Officer's Prey (The Napoleonic Murders)

by Armand Cabasson

  ‘My men will try to keep an eye on all our suspects during the combat.’

  ‘Excellent, I’m relying on them.’

  ‘Captain, aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘Why? Do you want to sell me that filthy potion of yours?’

  ‘No, seriously …’

  ‘Of course I am. But my fear doesn’t paralyse me and doesn’t ruin my life. So I can consider myself content.’

  Margont walked away. He wanted to sleep for a while. Lefine downed three of his phials in quick succession. He didn’t think it would work, but just in case …

  His heart was pounding. The Russians were here at last! He was convinced that the Emperor was going to see to them in his own way and he already felt sorry for them. While waiting for the general assault, he had just made up a new game that he found very entertaining. The aim was to imagine the worst possible death for Captain Margont. His wishes were then arranged in ascending order of preference.

  For the moment these were the results: For round shot to blow his arm off and for him to lie for hours watching the blood pour out of his stump; for grapeshot to make mincemeat of him; for a blow from a sword to smash his teeth and slash his face from ear to ear; for a hail of bullets to burst open his spleen, liver and bowels; for him to be seriously wounded, unable to move and left behind in a corner of the battlefield feeling the crows pecking his eyes out; for all that to happen at once.

  For him, Margont was a louse he hadn’t yet managed to crush. And if he didn’t disappear, this louse would end up, like any other, getting squashed.

  *

  At three in the morning the order of the day was read out to the troops. It was the Emperor’s address:

  ‘Soldiers, here is the battle you have yearned for! From now on victory depends on you. We need it; it will guarantee us plentiful food, good winter quarters and a swift return to the homeland! Conduct yourselves as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk and may all the generations to come proudly hail your conduct on this day. Let it be said of you: “He was at that great battle beneath the walls of Moscow!”’

  Colonel Pégot went to find Margont just after the speech had been read out. The cheering and the shouts of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ meant that he had to take Margont to one side to make himself heard. Napoleon had decided to reinforce IV Corps for the battle so he had placed the Morand and Gérard Divisions under Prince Eugène’s command. Some of their regiments had, however, lost a very large number of officers.

  ‘Officers are therefore being temporarily assigned to other regiments. These are orders,’ explained Pégot. ‘At the battle of Smolensk, the 13th Light lost one-third of its strength and about thirty officers. Consequently, I’m transferring you to it.’

  ‘That’s out of the question, Colonel. I want to remain with the men from my company. I know them and I …’

  Pégot shook his head. He was a pitiful sight with his bloodshot, dark-ringed eyes.

  ‘It’s only for the duration of the battle. One of the battalions of the 13th Light is without its major. I’m putting you in charge of it. You will take Saber, Piquebois and Galouche with you and you will give them the remnants of two companies each.’

  He was being put in charge of a battalion, was he? Promotion was close. To refuse the battalion was to refuse promotion. Margont wanted to ask something but Pégot was already off, waving him away.

  ‘No time, no time. I have to find some gunners to make up the numbers in our artillery companies, horses for our cavalry and our cannon, and I need to patch together what’s left of the companies … What a life! And on top of all this they’re taking my officers away.’

  The sun rose. Napoleon exclaimed that it was the sun of Austerlitz, the one that had broken through the clouds on 2 December 1805 to hail the victory. But today the sun was dazzling the French and showing up their positions. The sky was clear. Dew moistened the grass, pleasantly cooling the atmosphere. It could have been a beautiful day.

  CHAPTER 24

  AT five thirty a battery of the Guard’s artillery fired three shots, giving the signal for hostilities to begin. The roar of artillery fire was already deafening a few minutes later as the French attacked at several points. In both camps they were saying: ‘This is it at last.’

  Time was passing. The Morand Division was positioned in the front line on the left wing, in column by regiment, motionless, awaiting orders. Elsewhere there was slaughter; here there was waiting.

