‘What’s the use of giving these old carts a registered number?’
‘To assign you your quota of wounded.’
‘I’m not an ambulance!’
‘Every conveyance without wounded on board will be burnt.’
‘Explain yourselves, for goodness’ sake, or I’ll whittle your ears to a point!’
‘We’re going, Captain,’ said the first baggage-master.
‘We’re leaving Moscow tomorrow,’ specified the second, closing his register.
Four
MARCH OR DIE
THERE WAS BRIGHT SUNSHINE on 19 October. The army was delighted to be leaving Moscow. In ragged columns, their tattered uniforms hidden under Siberian fox furs and silk cravats, Davout’s depleted regiments were the first to leave by the old Kaluga road. ‘We’re going down to the fertile provinces of the south,’ the soldiers told one another, and they believed it. Hour after hour the massive exodus readied itself. The fifteen thousand serviceable vehicles in the city had been requisitioned and distributed by rank. There were the generals’ new carriages and berlines loaded with their voluminous baggage, the administration’s barouches and fourgons, little Russian wagons crammed with provisions, carts stacked with booty, barrows full of jewels, benches on wheels with people astride them, little horses harnessed by ropes to ramshackle little rattletraps, tired old nags pulling the guns or caissons, all jumbled together amidst a tremendous uproar of shouting valets, torrents of abuse in twenty languages, draught horses’ bells and the crack of whips. Civilians were swelling the throng by their thousands: women and whimpering children, rich foreigners, peasants on foot, European merchants without a home or business anymore, the usual adventuresses prostituting themselves in an army’s train. At the gates of Moscow, the gendarmes were checking the wounded, who had been divided into categories by the medical officers; they were only taking the least seriously wounded and the noninfectious who were expected to recover within a week. The rest were crammed into the Foundlings’ Hospital, left to the fate that vermin, dysentery, gangrene and the Russians had in store for them.
Sebastian and Baron Fain were sharing their staff berline with Sautet, the bookseller. He took up a fair amount of space, this character, what with his belly and his family, which comprised a lady with her hair up in a chignon who sniffled constantly behind the handkerchief she held over her nose, a tall young girl and a fidgety black dog. For wounded, they had been allocated a one-legged voltigeur, with his crutches and knapsack, and a broken-down lieutenant who had been propped up on bales of peas. Their baggage rose from the trunk to the roof, secured by straps, and the postilion had had to allow a third wounded up on his box seat, a feverish hussar in a wolf-skin cloak. Wedged against a window in direct sunshine, the bookseller mopped the beads of sweat on his forehead and remarked morosely, ‘At least we won’t be cold.’
‘We will be in Smolensk before winter,’ Baron Fain replied.
‘I hope so …’
‘His Majesty has planned everything.’
‘I hope so!’
‘Twenty days’ march, that’s all, by the southern route.’
‘If it doesn’t freeze too hard …’
‘According to the records for the last twenty years, I can assure you that in November the thermometer never goes below six degrees.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Oh, stop doubting!’
‘I shall doubt if I please, my lord. Why aren’t we leaving, what are we waiting for?’
‘The Emperor.’
‘The army has been moving out since five o’clock this morning, a horde of civilians has started after them, whereas we just sit here and rot away!’ He looked at his fob watch. ‘It is already almost midday!’
‘You are forgetting your good fortune.’
‘Ah, now there’s a subject. I’m ruined …’
‘But alive.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘Listen, Monsieur Sautet, you are with your family in the retinue of the Emperor’s household, which the Baden grenadiers will protect the entire way. Behind us, after the carriage carrying the maps and my office’s documents, are our supply wagons with bread, wine, linen and silverware. Other people are leaving without very much at all, you should consider yourself lucky. However, if you’d rather stay in Moscow …’
‘Heavens, no! I am French as well, and the Russians can’t be that fond of us any more. What a mess!’
‘Stop your jeremiads, if you please, or I shall forcibly set you down!’
