Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (5 page)

She tried not to show the change in her breathing.

“How would you,” he said to Gros, “like to take over the art commission? I know what I like, but I’m not well able to judge of masterpieces. Italy’s grateful tribute to her liberators. How would you like that?”

“I would be greatly—”

“Water,” he said. “These Italians are water. Water must be controlled, made to work mills, be tamed into canals, have bridges thrown over it. I’m not afraid of water.”

They did not quite understand.

T
he first full moon of the new year, as the dead regime would see it. But it was really Nivôse, still in the Year Four. To his right lay that fearful river, now tamed. He shivered again; the warm greatcoat seemed too big for him. And that old woman had said that he must also beware of the moon. Why? The moon pulsed out now like a lake in the sun. He was with Joubert on the plateau of Rivoli. He saw camp fires all about, far below: five camps, each signifying an enemy column. To the north, beyond his vision, on the slopes of Monte Baldo, General Alvintzi planned, he knew, a six-column advance, but, in that terrain, so complex a strategy would be difficult. The columns of Liptay, Koblos and Ocksay would find it impossible to deploy cannon. To the west and east of the plateau the columns of Lusignan and Wukassovitch waited to fall on the French rear. But it would be a hard passage to besieged Mantua, that they knew. Then there was General Quasdanovitch, ready to roar up the gorge of Osteria to the east. It was all too much, he hoped, for Alvintzi to coordinate. He said:

“That village, San Marco, is one of our keys. Take it, and you split their advance. A great deal depends on our reinforcements.”

“When?”

“I expect Massena before dawn. He will precede his division. You, Joubert, are to hold the eastern side of the plateau with one brigade. That should secure the gorge and Ocksay’s column. For a time, that is. Your two other brigades must hold off Koblos and Liptay in the northern sector.” He seemed to feel Mantua raying out its dangerous heat behind him.

When Massena arrived, he ordered him to hold the valley of the Tasso (ah, noble name) on the left flank, using a single brigade, and to mass the rest in readiness around the plateau. The moon moved to setting. At dawn they began.

In blissful nescience of the
¹
drift of man,

Fulfilling only its
²
Creator’s plan,
¹¹

The wide
³
plateau
⁹
extends its windy plain,

A rarity in that engorg’d terrain,
⁴

Where eagles wheel
⁸
about the mountain-wall,
⁶

Soar to the height then like a plummet fall
⁷

1.  Joubert advances with ten thousand men, eighteen cannon (six from Massena) to engage Austrian twelve thousand.

2.  Koblos’s column checks.

3.  Liptay’s proceeds toward flank of Joubert’s most westerly brigade. Eighty-fifth half-brigade in disgrace: collapses, flees. Massena’s reserve moves in.

4.  Austrians mount batteries on eastern bank of Adige, begin to dominate Osteria gorge.

5.  Lusignan’s column appears on southern ridge of plateau. French line of retreat and reinforcement cut off. Eighteenth half-brigade, newly arrived from Lake Garda, ordered to attack column.

6.  Austrians have advantage in gorge. Joubert brigade exhausted. Koblos and Liptay adjudged temporarily harmless. Joubert’s westerly brigades moved east. Light artillery devastates close-set Austrian column. One chance shot hits two Austrian ammunition wagons. Carnage, disorder.

7.  Five hundred infantry and cavalry take advantage of Austrian panic and drive the enemy from the gorge. Eastern sector now cleared.

8. 9. All forces shifted northward to meet Koblos and Liptay, now revived and regrouped. Main Austrian army split. Flanks harried.

10. Rey’s reinforcement arrives, pincering with Massena’s brigade on Lusignan. Three thousand prisoners.

11. (Bonaparte and Massena move south to engage Provera.) Rivoli now in Joubert’s hands. Three Austrian columns flee for La Corona. Murat and Vial seize gorges. Joubert to Bonaparte: “Followed your plan. Success beyond all hopes. Three guns, four thousand to five thousand prisoners. Alvintzi himself precipitated down rocks and fleeing up Adige valley.” Last great Austrian offensive over.

C
itizens Thiriet, Carné, Blondy, Fossard, Teisseire, Hubert, Tireux, Carrère (Jacques), Carrère (Alexandre), Trauner, Barsacq, Gabutti, Mayo, Bonin, Borderie, Verne, Chaillot, Barrault, Brasseur, Dupont, Salou and all the thousands and thousands of others wondered how the hell they had done it. Marched all night, then fought all day at Rivoli, marched all next night, all next day, then smashed Provera at La Favorita. Mantua, a snarling great fortress ringed with fever lagoons, was quick to fall. It was full of skeletons, some of them still alive, and there was a powerful stink of decaying horsehides.

“The view of the Directory,” Bonaparte said, “is that you are a Frenchman who has taken up arms against his own people.” He kept hitting his left palm hard with his riding crop.

“I see,” Würmser saw. “It’s not enough merely to fight for the monarchical cause against the republican. I take it that they want me for the guillotine.”

“No. Shot. By my immediate orders.”

“They ordered you, did they? Do they
order
you?”

“I won’t do it, of course.” The sugary fecal reek of the dead city pierced even here, the palazzo set about with deformed trees, stripped of bark and leaves for hopeless ragouts. “You naturally escaped from me. I consider that you’re a good brave commander.”

“But not as good and brave as a republican one, yes? So. The long cold road to Vienna.”