  Margont rode along the ranks of his new battalion. He tried to reassure those who were as white-faced as a Russian winter, and to calm down those who were overwrought. The soldiers were glancing up and seeing cannonballs buzzing through the sky. One young chasseur was marvelling at the scene. He found the masses of French and Russian troops rushing at each other ‘fantastic’, the exploding shells ‘amazing’, and the thunder of the cannon ‘awesome’. Exhilarated by the sight, he was gazing up at the black shapes flying over him.

  ‘And that? What’s that?’

  Margont went up to him and removed the bayonet from his musket. Otherwise in a couple of minutes he would accidentally have run his neighbour through. He slid it into its sheath.

  ‘Only when we launch the attack.’

  The soldier had still not taken his eyes off the spectacle overhead.

  ‘They look like huge insects!’

  ‘They are in fact insects. Their precise scientific name is Russiae rondishoti. This subspecies of the bumblebee family is a large spherical insect with an especially hard shell. They are clumsy and awkward and not very good at flying, so they always end up on the ground. They don’t sting but crush their prey beneath their weight. As they are gregarious by nature, when one of them arrives near you it’s always followed by the whole swarm.’

  ‘No, they’re cannonballs, Captain.’

  ‘That’s another way of looking at it.’

  The waiting continued. Some were beginning to hope that the battle would pass them by. Margont surveyed the battlefield. On the tops of the hills and on the slopes, in the smallest valleys and gullies, on the plains and even in the streams, as far as he could see, there were masses of soldiers. He had never seen so many. There were lines going into the attack, retreating or remaining still, squares, columns closely packed or split up, scattered hordes, fluctuating groups, soldiers isolated, lost or dug in, troopers whirling around or charging en masse … Coils of white smoke showed where muskets or artillery guns were being fired. Whole areas disappeared from view beneath these fluffy clouds that then rose slowly into the air until they filled the sky. On the top of its hill the Great Redoubt was hidden by the smoke of its artillery fire. It looked like an erupting volcano.

  Saber approached Margont. ‘Prince Eugène has taken the village of Borodino. But it’s probably a diversionary attack. The Emperor’s going to try to break through the Russian left so it’s imperative that we take the Great Redoubt, otherwise our troops will be crushed by its guns and will lay themselves open to attack.’

  Margont had realised that they had occupied Borodino. For the rest, he knew his friend only too well. Saber was smiling. He had some good news to announce.

  ‘The Great Redoubt will be ours.’

  The French artillery was pounding the Great Redoubt and the Three Flèches. To the left Eugène had indeed seized the village of Borodino but his progress had been halted. To the right the Three Flèches had already fallen – they had in fact been taken, lost and retaken. Ney’s troops and those of Davout, Murat and Nansouty were trying to link up with Poniatowski’s Poles, who were coming from the far right. But, from the village of Semenovskaya, which was set on a hilltop, the Russians overlooked the victorious French and were showering them with round shot, shells, grapeshot and bullets. Although Murat and La Tour Maubourg were attacking them with heavy cavalry – the Saxony Cuirassiers and Life Guards, and the Westphalian and Polish Cuirassiers – they were being counterattacked by a wave of Russian cuirassiers. The Friant Division took advan
tage of the impetus of the allied charge to storm the houses. The confusion and slaughter were at their height.

  All this time the 13th Light were chewing on blades of grass and kicking their heels. Aides-de-camp and orderlies kept galloping up, wheeling their horses round once or twice to calm them, handing over a missive and immediately setting off again. More and more of them kept arriving and they were in more and more of a hurry.

  ‘The Redoubt! The Redoubt! The Redoubt!’ Saber began to chant.

  His company took up the cry. A superstitious corporal, terror-stricken at the thought and appalled that no one was listening to his pleas, brandished the butt of his musket ready to smash Saber’s skull. The lieutenant had not noticed him because now all he could think of was ‘his’ Redoubt.

  Margont grabbed the man by the sleeve. ‘That’s not a Russian. Control yourself.’

  General Morand and his general staff galloped past the 13th Light. A few moments later, at about ten in the morning, the order was given to carry the Great Redoubt. The Morand Division began to march. Only the 30th of the Line and a battalion of the 13th Light were going to attack the Great Redoubt itself. The role of the other regiments was to take on the Russian troops deployed round about.