They were arguing before setting off. Sebastian scowled in his corner. The bookseller was right; if it hadn’t been for this expedition, Moscow would still be the delightful capital city people came to from all over the world. At least he didn’t have too much luggage, just the sabre he had bought from Poissonnard, his books, a little linen and a handful of diamonds he had stolen from the drawer of a dressing table in the Kremlin.
At that moment the Emperor got into his berline and sat down next to Murat, wearing the red uniform of the Polish lancers. Finally they were going to leave.
*
From the top of the nearest hill, sitting astride a Cossack horse that was sturdier than his previous one and rough-shod for the ice, d’Herbigny looked bitterly back at Moscow, at the domes mutilated by the loss of their crosses, the towers, the blackened roofs, the minarets rising from a bed of ashes. The Seminov monastery next to the Kaluga gate was on fire; the rations housed in it had had to be destroyed rather than handed to the enemy, apparently, because the administration thought they had enough food as it was, and in a few days they would be resupplying to the south. An incredible throng was pouring out onto the plain and slowly spreading out; a chaotic, massive tribe, barbaric in its variety, weighed down by plunder, streaming endlessly out of the city and overflowing the road on both sides by several kilometres. Amongst the currents in this noisy tide, the captain spotted the chestnut uniforms of the Portuguese cavalry: they were escorting a column of Russian prisoners – townsfolk, peasants, some spies perhaps, a handful of soldiers; they would serve, if need be, as bargaining counters or shields. He also saw the Imperial convoy caught up in the crush, the Emperor’s green berline, the fifty carriages of his train, the precisely dressed ranks of the regiments of the Old Guard in parade uniform; to their knapsacks and the straps of their cartridge pouches the grenadiers had attached little bottles of brandy and loaves of white bread baked in the Kremlin, and they were singing.
Closer to, on the hillside, the wheels of the overloaded wagons were sinking into the sand; officers’ wives were taking coachmen’s places and adopting their repertoire of curses. Gunners were bending their backs to help their emaciated horses pull the cannon to the top. The dragoons’ carts had got stuck for the umpteenth time. They were standing about, wasting time, and each separate incident delayed the whole.
Trooper Bonet came up to the captain. Ever since the latter had made him sergeant in poor Martinon’s place (Lieutenant Berton having vanished into thin air), Bonet had been looking to take the initiative.
‘Sir, couldn’t we lighten our baggage?’
‘Oaf! You’ll be happy enough when you get your share in France.’
Bonet reflected, puffing out his chest to show off the beautiful silk waistcoat he had made from a Chinese dress, and then, as if the idea had just come to him, he suggested, ‘What about the tea in the first cart? We’ve got a whole shipment of it …’
‘It’s my tea, Bonet. It’ll fetch a good price and it’s not the heaviest thing we’re carrying. Honestly, we’re not going to dump all our provisions! Nor unload and load up again at every hold-up!’
‘The chests of Peruvian bark?’
‘They’ll come in useful.’
‘The pictures?’
‘They don’t weigh anything rolled up. And that stuff’s worth a fortune in Paris! Should we dump the gold coins and all the precious trinkets we found in the churches as well?’
‘The wounded …’ his servant Pauli
n said distractedly, looking at his donkey, which was tearing at the leaves of a dry bush.
‘The wounded?’
‘We’re carrying a pretty heavy load, that’s true,’ said the sergeant.
‘And we won’t be checked any more, sir.’
‘I don’t value men by their weight!’ answered the captain, bright red. ‘They need us.’
‘We could put them in with the others, couldn’t we?’
‘They’re full to the gunwales, if not fuller!’
‘But we just have to tell the civilians it’s an order …’
‘Take down the wounded!’ ordered the captain.
