The Retreat (16 page)

They set off again in the morning. Baron Fain and his clerk were sneezing and blowing their noses as they took their places in the berline next to the bookseller and his family. Woebegone, the Sautets were drowsing under some sheepskins. One of the wounded was delirious. That day they didn't see any of the accidents that occurred in the passes – the Emperor's caravan had priority and the civilians couldn't compete with the well-organized soldiers who pushed ahead of them. But many of the carriages behind them broke a wheel and went over precipices with their passengers. Overloaded fugitives began to be seen jettisoning their surplus booty, scattering bags of pearls, icons, weapons and rolls of cloth along the road, which those following trampled on with complete indifference.

*

Crossing the marshes in damp fog took all the subsequent day. Scouts had marked out the route for the army; the baggage train stretched in single file along a precarious road, boggy in places and churned by the caissons and horses' hooves. Indistinct, mud-smeared objects floated on the surface of the quagmires either side of it. A horse kept
its head above the ooze for as long as it could; it hadn't the strength to whinny before it was swallowed up. The slightest misjudgement seemed fatal, so most of the travellers had got out of their heavy coaches. Elegant women in long dresses, frightened, advanced with a thousand precautions on loose stones and between the puddles. One carried a child on her shoulders. Grooms led their draught horses on foot. Mme Aurore's actors walked in front of their covered cart on which had been painted in white letters, on the tarred drill,
HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S THEATRICAL COMPANY
. Ornella and Catherine had covered their hats with waxed silk to keep off the rain; they held up the hems of their skirts as they walked, stumbling repeatedly and clinging to each other so as not to slip off the path. The Great Vialatoux was no longer up to declaiming, but he bewailed his plight at every step, since he was suffering from rheumatism; Mme Aurore admonished him with equal vigour.

Up ahead, just before the fog closed in, a barouche overturned and began to sink. Its passengers, German, shouted like mad for someone to throw them a rope and haul them out onto the road. A lanky figure in a fox-fur coat threw them a roll of canvas he had found in his cart and one of the Germans caught the end. As their rescuer pulled them back towards firm ground, the canvas started tearing, then ripped in two and the man fell back into the marsh.

‘It's stupid throwing a bit of canvas,' a coachman said.

‘Got a rope, have you?' came the angry response. ‘No? We've got to make do with what we've got, haven't we!' The horses struggled in the shafts, but in a second the mud
swallowed them and the barouche with a horrendous sucking sound. There were other scenes of this sort, before which everyone felt helpless.

They left the marshes a little before nightfall. The actors collapsed on ground that was sodden from the fog. To warm themselves up, some of the survivors were ripping the benches and seats out of their carriages, setting them alight and crowding round the resulting pyres. Mme Aurore followed suit, adding the wooden trunks emptied of their costumes. In return for their offer of a share of their provisions, two army stragglers were allowed to sit by the fire. They had no regiment anymore, no arms, just big shaggy cloaks that made them look like bears. One of these bears took Ornella by the shoulder and drew her closer to the fire to get a better look at her.

‘Are you on the stage?'

‘That's what it says on the cart.'

‘That was you that burst out of your glad rags that day in Moscow, wasn't it? You don't forget something like that in a hurry.'

‘What if you put on another performance just for us?' said his accomplice.

‘Leave her alone!' cried Mme Aurore.

‘I didn't hear anyone whistling for you, ma.'

The Great Vialatoux and the juvenile lead, curled up under a mound of furs, didn't move a muscle. Mme Aurore planted herself in front of them.

‘Get these verminous tramps out of here!'

‘This rheumatism has given me paralysis in my legs,' complained Vialatoux.

‘They're not asking for anything that bad,' added the juvenile lead.

The manageress furiously grabbed the pan that was on the fire and tipped it over one of the soldiers' legs; he leapt to his feet, yelling, ‘You're getting my goat, you mad old witch!'

‘Our beans,' groaned Vialatoux.

A gigantic explosion stopped them fighting. Rooted to the spot, they instinctively turned towards Moscow. Having remained behind with the Young Guard, Marshal Mortier had just lit the touchwood fuses of the gunpowder barrels with which he had mined the Kremlin.

