The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light

'I doubt it—but you don't know that,' says I, warming to my work. 'Anyway, it's a dam' good reason to give your colonels for not attacking headlong. Now then, what force has Tej Singh, and where?'

'Thirty thousand infantry, with heavy guns, behind us along the river.' He shuddered. 'Thank God I have only light artillery—with heavy pieces I should have no excuse for not blowing Littler's position to rubble!'

'Never mind Littler! What news of Gough?'

'Two days ago he was at Lutwalla, a hundred miles away! He will be here in two days—but word is that he has scarcely ten thousand men, only half of them British! If he comes on, we are sure to defeat him!' He was almost crying, wrenching off his beard net and trembling like a fever case. 'What can I do to prevent it? Even if I give reasons for not taking Ferozepore, I cannot avoid battle with the Jangi lat! Help me, Flashman bahadur! Tell me what I must do!'

Well, this was a real facer, if you like. Gardner, for all his misgivings about Lal, had been sure that he and Tej would have some scheme for leading their army to destruction—that was what I was here for, dammit, to carry their plans to Gough! And it was plain as a pikestaff that they hadn't any. And Lal expected me, a junior officer, to plot his own defeat for him. And as I stared at that shivering, helpless clown, it came to me with awful clarity that if I didn't, no one else would.

It ain't the kind of problem you meet every day. I doubt if it's ever been posed at Staff College … 'Now then, Mr Flashman, you command an army fifty thousand strong, with heavy guns, well supplied, their lines of communication protected by an excellent river. Against you is a force of only ten thousand, with light guns, exhausted after a week's forced marching, short of food and fodder and damned near dying of thirst. Now then, sir, answer directly, no hedging—how do you lose, hey? Come, come, you've just given excellent reasons for not taking a town that's lying at your mercy! This should be child's play to a man with your God-given gift of catastrophe! Well, sir?'

Lal was gibbering at me, his eyes full of terrified entreaty—and I knew that if I wavered now it would be all up with him. He'd break, and his colonels would either hang or depose him, and put a decent soldier in his place— the very thing that Gardner had feared. And that would be the end of Gough's advancing force, and perhaps the war, and British India. And no doubt, of me. But if I could rally this spineless wreck, and think of some plan that would satisfy his colonels and at the same time bring the Khalsa to destruction … Aye, just so.

To gain time, I asked for a map, and he pawed among his gear and produced a splendid illuminated document with all the forts in red and the rivers in turquoise, and little bearded wallahs with tulwars chasing each other round the margin on elephants. I studied it, trying to think, and gripping my belt to keep my hand from trembling.

I've told you I didn't know much about war, in those days. Tactically, I was a novice who could bungle a section flanking movement with the worst of them—but strategy's another matter. At its simplest, it's mere common sense—and if the First Sikh War was anything, it was simple, thank God. Also, strategy seldom involves your own neck. So I conned the map, weighing the facts that Lal had given me, and applied the age-old laws that you learn in the school playground.

To win, the Khalsa need only take Ferozepore and wait for Gough to come and be slaughtered by overwhelming odds and big guns. To lose, they must be divided, and the weaker part sent to meet Gough with as little artillery as possible. If I could contrive that the first battle was on near level terms, or even odds of three to two against us, I'd have given Gough victory on a lordly dish. Daft he might, be, but he could still out-manoeuvre any Sikh commander, and if they didn't have their big guns along, British cavalry and infantry would do the business. Gough believed in the bayonet: give him a chance to use it, and the Khalsa were beat—in the first battle, at least. After that, Paddy would have to take care of the war himself.

So I figured, with the sweat cold on my skin, my ankle giving me hell's delight, and Lal mumping at my elbow. D'you know, that steadied me—encountering a liver whiter than my own. Well, it don't happen that often. This is what I told him:

'Call your staff together—generals and brigadiers, no colonels. Tej Singh as well. Tell 'em you won't attack Ferozepore, because it's mined, you don't trust the deserters' tale of Littler's weakness, and as Wazir it's beneath your dignity to engage anyone but the Jangi lat himself. Also, there's a risk that if you get embroiled with Littler, and Gough arrives early, you may be caught between two fires. Don't let 'em argue. Simply say that Ferozepore don't matter, d'you see—it can be wiped up when you've settled Gough. Lay down the law, high-handed. Very good?'

