Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (29 page)

I’d rather give than that such as he

Should go to an untimely grave

He is bravest of the brave

Hero of Russia and Prussia and Spain

Bravest of the brave he was again

When of all but two thousand bereft

All of our army that was left

He came at last to the Niemerts bank

He said brave boys it is God we thank

And his men cried May God save

Our bravest of the brave

Never again shall any see

A Marshal so courageous as he

His fame will live for aye

And we’ll drink to Marshal Ney

A great raft floated, and on it was a superstructure of exquisite workmanship designed and executed exquisitely to the imperial exquisite specifications. An ice mirage, oh God God God. One bridge enough, shambling along and then over. Over.

Dumdy DUM

dee dum dee dumdy

DUM

DUM

DUM did dum did dum

DUM

DUM

H
e stopped his pacing and tuneless dumming as they began to troop into his quarters at Smorgoni. Murat, Eugène, Lefebvre, Bessières, Mortier, bravest of the brave Ney (but he
had
made a shambles at Tarragona), Davout. Berthier was already there, grinning as though good news was coming, getting fat. He said, amazingly without stuttering, life was always full of surprises, “Do please be seated, gentlemen.” N said, while they were looking for chairs:

“I have dictated what in effect are the final orders of the campaign. I have also written this—” He waved it at them, what looked like the manuscript of a sizeable book. “The Twenty-ninth Bulletin of the Great Army, gentlemen.” How the hell did he find the time? “This sets out, for the benefit of Paris, the present situation of the Great Army in the closing phases of what, as must freely be admitted, has not been the most successful of the various campaigns in which you and I have sought and found glory together.” Lefebvre grinned at that humor but then saw, in the great gray lamps that turned on him, freezingly burning, that no humor was really intended. “Paris, gentlemen,” N said. “Civilians, flighty, tremulous, panicky, disposed to believe the worst.” And right too, Davout thought, right to believe the. “Alarmism,” N said. “I trust none here have been sending alarmist letters.” Not sending any letters at all, Lefebvre replied silently. No time for letters. “No time for letters, eh?” N said, looking straight at Lefebvre. “Quite right, too. They’d be censored anyway, be quite sure of that.”

He paced, belched tinily though sourly, then said: “I tell the truth, naturally. One must always tell the truth. Some of it. Truth is a heady and dangerous brew for the common sort, but we have a duty to the truth. I speak frankly here of incompetence among the marshalate, for instance.” He double-gunned them grayly. “Lack of initiative where initiative is called for, too much initiative where unquestioning execution of orders is, ah, in order. You know the sort of thing.” He waved at them in a dismissive manner, as if they all accepted the necessity of being occasionally traduced. “But chiefly I blame the weather, gentlemen. The weather.”

“Sire,” Eugène said. N looked at him, sadly, fondly, his mother’s eyes, poor bitch. “The bad weather only really began after the crossing of the Berezina.” They could all hear the bad weather howling outside the commandeered nondescript dacha. N nodded kindly and said:

“You are brave, Eugène, it is altogether like you to wish to diminish the reality of hardship. Ah, listen to that gale, that blizzard. It is moving west, gentlemen.” He looked at them frowning; they knew what he meant. “Bad weather all over Europe. Chimneys toppling, windows breaking, slates dislodged. The master of the house must see that all is in order within. The bulletin ends with these words:
His Majesty’s health has never been better
.” He agitated his body minimally and thinly smiled, as in a charade depicting good health. “You have heard, of course,” he said, frowning anew, “of this damned Malet plot. A lunatic going round Paris saying I was dead. I,” he repeated in contempt, “dead. And then the stupid panic, instead of at once proclaiming the King of Rome Emperor of the French.” Ney kept well behind his eyes the horrible sad truth that that was one thing nobody was ever likely to do; for some reason they always forgot about the King of Rome and N knew it. A family was not in charge of Europe, only a man. Everybody knew this. Everybody knew, accordingly, what N was going to say next.

