The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald страница 226

Название: The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

Автор: George Fraser MacDonald

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Приключения: прочее

Серия:

isbn: 9780007532513

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ conduct. Palmerston, equally inevitably, defended Brooke as a man of “unblemished honour”, and Catchick Moses and the Singapore merchants rallied to his support. In the event, the inquiry cleared Brooke completely, which was probably a fair decision; his distant critics might think that he had pursued head-hunters and sea-robbers with excessive enthusiasm, but the coast villagers who had suffered generations of plundering and slavery took a different view.

       APPENDIX 3: Queen Ranavalona I

      That he has reported his personal acquaintance with her accurately there is no reason to doubt. His account of Madagascar and its strange customs accords with other sources, as do his descriptions of such minutiae as the Queen’s eccentric wardrobe, her Napoleonic paintings, furniture, idols, place-cards at dinner, drinking habits, and even musical preferences. His picture of her fantastically dressed court, her midnight party, and the public ceremony of the Queen’s bath can be verified in detail. As to her behaviour with him, it is known that she had lovers – possibly even before her husband’s death, although that admittedly is pure speculation based on a study of the events which brought her to the throne, on which Flashman touches only briefly.

      King Radama, her husband, had died suddenly at the age of 36 in 1828. Since they had no children, the heir was the king’s nephew, Rakotobe; his supporters, foreseeing a power struggle, concealed the news of the king’s death for some days to enable Rakotobe to consolidate his claim. In the meantime, however, a young officer named Andriamihaja, who was ostensibly among Rakotobe’s supporters, betrayed the news of the king’s death to Ranavalona, for reasons which are not disclosed. She promptly got the leading military men on her side, put it about that the idols favoured her claim to the throne, and ruthlessly slaughtered all who resisted, including the unfortunate Rakotobe. She rewarded Andriamihaja’s treachery by making him commander-in-chief and taking (or confirming) him as her lover – he was presently accused of treachery, put to the tanguin, and executed. (See Oliver, vol. i.)

      The next 35 years were a reign of terror, religious persecution, and genocide on a scale (considering Madagascar’s size and limited population) hardly matched until our own times. That Ranavalona escaped assassination or deposition is testimony to the strength with which she wielded her absolute power, and to her capacity for surviving plots. How many of these there were, we cannot know, but none succeeded-including the Flashman coup of 1845, and a later conspiracy in which Ida Pfeiffer, then aged 60, found herself involved, to her considerable alarm: she describes in her Travels how Prince Rakota (still evidently intent on getting rid of mother) showed her the arsenal he intended to use in his revolt, and how she then went to bed and had nightmares about the tanguin test.

      Since we know that Rakota and Laborde both survived the plot which Flashman describes, it seems likely that it simply died stillborn, or that the Queen, for some reason, forebore to take vengeance on the conspirators. It would be pleasant to think that Mr Fankanonikaka, at least, was spared to continue his devoted service to his queen and country.

       Notes

1. Since most of the Flashman Papers were written between 1900 and 1905, it seems likely that Flashman is here referring to the Test Match series of 1901–2, which Australia won by four matches to one, and possibly also to the series of summer 1902, when the Australians retained the Ashes, 2–1. It was in this year that an attempt to amend the ever-controversial leg-before-wicket rule failed.
2. Flashman’s behaviour on the football field is memorably described in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, where Thomas Hughes refers to his late arrival at scrimmages “with shouts and great action”.
3. Flashman’s memory is playing him false here, but only slightly. The so-called Rebecca Riots did not begin until some months later, in 1843, when a peculiar secret society known as “Rebecca and her Daughters” began a terrorist campaign against high toll charges in South Wales. They went armed, masked, and disguised as women, and would descend by night on toll-houses and toll-gates, which they wrecked. They apparently took their name from an allusion in Genesis xxiv, 60: “And they blessed Rebekah … and said … let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.” (See Halevy’s History of the English People, vol. iv, and Punch, vol. v, introduction, 1843.)
4. This is the earliest mention in any sporting or literary record of the “hat trick”, signifying the feat by a bowler of taking three wickets with successive balls, which traditionally entitles him to a new hat. The phrase has now, of course, a wider application outside cricket, covering three successive triumphs of any kind – a hat-trick of goals or election victories, for example. It is interesting to speculate, not only that the phrase had its origin in Mynn’s impulsive gesture to Flashman, but also that it was first used ironically.
5. Lords Haddington and Stanley were respectively First Lord of the Admiralty and Colonial Secretary; Lord Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Flashman is being malicious in coupling Deaf Burke and Lord Brougham as rascals – one was a famous prize-fighter and the other a prominent Whig politican.
6. СКАЧАТЬ