And now, because some things are the same in every timeline...
F. George MacDonald, Flashman on the Niger (London: John Barrie, 1990)
... I really shouldn't complain about being a hero. I've done well enough out of the business over the decades; much better, in fact, than I really deserve. But there are times when I wish it had a higher pay grade. Half-pay for a hero's no higher than it is for any other colonel, and wives and mistresses never seem to understand about the need to economize. So when you're on the beach, you've got to make a living as best you can, and somehow, the job openings for heroes never involve comfortable offices and evenings at the club.
I could fill a book with all the scrapes I've got into in search of the almighty pound: in fact, I
have filled a few. That's how I ended up on all three sides of the Franco-Prussian War, for instance - a near thing that was, and frightening as the devil, even if I did come out with both the Legion d'Honneur and the Iron Cross. Then there was the Basutoland business, which took all my cowardice and toadying skill to get out of in one piece, and that ill-starred trip to the States. And, of course, the job with the Royal Niger Company.
It started innocently enough, like all these things do: a chance meeting with an old friend, commiseration over drinks, and a mention that the Company was looking for staff officers. This Company, it seemed, was much like the one I knew as a lad in India: make the world safe for British finance, persuade the natives of the advantages of British protection with as few wasted bullets as possible, and make sure they kept their place while we walked off with everything that wasn't nailed down. They had their own army, like the East India Company did, and that army had a commander, and he, being as hard-working as most commanders-in-chief, needed a major-domo.
It seemed like just the job for me. I'd sit in the cantonment, shuffle papers, sample the local carnal talent, and pat the troopies' heads and say "well done" when they came back from the bush. It was fever country, of course, but I'd served in fever country before; health is one of the many undeserved blessings the good Lord has given me. The salary, although not all I'd hoped for, was ample for the work I'd be doing, and between that and a colonel's half-pay, it'd keep me in pints and Elspeth in dresses.
So that's how I found myself, in January of '78, at the Royal Niger Company Army headquarters in Opobo, in the kingdom of Bonny. This was a "kingdom," mind you, in the same way that there were kingdoms in India: we let someone live in a palace, boss the natives around to save us the bother, and take a small share of the loot, as long as he realized that the real kings were in Bishopsgate. There'd been another king before him, a real king, but the Company had persuaded him to step down, in much the same way that it persuaded the inland chiefs to salute the Queen's colours.
It was a mean sort of town, like most of our African outposts were in those days, but the palm-oil barons had built some fancy houses, and that's where I took lodgings. [1] I hired myself a bonny lass - a Bonny lass - to teach me the local lingo and the finer points of West African pleasure, and let her choose the rest of the household staff: like India, Opobo was crawling with natives who'd bow and scrape for a few shillings, and I couldn't be bothered to pick one from the other. I met the commander, one Pierson, a retired army officer who hoped to parlay Company service into a directorship and London respectability. He was an old India and South Africa hand and seemed to know his colonial business; I toadied him as I would any superior, accepted my marching orders, and settled into a routine...
*******
... The first hint of trouble came to Opobo in July, the most miserable month in the African calendar, a month of driving rains that couldn't quite drive away the heat. One of the Company's merchants was in Benin, a city of Edo or Yoruba or Malê - not even God could keep track of all the tribes in this country - and ran afoul of the local laws, for which the local magistrate duly assessed him a fine. We, of course, couldn't let these African kingdoms go around thinking that their laws applied to us, so Pierson did what was customary in the situation: when the rains stopped, he sent a punitive expedition out to teach them a lesson.
That in itself was nothing unusual. The Company gave similar lessons in manners to a few native chiefs every year. What was different was that the people in Benin were slow learners. We'd heard they were part of some alliance to the west, and evidently the rumors were true. The Company troops knocked a few of their columns around, but then they got reinforced, and the reinforcers sent us packing.
The news reached Pierson in late November, and from the way he reacted, you'd think Elphy Bey had come back from the grave and been annihilated all over again. It was bad enough that the Africans thought they could fine us for breaking their laws, but sending a punitive expedition home in defeat was beyond the pale altogether. Pierson raged on for an hour about how all the inland chiefs would never respect us unless we set an example, and that this Oyo alliance needed to be crushed. And then he started giving orders: mobilize this, recall that, and by the way, Flashy, get your gear and get ready to accompany me to the field.