  The infantry went forward perfectly aligned, coming under direct fire from the Great Redoubt. There was a buzzing that became a whistling sound, which got louder and louder, and then a breach appeared in the line. Another whistling sound and another gory void.

  ‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’ shouted the officers.

  The soldiers moved closer together to fill the gaps but more shells exploded, more cannonballs struck them full in the chest or tore off their limbs, and there were more shouts of ‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’

  Lefine had followed Margont. He had told a sergeant who was unhappy at seeing him leave the 84th for the day: ‘If you’re going to die, it might as well be with your friends.’

  ‘At this rate there soon won’t be any ranks left,’ he muttered.

  ‘Who cares? We’ll shout: “Close!”’ replied Margont.

  ‘Why are there so few of us to attack this redoubt? Who’s the fool who gave this order?’

  ‘Close ranks, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, well, the other regiments in the division could also close ranks with us! I hate the army, which is only reasonable since the army obviously hates me!’

  Margont was looking straight ahead and thinking only of keeping the ranks close together.

  Galouche was reciting a passage from the Bible: ‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’ The Apocalypse. It was an appropriate choice.

  The cannonballs were raining down more and more heavily, dropping, killing, bouncing off the grass, dropping back down again, killing once more … At last, the enemy was close enough and the line charged forward, yelling as it went. Grapeshot swept away whole ranks in a deafening din. The infantrymen following leapt nimbly over the dead and wounded and took their places. The attackers were in a frenzied state. Fear, vengeance, hatred, a desire for glory, and an obsession with fighting to avoid thinking about those dying around them – all these feelings mingled to produce an excited, exhilarated, enraged sort of euphoria. The Russians positioned on the edges of the redoubt had been pushed back or wiped out.

  Disorientated by the smoke surrounding the entrenchment – a warm fog that smelt of burnt gunpowder – Margont fell into a ditch. He tried to get up but other soldiers tumbled on top of him, screaming with fear. He struggled and quickly got back on his feet to avoid choking to death under a human shroud. He was suffocating and could hardly see. There were flashes of light: men were shooting one another inside the ditch itself. Terror-stricken Russians had hidden there and were firing at anything that moved, killing as many of their own men as of the enemy. They were swiftly slaughtered. The French gave one another a leg up to get out of what a grenadier from the 30th quite rightly called a ‘trap for prats’ and went back on the attack.

  The French were entering the Great Redoubt through the gaps made for the cannon or those caused by French artillery fire. Other infantrymen were clinging to the earthworks, digging their feet in and climbing up as best they could before shooting at the Russians from the top or throwing themselves at them. Some of the gunners were no longer even defending themselves but reloading their gun and firing so as to blow dozens of Frenchmen to smithereens. The cannon fell silent, the shooting gradually died away.

  When Margont entered the stronghold, he saw Saber stroking a cannon as if it were the muzzle of a horse.

  ‘You see, it was easy. I told you so!’

  At that precise moment the Great Redoubt and the Three Flèches had been taken. The enemy line was seriously weakened. Ney and Murat asked for reinforcements so they could try to penetrate the Russian army. Napoleon sent them very few. He wanted to preserve his Guard. Sending it into the attack at this moment would probably ensure victory but not without sustaining very heavy losses. The situation was not yet clear and he feared a second battle the next day or the day after. Napoleon therefore wanted to win without deploying his Guard … if possible.

  Seeing that all would be lost if he did not react, Kutuzov ordered a general counterattack, throwing considerable reserves into the fray. In the centre, the infantrymen of Lithuania, Ismailov and the Prince of Württemberg as well as the cuirassiers of Astrakhan and those of the Empress attacked the village of Semenovskaya while Barclay de Tolly and Bagration set about recapturing the entrenchments. On the Russian right, Hetman Platov’s Cossacks and Uvarov’s troopers went into action and, on the left, Olsuviev’s soldiers came to support Tuchkov’s in order to halt Poniatowski.

