“And does the emperor think that they will simply let us march straight up the road between them?”
“Their forces are dispersed over an area of ninety miles so that their men can live off the land without running out of supplies. They do not expect us to assault their positions; they do not even regularly patrol the border. They are convinced that it is they that will be making an attack.” I felt more than a twinge of guilt at his words for I had helped lull them into their complacency.
“They will need at least at least a day to concentrate their forces,” Davout continued. “If things go to plan they will not have that time. The emperor intends to push the Prussians to one side and march on Brussels. Half the British army is there and we can beat it. The capture of Brussels will show our enemies that the emperor is as strong as ever. Many of their soldiers who once fought in our ranks will think twice about taking up arms against us. After a taste of their new rulers, some might even re-join our units.”
“What about the other allies?” I asked.
“Once we have beaten the British we can turn on the Prussians but they will probably retreat ahead of our army. The Austrians will not attack on their own and the Russians are still at least a month away. The emperor hopes having shown his teeth, he can sue for peace to buy us time to rebuild France and the army.”
I could not help but be impressed at the audacious approach. It was a good bold plan and in hindsight, it was something I should have expected from a general like Napoleon. But it depended on being able to march a huge army of over a hundred thousand men right up to Wellington’s front door without him noticing. Surely even someone as dim as Grant would have picked up news of an approaching force of that size. He must have some reliable agents and there must be Prussian and British troops on the border who would see huge numbers of men gathering on the other side. Even if that did not work there were dozens of men in the French army who were suspected of having royalist sympathies. It would only take one of them to slip across the border and the element of surprise would be lost.
Even if Grant did not detect the enemy force, surely Fouché would. No one had a better spy network and he had already boasted of other informers in Davout’s ministry. Unless he was lying, Fouché probably knew of the change in plans already, but I had to get a message to him to make sure. I could hardly walk out of the War Ministry and straight to Fouché’s office without raising suspicion. I would need to find another way. The prospect of another stroll to Montmartre seemed quite appealing. This time I would call in first at Madame Chambord’s neighbour, who I now knew was Fouché’s agent, to give her the message. They would need to be quick if the emperor was already on the road, but a man on a fast horse would out-run a carriage. They were bound to have closed the border now, but Fouché would know of ways to get through. Yes, I thought, that is what I would do first and then it would be time for Hobhouse to visit Madame Chambord again. After all, with the army now on the march there would be little for us to do at the ministry apart from round up reinforcements as they became available. I was just remembering that naked body and blonde hair spread out across the bed when I realised that Davout was still speaking to me.
“…He has no command but the emperor has invited him to join the army. Perhaps a position can be found for him there, but you should make no promises, Colonel, that is important.”
“Er, yes sir,” I agreed while desperately trying to recall the earlier part of this conversation that I had not been paying attention to. Who the hell was he talking about? Perhaps a location would give me a clue. “Where will I find him, sir?”
“Well you were on his staff, you should know where he spends his time,” replied Davout irritably. “He was in Paris yesterday but if he is not still here he will be at his Coudreaux estate. Find him and take him to the emperor’s headquarters as quickly as you can.”
To my horror, I realised that I was going to war after all.
Chapter 24 – Tuesday 13th June
“Wake up,” hissed a voice. “You are leaning on the marshal.”
A boot kicked my leg to reinforce the words as I came reluctantly to consciousness. I sat up and opened my eyes to see an indignant officer glaring at me. He was wearing an unfamiliar red uniform, which disconcerted me for a moment until I remembered who he was. His name was Colonel Heymès and he was an insufferable toady.
I had located Ney at his Paris home and had given him Davout’s message. The Princess of Moscow had been almost reluctant to bring me into her husband’s presence, perhaps fearing some new slight from the emperor to further depress him. I found Ney in his study staring morosely at an unlit fireplace, an unread newspaper on his lap. He was the very picture of dejection. A moment later the news had transformed him back into an energetic marshal of France.
“At last!” he had roared and he actually hugged me, his stubbly unshaven cheeks rasping my face. “Now I will remind them all how I can fight. What command has he given me?”
I reminded him that the message was simply to report to the emperor’s headquarters at Avesnes, but he was barely listening. He rushed off calling for his uniforms and campaign chest. The princess stared indulgently after him and then she too hugged my arm.
“Do what you can to bring him back to me safely, Colonel,” she urged. “Now, I must get the cook to pack some food for your journey.”
He had no horses at the Paris house, but it was a hundred and fifty miles to Avesnes and so he decided to hire a carriage. He had also insisted on bringing with us his friend Heymès, who he had campaigned with in the past.
We had been bouncing along in that carriage to make our rendezvous with the emperor for a day now and it had not been a comfortable journey. It had rained for much of the previous day and the roads had been busy with carts and wagons heading in the same direction as us, so progress had been slow. I straightened up and tried to stretch my stiff limbs. The blinds were down but the drumming sound on the carriage roof confirmed it was still raining. If Heymès had intended to prolong the marshal’s sleep he had failed.