That's when I began wondering if I should have just gone home.
It was too late to refuse, of course: a hero never can. And truth be told, there wasn't much reason to fear. I'd be in the middle of twelve thousand troops, two thousand of them British (including all the officers and sergeants) and thousands more bearers to carry everyone's kit. That should be more than proof against anything we were likely to meet: hadn't the Company's inland expeditions regularly beat forces four and five times their size? Life on the march would be uncomfortable, but there wouldn't be any real
danger, would there?
Our first few encounters with the enemy did nothing to disabuse me of that notion. They ambushed a couple of our scouting columns and we grabbed one or two of theirs. The prisoners didn't talk much, but most of them carried 1853 Enfields and they had some old three-pounder mountain guns with them. Castoffs, really: they looked to be better-armed than the chieftains the Company had been dealing with thus far, but we still outclassed them by a good bit. And when we finally caught up to their main force, they gave way before us. They made a few stands where the ground looked favorable, but a couple of charges with fixed bayonets - led by fire-eating captains while my gallant self coordinated from the rear, of course - got them moving. Our soldiers, British and native both, made a good show of it, and Pierson was positively beaming.
A few such victories, though, and I was starting to get uneasy. Some of the gunfire I'd heard during the bayonet charges hadn't sounded like Enfields, and when I counted up all the soldiers who that gunfire had killed, the number was alarming. Our casualties were quite a bit more than theirs; they'd been giving ground, but for the most part, they'd backed off their positions without much loss. When I mentioned that to Pierson, he seemed genuinely surprised - most of our dead were Africans, and he seemed to think of them as infinitely replaceable - but then he shrugged it off and told me not to be an old woman.
Old woman I might be - in these pages, I'll proudly own it - but I was the old woman in charge of keeping the troopies marching, and that too was becoming a problem. The country was thick as flies with ambushes, supply trains were becoming irregular, and all those troops and bearers were a damned lot of people to feed. I judged we needed a battalion to escort the supply trains, and I detached one, but his nibs countermanded me. "There's nothing out there a double company can't handle," he said, never mind that at least one double company had already come to grief.
My foreboding grew as we crossed the Niger, under sniper fire all the while, and then, at midmorning on January 22 of '79, we made contact with the main enemy force again at a place called Agbor. The land was rising out of the floodplain into broken country and low rolling hills, and the Oyo or whatever they were had dug in along a sheltered rise. To their left, the rise descended into a small stream valley with broken land beyond, and to their right, a ridge slightly lower than the rise ran parallel to our line of march.
"We'll have at them," Pierson said. "Drive them back from here, and there's nothing to stop us getting to Benin."
"Maybe that's not the best course, sir," I said in my best toady voice. "They're dug in quite a bit better than they've been thus far. It looks like this may be where they stand and fight."
"And if they do? They're just niggers. A touch of cold steel'll see them off."
I couldn't help swallowing at that. I'm certainly no shrinking violet like Bertie who blanches at the word "nigger," but I've fought natives enough times to know that they can be both brave and fierce when they put their minds to it - quite a bit more so, in fact, than yours truly. Pierson had been in India, and he ought to know that too. And looking again at their positions, I was suddenly sure that this was no ordinary native army. The diggings were the kind of turnout I'd have expected from Frogs or at least Turks, certainly nothing that savages with bones in their noses were likely to do.
"What I'm saying, sir, is that maybe there's a more economical way..."
"What would you suggest then,
Sir Harry?" Pierson asked. He was anxious to make a name for himself, and obviously didn't think much of my caution.
"Dig in where we are. Pound them with artillery from outside their range. Make them come out to us rather than fighting where they're strong. And when they come out, have some men on the ridge to go around behind and bag 'em."
