Seven Men of Gascony

by R. F Delderfield

  As soon as fires in one part of the town were under control, flames would shoot up in another sector. Bands of armed convicts, turned loose from the city gaols, and led by members of the Russian police unit, furtively roamed the streets applying lighted torches to shops, houses and warehouses. The Emperor and his staff were forced to leave the Kremlin; a huge wooden palace where they found temporary asylum took fire soon after their entry and burned down in less than an hour. All the efforts of 130,000 men, comprising the French army of occupation, could do little more than limit the number of fresh outbreaks and beat out occasional fires before they succeeded in getting a hold. For the rest, major fires burned on until whole streets were reduced to ashes.

  Jean, Nicholas, Gabriel and Dominique kept together in the confusion and more than once during the next forty-eight hours were in danger of being cut off by the vast lanes of flame that swept across whole areas of the city with terrifying speed. Gabriel found the burning city a fearsome but beautiful spectacle. From the ramparts of the Kremlin, where they were sent on the evening of the second day, he looked down on a sea of flame, driven by the stiff westerly breeze right across the city. Broad tongues of fire licked into the dark masses of tortuous streets, curving and meeting some other avenue of fire and forming a broad front to sweep eastward towards the outer suburbs. Later, when the voltigeurs accompanied the grenadiers and Red Lancers of the Guard to the palace chosen for headquarters after the Kremlin area had become untenable, Gabriel watched the scene as one records the sequence of a nightmare, awful but none the less fascinating. He saw a party of chasseurs urge a team of captured Russians through an arcade of blazing houses, the prisoners being harnessed by ropes to two-wheeled carriages loaded with provisions snatched from the flames. He watched the French drive the reluctant teams over the scorching débris that choked the carriageway and saw the walls of burning houses collapse on men and vehicles, burying captors and captives in a shower of flaming rubble. Sacks of sugar which had been piled in the carriages flared up in bluish flame, but the men must have perished instantly, for the red-hot débris did not stir and everyone who witnessed the incident recognized the folly of penetrating the burning street and going to the party’s assistance.

  Nicholas stalked about with a close-lipped, set expression. The others wondered if he was worrying about Nicholette and hoped that she had not reached the city before the fire commenced. They had several encounters with incendiaries and formed part of a firing-party at the execution of a group of nineteen Russians caught in the act of setting fire to the Foundling Hospital. The victims were mostly convicts, of the type shot by Nicholas in the courtyard of the Governor’s Palace, but the schoolmaster did not appear to be moved by their stoic acceptance of death. He calmly fired, loaded and fired into the clump of kneeling figures, even wrenched a crucifix from the fingers of a dead policeman and glanced at it before tossing it aside as an article of no value. Something seemed to have happened to Nicholas recently. He was out of reach of their comradeship and conversation. Jean gave him an odd look or two but said nothing.

  More than once during their endless tramping from point to point, Gabriel glanced at Dominique and wondered if these appalling spectacles were registered in the slow, patient brain of the Gascon farm hand. He decided they were not. Dominique had always been a silent, matter-of-fact individual, dealing out and inviting death with no more concern than if he had been forking hay in his master’s fields along the banks of the Dordogne. Sometimes Gabriel envied him, although he realized that the boy’s intellect was feeble. Dominique seemed immune to physical suffering himself and cheerfully impervious to the sufferings of others outside his own particular circle. He had immense reserves of physical strength in his short, thickset body. He never seemed either tired or cold or hungry, though he slept like a hog in the sun the moment he laid his head on a knapsack, and ate like a famished wolf immediately food was placed in front of him. Now, in this phantasmagoria of smoke and scorching heat, something devilish seemed to animate him. He laughed at the flames and often ran, shouting, into the most dangerous corners to snatch up some worthless trinket he had seen. If he was successful he would stuff it gleefully into an already bulging knapsack.

