Song of the Legions (36 page)

“So the war is over?” I said, aghast. We had discharged our mission, and handed the old flag over at headquarters. No one even said as much as thank you. I was given a receipt, and a boot up the arse. We sat in the barracks, penniless, unrewarded, and unremarked.

We had ridden our old nags from Genoa to Milan. In Milan we discovered that we had missed the whole damned war with the Austrians. In October of the preceding year, 1797, Napoleon had signed the peace of Campo Formio. France was, damn it all, at peace with Austria, Prussia, and Russia. We cursed our ill-luck.

In December, Bonaparte, as if to oblige us, started a new war. This time it was with the Pope, of all people. We missed the best of that, too, for by the time we arrived, Dabrowski’s men had stormed the Pope’s prison fortress at San Leo. Thereby he had broken the Pontiff’s earthly power, if not his spiritual influence.

When we arrived in Milan everyone was drunk and happy, for it was nearly Christmas and we had all heard that the Tsarina had died, in carnal congress, copulating with a horse. It was the talk of all Europe, and an occasion of great rejoicing in all civilised lands.

Birnbaum and I found a garret in Milan and every day petitioned headquarters for commissions. The weather in Italy was new to us.
There we shivered through the blackbird days of January, and the short and accursed month of February, and waited for orders. Every day we watched as the legion grew. A trickle of men quickening to a flood.

Both of us spoke Latin, which is the mother tongue of Italian, so we found the language easy enough. Birnbaum prevailed on the Jewish merchants of the local ghetto for charity. I did likewise with the Church, the local priest apparently ignorant of the Legion’s disagreement with his chief, the Vicar of Rome. So we made the best of it. We caulked up our draughty attic room and the leaking roof. We repaired our uniforms and weapons so that, despite our lowly status, we looked like cavaliers.

We received our
zoldu
regularly throughout. Dabrowski was a damn good provider, it had to be said. Regular pay was a novelty I had never known before, not even in the Bullock’s army. Even so, it was not much to live on. I was still a warrant officer and Birnbaum a private soldier.

It would all have been easier had the Italians not insisted on living on lettuce leaves, like rabbits. Where was the meat? we wailed, as our landlady fed us soups clogged with greens, macaroni, and watered wine. She took a good few solidi for it, too. The meat fell off our bones and we stayed as lean as winter wolves.

As for the girls, though, they were a delight. We glimpsed angels, but their men folk kept them tight behind doors. As we soon discovered, their chaperones were armed with daggers. Many a night we had to leap from a bedroom window or a balcony for our very lives, laughing furiously, pursued by some formidable old black-clad Italian babcia, with no teeth in her head but clutching a stiletto in her hand. By the Devil’s horns, the women of Constantinople’s seraglios were less tightly guarded! Our wealthy officers had no trouble making the acquaintance of high-born ladies, though, at the theatre, in the gaming houses, or in church. This gave us hope for the future.

“Just you wait until we are Captains,” I told Birnbaum.

“When hell freezes over, then,” he retorted.

In short, we needed advancement, a regiment, and funds. March, the Italians say, is crazy. The weather changes from day to day and hour to hour. One day we sweated like pigs on the butcher’s block, the next, our hands were studded with chilblains. So we changed our tactics and swallowed our pride. I begged an old friend for help.

“This is my only friend at headquarters, and our last hope,” I told Birnbaum. “If this doesn’t work, we will be back to Turkey to fight for the Sultan!”

Thus we spent another stultifying day in suffocating corridors, waiting. Our boots shone like mirrors, our brass buttons gleamed like brilliant stars, and our hair glowed with powder and oil. We waited all day. By the time we were let in to see the General, we had wilted like winter straw.

Before us sat General Jozef Wybicki – rebel, warrior, and judge. We had first met on my mother’s farm, when I was but a lad, and last seen each other on the Third of May, at Madame’s celebration dinner. His hair was white now, not grey, and his face was flushed red with the sun, and lined with deep creases.

“General Wybicki, Sir!” we shouted, saluting, bowing, scraping and all but licking his boots!

