians that Liprandi's immediate conclusion was that the Light Brigade must have been drunk. (See Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why, and Kinglake.)
[21]Whatever may be said of his opinions, Flashman's information about the plight of the Russian serfs in the 1850s is entirely accurate, and is borne out by several other contemporary authorities. The best of these are perhaps Baron von Haxthausen, whose The Russian Empire, appeared in 1856, and Shirley Brooks's The Russians of the South (1854). They also corroborate his descriptions of Russian life in general, as does The Englishwoman in Russia, by "a Lady ten years resident in that country", published in 1855. Savage and Civilised Russia, by "W.R." (1877), is an informative work; two largely political tracts by S. Stepniak, Russia under the Tsars (1885) and The Russian Peasantry (1888), contain useful material and interesting bias; and the Memoirs of the celebrated Russian radical, Alexander Herzen (1812-70), give an illuminating insight into the serf mentality. Like Flashman, he observed how his family's land serfs "somehow succeed in not believing in their complete slavery", and contrasted this with the plight of the house serfs who, although they were paid wages, had their existence destroyed and poisoned by "the terrible consciousness of serfdom".
[22]Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff was later to become one of Russia's most brilliant agents in the Far East. He served in China, undertook daring missions into Central Asia, and was also for a time military attaché in London. There is evidence that early in the Crimean War he was serving on the Baltic, and this must have been shortly before his encounter with Flashman. He was twenty-two at this time.
[23]For confirmation, and other details of Harry East's military career, see Tom Brown at Oxford, by Thomas Hughes (1861).
[24]The commander of Prince Vigenstein's Hussars in 1837 was, in fact, Colonel Pencherjevsky.
[25]If anything, Flashman's description of the punishments meted out to Russian serfs by their owners appears to be on the mild side. The works cited earlier in these notes contain examples of fearful cruelty and the carelessness with which extraordinary penalties were sometimes imposed—Alexander Herzen gives instances of atrocities, and also recalls the psychological misery caused when his father, a nobleman, ordered a village patriarch's beard to be shaved off. Turgenev the novelist, another nobleman who saw serfdom at first hand, described how his mother banished two young serfs to Siberia because they failed to bow to her in passing—and how they came to bid her farewell before leaving for exile. (See A. Yarmolinsky's Turgenev the Man.)
[26]It was a folk-saying—and may still be—that one could tell a true Russian by the fact that he would go with his neck open and unprotected, even in the coldest weather.
[27]It is interesting that Pencherjevsky had heard of Marx at this time, for although the great revolutionary had already gained an international notoriety, his influence was not to be felt in Russia for many years. Non-Communist agitators were, however, highly active in the country, and no doubt to the Count they all looked alike. (p.164.)
[28]Flashman seems to suggest that this incident took place in February, 1855. If it did, then Tsar Nicholas I had only weeks, and possibly days, to live: he died on March 2 in St Petersburg, after influenza which had lasted about a fortnight. There is no evidence that he visited the south in the closing weeks of his life; on the other hand Flashman's account seems highly circumstantial. Possibly he has confused the dates, and Nicholas came to Starotorsk earlier than February. However, anyone scenting a mystery here may note that while the Tsar died on March 2, he was last seen in public on February 22 at an infantry review. (See E. H. Nolan's History of the War against Russia.)
[29]The Khruleff and Duhamel plans were only two in a long list of proposed Russian invasions of British India. As far back as 1801 Tsar Paul, hoping to replace British rule by his own, agreed to a joint Franco-Russian invasion through Afghanistan (Napoleon was at that time in Egypt, and the French Government were to pave the invaders' way by sending "rare objects" to be "distributed with tact" among native chiefs on the line of march.) The Russian part of the expedition actually got under way, but with the death of the Tsar and the British victory at Copenhagen the scheme was abandoned.