9. The General Service Enlistment Act (1856) required recruits to serve overseas if necessary. This was one of the most important grievances of the sepoys, who held that crossing the sea would break their caste.
10. Irregular cavalry units of the British Indian armies occasionally dressed in a highly informal style, so the Afghan rissaldar might conceivably have been wearing an old uniform coat of Skinner's Horse ("The Yellow Boys"). But it is unlikely that he had ever served in that unit — the Guides would have been more his mark.
11. The society of Thugs (lit. deceivers) were worshippers of the goddess Kali, and practised murder as a religious devotion which would ensure them a place in paradise. They preyed especially on travellers, whom they would join on the road with every profession of friendship before suddenly falling on them at a prearranged signal; the favourite method of killing was strangulation with a scarf. The cult numbered thousands before Sir William Sleeman stamped them out in the 1830s, but since many continued at large, and the Jhansi region was traditionally a hotbed of thugee, it is perfectly possible that ex-Thugs were active as Flashman says. In some cases it was possible to identify a former Thug by a tattoo on his eyelid or a brand on his back.
12. "Pass him some of his own tobacco" — a grim joke by Ilderim's companion. "Pass the tobacco" was the traditional verbal signal of the Thugs to start killing.
13. There was indeed a Makarram Khan, who served in the Peshawar Police, and later became a notable frontier raider at the head of a band of mounted tribesmen, fighting against the Guides cavalry. (See History of the Guides, 1846-1922).
14. The offering and touching of a sword hilt, in token of mutual respect, was traditional in the Indian Cavalry. (See From Sepoy to Subedar, the memoirs of Sita Ram Pande, who served in the Bengal Army for almost fifty years. They were first published a century ago, and recently edited by Major-General James Lunt.)
15. It is curious that Flashman makes no reference to dyeing his skin (as Ilderim had suggested) and indeed seems to imply that he found it unnecessary. But dark as he was, and light-skinned as many frontiersmen are, he must surely have stained his body, or he could hardly have passed for long in a sepoy barrack-room.
16. Of the sepoys whom Flashman mentions by name, only two can be definitely identified as serving in the 3rd N.C. skirmishers at this time — Pir Ali and Kudrat Ali, who were both corporals, although Flashman refers to Pir Ali as though he were an ordinary sepoy.
17. "Addiscombe tripe" refers to the officers, not the jemadars and NCO's. Addiscombe was the military seminary which trained East India Company cadets from 1809 to 1861. Flashman's prejudice may be explained by the fact that Lord Roberts, among other famous soldiers, went there.
18. The fears and grievances which Flashman recounts probably give a fair reflection of the state of mind of many sepoys in early 1857. Rumours of polluted flour and greased cartridges, and stories like that of the Dum-Dum sweeper, reinforced the suspicion that the British were intent on interfering with their religion, breaking their caste, altering terms of enlistment, and generally changing the established order. To these were added the Oude sepoys' discontent at the recent annexation of their state, which cost them certain privileges, and resentment at the changed attitude towards them (by no means imaginary, according to some contemporary writers) of a new generation of British officers and troops, who seemed more ignorant and contemptuous than their predecessors; this unfortunately coincided with the arrival in the Bengal Army of a better class of sepoys, possibly quicker to take offence — or, according to some writers, more spoiled.
All these things combined to undermine confidence and cause unrest, and there was no lack of agitators ready to play on the sepoys' fears. The belief that the British intended to Christianise India (see Note 5) was widespread, and reinforced by such reforms as the suppression of thugee and suttee (widow-burning). The resentment which reform had created among Indian princes has been referred to: in addition, educational innovations created disquiet (see Lawrence's evidence to the Select Committee on India, July 12, 1859, E.I. Parliamentary Papers. vol. 18); so even did the development of the railway and telegraph. With all these underlying factors, it will be seen that the greased cartridge was eventually only the spark to the tinder. (See also Sita Ram, Lord Robert's Forty-one Years in India, Kaye and Malleson's History of the Sepoy War and History of the Indian Mutiny (1864-80), G. W. Forrest's History of the Indian Mutiny (1904-12), and the same author's Selections from the Letters, Despatches and C.S.P. Government of India, 1857-8.)
19. Mrs Captain MacDowall's advice on the running of an Indian household might serve as a model for its time. (See the Complete Indian Housekeeper, by G. G. and F. A. S. published in 1883.)
20. The 19th N.I., who had rioted in February, were disbanded at the end of March, having refused the new cartridge. The paper which Mangal showed to Flashman was undoubtedly the March 28 issue of Ashruf-al-Akbar, of Lucknow, which predicted a great holy war throughout India and the Middle East; however, it gave a warning against relying on Russian assistance, describing them as "enemies of the faith".
21. Sepoy Mangal Pandy (? -1857), of the 34th Native Infantry, ran amok on the parade ground at Barrackpore on March 29, apparently drugged with bhang, trying to rouse a religious revolt and claiming that British troops were coming against the sepoys. He attacked one of his officers, and then tried to kill himself. Pandy was subsequently hanged, along with a native officer whose offence apparently was that he did not try to stop the attack. However, this first of the Indian sepoy rebels gained an appropriate immortality: the British word for any native mutineer thereafter was "pandy".
22. For the loading drill, see Forest's Selections, and J. A. B. Palmer's The Mutiny Outbreak in Meerut in 1857 referring to the Platoon Exercise Manual. While there is general agreement among historians on what happened at the firing parade, some differ over precise technical details; Flashman's account is sound on the whole. He states that the cartridges were not greased, but waxed, and since he does not refer to them as ball cartridges, this would seem to confirm that they were ungreased blanks. However, this would not allay the fears of the sepoys, who were apparently suspicious of any cartridge with a shiny appearance. Nor do they seem to have been impressed by the repeated assurances that it was unnecessary to bite the cartridge (which, if it were greased, would be highly polluting); as early as January, 1857, when it was announced that the sepoys could grease their own loads with non-polluting substances, it was also stated that they could tear the cartridges with their fingers (see Hansard, 3rd series 145, May 22, 1857); the response of some sepoys to this was that they might forget, and bite.
23. The British were, in fact, more considerate and humane towards their native troops than they were to their white ones. Flogging continued in the British Army long after it had been abolished for Indian troops, whose discipline appears to have been much more lax, possibly in consequence — a point significantly noted by Subedar Sita Ram when he discusses in his memoirs the causes of the Mutiny.
24. Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-General Sir Hugh) Gough was warned by one of the native officers of his troop on May 9 that the sepoys would rise to rescue their comrades from the jail. Carmichael-Smith and Archdale Wilson both rejected the warning.
25. One of the first casualties of the Meerut mutiny was, in fact, a British soldier murdered in a bazaar lemonade shop.
26. Hewitt and Archdale Wilson were extra-ordinarily slow in getting the British regiments on the move after the outbreak; they did not reach the sepoy lines until after the mutineers had set off for Delhi.