Flashman And The Tiger

[12]. Whoever "Princess Kralta" may have been, she was obviously a lady of considerable attraction and character. It is possible that Blowitz concealed her real name, since it is a device he employs elsewhere in his Memoirs; the only hint he gives of her origin is to describe her mother as "an Oriental flower", but from Flashman’s description it would seem that her father at least was European, and Northern European at that. Be that as it may, "Kralta" appears to have occupied an influential position in Continental diplomatic and royal society; the account of her activities which Blowitz gave to Flashman tallies closely with the Memoirs—her acquaintance with Bismarck, his employment of her to discover how Blowitz had got the Berlin Treaty, the melodramatic incident of the candle in the draught which alerted Blowitz to her treachery, and the sensational tale of how, at the German Emperor’s request, she soothed the distracted Bismarck with "some kind of diversion"—all these are in the chapter entitled, with Blowitzian panache, "The Revenge of Venus". He does not state bluntly how she "diverted" Bismarck, but the inference could hardly be clearer. For Flashman’s experiences with "Kralta" we have only his own testimony. As to her appearance and personality, he is more detailed than Blowitz, but there are no contradictions between them: both agree that she was imperious and charming, and while Flashman is more specific about what are called vital statistics, he can have had no quarrel with the little Bohemian’s romantic raptures. Blowitz was beglamoured on first sight of the Princess at a dinner party, to such an extent that he could not remember who else was present—a most unusual lapse of his remarkable memory. He enthuses about her beauty, radiance, "exquisite elegance", "silky hair" (chesnut at their first meeting, but subsequently "golden"), "melodious voice," "blue eyes which lighted up one of the most fascinating faces I have ever seen", and so on; he even notes the "brilliancy" of her teeth. There is something approaching awe in his description of her crossing a room with "the vague rustle of her silken robes … like a rapid vision", and one gets the impression sometimes that he was rather afraid of her.

[13]. This is the first substantial reference in the Papers to Flashman’s sojourn in Mexico in the latter half of the 1860s; hitherto we have known only that he spent time in a Mexican prison, and was an aide-de-camp to the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria. Maximilian, an amiable and well-intentioned prince, interested in botany, was a pawn in the ambitious schemes of Napoleon III of France, who took advantage of civil war in Mexico to send in a French army, ostensibly to collect war debts from the victorious `Liberals' of Benito Juarez, but in fact to establish a puppet empire under Maximilian, who was persuaded to accept the Mexican crown in 1863. He set up a government and was planning social and educational reforms, including freedom for the Indians, but Juarez’s forces remained hostile to the imperial regime, and when Napoleon withdrew his forces, partly due to pressure from the Americans, who were sympathetic to Juarez’s republicans, Maximilian was left to his fate. He made a brave fight of it, but was captured by the Juaristas in May 1867, and executed by firing squad in the following month.

What part Flashman played in these events will no doubt be revealed when his Mexican papers come to light. We know that he was in the U.S. with President Lincoln a few days before the latter’s death in April 1865, so his Mexican adventures were presumably confined to the next two years at most. The reference to Princess Salm-Salm, the wife of Prince Felix Salm-Salm, a German officer who served in the U.S. Civil War (possibly with Flashman) and was later chief a.d.c. to Maximilian in Mexico, suggests that Flashman was involved in the efforts which both the Prince and Princess made to save the Emperor’s life; she was a handsome and fearless lady who has left a spirited account of her adventures in Mexico, and of her later life in European royal circles and in the Franco-Prussian war, in which her husband was killed. Her Ten Years of My Life (1868) and the Prince’s My Diary in Mexico (1874) which she published after his death, give invaluable details of Maximilian’s last days.

That the Emperor Maximilian was a cricketer seems to be confirmed by a photograph in a Brussels museum in which he is seen posing at the end of a match with members of the British Legation in Mexico City, c. 1865. The editor is indebted to Colonel J. M. C Watson for a copy of this picture.