[13]. This is the first substantial reference in the Papers to Flashman’s sojourn in Mexico in the latter half of the 1860s; hitherto we have known only that he spent time in a Mexican prison, and was an aide-de-camp to the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria. Maximilian, an amiable and well-intentioned prince, interested in botany, was a pawn in the ambitious schemes of Napoleon III of France, who took advantage of civil war in Mexico to send in a French army, ostensibly to collect war debts from the victorious `Liberals' of Benito Juarez, but in fact to establish a puppet empire under Maximilian, who was persuaded to accept the Mexican crown in 1863. He set up a government and was planning social and educational reforms, including freedom for the Indians, but Juarez’s forces remained hostile to the imperial regime, and when Napoleon withdrew his forces, partly due to pressure from the Americans, who were sympathetic to Juarez’s republicans, Maximilian was left to his fate. He made a brave fight of it, but was captured by the Juaristas in May 1867, and executed by firing squad in the following month.
What part Flashman played in these events will no doubt be revealed when his Mexican papers come to light. We know that he was in the U.S. with President Lincoln a few days before the latter’s death in April 1865, so his Mexican adventures were presumably confined to the next two years at most. The reference to Princess Salm-Salm, the wife of Prince Felix Salm-Salm, a German officer who served in the U.S. Civil War (possibly with Flashman) and was later chief a.d.c. to Maximilian in Mexico, suggests that Flashman was involved in the efforts which both the Prince and Princess made to save the Emperor’s life; she was a handsome and fearless lady who has left a spirited account of her adventures in Mexico, and of her later life in European royal circles and in the Franco-Prussian war, in which her husband was killed. Her Ten Years of My Life (1868) and the Prince’s My Diary in Mexico (1874) which she published after his death, give invaluable details of Maximilian’s last days.
That the Emperor Maximilian was a cricketer seems to be confirmed by a photograph in a Brussels museum in which he is seen posing at the end of a match with members of the British Legation in Mexico City, c. 1865. The editor is indebted to Colonel J. M. C Watson for a copy of this picture.
[14]. Flashman seldom elaborates on international affairs, and it is probable that he has summarised, with commendable accuracy, the information given him by Willem von Starnberg touching on the state of the Austrian Empire and its ruler, the Hungarian question, and the relations of Emperor Franz-Josef, the Empress Elisabeth ("Sissi"), and their son, the Crown Prince Rudolf. (See Appendix.)
[15]. In 1853 Franz-Josef of Austria had escaped with a bad neck wound when he was stabbed by a Hungarian apprentice whose knife was impeded by the Emperor’s stiff military collar. Uniform also saved the life of the elderly German Emperor in 1878, when the helmet which he insisted on wearing in accordance with regulations took the blast of a double-barrelled shotgun; he had survived another shooting attempt only three weeks earlier. Tsar Alexander II of Russia was less fortunate; he was killed by a second bomb in St Petersburg in 1881, only minutes after an earlier device had wrecked his carriage. (See Bulow, and works cited in the Appendix.)
[16]. The quotation is from "In Ambush", in Stalky and Co.
[17]. Which it still retains. Ischl in Flashman’s time had a population of fewer than 3000, and seems to have changed little since then; its lack of size makes it a pleasant little gem among European resorts, tranquil and unhurried in its grand surroundings, and its shops and coffee-houses, with their remark-able range of confections, remain as attractive as ever. It is appropriate that such a Ruritanian setting should have been home to Franz Lehar (after Flashman’s day); his villa remains on the banks of the Traun, the Golden Ship was serving excellent cabbage a few years ago, and Frosch and his colleagues were still amusing audiences at the little theatre.
[18]. Anyone visiting the "Kaiservilla", the royal lodge at Bad Ischl, will probably share Flashman’s abiding memory. The lodge today is much as he describes it, and the horns of the Emperor’s quarries still adorn its walls in profusion. There is in fact a secret stairway from the Emperor’s rooms, remarkably modest chambers simply furnished with, among other items, the plain iron bedstead which he used. It is such an ordinary bedroom that it is hard to realise that this is where the First World War began.
Flashman’s brief acquaintance with Franz-Josef illustrates many of the Emperor’s characteristics: his passion for the military, his poor grasp of languages other than his own, his rather stuffy formality, his devotion to administrative detail, and the simplicity of his tastes—boiled beef and beer was a favourite meal. He enjoyed his rubbers of tarok, and in his later years especially it was a regular evening pastime. (See Appendix.)
[19]. There is an old salt-mine in the mountains of the Saltzkammergut above Ischl which corresponds so closely to Flashman’s description that it must surely be the same one. The strange pool is still there, and the bogies run on rails from the mine entrance into the great cavern.
[20]. The quoted line is spoken by Rudolf Rassendyll to Count Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda. Flashman claimed that he had told the story of his Strackenz adventure to Anthony Hope Hawkins (later Sir Anthony Hope) and that the novelist used it as the basis for his famous romance, modelling the Count of Hentzau on Rudi von Starnberg.
[21]. Caprice must have charmed at least three copies of Punch from her English tourist, including the most recent issue (October 13) in which France is depicted as a homely old woman. The cartoon of Gladstone dancing the hornpipe is from a September number (he was on a cruise with Lord Tennyson) and the alluring figure labelled "Manchester Ship Canal" is earlier still. Punch’s anti-Gallic prejudice runs through all three numbers. The blimpish British officers cited by Flashman are characters in Hector Servadac, one of Jules Verne’s later science-fiction novels (1877). Police whistles came into use in 1883.
[22]. There were many distinguished de la Tour d’Auvergnes, principally Theophile Maio Corret of that name, a French soldier renowned for his courage and chivalry, who died in 1800, having consistently refused pro-motion beyond the rank of captain. He was known as the First Grenadier of France.
[23]. W. Pembroke Fetridge was the author of The American Traveller’s Guide: Harper’s Handbook, for Travellers in Europe, which first appeared in 1862. Flashman probably had the 1871 edition.
[24]. The unique position which Chinese Gordon held in the eyes of officialdom and the public was demonstrated by the fact that when he left Charing Cross Station for the Sudan, the Foreign Secretary bought his ticket, the Duke of Cambridge held the carriage door for him, and Lord (formerly Sir Garnet) Wolseley carried his bag. (See Charles Chenevix Trench, Charley Gordon, 1978.)