He nodded, rubbing his face and biting his knuckle—he had the wind up to such a tune that I swear if I'd told him to march on Ceylon, he'd have cried amen.

'Now, your gorracharra are deployed already—send them against Gough with their horse artillery, pointing out that they outnumber him two to one. You'll meet him somewhere between here and Woodnee, and if you detach some of your force to entrench at Ferozeshah or Sultan Khan Wallah, you'll reduce the odds, d'you see? Gough will do the rest —'

'But Tej Singh?' he bleated. 'He has thirty thousand infantry, and the heavy guns —'

'He's to sit down here and watch Littler, in place of your gorracharra. Yes, yes, I know—that don't take thirty thousand men. He must divide his force in turn, leaving only enough to watch Ferozepore, while the rest follow you as slowly as Tej can decently arrange—it'll take him time to bring 'em down here from the river, and if he sets about it in the right spirit he can waste the best part of a week, I dare say —'

'But to divide the Khalsa?' goggles he. 'It is not good strategy, surely? The generals will not permit —'

'To hell with the generals—you're the Wazir!' cries I. 'It's bloody good strategy, you can tell 'em, to send your most mobile troops to meet the Jangi lat when he leasts expects 'em and his own men are so fagged they'll be marching on their chinstraps! Tej Singh will back you up, if you prime him first —'

'But suppose … suppose we beat the Jangi lat—he has only ten thousand, and as you say, they will be tired —'

'Tired or not, they'll tear your gorracharra to pieces if the odds ain't too heavy! And I doubt if Gough's as weak as you think. Good God, man, he's got another twenty thousand somewhere between Ludhiana and Umballa—he ain't going to send 'em on furlough, you know! And the Khalsa will be in three parts, don't you see? Well, none of those three parts is going to be a match for Paddy Gough's boys, let me tell you!'

I believed it, too, and if I wasn't altogether right it was because I lacked experience. I was trusting to the old maxim that one British soldier is worth any two niggers any day. It's a fair rule of thumb, mind you, but I can look back now on my military career and count four exceptions who always gave Atkins a damned good run for his money. Three of them were Zulu, John Gurkha, and Fuzzy-wuzzy. I wasn't to know, then, that the fourth one was the Sikh.

It took me another hour of explanation and argument to convince Lal that my scheme was his only hope of getting his army properly leathered. It was hard sledding, for he was the kind of coward who's too far gone even to clutch at straws—not my kind of funk at all. In the end I gave him Jeendan's recipe to Jawaheer, which you'll recall was to rattle a wench to put him in fighting trim, but whether Lal took it or not I can't say, for I caulked out in an alcove of his pavilion, and didn't wake until noon. By that time Tej Singh had arrived, still fat as butter and quite as reliable, to judge from the furtive enthusiasm with which he greeted me. But while he was every bit as windy as Lal, he was a sight smarter, and once the Flashman Plan had been expounded he hailed it as a masterpiece; let my directions be followed and Gough would have the Khalsa looking like a Frenchman's knapsack in no time, was Tej's view. I guessed that what really commended my scheme to him was that he'd be well away from the firing, but he showed a good grasp of the details, and had some sound notions of his own: one, I remember, was that he would take care to keep his guarding force on the north and west of Ferozepore, so that Littler would be able to slip away and join Gough without hindrance if he wanted to. That, as you'll see, proved to be of prime importance, so I reckon Tej earned himself a Ferozeshah medal for that alone, if everyone had his due.

You must imagine our conference being carried on in lowered voices in Lal's sleeping quarters, and a bonny trio we were. Our gallant Wazir, when he wasn't peeping out to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, was brisking himself up with copious pinches of Peshawar snuff which I suspect contained something a sight more stimulating than powdered tobacco; he seemed to take heart from the confidence of Tej Singh, who paced the apartment like Napoleon at Marengo, heaving his guts before him and tripping over his sabre while describing to me, in a gloating whisper, how the Khalsa would flee in disorder at the first setback; I lay nursing my ankle, trying