Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (28 page)

Major Cordaillet was puzzled about too many things—the delay in leaving Moscow, the failure to use the warmer southern route home, the burning of the pontoon train (somebody had said that the rivers would be frozen, so the train would not be needed), but out of the manifold cloud of puzzlement flashed a maxim that he felt a dreadful hunger to be expounding in some military college somewhere to crop-headed cadets, lean as a bone and listening intently, just before the end of the morning session, then home to his quarters and onion soup and a small roast leg of veal with garlic:
Gentlemen, with Russia no army can win
. The winter was killing them, the summer had already killed them: they were dead before they saw the cupolas of Moscow, what with dysentery and malaria and starvation. It is Russia itself, gentlemen, that purveys death; Russia will find one form or another. But for God’s sake expunge from your minds any romantic image of General Winter as the killer. He then dismissed his class and, saluting General Winter, grimly died.

Colonel Boutteau, who came of dairy fanning stock in the Midi, wept for the cattle that had marched with the army into Russia, now all gone and mooing and grunting and bellowing forever in a sort of Homeric hell. For the horses he felt little pity: they had gone snorting in, willing extensions of man, saying ha ha among the trumpets. But the calves new-dropped had been cursed for not keeping a better pace. He died smiling, warmly nuzzled.

Senior Private Cornu was one of the men who did not drop away from the column between Smorgoni and Vilna. How many was it who had? Twenty thousand? Thirty forty? Figures meant nothing. Cornu had Grandjean on one side and Sauveur on the other when the story began to spread through the snow that Vilna was full of rations, the usual army fuckup, everybody starved on the way into Russia while the cunting rations were there all the time. Cornu said to his mates: Listen to the advice of an old soldier, don’t fight, wait. They saw what he meant when they got to the town gates (town, gates, lamps, walls, streets, people in fur coats,
women)
because the raw and stupid began to clamor to be let in: open up, fuck it, we’re fucking starving, if you knew what we’d been through you fucking bastards you’d fucking well open up. There, see, Cornu said, look. Fucking Jesus, Grandjean said. Men being crushed to death at the gates, hundreds going down, crushed and yelling. The fur-coated officers of the garrison, leading a small army with guns at the ready, would not open the gates, not until there’s a semblance of order, who is in charge there?
There
—a big jet of steam out of his well-fed gob. The only way to stop the hammering and tearing at the gates was to let those in the front have it, right in the chest. See what I meant? Cornu said. That’s quietened the stupid bastards down a bit. Then they opened up and let them trickle in. The trouble was that nobody could tell officers and NCO’s from the rest of the mob, a ragged screaming lot as they were. Some got clobbered with rifle butts as soon as they got in, keep their fucking hysteria down. Get the bastards into billets, first job. Get the casualties into hospital, first job. NCO’s barked away, sometimes cuffing, all right for those swine, they’ve been here guzzling while we’ve been fucking fighting. They got twenty thousand (or thirty or forty) into hospital, bundling them into beds or onto floors. They shoved the raving hungry noncasualties (but everybody was a casualty really) into big cold halls and barrack rooms and even into the houses of frightened civilians (all right missis we’re not going to rape nobody we’re just about ready to fucking drop). Then the quarter buggers started coming round, carrying blankets and new uniforms and rations.

Cornu and Grandjean and Sauveur started to cry when they saw bread and biscuit and sausage. Lads, lads, take it slowly, said one of the Q men, here, have a swig of this cognac here, but slowly slowly. You needn’t be so eager to get it all down, there’s God’s fucking plenty in Vilna here. They reckon there’s four million biscuit rations and the same of meat, just about. By the living lord Jesus, Sauveur breathed, his mouth stuffed. The usual army fuckup, the Q man said, nothing where it’s needed, plenty where it’s not. And liquid nourishment too? Cornu asked in a finicking manner, already near pissed on a glass of brandy. Cognac, the Q man said, and rum and vodka, vodka being this Russ stuff. We all know all about Russ stuff, Grandjean said, properly glazed. Take advice of old soldier, Cornu swayed, don’t let bastards get hold of too mush liquizh nourizhnt.

