Far Flies the Eagle (11 page)

He had looked so terribly old at that moment, and his clever tongue, which had so often swayed a Council, stumbled and he choked on his excuses. Even his education deserted him and he made mistakes, his accent broadening; he dropped his papers and forgot to pick them up, but remained on his knees, pleading with Alexander not to dismiss him, not to destroy his life's work for the progress of Russia, and all the time Alexander's resolution hardened the more his heart was touched. Speransky angered him by becoming suddenly so pitiful and making his task so much more difficult. So much more difficult than even Speransky knew at that time.

The Emperor folded his papers and arranged the pens on his gold inkstand. The desk was the one Catherine the Great had used; as a youth he had often come to see her and helped her out of the chair he was sitting in at that moment. He thought of her and wondered if she had ever felt as he did, if she had ever known a spasm of loathing for the things she had to do in the name of Authority.

Plump, smiling Grandmère who loved him so dearly; remembering, he realized her calm benevolence was terrifying in its assurance that whatever she did she was above the law. As he was. It was the privilege and the burden of kings.

“I am not cruel by nature,” she had said once, and her words came back to him. “But there are times when my position forces me to play the hangman.”

He glanced at the clock inset in gold that stood on a corner of the desk. Speransky would have reached his home and found Balachov, the Police Chief, waiting with the last part of Alexander's sentence. By now they would have bundled the old man into a closed troika and driven him off to exile in Siberia.

He rose and went into the ante-room, which he found to be crowded with people; he recognized Araktcheief, who bowed low and smiled; everywhere he saw the faces of Speransky's enemies, the men who wanted war with France and could be relied on for support.

He nodded to them all, smiling and calm, and went to his own rooms. There he sent his valet for Marie Naryshkin. She understood and loved him well enough to know that exhaustion, not comfort, was what he needed, and eventually he fell asleep in her arms.

At the beginning of May the Emperor Napoleon arrived at Dresden, where a great Court had been assembled to pay homage to him. As at Erfurt there were Kings and Princes, a dazzling display of troops, the most beautiful women in Europe, and this time his wife the Empress Marie Louise. Marie Louise was not pretty; her looks were feline, her colouring fair and her figure voluptuous in the style Napoleon admired, but the pointed face and tilted eyes were stupid, far more stupid and less fascinating than the Empress Josephine even in the days of her decline. Marie Louise's success with the Emperor was due to three things, her obedience to his will, an unexpected talent in bed, which delighted him, and the birth of the heir he wanted so desperately. He was unfaithful to her, but always kind, and she submitted to him with sleepy eagerness, confident in any situation where her senses and not her brain came into use. Oddly, he had become quite fond of her, so fond that in a moment of madness he had ordered the doctors to save her life instead of the child when a crisis arose during her confinement. She smiled sweetly and kissed him when she heard of the incident, and despised him in her vague way as a common little man who put his personal feelings before the good of his dynasty. She was as happy with him as she could ever be with anyone.

There were banquets and receptions, reviews and military displays, all calculated to impress the Czar of Russia with the power and resources of the French Emperor. Never had Napoelon appeared more confident and over-bearing; he still persisted in treating the possibility of war with Russia as a mistake Alexander had no real intention of committing. The Czar was a man given to gestures, he declared casually; no one need think he would do more than parade up and down, manœuvring his vast army and then turn back to Petersburg. But when he was alone with Marie Louise, he dropped the pose.

After a strenuous day and an evening reception attended by many hundreds, the Emperor had retired to his wife's rooms. She was already undressed, the gold embroidered gauze dress put away, the fabulous tiara and necklace locked in her jewel case. She sat before her dressing-table, twisting yellow strands of hair round one finger and looking at herself in the mirror.

Bonaparte sat on her chaise-longue, his shoulders hunched, his hands hanging down between his knees.

“The reception went well to-night,” Marie Louise remarked.

Napoleon glanced up at her moodily. “It always does,” he said. “Thank God it's the last, I leave for the frontier to-morrow.”

