‘Barely half that, sire, and the meat has run out.’
‘How many men to feed?’
‘Fewer than a hundred thousand, far fewer …’
‘The Guard?’
‘Five thousand able-bodied.’
‘The cavalry?’
‘Eighteen hundred mounted troopers.’
‘The regiments?’
‘Roughly thirty thousand.’
The Emperor walked round the room, his lips quivering; he took a great pinch of snuff, then threw his snuffbox on the floor, and bawled, ‘Bring me the criminal in charge of provisioning!’
Napoleon stayed alone with the commissary responsible for Smolensk’s stores. For a long time the secretaries, valets and grenadiers on guard heard His Majesty’s yells and threats and the sobs of the guilty man.
Five
BEREZINA
‘This year a group of mallards had their feet frozen to a pond’s surface, and now a bald eagle busies himself swooping in and tearing off their heads.’
Jim Harrison, Just before Dark
IN THE SHATTERED HOVEL in the suburbs of Smolensk, there were no planks or beams left to sustain the fire their survival depended upon, so they had to set off again, keep on walking, find better shelter and food. Dr Fournereau, Ornella and the rest of their wretched band were gathering together their possessions when one of them, who had pushed back the palisade to look outside, grabbed Fournereau by his black bearskin cloak. ‘Mira! Mira! Las puertas!’ The doctor put on his gloves. Hordes of men and women were climbing from all directions towards the open gates of the city; if it weren’t for the fact that they sank into the snow at every step, the doctor and his troupe would have run to get ahead of the crowd. The bitingly cold air cut to the bone. Keeping close together, they planted their feet in the snow mechanically, their brains switched down, moving on instinct, like hunters. The Emperor had just set off towards Minsk with his Guard; his headquarters staff was packing up and the servants were selling Bordeaux from the Imperial cellars at twenty francs a bottle. No officers were able, or inclined, to bring the chaos under control. The soldiers, stragglers and fugitives wouldn’t listen to anything but their stomachs. They were besieging the stores where the supply commissaries had barricaded themselves whilst they waited for hypothetical orders.
The snowstorm had veiled the piles of bodies, studding the road that climbed towards the citadel with white mounds. Halfway up, Fournereau and his dependants merged with the thousands of people banging furiously on the massive shutters of the main warehouse. From a first-floor window, Comptroller Poissonnard was haranguing the crowd. ‘Wait! There’ll be some for everybody!’
‘What are we waiting for?’
‘We have to get the rations organized!’
‘We’ll organize them ourselves! Open up!’
‘Wait …’
‘Shut up, little piggy, or you’ll end up on a spit.’
A barouche whose horses had been taken by the artillery cleared a path, drawn by voltigeurs, and with the crowd helping to push it, smashed into the door; a leaf started cracking, which fifty hands tore clean away. Slats went flying to make the opening bigger. Then without a word, with the force of a torrent, the crowd surged into the building and fanned out. Fournereau held Ornella by the arm; the rest of his band followed him. They let themselves be swept into a room full of crates that a big uhlan in a tricorne was hacking open with an axe. Held aloft on outstretched arms, two-handled baskets were passing over people’s heads; those at the front looted the beans and bags of flour and rice; those behind bounded up the staircase. On the first floor, the commissaries had jammed the doors shut with bars, but they couldn’t withstand the massive pressure. The besiegers discovered a new stockroom where Poissonnard was preparing to flee. He had fixed a ladder to one of the windows and two of his associates had already climbed down it; wagons were waiting for them at the rear of the building. Fournereau grabbed the comptroller by the skirts of his blue coat, as he stepped over the windowsill. ‘What are you taking away in your carts?’
‘His Majesty’s Service!’ Poissonnard answered in a hoarse voice.
‘Where’s the meat?’
‘The droves never arrived!’
The doctor bent forward. Catching the comptroller by the throat, he half-strangled him. Below, the man’s quarter-master colleagues were waiting for him; the wagon drivers were on their seats, reins in hand, looking around for the signal to leave. Poissonnard moaned, ‘Let me go, I’m no use to you.’
