Song of the Legions (37 page)

As we talked, the men finished their march past, and we fell in step behind them.

“I have never heard of a general who created nations and provinces out of thin air,” I said, “not since the days of Julius Caesar. Plenty of generals destroy them, mark you, but none build them! General Bonaparte! A man of destiny indeed, as celebrated in your fine song.”

“Oh, yes, my song!” Wybicki said bashfully. “Tell me – do your men like it?”

“Why, the men are hungry for this song of yours!” I replied. “We shall have it this instant, General!”

So I gave the order and we sang it, loudly and passionately, for its author to hear it. It was, of course, sung to the tune of the wonderful, mysterious mazurka of the Third of May. What else? For a fond moment, we imagined it was seven years ago, marching through Warsaw with the Bullock, and Pepi, and the Commander, and Dabrowski. We were cheering with the crowds outside the red walls of the Royal Castle. Dancing with the girls around King Sigismund’s statute, in a sea of red and white, and kisses, and cheering. Tears of joy, flowing like blood. Dabrowski had given us hope. Good old Dabrowski!

“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!

Like Czarniecki to Poznan

Returning across the sea

To free our fatherland from chains

Fighting with the Swedes

March, march, Dabrowski...

Across the Vistula and Warta

And Poles we shall be

We've been shown by Bonaparte

Ways to victory!

March, march, Dabrowski...

Germans, Muscovites will not rest

When, backsword in hand

Peace will be our watchword

And the motherland will be ours!

March, march, Dabrowski...

Father, in tears

Says to his Basia

Just listen, our people

Are beating the drums!

March, march, Dabrowski...

All cry out as one

Enough of this slavery

We've got scythes from Raclawice

And God will give us The Commander!”

“We’ll sing it louder still for Dabrowski himself,” we shouted, “In Rome!”

Such a day! The Third of May, 1798. At one in the afternoon, to be precise, Dabrowski’s Legion marched into Rome. It was a fine, sunny day, and curious people lined the streets. First came the drummers, then the orchestra, then the artillery, and finally the infantry. My company was fortunate to be there. As you will have expected, the honour of taking Rome fell almost exclusively to the bluebloods of the
First
Legion.

We entered Rome through the Porta del Popolo – the Gate of the People – near the Piazza del Popolo. We entered the Eternal City unopposed. This was storybook war, as played out by old men in armchairs, and boys with lead soldiers on tabletops. Rose petals, not bloody rags, were trampled beneath our feet. The air was alive with scarlet and white flags and blossoms. There were no dead bodies or screaming horses. Only pomp, victory, and girls.

Along the length of the Via Del Corso to Santa Maria we scoured the balconies and rooftops for riflemen. We needn’t have concerned ourselves. The only powder expended that day was on squibs and fireworks. The Pope’s men had broken and run at San Leo. So our suspicious gazes turned to gleeful, lusty stares.

From the window of every villa we were watched, and we drew amorous fire. We returned it! At every window, Italian beauties. Roman ladies dressed in white flowing gowns, drawn low over the bosom, and tight in beneath it, for such was the fashion of the day. Some few peered coquettishly from behind wooden shutters, or fluttering fans. For the most part, they sat quite brazenly at balcony and terrace, sipping noonday wine, or biting into apples. These Roman wenches gazed down at us with greedy eyes. We watched them appraising us as if we were beasts at market, or gladiators at some slave-auction of bygone days.

We called
ciao bella, belissima
, at the tops of our voices, and they called back,
ciao
, and
Dobra Pologna
! Favours, silk scarves, and love-notes rained down on our heads. There was precious little decorum, and no modesty in their conduct, which was brazen, unchristian, and quite immoral. Thank God! It was, in short, a splendid and glorious day! We vied to see who could score the highest in roses, billet-doux, and wisps of chiffon. I swear that I saw one lady throw her silk undergarments to a captain of grenadiers. We strutted like kings.

Military discipline that had held through slaughter and steel, and every imaginable disaster and privation, broke down after a few moments of this amorous onslaught. On that day I determined to take one of these Italian beauties – preferably a Contessa – to be my wife. This I did, eight years later. But that is another story.