When they woke up next noon, warm in twelve blankets each but with wooden mouths and coffin-makers hammering away in their skulls, Cornu and Grandjean and Sauveur heard from a sober bugger already dressed and going around the barrack room with the news, that there’d been a hell of a to-do in the night, some stupid bastards had broken into the Q stores and overpowered the NCO’s in charge and broken the necks of bottles and started to get pissed. They got pissed and went raging round the streets shouting where is he?, meaning His Imperial Majesty, or looking for women, and a lot fell kalied in the streets and alleyways and have died of the cold and the exposure. Jesus Christ, Cornu said, isn’t it what I was saying last night? Like fucking children, a lot of them. Where do we get breakfast.

For breakfast, sitting at a table with Camous, Matheron and an Austrian called Eichler, they had a lot of coffee with rum in it which cured the wooden-mouth nicely, and some boiled oatmeal with cream and syrup, and some cutlets and little beefsteaks with fried potatoes, a lot of hard-boiled eggs (stop you having the shits, Matheron said), very gamy sausage and bread, more bread with slabs of butter and raspberry jam, some cold roast chickens, a pint of red wine per man, more coffee with rum in it, some very nice creamy pastries, and a sort of rabbit and hare pie, followed by a glass or two of brandy and water. A bit of all right. There was also some pipe tobacco and clay pipes, so they lighted up, well-satisfied, and Eichler said: How long here we stay? Camous, who’d been around that morning in his new fur coat, watching them cart the bodies covered with frozen vomit from the streets, said that the orders were eight days’ rest at least here in Vilna before pushing on. Whose orders, Cornu wanted to know.
His
, of course. He’d given the orders himself to Murat, King of Naples, man in charge. Well now, Cornu said, a good question might be: Where is His Imperial Fucking Majesty, God bless and save him and chew his ballocks off? Oh, he’s gone, Matheron said. The whole of Paris is in an uproar because the rumor got round that he’d snuffed it in The Russian Snows, so now he’s gone to say here I am, alive and kicking and ready to fuck the first thing on two legs that offers. He shouldn’t have, Grandjean said, first rule of command is to stay with your men, that’s laid down, one of the fundaments of army law. He makes the fucking laws, Sauveur said. I don’t trust this Murat, Camous said, King of Naples indeed, big proud I-am of a bastard, he’ll have us out in the fucking snowy wastes again just to show how cunting brave he is. That Eugène should have been put in charge, all right young Eugène is, son by first marriage of poor old Jojo. She was all right too, better than this one he’s got now. Eichler said: You not say that, she Austrian lady. All right all right, keep your fucking Austrian shirt on, no offense meant, what time’s dinner?

While they were all kipping down in the barrack room, wrapped in twelve blankets with the stove nicely going, the sober bugger with the early news about the drunk and dying feeding it with wood like a fucking madman, Sergeant Brincat came in, all smart and shaved and his belly full of grub, shouting: Right right lads, marching orders, pay attention, come on, show a leg. There were grumbles and disbelieving shouts of fuck off, pull the other one, get your head down until they saw that he meant it, and everybody sat up, a bit bleary with food and liquor and shut-eye. The Cossacks are coming, Sergeant Brincat said, and they’ll be in here to slice everybody’s balls off, you know what they’re like, so draw rations and dress up warm and get fell in on the road. Jesus Christ, Grandjean said, isn’t that the bleeding army all over? What did I tell you? Matheron said. Didn’t I tell you that the first rule of the army is when in doubt fuck everything up?

So snow and snow and everything was snow

And slow in snowy woe the soldiers go

Groaning at snowy woe and moaning: oh.

