Four Days in June

by Iain Gale

  Pray God, he thought, that it is d’Erlon. For if it’s Wellington, we’re done for.

  Nervous now, Napoleon walked back inside the mill. He sat down for a moment on the millstone. Folded his arms. Closed his eyes. Tried to focus his mind. They are waiting for me, he thought. Waiting for my orders. For my miracles. They know that I will win. But do I know it? Can I be sure? Have I over-reached myself? Am I too old? A sudden tiredness descended upon him, along with a creeping nausea. He crossed his arms tighter. Willed it away.

  Around him, the generals, the orderlies, the courtiers, marvelled at the Emperor’s composure. At his ability to relax at this, the most crucial moment of the battle. What a man. Not a man, surely, but a god.

  A slight cough. Napoleon opened his eyes. Gourgaud.

  ‘The scout, sire, has returned with news of the column. They’re French, your Majesty. It is d’Erlon, sire. You were right.’

  Of course it was d’Erlon. And he was heading for their flank. De la Bedoyere must have caught him already on the road. No time to change routes. Take the quickest. That was fine. Improvise. Sound generalship. No need now to send him further orders. D’Erlon was no fool. He would know to continue along the Roman road. Napoleon rose and walked across the room to where a second map had been set up on a block of stone. He marked d’Erlon’s current position with his thumb. Traced its route towards him. That would bring him on the field at the little village of Trois Barettes. Well, that would do. He would not surprise the Prussians – who must also have seen him – but he would still threaten their flank. They would have to deal with him. It was good enough.

  And there was now no need to wait for him. Napoleon had had enough of this bloody slogging match. Enough of ‘Papa’ Blücher. He turned to Soult.

  ‘We’ll finish this business now. With the Garde. Drouot?’

  The tall, impeccable Garde commander, amicably nicknamed ‘the sage’, a veteran of twenty-two years, moved forward from the crowd of officers. Pulled his lame leg to a painful attention. ‘Sire?’

  ‘Now’s the time. Move the Old Garde, grenadiers, chasseurs, directly into the attack. Desvaux. Where is Desvaux? Someone. Gourgaud. Lannoy. Someone. Go and find Desvaux and tell him to open fire with the Garde artillery in … ten minutes from now. Tell him nine batteries, twelve-pounders, six-pounders. No, not the horse batteries. He should send those into the attack. The others to fire directly into their centre. Tell him. Go. Go.’

  The officers dispersed.

  Walking out on to the platform, back into the searing heat, Napoleon looked down at the path that his ‘invincibles’ were to take. The rise in the land would hide them, even their tall bearskins, from the Prussians until it was too late.

  Looking further across the valley now he could see more activity in the Prussian lines. On the left he saw a body of cavalry move towards St Amand, supported by what looked like an entire brigade of infantry. So Blü cher was committing his right to a counter-attack. Surely, now was the time. The air was extraordinarily still. For an instant he found it hard to breathe. Loosened his collar. The moment passed.

  Directly over the battlefield, in what seemed a curious micro-climate, fuelled in part by the smoke of the battle, heavy, black storm clouds had gathered. Yet despite the heat and the alarming, stifling moment, Napoleon began to feel himself calming. Body and mind back in control.

  ‘Gourgaud. Send half of the Garde light cavalry, the red lancers, directly towards St Amand to support the Young Garde. And Domon’s chasseurs.’

  That would deal with any new threat.

  He turned to Gérard, commander of IV Corps, who was hovering by his right hand, awaiting his orders to support the Old Garde. Smiling, Napoleon pointed to the central hillside, now entirely empty of Prussian troops. Covered only with corpses.

  ‘Look, Gérard. You see. Now they are lost. Blücher has committed his reserve. There is nothing to stop us.’

  As he spoke, as if in agreement, the clouds above opened at last with a great thunderclap and warm rain began to pour down on the two armies.