"And have everyone say that the Company is afraid of a few natives? No, we're not going to stand here getting hungrier and sicker while we wait for those niggers to decide they've had enough gunfire. We're going in." He spat down on the grass. "Or should I say, I am. Since the Hero of Afghanistan is quaking in his boots at the thought of taking them on, you can command the rear detachment. Protect the artillery - if they're so fearsome, we certainly don't want them snatching it." He pointed toward the guns with one hand and motioned to his remaining staff officers with the other, and I could see I was dismissed. [2]
I went to take up my post with equal parts cheer and chagrin. I was concerned for what Pierson's opinion might mean for my career, but I also wasn't going to be charging that barricade, and that fate was far more immediate than the other. I took over the screening detachment as if it were the most natural thing in the world, placing the men around the guns and making sure my command post was well protected. Which, as it would turn out, was a damned good thing.
By that time, I could see the army advancing in three columns: the main assault toward the Oyo diggings, a smaller detachment climbing the ridge to take them in the flank, and another marching toward the stream valley to circle around behind. At least Pierson wasn't risking everything on the frontal attack; maybe my caution had got to him after all. I'd make sure to take the credit for that when the despatches were written - Pierson might not think to include me, but since I was chief of staff, I'd make sure the version that went out was the one I wrote.
But then my daydream abruptly ended, because the Oyo army opened fire. There was canister - they had to have at least six-pounders back there - but that was the least of it, because those
weren't Enfields they were firing. They had the Henry breech-loaders that fired four times as fast, and from the sound of it, a couple of Gatlings too. Whatever regiment we were facing was better-armed than their scouting columns - hell, it was as well-armed as we were. With them firing from entrenched positions, charging into the teeth of that fire was suicide, and thanks to the miracle of smokeless powder, I saw every nightmare second of it.
I saw Pierson point at something with his sword, and then I saw him go down. The leading edge of the charge was in among 'em by then, but they'd fixed their own bayonets, and this time they didn't plan on giving way. They weren't as good hand-to-hand as the Sikhs, but then again, no one this side of God is, and they were quite good enough. They had good officers too - someone on that rise knew how to get men where they were needed, and was doing so damned sharp rather than fighting in a mob like most of these natives do.
It might still have all been worth it if the two side columns could get around to flank 'em. But I heard gunfire from the broken land, and realized they'd had people there waiting. And then, with our men still just three-quarters of the way to the top of the ridge, their cavalry swept down from the right. They'd been behind the ridge the whole time, thousands of them, and now they were shouting something in their language and charging with drawn sabers. The man at their head wore a white dashiki and cap with a gold pendant on a chain around his neck, and he flourished his saber at our men who were still crossing the field.
It only took a few minutes. Where there were still officers or steady sergeants, the men formed hasty squares and tried to stand them off, but there weren't enough of them, and when they stopped in place to hold off the cavalry, the gunfire from the diggings was murder. The rest just ran. Most of them got away, I think, but it really didn't matter: alive or dead, they weren't an army anymore. The Africans among them probably wouldn't stop until they got home, and the only reason the British didn’t follow suit was that it was a damned long swim. A few others were able to fight their way clear, but before long, everyone still on the field was giving up. I heard later that fifteen hundred men were killed and four thousand taken prisoner. They'd have beaten us, I think, even if Pierson
hadn't lost his wits. [3]
And there I was, in my place by the guns, and I knew that this was exactly where the cavalry would come next. The men were looking at me and asking what to do. I looked thoughtful, pointed out toward that bejeweled officer, and said, "Boys, looks like we'd better..."
Just then, one of their shells exploded not ten yards away. I was sheltered, so I didn't get fileted, but a piece of shrapnel hit me square on the forehead, and I was knocked out as clean as if I'd taken a punch from Sullivan.
You've no doubt heard, as I have, the popular version of what I would have said next. You may have even seen the
Punch cartoon showing me pointing fearlessly at the oncoming cavalry, urging the men to fight on against hopeless odds.
Actually, I'd been about to say "surrender." But I didn't, and Captain Brenton Carey had to give up in my place. And I’ll bet a thousand quid you've ever heard of
him.