“I am going back to Paris,” he said. “I cannot hold Europe together from a sleigh in the wilds of Russia. Europe has to be controlled from the Tuileries.” He looked at them fiercely, daring them to respond as some had responded when, so many centuries ago, he had decided to walk out of Egypt. But the eyes of the marshals betrayed, a little too quickly, concern only with the question of who was to take over. “You see this?” he cried. “You see the necessity for my action?”

Oh yes yes certainly no doubt about it the best course certainly no possible doubt of it your place is in it is obviously the obvious thing obviously to—

“I want no shouts of
treachery
” he shouted. And then, reasonably: “You all know the way home. Vilna, Ponarskaia, Kovno, and then you’re on the river Niemen. Tilsit,” he darkened. “If there is to be talk of treachery,” he cried in agony, “let the word be thundered in the proper area. You may all, crossing the Niemen near Tilsit, cry out that word
treachery
. Alexander,” he whispered, as though at the invocation of spirits. “What right does he have to such a name? He has conquered nothing. We have been conquered by nature, gentlemen, not by the toy-soldiering of pouting pretty petty potentates. He has one skill, and that is treachery. Well, we may now expect his treachery to inspire the princelings of Austria and Prussia to conceive of new hope—hope doomed, need I say, at the outset. I go back to Paris to prepare our people for new glory, to form new armies, raise money. Watch,” he said, looking at them all narrowly, “the treasury of the Great Army. Ten million francs in gold. You may have difficulty in getting it over the hump of Ponarskaia. Baron Caulaincourt was, as he would freely admit were he here, remiss about ice-shoeing.”

Why the devil didn’t he say who was going to take over?

“You are undoubtedly saying to yourselves,” he said, pacing anew, “
why
the
devil
does
he
not
say
who
is
going
to
take
over
?” He smiled at them and it was as though a thaw had set in. “I will come to that in a moment. First, my departure. I shall leave at ten—that is, in approximately three hours’ time—accompanied only by Caulaincourt, Duroc, Lobau and poor Roustam. Roustam looks positively purple in this snow, gentlemen. I shall take also somebody to help me to interpret when I come to the Duchy of Warsaw and, ah yes, I shall go incognito, as first secretary of Baron Caulaincourt. Two
calèches
and a sleeping coach—no more. And, as a tribute to His Majesty of Naples here, an escort of Neapolitan cavalry.” He smiled long at Murat, and everybody then knew who was going to be in charge. A bad choice, too arrogant, all right in attack, hopeless in retreat, not liked by the men, everybody thought except Murat. “The news of imperial departure is to be kept secret for several days and then released along with the imperial decree to the effect that the King of Naples is appointed lieutenant-general and will command the Great Army in my, our, absence. It is not, of course, to be revealed that I am proceeding to Paris. Warsaw, gentlemen. No lie. I shall stop at Warsaw on my way home.”

On my way home
. Emotive phrase: some felt tears coming. Berthier sniffed quite loudly: probably expected to be taken back with him,
home
.

“Sire,” Mortier said, raising a hand as if in school.

“I think that is all, gentlemen—princes, dukes, marshals I should say, nobility, soldiers. Yes?” with surprise to Mortier.

“What happens to us, sire?”

“Happens?” still with surprise. “You get the army home. Or you fall. You die. What happens to any soldier? A very strange question, my lord duke your grace.”

“He didn’t mean that,” Ney said. “He meant what happens to the Empire. I admit, he will admit, that this is perhaps not the time to ask such a question—”

“Indeed not,” N said. “But, gentlemen,” he started to pace, “let me say this, something for you to think over while I jolt towards the center, the very heart, of the Empire—this: that we never sought anything,
anything
, but peace and security and prosperity at home. France is the Empire, France. We fought the enemies of France, and we will go on fighting them, but it was never our intention to do more than scare them off our territory—like big dogs, eh? We never sought aggrandizement, we sought only to be left alone, to implement, in peace, unmolested, the principles of the Revolution.”

