Flashman on American independence

      But try telling that to a smart New Yorker, or an Arkansas chawbacon, or a pot-bellied Virginian Senator; point out Canada and Australia managed their way to peaceful independence without any tomfool Declarations or Bunker Hills or Shilohs or Gettysburgs, and are every bit as much “the land of the free” as Kentucky or Oregon, and all you’ll get is a great harangue about “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, damn your Limey impudence, from the first; a haw-haw and stream of tobacco juice across your boots from the second; and a deal of pious fustian about a new nation forged in blood emerging into the sunlight under Freedom’s flag, from the third. You might as well be listening to an intoxicated Frog.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.105, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Free of all restraint

It’s the usual way, with civilians suddenly plunged into war and given the chance to kill; for the first time, after years of pushing pens and counting pennies, they’re suddenly free of all restraint, away from wives and families and responsibility, and able to indulge their animal instincts. They go a little crazy after a while, and if you can convince ’em they’re doing the Lord’s work, they soon start enjoying it.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.185, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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Just nuts to them

… the Cossacks were free, independent tribesmen; they had land, and paid little tax, had their own tribal laws, drank themselves stupid, and served the Tsar from childhood till they were fifty because they loved to ride and fight and loot – and they liked nothing better than to use their nagaikas on the serfs, which was just nuts to them.

Flashman at the Charge, p.147, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Glory days

She paused for a moment, and then said in a whisper almost: ‘ “Whoever stands on British soil, shall be forever free.” It’s true isn’t it?’
   ‘Oh, absolutely,’ says I. ‘We’re the chaps, all right. Don’t hold with slavery at all, don’t you know.’
    And, strange as it may seem, sitting there with her looking at me as though I were the Second coming, well – I felt quite proud, you know. Not that I care a damn, but – well, it’s nice, when you’re far away and don’t expect it, to hear the old place well spoken of.

Flash For Freedom!, p.205, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Haven't read Seneca

No, they won’t die, because like you – and Mr Flashman yonder – they haven’t read Seneca, so they don’t know that qui mori didicit servire dedidicit.* If they did, we’d be out of business in a week.

*Who has learned to die, has learned how not to be a slave.

Flash For Freedom!, p.69, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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William Wilberforce and pious humbug

Why my pious acquaintances won’t believe this [African involvement in ths slave trade], I can’t fathom. They enslaved their own kind, in mills and factories and mines, and made ‘em live in kennels that an Alabama planter wouldn’t have dreamed of putting a black into. Aye, and our dear old dead Sir William Wilberforce cheered ‘em on, too – weeping his pious old eyes out over niggers* he had never seen, and damning the soul of anyone who suggested it was a bit hard to make white infants pull coal sledges for 12 hours a day. Of course he knew where his living came from. My point is; if he and his kind did it to their people, why should they suppose the black rulers were any different where their kinsfolk were concerned? They make me sick with their pious humbug.

Flash For Freedom!, pp.63-64, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.

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