Seven Men of Gascony

by R. F Delderfield

  Apart from this he was reasonably well equipped for a winter campaign. He had his service tunic, breeches, small clothes and leather top-boots, a pair of red worsted stockings from the wardrobe of the count’s valet, a sheepskin cape that laced half-way down the front and left the skirts free to be tucked under the thighs, affording both horse and rider additional protection, and a woollen night-cap, worn inside his dragoon’s helmet.

  Before joining the artillery convoy that left the city soon after the advance guard, he had been careful to pack his saddle-bags with four days’ supply of hoarded rations. The cavalry had not fared well in this respect. Few of them had spent any time in Moscow, having been engaged in widespread foraging expeditions beyond the surrounding countryside, which had been swept clean by the retreating enemy. Louis had a little flour, some rye from which he could make cakes in the manner taught him by Jean long ago, a knot of onions and a small metal flask about half-full of Russian gin. He was a careful young man and had taken Jean’s lessons to heart. He ate sparingly and estimated that, in event of there being no ration issue, he could hold out until reaching a revictualling depot at Smolensk.

  His principal problem was Roxy’s fodder. The cavalry had been extremely short of fodder throughout the entire summer, and after the fire it was practically unobtainable. There was a certain amount of rye, it is true, but Louis had learned from experience that unripened rye was fatal to horses and he was obliged to make extraordinary exertions to gather even a meagre amount of oats and hay for his mare.

  When the snow fell and the lakes and streams froze he was presented with another problem. The ice was often so thick that he had difficulty in watering his horse. Sometimes he found a shallow pond and smashed the ice with the butt of his carbine. At other times he foraged around among the litter that covered the roads until he found a bucket which he could use to melt snow; but this was a long, tedious business and he had constantly to be on his guard against horse thieves.

  On one occasion, warned by a whinny of protest from Roxy, he shot a man in the act of sneaking off through the woods with the reluctant mare in tow. The thief was an Italian gunner from Prince Eugène’s corps and Louis shot him methodically, in cold blood. He knew that without Roxy he would never see France again, and it was this knowledge as much as his love for the horse that encouraged him to take grave risks to keep the animal alive and reasonably healthy.

  During the ride from Moscow to Vyazma Louis twice entered the Russian lines for the purpose of stealing fodder. Jean would have considered the risk justified. Without fodder Roxy would have soon joined the thousands of half-devoured carcasses that blocked the Smolensk road, and in high riding-boots Louis would have been helpless to continue his journey on foot. Even if he had been lucky enough to secure a pair of boots from a corpse (and boots were the first articles stripped from the dead) he was now unaccustomed to marching and could not have competed with the tougher infantrymen in their ceaseless battle for food, warmth and shelter. Louis realized this and once he was alone pushed out onto the flanks of the army to fight for Roxy’s life and for his own.

  He was lucky. Two days after the engagement on the Kaluga road, when the head of the Grand Army was turned back onto the road by which it had advanced, General Milhaud, in command of the convoy, was forced to make an important decision. The transport animals pulling the artillery train were in a lamentable condition and it was obvious to any cavalryman that they could not stagger as far as Vyazma, quite apart from attempting to reach Smolensk and the highroad beyond. Either guns had to be abandoned by the score and teams joined up to pull a limited number onward or a message would have to be sent forward asking for an increased quota of draught animals. The general had no conception of the state of affairs existing in the corps marching ahead of the convoy. He assumed that they were in better case than his own troops, for they had primary access to such depots as existed along the road and were, in addition, that much farther advanced when the temperature began to fall. He could not be blamed for failing to realize that the rearguard alone was maintaining discipline on the march. Such a state of affairs was illogical. It was reasonable to suppose that the rearguard, having suffered the most, would be the most disorganized corps in the army.

  Reviewing these facts, Milhaud compromised. He cut the traces of some of the heavier guns and abandoned them on his own responsibility. He then regrouped the teams and sent a messenger forward to contact Marshal Berthier, explaining the dilemma, and ask for fresh orders. He chose Louis to convey the message, for he saw at a glance, whilst Louis was on guard duty outside his billet, that the dragoon’s horse was in a far better condition than any of those of his three surviving aides. He contented himself with sending a single rider, since Louis would not be required to leave the line of march and would run little or no danger of capture by Cossacks.

  Louis rode off confidently enough, overtaking the wreck of Davout’s columns and keeping, as far as possible, to the bridle paths that cut through the forest parallel with the highroad. In this way he made better progress. The main road was choked with abandoned wagons, half-burned carts, dead horses and stragglers from every unit.

  Once or twice he was chased by groups of Cossacks, but Roxy soon left their miserable mounts behind. At night Louis made his way back to the main road, for the purpose of gathering information as to the whereabouts of the Chief of Staff and to avoid the dangers of bivouacking alone.

  On the third day Roxy began to falter and Louis knew that she must have food if she was to keep going. He had seen, in the distance, Cossack bands walking their horses against the skyline, and a close scrutiny showed him that some of their ponies were carrying fodder. He did not rejoin the army that night, but waited in a wood of dwarf pines for the twinkle of the Cossack bivouac fires out on the flank.