‘No, you’re no use to anyone. Go and join the other lickpennies!’ With a hard shove, Fournereau unbalanced Poissonnard, who toppled from his ledge and fell, screaming; he smashed onto a vehicle’s oilskin hood. The drivers instantly whipped up their horses and the wagons disappeared round the bend of the snow-covered street. In the warehouse, the systematic pillaging was continuing; everything was vanishing into pockets, sacks, double bags and caps; even the wooden crates were being taken for the next campfire. Fournereau knelt down next to Ornella. She was stuffing her bundle with dry vegetables. ‘Looks like we’re not going to paradise today either,’ he said.
‘Then it’ll be tomorrow,’ she answered with a distracted smile. They heard a cannonade in the distance. No doubt one of Kutuzov’s armies was attacking the rear-guard.
*
The baggage train followed the route taken by the Emperor and his Guard, across twenty-five leagues of flat country to Krasnoie, a small town where they would be joined by Davout’s, Eugene’s and Ney’s army corps, who were going to leave Smolensk in stages. The secretaries’ berline and their department’s wagons had spent the night under cover in a birch forest, surrounded by campfires lit by skirmishers of the Young Guard who were commanded by a beefy captain, loudmouthed but attentive to his men, named Vautrin. Before dawn he was poking those who were asleep with his stick, chivvying them along; they were stretched out in the snow, their cloaks stiff with ice. ‘Up you get! Up you get! If you sleep now you won’t wake up again!’ They sat up and got to their feet, one by one, blinded by the smoke from the glowing fires that the non-commissioned officers had watched over all night, constantly breaking branches to keep them stoked. ‘Up you get! A plague on any fool who sleeps too long!’ His bellows echoed in the silence. Sebastian opened an eye in the berline he’d been sharing with Fain, Sautet, who was snoring open-mouthed, and Sautet’s family since Moscow. ‘Up you get! Up you get!’ Captain Vautrin repeated, belabouring one of his men. The officer stuck his stick in the snow, shook the sleeper and bawled at the survivors of the 2nd Battalion: ‘On your feet! Otherwise you’ll end up like your friend Lepel!’ Sebastian left his travelling companions and went over to the fires. The soldiers of the Guard were the only ones wearing uniforms that more or less matched, with grey greatcoats, albeit frayed, and shakos with chinstraps in place; despite the furs over their ears and the rags round their gaiters, they had retained a soldierly bearing.
On the tip of a bayonet, Captain Vautrin offered the secretary a piece of grilled meat that he took with his gloved fingers and bit into. It wasn’t easy to swallow, but he didn’t even ask what things were anymore, he just chewed the blackened, stringy flesh – what difference did it make anyway? He’d gladly have turned cannibal if there were no other way to hold out till Paris.
The skirmishers collected their muskets from the piles; one of them slung the strap of a drum over his shoulder and started playing. Sebastian resumed his position on the berline’s box. He sensed similar stirrings in the carriages behind. Day was breaking in a milky white sky, but now it had fallen twenty degrees below freezing, the snow had stopped. Glancing at the hindquarters of their two horses before touching them with his whip, he noticed that the one on the left was covered in blood, black blood, congealed and crusted. He jumped down from his seat, wincing; during the night, some rogues had cut slices the size of large steaks from the thighs of the animal, which hadn’t felt anything in the bitter cold.
‘My lord …’
‘Are we setting off?’ mumbled Baron Fain under his covers, screwing up his eyes.
‘That is going to be difficult, with only one horse.’
‘What are you telling me, Monsieur Roque?’
‘Come and see.’
‘Oh, goodness, what horrors have you in store?’
‘What is it?’ the bookseller asked anxiously, emerging from the berline.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ muttered the Baron as he walked with Sebastian towards the mutilated horse.
The driver of the maps and archives wagon had come to have a look; he was shaking his head.
‘That’s not pretty, not pretty at all …’
‘Keep your comments to yourself,’ snapped the Baron, exasperated by this serious reversal.
‘What shall we do?’
‘First, Monsieur Roque, take this poor animal out of the shafts.’
‘That will only leave one horse, and he won’t be able to pull the berline, even if he did have his share of oats in Smolensk.’
‘Ah now, for a coach that size,’ the coachman said, ‘you’d have to have a team of four put to.’
The Baron thought. The 2nd Battalion of skirmishers had marched off behind their drums and rolled colour, of which only the eagle showed above the shakos.
‘I’ll ride the second horse,’ decided the Baron. ‘We’ll pack it with a modest load. And you, Monsieur Roque, will follow with our wagons, on this driver’s box.’
‘And the Sautets?’
