2. A reasonable summary of Anglo-Chinese relations up to 1860, including the Arrow War of 1856. For details of the Palmerston-Cobden debate (February 26, 1857), see Division IV of J. Ewing Ritchie's Life and Times of Viscount Palmerston.
3. Flashman, of course, had no scruples about the opium trade, but the mere fact that he mentioned morality to Mrs Carpenter is some reflection of the opposition that was growing against the opium interests. China had legalised the traffic for the first time under the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin; the opium lobby brazenly claimed that this was voluntary; Sir Thomas Wade, a leading China expert, said the concession had been "extorted", and Lord Elgin postponed the relevant clause rather than force China's hand. In fact, the Chinese recognised that there was nothing they could do about it; "the present generation of smokers must and will have opium," their commissioner told Elgin, a fact recognised by such experienced observers as the missionary Alexander Williamson, who called for abolition by Britain, but admitted that it would make little difference to the Chinese, who would get their drug anyway (Williamson knew the figures, and that it was not uncommon for a labourer to smoke 80 cash worth of opium a day out of his wage of 120 cash (21/2p.)). This argument was fastened on by the opium lobby, whose line is echoed by Mrs Carpenter; what is surprising is that even old China hands like John Scarth could assert that the drug was smoked as a sedative rather than as a narcotic. An excellent summary of the subject is J. Spencer Hill's Maitland Prize-winning essay of 1882, The Indo-Chinese Opium Trade (1884); Hill came to the subject strongly prejudiced against the anti-opium lobby, but his investigations changed his mind. (See also John Scarth, Twelve Years in China (1860); Alexander Williamson, Travels in North China (1870); H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, 1908.)
4. Unless there were two Jack Fishers, midshipmen on the China Station in 1860, Flashman's young acquaintance can only have been John Arbuthnot ("Jackie") Fisher, later admiral of the fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, godfather of the Dreadnought battleship, and the foremost name in the Royal Navy since Nelson. Just as Wolseley (see Note 6) may be called the architect of the modern British Army, so Fisher with his "big-gun" turbine ships gave the Royal Navy command of the seas in the first half of the present century. He entered the navy when he was thirteen, and served during the Crimea before going to the China Station in 1859, where he took part in the capture of Canton and the attack on Taku Forts. He was in Chinese waters in the spring of 1860, and still a midshipman although acting-lieutenant, a rank not confirmed until the end of the year. Since Flashman certainly knew Fisher in later life, it is surprising that he does not identify him at their first meeting; on the other hand, his brief description sounds very like the young "Bulldog Jackie".
5. Chinese secret societies, tongs and triads (the Heaven and Earth Association, the Dagger Men, and others) had various recognition signals; three fingers round a cup was that of the White Lilies. (See Scarth.)
6. Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913), "the model of a modern major-general", was one of Britain's most important soldiers. He won no distinction as a commander in a great war, but his record in the so-called "little wars"—indeed, the variety and success of his service generally—is probably unique in the history of arms. An Anglo-Irishman, he followed his own maxim that if a young officer wants to do well he should try to get himself killed; Wolseley tried really hard, first in the Burma War, when he was badly wounded leading the attack on an enemy stockade; in the Crimea, where he was twice wounded, losing an eye; in the Indian Mutiny, where he served in the relief and siege of Lucknow, being five times mentioned in despatches; in the China War of 1860; in Canada, where in his first independent command he put down the Red River Rebellion without a casualty; in Africa, where he won a lightning campaign against King Koffee of Ashanti, and captured Cetewayo, the Zulu leader; in Egypt, where he beat Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir and took Cairo; in the Sudan, where he reached Khartoum just too late to rescue Gordon, his old friend of the Crimea and China. He was made a viscount, and later field marshal.
But Wolseley's real importance was as a military reformer and creator of the modern British Army; having seen and suffered under a traditional regime which, while largely successful, had hardly changed in centuries, and being a confirmed champion of the private soldier, he foresaw the need for change in a rapidly changing military world. He had seen the first "modern war" in the struggle between the American States (where he met Lee and Stonewall Jackson), and his reforms and reorganisations, bitterly opposed at the time, prepared the British Army for a new era of warfare; his influence, largely forgotten, is on the Army still. He was (as Gilbert and Grossmith recognised when they caricatured him in "The Pirates of Penzance") a man of many talents; a trained draughtsman and surveyor, he sketched and painted well, and wrote several books, including most notably The Soldier's Pocket Book, a life of Marlborough, a novel, and his reminiscences of the China campaign.
Flashman shows him briefly as a young staff-officer, before the full flowering of the quick temper and impatient efficiency which were to make the expression "All Sir Garnet" synonymous with the modern "Right on!" Wolseley always wanted the best; typically, he chose for one campaign a man who had beaten him in competition. Disraeli passed an illuminating judgment on him: "Wolseley is an egotist and a braggart. So was Nelson." (See his Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (1862), and Story of a Soldier's Life (1903); Sir John Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol XIII (1930); Dictionary of National Biography.
7. Since Flashman probably knew more eminent fighting men—including the great names of the Crimea, Mutiny, U.S. Civil War, and Afghan and American frontiers, to say nothing of his various native foemen—than any other observer of his day, his opinion of James Hope Grant (1808-75) has to be taken seriously. The record seems to bear him out; Grant's active service in India and China is chiefly remarkable for the amount of time he spent in hand-to-hand combat, to which he brought an iron constitution and an apparently total disregard for his own safety. "To die is nothing," he once explained, "it's only going from one room to another." It was in outpost work and the leadership of flying cavalry columns that his talent lay, although his one major command (China, 1860) was conducted with efficiency, despite his being to some extent at the mercy of his diplomats (Fortescue is scathing on this). Flashman's character sketch and physical description are sound; he makes the important point that the terrible fighter and stern disciplinarian was an unusually gentle and kindly man, whose consuming interest was music—Grant was a gifted 'cellist and composer, and indeed owed an early advancement to the fact that his commanding general was a keen violinist who wanted a 'cello player as brigade-major. Despite his sketchy education, Grant was something of a military innovator; he is credited with introducing regular manoeuvres and the war game, and it is interesting that Wolseley, the most intellectual of soldiers, should say: "If I have attained any measure of military prosperity, my gratitude is due to one man, and that man is Sir Hope Grant." (See Sir Hope Grant and Major Knollys, Incidents in the China War; Fortescue; D.N.B.)
8. The Hon. F. W. A. Bruce was at 46 a diplomat of considerable experience, having served in South America, Egypt, Hong Kong (as colonial secretary), Newfoundland (as governor), and in China, first as secretary to his brother, and from 1858 as superintendent of trade and envoy extraordinary to the Chinese Empire.