The Empress pushed her hair over one temple with her fingers and frowned slightly, undecided whether the line suited her.

“I shall miss you dreadfully, dear heart,” she said. “Perhaps he'll make peace at the last minute.”

“Alexander doesn't mean to make peace. I've suspected that for weeks, though I had to pretend otherwise to all these fools in Dresden. He's determined on war, Marie, and war he shall have now, whatever the consequences.”

She turned round and looked at him, surprised by the gloomy tone and hang-dog air. He looked ill, she thought, suddenly, and very tired; it was so unlike him to be depressed before a campaign.

“You'll win, dear heart,” she said. “You always do.”

He was staring at the ground, his hands clasping and unclasping. “I'll win. Never doubt that. But this is one war I didn't want to fight. God knows, I trusted him—and then he turned on me! I should have known better. At Erfurt I suspected him; if it hadn't been for your father going to war with me, I'd have attacked him then and beaten him!”

The Empress's cat's eyes changed colour at his reference to the Emperor Francis and the campaign which had ended with her being sent to France as the price of defeat. Then she turned back to the mirror again; after all the man was a vulgarian, one had to expect occasional lapses of good taste.

“Why don't you try and make peace even now?” she suggested.

He scowled at her back. “And humble myself before Europe! Where are your brains, Madame?”

“Well, you could say he asked for it,” Marie retorted. She pouted at her reflection.

“I think I shall have my hair dressed higher.…”

After a moment Napoleon rose and came behind her.

“I apologize, my dear. That was a very wise suggestion.”

His eyes were narrowed and she watched them in the mirror, thinking that it was odd that such a little man could look so frightening at times.

“He may also be hampered by pride. If I make a show of force, cross the frontier and then send an envoy to him … he might be glad to avoid doing battle. The whole problem might be solved.…”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and immediately she leant against him; he bent and kissed the nape of her neck. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation; she liked his hands, they were white and delicate, almost well-bred.… The thought passed through her mind, already hazing with sensuality, that she had said something really intelligent.…

“All is not lost,” Napoleon muttered as he held her. “I'll fight if I have to and I'll win for you, my Marie, and for our son. I'll erase Russia off the map if necessary, but I'll win.…”

A little later he slept, and she moved cautiously to escape his weight without waking him, wondering why this episode was somehow different from all the others in their married life. The element she sensed but could not identify was new to Bonaparte himself.

It was desperation.

She lay for a few moments puzzling over it and then drifted into a calm sleep.

The next morning Napoleon left Dresden at the head of a great cavalcade to join the Grand Armée on the left bank of the River Niemen.

In the stifling heat of June Alexander and his entourage arrived at Wilna ostensibly to review the troops stationed there and to hold manœuvres, but in fact he travelled to his army as Napoleon left to join his.

The Czar's arrival began a round of fêtes and entertainments given by the local nobility. Every evening there was a ball or a dinner in his honour, and while the armies of France camped a few miles away on the opposite bank of the Niemen, beautiful women danced with him, flirted with him and retained an impression of his charm that lasted for the rest of their lives. In the day-time the factions surrounding him squabbled and intrigued against each other.

In accordance with General Pfühl's strategy, Russia's armies were divided into two mobile forces, the main body commanded by a Lithuanian of Scottish descent, Barclay de Tolly, the other by Prince Bagration. The pivot of the Russian strategy was a huge fortified encampment built by a bend of the River Dwina; it was intended that this bastion at Drissa should bar Napoleon's way, that the decisive battle should be fought close to it by Barclay de Tolly's men, while Bagration and his forces remained separated and harassed the French in the rear or the flank. Alexander had adopted the plan and disposed his forces accordingly, but a threefold campaign was being waged to make him change his mind. Araktcheief and Barclay de Tolly denounced Pfühl's theory as fiercely as the German emigrant tacticians defended it, and Bagration prophesied disaster if the plan was really put into practice.