  He reminded Gabriel of the illustrations which he had seen as a child to Dante’s Inferno, hordes of ghoulish little imps driving the damned into a boiling lake. Dominique continued to match the mad frolics of the fire, darting beneath blazing beams and running down the steps of reeking cellars until Jean, impatient with such childishness, barked an order at him to remain close to his side. Jean was deeply distressed by this orgy of destruction.

  “I can’t help thinking of all the good food that’s going to waste,” he told Gabriel. “We shall need every ounce of it if we stay here until spring!”

  Here and there they saved what they could. The fire-fighting teams formed themselves into foraging parties, breaking open provision shops not yet reached by the fire and piling goods—sugar, brandy, hams, sacks of flour, mustard, preserved fruits and other foodstuffs—onto the few clear spaces, for collection and transport to the established distribution centres.

  At one point they came across a small Russian hospital, and one of the patients, a gunner with both legs broken, implored them in halting French to save him from the flames. The voltigeurs did what they could, carrying a dozen men out of a filthy stable and depositing them in the middle of a garden behind a large private house already demolished. They could do no more and left them there to take their chance. The gunner called after them piteously, but they never discovered whether the injured men survived. That part of the city was afterwards burned to ashes.

  “It’s their own fault, the barbarians,” muttered Jean, as though addressing his own conscience. “They shouldn’t have fired the damned city. We shall all suffer for it!”

  There were women in some of the churches, hiding down in the crypts in the hope that the dead would protect them. Some of these were persuaded to move over to corps headquarters, where the younger ones were employed as prostitutes and the older as washerwomen or cooks.

  Most of the senior officers behaved well, exhausting themselves in efforts to check the fire. Gabriel saw Marshal Mortier, the big, jolly commander of the Kremlin area, working with a party of sappers in a desperate attempt to blow up a section of the wooden houses and create a gap that the flames could not bridge.

  The marshal’s splendid uniform was singed and blackened and his jovial face smeared with soot. He toiled like a labourer side by side with the N.C.O.s and men of the ranks.

  By the morning of the third day the fire had burned itself out. A dense cloud of smoke hung over the city, shutting out the sun. The stench rising from the smoking rubble was almost overpowering. Two-thirds of the city had been completely destroyed.

  In the ruins of the Place des Pendus they came across Nicholette. She told them that her wagon and team were intact. The press of vehicles along the main road of advance had been so great that she had been delayed thirty-six hours on the outskirts of the city. By that time fires were blazing in all directions and she had thought it wiser to bivouac on the far side of the Moskva.

  Nicholas and the others accompanied her there, loading themselves with the provisions they had set aside for their own use before handing over the bulk of their salvage to the quartermaster. They had set by several sacks of sugar, some liqueurs, a little flour, some pickles and a quantity of fur-lined clothing. Nicholas remained on guard and the others returned to company headquarters, where efforts were being made to rebillet the troops in those sections of the city that had escaped the flames.

  Later on, when the company was settled, Nicholette moved in and during the next month the file lived luxuriously. They slept on ermine and there was always something for the cooking-pot. Bread and meat were short, but there was more than enough to drink, so much, indeed, that Nicholette stocked up and did not trouble to sell liquor. They had rum punch every night and occasionally a case of sparkling champagne. Jean s
oon recovered his spirits.

  “This is something like a campaign,” he told them, “we didn’t do as well as this in Warsaw or Vienna.”

  They had a comfortable billet in the lower part of a house that had been a doctor’s. There was a small library, including some volumes in French. Nicholas read a good deal in his off-duty hours. The doctor had been a devotee of Voltaire and his edition was beautifully bound in red Moroccan leather.

  Louis looked in one evening. He had been caught up in the fighting with Murat’s column, east of the city. Louis himself looked well enough, but his mare, Roxy, was a good deal thinner than when they had seen her picking her way over the débris of Borodino a month before.

  “It’s the Devil’s own job getting fodder,” Louis told them. “I have to pay the hucksters for everything I get, and the stuff they sell is too thin for a powerful mare like her. I’ve had to steal for her on more than one occasion!” Roxy tossed her head and laid her muzzle alongside Louis’ cheek, as though she fully appreciated the dragoon’s efforts on her behalf.