*

‘You, my friend, will be beside yourself with joy when you see the meadows in Normandy …' The captain was talking to his horse and tenderly stroking its neck as he watched it eat a bundle of hay. On the sixth day the heavy rain that had been hampering their progress had stopped, and the men had taken heart again. Cutting across fields, they had rejoined the new Kaluga road, marched past forests, sped through gently rolling country and found forage and cabbages and onions to improve the soup. They had left Borowsk, the city of hazelnuts, behind, and now here they were, on a plain dotted with clumps of trees. Everything seemed peaceful. D'Herbigny saw the Emperor sitting at a table by the roadside with Berthier and the King of Naples. The chef Masquelet had prepared lentils with bacon on his mobile canteen, simmering them for a long time over a low heat. So far, no sign of any Russians or Cossacks. Except – just then two Cossacks appeared, pulled along on a leading rein by hussars taking them to the Emperor.

The captain kept still. He tried to piece together the
encounter from the gestures of the participants. The Emperor, a napkin around his neck, listened to the hussars' explanations. The King of Naples, listless since the loss of his cavalry, continued to eat his lentils with a spoon. Where did these unattached Cossacks come from? How had they been captured? Were there others? How many and where? At the very least, it meant that the Russians knew of the army's march on Kaluga. There was a roar of cannon. The Mamelukes fetched horses. The Emperor mounted up, then Caulaincourt, then Berthier, with more of a struggle, and they were about to hurry to the fighting when a trooper arrived at breakneck speed, one of Prince Eugéne's Italians. He stopped in front of the Emperor and they spoke. Napoleon dismounted and went back into the relay, a simple hut where he was going to spend the night.

D'Herbigny made enquiries. Two battalions of the vanguard had taken up position in a small town; built on an escarpment, it overlooked and covered the road the army had to take. Russians, in far superior numbers, had attacked. There was an English officer among them. Would they reach the south? the captain wondered. Could they withstand troops that had had time to raise a line of defences? Candles burned in the windows of the hut. His Majesty received a constant stream of dispatch riders. No one slept. Hands outstretched before their bivouac fires, grenadiers and cavaliers awaited orders. All night, horses galloped in the plain.

A little before dawn, shadows began to move about the hut. Silhouetted in the windows, the captain made out the Mamelukes' turbans topped with brass crescents; grooms brought round saddle horses, which they presented to the grand equerry. The Emperor was outlined in the frame of
the door; he put on his cocked hat and sent an officer of his suite to the dragoons' bivouac.

‘Captain, collect a troop to escort His Majesty.'

‘Did you hear that, you bunch of brigands?' cried d'Herbigny.

His troopers leapt into the saddle. Near the hut, the captain heard the Emperor arguing heatedly.

‘It's still dark, sire,' Berthier said to him.

‘I realize that, you idiot!'

‘You won't see anything from the outposts.'

‘It will be light when we get there.'

‘Let us wait …'

‘No! Where is Kutuzov in all this? I must see for myself.'

Some Italians of Prince Eugéne's guard charged up at that moment and gave more detailed information. ‘The Viceroy is standing fast, sire.'

‘Has he held the town?'

‘He has taken it and retaken it seven times.'

‘The Russian armies?'

‘It looks as if they are falling back.'

‘How do you know?'

‘By the enemy's camps. There are only Cossacks and peasant militias left.'

The sky began to brighten. The little band set off in a half-light. They had barely gone a few hundred metres before hurrahs rang out. Cossacks rushed at the drivers and canteen-women; others whirled between the guns of the artillery park ahead, urging on their horses with their whips; a third party swarmed round the Emperor's escort, lowered their lances and prepared to charge. Napoleon drew his épée with its gold pommel in the shape of an owl. The generals
surrounding him formed a line in front of him and drew their swords as well. D'Herbigny and his dragoons rode for the attackers, who were so hard to make out in the panic of that dawn. They threw themselves into the mêlée; the air rang with the impact of sabres on the wood of the pikes and horses clattering to the ground; riders cannoned into one another, veered out of the way, wrenched their horses aside, yelled and struck out. D'Herbigny found himself behind a green-coated rider brandishing a lance; he drove his blade in under the man's collarbone. Eventually squadrons of chasseurs and Polish lancers came to the rescue, the remaining Cossacks turned their horses' heads and the French gave chase. Some grenadiers helped Dr Yvan lay the wounded out in the grass. D'Herbigny noticed they were carrying the man he had run through.

