Three Emperors (9780062194138) (10 page)

The only reason he tolerated me was honesty. “A dangerous one. If you give the enemy time to act in concert, the odds are hopeless.” Another murmur. “You could take your winnings, the capture of Mack's army, and negotiate for the best peace you can get.” I turned to the others. “Or you can go all in.”

Napoleon smiled. “Indeed. I've put my head in the noose to pursue my enemies, and my only course now is to make them even more reckless than I am. What strategy would you adopt in brelan, Gage?”

“I'd bluff. But in this case the cards are exposed, since both sides have scouts who can count. The Allies know they outnumber you, and the longer they wait, the greater their advantage.”

“Exactly. My spies tell me Russian general Kutuzov has counseled exactly such patience, but younger and more eager Russian princes are anxious to fight. There's no glory in delay and maneuver. Kutuzov is a commoner, and they despise him for it. Emperor Alexander is torn between common sense and the aristocracy he must placate to consolidate his power. I, meanwhile, need a decisive battle while I can still even the odds. I need Alexander to attack, but only when and where I want him to. How do you draw an opponent out, American gambler?”

“By feigning weakness.”

He turned to the others. “And what would look weaker than sending a foreign hanger-on like Ethan Gage to beg for time from an enemy?” The officers laughed.

This new diplomatic duty was alarming. I was searching for my wife.

“Gage does exude a certain craven cleverness,” Marshal Lannes judged.

“The kind of duplicitous diplomat who negotiates to save himself,” Murat added. “Royals will remember his treachery at Tabor Bridge and view our use of him as cynical and desperate.”

“The American is obsessed with his own family when the world is on a knife-edge,” Constant chimed in.

“The world is always on a knife-edge,” I said, but no one was listening.

“Gage is as feeble as a hare in a snare, with Alexander the watching Russian wolf,” added Napoleon's aide-de-camp General Anne-Jean-Marie-René Savary. “Using an American will confuse them.” This guileful officer had won the emperor's favor by commanding his bodyguard, crushing French rebels, and overseeing the illegal execution of the Duc d'Enghien. Any sensible man was wary of him, including me.

“Exactly,” Napoleon replied. “We're going to choose our place to fight, cousins. And we're going to use the American to bait the trap.” He turned to me. “Gage, I'm sending you with Savary to offer a truce. The more the enemy holds you in contempt, the more likely you are to succeed.”

“I know nothing about Russians.”

“I don't want you to study them. I want you to draw them to where I can kill them. We have a week at most to destroy them before they become so strong that they destroy me.”

“Lure them where?”

“Exactly.” Once more he addressed the others. “The Allies have three choices. They can march into the forested hills of Bohemia, to my far left, between Brunn and Prague, and hurry westward to cut my supply lines and retreat. But that puts their army columns on hilly forest roads, out of touch with each other.”

“We could crush each column as it emerges from the woods,” Lannes said.

“Second, they can march directly from Olmütz toward Brunn and attack me head-on. But I have a choice of several heights to make a stand on, and if I lose I simply fall back on my supply routes. Even an Allied victory could result in stalemate.”

“The last thing Czar Alexander wants,” said Savary. “He fancies himself Alexander the Great. Emperor Francis wants to be Charlemagne.”

“Third, they can swing south, around my right. If successful, this puts them between our forces and Vienna, and closer to the Austrian dukes coming from Italy. They would retake their capital, unite their forces, and force me into a precipitous retreat. A combined army could chase us all the way to Paris.”

“You think they'll try that,” I summed up.

“I prepare for every contingency. But that would be my choice, were I Alexander or Francis. So: a thousand miles from home, winter coming on, enemy reinforcements marching from all directions, our supplies thin and troops tired. What is our task, cousins?”

“To have them try to turn our right flank in a place of our choosing,” Murat said. He had the eagerness of a schoolboy and recited the answer the teacher wanted. “And then strike a devastating counterblow.”

“You are learning at last. Yes, to turn their own confidence against them. I have ground in mind. We're too weak, and too extended, to attack the enemy at Olmütz. We must convince them to hurry to us by pleading for time.”

“The more you beg, the less you get,” I offered. “That's been my experience, anyway.” I take lessons from my failures.