Two dragoons climbed up on the wagons to lay hold of the groaning infantrymen squeezed between the chests of plunder. They picked them up under the arms and passed them down to their comrades, who put them in a heap on the ground in full view of everyone. While some of the troopers tried to impose this extra load on whichever civilians they could, others dismantled the sides of the carts and laid the planks in front of the wheels trapped in the sandy ruts. Some pushed, others attached ropes and pulled, and the rest whipped the mules with their leather belts. Not far away, groups of soldiers and merchants in frock coats were trying the same method to free their stranded carriages. A supply wagon tipped over, a library of gilt-edged books was sent flying, which a bawling officer protected from the hooves and wheels. When the dragoons’ lead cart was moving again at the mules’ exasperating pace, the captain grew concerned about the wounded.
‘Did you manage to find room for them?’
‘Course, sir.’
‘That’s a good job.’ It wasn’t true, d’Herbigny suspected, but he pretended to believe his men. They had to push on. After this there would be no more hills, and less soft sand, but a stony steppe instead and narrow gorges which this horde would have trouble passing through.
*
A thin, cold rain began on the first evening and the multitude settled itself on the plain as best they could. The Emperor took shelter on the first floor of a wretched stone manor house, with the members of his household. Baron Fain and Sebastian left Sautet in the berline.
‘And we’re going to spend the night in this carriage, are we?’ the bookseller cursed.
‘Squeeze up to keep warm.’
‘What are we to eat?’
‘Your provisions.’
‘You promised that we would lack nothing!’
‘Don’t you have any provisions?’
‘A little, yes, you know we do.’
‘Well, what are you complaining about?’
‘Those two! We’re not going to get a wink of sleep with their moaning and groaning!’
He was talking about the wounded, the voltigeur and the Dutch officer who were tossing and turning on the bales of peas. The bookseller became more insistent. ‘For Heaven’s sake, space is not something that manor house is short of!’
‘The Emperor’s palace? We don’t allow entry to civilians.’
‘A palace, that?’
‘You should know, Monsieur Sautet,’ the baron answered irritably, ‘that that is always the name given to where His Majesty stays, whether it is a hut, a tent or an inn.’
When Sebastian and the Baron had left, the bookseller looked in his double bags and took out a smoked sausage, a bottle and some biscuits. The biscuits had not weathered the journey too well and were mostly crumbs. The family shared the food in silence. A grenadier knocked at the window and Sautet opened it. A cold breeze made them shiver. The soldier was carrying a cooking pot which delighted the travellers. ‘Ah, they are taking care of us after all.’
‘Any wounded?’ asked the grenadier.
‘Two in the berline.’
Another grenadier with a ladle filled two bowls with a steaming, clear broth which he held out to Sautet.
‘I’ll see to this,’ the bookseller said. ‘Ouch! It’s boiling!’
He gave one bowl to his wife, hunched over the other and drank the broth in long draughts.
‘Hey! It’s only for the wounded,’ the grenadier snapped.
The black dog started barking, which caught the grenadiers’ attention.
‘Quiet, Dmitry!’ scolded Mme Sautet.
‘What’s wrong with our dog? Why are you looking at him like that?’
‘Very tempting,’ said one of the grenadiers, and slammed the door to go and deliver his soup to other wounded.
The bookseller gulped another mouthful with a grimace. ‘Revolting!’
‘No doubt, my friend,’ said his wife, ‘but it is hot.’
‘I wasn’t referring to the gruel, Mme Sautet. Didn’t you hear that beanpole’s remark about Dmitry? Tempting!’
He finished his bowl. She drank some more and then passed hers on to her daughter who inhaled the bitter fumes. It was an unpleasant-tasting barley soup that the wounded didn’t get a drop of. Salt being in short supply, the regiment’s cook’s boys had added gunpowder. The coal and sulphur separated and came to the surface as it boiled, and were then skimmed off with a ladle. The saltpetre that remained was enough to season the concoction, but it left a bad taste in the back of the throat and tied one’s stomach in knots. When Sebastian returned soon after to look for a fur in the secretaries’ carriages, he found Sautet squatting in the courtyard, his breeches round his knees; he was easing his bowels under a canopy.
‘We were so happy in Moscow!’ the bookseller complained, surprised by the secretary in that state.
‘At Kaluga,’ said Sebastian, lighting the fellow with his lantern, ‘we’ll find herds, orchards and well-stocked granaries.’
