‘Tell me, isn’t Countess Walewska’s chateau there-abouts?’
‘Indeed, sire.’
‘Would that necessitate a detour?’
‘Don’t think of it, sire, we have to get to the Tuileries as quickly as possible. Besides, who is to say that the countess is not in Paris?’
‘Let’s forget it. I am eager to see the Empress and the King of Rome again. You’re right.’ The Emperor gave in easily; Caulaincourt’s arguments were convincing. Still, he would have liked to have greeted his mistress and kiss the son she had given him.
Caulaincourt resumed his explanations. ‘Then, after Dresden, we cross Silesia.’
‘In Prussia? Are we obliged to?’
‘Yes, for a short distance.’
‘What if the Prussians stop us?’
‘It would be a terrible stroke of luck, sire.’
‘What would they do to us? Demand a ransom?’
‘Or worse.’
‘Would they kill us?’
‘Worse still.’
‘They’d hand us over to the English?’
‘Why not, sire?’
The Emperor shuddered at the idea – but it was a fit of violent hysterics rather than fear or revulsion that shook his shoulders, ‘Ah hah hah, Caulaincourt! I can picture your face in London, in an iron cage! They’d smear you with honey and give you to the flies, hah hah hah!’
They set off again in the red sleigh with its badly jointed windowpanes that let in freezing draughts. Sebastian felt all the same that he’d returned to civilization. His stomach was full; he’d been able to wash and put on new clothes; above all, the mind was reasserting its superiority over the body as he forwent sleep in order to remember what the Emperor said.
‘In less than three months, I’ll have five hundred thousand men under arms.’
‘The ill disposed, sire, will say that equates to five hundred thousand widows …’
‘Let them talk, Your Grace. If the Europeans understood that I’m acting for their own good, I wouldn’t need an army. Do you think I enjoy war? That I don’t deserve a rest? As for the sovereigns, they’re narrow-minded. Honestly, I’ve made it clear enough that I want to put a stop to revolutions! They owe me thanks for having stemmed the torrent of revolutionary spirit that was threatening their thrones. I loathed the Revolution.’
‘Because it killed a king?’
‘On the famous 13 Vendémiaire, Caulaincourt, I hesitated. Oh, I remember it well. I was coming out of the Feydeau Theatre, having been to a melodrama, The Good Son; the alarm was sounding throughout Paris. I was ready to sweep the Convention from the Tuileries, but whom would I have had to command? An army of Royalist dandies, students and innkeepers trained by Chouans. In the Royalist sections, they held their muskets like umbrellas! And then, when it started to rain, the downpour dispersed the rioters, who left to find shelter in a convent and talk … So that evening I reluctantly chose the Directory – the Directory, that nest of swindlers driven entirely by self-interest. I seconded Barras to use his power and establish mine.’
‘You would have served the monarchy?’
‘Do you want me to tell you who really killed the king? It was the émigrés, the courtiers, the nobility. One does not go into exile. If they had created a real resistance on the nation’s soil, I would have ranged myself on their side.’
‘You received them later at your court …’
‘My duty was to win them over. One must unite every shade of opinion and make use of people whose interests are most opposed. That is the way to prove a government is strong.’
‘How many would remain faithful to you in adversity?’
‘I hold men in slight esteem, as you know, but am I wrong, Your Grace? I have no illusions about their behaviour. None. As long as I stoke their ambitions and coffers, they will bow their heads.’
*
The Emperor and his travelling companions were wary of ambushes but over the five following days they suffered only mechanical problems and vexations due to the dilatoriness of postmasters. At Dresden they exchanged the red sleigh, by then almost in pieces, for a berline fitted with runners which the King of Saxony gave them; having been woken at four in the morning, he had come rushing to greet them in a sedan chair without telling his entourage. For want of snow, this new sleigh was in turn replaced by a mail barouche, then by a landau – and this was now in a coaching inn between Erfurt and Frankfurt awaiting fresh horses. Napoleon remained sitting in the landau; no one was showing any signs of urgency.
‘Caulaincourt, it’s infuriating! Are they putting those horses to?’
‘I have ordered them to, sire,’ said the grand equerry.
‘And what answer does this fool of a postmaster give?’
‘He tells me presently, presently.’
