by Holub, Josef
Only a hard frost can overcome the mud and make the roads once more passable for foot and horse and carriage. Maybe that would be the lesser evil. We long for the feared cold to come.
Cossacks and Bashkirs and Lord knows what kind of Russians ride up from the side, hew and smite, and disappear. Any of the Grande Armée who try to avoid the muddy highway are cut to ribbons.
How far is it to Smolensk? And how much farther home? There is said to be food in Smolensk. Huge storehouses full of it. I wonder if it’s true? We can’t trust all the things we’re told. We’ve been getting it from the wrong end of the horse too many times.
28
On one of the last days of October, there it is suddenly: the longed-for and long-dreaded frost. Overnight, an icy east wind freezes the mud to rock. Almost simultaneously, the heavy black clouds discharge their burdens.
Now it’s just as well we’ve held on to our furs. The first cold snowy night we have to spend out of doors. Far and wide, there’s only one single wooden structure. Which is full to the last inch. The men are even lying on top of each other.
“Let us in!”
“What have you got to pay with? Food? Vodka? Nothing? Then there’s no room. You can see for yourselves.”
Beside the road, we lay one fur down on the snow, and then we cover ourselves up with the other one. We exhale our own warmth into the gap. Snow is still falling. It packs, insulates, warms. So we manage to survive half the night. Then I feel someone tugging at our top fur. I wake up in time and shoo away the thief. There’s no more hope of sleep. Beside us someone is lying there half-naked. He doesn’t stir. Frozen. Was he stripped first, or was he already dead when they stole his clothes?
Konrad Klara weeps to himself. His tears freeze on his cheeks.
“Come on, Konrad Klara. We must move on.”
“What about our regiment?”
“I can’t see anyone. Probably the regiment doesn’t exist anymore.”
The street is still almost empty. Nothing is coming from Moscow now. Either the fugitives are asleep under the snow, or else they’ve already frozen to death. In the dawn, Konrad Klara sees a young man in a thin French uniform leaning against a birch.
“Hey, you! You’ll freeze if you stay there.”
The young man doesn’t stir. He must have fallen asleep with exhaustion. I tramp over to him to shake him awake. I’m too late. He is stiff as a wooden beam. Konrad Klara wipes his eyes. Is my pity already frozen? It only pipes up very feebly.
The days are dark, the nights clear and icy. On the side of the road are cannons stuck in the snow. They’ve gone as far as they can go. They’ve been nailed up. There are no more commands and no more organization. Who would go to the trouble of lugging cannons around anymore? Everyone just wants to save his own life. Rifles are tossed into the snow. A thin branch, a half-charred beam, a bundle of straw are all more use. They offer the chance to be admitted to a campfire site at night. A fire that would save a person from freezing.
We must have something like a guardian angel, Konrad Klara and I. Through the blizzard we spot a dark stain some little way off the road. A barn? Or something better still? We should have a look. We haven’t been attacked by Cossacks for a whole day now. It’s not a great risk, then. We leave the road and stamp through the loose snowdrifts. We’re wallowing about up to our chests. What it is is a baggage cart. The wind cleared the snow from the top of it. That was the dark thing we spotted from the road. With our bare hands, we dig our way into the cart. What wonders! Frozen bread and lard are in there. Hopefully, no one has seen us. Having something like that could be fatal for us.
But now we have food again. We stash it under our fur coats.
At night, we leave the road a few paces, dig a hollow in the snow, and bury ourselves in it in our furs. One underneath, one on top, a little snow over that. Our own warmth stays in.
Young Alsatian soldiers, aged sixteen or thereabouts, come out to meet us. They are Napoleons last throw. They have just gotten here, and take over the rear guard from us. They are desperate to fight. There’s nothing we can do for them. I wonder how long they’re going to live?
The snow lets up, but it gets colder.
“I’m not going to make it home,” Konrad Klara sighs to himself.
“What are you doing, spouting such nonsense?”
“Just talking.”
“No, come on. Spit it out. Is something hurting you?”
“No. Not really. But I saw the black butterflies last night.”
“You saw what? Black butterflies? In the middle of winter? With this cold?”
“Not really. In my sleep, you know. I saw Sergeant Krauter as well.”
“Oh, I see. Do you have any idea of the stuff I dream? Lots of nonsense. I expect the butterflies were brown, you just didn’t see the colors clearly. And Krauter, that bastard, he can’t do anything to us as long as we stick together. Together, we’re stronger than he is. Let’s not think about him anymore.”
Konrad Klara’s eyes brighten.
“You’re right!” he says, sounding slightly calmer. “Nothing can happen to us. Fortune favors us. And together we’re going to make it back.”
Even the sun comes out. Admittedly, it doesn’t succeed in making the air any warmer. Our breath freezes in front of our faces. The following night is the coldest of all. We dig our sleeping place deep into the snow on the edge of a forest. A few twigs underneath and over us to keep our body heat in the hole. During the night, thousands freeze.
Smolensk is a huge disappointment. There is nothing left to eat there. The Imperial Guards have emptied out the storehouses. They’ve lived like maggots in bacon, they’re full to bursting, and now they’re on their way home with Napoleon their emperor. That’s the rumor. Truth or lie.
The fury of the troops following after is indescribable.
Konrad Klara breaks down and cries again. Tears of rage, this time.