  From the Great Redoubt a host of Russians could be seen, pressed shoulder to shoulder. Their courage bolstered by vodka, they formed a compact wall and were shouting ‘Huzza! Huzza!’ to thank the French for being kind enough to take them on. In the entrenchment, mainly occupied by the 30th of the Line because the other regiments were placed on either side of the position, the French were astounded. What was going on? Hadn’t they won? Wasn’t it all over? The French were firing from all sides but the Russians did not even slacken their pace. The seething green and white mass glinting with bayonets immediately swarmed over those who fell, giving the impression that the volley of fire had had no effect.

  ‘For God’s sake, are we firing at ghosts or what?’ someone swore.

  Margont saw Saber and a few men knocking down the double stockade that closed off the gorge of the redoubt. They were pushing with both hands against the tree trunks spared by the cannonballs or leaning against the wood. It was difficult to work out quite why they were doing this. Didn’t they realise that the Russians were going to come back this way?

  ‘Stop these idiots or I’ll have them shot on the spot against their posts!’ yelled a colonel, pointing at Saber and his men with the tip of his sabre.

  Margont pushed his way through the throng of fusiliers to get to his friend.

  ‘You’re mad. What are you doing?’

  Saber had seized hold of a tree trunk, which he was gradually bending. He was so stubborn that even if three men had got hold of him to remove him forcibly, he would have taken his bit of the stockade with him.

  ‘The redoubt’s lost! We’re going to be swept up like dead leaves and the green coats will cling to this battery like limpets. The only way of getting back here will be a combined pincer attack, with the infantry head on and the cavalry to the rear. So we need to clear a path for our troopers!’

  ‘A combined attack?’ yelled Margont uncomprehendingly.

  The previous night Saber had not taken account of the human factor in drawing his battle plans on the ground. That was one thing. B
ut even now, when a human wave was about to engulf them, he was continuing to reason in a cold, mathematical way, a disembodied way, even. Saber collapsed, along with his post.

  A trooper suddenly appeared in front of them. His horse was pawing the ground and tossing its head to shake the foam from its lips. The man and his mount were silhouetted against the light and their dark, proud, magnificent outlines were terrifying. He looked like one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. When the soldiers’ eyes had adjusted to the light, they recognised Colonel Delarse. He had his back to the enemy. The Russians, who were getting closer and closer, were all attempting to cut down this officer, who some of them thought was Napoleon himself. Delarse pointed at the heart of the redoubt.

  ‘Gentlemen, this is the gate to Moscow. Do not let them shut it again!’

  A cheer went up at these words and shouts of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ rang out. Delarse set off again at a gallop, followed by a riderless black horse. Darval, his adjutant, had just rolled down dead at the foot of the earthworks.

  The Russian horde swooped down on the entrenchment. Dark shadows appeared on all sides in the suffocating smoke caused by the firing. Flashes of light burst out constantly amidst a deafening roar. The Russians were trying to get in through the gorge but the French were blocking their way. Bodies were piling up on both sides. The Russians coming up behind flung themselves with all their might against their comrades to break this bottleneck. The soldiers of the 30th and the 13th Light were massing to counterbalance the Russian push. Those who were in the middle of this fray were caught in the vice. Squashed one against the other, some who had been killed could not even fall to the ground, giving the illusion that the dead had risen again to take part in the fighting.

  Margont looked up. The Russians were firing from the top of the earthworks. Their bodies stood out so clearly that they were immediately cut down. Others took their places, only to suffer the same fate. The defenders of the gorge were eventually overwhelmed. Men were trampled to death whilst the Russians, whooping with joy, flooded in, running their bayonets through anything that moved. A petrified Margont thought of the amphitheatre in Nîmes. He had the impression of being in the middle of that ancient building, a wretched gladiator lost amidst a host of other gladiators. But there was no public, no Caesar poised to raise his thumb to bring the slaughter to an end. He saw green musketeers rushing towards him. A French fusilier next to him began howling with laughter. He was standing motionless, his weapon at his side, and laughing, just laughing.