*******
You can imagine how frightened I was when I came to: a prisoner of a savage army, like as not due for the stew-pot. But they treated us quite decently. Those who were too wounded to march – and I made damned sure to let them know I couldn’t walk a step – got loaded into carts while the others walked behind. We took the trip in easy stages, they gave us plenty of food and water – a bit strange to my taste, but I’d eaten stranger things on campaign – and while they made sure we knew we were prisoners, they didn’t abuse us in the least.
A few of the native troopies tried to recruit me into rushing our guards - “with the brave Flashman we can never fail” and all that rot. I lectured them sternly about their duty to their comrades, telling them I was as eager to go as they were, but that they mustn’t try anything that was liable to set off a massacre. That was a lot of bushwah, of course: I was planning to high-tail it myself as soon as the chance arose, but not in any way that could get me caught in a crossfire.
The chance didn’t happen. They were uncommon smart, that lot – they sent the enlisted men to separate camps in lots of three hundred, and kept a weather eye on the officers. I was still trying to figure out how to do a runner ten days later, when we got to Ilorin.
Ilorin was a surprise. It wasn’t a big village. It was a
city. Paved streets, parks, four-story stone buildings, and most uncanny of all, mills – the kind of mills they might have had in Yorkshire thirty years ago, but mills all the same. The people looked prosperous enough, and they carried themselves like men of affairs. It was a
civilized place. Of course, I remember thinking that about the Malagasy capital the first time I set eyes on it.
My companions on the grand tour were reduced to a dozen other officers by this point, and they put us up for the night in the cellar of some government building. I had a sense something was going to happen, and I was right: the next morning, an African fellow asked for me by name and brought me to a handsome house across the square.
I waited a few moments in an anteroom under his watchful eye, contemplating the painting that occupied most of the opposite wall. It was a war scene, a white-haired black man leading an assault on a city wall. It seemed like a battle between Africans, but there was a British officer in full rig fighting next to their chieftain, and a few of the troops behind him wore the uniform of the 95th Foot. Curious, that, but the most curious thing of all was that I had a feeling I’d been there.
“Good morning,” someone said. “I am Usman Abacar.”
I looked up to see the man who’d led the cavalry charge at Agbor, and I did a double take. He was speaking English, and not pidgin English either, but the kind someone who’d been to public school might speak. I remembered hearing that the Oyo head chief
had been to public school – the same one that Pam had been to, in fact. A native speaking the Queen’s English was amusing enough, but Pam – that made me very afraid.
I kept my eyes, rather rudely, on the painting, and Abacar noticed. “That was my father,” he said. “The battle of Abomey.”
Abomey. Now I remembered – I
had been there, a year or two before my host’s dad wrecked the place. I thought of mentioning it, but then thought better: I might have to explain what I’d been doing there, and that could get awkward. I’d heard that these people had even more of a down on the slave trade than the Royal Navy, and who could blame them, really?
Silence, it appeared, was the better part of valor, and I maintained it while the Oyo general led me into an adjacent room. There was a carven table in the center – the kind of table where treaties are made – and around it were three women.
They were a study in contrast, those three. The one nearest me was eighty-five if she was a day, a sharp-eyed old harridan who was obviously no one’s fool. Next to her was another, my age or a little older; she’d clearly been a charmer in her day, was still quite handsome, and radiated the calm of someone who had been in such rooms many times. And the last one, judging by the looks she gave Abacar, was his wife, and if so, he was a very lucky man.
Me being who I am, the sight was enough to start me thinking about possibilities – not with these ladies, who were plainly off limits, but the others I’d seen in town. But that could come later. What mattered now was that, although Abacar might be the speaker, it was the four of them who’d decide my fate, if they hadn’t done so already.
“It seems,” Abacar began, waving me to a chair, “that your Colonel Pierson has left me with something of a dilemma.” Not one to waste time with preliminaries, was Abacar, so maybe not so much like Pam.
“I can’t imagine what that would be,” I answered. “You beat us.”
“That’s precisely it. You were
supposed to probe my defenses as you’d done before, realize you couldn’t win, and retreat. Then we could have made peace like civilized people – I’d been laying the groundwork for that in Britain since the war started. But once Pierson went all-in, I had to do the same, and after a defeat like that, the people in London may not want to be civilized.” [4]
I could agree with that. It’s easy to shout for revenge from a comfortable pub in London, never mind the poor sods who’d have to execute it.