Dabrowski’s column halted on the Capitoline Hill, at a monumental staircase, like a huge glacis. Atop this great Jacob’s Ladder sat the grim face of the Church of Santa Maria. It resembled a bastion as much as it did a church, with its high, thick stone walls, and tiny loophole windows. This fortress of God was built to commemorate the victims of the plague. Had the Pope chosen to defend it, why, he could have inflicted a new plague of casualties on us – but he did not. The Pope’s spirit was well and truly broken, and he feared to spill the blood of the populace by enraging us. Thus our conquest proceeded in a stately fashion, like a society ball.

There, at the foot of the staircase, sheltering under silk parasols, were our generals and officers in dress uniform, and their wives arrayed in all their finery. For the Legion travelled as a wandering nation, or a crusader army. We travelled with our women folk, our camp-followers, our sweethearts (and indeed other men’s), and the old, the young, the crippled and the infirm. Those who had wives and children brought them, for we had no homes to go back to. Our houses and estates were burnt, or stolen and given to traitors.

We counted those wives and officers we knew. We recognised the Little Negro instantly, for he gleamed like a black pearl. He stood arm in arm with a pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed Frenchwoman. She professed to be his wife – although they were not married. As we esteemed him so highly, no one ever mentioned the fact they lived in sin, although it was an open secret.

A Jewish officer was standing near to Dabrowski. Birnbaum told me this was Colonel Joselewicz, who had inspired him to join the Beardlings, and who had survived the Slaughter of Praga.

Lastly, we spied, next to her husband, Madame Dabrowski, and beside her, the Junoesque Madame Zayonczek. Splendid as any statue, the white ice queen outgunned not only the other wives, and the Roman women, but the glories of antiquity itself. Raphael and Michaelangelo would have duelled to carve her marble figure!

We saw not Madame L.

Pius VI, the beaten pontiff, met Dabrowski here. We watched as our leader ascended the stone staircase, like a bear ambling up a mountain. Dabrowski clutched Sobieski’s flag in his great paw. That standard which had caused us such trouble since Madame had entrusted it to us. Dabrowski was a giant of a man, strong as a minotaur, able to bend two horseshoes in his hands. He wielded the double-tailed flag as easily as a toothpick. General Dabrowski himself was indifferent to religion. Yet he knew its value to the men, and accorded the beaten pontiff all honours, such as showing him Sobieski’s flag. Dabrowski and the Pope greeted each other like fellow pilgrims, as if the one had granted a plenary indulgence, and the other had paid for a cathedral to purchase it.

We Poles did not loot churches, as the French notoriously did. So perhaps the Pope’s joy was real! At any rate, we attributed his good humours, and the city’s kind favours, to this fact. Girls waved, boys brought us water, old men asked us about our battles. Priests blessed us. One and all commiserated our fallen homeland. Like Italy, Poland was a land divided, and under the evil yoke of foreign rule. So we stood in the sun awhile, drinking in the scenery and the signoras, and sharpening our thirsts like blades.

“That was my idea of a battle!” Birnbaum and I laughed as we fell out, when we were eventually let off the leash to wander the city. “Now let’s have a drink!”

We wandered through the Piazza del Campodoglio, full of smart cafes. Beneath our boots was a geometric paving laid out by Michaelangelo himself, who also scribbled the designs for the pretty pink facades of the ice-cream coloured buildings surrounding the square.

Cyprian Godebski was sitting in a cafe in the Via Calvi, with two ladies. These he introduced as the Duchesa and the Marquisa. Oh, to be a captain!

“Tanski and Sierawski are here already,” the poet said, offhandedly, and offered us wine. We had not clapped eyes on each other for a full year. Godebski was greyer and gaunter, but otherwise unchanged. If he was still heartbroken over Madame, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it. He wore the facings of the Second Legion, and Captain’s epaulettes, and a lady’s red silk drawers were knotted around his neck. Whether these belonged to the Marquisa, the Duchesa, or a third lady, I never established. But both the ladies were vigorously contesting the trophy. At the ladies’ insistence, Cyprian regaled us with tales of his miraculous escape.

“I was the most wanted man in Europe,” he boasted, or rather lied, “I rode through the heart of the Austrian ranks, cutting a swathe through them like a scythe through corn! Then my swift horse carried me across tyrannical Prussia, that foul police state, where spies and gendarmes lurk in every shadow! I made my way to France, the home of Liberty, and in Paris I found Dabrowski and the Legion.” He lit cigars for us all, including the ladies, who blew smoke rings in our faces.

