God-given gift of catastrophe

      It ain’t the kind of problem you meet everyday. I doubt if it’s ever been posed at Staff College . . . “Now then, Mr Flashman, you command an army fifty thousand strong, with heavy guns, well supplied, their lines of communication protected by an excellent river. Against you is a force of only ten thousand, with light guns, exhausted after a week’s forced marching, short of food and fodder and damned near dying of thirst. Now then, sir, answer directly, no hedging — how do you lose, hey? Come, come, you’ve just given excellent reasons for not taking a town that’s lying at your mercy! This should be child’s play to a man with your God-given gift of catastrophe! Well, sir?


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.220, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Nothing so cheering

With the danger safely past, I was soon in good fettle again. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing so cheering as surviving a peril in which companions have perished, and our losses had been heavy.

Flash For Freedom!, p.85, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

A loss for once

I would have given a pension to see him at a loss for once. But I was to see it for nothing.

Flashman, p.117, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.