Plot Summary
Flashman not only encounters Lord Palmerston at Balmoral, but also his old nemesis Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev. He escapes assassination narrowly and journeys to Jhansi in India, where he meets Rani Lakshmi Bai, the beautiful queen. He listens to her grievances against the British Raj and attempts to seduce her. Whether or not he is successful is unclear, but immediately afterwards Flashman is nearly garroted by Thuggees. In disguise as Makarram Khan, a Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, he takes refuge in the native cavalry at Meerut. Unfortunately, Meerut is where the Sepoy Mutiny begins.
Flashman survives the Siege of Cawnpore and the Siege of Lucknow but ends up imprisoned in Gwalior after an attempt to deliver Lakshmi into British hands. He is released just in time to witness the death of Lakshmi, but then his appearance after two months in prison leads to his misidentification as a mutineer. After being knocked out during the British attack on the Rani's camp, he awakens to something that makes Hugh Rose later wonder that Flashman did not lose his mind - he is gagged and tied to the muzzle of a cannon, about to be executed with other mutineers. Fortunately, quick thinking allows him to communicate with gestures his true ethnicity to his British captors. In an uncharacteristically humane act, he orders the Indian mutineers who were going to be blown away alongside him, to be freed saying "the way things are hereabouts, one of 'em's probably Lord Canning." In this book Flashman often behaves heroically, though his interior thoughts are often - but not always - those of a coward and a cad.
Read more about this topic: Flashman In The Great Game
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