“Dabrowski has given me your Battalion to command, boys, to whip it into shape,” Godebski said, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve heard some pretty damned rum things about your Battalion – they say it’s full of Podolians and Jews!”

“Damned impertinence!” we laughed. To our immense delight, Tanski and Sierawski appeared, laden with bottles.

“Where the hell have you two bastards been!” I roared at them. “You, Lazarus,” I said to Tanski, “risen from your grave! How come you aren’t dead of the plague?
Someone must have said a few prayers for you!”

Tanski shrugged. “It was naught but a touch of dysentery. I spent twenty-eight days in bed, living on water and rusks, and then I was as right as rain.” His brush with death had sharpened his appetite, unless it had been that diet of rusks, for with that, he turned to one of the black-haired ladies nearby at the next table, bowed, introduced himself, kissed her hand, and began wooing and pursuing her with a will.

“What about you?” I asked Sierawski.

“The French Ambassador and I were captured by pirates, and taken to Tunisia,” Sierawski said sheepishly. “The French ransomed us after a few months. The food was good, although they had no strong liquor there, only beer and wine.”

“My heart bleeds!” I snarled, “it sounds like torture!”

“It was all quite civilised,” Sierawski admitted, downing a stiff drink. “We won a lot of money at cards, and smoked a lot of tobacco. They have very strong tobacco in Tunis,” he said casually, slurring his words.

“By God!” I cursed. I was by then very refreshed myself. “You’re as lazy as a bloody horse! Some of us have been busy, settling old scores! But no matter! Who is this drunken bastard of a priest?”

Tanski and Sierawski had with them a man dressed in Cardinal’s scarlet vestments. A lit pipe hung from his mouth. Two Legionnaries with muskets followed at a respectful distance. The priest, who was drunk, dropped his crook and mitre, and the guards picked them up. Their faces wore long-suffering expressions.

Sierawski, who was also blind drunk by now, laughed, “It’s the Podolian Pope, Blumer! Bow down before His Holiness!”

“Sancta Piva i Vodka!” the Priest said, casting a benediction over us all. The ladies sniggered and tittered, and primped their bosoms, and the priest leered at them with an expression that was entirely sinful, and not at all spiritual. Then he slumped over the table and passed out.

“Who the Hell is this priest of yours? If Podolia had a Pope, he’d hold his drink better than this!” I laughed, as we propped up the old goat in an armchair to sleep off the communion wine.

“In fact this is His Grace, Cardinal Testaferrato,” Tanski

explained. “He is the Pope’s henchman, and a very valuable prisoner. I am his gaoler. As you can see my regime is very humane. We charge all of his expenses to his Diocese. It is a very blessed arrangement indeed. And the old fellow is catnip to the ladies – they can’t get enough of him. He never gives a penance of more than three Hail Marys.”

With that, came three Hail Marys and Three Graces. The Marias were fair ladies in waiting, and the Graces were black-eyed Contessas. Their long hair shone ebony-black, in glorious waves. All wore dresses in the Greek style, white like Doric Columns. Rome still aped Greece in all things after all these years – just as we Poles aped the French. One Contessa and her lady swarmed to my side, and Birnbaum and I felt quite delightfully besieged, or perhaps boarded by amorous amazon pirates. We hoisted the white flag, and drank deep of the scarlet wine.

Sierawski grabbed the cardinal’s mitre, rammed it on his head, and capered about the tables, waving the jewelled crook in the air like a lance. Great ironic drunken cheers went up all around as the engineer ran wildly by.

“Our engineer is very highly thought of by Dabrowski, and a great favourite,” Godebski told me, “the French Ambassador passed on an excellent report, saying that he owes him his life. Mark my words, the lad will go far.”

I felt a great pang of joy for my friend – for he deserved it – and a great pang of jealousy, also. With that, the mitre fell over his eyes, and Sierawski stumbled on the crook, fell, and landed on his arse in a fountain. We dragged him out, soaking wet. Ah well, one minute you’re on the horse, the next minute you’re under it! We propped him up next to the Cardinal, and the pair of them gave drunken benedictions to passers-by.