  A moment later, theatrically on cue, the fifty-four cannon of the Garde artillery opened up on Ligny. Desvaux, observing Napoleon’s instructions to the letter, was pouring his fire directly into where Blü cher’s line was at its weakest. It was the old way. Pound away at one point and then, when it’s good and weak, pound some more. And Napoleon was aware that somewhere in those crackling, molten ruins, alongside the Prussian dead and dying, lay French wounded, among French corpses, all of them now being ripped to pieces by their own artillery. Well, that was war. It was too bad. They would die for their Emperor. They understood. He reached inside his coat and produced the snuff-box. Taking a pinch he applied it to his nostrils with a slight sniff and replaced the little tortoiseshell coffer. He turned to his left, took from another pocket the cologne-soaked handkerchief and held it to his nose.

  ‘I tell you, Gourgaud. There is nothing like a grand battery, sixty, eighty, a hundred guns. Twelve-pounders if you can get them – a real cannonade – to make your enemy shit in his pants. And then,’ he smiled, ‘then he really does have no stomach left for a fight. Eh, Lannoy? Moline? Eh, Resigny? No stomach. Ha.’

  Pleased with his joke, Napoleon laughed to himself. The four aides knew to join in.

  From behind the Emperor an unrelated peal of laughter erupted simultaneously from a group of orderlies. Napoleon turned, suddenly stony-faced.

  ‘You might be a little more serious, Saint-Denis, when you are surrounded by so many brave men killing each other.’

  Silence.

  Napoleon looked up at the rain and then down, and across the valley. ‘Now, we move.’

  The group descended from the platform.

  ‘Come on. Come on. Find my horse. De la Bedoyere.’

  ‘The general is with Marshal Ney, sire.’ Gourgaud.

  ‘Of course. Yes, of course. You’re right.’

  A green-liveried equerry brought up Marengo. Napoleon mounted the beautiful white horse, startlingly bright amid the darkness of the battle. Quickly now, followed by his unshakeable tail of officers, he rode for high ground. To a spot where he could be seen clearly by the Garde who, even as he arrived, had begun to file past their Emperor.

  They came on in two columns, the left made up solely of grenadiers, the tall ‘grumblers’ of his army. Veterans to a man, heroes of ten years of battles, with their earrings, moustaches and flour-whitened hair, their height emphasized by the prized tall black bearskins. On the right marched a mixed column: more grenadiers, chasseurs and the gaudily dressed ‘marines’, most of whom had never seen the sea.

  Above the tumult of the guns, their cries of allegiance rang out. ‘Vive l’Empéreur’, ‘Mort aux Prusses’.

  Napoleon was surrounded by the men he had made. Soldiers and officers. He saw Friant, the son of a furniture-polisher, who had risen from sergeant-major to command four regiments of Garde grenadiers, and Morand, the former lawyer and an Egyptian veteran, also now a general, of chasseurs. Poor, ugly Morand, whose face had been so badly disfigured by a shell splinter at Borodino that it was said that any woman to whom he made love could not bear to look at him and begged him to take her from behind. Napoleon smiled at the thought. Here too now, smiling back at his Emperor, came Petit, whom only last year in the courtyard at Fontainebleau he had left in tears as he prepared for exile on that execrable little island. Well, they would not have the opportunity to do that to him again.

  His vengeful reverie was interrupted by a flash of steel-grey tunics on his right and the tumbling rush of ammunition caissons and limbers, which announced the artillery train of the Garde, hurrying their light guns up to the assault.

  It took a full twenty minutes for all the columns to reach the front line. Once there, though, their momentum carried them quickly down the slope towards Ligny. Twenty thousand men, in five regiments, constantly under fire. The two Garde columns flowed around the burning village, one to each side. Between them the mass of IV C
orps hit it square on. They were flanked by cavalry. On the left the huge, bearskinned grenadiers à cheval of the Garde, with their massive, jet-black horses and the helmeted green and gold Garde dragoons, who still bore the title of Napoleon’s dead empress. On the right rode the 3,000 cuirassiers of Milhaud’s corps. All came on relentlessly, regardless of the ferocious Prussian fire, thrown point-blank into their faces. Sabres gleaming, bayonets promising no quarter, the French fell upon what remained of the Prussian centre.

  This, thought Napoleon, was how it should be. This was war. War on his terms. War without limit. Alexandrine war. Caesarian war. His mouth was dry. Parched with excitement. His body deliciously alive with sensation. Also, to his delight, he realized that, as so often at this point in a battle, he had an erection. Amused at his own predicament, he sat perfectly still and watched the bloody drama unfold.

