Flashman on the March

things are better not known. Enough that she is at peace.”

That was all she said to me, and I saw her only once more, on the following day outside her splendid silk pavilion, when Gobayzy sent word that he was honoured by the offer of Magdala, but on the whole he’d rather not. So the amba was hers, says Napier, but she must understand that he was bound to destroy its defences and burn all its buildings, to mark the disapproval (that was the word he used, so help me) of its late ruler’s conduct in daring to imprison and maltreat British citizens. She assured him that fire could only purify the place, and departed with her retinue, borne in a palki and smiling graciously on the troops who cheered her away.

The same afternoon Magdala was set on fire. The King’s Own had it cleared of its last inhabitants by four o’clock, the Sappers and Miners had laid their charges, and presently in a series of thun derous explosions the gates and defences were blown up, the last of the cannon destroyed, and the whole ramshackle town with its thatched palaces and prisons and houses put to the torch. It went up in a series of fiery jets which the wind levelled in a great rushing of flame which, as Stanley says, turned the whole top of the amba with its three thousand buildings into a huge lake of fire. The whole army watched, and I heard a fellow say that Hell must look like that, but he was wrong; the Summer Palace burning, that was Hell, wonderful beauty smashed and consumed in a mighty holocaust; Magdala was a vermin-ridden pest-hole which its dwellers had been only too glad to leave.

Indeed, they couldn’t get far enough away from it, and it was a swarming multitude tens of thousands strong, men, women, chicos, beasts and all their paraphernalia, that set off from Arogee that same day, down the defile to the Bechelo; that was Napier’s other great concern, to see them safe beyond the reach of the Galla marauders who’d been denied the plunder of Magdala and were itching to make up for it at the expense of the fugitives. Our troops rode herd on them the whole way, but Napier would run no risks, and had cavalry patrols escort them for another twenty miles beyond the river.

The next day, the eighteenth, the army set off north, with the Sherwood Foresters leading the way, their band thumping out “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” and “Brighton Camp', and behind them the Native Infantry sepoys swinging along followed by the jingling troopers, the Scindees and lancers and Dragoon Guards, and behind them the guns and the matlows of the Naval Brigade, and last of all the 33rd, the Irish hooligans of the Duke of Wellington’s, the long khaki column winding down the defile, dirty, bedraggled, tired, and happy, catching the drift of the music on the air and joining in:

I seek no more the fine and gay, They serve but to remind me, How swift the hours did pass away With the girl I left behind me

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