‘Let them walk like everybody else. After all, Dr Larrey recommends walking to prevent numbness. You will explain the situation to them.’
The horse that had been butchered alive fell in the snow, jerking spasmodically; the steam pluming from its nostrils quickly turned to ice, like that tear Sebastian thought he could see at the corner of its staring eye. The Baron chose necessities, which he stuffed in a satchel. When he was ready, he mounted the unharmed horse without either saddle or stirrups, clasped its neck with both arms, and pressed his face into its mane. He squeezed the flanks of his mount with his knees and trotted off after the battalion, telling his clerk, ‘I’il find a saddle on the road, no one would have thought to slow themselves down with one of those.’
‘You follow me then, right?’ the coachman suggested to Sebastian.
‘Yes, but I have to warn the passengers first …’
‘Well, get a move on. We don’t want to go wasting any time.’
It was a delicate mission. Sebastian loathed being the bringer of bad news. He was trying to become more callous, and it was easy enough in His Majesty’s entourage, but in this case, how was he to explain to the bookseller that they were leaving him in this forest a long way from the city? At least, by a stroke of luck, they had entrusted the last of their wounded, the lieutenant with the fever, to the doctors in Smolensk. He opened the door wide.
‘Are we setting off or not?’ demanded the bookseller.
‘The truth of the matter is that everyone, from now on, is making their own arrangements to continue their journey …’
‘What’s this nonsense you’re telling me, young man?’ ‘There are no horses to draw the carriage.’
‘That means …’
‘That you gather up what you think will be useful.’
‘And then set off on foot?’
‘I fear so, Monsieur Sautet.’
‘Well, I dread so! At my age, what an idea! What about my wife? And my daughter?’
The two scared women were biting their lips. Emboldened by a sudden flash of courage, the bookseller asked Sebastian to take his daughter in the map wagon.
‘What about you two?’
‘Mélanie and I shall stay in the carriage.’
‘Be reasonable, Monsieur Sautet …’
‘Are you invoking reason, in circumstances like this? Come now, there is only the one road. A barouche will have room for us. There are other former inhabitants of Moscow, acquaintances of mine, in this wretched cortege.’
‘Very well,’ said Sebastian. ‘Mademoiselle …’
He helped Mlle Sautet down onto the slippery foot-board, took her in his arms to prevent her falling and found as best a place for her as he could between the piles of files and scrolls filling the wagon. The dog Dimitri was barking. Sautet leant out of the door, a book in his out-stretched hand. ‘Monsieur le secrétaire, this volume fell out of your bag, it would be a pity to lose it.’
‘Thank you, sir, thank you.’
Sebastian took the book, Seneca’s On the Tranquillity of the Soul, from which the bookseller, either mockingly or pretentiously, recited a passage: ‘When one believes that whatever can happen is about to happen, this always cushions the shock of the misfortune. But take care of Emilie …’
‘I promise, Monsieur Sautet.’
The wagon left. As they passed the stranded berline, Sebastian saw the bookseller and his wife clasped in each other’s arms. He lowered his eyes. The barking hadn’t stopped; the little black dog was scampering along next to the wagon. The secretary bent down, stretched out a hand, picked up the animal by the scruff of its neck and settled it on his lap under the wolfskin cover. The coachman rolled his eyes heavenwards.
*
The reality of what was happening tormented Sebastian Roque. No one had prepared him for such cruelty. He kept telling himself that the secretariat’s wagons were full to bursting, fuller, even; it just wasn’t possible for them to take the bookseller and his wife; he’d already contravened regulations as it was, by fitting their daughter in amongst the ragtag assortment of maps and administrative documents, maybe he’d get into trouble for that in itself. What was going to happen to the Sautets? No carriage would stop to save them; the bookseller had used this argument to salve the young man’s conscience, it was elegant, brave and false. They would die of hunger or cold if peasants didn’t massacre them first. Sebastian despised himself and exonerated himself in equal measure as he stroked Dimitri the dog, who gave off a little heat.
‘We’re there,’ the coachman said.
‘Where?’
‘Krasnoie, probably.’
