Under Two Flags tells the story of an English aristocrat, apparently in disgrace, who disappears and joins a French battalion in Algeria, loosely based on the Foreign Legion. The novel is about The Hon. Bertie Cecil (nicknamed Beauty of the Brigades). In financial distress because of his own profligacy and the loss of an important horse-race on which he has bet extensively, and falsely accused of forgery, but unable to defend himself against the charge without injuring the "honour" of a lady and also exposing his younger brother, Cecil fakes his own death and exiles himself to Algeria where he joins the Chasseurs d'Afrique, a regiment comprising soldiers from various countries, rather like the French Foreign Legion.

Excerpt from Folle-Farine, Vol. 3 of 3 It was. Not the physical privations of poverty which could daunt him. His boyhood had been spent in a health-giving and simple training, amidst a strong and hardy mountain-people. It was nothing to him to make his bed on straw; to bear hunger unblenchingly; to endure cold and heat, and all the freaks and changes of wild weather. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"This first full-length study of the works of best-selling Victorian novelist Ouida (pen name for Marie Louise Rame) examines the evolution of social, political, and gender issues in Ouida's fiction from her "high society" romances of the 1860s to her satirical exposes of contemporary society in the 1880s and 1890s." "This study places Ouida in the context of nineteenth-century debates over gender by exploring the contradictions between the vehement critiques of marriage in her fiction and the equally vehement anti-feminist sentiments of her journalism. Examining Ouida's revision of gender stereotypes such as the domestic angel, the adventuress, and the dandy, Schroeder and Holt establish Ouida as a significant predecessor of the 1890s New Woman."--BOOK JACKET.