It was a long time since anybody had talked of the Revolution: the word struck strangely—an embarrassment, like an endearment pronounced in public, or an obscenity, or something very sentimental or old-fashioned.

“Is it our fault,” N said, arms held out in pleading, “if the cursed English fail to see the light? God knows, the Eternal Spirit of Reason knows, that we have tried to make them see it. These crumbling tyrannies they more than any typify, these oppressive oligarchs—all have set their faces against the sacred principle of the equality of man. You ask of the future of the Empire. It will be like the past, like twenty years ago, if by Empire you mean, as I think you do, that Empire of Man which we endeavored to make replace the old foul tyrannous feudal Europe. We ask, gentlemen, so little, so very very little.” His eyes went gradually out like lamps. Then they came, in a flash, full on again. “But that little is everything that history, with our help, has striven painfully to bring to birth. Fraternity.” He mimed the concept: a Corsican brother greeting his brothers in a brotherly manner. “Equality.” Arms down by his sides limply, a sudden inanity in his face. “And,” he said, “the other thing.” He strode briskly up and down, clomp clomp over the bare floor. “No, no, gentlemen, no.” It was not quite clear what he was denying. “The work goes on. We have had a glimpse of the eternal forces of evil that militate against our simple pure and, yes,
Christian
doctrine. Antichrist is abroad, gentlemen. But, with God’s help, Antichrist shall not prevail.”

Everyone felt like applauding. He stood there an instant in a postperoration pose and then briskly made his farewells in the name of the sacred principles for which they all stood. He embraced Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy. He embraced Joachim Murat, King of Naples, Grand Duke of Clèves and Berg. He embraced François-Joseph Lefebvre, Duke of Danzig. He embraced Jean-Baptiste Bessières, Duke of Istria. He embraced Adolphe-Édouard-Casimir-Joseph Mortier, Duke of Treviso. He embraced Michel Ney, Duke of Elchingen, bravest of the brave, but still that showing in Spain gravely qualified much of the. He embraced Louis-Nicolas Davout, Duke of Auerstadt and Prince of Eckmühl. Brothers in republican arms, liberty’s guardians. Finally he embraced Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Prince of Neuchâtel and Prince of Wagram, saying:

“I don’t quite see why I’m doing this now, Berthier. Last minute, when I get into the coach. Still, never mind,” embracing him.

“Bbb—”

“Let us all now sing together,” Murat smiled, “an anthem appropiate to the occasion. Ready?” He started them off:

“Off he goes

Ensanguinated tyrant

O bloody
bloody
tyrant—”

N awoke with a shock on hearing that. He was troubled that the bed was plunging and jolting, but then he realized where he was—in the sleeping coach trundling towards the Niemen through moonlit snow that the curtains shut out. He also knew that the fever had come on him at last after the stern months of being the iron man with the smile, and that these marshals and princes of the Empire were going to stay with him until the fever was spent. “The point is,” Murat was saying, “that the legend is broken. The myth of invincibility is not invincible. The British rule the seas, the war in Spain drags on, and now look at this really incredibly remarkable showing in Russia.” He smiled. They all smiled. Lefebvre said:

“Over-extension of resources. Damned bad strategy. But he wouldn’t listen, oh no, he never listens.”

“
You
listen to
me
,” N panted, right index finger on left thumb ready to tick off points. “Always important to remember that a very narrow compartment indeed divides the sublime from the ridiculous. I remember distinctly being taught that as a cadet. One man is a man, six hundred and fifty-five thousand men are either a stellar sublimity or a joke. They march, they charge—they are the very movement of the heavens. They retreat, they all have dysentery—ah, how comic.”

“Tell them that back home,” Bessières said, coming very close and showing teeth that were decaying at the roots. “Get all the widows and orphans together and tell them how comic it was.”