  “You’re worse than a woman with that greedy brute!” laughed Jean.

  They all noted Nicholette’s swelling figure, and Gabriel thought it made her seem even more diminutive than she was. Old Jean pulled a wry face when he discovered that she was expecting a child.

  “It’ll be well enough if we stay here,” he grumbled, “but there are all kinds of rumours going about. I’ve heard we may be marching on into India to take a look at English colonies there.”

  “We’ll manage,” said Nicholas grimly. “I’ve already spoken to Major Goulard and he’s promised to attend whenever it’s necessary.”

  Major Goulard was the surgeon-major of the Ninth Regiment. He was a pleasant, conscientious man, renowned throughout the light infantry for the number of men he had saved after amputations. More than half the wounded who submitted to a surgeon’s knife subsequently died of gangrene; Goulard’s average of recovery was high and he was also known as a clever accoucheur, having once delivered Madame Lamette, a cantinière of the Gendarmes d’Elite, of twin boys. It had occurred during the siege of Almeida and both infants had survived.

  “When do we celebrate?” Jean asked Nicholette.

  “Sometime in February,” she told him blithely. He observed that she seemed delighted at the prospect, and couldn’t imagine why.

  “I can’t think how it happened,” he grunted. “Your mother would have had something to say about it!”

  “It happened to her too, didn’t it?” replied Nicholette with a smile.

  Gabriel was the only one who was not surprised by the announcement. He was convinced, by this time, that the girl was hopelessly in love. He didn’t know about Nicholas; the schoolmaster wasn’t as easy to read as his wife, but whenever Nicholette was about he seemed gentle and protective, as though he too, despite his outburst to Gabriel on that first day in Moscow, was secretly pleased with the prospect of a son. Of course he was convinced that the child would be a boy. “Not even the gods of the First Empire would be malicious enough to launch another girl into this sort of life,” he said.

  Old Jean’s eyes twinkled. “They were on one occasion,” he retorted, looking at Nicholette.

  The girl smiled, stretched herself and rose to examine a small portmanteau stuffed with infants’ clothing. Gabriel had discovered it in an attic at one of the half-burned palaces and had thoughtfully brought it away with him.

  “Ah, well,” said Old Jean, sipping his rum punch, “as I said before, it’ll be all right if we stay here.”

  They did not stay there. The following morning the regiment received orders to pack up and be ready to march within twenty-four hours. After five weeks of waiting for peace terms that never arrived the Emperor had ordered a general retreat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The exodus began with an interminable line of wagons, carts and vehicles of every description, loaded down with a variety of loot that ranged from boxes of heavily brocaded church vestments to earrings, trinkets and jewellery of all manner of design, plain and intricate, worthless and priceless. In the history of the Grand Army there had never been a baggage train like this one.

  The voltigeurs, preparing to leave with Marshal Davout’s column and follow on the heels of Prince Eugène’s advance guard, massed on one of the boulevards approaching the southern exit of the city and watched the cavalcade trundle past. Carts were piled high with furs, carpets, oil-paintings still in their massive gilt frames, silver plaques depicting scenes from Russian history and Greek mythology that had been torn from public buildings spared by the fire, furniture of all kinds, women’s clothing, cases of wine, and old-fashioned cannons taken from the Kremlin arsenal as trophies of war for exhibition in Paris. Very little of this spoil travelled more than three days from the capital. It was abandoned by the ton as soon as the rough roads began to take their toll of the vehicles. In the meantime, however, it hampered the line of march and prevented the enforcement of discipline.

  Most of the soldiers’ knapsacks were similarly laden. Few men in the company had followed Jean’s advice to throw away their booty and carry what food was available. Instead they slouched along, bent under the weight of gold and silver ikons, enamelled snuff-boxes, ladies’ hairbrushes studded with brilliants, porcelain vases wrapped in soiled clothing, any semi-precious object which seemed to offer compensation for the troubles and fatigue of the long march from the Niemen. In less than a week most of the men would have exchanged the entire contents of their knapsacks for a dozen potatoes. Some made even worse bargains. At one point in the retreat Gabriel saw a hussar hand over a gold crucifix for a raw horse-liver and congratulate himself on having found someone willing to make the exchange.

