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Home / People / Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala

Historical person

Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala

1810–1890

Robert Napier was a British Indian Army engineer and commander who served in the Sikh Wars, the Indian Rebellion and campaigns in China. He led the 1868 expedition to Ethiopia that captured Magdala and rescued European hostages before withdrawing.

Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala also held the offices or ranks of Baron Napier of Magdala, Governor of Gibraltar, Governor-General of India, and member of the House of Lords. Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala was born in Colombo and died in London.

George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman on the March places Robert Napier in command of the 1868 British expedition to Abyssinia. Flashman reaches Napier’s army with a silver convoy and is then sent beyond the British lines on a mission that exploits his supposed talents for diplomacy and deception. Napier provides the disciplined military counterweight to Flashman’s self-serving improvisation: his immense logistical operation, advance on Maqdala and rescue of the hostages give the novel its historical structure, while Flashman is inserted into the gaps around the real campaign.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala (1 series)

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2(80,547)

The Flashman Papers present the supposed memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown’s School Days who becomes a decorated Victorian soldier despite being a coward, liar, opportunist and sexual predator. George MacDonald Fraser places this fictional witness inside documented nineteenth-century…

All books in this series