Napier sat his horse by the track, with Speedy and Charlie Fraser and Merewether and myself, watching them go by, and how they roared and cheered and waved their helmets at the sight of him, the old Bughunter who’d taken them there against all the odds and now was taking them back again. He smiled and nodded and raised his hat to them, looking ever so old and weary but content, turning in his saddle to gaze back at those three massive peaks where he’d wrought his military miracle—Selassie and Fala gilded in the morning sun, and beyond them Magdala like a huge smouldering volcano, the plume of black smoke towering up into the cloudless sky.
“Going home now, gentlemen,” says he, and Merewether said something about a great feat of arms, and how the country would acclaim the army and its leader. Napier said he guessed the Queen and the people would be pleased, and H.M.G. also, no doubt, “but you may be sure it will not be all unalloyed satisfaction. It never is.”
Speedy wasn’t having that. “Why, Sir Robert, who can complain except a few miserable croakers—no doubt the same Jeremiahs who swore the campaign was doomed in the first place—and now they’ll carp about the cost? As though such a thing was to be fought on the cheap with a scratch army and fleet! They’ve had it at bargain rates!”
“I doubt if the Treasury will agree with you,” laughs Napier, in high spirits. “No, I was thinking rather of the wiseacres in the clubs and newspapers who will find fault with us for doing no more than we were sent to do: rescue our countrymen. I dare say there will be voices raised in the House demanding to know why we have left a savage country in confusion and civil war—”
“Which is how it was for centuries before we came!” cries Charlie. “And the Ethiopian can’t change his skin, can he? He’ll go murdering whether we’re here or not!”
“The Chief’s right, though,” says Merewether. “There’s bound to be an outcry because we’re not leaving a garrison to pacify the tribes and police the country—oh, and distribute tracts to folk who were Christian before we were! As though Abyssinia were a country to be pacified and ruled with fewer than ten divisions and a great civil power!”
“Which would call for an expenditure of many millions, far more than we have spent—and with no hope of return.” Napier was smiling as he said it, but I wondered if some hint of censure had already reached him from home. They’d given him a free hand, and he hadn’t stinted.
“And if we were to occupy the confounded place, Mr Gladstone would never forgive us!” says Merewether. “What, enlarge the empire, bring indigenous peoples to subjection, and exploit them for our profit! Rather not!”
There was general laughter at this, and Napier said with his quiet smile that we must resign ourselves to being regarded as callously irresponsible or rapaciously greedy. “Brutal indifference or selfish imperialism; those are the choices. As an old Scotch maidservant of my acquaintance used to say: ‘Ye canna dae right for daein’ wrang!’” [62]
More laughter, and Charlie said, well, thank goodness at least no one could complain that there had been dreadful slaughter of helpless aborigines by the weapons of civilisation. “Twasn’t our fault jolly old Theodore kicked the bucket!” he added. Merewether said thank goodness for that, and I could feel the uneasy silence of Napier and Speedy. No doubt it was out of consideration for me that Napier checked his mount until I was alongside, and then says cheerily: “You’re very silent, Harry. Have you no philosophic reflec tions on the campaign? No views on what should or should not be done now that it’s over?”
I glanced back at the smoke rising from Magdala like some huge genie escaping from his bottle, and then at the long dusty column of horse, foot, and guns swinging down the defile. And I thought of that hellish beautiful land and its hellish beautiful people, of Yando’s cage and the horrors of Gondar, of bandit treasure aswarm with scorpions, of the terrifying thunder of descent into a watery maelstrom, of a raving lunatic slaughtering helpless captives, of fighting women drunk on massacre, of a graceful she-devil aglow with love and ice-cold in hate… and was finally aware of the gently smiling old soldier waiting for an answer as we rode in sun light down from Arogee.
“My views, sir? Can’t think I have many… oh, I don’t know, though. Wouldn’t mind suggesting to Her Majesty’s ministers that next time they get a letter from a touchy barbarian despot, it might save ’em a deal of trouble and expense if they sent him a civil reply by return of post…”
[On which characteristically. caustic note
the twelfth packet of the Flashman Papers
comes to an end.]
APPENDIX I: The Road to Magdala
Perhaps because it was so unusual, perhaps because it was such a triumph, the Abyssinian War has attracted an embarrassment of authors, who have covered every aspect of the campaign. Holland and Hozier’s official report is the main source work, dealing with everything from the overall narrative of operations to the rates of pay of native water-carriers; Blanc and Rassam have described the experiences of the prisoners, and the march has been covered in detail by Stanley, Henty, C. R. Markham’s History of the Abyssinian Expedition, 1869, A. F. Shepherd’s The Campaign in Abyssinia, 1868, and others. But for those who would like good shorter works by later historians, they cannot do better than Frederick Myatt’s The March to Magdala, 1970, and Moorehead’s The Blue Nile, which in its portrait of the river and its history includes an account of Napier’s march. The Diary of William Simpson of the Illustrated London News has been previously mentioned, and one cannot omit the week by week coverage which that paper gave to the campaign, with excellent illustrations.
Finally, whoever wishes to understand events which led up to the war, and the history of the country in which it was fought, will find Frank R. Cana’s essay in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910, most helpful, while Percy Arnold’s Prelude to Magdala, 1991, is invaluable as a detailed and author itative work on the diplomatic preliminaries to the war.
APPENDIX II: Theodore and Napier
It is curious that although Flashman’s involvement in the war was peripheral, he probably knew Theodore, the man in the eye of the storm, better than anyone except perhaps Rassam and Speedy. He is also the foremost authority for those remarkable sister-queens, Masteeat and the mysterious Uliba-Wark, and for the conduct of the Galla part of the campaign. No one saw the Abyssinian side of the crisis as closely as Flashman.
Trying to make sense of the Emperor is really a waste of time. He is beyond the reach of psychiatrists and psychologists, and even if he were not it is doubtful if they could understand let alone explain him. Flashman does not try, and one can say only that his portrait of Theodore, drawn at close range if on brief acquaintance, tallies closely with those which have come to us from Blanc, Rassam, and other contemporary authorities. Almost all the thoughts and ideas, and even the very words, which Flashman attributes to him, are to be found elsewhere, in the reports of other witnesses, and in Theodore’s own letters. His massively split personality, his wild swings of mood, his periods of rational, even light-hearted conver sation contrasted with his ungovernable rages, his benevolent impulses, his evident urge to self-destruction, his drunkenness, his restless energy, his undoubted abilities, and his truly devilish wicked ness—all these things which Flashman describes are echoes of what others saw in this strange, gifted, proud, and all too horrible man.