‘He hasn’t got horses in his stable?’
‘He claims not. We’re waiting for some to be requisitioned.’
‘We need to leave before nightfall!’
‘That would be desirable, sire. The road is difficult in the forests.’
‘Help me get out, you graceless idiot, I’m freezing.’
Furious at the delay, the Emperor strode towards the postmaster’s house. Once inside, however, he calmed down. In the salon, a woman was playing a sonata on a harpsichord. She didn’t speak a word of French, Napoleon not a word of German. He thought her entrancing and she played with a lightness of touch unexpected for such a place.
‘Caulaincourt!’
‘Sire?’ said the grand equerry, entering at a run.
‘You speak their language. Ask for coffee and hurry these flabby lumps along!’
Caulaincourt met Sebastian and the interpreter in the courtyard, which was surrounded with dwelling houses, outhouses and stables.
‘Your Grace,’ Sebastian said to him feverishly, ‘they’ve locked the main gate as though they are trying to keep us here.’
‘Could they have recognized His Majesty?’
‘Why delay us?’
‘What if they’ve told German partisans who are now setting an ambush for us in the defiles before Frankfurt?’
‘Unless they are in the habit of robbing travellers …’
‘I talked to one of their postilions,’ said the interpreter. ‘No one has changed horses here for more than thirty-six hours.’
‘Logically, then, they should have horses.’
Caulaincourt gave his instructions. The Polish count was to go to the village to fetch a squad of the French gendarmes stationed in that part of the country. He was to give one of His Majesty’s pistols to M. Roque and make haste on an unharnessed horse; the village wasn’t far, he should reach it without mishap, even with a tired mount. Where was the outrider? Exhausted, he was snoring on the landau’s seat. Sebastian woke him so that he could hold the gate open with Roustam.
‘The stables are this way, Your Grace,’ said Sebastian, holding the pistol pointing at the ground.
Inside they heard whispering, the stamping of hooves. Caulaincourt banged on the door with his fist and demanded in German, ‘Mach auf! Open up!’
Tricked by the accent and the firm tone into thinking it was one of his fellows from the post-house, a postilion opened the door. Sebastian and the grand equerry pushed him out of the way and entered the stable. Ten well-rested horses were there at their mangers. ‘Filthy liars!’ Caulaincourt shouted, very annoyed, and ordered the postilion to harness four of the animals.
At the sound of the altercation the other postilions ran out of the surrounding buildings and began to threaten the equerry. A frenzied figure pushed through them, red-faced, thick brows joining in a line across his forehead. Sebastian didn’t understand a word of the curses he spat in Caulaincourt’s face like blasphemies, but he knew enough to realize it was the postmaster. The man raised his whip and lashed the air; Sebastian, who had moved closer, caught the blow in his face. A red weal appeared on his cheek. Caulaincourt grabbed the postmaster by the collar and pinned him against the w
all. The horses side-stepped nervously. Sebastian, blood running down his cheek, hesitantly threatened the surly postilions with his pistol, while Caulaincourt released his captive, drew his sword and jabbed it against his throat. The postmaster barked orders and the horses were immediately put to the landau.
At that moment the Emperor came out with the panic-stricken harpsichord player on his arm.
‘Caulaincourt, tell Madame, in her language, that she is good enough to come and play at the Tuileries.’
‘Can I add without her husband?’
‘Is she the spouse of that malevolent lout?’
‘I fear so, sire.’
‘What a pity. Let’s go.’
The outrider started the team off at full gallop; Roustam leaped up onto his seat and they were pulling out onto the road when the Polish count returned with a party of gendarmes.
‘Count, follow us with your gendarmes!’ the grand equerry shouted through the door. In a quieter tone, he added to the Emperor, ‘I smell a trap.’
‘Don’t look on the dark side of everything, Caulaincourt.’
‘Isn’t there some intrigue behind this? Why should they lie to us?’
‘Perhaps they didn’t want to spoil their horses on this wretched road,’ volunteered Sebastian.
‘What if the lad’s right?’
The Emperor wanted to tweak Sebastian’s ear but, reaching for it under the furs, his fingers touched a sticky liquid and he pulled his hand away quickly. ‘What is it?’