With his whip he pointed to a jumble of shacks in the distance whose roofs were sagging under thick snow. An unbroken line of regiments and berlines was heading there. Dead horses still lay everywhere, and corpses frozen like statues on the roadside, which they looked at wearily, as one would boundary posts. They hadn’t quite arrived, however. First the road dipped down into a defile with sides of sheet ice. At the entrance to a narrow bridge, carriages and wagons were snarled. One of the Treasury’s caissons burst open as it fell and unleashed a rain of gold coins. Exhausted soldiers stopped at the edge of the ravine. Sebastian wanted to see as well. Unable to move, the coachman grumbled, ‘You’re too curious, sir.’ When Sebastian pushed back the cover, the black dog bounded down into the snow.
Down below the gold coins had fallen on a drove of oxen. Hundreds of the beasts had been frozen, their eyes open, in a welter of horns and muzzles set in ice. The leaders of the drove had left the road, blinded by a storm perhaps, and their kin had followed, pushing and jostling, until they were at the bottom; unable to get back up, they must have lowed and thrashed about and gouged each other for a long time. The ice had frozen them in ghastly or ludicrous poses.
Some soldiers were letting down ropes to have a closer look at the oxen sprinkled with gold. They walked on the ice, holding onto the horns as if they were handles. A giant fellow brought down a sapper’s axe on one of the beasts, but the blade didn’t even cut its hide, it was so hard. Under Sebastian’s feet, Dimitri the dog barked with impunity at the dead oxen that terrified him. He went too close to the edge and slithered down a few metres. Sebastian went after him, clinging to outcropping rocks, and scooped the dog up against his chest; hands reached out to help him. A modicum of fraternity still existed amongst the men of the Imperial Guard.
Then the wagons crossed the bridge.
It was night when they entered a Krasn
oie brightly lit up by bivouac fires. The drivers unharnessed in front of the rudimentary headquarters buildings and Sebastian checked to see how his passenger had taken the journey. She was completely still, curled up on the cardboard boxes of records. He slapped her hands and cheeks, but couldn’t get any blood circulating under that transparent skin.
‘Take her to the doctors, Monsieur Roque.’
Baron Fain, told that the wagons had arrived, didn’t appear surprised to see Mlle Sautet. He even offered to help his clerk take her to the Guard’s hospital, where Dr Larrey was practising.
‘Don’t go to all that trouble, my lord.’
‘Oh, but I shall! What if you come a cropper with your load on this slippery snow? If you sprain your wrist? I need your quill hand, you know.’
The hospital proved to be a barn full of wounded and frostbitten grenadiers, who were being massaged by medical orderlies and exhausted voluntary nurses. Sebastian recognized Mme Aurore from behind; she was bustling about a sergeant in a bed, pulling off his boots; his feet were frozen and their skin, which had stuck to the leather, was peeling off in strips. Catherine, the red-headed actress, was going up and down the rows with a flask of brandy. After leaving the bookseller’s daughter with an apprentice surgeon, Sebastian questioned Mme Aurore, who was bandaging her sergeant with strips torn from a shirt. Where was Ornella? She didn’t know. She had fallen in with a group of stragglers. When they had left their cart, the troupe had split up; the manageress and Catherine had found refuge with some gunners and hitched a lift astride a gun carriage.
*
That night, shirkers had stolen Captain d’Herbigny’s Cossack horse; all he had found was the cut bridle. Everyone had to sleep at some time or another, but thieves took advantage of it. How many men no longer left their knapsacks and took it in turns to watch their horses? A cavalryman reduced to an infantryman’s state, the captain felt disgraced by his misfortune. When he had discovered the theft, he hadn’t even had time to go looking in town: the Emperor was assembling all the able-bodied divisions of the Guard on Krasnoie’s main square. Grenadiers, dis-mounted dragoons, skirmishers – they were all there stamping their feet, snow on their hats and their beards. The Russians were trying to cut Napoleon off from the rest of his army. Davout’s I Corps, so staunch and so depleted, was coming under the fire of an army ten times its size but fortunately poorly commanded. The Tsar’s generals still feared Napoleon; even in the midst of a rout, his name was enough to make them tremble. Knowing this, he had decided to lead his elite troops into action himself, relying on his presence to push back the enemy and rescue the hard-pressed units trying to reach him. He came onto the square on foot, dressed in the Polish style with a green pelisse with gold frogging, fur-lined boots, a marten-fur cap edged with fox fur tied on with ribbons, and holding a baton made of birch in his hand. He gave a speech, phrases of which were repeated through the ranks. D’Herbigny only remembered one, but it electrified him: ‘I have been an emperor long enough, now I’ll be a general again.’
The Retreat Page 17