Still another faction urged Alexander to take over the command of the army himself and direct the war, but the memory of the disasters of Austerlitz and Friedland had not faded from Alexander's mind if it had from his supporters, and he rejected the proposal. The fourth cabal surrounding him demanded that he should make peace with Napoleon as soon as possible, and his brother the Grand Duke Constantine led this chorus. It was the measure of his tact and diplomatic skill that he remained above the bickering and enmities which flared up round him every day; while supporting Pfühl he listened carefully to his detractors; his immunity enabled him to weigh the merits of each argument and to form an unbiased judgment while he sat through one angry conference after another.

He had followed Pfühl, and if necessary he would continue to do so for a time, but it was first necessary to induce Napoleon to commit the aggression which must make him responsible for the war.

The French envoy General de Narbonne had been treated with exquisite courtesy and dispatched with the answer that while the Czar had no wish to shed blood, he would never agree to anything contrary to his country's honour.

“All the bayonets in Europe,” he added, “if they were concentrated on my frontier, would not shake my resolution.”

After that there was silence, an ominous silence, while the nobility of Wilna vied with each other in their attempts to honour Alexander, and his staff fought with each other about the best method of defeating the French. There were even a few lost voices who declared that Napoleon would never attack at all.

On the evening of June the 24th Alexander attended a ball at the house of a local landowner; it was a brilliant assembly, graced by exceptionally lovely women, and the Emperor was enjoying himself for the first time in weeks. He felt relaxed and gay, for a few hours the shadow of the war and its problems receded; even Araktcheief was smiling as he talked to a group of officers in one corner of the huge supper-room. The strains of music from the ball-room mingled with talk and laughter; Alexander listened to it absently while he paid compliments to an admiring audience of Polish ladies.

He saw Balachov enter the supper-room, and thought suddenly of Speransky and the night Balachov had arrested him. Speransky was in Perm, sentenced to the living death of exile.… He was still writing letters begging for mercy, letters which remained unanswered and would no longer be followed by others, for his gaolers had been ordered to remove pen and paper from him. Balachov pushed his way towards the Czar; at that moment Alexander noticed the expression on his face. “You will excuse me, just for a moment.” He turned to the woman nearest him, before he moved quickly forward to meet the Chief of his Police.

“Sire,” Balachov bowed and looked round, “I must speak to you.”

“What is it? Speak quietly. We can't be overheard.”

Balachov whispered and Alexander bent over him; when he straightened he was pale. Followed by Balachov he left the supper-room, and a few minutes afterwards Araktcheief and Speransky's successor, Admiral Shishkov, were summoned.

Early that morning the advance guards of the Grand Armée had crossed the Niemen into Russia.

Pontoon bridges had been thrown over the Niemen, and three enormous French columns commenced the crossing near the town of Kovno. There was a sudden roar of cheering, swelling and rolling like thunder from regiment after regiment drawn up on Russian soil as the figure of the Emperor Napoleon appeared and rode his horse over the bridge. The noise reached a crescendo as his mount stepped on to the bank, and for a moment he waited, one hand raised in salute. Men were pouring in torrents over the bridges, spreading out and blackening the land with their numbers. Heavy waggons bumped and swayed and lurched down on to the river bank, carrying cannon, clothes, medicines, food and supplies of every kind. And there was more equipment on the way. In the meantime, the French troops could supplement their rations by living off the land.

Within a few hours of the invasion two things became clear; there was not a Russian soldier in a radius of several miles, and the country was a sandy waste. The rough cart tracks were obliterated by the passage of men and horses, there was no fit pasture for the animals and no shelter for either the Emperor or his troops.

But the order to march was given, and slowly the host began to move; the objective was Wilna, where the Czar was sure to stand and fight. When they reached Wilna, they found the Russians had withdrawn.

At the village of Rykonty the advance guard brought in a Russian nobleman who claimed to be the Czar's emissary. It was Balachov. He was taken to Napoleon's headquarters where he delivered Alexander's protest against the invasion of his country without even a declaration of war. Napoleon raged at him, abusing and threatening in the most violent terms, but Balachov stared at the floor and appeared not to hear. His silence and the phrasing of Alexander's message roused Napoleon to a climax of rage.