“Well, Pierre,” growled the man beside me on the seat. “Now you have woken us both up perhaps you could tell us where we are.” The marshal reached forward and pulled on a cord that raised the leather curtain covering the window on his side of the compartment. A grey light shone through the glass, which had misted up with the breath of three men through the night.
“I think we are near Saint Quentin, Marshal,” said Heymès.
Ney tried to clear the glass with his hand, but with water on both sides of pane, it was still hard to see outside. With a grunt of irritation, he unhooked the leather strap that lowered the window. A blast of chill air invaded the carriage. I raised the blind and lowered the window on my side too. It was raining hard and rivulets of water ran down the gutters of the road. We were passing a cart that according to the number painted on its canvas side, belonged to the 23rd regiment, but it would be a while before it caught up with the column. It had its axle propped up on a log and a wheel missing.
“Would you like some food, Marshal?” asked Heymès opening a hamper at his side. “There is some chicken left and some slices of ham. The bread is stale but could still be eaten.”
“No,” said Ney cutting him off. “I want a piss. Tell the coachman to stop under those trees up ahead.” He turned to me, “Have you ever gone on a campaign in a carriage before, Moreau?”
“No, I haven’t,” I admitted.
“Neither have I and I don’t like it. We need to find some horses at Avesnes; I want a saddle between my legs not a hamper of ham.”
Having watered the trees we climbed back into the carriage, our clothes damp, to continue the journey. Ney sat forward eagerly, often putting his head out to look for any signs of the gathering army up ahead. He and Heymès talked of old campaigns with the excitement of children going on some adventure. I struggled to share their enthusiasm.
Heymès’ uniform did not help, for it looked more British than French. The r
ed cloth reminded me that the ‘enemy’ we were on our way to fight were my own people. It had all been a little unreal when I was in my nice safe billet in Paris. I had concentrated on gathering equipment and supplies with little thought as to who they would be used against. After all, the British commander himself had asked me to stay behind enemy lines. But now I knew that the information I had managed to pass on had only served to deceive the allies. On top of that, instead of being safely in the enemy capital I was reluctantly anchored to possibly the bravest lunatic in the army. The prospect of a quiet war was receding fast.
I had a strong sense of divided loyalties. I did not want the British to be beaten, but equally for the first time in my life I did not want to see the French defeated either. A sense of belonging is a strange thing. Most of us are born in a country, sometimes fight for it and either die in it or for it. But in my time I have found myself accepted by many different groups. There were the East India Company soldiers who all laid down their lives for me; I felt accepted in the Begum of Samru’s army and was glad to see it escape Wellington’s final attack at Assaye; I have even felt I belonged at one time amongst a band of Iroquois warriors. Compared to those experiences, it was not hard to feel an affinity for the French.
I had spoken the language continuously for the last few months and was even beginning to think in French. I had genuine friends among them now such as Lagarde and de Briqueville. They were defending their homeland and Hobhouse was right that it did seem reasonable to allow the French to choose for themselves who they wanted as their ruler. For all his avarice of other people’s lands, it was obvious that Bonaparte was a far more capable ruler than fat old King Louis – which was precisely why the allies wanted him removed. And I say this as a man who has had a French musket ball through his innards and nearly died as a result.
I would have felt very differently if the French were invading England and there was the likelihood of the Imperial Guard marching up the drive to Berkeley Hall. But we were fighting in the Netherlands. Surrounded by more powerful neighbours, it was almost the traditional setting for continental wars. The southern part had until recently been part of France and I doubt that there has been fifty years of its history without some sort of invasion or disturbance.
Whatever Napoleon did, he could not attack Britain – the navy would see to that. Perhaps Grant was right when he claimed that I had gone native in the past when in enemy uniform, but I had spent too long in France to be indifferent to their fate. I had worked hard getting this army ready to campaign and as we approached Avesnes we saw a growing number of soldiers struggling through the muddy fields on either side of the road. The carriageway was kept free for wheeled vehicles and I confess that I felt a moment of pride when I spotted the artillery battery that I had helped pull together. This time, they had their pots of grease.
I had to remind myself that those guns I had helped gather could soon be firing shot at my countrymen. Men who had stood alongside me at Talavera, Busaco, Albuera and Badajoz and countless other places, back in the day when we had fought the men I now regarded as friends. Most of that army I had fought with then had been dispersed and Heymès was scornful of the new allied force. Many of the Prussians, he claimed, were half-trained militia who would not stand their ground. Meanwhile, amongst the so-called ‘British’ army, the majority of them had a first language that was not English. Many spoke German, others Dutch and a good number even spoke French. Some of those who had previously fought for France would still be wearing their French uniforms.
I too had studied the information received by the War Ministry about the allied forces and it made depressing reading. Of the forty thousand men under Wellington that were British, a good number of them were straight from the depots in England, and yet to smell gunpowder in earnest. Meanwhile, the loyalty and commitment of some of the foreign units was questionable at best. It was hard to argue against a crowing Heymès that if caught by surprise, the veteran French cockerels would tear through them as though they were chickens.