“Maybe so,” I temporized. “But what does that have to do with me?”
It was the crone who spoke. “We know your history. You’re a respected war hero, well-connected in the army, welcome even in the royal court…”
Well yes, Vickie always did fancy me.
“… and we need you to carry a message.”
“An alternative proposal.” It was Usman taking over again. “You might call it a mutual surrender.”
“You hardly need me to arrange a surrender. Just show the damned white flag.”
“
Mutual surrender. We will join your empire, and recognize Victoria as our Queen. Our regiments will fight for you, and you’ve already seen that those regiments are something worth having. You, for your part, will recognize our borders and our responsible government, and will guarantee them against foreign powers as well as… rogue businessmen of your own nationality.”
It took me a minute to realize what he was saying. “You want to be a bloody
dominion? Like Canada? That’s for white men, and even then, most of them damned well better be English.”
He didn’t even blink at that, and again, it was the old woman who answered. “It’s for whoever can take it, no? The Sotho got something similar, after they beat you.”
“I wouldn’t say they
beat us, so much as…”
“They did,” said Abacar. “And so can we. We have more than enough force now to take both Lagos and Opobo, and if you wanted to take them back, you’d have to land under fire and then root us out of the hills. We could make them hell for you, even more than the Sotho did. You’d lose tens of thousands.”
He said all that in the most matter-of-fact of tones, looking straight at me all the while, as if he
knew that under my bemedaled chest lay the heart of a poltroon. The knowledge that I’d probably be one of the officers sent to fight in those hills was enough to make my heart do double-time, and at that moment, I knew I’d carry whatever proposal he wanted and do my pleading, toadying best to make sure it was adopted.
But I could hardly show it, could I? “If that’s so,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster, “why don’t you?”
“Because it would destroy us too. We aren’t Sotho, to drive our herds up to the mountains and let you have the lowlands. Our wealth is in our cities, and if we fight you, we’re fighting our own customers. We don’t
want you as enemies.”
“But a dominion…”
“It doesn’t matter.” That was the young woman now – Seye, I’d heard Abacar call her. “If it makes you feel better, call it a protectorate rather than a dominion. Call your ambassador a commissioner. Take our constitution and promulgate it in London, as you did with the Cape and the Australian colonies, so that self-government will be your gift to us rather than something we’re seizing from you. There are many ways to salve pride – what matters is the substance, not the label.”
Quite a lucky man, was Abacar. Something told me Seye had been in a chancery or two, and they’d been the better for it.
“Very well then,” I said, giving my best show of reluctant acquiescence. “I’ll carry your message, although I can’t make any promises for them who’ll receive it.” [5]
There were a few more pleasantries, but that was about the end of the conversation. A few days later, I was on my way to Lagos with six other captured officers and three hundred rankers, all of whom had given their parole – Usman had told me that all the prisoners would be released, as a sign of Oyo’s good faith.
It was just my misfortune that the rankers included the ones who’d earlier wanted me to lead their gallant escape. I had a dismal foreboding that Lagos would hardly be the end of my journeys on the Niger, and like most of my premonitions, it turned out to be right…
_______
[1] Flashman is being somewhat unfair in describing Opobo during the late 1870s as “mean.” During the short period when it was the capital of the Kingdom of Bonny, Opobo was a key transshipment point for the palm-oil trade, and many new-minted millionaires, both European and African, built fine mansions and social clubs. Much of what is now Opobo’s historic district was already in place by the time the Company took over in 1872. However, the palm-oil barons made relatively little investment in public works, so the city’s amenities were available only to those who could afford to supply them privately. Opobo in the late 1870s still had a raw, boom-town feel to it, reminding Flashman more of the frontier outposts where he had sometimes served than of an established European or Indian city. The same conditions prevailed in the inland cities where the Company had its regional headquarters, which our hero successfully avoided visiting.