“Not so long.” He saw the map very clearly in his mind. How many available for guarding the Tyrol? It was the Austrians on the Rhine that were the trouble. Snow still at this season, and he dared not wait. Spilimbergo, San Vito, Laybach, Klagenfurt, Marburg, Gratz. As for the Papal States, they were as good as subdued. He smiled and said: “You would have been in very holy company. One of our Directors wants the Pope shot too. The Goddess of Reason told him in a vision.”

“And what do
you
want?”

“I don’t want the Bourbons back in France. I share that view with my army. I stand for the Constitution.”

“Yes. What hypocritical nonsense: a Frenchman taking up arms against his own people, indeed. You and I appreciate the metaphysical aspects of this struggle. And it will be a long struggle, we both know that. How can you win? You can’t garrison the whole world.”

“Education. Spreading the truth. The republican clubs in Milan are already powerful and enlightened. The people have to be made to be free.”

The eyes, Würmser was thinking, are remarkable. The eyes are a whole Haydn orchestra. “Your Directory, if I may say so, seems to contain some rather giddy men.”

“I stand for the Constitution.”

“
Y
ou have to hand it to her,” Massena said. “She shows the other women up. Look at old Mother Goodpart there, blazing. Can’t keep her eyes off her tits.”

“Not the only one.” The victorious generals took fresh flutes of champagne from the flunky with the silver tray. They kept together, awed by the aristocratic company and the creamy splendor of Mombello. Pauline Bonaparte, Pauline Leclerc as she had just become, was, as the Paris papers would say, radiant, but the Creole matron knew all about outshining. “It’s the eyes,” Joubert said.

“Whose?”

“The whole damned family of them. Sexuality. That little bitch there couldn’t wait to have it from Leclerc.
Lui
—What does his mother call him?”

“It sounded like Nabuliune.”

“He found them fucking behind a screen. But he didn’t turn on old Charles Victor, oh no. He knew where the fault was, if you can call it a fault.”

“So now it’s benefit of clergy,” La Harpe said. “Back where we were before. Incense and communion and the whole butcher’s shop. Still, this is Italy.” Summer Italy, gorgeous, sun and fireflies and fountains and sexuality. “Nabuliune is going to make a speech.”

It was in Italian, and they could not understand it all. They caught certain key abstractions—victory, democracy, tyranny, republicanism—but they missed the jokes, which seemed to be unsoldierly, positively intellectual. He seemed to quote from an Italian poet, and then from a Latin one. Some of the old and distinguished smiled and nodded at each other. You had to hand it to him. Then he said how delighted he was to have
tutta la
famiglia
there with him, including Joseph, Giuseppe, his elder brother, to whom he apparently apologized for taking over from him his elder brother’s function, but he saw himself, if he might so put it, as
Giuseppe in Egitto
. Everybody applauded.

“What’s that word?”

“Egypt.”

A lot of the Italian dignitaries present seemed to know French very well, and one of them, very old, said something about the remarkable son of a remarkable mother, quoting Racine or somebody.

“You see what he means about family,” Kilmaine said. “He wants to have everything in the family. He’ll bring in more sisters and cousins and try to have us married to them. It won’t make any difference if you’re married already. Bills of civil divorcement. Family everywhere. Nothing’s right for a Sicilian unless it’s in the family. The
clan
, so to speak.”

“He’s a Corse.”

“Where’s the difference?” He looked benevolently at old Berthier, smarter these days, spluttering less, hardly biting his nails at all any more, as he spoke halting but worshipping Tuscan to the Visconti married woman, a beauty.
Lui
would soon have the poor devil married to that little Caroline there, only a child, or somebody.

Lui
was somewhat flown with wine and water: this, after all, was his sister’s wedding. “No,” he was smiling, “that is one toast I will not propose.
Not
peace. Not on the terms of a restored monarchy. I know all about Pichegru’s intrigues. Augereau should be in Paris by now, ready to save the republicans, more cannon round the Tuileries. I stand for the Constitution.”

“Whose constitution?” Miot de Melito asked.

“Ah.” He gave him a warm cold complicated look. “An excellent question.”

Pauline, even though she was now a married lady, put out her tongue at her sister-in-law, bitchy little jealous madcap as she was. Chatterbox too, all about Giuseppina and her
young men
. Madame Letizia, a handsome hard-eyed ramrod, dowdiness a virtue, gave the deep decolletage and the willow body, Grecian high-waisted silk seemingly pasted to it, a fine look of hate. Neither chit nor child yet, where was his sense, seduced by Parisian wickedness, Joseph should have asserted his authority, inherited too much of his poor father’s weakness. Then she smiled at some who bowed, a happy mother though unhappy among these Greek columns and pagan pictures, cherubim writhing on the ceiling. Little Caroline and Jerome were playing a hitting game with
her
son, Eugène. Children by her first, but none by
lui
. There had been time, there had been urgency. A curse from somewhere, God’s curse? There
was
a God, and a punishing one, despite or because of the Paris wickedness. Time would show a lot, but not a child.

“The whole province of St. Mark,” he was now saying. “Well, it’s useful for bargains. The Austrians can have it, the Venetians know who the real masters are.” He suddenly grabbed and hugged his wife with bedroom relish, despite all these eyes. Real masters are. “And my dove shall be feted by the Doge, so you shall, my pigeon, and ride in a gondola.” She saw herself stepping into one, Charles’s warm hand sustaining her. Lights lights. Then
lui
became Alexander again. “It’s one gate to the East. It’s in the East where the scheming foxes of Albion will be hounded and torn. Those watery kings, those kings of water. India.” He looked round the family, including his generals, all brothers-in-law really, with bright scheming eyes. Sarees and turbans and their fingers afire with spill of sapphires. “If only father were alive,” he said. Then the dancing began.