  He saw a mass of fires over on the right, but, a mile or so closer, in a copse that sprouted from a shallow valley dividing two bare hills, he saw a more promising bivouac consisting of not more than three fires.

  About ten o’clock he walked Roxy out of the pine wood and across the shoulder of the nearest hill, where he reined in, looking down on the Russian bivouac and awaiting his chance.

  There was no moon and very little starlight. The temperature had risen slightly and excitement warmed him. By midnight the fires seemed to have burned down and he guessed that most of the Russians would be asleep, their feet to the blaze. Cautiously he descended the slope.

  It was far easier than he had imagined. There were two sentries, but they had met to engage in conversation in the middle of their beat. A dozen ponies were tethered to a large birch tree on the outskirts of the wood, more than twenty yards from the nearest fire. Louis whispered a word to Roxy, and the mare stood still. He then crawled forward and, placing the tree between himself and the sentries, took out his knife and quietly sawed through the thin leather reins of three ponies.

  He knew that one of the bulging saddle-bags worn by each of the animals would contain oats. Even as he pulled gently on the severed reins Louis experienced a slight qualm of disgust for men who supped and slept without troubling to remove their saddles from the horses they rode all day. The ponies moved off willingly enough and at a safe distance Louis went through the saddle-bags. In two of them he found a small quantity of oats, which he transferred to Roxy’s saddle-bag. He then turned the ponies loose and, mounting his own horse, rode back to the pine wood.

  He did not remain there, but rode across to the main road, putting the highway between himself and the Cossacks. He fed Roxy by a vast fire lit by a group of stragglers from the Baden Brigade. The men were too exhausted to notice the stray dragoon and his big horse. It warmed Louis’ heart to hear Roxy’s satisfied champing. Later, in the inadequate shelter of the snow-laden trees, man and beast lay down together on a few handfuls of straw which Louis had saved from the previous day.

  When the first thaw came Louis found progress much more difficult. The woods were obstructed by fallen trees and he was obliged
to go back to the road. Even here he dared not force Roxy to a trot, although he began to be alarmed by the remarks of some of the stragglers he passed.

  At this stage in the retreat, about two days’ march from Smolensk, the supplies of horseflesh were giving out and, to make matters worse, men were getting into the habit of killing horses on the spot for the sake of their blood. He saw one wretched animal slaughtered in this fashion by a party of Polish lancers, horsemen who should have had more sense. That same night he shot the gunner who tried to steal Roxy whilst he was collecting wood for a fire.

  His own rations were already beginning to fail and he had no opportunity to replenish them. The Cossacks’ saddle-bags had contained no food beyond the oats. All the remainder of the space in their bags had been occupied by articles looted from prisoners or from dead men along the road.

  Louis hoped that he would overtake Headquarters Staff the following day, but, having seen the disintegration along the road, he doubted if Marshal Berthier would be inclined to send help back to the artillery train. Louis had passed hardly any cavalry and was beginning to wonder if any existed.

  He kept a constant eye open for Jean and the others, and once got cheering news of them from a wounded voltigeur of the Ninth who was being transported by sledge. He saw nothing of Nicholas or the canteen, however, and hoped that it was keeping up with the Guard, now well in advance. He looked carefully at every abandoned wagon that he passed and was always relieved when he failed to recognize Nicholette’s vehicle.

  That night he again penetrated a Russian bivouac and got away with a small truss of hay. This time it was not so easy. He had to stab a sentry through the neck, and only the thickness of the wood prevented his pursuit and capture. Roxy was going slightly lame, but after the hay and a long drink of melted snow she seemed fit enough for the final stage of the journey to Smolensk. Louis judged that the Imperial Guard would reach the city before he overtook them.

  He came to a broad expanse of wood soon after starting the next morning. It seemed comparatively deserted and the dragoon passed only an odd straggler or two, who kept their eyes on the ground and limped along oblivious of everything but their own misery.

  Soon afterwards, just as it was growing fully light, he entered a long stretch of road and thought that he could discern the towers of Smolensk at the crest of a second stretch, which emerged from woods in the far distance. Between him and the nearest trees there was a party of infantrymen, trudging along the road in a compact body.

  Louis would have preferred not to pass them, but he had no alternative. On each side of the road were steep banks inches thick in ice. Louis let Roxy move at her own pace and congratulated himself for the hundredth time on having had the foresight to shoe the mare with frost nails before leaving the convoy’s bivouac on the field of Borodino. He wondered whether Roxy was the only horse in the French army with frost nails. He had indeed been fortunate to find a few in a wrecked farrier’s wagon close to the battlefield.

  As he approached the infantry the men stopped, and one of them, a sergeant, hailed him.

  “Got anything to eat, brother?”

  Louis shook his head and tried to move through the group. His instincts told him that there was something menacing in the way they stood round, looking up at him. They were a mixed bunch, mostly Bavarians.

  Louis groped in his saddle-bag and found his metal flask, now containing about two inches of gin.

  “You can share that; it’s all I’ve got!”

