Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger
The last three books in George MacDonald Fraser’s uproarious bestselling Flashman series, now available in one ebook for the first time.FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON: 1860As China seethes through the bloodiest civil war in history, and the British and French armies hack their way to the heart of the Forbidden City, Flashman finds his services much in demand. There’s the vicar’s wife, desperate to sell her cargo of opium; the Amazonian bandit queen who, having mislaid five husbands, is casting about for a sixth; Lord Elgin in need of an intelligence chief for a perilous mission to Peking; and the Emperor’s ravishing concubine who would have the hairy barbarian shaved and perfumes and delivered to her pavilion…FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH: 1867-8Who better to undertake a perilous mission into deepest Abyssinia to rescue Britons held hostage by a mad emperor that the ever reluctant Sir Harry Flashman, V.C.? In a land populated by warriors, leather-clad nymphs with a penchant for torture, de-ballocking Amazons, and a voluptuous queen who feeds disobliging guest to her pet lions,Flash Harry’s mastery of lechery and poltrooney will be put to the ultimate test.FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER: 1878-1894Whether embroiled in a plot to assassinate Emperor Franz-Josef, saving the Prince of Wales from scandal, or galloping hell-for-leather with a horde of angry Zulus in hot pursuit, Flashman never disappoints.
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THE FLASHMAN PAPERS BOOKS 10–12
FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER
GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
Table of Contents
FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON
from The Flashman Papers, 1860
Edited and Arranged by
GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
Table of Contents
Appendix I: The Taiping Rebellion
It is now twenty years since the Flashman Papers, the memoirs of the notorious Rugby School bully who became a Victorian hero, were found in a Leicestershire saleroom. Of the dozen or so packets of manuscript, seven have so far been published in book form; they have covered four military campaigns (the First Afghan War, Crimea, Indian Mutiny, and Sioux War of 1879), and five episodes of less formal and generally reluctant active service – pirate-hunting with Brooke of Sarawak; as military adviser to Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar; as conspirator with Bismarck in the Schleswig-Holstein affair; in the African slave trade and Underground Railroad; and on the American frontier during the Gold Rush. This eighth volume sees him returning to military service in the Taiping Rebellion and Pekin Expedition of 1860.
Not the least interesting feature of Flashman’s recollections, to students of history, is the light they cast on the early years of many famous Victorians, who are seen through the unsparing eyes of one who, while a self-confessed coward, libertine, and scoundrel, was nevertheless a scrupulous reporter. Thus, we have seen him fleeing the murderous wrath of the young politician Bismarck, viewing Congressman Lincoln with wary respect, teaching the infant Crazy Horse how to wink, admiring Lola Montez the aspiring novelty dancer, and toadying to the young Queen Victoria herself. In China he encounters two of the great mercenary captains, a future empress, the founding fathers of the modern British Army and Navy, and those strange, forgotten peasants who changed the face of a great empire. It may be that he provides some new historical insights, while again demonstrating the lengths to which perfidy, impudence, immorality, and poltroonery may be stretched in the enforced pursuit of fame, riches, and above all, survival.
In accordance with the wishes of Mr Paget Morrison, owner of the Flashman manuscripts, I have confined my editing to correcting the old soldier’s spelling, checking the accuracy of the narrative (which is exact where matters of verifiable historical fact are concerned) and inserting the usual foot-notes, appendices, and glossary.
G.M.F.
Old Professor Flashy’s first law of economics is that the time to beware of a pretty woman is not when you’re flush of cash (well, you know what she’s after, and what’s a bankroll more or less?), but when you’re short of the scratch, and she offers to set you right. Because that ain’t natural, and God knows what she’s up to. I learned this when I was fourteen, and one Lady Geraldine, a high-spirited Hebe ten years my senior, lured me out in a punt with the promise of a crown if I minded her clothes while she went bathing. In all innocence, I accepted – and I haven’t seen that five bob yet, because the randy baggage had to shell out all her loose change to buy the silence of the grinning water-bailiff who caught us unawares in the reeds, where she was teaching me natural history after her swim. I had the presence of mind even at that tender age to clap my breeches over my face and so avoid recognition as I fled, but you take the point – I had been misled, in my youthful simplicity, by a designing female who played on my natural cupidity.
Ever since, when they’ve dangled rich rewards before me, I’ve taken fright. If the case of Mrs Phoebe Carpenter was an exception – well, she was a clergyman’s wife, and you don’t expect double-dealing from a wide-eyed simperer who sings come-to-Jesus in the choir. I don’t know why I bothered with her … yes, I do, though; shaped like an Indian nautch-dancer under her muslin, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and with that pouting lower lip that’s as good as a beckoning finger to chaps like me – she reminded me rather of my darling wife, whom I hadn’t seen in more than three years and was getting uncommon hungry for. So, reading the invitation in Mrs Carpenter’s demure smile, and having ten days to loaf in Hong Kong before my ship sailed for Home>1, I decided to have a cast at her; it was a dead-and-alive hole in ’60, I can tell you, and how else should a weary soldier pass his time?
So I attended morning and evening service, hollering hosannas and nodding stern approval while her drone of a husband sermonised about temptation and the snares that Satan spreads (about which he didn’t know the first dam’ thing), and gallantly helping her to gather up the hymn-books afterwards. I dined with them, traded a text or two with the Reverend, joined them in evening prayers, squired her along the Queen’s Road – she was all for it, of course, but what was middling rum was that he was, too; it ain’t every middle-aged vicar who cares to see his young bride escorted by a dashing Lancer with Balaclava whiskers. I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan. If you’ve read my earlier memoirs you’ll know all about it – and how by shirking, running, diving into cover, and shielding my quaking carcase behind better men, I had emerged after four campaigns with tremendous credit, a tidy sum in loot, and a chestful of tinware. I was a colonel of six years’ seniority at 37, big, bluff, handsome Flash Harry, quite a favourite with Queen and Consort, well spoken of by Palmerston and my chiefs, married to the beauteous and wealthy daughter of a peer (and a dead peer, at that) – and only I knew (though I’d a feeling that wily old Colin Campbell suspected) that my fame was all a fraud and a sham.