‘He doesn't look very Tartar,' he said to the acting stretcher-bearers.

‘Oh no, not him.'

‘Who is it?'

‘One of our major general's aides-de-camp. He'd broken his sabre off in the guts of one of those fiends and taken a Russian lance to carry on fighting.'

Full of pride at having saved his Emperor's life, the captain thought that anyone could make a mistake in the dark.

*

Around six o'clock that evening, the council of war convened in a barn. Leaning his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, without having taken off either his overcoat or his hat, Napoleon gloomily studied the maps unrolled before him. Murat had thrown himself on a bench by the
wall and put his plumed cap down near the candlestick. The other marshals stood waiting for the Emperor to decide which route to take. He had spent the day reconnoitring the town in which his battalions had fought with fixed bayonets, except that it wasn't a town anymore, it was more like a field after the stubble had been burned off; not a single house had withstood the Russian cannon, nor even the forests flanking them to the top of the hill. The lines of bodies roughly indicated the street plan; only the church was still recognizable, down below, near the bridge over the river. Prince Eugène had shown him the place where General Delzons had been killed by three bullets …

Eventually the Emperor said, ‘Kutuzov has pulled his armies back, his baggage is slowing him down, he has lost thousands of men, now is the moment to rout him.'

‘Perhaps he is merely changing position, sire …'

‘If we attack now, we will open the southern route.'

‘With what troops, sire?'

‘We have all we need! I've seen Kutuzov's dead, do you hear! I've seen them! Most are young recruits in grey jackets who've only been serving two months and have no idea how to fight. His infantry? Only the front rank is made up of real soldiers. Behind them? Those youngsters, moujiks, peasants armed with pikes, militiamen levied in the capital. . .'

‘Sire, we have just lost at least two thousand men, and how many wounded are we going to take in this pursuit? Let us return us quickly as possible to Smolensk before the cold of winter sets in.'

‘The weather is superb,' the Emperor declared. ‘It will hold for another week and by then we will be under cover.'

‘In Kaluga?'

‘We will rest there, resupply, dispatch reinforcements to meet us there …'

‘Winter can come overnight, sire.'

‘A week, I tell you!'

‘Let's hurry,' Murat suggested. ‘By forced march, we'll be in Smolensk before the week is out.'

‘By forced march …' Davout echoed ironically. ‘Through devastated country and on an empty stomach? Because, naturally, the King of Naples is suggesting we go back the way we came!'

‘It's the quickest!'

‘What about you, what do you suggest?' the Emperor curtly asked Davout.

‘Here, towards Juchnow, by the middle road,' answered the marshal, a pair of round spectacles on the tip of his nose, bending over the map.

‘Waste of time!' said Murat.

‘This region, at least, has not seen any fighting and we'll find the provisions there that we are starting to run short of.'

‘That's enough shouting!' said Napoleon, sweeping the maps off the table with his sleeve. ‘It is for me to choose.'

‘We await your instructions, sire.'

‘Tomorrow!'

They were leaving on this note of indecision when the Emperor detained the major general.

‘Berthier, what do you think?'

‘We are no longer capable of doing battle.'

‘I'm right, though, I know it. Kutuzov! Just one push and he'd fall.'

‘A rapid troop movement, sire, would mean abandoning our wounded and the civilians …'

‘Civilians, what a curse!'

‘We have promised them our protection. As for the wounded, we have to take them, otherwise what soldiers we have left will lose faith in Your Majesty.'

‘Tell Davout to send out cavalry to reconnoitre his famous route. But what about you, Berthier, what's your inclination?'

‘Let's make haste for Smolensk.'