‘At this speed, my poor friend, we won’t be there for quite a while!’
‘What danger can we be in, so close to His Majesty?’
‘Catching a good bout of diarrhoea, for a start,’ muttered Monsieur Sautet.
He got to his feet, pulled up his breeches, and straightened his braces. Bringing his face very close to Sebastian’s, who could smell the soup on his sour breath, he said, ‘I admire your confidence but I know this country. I know the steep gorges we’ll have to get through, and the Nara marshes we’ll have to cross – but how in Heaven’s name will we be able to do that with these numbers and this disorder?’
Sebastian didn’t know what to say. He turned away, shone a light into the baggage coach and, from under the mound of packages and furs, took out a lamb’s wool fur-lined coat to wear under his overcoat: up in the house, the secretaries were only entitled to an icy room without panes in its windows; what little dry wood there was was reserved for the Emperor and the Guard’s canteens.
They set off again in the morning. Baron Fain and his clerk were sneezing and blowing their noses as they took their places in the berline next to the bookseller and his family. Woebegone, the Sautets were drowsing under some sheepskins. One of the wounded was delirious. That day they didn’t see any of the accidents that occurred in the passes – the Emperor’s caravan had priority and the civilians couldn’t compete with the well-organized soldiers who pushed ahead of them. But many of the carriages behind them broke a wheel and went over precipices with their passengers. Overloaded fugitives began to be seen jettisoning their surplus booty, scattering bags of pearls, icons, weapons and rolls of cloth along the road, which those following trampled on with complete indifference.
*
Crossing the marshes in damp fog took all the subsequent day. Scouts had marked out the route for the army; the baggage train stretched in single file along a precarious road, boggy in places and churned by the caissons and horses’ hooves. Indistinct, mud-smeared objects floated on the surface of the quagmires either side of it. A horse kept its head above the ooze for as long as it could; it hadn’t the strength to whinny before it was swallowed up. The slightest misjudgement seemed fatal, so most of the travellers had got out of their heavy coaches. Elegant women in long dresses, frightened, advanced with a thousand precautions on loose stones and between the puddles. One carried a child on her shoulders. Gr
ooms led their draught horses on foot. Mme Aurore’s actors walked in front of their covered cart on which had been painted in white letters, on the tarred drill, HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY’S THEATRICAL COMPANY. Ornella and Catherine had covered their hats with waxed silk to keep off the rain; they held up the hems of their skirts as they walked, stumbling repeatedly and clinging to each other so as not to slip off the path. The Great Vialatoux was no longer up to declaiming, but he bewailed his plight at every step, since he was suffering from rheumatism; Mme Aurore admonished him with equal vigour.
Up ahead, just before the fog closed in, a barouche overturned and began to sink. Its passengers, German, shouted like mad for someone to throw them a rope and haul them out onto the road. A lanky figure in a fox-fur coat threw them a roll of canvas he had found in his cart and one of the Germans caught the end. As their rescuer pulled them back towards firm ground, the canvas started tearing, then ripped in two and the man fell back into the marsh.
‘It’s stupid throwing a bit of canvas,’ a coachman said.
‘Got a rope, have you?’ came the angry response. ‘No? We’ve got to make do with what we’ve got, haven’t we!’ The horses struggled in the shafts, but in a second the mud swallowed them and the barouche with a horrendous sucking sound. There were other scenes of this sort, before which everyone felt helpless.
They left the marshes a little before nightfall. The actors collapsed on ground that was sodden from the fog. To warm themselves up, some of the survivors were ripping the benches and seats out of their carriages, setting them alight and crowding round the resulting pyres. Mme Aurore followed suit, adding the wooden trunks emptied of their costumes. In return for their offer of a share of their provisions, two army stragglers were allowed to sit by the fire. They had no regiment anymore, no arms, just big shaggy cloaks that made them look like bears. One of these bears took Ornella by the shoulder and drew her closer to the fire to get a better look at her.
‘Are you on the stage?’
The Retreat Page 13