“We meet again, lad,” he said, shaking my hand. He sat in a dusty office, surrounded by overflowing piles of parchment wrapped in red ribbons, great heavy books of accounts, pots of ink and quill pens. “Move some of those papers out of the way and sit down, comrades. So much paper! I have to organise everything from the latrines to the Courts Martial,” he complained. “It wasn’t like this in the good old days,” he said to us sadly, looking at the bulging piles of paperwork, “Back then I was a fighting general, not a glorified clerk! I might as well be back in my law office in Warsaw. All I’m good for nowadays is jawing and paperwork. Ah, well,
tempus fugit
, I suppose,” he grumbled.

Too old for fighting, Wybicki still worked tirelessly for our cause, organising the Legions. He was Dabrowski’s right-hand man and assistant, and he kept the wheels of our Legion turning as best he could. He had hundreds of things to do and organise. Amongst his many duties was handing out officers’ commissions. This was why we went to him.

“Now then, what can I do for you lads?” Wybicki asked pleasantly.

“General Wybicki, Sir! We humbly request a commission, and a regiment! We want to fight, Sir!” I toadied shamelessly. Birnbaum and I sat down, and leaned forward eagerly, like anxious schoolboys. “We have been kicking our heels in Milan for months, Sir!” I added.

“My dear Blumer, there’s no need for all this “Sir” business, do call me Jozef!” Wybicki insisted, “we’ve known each other, what, twenty years now?” he took out a pipe, and offered it to us.

“Aye,” I said, sensing an opening, “twenty years since you hid in my mother’s barn. And how long since we last met, on
the Third of May?”

“Good God, my boy!” he exclaimed, as we shared the pipe. “Almost seven years! Seven years next month since the Third of May! How time passes!” he exclaimed. Those hard years were writ on his face. On ours, too.

“You’ve a fine record, Blumer,” Wybicki said. “Zielence, Dubienka, Markuszem, Raclawice, Wola, that damned Denisko business...”

“Seven years is a damned long time to still be a warrant officer,” I reminded him.

“Well, there are not many places, you know,” he vacillated, for he was still a lawyer, after all. “We have so many officers like you, exiles, and so few men to go around. Too many Tsars, not enough Cossacks! Five captains for every dragoon, as they say! Not that we have any cavalry yet – it’s all artillery and infantry. General Bonaparte started his career in the artillery, don’t you know?”

“I’ll do anything, General. Put me in the grenadiers, or even the artillery,” I said quietly, “anything except the engineers, obviously. A gentleman must have some standards.”

“Good God, no! Quite right too,” Wybicki agreed.

I changed tack. “A lot of good officers are volunteering on ten per cent of their zoldu, and running here and there as gallopers. Let me do that, Sir, I implore you.”

Wybicki shifted uneasily in his chair. I was losing him. “Have you heard the news?” the kindly Wybicki said, changing the subject. “The Bullock is dead.”

“Good bloody riddance,” I snarled. “Damned traitor!”

On 12 February 1798 the Bullock, the Tsarina’s former lover, and her prisoner, had died in St Petersburg, shortly after the Great Whore herself. He passed away without mourning. Nobody loves a traitor.

“Is there any word of Pepi – I mean the Prince Poniatowski?” I asked.
Wybicki shrugged. “The nephew follows the uncle. Living drunk and dissolute in exile, a typical idle princeling, the last I heard.”

Pepi, years later, went on to redeem himself. Of course, we had no way of knowing that then. By God, that was a dark time! I was desperate now. In a moment Wybicki would usher us out, empty handed, and we would be back to our dreary purgatory in our dingy lodgings.

“I have heard that the Commander is to be pardoned soon, and will join us,” I said, staking on one last turn of the cards, for I had been struck by an idea.

“Ah!” Wybicki exclaimed, his face brightening up, “God grant us Kosciuszko!”

“Indeed!” I said, “Did you know, Sir, that the Commander himself made me a Lieutenant of foot, during the Uprising, in Krakow, before Raclawice?” I suddenly remembered it, with a jolt of triumph. “If we are all in the infantry now, perhaps I might have that rank back, at least?”

