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Authors: Evelyn Anthony

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“You will, Catherine, you will do exactly as your brother and I tell you. You will marry George of Oldenburg, or you'll stand before the world as the Princess Bonaparte rejected. You have no choice.”

Her mother had a vein of implacability in her nature, though she seldom showed it, but Catherine recognized it now.

She turned to Alexander. Her throat constricted so that she could hardly speak.

“Anne,” she whispered. “Anne instead of me … I can't bear it!”

Alexander came close to her and put his arm round her shoulders; she was beaten and he knew it. “He will never have Anne. I give you my oath on that. Go now, my sister.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and glanced quickly over at his mother.

She knew the truth, but he had forced her to act out the lie for Catherine's benefit, and as usual when he exerted his will, she did what she was told. She came to Catherine's side and led her out of the room.

Within eight days the betrothal of the Grand Duchess Catherine to Prince George of Oldenburg was officially announced, and the unhappy Ambassador to Petersburg had the task of conveying this unprecedented insult to the Emperor of the French.

“You'll never know how much I missed you, Marie,” Alexander whispered. He turned his head on the pillow towards her as he spoke, but the brocade bed curtains made a cavern of complete darkness; he could feel her breath on his cheek but he couldn't see her.

“I'm glad, I wanted you to miss me. I was miserable. But not now.”

Her lips touched his and lingered. He drew her small body closer within the circle of his arm and caressed her; as he did so, the memory of the other women to whom he had done the same things passed through his mind with amazing clearness while his blood began racing with desire. His grandmother's lady-in-waiting, a middle-aged bawd of incredible coarseness and experience had initiated him with Catherine's approval; afterwards, bewildered and ashamed, he had imagined the Countess telling his grandmother details and the two of them laughing.

Perhaps that was why he had failed with Elizabeth, who was nervous and strangely ardent in spite of her ignorance. He had loathed making love to her, hated the pale hair, the slanted cat's eyes with their unexpectedly sweet expression, the slim body that stiffened with expectancy when he touched it, and never passed the point where sensual rigidity became response. He had fulfilled his marital duties for a time and then abandoned them when his wife remained childless.

His mistresses were women of every class and type; some very young, the lisping daughter of the nobility one night, and a pretty servant girl the next; sophisticates, who began the affair out of vanity and ended by falling in love with him, common whores picked up in gypsy taverns who would have died with fear had they known who he was. Countless women had taught him the power of his own fascination for them without moving him in the least.

And then Marie Antonova Naryshkin, who was dark and beautiful, exactly the type he admired, who laughed up at him and eluded him for a time, till the conquest of her became an obsession. After she had surrendered, her attraction increased, where it had waned with all the others.

As a mistress she combined the qualities he needed, and had never found in one woman before; she was beautiful, a refined companion who knew how to be gay or restful according to his mood, and a lover who roused him and responded herself as no one else had ever done.

He had taken possession of her, installed her as his official mistress, been generous, ardent and kind for three years, and only fallen in love with her after Tilsit.

He had since learnt from experience what his reason had accepted second-hand, that love was painful, unselfish and absorbing, and had far less to do with sensuality than was commonly supposed. He had slept with women at Erfurt, and when Marie was abroad, as he would always sleep with them because he needed them, but his infidelities only increased the aching affection he felt for the woman beside him.

“Alexander, oh, Alexander,” she whispered, and he smothered the words with his mouth, his mind suddenly blank as his passion engulfed him and was met by the force of her own.

Afterwards she slept, deeply, like a child, with her head cradled in his arm, and in the darkness he smiled and kissed her gently.

Unlike Elizabeth, Marie had borne him children. She could have given him the heir he would never conceive with his wife, but the happiness they shared could never be regularized by marriage. He knew it and so did she; no Czar had officially married a commoner since Peter the Great, and whether Alexander loved or hated her, Elizabeth Alexeivena was a Princess of the Royal house of Baden.