We arrived at Avesnes mid-afternoon, the last few miles crawling at a snail’s pace through the crowded roads. It was a frontier fortress town that was packed with soldiery, with bivouacs of the Imperial Guard around the outskirts and parks of artillery on nearby fields. Even colonels like Heymès and I could not get room in the fortress itself, so we had to make do with crowded lodgings in town. Ney went to dine with the emperor and other senior generals while I shook off Heymès and went to get drunk. It was the best way to stop fretting about what I should and should not be doing.
Having got myself on the outside of two bottles of a rough red wine, things did indeed seem clearer. A drunken Flashy decided that he did not care if the French won the coming campaign or if the British and Prussians were beaten. It is strange how wine sometimes brings clarity of thought, for I saw that none of that mattered. What I did care about was getting back to England in one piece. I had finally achieved wealth and position with a loving wife and a son. I was damned if I was going to risk all of that in some death or glory charge across the lines. I would just keep my head down and let matters take their course. Then I would make my way to the Channel and never head south of Dover again.
Chapter 25 – Wednesday 14th June
I woke up next morning lying in a tent. My head was throbbing as though there were a steam pump in it. There were other regular rasping noises from nearby and something heavy was across was my legs. I lay there for several minutes, unable to move or remember where the hell I was or how I had got there. Eventually, with a supreme effort, I managed to sit up. I had to shut my eyes for a moment to stop the tent spinning and to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat. God knows what I had been drinking the night before, but judging from the taste in my mouth, someone had brought a skunk from Canada and fermented it. Peering down I found an unconscious hussar lieutenant lying across my legs and two old soldiers sprawled beside me, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. They both had the big bushy grey moustaches I had seen worn by soldiers of the Old Guard and one had his shirt open to reveal a colourful tattoo of an eagle raping a woman. I pushed the hussar off my shins; his head hit the ground with a thud but he did not wake up. Rolling over I crawled out of the tent on my hands and knees, gasping in pain as the bright sunlight outside found my eyes.
“Ah-ha, I wondered which one of you would wake up first,” chuckled a voice nearby. Looking up I saw another moustachioed soldier sitting on a log near the entrance to the tent smoking a pipe. He was in his shirtsleeves so I could not see his rank, but he did not seem the slightest bit perturbed by a colonel crawling out of his tent.
“God, my head, I think I am dying.”
“I am not surprised given what you were drinking last night.” He laughed “After the wine you went on to some local firewater. You were properly raving then. Something about General Wellington fucking your wife and how he could go to hell.”
I felt the bile rise in my throat again but realised that at least I had obviously had the sense to rave in French. “Is there any water?” I croaked.
The soldier passed me a canteen and I drank greedily. “What is happening?” I asked between gulps.
“You can relax. We are not marching until noon.”
“Thank God.” The thought of bouncing around in that carriage again was enough to make my guts churn.
“There are eggs if you want them and perhaps some pork left.” The soldier gestured to a skillet that rested over a camp-fire.
“No thank you. Do you mind if I just sit here a bit?”
“They say you came in with Ney. Well if you are good enough for him, you are good enough for us. Stay there as long as you like.” We sat companionably in silence for a few minutes and I gradually felt the sun warming my skin. My clothes were still damp from the rain the previous day. I was not surprised at the soldier’s attitude to my rank; the Imperial Guard were an army within an army. Men would turn down commissions in line regiments to become a sergeant in the Gua
rd and so they only treated their own officers with due deference. “I suppose you are too young to have fought here before,” said the sergeant at length.
“Yes, I have only fought in Spain.”
“Ah, I was here twenty years ago. We beat them then and we will do so again.” He spoke with a calm matter-of-fact confidence. “It is proper killing country over there,” he added pointing to the east. “Once you are over the river these wooded hills fall away and there is just a flat plain all the way to Brussels and beyond. That is where we fought before. We even had a balloon then to spot movements of the enemy. There must have been hundreds of battles there over the years. They say that’s why the crops grow so tall, all the bodies that have been buried there.
“My father fought at Marburg, is that over there?”
“Marburg, no, that is much further to the east, about ten days’ march for the Guard and at least two weeks for everybody else. Before my time, that. So your father was a soldier too?”
“For a while,” I admitted. It was, in fact, his only battle and he had been fighting the French at the time but there was no need to mention that. “So are you sure we will win?” I asked.
The old soldier puffed his pipe for a moment. “I know we will win or I will not live to see us lose,” he said simply. He tamped down his tobacco with a stick before continuing. “I put my faith in my emperor and my musket. And I know that when we advance nothing will stop us.” It wasn’t said boastfully, just a cold statement of fact, which made it all the more chilling.
Flashman's Waterloo (Adventures of Thomas Flashman Book 6) Page 21