Real Soldiers of Fortune
Richard Harding Davis
(Independently published, March 20, 2020)
First published in 1906, this is an early biography of the Real Soldiers are Winston Spencer Churchill, Baron James Harden-Hickey, Captain Philo Norton McGriffin, General McIver and other prominent military men of Davis’ time.NY sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at night in the table d’hote restaurants of University Place, you may meet the soldier of fortune who of all his brothers in arms now living is the most remarkable. You may have noticed him; a stiffly erect, distinguished–looking man, with gray hair, an imperial of the fashion of Louis Napoleon, fierce blue eyes, and across his forehead a sabre cut.This is Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver, for some time in India an ensign in the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain, captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the Confederate army; in Mexico, lieutenant–colonel under the Emperor Maximilian; colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of cavalry for the Khedive of Egypt, and chief of cavalry and general of brigade of the army of King Milan of Servia. These are only a few of his military titles. In 1884 was published a book giving the story of his life up to that year. It was called “Under Fourteen Flags.” If to–day General MacIver were to reprint the book, it would be called “Under Eighteen Flags.”