“I'm gambling like brelan, Gage, and I'm gambling that the Austrians will recognize you and trust nothing you tell them. Promise me that you can still lie and dissemble, trick and deceive, mislead and divert.”

“I'm actually honest to a fault. And even if they think the worst of me, won't they be tempted to just shoot or hang me?”

He smiled. “That's a risk I'm prepared to take.” The joke, if it was one, got a hearty laugh. “No, they'll send you back with a counteroffer to conceal their movements, in time for glorious battle to embroil us all.”

Chapter 11

I
will not exaggerate my importance as bait. Alexander I of Russia was a czar at twenty-seven, thrilled to be at war, and an egotist who hardly needed to be egged on by me. The man was convinced it was God's will that the Russians give the godless French a good thrashing. (Never mind that Napoleon had invited the Catholic Church back after declaring the Revolution over and that his regiments shouted, “By the sacred name of God, forward!” when advancing.) By the time Savary and I reached the Allied emperors, their armies had swung from the defensive to the offensive, and on November 28 they drove a French screening force from the Moravian town of Wischau, halfway between Olmütz and Brunn. The ease with which Napoleon's outposts were driven back had astonished and excited the Allied high command. The French were not invincible after all!

Bonaparte had meanwhile found his preferred battlefield, a farmed hill called Pratzen, with broad, gently sloping shoulders. It was west of the château of Austerlitz and just south of the Brunn–Olmütz Road. From its heights he had a panoramic view of enemy maneuvers. The French right flank that Bonaparte expected the Allies would try to turn fortified itself in a lowland south of the Pratzen Heights, protected by frozen ponds, a stream, woods, and the tiny villages of Tellnitz, Sokolnitz, and Kobelnitz. Cannons crouched behind stone walls, and loopholes were knocked in the walls of farmhouses.

Napoleon's left flank thus straddled the road, his center was atop the hill, and his right waited in the foggy valley. Clearly outnumbered, he had ordered Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout to bring his corps by forced march from Vienna.

The question now was whether the Austrians and Russians would attack, as desired, and if they would do so carefully, as feared. The emperor risked Savary and me to help ensure the former and prevent the latter. Timing was critical. If we could stretch out diplomatic palaver long enough, we'd give the French time to almost equal the Allies in number. If we conveyed weakness, the Allies would turn reckless. My presence was to encourage attack, and Savary's job was to delay it until the right moment.

So once more I found myself in the last place I like to be: between two armies, in a fight I had no stake in, with not even a pistol in my belt. I was desperate to resume my hunt for Astiza and Harry. But I was boxed in by a retinue of Savary's aides and had no alternative until I could contrive to slip away. We rode under flag of truce into the aftermath of the early skirmish, trotting gingerly up the Olmütz Road past a scattering of dead men and horses, abandoned equipment, and broken wagons. Russian dragoons had stampeded the French cavalry, and then the Arkhangel Musketeers had stormed the village of Rausnitz. In the dark following the action, we passed a huddle of more than a hundred French prisoners, seated miserably in a field with no fire and no food. The Russians guarding them were big, solemn, brutish-looking peasants in coats that reached to their knees. Many had crosses around their necks of a size usually hung on walls. Mounted Cossacks, as lithe as Mongols, roamed the periphery on ponies as shaggy as their fur hats. Light snow fell and melted, the war cast in gray.

Imperial Russian scouts galloped up to meet us, clods flying, the officers excited as hounds by the French retreat. It was the start of great glories to come, they believed. They wheeled to box us in, the nostrils of their horses blowing steam, their own faces red and shiny.

“A message to your emperors from ours,” Savary said. “We need to talk.”

“It appears you do,” a self-satisfied Russian major replied, gesturing to corpses lying near the road. Snow had powdered them like pastry. “The east is becoming less to French liking, I think. Who is that one?” He pointed at my civilian clothes.

“A neutral diplomat,” I said. “Ethan Gage, at your service.” As is customary, we all spoke French. “American by birth and negotiator by profession. Napoleon uses me for delicate missions.”

“Surrender is not delicate, monsieur, and the French must accede to it if they wish to leave Bohemia alive. But you can repeat Bonaparte's honeyed lies to my masters, and bring back truth to the tyrant. This way—we ride through the night.”