Of course, I had no papers to prove this, they had all been lost, but Wybicki took my word for it as a gentleman.

“Why the Devil didn’t you say so!” Wybicki beamed. “Of course! If the Commander ordered it, then who am I to gainsay him? I shall write out the commission forthwith. I can give you a platoon, but you’ll have to find yourself a sergeant.”

“There he is,” I said, quick as a flash, pointing at Birnbaum. Wybicki nodded and smiled and wrote it all out. He cared not a jot that Birnbaum was a Jew.

“Congratulations, Lieutenant Blumer, Sergeant Birnbaum,” Wybicki said, shaking our hands. He offered us cigars, and lit them with a match. This was a new invention, and a marvel of the age. Fascinated, we watched him strike it. We sat back and puffed on the cigars until a fug of companionable smoke filled the room, and drank a small toast.

“We were speaking of the Commander,” I said to Wybicki. “Are the rumours true?”

“They are! Since the Tsarina’s death, and the Peace Treaty with the French,” Wybicki told me, “The new Tsar, Paul, has pardoned the Commander and given him parole. General Dabrowski hopes that the Commander will join us soon – he is talking to Bonaparte about it.”

“Excellent news indeed!” we rejoiced. Falsely, as it turned out.

“Tsar Paul has proved himself a wise, kind, and merciful ruler,” Wybicki went on. “He rarely executes anyone, and has never even ordered a pogrom,” he nodded at Birnbaum, who was as stunned as I was by this revelation.

“Are you sure, Jozef?” I asked, wondering if the General had become senile. “This Paul sounds an unlikely Tsar to me,” I said dubiously. “I bet the Russians hate him, at least.”

“Naturally the Russians hate him,” General Wybicki agreed. “They call him ‘Paul the Mad’, and are spoiling to murder him.” We shook our heads, bemused. Not long after that the Russians did indeed murder ‘Paul the Mad’ as a punishment for his singular failure to execute, torture, rape, imprison, massacre, or persecute anyone at all, which are all the things one expects of a normal Tsar.

“Yet they mourn the odious Catherine as if she was a dead saint.” I reflected.

“That vile woman,” Wybicki said bitterly. “What a way to die!”

“Nonsense! It’s what she would have wanted!” I laughed, and we drank the first of many toasts, “To horses! Let us have our cavalry soon!” I said, downing the vodka at one gulp.

We were on the march, at last!

“How do you know this road leads to Rome,
Lieutenant
Blumer?”

“Because all roads lead to Rome,
Sergeant
Birnbaum,” I replied with a grin.

We had rank, and money in our pockets, and we were at war! We were happy. May is the month of roses in Italy, when travellers begin to flock to see the sites – the Colosseum, the Catacombs, the Forum – and the signoras. It was said that their skin was finer than the marble of the statues. Well, we would see for ourselves. Here was the nation of Poland, ten thousand men under arms, and another ten thousand camp followers, taking the grand tour!

Although both Birnbaum and I still had our horses, we slogged on foot. It would hardly do to ride while the men walked. Instead we piled our warhorses with baggage, and made pack-mules of them, much to their disgust. We were all in the infantry now. I had never thought to sink so low again. The infantry! The ignominy! For the Legions had no cavalry to speak of – yet. It could have been worse. It could have been the artillery, or God forbid, the engineers.

We marched in the shade of olive trees where we could, and in blazing golden sunlight where we could not. The soil here was a scorched umber in colour. The pitiless Italian sun heated it like a clay oven. We marched past rugged hillsides and groves of olive and cypress. We marched past vineyards and terraces. White farmhouses gave way to smart marble villas.

After another few days march, the road was lined on both sides by a gigantic cemetery. Thousands of graves, as far as the eye could see. A calvary of crosses, urns, reliquaries, and weeping angels. This necropolis must have contained all the tombs of antiquity, and it took us a full day and a night to march through it. I did not ask my men to stop, for they would not have done. Not for all their arrears of pay in solid gold. We tarried not in these shadows of Hades, this land of the dead. We quickened our step, and sang Wybicki’s song. The Song of the Legions –

“Poland has not died

As long as we live

Our lands, that the invaders have taken,

We, with our sabres, will retrieve!

