Time for a little something

       I suppose Cardigan’s “Walk—march—trot!” at Balaclava is the most memorable battlefield command I’ve ever heard, but J.B.'s order for breakfast at Harper’s Ferry runs it close.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.283, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, breakfast.

Flower of the 11th Hussars

Picture if you will that score of primitives with their painted faces and head-bands and ragged kilts and boots, fairly bristling with lances and hatchets, and in their midst the tall figure of the English gentlemen, flower of the 11th Hussars, with a white stripe across his face, his hair rank to his shoulders, his buckskins stinking to rival the Fleet Ditch, lance in fist and knife on hip—you’d never think he played at Lord’s or chatted with the Queen or been rebuked by Dr Arnold for dirty finger-nails (well, yes, you might) or been congratulated by my Lord Cardigan on his brilliant turnout.

Flashman and the Redskins, pp.181-2, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, gentleman.

Flashman gets snakey

      ‘Colonel Fwashman!’ he cried. ‘You are a viper!’
       I turned at that, making myself go red in the face in righteous wrath, but I knew what I was about; he was getting no blow or challenge from me – he shot too damned straight for that.
       ‘Indeed, my lord,’ says I. ‘Yet I don’t wriggle and turn.’

Flashman in the Great Game, p.17, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Lord Cardigan, viper.

And so have his brains blown out

Several times it had occurred to me on the campaign that it would be a capital thing if he could be induced into action where he might well be hit between the legs and so have his brains blown out, but he’d not looked like taking a scratch so far.

Flashman at the Charge, p.99, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.

Mutual feelings

This was Lucan, his own brother-in-law; they detested each other, which isn’t to be wondered at since they were both detestable, Cardigan particularly.

Flashman at the Charge, p.43, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Lord Lucan, Lord Cardigan.

the legions of bottles

He would be in his mid-fifties by now, and it showed; the whiskers were graying, the gooseberry eyes were watery, and the legions of bottles he had consumed had cracked the viens in that fine nose of his. But he still rode as straight as a lance, and if his voice was wheezy it had lost nothing of its plunger drawl.

Flashman at the Charge, p.26, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.

Lordly lecher

I didn’t care for the sound of this; I knew Cardigan for as lecherous an old goat as ever tore off breeches.

Flashman at the Charge, p.15, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Lord Cardigan, James Brudenell.

Spoilt child of fortune

His nose was beaky and his eyes blue and prominent and unwinking - they looked out on the world with the serinity that marks the nobleman whose uttermost ancestor was born a nobleman too. It is the look your parvenu would give half his fortune for, that unruffable gaze of the spoilt child of fortune who knows with unshakable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction.

It is the look that makes underlings writhe and causes revolutions. I saw it then , and it remained changeless as long as I knew him, even through the roll-call beneath Causeway Heights when the grim silence as the names were shouted out testified to the loss of five hundred of his command. 'It is no fault of mine,' he said than, and he didn't just believe it; he knew it.



Flashman, p. 31, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.

A first-class drill sergeant

They say he was brave. He was not. He was just stupid, too stupid ever to be afraid. Fear is an emotion, and his emotions were all between his knees and his breastbone; they never touched his reason, and he had little enough of that.
For all that he could never be called a bad soldier. some human faults are military virtues, like stupidity, and arrogance, and narrow mindedness. Cardigan blended all three with a passion for detail and accuracy; he was a perfectionist, and the manual of cavalry drill was his Bible. Whatever rested between the covers of that book he could perform, or cause to be performed, with marvellous efficiency, and God help anyone who marred that performance. He would have made a first-class drill sergeant..."



Flashman, pp. 29-30, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.