‘A wound acquired in Your Majesty’s service.’
‘M. Roque received a blow at the coaching inn,’ Caulaincourt explained.
‘I see, I see …’ The Emperor wiped his fingers on the landau’s cushions with a grimace of disgust and then retreated sullenly into his corner. Sebastian observed his profile in the twilight, the fine features in a fat face. Napoleon was muttering, ‘Intrigues, intrigues …’ and these words took him back to his dynastic obsession: Malet’s conspiracy and what it revealed about the attitude of his minister.
‘Malet! So many people in Paris are going to sing their own praises to make me forget their cowardice, but how many were thinking of another revolution rather than a regency? All these marshals around the Empress – are they there to help her? Oh no, certainly not, they are there to stifle her. I can imagine the pressure they put her under, their greed. If I died everything would turn to ashes. They’re not up to it, they’re jealous of each other.’
‘You have often exacerbated their jealousies, sire.’
‘You tell me that, do you, Your Grace? My poor friend! If you knew the people who have called for your downfall! You know why? Because your nobility, as a marquess of the Ancien Régime, is several centuries old and they’re dying of envy. Duke of Vicenza, fine, not that you could give a hang, but Marquess of Caulaincourt, no. That envious rabble! They will never have the bearing or elegance of true nobility; in ten years they’ll be just as uncouth as they are now! I reign for their children.’
*
Behind, far behind, the remnants of what was once an imposing army and now numbered a few thousand beggars at most were drawing near to the Niemen. In a hut which only had part of its roof remaining – the rest having, as usual, been burnt – a dozen of these savages were sitting around the ashes of last night’s fire, growing numb.
‘Sir,’ Paulin stammered through chapped lips. ‘Sir, it’s light’
‘Don’t be stupid! I know it’s still the dead of night and the embers are protecting us.’
The Great Vialatoux waved a hand in front of the captain’s open eyes and turned to Paulin in silence. D’Herbigny’s corneas had been burnt by the cold and the glare of snow. They picked him up.
‘Come on.’
‘No, no, I can’t see anything!’
‘It’s the frost, sir, your eyelids will come unstuck.’
‘My eyes are open!’
‘The ice in them will melt. Put this bandage on,’ said Vialatoux, tearing a strip from one of the jackets they had taken, with the boots and gloves, from the countess at Vilna.
‘How am I meant to walk with this bandage over my eyes – with another over my mouth and a third over my ears?’
‘Put your hand on my shoulder, sir, I’ll guide you.’
‘Where is your shoulder?’
Paulin picked up his pine stick, Vialatoux the bags.
As every morning they passed the previous night’s dead, sitting in a circle round their wet bivouacs, their skin black with soot. One had frozen on his feet, carrying branches; he had no fingers left and looked strangely as if he was smiling – but then, as the captain often repeated, dying of cold is not so bad, you just fall asleep, that’s all.
The plain was dotted with ghosts moving in the same direction, staggering like drunkards, losing their balance, collapsing and never getting up. Some had nosebleeds that wouldn’t stop, the blood freezing on their beards. Splinters of ice blew in the wind. A crow fell to the ground like a stone. A tree cracked apart, its trunk split by the cold. A group of soldiers’ bare feet struck the ground with a sound like horses’ hooves; the skin was peeling off their legs, the bones showing through, yet they felt nothing. Otherwise not a sound, the air was mute, nature inert.
The captain’s hand lost its hold on his servant’s shoulder; he tripped over a body, sprawled full length in the snow, half got up and groped around until he found the body he’d bumped into. It was Paulin who was mumbling feebly, ‘Leave me alone …’
‘Who’ll guide me then, eh?’
‘M. Vialatoux …’
‘No! I pay you to serve me!’
‘Not for a long time …’
‘What about the Treasury coins you stuffed in your breeches, you swine!’
‘Leave me here, I’m falling asleep …’
‘Don’t you want to see Rouen again, you ass?’
‘Long way. . .’
‘I loathe all this carry-on!’
The vapour of their breath was freezing on the bear skins over their mouths, making it impossible to talk further, but the captain gripped Paulin’s arm and forcibly set him back on his feet. Vialatoux whispered encouragingly, ‘A village or a town … anyway, some houses.’