  All that was to come. For the time being the weather was warm and sunny during the day, fresh and dry at night, and there was sufficient food to go round among the infantry. But, even at this stage, at least half the cavalry were unmounted and anxious to buy plain shoes so as to discard their clumsy riding-boots. The voltigeurs were adjacent to a vast column of dismounted dragoons and hussars, all faced with the prospect of walking two hundred leagues before they could hope to get remounts in the nearest of the Polish or East Prussian depots.

  Old Jean insisted on examining the knapsacks of Gabriel and Dominique, emptying the latter’s of a variety of worthless junk and stuffing it with four small bags of rice which they had found in a gutted cellar. Gabriel carried a few potatoes, a little salted beef, a small bag of flour and two bottles of brandy in addition to his linen. He found this heavy enough without the addition of one or two keepsakes that he had intended to carry back. Jean let him retain his sketchbook.

  “That’s as much a part of us as Dominique’s fiddle,” he said seriously.

  Nicholas travelled with the wagon. He had managed to conceal a limited amount of food, mostly rye and preserves, under the floor of one of the lockers, but the bulk of the space was used for an ambulance, Nicholette having agreed to transport three wounded officers as far as Smolensk. The officers had enriched themselves during the fire and could afford to pay handsomely for the privilege. Nicholette calculated that she would make more money in this way than by filling the wagon and straining her lean team with the haulage of heavy wine tubs or cases of liqueurs. She had sold all her stock immediately she heard of the impending retreat.

  There was no room in the vehicle for the dog Fouché, so Nicholette left it with Jean. The dog attached itself to Gabriel and slouched along at the rear of the company. Jean regarded it speculatively during one of the enforced halts for a transport block on the road ahead. It was lying, head down between its forepaws, blinking into a smoky fire.

  “Funny thing about that dog,” said the sergeant. “Never seen it prance about like other mongrels. Can’t imagine it ever having been a puppy. It knows every bugle call on the scale—look at it now!”

  The drum beat a muster and the dog shook itself and stood up, its lean muzzle coming round to Jean for permission t
o fall in.

  Old Jean said that they should stick as close to the wagon as their duties permitted. In case they became separated he arranged a long series of rendezvous between Moscow and Minsk, the supposed magazine town they were heading for. He did not know then that the Staff had decided to attempt a more southerly route passing through districts unwasted by the army’s advance. A few days after leaving Moscow, however, this plan had to be abandoned. Prince Eugène’s advance guard met a severe check at Maloyaroslavets, on the road to Kaluga. A strongly reinforced Russian army barred the southern route and turned them back onto the old road. The French gave way reluctantly.

  It was not long before they approached the plain of the Moskva, where the battle of Borodino had been fought fifty-six days before. Seventy-five thousand corpses lay there, for the most part unburied, many of them gross and bloated in the mud which the rains had washed from their shallow graves. Others had been half-eaten by wolves and birds of prey. The stench was indescribable.

  Just ahead of their line of march they saw a knot of men break ranks and crowd round a figure that had dragged itself down a gentle slope near the stream-bed. Hastening forward they discovered the cause of the diversion. The men in the first company had discovered a wounded grenadier, with both legs completely shattered, who had kept himself alive on the battlefield since the previous September.

  The poor wretch was quite rational and asked for transport home. He had been sheltered by the body of a horse and had eaten its putrid flesh to keep himself alive, drinking water from a brook foul with the bodies of men and animals. His survival was a miracle and the surgeon-major of the regiment personally supervised the grenadier’s transfer to a carriage and ordered him to be carried along with the army. During the days ahead Dominique, who hardly ever spoke, sometimes referred to this man. When things became increasingly difficult he said, with one of his vacant grins, “Ah, but at any rate we’ve still got our legs!”