Winds of Folly (38 page)

‘Outnumbered and surrounded,' Bonaparte repeated thoughtfully, still gazing down at the map, ‘but we have one advantage that they do not.'

He did not say what it was. Perhaps he thought they all knew.

He looked at Nathan. ‘Remember,
monsieur le Capitaine
, how you held the map for me, at the Tuileries, you and Junot?'

‘I do,' said Nathan. ‘It was raining.'

Bonaparte stared at him as if he was being flippant, but Nathan was a Navy man: you always had to think of the weather. ‘Was it? I do not remember. Perhaps it was. Now listen to me, and I will teach you how to be a General.' He peered at the map. He looked, Nathan thought, like a wasp buzzing over a pot of jam. ‘A month ago the Austrians were in retreat. Here at Trento. Twenty thousand of them at most. Defeated, demoralised – under a General they did not trust. They were no longer a threat to me, no longer an army. So
I went to Milan to see my wife. I drew a new map of Italy. I took tribute from the Pope in return for Rome. I even had time to kick the English out of Livorno.'

Nathan remembered that, too, but did not say. He wondered if Bonaparte had been there, up on the hillside with his beloved artillery, looking out towards the
Unicorn
, that irritating English frigate, guarding her chickens, plucking the English to safety. But Bonaparte had moved on from Livorno.

‘But then the Emperor took twenty-five thousand men out of his Army of the Rhine and sent them south, under Wurmser, to Trento. Generalfeldmarschall Graf von Wurmser, one of the old school. You know that he is seventy-two? I am twenty-six. War is not a game for old men. But …' he shrugged. ‘The Emperor trusts his old men.
Die alte Herren
. So now I have this old man with his twenty-five thousand veterans at Trento and twenty thousand of the men I have already defeated – how many times is it, Junot?'

‘Three times, my General.'

‘Only three? It feels like more. And last week they marched down the Adige. I was not too worried, to tell the truth. I thought Masséna would stop them at La Corona but …' He shrugged again. ‘He did not. He let me down. His troops let
him
down. Some of our battalions did not behave very well, not like one expects Frenchmen to behave, did they, Junot?'

‘No, my General.'

‘How would you know? You were in Venice. Hiding behind your mask. Playing at Carnival.'

Nathan had taken Junot's remark about being in Venice as a lie, or an exaggeration, but now he wondered. Had he been in Venice while Nathan was there? Had he been in the Convent of San Paolo, in his mask? But he forced his attention back on the map. He had the feeling that for some reason Bonaparte wanted his approval, but why? Unless Junot was right.

‘But then Wurmser makes a mistake. The first mistake. He divides his army. He sends eighteen thousand men down the west of Lake Garda under Quasdanovich.' He drew the line with his finger, the narrow trail between the lake and the mountains. ‘The rest he brings down the Adige.' He drew another line, down the east of the lake, towards Verona and Mantua. ‘Now why does he do that? Why does General-feldmarschall Graf von Wurmser, with all his experience, send half his men down one side of the lake and half down the other?'

He looked sharply at Nathan. Nathan shook his head.

‘I have no idea,' he said.

‘Nor have I,' said Bonaparte with a sigh. ‘But let us think about it. Look at the map.'

Nathan took a guess. ‘To catch you between two pincers? Squeeze you like a lemon.'

Bonaparte looked at him. ‘You are sure you have not been a General?'

Nathan smiled thinly – he took it to be sarcastic but no, Bonaparte thought that might very well have been what Wurmser had intended – and that it might have had every chance of success, if he had seen it through.

‘See, he has cut my lines of communication with Milan, and if he unites the two wings of his army here, south of Lake Garda …' Bonaparte shrugged. ‘Well, I will not say we are finished but we have a fight on our hands. But then he makes his second mistake. He takes Verona but then he carries on marching … marching south to Mantua.' He frowned at Nathan. ‘Why do you think he does that?'

It seemed reasonable enough to Nathan, given that Mantua was his objective. He said as much.

‘But consider, what is his priority? What should
be
his priority?'

Nathan thought what Nelson would do. ‘To defeat the enemy,' he said. ‘To smash them. To go right at them.' That was what Nelson would have said.

