3. Flashman's memory is slightly at fault here. He was not, as he says, "retired on half-pay" at this time; in fact, he had been in Singapore inspecting Australian horses for the East India Company army, and it was during this visit that his wife, Elspeth, was kidnapped by Borneo pirates, and the adventure began which culminated in the Flashmans' rescue from Madagascar in June, 1845. In the circumstances, his failure to remember his exact military status is understandable. As to his allowing himself to be bullied into going to India, he may not have been quite as reluctant as he suggests; the Governor of Mauritius certainly had no power to compel him, and it may well have been that the Punjab crisis (which had not yet assumed serious proportions) seemed a less daunting prospect than returning to face his ill-willers in England.
4. "Elphy Bey" was Major-general William Elphinstone, commander of the British force which was wiped out on the retreat from Kabul in 1842, in which Flashman ingloriously won his first laurels. A fine soldier who distinguished himself at Waterloo, Elphinstone was hopelessly inept in Afghanistan; crippled by gout, worn out, and according to one historian, prematurely senile, he was incapable of opposing either his political advisers or the Afghans, but in fairness he was less to blame than those who appointed him to a post for which he was unfitted. Flashman gives a perceptive but characteristically uncharitable sketch of him in the first volume of the Flashman Papers. (See also J. W. Fortescue's History of the British Army, vol. xii (1927); Subedar Sita Ram's From Sepoy to Subedar (1873), and Patrick Macrory's Signal Catastrophe (1966).)
5. "John Company"—the Honourable East India Company, described by Macaulay as "the strangest of all govermnents .. for the strangest of all empires", was Britain's presence in India, with its own armed forces, civil service, and judiciary, until after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, when it was replaced by direct rule of the Crown. Flashman's definition of its boundaries in 1845 is roughly correct, and although at this period it controlled less than half of the subcontinent, his expression "lord of the land" is well chosen: the Company was easily the strongest force in Asia, and at its height had a revenue greater than Britain's and governed almost one-fifth of the world's population. (See The East India Company, by Brian Gardner (1971))
Flashman, writing in the early years of the present century, occasionally uses the word Sirkar when referring to the British power; the word in this sense means "government", but it was probably not applied exclusively to British authority as early as 1845.
6. The origins and development of the Sutlej crisis are controversial, and it is difficult even today to give an account that will satisfy everyone; nevertheless, Flashman's summary seems an eminently fair one. His racy little narrative of the power struggle at Lahore after the death of Runjeet Singh is accurate so far as it goes; indeed, it spares readers some of the gorier details (no doubt only because Flashman was unaware of them). His view of the gathering storm, the precarious position of the Lahore durbar, the menace of the Khalsa, and the misgivings of the British authorities about the loyalty of their native troops, and their ability to deal with an invasion, are reflected in the journals and letters of his contemporaries. Other points and personalities he mentions will be dealt with more fully in subsequent Notes. (See Appendix I, and G. Carmichael Smyth, History of the Reigning Family of Lahore (1847); W. Broadfoot, The Career of Major George Broadfoot (1888); Charles, Viscount Hardinge, Viscount Hardinge (1891); W. L. M'Gregor, History of the Sikhs, vol. ii (1846); Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs, vol. 2 (1966); J. D. Cunningham, History of the Sikhs (1849); George Bruce, Six Battles for India (1969); Fortescue; Vincent Smith, Oxford History of India (1920).)
7. Sir Hugh Gough (1779-1869) was that not unusual combination: a stern and ruthless soldier, but a kindly and likeable man. He was also entirely "Irish"—reckless, good-humoured, careless of convention and authority, and possessed of great charm; as a general, he was unpredictable and unorthodox, preferring to engage his enemy hand-to-hand and trust to the superiority of the British bayonet and sabre rather than indulge in the sophistications of manoeuvre. He attracted numerous critics, who drew attention to his shortcomings as a military organiser and tactician but could not deny his saving grace as a commander—he kept on winning. By 1845 he had a combat record unequalled by any soldier living, Wellington included, having been commissioned at 13, fought against the Dutch in South Africa and Surinam, pursued brigands in Trinidad, served throughout the Peninsular War (in which he received various wounds and a knighthood), commanded a British expedition to China, stormed Canton, forced the surrender of Nanking, and beaten the Mahrattas in India. At the time of the Sutlej crisis he was 66 years old, but sprightly in body and spirit, handsome, erect, with long receding white hair and fine moustaches and side-whiskers. The best-known portrait shows him in his famous white "fighting coat", pointing with an outstretched arm: it is said to illustrate one of the many critical moments in his career when, at Sobraon, he shouted: "What? Withdraw? Indeed I will not! Tell Sir Robert Dick to move on, in the name of God!" (See R. S. Rait, Life and Campaigns of Hugh, 1st Viscount Gough (1903); Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers (1985) and other works cited in these Notes.)
Sir Robert ("Fighting Bob") Sale was another highly combative general, celebrated for leading from the front, and once, when his men were mutinous, inviting them to shoot him. He fought in Burma, and in the Afghan War, where he was second-in-command of the army, and earned distinction as the defender of Jallalabad. (See also Note 9.)
8. War with the Gurkhas in 1815 brought the British to Simla, and the first European house was built there in the 1820s by one Captain Kennedy, the local superintendent, whose hospitality may have laid the foundations of its popularity as a resort. Emily Eden was the sister of Lord Auckland, Governor-General 1835-41. (See the excellently-illustrated Simla: a British Hill Station, by Pat Barr and Ray Desmond (1978).)
9. Adapting Raleigh's famous judgment on Henry VIII, one may say that "if all the patterns and pictures of the memsahibs of British India were lost to the world, they might be painted to the life from Lady Sale". Born Florentia Wynch, she was 21 when she married the dashing young Captain Robert Sale, by whom she had twelve children, one of whom, as Mrs Alexandrine Sturt, shared with her mother the horrors of the march from Kabul. Lady Sale was then 54, but although she was twice wounded and had her clothing shot through by jezzail bullets, she worked tirelessly for the sick and wounded, and for the women and children who took part in that fearful journey over the snowbound Afghan passes. Throughout the march, and during the months which she suffered in Afghan captivity, she kept the diary which is the classic account of the Kabul retreat in which all but a handful died out of 14,000. It is one of the great military journals, and a remarkable personal memoir of an indomitable woman, who recorded battle, massacre, earthquake, hardship, escape, and everyday detail with a sharp and often caustic eye. Her reaction, when soldiers were reluctant to take up their muskets to form an advance guard was: "You had better give me one, and I will lead the party." Other typical observations are: "I had, fortunately, only one ball in my arm," and the brisk entry for July 24, when she was a prisoner: "At two p.m. Mrs Sturt presented me with a grand-daughter—another female captive." During the march her son-in-law, Captain Sturt, had died beside her in the snow. Her heroism on the march was rewarded by an annual pension of Ł500 from Queen Victoria, and when she died, in her sixty-sixth year, her tombstone was given the appropriate inscription: "Under this stone reposes all that could die of Lady Sale".