He knew this to be the reason why Marie, usually so carefree and good-natured, treated the Empress with open rudeness, and always informed her in person when she was pregnant by the Czar; jealousy made her cruel, and like all women in love, whose way is barred by a rival, she was very cruel. Everyone was cruel to Elizabeth. He remembered the murder of the cornet Okhotnikov, and the horror of Constantine sitting at the Imperial table getting drunk that night and grinning like a demon. But she had courage, he admitted, and she was loyal. Nothing could or ever would induce her to intrigue against him, and he knew it. ‘If you could ever find it in your heart to forgive me, I might find happiness again,' she had said at the end of their interview before he went to Erfurt, and he thought for a moment that it was an odd remark for her to make … and then forgot both the words and the woman as he always did. Marie stirred beside him and murmured something, but she didn't wake. He moved his arm away from her shoulders and raised it behind his head, knowing that sleep was far away for him. In the silence he began to think of Erfurt and Napoleon.

Spain was bleeding him, Austria meant to attack him, but Napoleon was still too strong, far too strong to challenge openly. He would wait as he had had to wait after Tilsit, wait and see what the outcome would be between France and Austria, and hurry the reorganization of his own armies, for this time there would be no margin for mistakes.

He pulled back a corner of the hangings and saw that the room was growing light. He turned slowly and looked down at Marie Naryshkin; she lay in the shadow of her own hair. He let the curtain fall and lay back in the darkness, listening to the twittering of the birds nesting in the trees outside, until a movement told him that Marie was awake beside him, and he leant over and took her in his arms.

In Spain an army of a quarter of a million men, led by Napoleon himself, were fighting the raw Spanish troops who numbered only 90,000. They fought savagely, driving the rebels across the dusty plains and through the ruined towns and villages of Spain, leaving death and desolation behind them, penetrating the mountain districts, where they engaged in a final battle with the patriot forces at the pass over the Somosierra mountain. From the heights, Spanish gunners poured down a hail of grapeshot on the mass of struggling troops; dust, gunsmoke, the screams of the wounded and the pounding of cannon had transformed the peaceful mountain slopes into an inferno of noise; officers were yelling themselves hoarse above the bedlam, urging the French troops forward over the bodies of their comrades, into the blast of the Spanish gunfire.

Napoleon watched from the fringe of the battle, a tiny figure on his white horse, unshaven and covered in dust. Forgotten was the borrowed dignity of kingship; the Emperor had once again become the General, with the roar of the fighting in his ears and the sharp cordite smell drifting on the hot air, the smell of Marengo, of Austerlitz, Jena, the smell of cannon, of victory and death. He stared upwards at the mountain slopes where the batteries were belching down shot on to his army, shielding his eyes from the sun. He remained rigid for a few moments, till some of the Spanish irregulars on the slopes pointed him out and began aiming at him. Bullets whined and ploughed into the ground a few yards away, and his aide-de-camp called to him anxiously.

“They've seen you, Sire! For God's sake ride back!”

Bonaparte turned his horse's head; his sallow face was flushed, and for a moment the aide remembered the young General of the Revolution whom he had loved and followed, and who was often unrecognizable in the Emperor of France.

“Ride to the commander of the Polish Light Horse. Tell him the Emperor orders him to put those cannon out of action! Ride!”

And then he turned again to watch the battlefield. Within minutes of his order, he saw the lines of Polish cavalry moving forward, pennants fluttering, the sun striking light off their breastplates; very faintly the jingling of their harness came to him, and he remembered that the inconsequential sound was the most striking feature of every charge, the tinkling accompaniment of death, more terrible than the roar of cannon which broke out as the first line of horsemen rode up the slope. They were riding recklessly now, their ranks broken by scores of casualties as the shot scorched down on them, men and horses stumbling, slipping on the rocky surface, dead and maimed animals in a hideous confusion while the survivors still rode on, urging forward and up.

The leaders swept down on the first gun emplacements, sabres swinging in the sunshine; the gunners were cut down and trampled before the second wave of Polish cavalry descended on them yelling and slashing.

