The truth about Brooke’s Burmese wound is far from clear; all that can be said with certainty is that he received it during his service in the Bengal Army in the Assam campaign (1823–5) when he commanded a native cavalry unit and was shot while charging a stockade. Both his principal biographers, Gertrude Jacob and Spenser St John, say that he was hit in the lung; according to Miss Jacob the bullet was not extracted until more than a year later, when it was kept in a glass case by Brooke’s mother. On the other hand, Owen Rutter cites John Dill Ross, whose father knew Brooke well, as the authority for the story that the wound was in the genitals. If this is true it is certainly consistent with Brooke’s reputed refusal of Miss Burdett-Coutts, and with the fact that he never married.
It is possible, of course, that Jacob and St John were unaware of the true nature of Brooke’s injury (although this seems unlikely in the case of St John, who was Brooke’s close friend and secretary at Sarawak), or that they were simply being tactful. Remarks occur in their biographies which are capable of varying interpretations: St John, for example, says that in convalescing from the wound Brooke was “absorbed in melancholy thoughts, and often longed to be at rest”, but that is not necessarily significant – any young man with a wound that had put paid to his military career might well be gloomy. Again, both Jacob and St John refer to Brooke being in love, and briefly engaged (to the daughter of a Bath clergyman) after he had been wounded, and St John adds that “he from that time seems to have withdrawn from female blandishments”. It would be dangerous to draw conclusions from such conflicting evidence, or from what is known of Brooke’s character and behaviour; Flashman, naturally, would be ready to believe the worst.
Whatever Flashman’s opinion of Brooke, he has been an honest reporter of the White Raja’s background and conversation. The picture of The Grove – the furnishings and routine, the formal dinners, the reception of petitioners, even his interest in gardening, his pleasure in comfortable armchairs and home newspapers, and his eccentric habit of playing leap-frog – is confirmed by other sources. Much more important, virtually all the opinions which he expressed in Flashman’s presence, throughout this narrative, are to be found elsewhere in Brooke’s own writings. His views on native peoples, piracy, Borneo’s future, missionaries, colonial development, religion and ethics, honours and decorations, personal ambitions and private tastes – all the philosophy of this remarkable man, in fact, is contained at length in his journals and letters, and his conversation as reported by Flashman reflects it accurately, often in identical words. Even the style of his talk seems to have been like his writing, brisk, assertive, eager, and highly opinionated. (See Brooke’s papers, as quoted in St John, Jacob, et al.)
Charles Johnson (1829–1917) was Brooke’s nephew, and became the second White Raja on his uncle’s death in 1868. He took the name Brooke as his surname, reigned for almost 50 years, extended Sarawak’s boundaries, and earned a high reputation as a fighting man and just ruler. Despite his background, he was an unusually clear-sighted colonialist who predicted at the beginning of this century the end of empire and the ascendancy of new Eastern Powers in the shape of China and Russia.
W. E. Gladstone was one of several liberal politicians who pressed for charges to be brought against Brooke on the ground that his actions against the Borneo pirates were cruel, illegal, and excessive. St John comments bluntly: “James Brooke’s sympathies were with the victims, Gladstone’s with the pirates.” (See Gladstone’s article on “Piracy in Borneo, and the Operations of 1849”.)
An excellent description of a sea-going pirate prau. These vessels, up to 70 feet long, heavily armed with cannon and carrying hundreds of fighting men, were the scourge of the East Indies until well into the nineteenth century. Cruising sometimes in fleets of hundreds from the great pirate nests of the Philippines and North Borneo, they preyed on shipping and coast towns alike in search of slaves and plunder, and set the small naval forces of Britain and Holland at defiance.
While piracy was universal in the Islands, the principal fraternities were the Balagnini, subsidized by the Borneo princes in return for slaves and treasure; the wandering Maluku from Halmahera in the Moluccas; the Sea Dyaks of the Seribas and Skrang rivers who specialized in head-taking; and most feared of all, the Lanun or Illanun rovers, “the pirates of the lagoon”, from Mindanao, whose praus could cruise for three years at a time and who operated the great slave market on Sulu Island. Although most of the pirate leaders were Islanders, some of them, like Flashman’s friend, Sahib Suleiman Usman, were Arab half-breeds – Usman was held to be especially detestable because he did not scruple to sell fellow-Arabs into slavery, but he was extremely powerful as head of a strong confederacy of North Borneo pirates, and also through his marriage to the Sultan of Sulu’s daughter. (See Brooke, Marryat, Keppel, Mundy, and F. J. Morehead, History of Malaya, vol. ii.)
“Jersey” can surely only refer to “New Jersey”, where the .40 five-shot muzzle-loading revolver known as the Colt Paterson was produced between 1836 and 1842. Some of these pistols had barrels a foot long.
Flashman is definitely mistaken. If any pirates were executed at Linga – and there is no supporting evidence, although the methods of execution which Flashman describes here were common among the Dyaks – Makota could not have been among them, since he was with the pirates at Patusan on the following day.
The storming of Patusan, where five pirate forts were burned, took place on 7 August. If Flashman’s account does not give prominence to the part played by Wade and Keppel, or to the outstanding bravery of the loyal Dyaks and Malays, it is understandable; river-fighting was more confused than most, and he was obviously fully occupied by his own share of it. On some details he is exact – Seaman Ellis was killed in the Jolly Bachelor while loading the bow gun, for example – and other accounts also refer to the plundering of Sharif Sahib’s headquarters (where his “curious and extensive wardrobe” was discovered) and to the fact that his harem escaped unscathed from the battle. Plainly the other reporters did not consult Flashman on this last point, or if they did, he was prudently reticent.
The fort of Sharif Muller (or Mullah) was taken on 14 August, and a great force of pirate praus destroyed. The death of Lt Wade, and Muller’s escape, took place as Flashman describes
The Battle of the Pyramids, fought on 21 July 1798, was one of Napoleon’s most complete victories. He beat and captured an Egyptian-Turkish army more than 20,000 strong under the Circassian, Murad Bey. St John tells us that one of Brooke’s people had taken part in the battle, on the Turkish side, but refers to him merely as “an old Malay”; Flashman is the only source for the suggestion that this anonymous veteran was Paitingi Ali; it is possible, assuming that Paitingi was in his 60s at the time Flashman knew him.