[2] Flashman tends to judge his commanders harshly, particularly those he sees as dilettantes or social climbers, and it seems doubtful that Colonel Pierson was as comically incompetent as Flashy portrays him. It is beyond dispute, however, that both Pierson and the Company badly underestimated their Malê foes. Although the Company officials had certainly heard of the Malê, they had little if any contact with them: Ilorin traded through Lagos rather than any of the Company’s ports, and had no borders with the Company’s zone of control. The Company obviously knew that the Yoruba and Malê had formed the New Oyo Confederation, because Flashman refers to it by its correct name, but was slow to grasp the ramifications, especially since its first encounters with Oyo forces were with Yoruba militias which had not yet been integrated with the main Malê armies and had relatively outdated weapons and tactics.
Pierson himself was a racist of the classic stripe, whose low opinion of “natives,” and of Africans in particular, is well attested. He also was not a combat soldier; he was a career staff officer in both India and South Africa, and as such, had always dealt with natives from a position of comfortable social superiority rather than having to face them on equal terms in the field. This mindset, combined with a wish to win personal glory that he could parlay into a lucrative London job, no doubt goes some way toward explaining his recklessness at Agbor.
[3] Our hero’s description of the Battle of Agbor, which in fact took place about four miles from the town of that name, is roughly accurate. Pierson directed a frontal assault on the Malê positions, to take place simultaneously with smaller flanking maneuvers. This occurred almost immediately upon making contact with the enemy, without any preliminary probing attacks. The Company forces took heavy casualties in their attack on the Oyo lines, and when fully engaged, were met with counter-envelopment by the Malê cavalry. The battle was one of the shorter engagements of the British colonial wars, lasting just over an hour, and was one of the most significant defeats that a British-led force ever suffered against an African foe.
Whether the Company might have fared better had Pierson listened to Flashman can never be known, but one is inclined to agree with the assessment made by our hero immediately before he was rendered hors de combat. His suggestion that the Company forces stand back and pound the Malê with artillery fire was based on his assumption that the Company’s guns were superior; in fact, both forces’ artillery was at rough parity. It is unlikely that the Company could have kept a bombardment up long enough to force the Malê out of their fixed positions, considering that they would have been vulnerable to Oyo artillery fire and flanking maneuvers, and were lower on supplies than the Oyo army was. In the end, the Company’s only real option was a tactical retreat, which Pierson’s pride or arrogance (depending upon the biographer) would not allow.
[4] This is a remarkable declaration for Usman Abacar to make, but his personal papers indeed suggest that he was wary of winning too decisive a victory. Shortly after his return from Agbor, he wrote to John Alexander MP and his childhood confidante Sarah Child, expressing concern that the scale of the Company’s defeat might make a political settlement more difficult. It seems that he did, in fact, intend to present the Company with an impossible tactical situation in which its already-battered army would have no choice but to retreat, and then follow up with immediate political overtures. In the event, however, Pierson’s insistence on an all-out attack compelled the Oyo army to respond in kind, turning its planned show of force into an overwhelming use of force.
[5] We have only Flashman’s word that this conversation occurred – the histories reflect that Usman’s proposal was delivered through more orthodox channels – and it seems unlikely that the canny politicians of the Abacar family would have been so candid to a prospective envoy who had lately been part of an enemy army. But Usman, the Nana Asma’u and Adeseye did play approximately the role Flashman gives them in developing the peace plan – we know this from the notes of other Malê officials who were present – and subsequent events did proceed much as our hero outlines. The prisoners were paroled to Lagos three weeks after the battle of Agbor, and this, along with the Oyo Confederation’s declaration of loyalty to Britain and the groundwork laid by Usman’s propaganda assault, mollified public reaction to the defeat. There were a few more desultory battles along the Niger, but on March 30, 1879, the British government, acting for the Company, declared a cease-fire and agreed to convene peace talks. The negotiations began in Lagos in late October and lasted through the dry season; on April 3, 1880, the war officially ended, with Oyo joining the British Empire, as an “imperial domain,” on terms very similar to those Usman presented. Two years later, in May 1882, Queen Victoria added “Empress of Africa” to her list of titles. Whether Flashman had anything to do with that is one of the nineteenth century’s great historical mysteries.