March, march, Dabrowski,

From Italy to Poland!

We’ll reclaim our nation

Under thy command!”

On the other side of the cemetery, the men marched on, drowsy with heat and red wine from their canteens. Waves of heat shimmered and rippled from the road. At every mile post the villas became larger, more opulent, and more magnificent. Villas gave way to mansions, mansions to palaces. Above us hung a sky of pure amethyst. Light and beauty burned our hungry eyes.

Well, if we had not earned a rest, we had one anyway. Many leagues from the cemetery, and beside a water trough, I ordered the men to sit in the shade. We watched as our horses drank the water. I always had them drink first, as a matter of course. This was a precaution, in case of poison, or bad water. As the horses showed no ill-effects I had the men fill their skins, and drink their fills.

Then we sat in the shade of an ancient olive tree, and smoked. It was an ancient, gnarled old trunk, the branches like cannon barrels, the base as thick as a house. As venerable a tree as any of those silent sentinels we sat under in the heart of the forests of Poland. Julius Caesar might have marched past this very tree, on his campaigns, two millennia ago.

The men took off their czapkas and rested. These were worn by all of the infantry, but with different colours for rank and regiment. Beneath, we all cut our hair in the style
a la Kosciuszko
– long hair to the middle of the collar, for both officers and the rank and file.

We officers wore epaulettes on the left shoulder with the traditional Polish insignia. Thus I wore a badge of rank in the same style as I had at Raclawice, for I was an infantry Lieutenant again. On the right shoulder was another epaulette with a strap in the Italian colours of red, white, and green. The white band of this strap bore embroidered on it the words “
Gli uomini liberi sono fratelli
–
All free men are brothers.
”

Any man of ability could become an officer, not only the rich and noble, as long as he could read and write. Dabrowski was trying to build a new nation, where a man might rise by merit, not birth.
Naturally some of the
szlachta
, those officers from our old nobility, had mutinied against this already. Dabrowski had put down their revolt with some force.

We sat and smoked. Birnbaum, and some of my other men, as was their wont, began to talk politics. For we were men of principle, volunteers, not conscripts or mercenaries.

“Lieutenant,” Birnbaum said snidely, “begging your pardon, but why are we at war with the Pope? As a Jew, I have no personal qualms about it. If the Pope wants a bayonet, then by my beard he can have it! But you boys are all good Catholics, are you not?”

“We are at war with the Pope because he badmouthed Bonaparte,” I said flippantly, and the men fell about with laughter. As it was, I was not far from the truth.

“So what if he did? What’s that to us Poles?” someone piped up.

“The Pope is a Hapsburg puppet!” came another.

“An arrogant Austrian arsehole!” someone snarled.

“The Tsar kisses his ring!” came a final lewd shout.

“That’s all true, no doubt,” I said, “but we have our own score to settle, remember? Those of us who were at the Third of May have not forgotten this Pope
^[6]
. He condemned the Constitution in ’91, and he blessed the Targowica traitors in ’92! Damn it, he even blessed the Russian invasion, and the great whore herself! Now he can join her – in Hell!”

“The Pope will pay!” roared the men, good naturedly. They were convinced, or at least satisfied, and marched off with renewed vigour.

“Is any of that true?” Birnbaum asked, with a mixture of shock and admiration.

“True enough,” I replied. “Besides, it will be good to be on the winning side for once.”

As we marched, I remembered what Wybicki had told us. ‘There are two Legions now,’ Wybicki had said proudly, ‘for we now have so many men. Most are deserters or prisoners of war from the Austrian army, sent to us by Bonaparte.’