‘Excellent.' Bonaparte clapped his hands together twice. ‘We will make a General of you yet. His priority is to defeat me. To smash me. The French Army of Italy. He smashes the field army of the French and not only does he raise the Siege of Mantua, he takes back the whole of northern Italy. For we have no other army in the field. So why does he march on Mantua?' This did not seem to be a rhetorical question: he seemed to be genuinely puzzled. ‘Is it because he wishes for the glory? To become the General who breaks the Siege of Mantua? Maybe he thinks the Emperor will make him the Duke of Mantua, along with his other titles. Or maybe it is just that he is an old man and fights the old wars. In the old wars you do not fight battles, not unless you have to. Armies are too precious to lose. You move them around the map, you take a city here, a city there. It is a war of sieges and fortresses. But we have changed all that. For see, I have raised the siege, I have abandoned my siege guns, all those trenches we have been digging all summer, I have pulled back Sérurier's division from Mantua and I have concentrated my forces here, south of the lake. I am between his two armies. The lemon, you say? Very good. Imagine this is the Tuileries in Paris. It is Vendémiaire. The enemy have me surrounded and outnumbered. But at any one point if I strike out from the circle, it is I who have the advantage – me. And this is what I have done. Yesterday we took Quasdanovich here at Lonato – Masséna did. He makes up for his defeat at La Corona and he has sent him scuttling back to the Tyrol, with the loss of how many men, Junot?'

‘I do not know, my General, I was not here.' Sulkily.

‘Tell him, somebody.'

‘Seven thousand,' said several voices at once.

‘Seven thousand men. And he is out of the fight. And now Wurmser is marching up the Mincio from Mantua with his twenty-five thousand men to save him, not knowing he is already defeated, and tomorrow we will do the same to him. Except he has nowhere to run, and
if we can find the cavalry
…' raising his voice for the benefit of the others in the room ‘…
we will wipe him out!
' He looked at Nathan again. ‘Someone will tell us sooner or later where the cavalry are. Kilmaine is an Irishman, you know. His family name is Jennings. I cannot even pronounce it.' He had difficulty with some of the French names, too. ‘So what have I left out, my General?'

Nathan looked at the map again. He scratched his chin. ‘The weather?' he guessed.

‘The weather?' A frown. Bonaparte looked at Junot; he looked at the other officers. They aped his frown. ‘What is the weather to do with it? Do we think it might snow, in August?' He looked to his officers again. Nathan could see they were thinking about it. ‘Why do you say this? I ask if you remember Vendémiaire and you say, “Yes, my General, it was raining.” You are like my mother. “Take your coat,
Nabolione
, it is going to rain. Remember, my son, it is cold in the Alps in winter.”'

The officers laughed. Apparently it was all right for Bonaparte to make jokes about his mother, and his name.

‘No, not the weather, not the wind or the rain or the snow. What I have left out is
the luck
. A General must have the luck. If Wurmser has the luck and I do not …' Suddenly he looked depressed and very tired. ‘Well, a General must make his own luck. Give our friend here an armband, Junot,' he said, ‘and find him a horse. He can hold the map. It may bring us the luck.'

He walked back to his chair and fell into it, closing his eyes again.

*

Next day they marched to Castiglione.

Nathan spent the night wrapped in a horse blanket on the floor. He thought of escape but dismissed it as impractical. Even if he could have made his way to the Austrian lines without being shot by the French
videttes
, there was every likelihood of being shot by the Austrians. He did not underestimate the difficulty of convincing a nervous and excitable Austrian picket that he was a Captain in His Britannic Majesty's Navy who found himself stranded 100 miles from the sea in the uniform of a French cavalry officer. Especially as the only German he spoke was
Guten Tag
and
Danke
. Good-day and Thank you would not, he thought, prove overly persuasive.

His chief hope was of an Austrian victory. In the chaos of a French retreat, he thought it might not be impossible to make his way back to the coast, especially if he was now supplied with a reliable mount. Finding a boat that would convey him to the
Angelika
– if she was still at her mooring – was a problem he would consider at the appropriate time and place.