We eventually came to Ponarskaia, where it was necessary to negotiate a great hill which was nothing more than a slithering obstacle course of polished frost (so Captain Gontier was to write to his old Latin master, Auguste Longevialle, in the lycée at Lyons). It was possible, with immense difficulties, for officers and men to claw their way, occasionally clinging at dead roots and stones and thorn-bushes, but the horses slipped continually, snorting in panic, and it became necessary, after hours of fruitless attempts, to abandon the wretched animals to snow and, it was to be hoped, a speedy death. The death, we knew, of the twenty thousand hospital casualties left behind in Vilna to the mercies of Cossack raiders would be less speedy and far more terrible. Nature is fierce, but not so fierce as man. The abandonment of the horses meant also the abandonment of carts, limbers, carriages, and hence all remaining artillery and supplies. There was a kind of relief in the recognition we all now conceived that we are at the total mercy of the pursuing forces.

But what will probably most interest you, sir, and, I should imagine, knowing you, incite you to a gust or so of Democritan laughter, is the fact that we had to abandon the entire remnant of the treasury of the Great Army on those inhospitable slopes. I, as the sole remaining representative of the department, was left with the decision. It was suggested by some of the greedier and stupider field officers that the money, which was all in gold, should be distributed among the personnel proportionately according to rank, but I had a vision of men tearing at each other in the icy blizzards of the hill-slopes for possession of mere dull metal, their pockets never full enough, and the survivors falling under the sheer weight of their greed. There were, by my computation, something over ten million francs in gold left there in the unmanageable coffers. Fr 10,000,000—now you have it in figures that dazzle the eye. Whatever became of that useless bounty I know not, but I am sure that, if found by our pursuers or by nomadic bands in the Russian spring, it will be a cause of dissension, death, and whatever other modes of misery gold, as we know, can breed. My compliments to madame. You will perhaps be pleased to know that I am rereading Juvenal.

And so, though slow, to snowy Kovno go

With pouch and pocket loaded low with snow

Forty-odd cannon sitting there grinning at us, but not a single horse to draw. Crammed with supplies, but how do you carry them? The town hardly to be defended, and the enemy closing in for the kill. Seven thousand only under arms now, gentlemen. Seven thousand under arms now, men. Under arms now, lads, they reckon about seven thousand. Seven thousand under arms, all that’s left, Jesus Christ almighty. It is recommended that only such supplies as can reasonably be transported by nonvehicular means be taken, and that, in view of the danger of enemy harassment, the town be evacuated with all speed. Grab what you can and fuck off.

I’ll sing you a song of Marshal Ney

Whose fame will live for many a day

The scourge of Austria and Prussia

And the last man out of Russia

At Smolensk the Emperor had ordered him

When everything seemed gray and grim

To act as rear guard

While the rest of the army moved westward

But then in all the snow and sleet

The Emperor speeded up his retreat

But by oversight Ney never heard

One single solitary word

And so his Third Corps from Smolensk he led

When the rest of the army was well ahead

Along a ghastly road he went

With supplies near nonexistent

And a gap in front and a gap behind

Which the enemy was quick to find

So confronted him with huge forces

Men and guns and horses

The Russian general in charge of which

Was one named Miloradovitch

Who with no hesitation

Asked for Ney’s capitulation

But for some strange reason the Russian forgot

To order cease-fire so shell and shot

Continued strong and unyielding

While parleying should be proceeding

So this reply brave Ney then tenders:

A Marshal never never surrenders

Under enemy fire no parleying sir

Consider yourself my prisoner

But he could not break through their shot and shell

And so as the freezing nighttime fell

Brave Marshal Ney drew his men over

To the village of Danikova

And many bivouac fires he ordered lit

The enemy laughed and thought that it

Was a camping down for the night

They would capture them at first light

But Marshal Ney’s plan was cleverer and deeper

He nightmarched his men to the river Dnieper

And when the Cossacks got there

They found a fighting square

On Ney went only looking back

To parry another Cossack attack

His Gascon fire all kindled

Although his force steadily dwindled

A Polish officer with might and main

Galloped with a message for brave Eugène

Who sent troops out right away

To help the exhausted Ney

The Emperor believed that the Third Corps

Was finished and would be seen no more

Imagine his surprise

When on Ney he casts his eyes

Three hundred million from my treasury