Alice's tea party

. . . I, on the subject of bizarre conversation, had never thought to meet a crazier discourser than Hung-Hsiu-Chuan, leader of the Taiping Rebellion who was hopelessly mad, or Mangas Colorado, chief of the Mimbreno Apache, who was hopelessly drunk. I discovered in that hut under Selassie that I’d been quite wrong; King Theodore was both hopelessly mad and drunk, and could give either of them a head start and a beating in the race to Alice’s tea party.


Flashman on the March, pp.202-03, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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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.