Flashman on the March (Flashman Papers) (Hardcover)

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From Publishers Weekly
Last seen in Flashman and the Tiger (2000), that incomparable English rogue, Sir Harry Flashman, is up to his usual amatory and military hijinks in the 12th installment of Fraser's masterful Flashman papers. Having seduced a silly Austrian princess on the ship bearing the body of Maximilian, the ill-fated emperor of Mexico, back home to Trieste in 1867, Harry eludes the offended Austrian authorities by seizing the chance to become the British envoy on a mission to rescue a group of European hostages held by the mad Abyssinian king, Theodore. (When Whitehall neglected to respond to the polite letter Theodore wrote Queen Victoria, he took captive a few hundred unfortunate foreigners.) This now obscure expedition, which made headlines in its day, provides the kind of sardonic history lesson fans have come to relish. Allusions to adventures not yet published tantalize, notably those to do with Flashman's role in the U.S. Civil War. Fraser has nibbled at the edges (Flashy was there for John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1995's Flashman and the Angel of the Lord), and one can only hope that the next volume does more than simply mention such iconic names as Gettysburg.
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From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
It is now 40 years since the Flashman papers were fortuitously discovered during a sale of household furniture at Ashby, Leicestershire. As edited and arranged by the distinguished independent scholar George MacDonald Fraser, their gradual publication -- this being the 12th volume -- has provided welcome, if unexpected, insight into the military campaigns and private life of Victorian Britain's most decorated soldier, Sir Harry Paget Flashman (1822-1915).

No student of 19th-century history would dispute that this archive has proved anything less than a treasure trove, prompting revisionist interpretations of the "Great Game" in Central Asia as well as renewed understanding of the Crimean War (and of the Charge of the Light Brigade, in particular), deepened insight into the American western expansion, and hitherto unsuspected background to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. (Alas, we still await a full account of Sir Harry's presence in North America from 1861-65, though it is well known that he served with both Union and Confederate forces.) No doubt their author's vigorous style and forthrightness, like that of Boswell in his "racy" journals (discovered under comparably romantic circumstances at Malahide Castle), contribute to the papers' popularity outside the academy: Many readers testify that they have in fact made the Pax Britannica "come alive." True, on occasion some pages have been deemed a little shocking by unduly sensitive natures -- one hardly forgets how Flashman, being pursued by angry Russians on horseback, felt compelled to lighten a heavy sled by throwing his virtually unclad mistress out of it. But as the French so wisely observe, autre temps, autre moeurs. Far more worrisome is the scholarly deliberateness of the Flashman publication schedule. Fraser's editing has been impeccable -- and it is impossible to imagine anyone else capable of it -- but he is himself past 80 and only halfway through his subject's long life. Be that as it may, Flashman on the March is at last available.

The story begins. . . . Story? I should obviously say "memoir," but the Flashman papers have proved so exciting that many readers, and even some critics, have adopted the convention of likening them to swashbuckling fiction. This is an understandable error, and easily forgiven. Still, the presence of historical endnotes -- 19 pages of them here -- goes far to undercut any unwarranted suspicions about their strict factual accuracy. At all events, this packet's "story" begins with Flashman escaping from Mexico after the execution of the French Emperor Maximilian, whom he had tried, unsuccessfully, to save from the firing squad. As one somehow expects, the ship bearing our hero back to Europe also bears an alluring young female, in this instance the Austrian captain's great-niece: "Puppy-fat and golden sausage curls ain't my style as a rule, but combined with a creamy complexion, parted rosebud lips, and great forget-me-not eyes alight with idiotic worship, they have their attraction." It is a long voyage to Trieste, and only a prude could blame Sir Harry for beguiling the tedious hours by instructing the little chit in "a few exercises they don't usually teach in young ladies' seminaries."

As so often happens, the value of this pedagogy is rashly undervalued, not to say m