We galloped past regiment after Allied regiment, their campfires constellations of stars turned upside down. I'd been with Napoleon in Egypt and Marengo and seen the huge scale of war. Yet this campaign had more than twice that dimension. If Napoleon's reinforcements arrived, approximately seventy-five thousand French would face eighty-one thousand Russians and Austrians. These were unprecedented numbers to control, feed, and arm. Conflict was swelling like a tumor, and the challenge was to control its cancer. Bonaparte was Prometheus, bringing not fire but firepower to the world.

The Russian czar had a reputation as a reformer, but his nation remained an autocracy opposed to all that French or American revolutionaries represented. It was an empire reliant on size and serfdom. When enlisted Russians approached their officers with a question, they fell to their knees to ask. These men were beaten like mules, shouted at like the deaf, and shuffled like slaves. They looked like shambling bears.

In battle, however, the Russians were fiercely patriotic and had the reputation of being almost impossible to capture alive. They would die fighting.

We found the two enemy emperors in a manor in the captured town of Wischau. We were ushered into an overheated salon through the usual ring of sentries and functionaries, the inner circle sparkling with braid, medals, buttons, and boot polish.

I decided the Russian looked more the emperor than the Austrian. For one thing, Alexander was ruthless. The czar had boyish good looks and Western tutors, but he'd also acceded upon the assassination of his father, Paul, whose governing was erratic to the point of lunacy. Four years ago, the czar's generals had dragged Paul out from behind the dressing stand where he was hiding and sabered, strangled, and stomped him to death. Then they'd gone to find his weeping son. “Time to grow up,” General Nicholas Zubov had told Alexander. “Go and rule!”

And so he did, with typical Russian grit and lack of sentimentality. He brought in a cabal of young reformers, tried to overhaul the sclerotic bureaucracy, and started reforms of his brave but clumsy army. Word was that Alexander had founded a new port on the Black Sea, called Odessa, that was already a success, and was gobbling up other Ottoman lands. He'd also reassured the nobility by putting a stop to any nonsense about freeing serfs. Now he was in the prime of his life: erect, athletic, confident, virile—he went through mistresses like a post rider goes through horses—and resplendent in a black uniform with blue slash. He was a clean-shaven and ruddy-cheeked man with high forehead and curly, sand-colored hair. His boots were bright as obsidian, his spurs golden. He was a Murat with better taste, I decided, and clearly relished the opportunity to save Europe from Napoleon.

Now I'd been drafted to help save Napoleon from him. I felt squeezed between their egos.

Austria's Francis II, by contrast, was thirty-seven, slight, and more timorous, since his armies had been bested by Bonaparte several times. Because he had lost so many men from the surrender of General Mack, his soldiers were now the minority of the Allied army. Still, his officers were trying to graft Austrian organization onto Russian boldness, devising a complex battle plan. Francis was the prissier of the two emperors, in white and gold too pretty for battle, but he didn't pretend to be martial. Alexander had energy, accomplishment, and ambition, while Francis was earnest and plodding, a balding monarch still stunned by French successes.

Savary and I sensed power in the room—it was as intimidating to enter enemy headquarters as it is to walk into a bear den—but not unity. The chamber was crowded with generals of two nations, each as proud as a cock. Russia's Prince Bagration had the beak and jaws of a nutcracker: lean, thin-lipped, and predatory. Napoleon thought him the best warrior of the bunch. General Kutuzov, aged sixty, was considered the wiliest, but he appeared to have been ignored, leaning in a chair against a wall in the rear of the room. He was fat, drunk, and old, his eyelids heavy, yet I saw him watching everyone.

It was Savary who presented Napoleon's proposal. “The French emperor requests a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours,” the aide-de-camp said, “time enough for both of us to exchange our wounded and consider our positions.”

“What wounded have you captured to exchange?” Emperor Alexander replied. He was proud of the skirmish he'd won.

“We're talking about mercy, Your Excellency.” I didn't trust Savary, but he was the right man for this job. He could lie like a horse trader.

“And who is this?” the Russian said, turning to study me with distaste.

“An American negotiator of peace,” I said, speaking up. “I've supped with President Jefferson and can tell you he admires your reforms, Your Highness.” This was true. When you come from a chain of tyrants, any improvement looks good.