  In Fleurus the church bells tolled seven, their low tone blending with the music of the grenadiers’ band who propelled the last battalions into the mêlée with the strains of the ‘Chant du Depart’. And then followed them into the flaming, shattered remains of what five hours earlier had been the village of Ligny.

  Steadying himself on Marengo, who had shied, uncharacteristically, at the close passage of a roundshot, Napoleon watched absorbed, electric with tension, as his columns reached the Prussian lines. Saw the impact as their huge impetus pushed the Germans physically backwards up the hill. Now all the French were across the stream. He looked with pride as the Garde moved swiftly from column into line, ready to bring as many muskets as possible to bear on the enemy. Officers ran in front barking orders, twirling their swords in the air, urging the men on. On the right he watched a Prussian cavalry regiment appear from nowhere and make for two battalions of the grenadiers. With one double wheeling action the veterans transformed their line into a hollow square. The cavalry, seeing the bearskins, reined in, turned and fled.

  Napoleon clapped his hands. Without shifting his gaze from the carnage and spectacle before him, he addressed his aides; not in the voice of the Emperor, but with the victory crow of the playground general.

  ‘Look. Look at them all. Aren’t they the finest in the world? My children. What can stop them? What will stop us? Now can you see? Now do you see how to win a battle?’

  ELEVEN

  Quatre-Bras, 6.30 p.m. Macdonell

  They had been marching for fourteen hours. Had covered, he estimated, at least twenty-five miles. Since they had regained the road, past Nivelles, Macdonell’s place at the front of the long, weary column had been taken by the light companies of the First Guards. By way of a diversion he had temporarily left his men in the charge of Henry Wyndham and ridden up to join the commanding officer of the new vanguard, George Fraser, Lord Saltoun, a fellow Scot and his exact equivalent in rank and command. Saltoun, seven years his junior, was an amiable man and the two had much in common. Like Macdonell, Saltoun had originally served with a Highland regiment – the 42nd, ‘Black Watch’, before transferring into the Guards. The two men rode together now, exchanging pleasantries and observations, although both knew that this was merely to disguise the inevitable apprehension which marked the approach to battle.

  Having covered the health of several mutual friends at home in Scotland and the merits, on a Highland estate, of replacing tenant farmers with sheep, as Macdonell’s brother Alasdair was at that very moment in the process of doing at Invergarry, their conversation had moved on to fishing, about which Macdonell was passionate. In the Peninsula, in the many breaks between engagements which made up most of a soldier’s life, he had revelled in the variety of fish to be found in the Spanish rivers. Not only salmon and trout, but mullet, barbel and rock-fish.

  Saltoun was currently reaching the end of an extended appraisal of the sporting glories of his estate, a substantial acreage near Fraserburgh, on the Aberdeenshire coast, with at its heart the ancestral seat of Philorth Castle.

  ‘When this business is done, James. When we have disposed of Boney and his cronies for good and are back at home in Scotland for a while, you will come and stay with me at Philorth and I will show you the finest salmon fishing in all the country. We shall fish the Don and the Dee and I dare say even, if you will, my own modest Loch at Strathbeg.’ He laughed. ‘I know, of course, that you consider me the lesser fisherman.’

  Macdonell began a half-hearted objection. Saltoun waved his hand.

  ‘No, no. I’ll not hear your protests. I am resolved. You will see for yourself.’

  Macdonell smiled. ‘Perhaps, Saltoun. And I’m always happy to accept an offer of a day’s sport. But, with my brother’s permission – though he is no fisherman – I shall return your invitation. And then you’ll join me at Invergarry and we shall see quite how true your boast might be. I know of a spot on a high bank, above the river Garry. The air has a particular freshness. That’s where we’ll make our camp. Then I’ll take you down across the rocks, to where the river crashes like a mill race, roaring down the four miles to Loch Oich. And then, my dear Saltoun, then you will see how to cast into a fast river. That’s where you really have to work a fly. There you must “strike the rise”. If you do not, all is lost. Timing, Saltoun. It’s all about timing. Now that’s fishing. Real sport.’

