Genteel soldiering

“Nothing can withstand the might of the Tien-Wang,” says Lee, and I thought, God help Shanghai. I realized then that my soldiering had been of the genteel, polite variety — well-mannered actions like Cawnpore and Balaclava and the Kabul retreat in which the occasional prisoner was taken. In China, the idea is to kill everything that stirs and burn everything that don’t. Just that.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.125, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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