At first, we were delighted to discover that we had two Legions. Then we discovered that the Second Legion – our legion – was the least fashionable of the two, by a considerable margin. The Second Legion was sneered at as ‘the Algerians’ by the First. Most of the men of the Second Legion had taken the hard road through the Turkish Empire that we had. But the gentlemen of quality had ridden their carriages through France, and taken their ease in Paris along the way. Glamorous émigrés with beautiful wives wearing sable cloaks, and money in Paris. These nobles had fought in the First Legion, alongside Napoleon Bonaparte, in his glorious and victorious war against the Austrians.

We, the men of the Second Legion, had been defeated, caught up in Denisko’s catastrophe. You will recall that Denisko had pitted two hundred men against eight thousand Austrians, all for the worthless hole called Bukowina. Two hundred men missing or dead! It could have been worse – it could have been the entire Second Legion. A bad business, Wybicki had said.

A cloud of dust. A rider approached. Speak of the Devil!

“Look sharp if you value your necks!” I roared. “It’s the Head of the Courts’ Martial!”

This trick worked better than any amount of cursing or cajoling. By the time he arrived, my men were on their feet, in a perfect column, not one of their white buttons out of place, and marching fifteen paces to the minute.
Amongst his many other duties, Wybicki was responsible for our code of military discipline. For we were a regular army, not a rabble of mercenaries. Thieves, deserters and rapists were all shot. After a fair trial, naturally, over a drumhead.

“Hold my horse, there, Blumer, I’m an old man!” Wybicki said to me gleefully, “by God! It’s good to get out of that damned office at last! What beautiful country this is!”

Wybicki was covered in the dust of the road, but his face glowed with elation as he wiped the sweat off it with the braided cuff of his general’s uniform. The General dismounted, and we walked side by side, next to the men as they marched along the quiet Roman road, echoing with their boot-heels.

Quite suddenly, and in spite of their fear of the Court Martial, my men cheered at the sight of Wybicki. They knew him as a true patriot, and they loved him for his song. Wybicki had forged this weapon for us, a weapon of words – the Song of the Legions. It was the song of the
New
Poland, rising like a salamander from the ashes.

“Would you care to take the salute, Sir?” I asked, for he seemed quite affected by it.

“I will!” said the old general, wiping at his eyes with a handkerchief, “this damned dust!” he cursed, “it makes my eyes water,” he lied. “I’m an old man, you know, Blumer!” We grinned, for he was weeping with joy.

My men marched past, in perfect order, arms at the slope, bayonets fixed. I drew my sword – it flashed in the sun – eyes right! Salute! – and Wybicki watched them.
Our uniform was as close as we could make it to the traditional Polish uniform. The French had tried to dress us up in their colours. We were very sensitive to such impositions, and resisted them vigorously. We were Polish soldiers, not French mercenaries.

On our heads, to keep off the sun, we wore the czapka, with bright feather plumes, and cockades of red and white.
The uniform was a dark blue jacket, piped with the battalion colour, which in our case was black. This jacket had red turnbacks, a white collar, and green cuffs.
The breeches were dark blue, skin tight, with no stripes. As for our trappings, everyone wore a tricolored belt, with red, white and blue stripes – French colours. A bullet pouch, of standard French issue, was hung from a white belt that was hooked over the left shoulder. Our haversacks too were standard French issue. In fact,
everything from boot-heel to bayonet was French issue, albeit we were paid in Italian solidi, and not French francs. Bonaparte meant the Italians to foot the bill for their own liberation.

We stood for a moment as the men marched by under our strange new flag – an Italian Tricolor with a silver Polish Eagle perched atop it. The French, famously, had silver eagles on their standards. Our Legions had the same, but with our distinctive crowned eagle on it. Emblazoned on the Tricolore Flag were the strange words ‘The Second Auxiliary Polish Legion of the Cisalpine Republic’.

“Forgive me for asking, Sir,” I asked, “but the men were wondering, what the Hell is the Cisalpine Republic? None of us has even heard of it. And more to the point, why are we not simply in the French army?”

Wybicki shrugged. “By French law, Bonaparte is forbidden from raising foreign troops for the French army. So he got around this prohibition by
inventing a whole new country
– the Cisalpine Republic – from territory captured (or rather liberated) from the Austrians, in October last year. He’s a better lawyer than I am!”