The Emperor sat very still, till the slackening fire from the mountain ceased altogether and the mass of French infantry heaved forward through the pass like a tide overflowing; he could hear the men cheering, cheering the Poles who were riding slowly back, trying to re-form their scattered survivors into two lines. As they passed him they saluted, and he saw one wounded trooper sway and fall forward over the neck of his horse.

The colour had died out of his face, leaving it sallow and puffed with tiredness; he was feeling the pain in his belly again, the gnawing, indigestible pain that attacked him whatever he ate, and somehow the pain was superimposed on the knowledge that the battle was won. He saluted the remnants of the light cavalry and then turned his horse and rode slowly forward.

On the 10th of December he entered Madrid. He was so used to the pattern of victory that the refusal of the Spaniards to accept his brother as their King astonished him; after the battle the defeated agreed meekly to his terms and resigned themselves to whatever form of government he chose for them; no nation had ever dared to do otherwise, but neither threats nor bribes could move the Spanish people. They refused allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte and gathered their forces to continue the war. Napoleon left Madrid and marched out to crush the British expeditionary force of 26,000 men who had ventured into the heart of Leon under the command of Sir John Moore. Moore retreated steadily, drawing the French after him, until the two armies met at Corunna. In the ensuing battle, Sir John Moore was mortally wounded in the moment of victory.

Meanwhile news reached Napoleon that Austria was about to declare war on him while he and his armies were engaged in Spain, and abandoning the campaign, which he believed to be practically over, he set sail for France to confront this new danger.

On board ship he was more morose and irritable than usual, and spent hours shut up in his cabin, or walking the quarter-deck alone.

So Austria was hoping to revenge herself for the defeat of Austerlitz, thinking that the rebellion in Spain and the continuous war with the English in Portugal were portents that the power of Bonaparte was weakening.… The feeble Hapsburgs, patching the rags of their past glory, were actually going to make war on him! He laughed aloud in anger and contempt. War. They should have war and learn the lesson of defeat as they had never learnt it. He thought of Russia and his mood changed. Russia had promised him men, and she must keep that promise, she dared not do otherwise, he decided, banishing the disquiet that memories of Alexander aroused in him. He had measured his strength against France once and been beaten out of the field; he was strangely obstinate and cold, where he had been admiring and pliable at Tilsit, but Napoleon was confident that he was still afraid. He remembered the hurried marriage of the Grand Duchess Catherine and sweated with anger; he would revenge that insult when the time came. But for the moment he preferred to ignore it, and his Ambassador Caulaincourt was instructed to continue negotiating for the hand of Alexander's sister Anne. As soon as he had defeated Austria, he intended to carry out his long-term intention of divorcing the Empress Josephine and founding a dynasty with a new wife.

In December of 1808, the Ambassador Caulaincourt asked for a private audience with the Czar. He was nervous and fidgeted while waiting in the ante-room, aware as always of the hostility of the Russian courtiers and officials who waited with him. He had become hardened to insults during his stay in St. Petersburg, able to answer the taunts of the Grand Duchess Catherine, now Princess of Oldenburg, the hauteur of the Dowager Empress, with smiles and tact; but social ostracism still stung him, and for all Frenchmen who were not
émigrés
from the old régime, Petersburg was a very lonely place. Caulaincourt's only friend was Alexander, and the extent of his gratitude was almost treasonable. The Czar was the kindest and most unassuming of all the monarchs with whom Caulaincourt had dealt; the impression of sincerity and friendship which Alexander conveyed to him at every meeting was far stronger in effect than the bitter reproaches of his own Emperor at Erfurt. He trusted the Czar and he genuinely liked him, he almost clung to him, surrounded as he was by hatred and suspicion from everybody else.

As usual, Alexander did not keep him waiting long, and he hurried through the double doors; before they closed behind him, those who remained in the ante-room were able to see their Emperor rise and come forward to embrace him.

At the end of an hour he left, bowing to the Russians grouped outside the Imperial suite, smiling and obviously satisfied. A few moments later, one of Alexander's pages was sent to summon the Austrian Ambassador Prince Schwarzenberg to an immediate audience.

BOOK: Far Flies the Eagle
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