Contemplating the infinite

Hell of a place the Sudan, all rock and sand and thorn and the most monstorous savages in creation; Charley Gordon, my China acquaintance, had governed it in the 70s, and spent most of his time poring over the scriptures and chasing slavers before retiring to Palestine to watch rocks and contemplate the infinite.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.48, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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The mystery that binds

“…no. He’s teaching China. The word will go to the ends of the Empire — how the barbarians came, and smashed the chalice, and went away. And for the first time all China will realise, that they’re not the world’s core, that their Emperor is not God, and that the dream they’ve lived in for thousands of years, is just . . . a dream. Gros was right—it’ll bring down the Manchoos, no error, not today, perhaps not for years, but at last. The mystery that binds China will go up in smoke with the Summer Palace, you see. And just by the way — China will break no more treaties; not in our time.”
      I thought about Yehonala, and wondered if he was right. As it turned out, he was, almost; China was quiet for forty years, until she roused the Boxers against us. And now the Manchoos are gone, and who’ll deny it was the fire that Elgin kindled that made China’s millions think thoughts they’d never thought before?

Flashman and the Dragon, p.279, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Rolling up the Peiho

Fifteen thousand horse, foot and guns rolling up the Peiho, not to fight or hold or to conquer, but just so that the Big Barbarian could stand before the Son of Heaven and watch him put his mark on paper. “And when he does,” says Elgin, “the ends of the earth will have met at last, and there will be no more savage kings for our people to subdue. We’ve come a long way from our northern forests; I wonder if we were wise.”


Flashman and the Dragon, p.168, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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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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Tally the destruction

No one can ever count the dead, or tally the destruction, or imagine the enormity of its blood-stained horror. This was the Taiping – the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.84, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Taiping.

Gen. Sir James Grant explains the disposition of the 1860 Anglo-French expedition to China

     “Shared command. Montauban and I. Day about. Lamentable.” Pause. “Supply difficult. Forage all imported. No horses to be had. Brought our own from India. Not the French. Have to buy ’em. Japanese ponies. Vicious beasts. Die like flies.” Another pause. “French disturb me. No experience. Great campaigns, Peninsula, Crimea. Deplorable. No small wars. Delays. Cross purposes. Better by ourselves. Hope Montauban speaks English.
     That would make one of you, thinks I. Would the Chinese fight, I asked, and a long silence fell.
     “Possibly.” Pause. “Once.”


Flashman and the Dragon, p.47, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


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Flashman, friend of the worker

…the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.19, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

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Fiercer and stronger

(And you won’t teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don’t follow that he’s your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That’s how the Chinese think of us — and damn the facts that stare ’em in the face.)

Flashman and the Dragon, pp.16-17, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Chinese.

Some imaginary trader

I don’t know who ran the first chest of opium into China but he was a great man in his way. It was as though some imaginary trader had put into the Forth with a cargo of Glenlivet to discover that the Scots had never heard of whisky.

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

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A china orange

…my life wouldn’t be worth a china orange if I went anywhere they could come at me.

Royal Flash, p.178, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,China orange.