  The sergeant snatched the flask and, wrenching out the stopper, applied it to his lips. He could not have tasted it before it was torn from his hands and a general scrimmage ensued. Louis thought that it was like a pack of schoolboys fighting over a coloured marble. Nobody had any gin; it was spilled in the snow and one of the men, cursing, fell on his knees to scoop up the patch of snow where it had fallen.

  Louis tried to take advantage of the diversion to get through the group and away into the woods. The sergeant, a lean, badly frostbitten man wearing the bedraggled uniform of the Foot Chasseurs, grabbed his bridle.

  “What about the horse? She’s got blood, hasn’t she? Damn it, we are starving, man; you haven’t walked a million leagues in this Godforsaken wilderness!”

  The other men gathered round, all except the wretch who still grovelled near the fallen gin flask, cramming snow into his mouth.

  Louis drew a pistol and pointed it at the sergeant.

  “Let go that bridle or I’ll blow out your brains!” he said quietly.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw three more infantrymen coming down the road from the woods. He wondered if they were hurrying to share anything that was going.

  The sergeant was not frightened by the threat.

  “We may as well be shot here as die of hunger nearer Smolensk!” muttered one of the men, but he remained on the edge of the group.

  The sergeant looked up into Louis’ face. There was murder in his eyes, but also a hint of appeal.

  “Let’s have the mare to keep us alive, comrade. You shall have your share, I promise you!”

  For answer Louis fired in his face and, dropping his pistol, whipped out his sabre.

  The sergeant fell, but for some reason failed to relinquish his grasp on the bridle. Roxy reared, snorting with fright at the flash of the firearm so close to her eyes. The men surged round the horse, thrusting with their bayonets. Roxy screamed with pain as one of the points tore her coat, and at the sound of her scream Louis went mad, standing up in his stirrups and slashing down at the shakos with all his strength.

  He felt a blow on his leg and then another, terribly heavy, in his stomach. The white landscape seemed to sway and melt, like a snow scene painted on canvas and exposed to a draught. The last thing he remembered was a shout from higher up the road and a blurred vision of three men running and firing as they ran. Then the mare crumpled forward and Louis’ face brushed her mane.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nicholas and Nicholette had the good fortune to escape the disasters that overtook the greater part of the Grand Army during the first stage of its retreat. Their journey as far as Smolensk was relatively uneventful, despite heavy snowfalls that began to impede the vanguard’s progress within a few days of leaving Moscow.

  The three wounded officers they carried ensured the wagon against the molestation threatening all wheeled transport once Prince Eugène’s corps had received its check near Borovsk and had to turn back to the northern route. Within twenty-four hours of this engagement carts and carriages began to break down and many were looted by the half-starved troops.

  Nicholette had a major-general and two colonels in her vehicle, the former officer being a personal friend of Eugène. The Prince lent the equipage half a dozen troopers from his own bodyguard, and the horsemen, all well mounted, managed to keep the wagon on the move and give protection from marauders, which became increasingly necessary after the army had passed through Vyazma and the acute ration shortage grew apparent.

  Once or twice, when the road was exceptionally bad and Nicholette’s Flemish horses were unable to drag the heavy vehicle clear of snowdrifts, the Italian troopers harnessed their horses to the team and forced a passage. In this way the wagon improved its position on the line of march until it was close behind the train of the Imperial Guard. Even so, the journey seemed an immense strain, and Nicholette cursed herself for neglecting to carry more fodder. There was never any to be found in the villages once the Guard had passed through ahead of the column.

  When the detachments of the Ninth Regiment of light infantry received orders to join the rearguard, Nicholas was under obligation to fall back and find his comrades, but, after consultation with the wounded major-general, he decided to ignore the order and continue the retreat as a transport driver. Nicholette was in no condition to handle the wagon herself, although she still insisted on occupying the driving-box each day. Péliot, the major-general, whose life depended on the unimpeded progress of the vehicle, pledged himself gu
arantor for Nicholas’s conduct.

  Nicholas could not help grinning to himself when he listened to the officer’s arguments in favour of a corporal absenting himself from his regiment. The wounded man was a cuirassier and Nicholas could well imagine that in normal times, when he could sit his horse, the major-general would be a stickler for discipline. In the circumstances in which he now found himself, however, discipline could go hang. The whole rearguard might be overwhelmed by the Cossacks so long as his wagon kept moving; with Nicholas gone and only a pregnant woman on the driving-box, his chances of reaching the German depots would, in truth, have been negligible.

  The major-general did not admit this to himself, as Nicholas might have done. Instead he invented a line of argument in favour of the corporal remaining where he was. He convinced himself and his two companions that a breakdown of the wagon might easily block the whole line of march and thereby delay the progress of the army. After he had expressed this opinion three or four times he began to believe it, and the colonels, themselves at the mercy of the canteen, did nothing to disillusion him.

  Eugène’s corps maintained its discipline for the first fortnight of the retreat, and on one occasion the Prince rode alongside the wagon to enquire after his friend. Nicholas wondered if Péliot would inform his chief that he was being driven by a deserter, but the major-general made no reference to the fact. He gratefully accepted two bottles of cognac from the Prince’s chief of staff and blamed the retreat on the weather.