They joined the bands converging on Kovno. Vialatoux took the lead, while Paulin rested a hand on his shoulder and, behind him, the captain did the same in turn, like those blind men who walk in line, each holding on to the one in front. In this fashion they progressed; with no goal in mind other than simply to keep moving, they eventually stumbled across the threshold of the tavern where His Majesty had stopped before crossing the Niemen. Sleighs stood outside, tied to wall rings. Vialatoux steered his unsteady companions to the door, which he opened to find himself face to face with the Italian innkeeper, who refused to let them in. The heat of the room gave them fresh energy and unwrapping the fur over his mouth, the actor declared haughtily, ‘This is an invalided officer and his servant and I am guiding them through this frozen desert.’
‘What proof can you give me?’
‘We have gold.’
‘That is something else.’
Vialatoux threw a handful of coins on the floor. The cook’s boys rushed forward as the innkeeper counted them, apologizing, ‘I cannot extend my hospitality to everybody.’
‘What about him?’
The Great Vialatoux indicated a sick man buried under a mound of blankets at the end of the room, an emaciated, ashen-faced figure whom a maid was feeding a bowl of bouillon. Other men, healthier but with drawn features, were sitting at his bedside.
‘It’s General Saint-Sulpice, he has been wounded and we are his escort,’ answered one of the men.
‘Saint-Sulpice?’ roared the captain. ‘Take me to him!’
He flung his arm out into space, searching for something to lean on, and Vialatoux guided him across the room. Under his coats and blankets the general still wore the embroidered uniform which was his passport: the Cossacks didn’t dare kill or rob senior officers
; their capture earned more than their effects.
‘General,’ said d’Herbigny, standing to attention.
‘What?’ asked the wounded man.
‘Captain d’Herbigny, 4th Squadron, at your service.’
‘Herbigny …’
‘You put me in charge of the brigade.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Here, General!’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘I am the brigade!’ said the captain, thumping his chest.
In the meantime Vialatoux was making enquiries. Could one easily cross the Niemen? Yes, it had frozen afresh. Could one stay a few days in Kovno first? That would not be prudent; so close to the Duchy of Warsaw, this would be the last town the Russians attacked and they were apparently only two or three leagues away. A sleigh? There were none left. Those outside, the general and his suite’s? Didn’t they have three places spare? Alas, no.
‘Captain,’ one of the men of Saint-Sulpice’s escort was saying. ‘Captain, you’ve dropped something …’
‘I have?’
‘Wait, I’ll tell you what it is …’
The man bent down and let out a scream, as if he’d touched something diabolical. The others fell silent.
‘What have you found?’ roared the captain. ‘I can’t see anything anymore, nothing but unending night.’
‘It’s that …’
‘Tell me! That’s an order!’
‘Your nose, sir,’ said Paulin in a broken voice.
‘My nose scares these ruffians, does it?’
‘Oh no …’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘It has frozen.’
‘And?’
‘It has fallen on the ground, sir.’
*
The Emperor’s impatience grew as the distance between him and Paris lessened, particularly after he crossed the Rhine by boat and met Montesquiou. Berthier’s messenger, who was on his way to rejoin the major general, confirmed that the Empress and his son were in wonderful health and that the fatal 29th Bulletin was to be published in the Monitor immediately. Thereafter Sebastian had less to record. Napoleon became more playful and little inclined to confidences. Indefatigable, once again he blamed all the faults of his campaign on the English. That tactic of withdrawing without fighting, burning the crops and towns, wasn’t that Wellington’s policy in Portugal? Didn’t the Tsar have an adviser from London, Sir Robert Wilson? And the fact that the Russians had missed countless opportunities to exterminate them, was that incompetence or because they wanted to keep France strong enough to counterbalance the English? Apart from reflections of this sort, which he barely elaborated upon, the Emperor immersed himself in newspapers and frivolous novels. At Verdun he asked Sebastian to buy him some sugared almonds from a well-known confectioner. At Chateau-Thierry he took a bath and put on the green tailcoat of his Guard’s foot grenadiers, keeping his cap and fur-lined coat, not so much because of the cold, which was now bearable, but so as not to be identified too soon. He wanted his sudden return to be a surprise.
The Retreat Page 24