  Saltoun laughed and shook his head.

  His junior officers, riding to their right and left, smiled at the gentle rivalry of the two men, envying the colonels their apparent composure. For their own thoughts were far from anything as peaceful and mundane as salmon fishing. Their heads were filled with the horrific images which they had encountered, continued to encounter, over the last few miles, as they passed the streams of wounded British, Dutch, German and Belgian troops, flowing back along the road towards Nivelles. Some were on foot, others, too badly mangled to walk, travelled in commandeered hay wagons, drawn by oxen and driven by sullen peasants.

  As the officers rode on, the sound of the guns grew ever nearer. The regimental music had long since ceased and with it had gone the jaunty spring in their step. It had been replaced by a new haste, spawned by a real sense of urgency. Apart from the guns, the only noises were once again the tramp of marching feet, the clatter of horses’ hooves, the jangle of their harness and the dull, rhythmic clank of bayonet on wood.

  Rounding a bend in the road, Macdonell saw ahead of him the houses of what he guessed must be Quatre-Bras. On his left he discerned a body of men. Belgians, by the look of them. They were sitting down. Evidently awaiting orders. Over on the right he could see the outline of a large wood, stretching off to the south for perhaps over a mile. That would be the Bois de Bossu. Their objective. As they approached the village he caught on the air the unmistakable stench of a battlefield, bringing back countless memories, and with them conflicting emotions of exhilaration, sorrow and fear. Near the crossroads the men began to pass the first bodies. Men who, sensing the hopelessness of their condition, had crawled away from the fight to die in peace at the roadside. There were more wounded too. Men of all arms and nations. English, Scots, Nassauers, Belgians, Dutch, Brunswickers. It was not a pleasant sight, and Macdonell knew that, for many of the younger men in his command, officers included, this would be their first encounter with the blood of a battlefield. From behind him he heard Miller bark a reprimand as some of the raw recruits threw up at the roadside. Being himself largely inured to the sight, however, he was more interested in attempting to identify from their uniforms which regiments had already become involved in the battle.

  It appeared that the reserve had arrived some time ago, such was the evident extent of their losses. He saw men of the 69th, dead and wounded. Lying on his back, face frozen in a contented smile, was the corpse of a private of the 28th, still wearing his distinctive stovepipe shako. There were Highlanders here too. Macdonell startled a wounded sergeant of the 92nd, nursing a maimed hand, with a word of encouragement in Gaelic. On another body, lying face down in the ditch, he could make out the kilt of the Black Watch, Saltoun’s old comrades. He was about
to point this out to his companion when both men noticed a group of horsemen hurrying towards them along the road. At their head rode a distinctive figure, clad in black with an extravagant fur-trimmed pelisse and an outrageously plumed bicorn hat. There was no mistaking the Prince of Orange. At his side Macdonell recognized his chief of staff, the renowned General Rebecque. The Prince rode hard up to Saltoun, whom he had decided was the senior officer. He wore an expression of unconcealable jubilation and spoke in the stilted, staccato court English of European royalty.

  ‘Gentlemen. Your arrival could not be more timely. Attack. Attack. You must attack. Waste no time, sir. Drive your men into the wood. Take the wood. Attack the enemy.’

  Saltoun, casting Macdonell a sidewards glance, was sanguine in his reply. ‘Of course, your Highness. Of course we will attack. But with the utmost respect, sir, where exactly are the enemy?’ With a gesture of his hand, Saltoun continued: ‘You know Colonel Macdonell, of course, your Highness? Of the Coldstream.’

  The Prince looked at Macdonell. Tried to place him. Failed. Nodded politely. Turned back to Saltoun. ‘Why, they’re in the wood of course. Can’t you see? It’s full of the French. Look. Can’t you see? They’re everywhere. You must attack.’

  The Prince was becoming agitated now. Impatient with this coolly obsequious English aristocrat. Rebecque frowned. Pursed his lips, embarrassed by his commander’s outburst before two senior officers of the British army’s élite. Men whom he knew must be veterans of the Peninsula. The Prince continued.

  ‘Colonel, I order you to move your men into that wood at once. If you will not undertake it, then I shall find someone who will.’