And so a little after dawn on the fifth day of August, or eighteenth Thermidor as the French still insisted upon calling it, Nathan rode out with General-in-Chief Bonaparte and his staff to fight a battle that would, the General informed them, determine the fate of Italy, possibly the whole of Europe. Nathan rode a big bay gelding with a more amiable disposition and considerably better gait than the last horse they had given him, and he wore the green-braided coat of a Major in the 21st Regiment of
chasseurs à cheval
. Junot had also found him a red-and-white silk scarf which he had tied about his right arm to signify that he was one of the Commander-in-Chief's elite
aides de camp
. The map was folded in his pocket. The weather, albeit irrelevant, was fine. Clear blue skies, the sun already warming the parched earth. He had been given a sword and a
pair of pistols. Junot rode at his side, Bonaparte a little ahead of them both.

The Austrians were drawn up on a ridge of high ground running east from Castiglione to the small town of Solferino, marked by the distant tower of La Rocca which guarded their right flank. Their left was guarded by the redoubt of Monte Medolano. There had been an exchange of artillery fire and the morning mist was thickened with smoke, shrouding the ridge where the Austrians were. Nathan saw the white-uniformed figures moving through it like ghosts. Not that they appeared to be moving much. They seemed content to hold their position and let the French do all the work.

His first impression was hopeful. The French troops looked exhausted. They had been marching and fighting for three days now and many of them were dead on their feet. The Austrians commanded the high ground and they had a large advantage in numbers. From remarks he had overheard, Nathan gathered that Wurmser had about 28,000 men with his veterans from the Army of the Rhine, and more he had picked up from the garrison at Mantua. Bonaparte had about 22,000 but with 10,000 more marching up the Oglio after raising the Siege of Mantua. He had Masséna on his left and Augereau on his right and Kilmaine with his cavalry – which had either been found or had not been missing in the first place – massed in his rear.

If Bonaparte had asked his opinion, and Nathan had been inclined to the French cause, he would have advised him to stay where he was until his reinforcements arrived and then hope to turn one or other of the Austrian flanks. But Bonaparte did not ask his opinion. He launched an immediate attack on the Austrian centre.

For most of the morning Nathan watched the French columns advancing towards the opposite ridge and then falling back. But they always fell back in good order and it occurred
to Nathan, after some private deliberation, that the attacks were feints, designed to persuade Wurmser to strengthen his centre at the expense of his flanks. He had no idea if this was working or not. Although the mist had dispersed, the smoke lay thick over the entire battlefield. He could no longer see either Solferino or Monte Medolano. There was a continuous roar of artillery all along the line, though it seemed rather a tame roar to Nathan after the confined discharge of a ship's broadside.

He had leisure to observe Bonaparte directing a battle, but in truth he learned little from it. The General seemed lost in his thoughts and he did not choose to share them. He looked, Nathan thought, like a mathematician working out a very complicated sum in his head. Gallopers came and went bringing news from his divisional commanders, but mostly they brought notes, scribbled in the heat of battle, and Bonaparte sent written notes in return. The first indication of a tactical manoeuvre was when Nathan heard Bonaparte emphasising that both Masséna and Augereau were to make the retreat look real. What retreat? Nathan wondered. He could see no signs of a retreat from either side. Then he saw the Austrians pouring down from the ridge over towards Solferino. He understood now what was meant by ‘the fog of war'. A little later, a galloper came in with news that the French troops from Mantua were attacking the Austrians' left flank. Then, for the first time, Bonaparte consulted the map. He nodded to himself a few times and then called out to one of his aides.

‘Ride to Marmont. Tell him now.'

The staff shifted their position to the right to watch the attack on Monte Medolano. The
masse de rupture
, Bonaparte called it. Even through the smoke, Nathan could see the French horse artillery gallop up to point-blank range and open fire on the Austrian flank. And behind the horse artillery came the
grenadiers. Even Nathan, who hoped for a French defeat, felt a thrill of excitement as he watched those blue-uniformed troops in their bearskin helmets marching into battle to the sound of the drums. The little drummer boys almost running to keep up with the marching troops, beating out the rhythm of the march, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. He heard the roar of the Austrian artillery and the distant spiteful whine of the falling shot. He saw the swathes it opened in the ranks of the marching men, but they did not stop marching and the drums did not stop beating.