“I'm glad to hear it. I wrote your leader in August about the workings of federalism, and he sent me some books. We both have large empires. Yours has expanded with Louisiana.”

“I had a hand in the sale of that French territory. My president admires France, too, Your Excellency. I'm sure he'd counsel peace.”

“Yet he has doubled his nation and started his own war with the Barbary pirates. Are you representing America here?”

“No. Fortune has made me peacemaker to the French army, and I'm trying to prevent needless bloodshed. Each side has won honors. Twenty-four hours will give you time to begin a mutual retreat, saving countless lives.” Everyone present knew there wasn't a whit of a chance of this. When you march thousands of men hundreds of miles, you're damn well going to use them; it was just a question of when. So I was consciously trying to play the fool.

“What if my intention is to sleep in Paris?” It was a jaunty taunt.

“Paris is a long way. I, for one, am half-frozen, and there's time for hostilities to be suspended for Christmas. A truce would be a first step toward an armistice and treaty.”

Napoleon intended nothing of the sort, of course, and had explained our roles as actors before we set out. “If Alexander and Francis accept my proposal,” he had instructed, “it will suggest they are still too disorganized for a general assault. I will accordingly smash them with an attack of my own. Should they refuse, it will tell us that their own attack is imminent and we must maneuver to meet it. Both of you must watch their eyes as well as their tongues.”

“You'd make a fine brelan player,” I'd told Napoleon. “And you're clever enough to put my head in the lion's mouth, not yours.”

“Yes. Your execution would be another sign of their eagerness for battle.”

Now someone shouted in the hot and crowded room. “That insect is the lying scoundrel from Tabor Bridge!”

With dismay I recognized the voice of the Austrian general Auersperg. Hadn't he been cashiered or imprisoned yet? He pushed forward through a crowd of Russian and Austrian staff officers and pointed at me like a biblical prophet. “Do not believe a word this man says. He slithers like a serpent! He's a despicable rascal, a fraud, an impostor, a saboteur, and a reptile.” He fumbled for his sword, face mottled with frustration and rage. “He hid in the mud of the Danube riverbank before I could kill him, but I'll run him through now!”

I tried to step back but was hemmed in. “I've no weapon and am under flag of truce, General. This is rather unseemly.”

“He claimed armistice before!”

“And you drank champagne to it, if I recall.”

Alexander put his hand up, even though Auersperg was an Austrian general, not a Russian one. “No one is running anyone through. This is a negotiation. Put your sword away; you've disgraced yourself enough.” Such a public rebuke was devastating, and Emperor Francis colored at this reminder of his nation's embarrassment. Auersperg stepped back, humiliated once more.

I gave him a bright smile, dismissing his criticism. As Franklin said,
Whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

“Why does Bonaparte send an American minion to deliver a message requiring trust?” Austria's Francis demanded, annoyed at my presence and apparently not as philosophical as old Ben.

Savary spoke up. I found Napoleon's aide conceited; he found me flippant. “I didn't know he was at the Tabor, and I'm sure his role is being exaggerated,” the Frenchman lied. “The American is nothing; pay no attention to him. He is Napoleon's pet, given to me as much as a servant as anything else.”

“The use of a neutral American to propose terms is a deliberate insult to Allied arms,” a prince spoke up. This was Peter Petrovich Dolgoruki, a noble so full of himself that he seemed about to inflate and burst. “The contempt of the Corsican usurper is clear. America has no role here. Napoleon has sent a jester.”

“You don't think we need his armistice, Dolgoruki?” Alexander asked mildly.

“Not when the enemy has run in terror before us for two days.”

I could have pointed out that the Allies had run the other way for two months, but Dolgoruki's pride was exactly what Napoleon was hoping for.

“Here's a letter from my emperor,” Savary said. “It is offered in respect.”

“Francis?” Alexander asked.

“We will consider it in private,” the Austrian emperor said. “Wait here.” The two rulers withdrew to another room to read the document, everyone but Savary and me bowing, saluting, or snapping to attention when they did so.

We waited, without chairs or refreshment, for a good half hour. Dolgoruki and Auersperg stared daggers. The rest boasted to one another about their derring-do. Russian majors sipped from flasks of vodka and told ribald stories, and Austrian staff officers studied maps.