"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Some interesting Flashman news: Celtic Films and Picture Palace Productions, which did the Sharpe series on TV, have announced plans to bring Flashman to television, with a screenplay for Flashman at the Charge being done by George MacDonald Fraser.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Flashman, author Fraser has confirmed he plans another installment of the Flashman Papers, fueling speculation on his choice of subject.
One possibility is the French intervention in Mexico, from which Flashman escapes at the outset of Flashman on the March:
The action opens with Flashman accompanying the corpse of Maximilian, the Habsburg who became, in the way of that eccentric dynasty, Emperor of Mexico, on its voyage back to Trieste. En route, Flashman deflowers the great-niece of Admiral Tegethoff, commander of the vessel, a romantic interlude soon revealed to the world…Thus Flashman reaches Trieste desperate to escape from the clutches of the Austrians.
Will Flashman's previous adventures in Mexico be described in the next book?
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Here's how Flashy describes the ill-fated Maximilian's last moments before the firing squad:
[Maximilian] cried "Viva Mejico, Viva la indepencia! Shoot, soldiers, through the heart!" Which they did, with surprising accuracy for a platoon of dagoes.
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On Cinco de Mayo, Irish Elk likes to raise a Corona and lime to the memory of the late Emperor of Mexico and his Empress, to a playing of the favorite song he asked to hear before he met his end. Yradier's "La Paloma," as rendered by music box from 1895, is first in this gallery of sound files posted by the Musical Box Society of Great Britain.
Over a thousand Belgians braved a raging blizzard in Brussels last week, trudged on foot four miles behind a coffin draped with the flags of Mexico and Belgium.
Thus they paid homage to a lady great in sadness, Marie Charlotte Amelie Augustine Victoire Clementine Leopoldine, daughter of the late King Leopold I of the Belgians, once Empress of Mexico. Her story: At 17 she was the radiant bride of the Archduke Maximilian whose brother was Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary; at 23 Empress of Mexico, set beside Maximilian upon that throne by the Emperor Napoleon III of the French; at 26 a distracted woman, kneeling before Napoleon III, begging him to deliver her husband from the revolted Mexicans, crying when Napoleon III declared he could do no more: "My Fate is what I deserve! A granddaughter of Louis Philippe should never have trusted herself to a Bonaparte!"
Thereupon she fainted, and, when she recovered was found to have lost her reason so that she did not know her husband was murdered a year later (1867). Mercifully unconscious of his death during the 60 years of her madness (up to her death at 86, last week) she was always expecting the Emperor Maximilian to return to her, would sometimes don court regalia in expectation of his coming, and say, "He will come soon. He will come very soon now."
Lady of sadness, Death came to her in a white wintry robe. Eight young officers bore her coffin to the royal crypt in the Laeken Cháteau, near Brussels. Albert, King of the Belgians, and the Royal Family paced behind it slowly to the sad measures of Chopin. #
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