29
It’s a particularly nasty day in late November. Cannons are thumping ahead of us and behind us and either side of the marching route. Rifle fire is crackling very nearby. Step-by-step, the men shuffle along in the thousandfold tracks left in the snow.
At around midday the procession suddenly grinds to a halt. It gets going again with curses. Beyond the edge of the highway the surface of the snow has been smashed. Cannonballs have plowed through it. There are corpses lying among wrecked baggage carts. No one notices them. Probably a surprise attack from Cossacks and artillery. Four mortally wounded horses are twitching in their death agonies. Men are hunkered around them, cutting into the steaming bodies. Others are tearing off cartwheels and planks and feeding them to a fire.
We join them and help. No one minds. There’s enough meat after all, four whole horses. That’s enough for a lot of people. But not for long. More soldiers keep turning up. The scent draws them. Food! More and more hungry men huddle around the fire. They reach forward into the embers to grab at morsels. Those sitting at the front are knocked over. Oaths and shouts.
I fish out a couple of pieces of meat from the embers, shove them under my fur coat, and then drag Konrad Klara away from the fire. A few elbows to left and right, and we’re clear of the crowd. We walk on, and before long we find a quieter place, where we gulp down our still warm pieces of horseflesh. A little strength returns to our tired bodies.
Shortly thereafter we see the horrible end of Hanselmann, the son of the Schonbronn cobbler. He was the cannoneer who always followed Sergeant Krauter around. He’s lying in some dark red snow. A cannonball tore off his lower limbs. He didn’t stand a chance against a direct hit like that. There’s nothing left for the surgeon to stitch there. I feel sad, even though Hanselmann hit me across the face with a whip only a couple of days ago. It didn’t have to be such a big cannonball as that. The sergeant isn’t there. It seems he’s managed to get away once more.
Toward evening of that same day, a sleigh forces its way with loud whip cracking and shouts through the men t
rudging along. There are four men in furs seated on it. “Ho, you!” one of them calls out, and the sleigh brakes. “Thunder and lightning! Aren’t you young Count Lammersdorf?”
Konrad Klara perks up. Thunder and lightning? His uncle, the colonel, always said that. O terror! O joy! So the colonel’s still alive.
The colonel orders him without much hoo-ha to hop in and turns to ask the bundle of fur beside him: “Your Excellency surely won’t mind if we take along my nephew? If we squeeze together, there’s enough room.”
A great man, that uncle. What a turnup! That’s how quickly things can change, from one second to the next. It’s good for Konrad Klara and for me. Suddenly, we have a little more future to look forward to. The stomping through the snow is over for now. We can save our strength. I’m sure the gentlemen will have something that Konrad Klara and I can eat as well. And the sleigh covers the ground much faster than our dog-tired legs. Suddenly, home has moved considerably nearer.
Joyfully, the lieutenant leaps up onto the sleigh and squeezes into the seat beside his uncle.
“Adam Neve! Come along! Hop on board!”
“Hold on!” the uncle butts in. “We don’t have that much room!”
“But can’t Adam Neve sit on me, or the other way round?” begs Konrad Klara.
“Thunder and lightning! Who is this Adam Neve? Another young lieutenant?”
“No, uncle! He’s the corporal! You remember the one, my former servant!”
“Well, I’m afraid we can’t have that. We don’t have room for any servants here. You have to come on your own. Alone. No one with you.”
The mass of men on the road is pushing and surging. I am picked up by it and pushed past the sleigh. I feel utterly miserable, my head is empty, I am incapable of thought.
The Excellency in the sleigh orders crossly: “Onward!”
The horses pull. Cracks of the whip and shouts clear a space for the sleigh.
Then Konrad Klara jumps off.
“Not without him,” he calls out to the colonel, waves to him, and is once again trudging at my side on the snow-covered marching route.
“Thunder and lightning!” the colonel shouts back to his nephew. Along with something else, which is swallowed up by his fur collar.
Tangles of thoughts bounce back and forth in my head. What should I say? Konrad Klara has turned down the comfortable offer of rescue. On my account. I wipe my nose several times. I need to too, because the damned cold at nightfall freezes everything on the spot.
30
Each time a horse collapses, soldiers fall on it, beat and fight one another for it, and hack off pieces for themselves. There’s not usually much meat to be had. The animals are mostly skin and bone. But that’s worth something, too. More than nothing.
How much farther is it home?
But we’re lucky. We’re still alive. And healthy. We haven’t even got frostbite on our fingers and toes. Usually, we have a little something to eat. What more could we wish for? Sometimes we walk half the night. That gives us a little edge. At night, the road is almost empty. By day, it’s only the Imperial Guards who are ahead of us, a few half-preserved regiments, maybe Poles, who are reasonably well armed, and some like us, who want to stick close to the Guards because they keep the swirling bands of Cossacks at bay. There is reported to be a Wurttemburg regiment there as well.
Behind us comes the hungry, demoralized mass of the defeated Grande Armée. That’s where chaos is.
From time to time, we find a bit of wood or something eatable off the road.
A calf lies buried in snow next to a well. Konrad Klara notices the hump in the snow. It seems he has a nose for buried treasure. The calf smells clean and innocent. It froze quickly and thoroughly.
Not far off are some priests sitting around a camp-fire. Trustworthy-looking men. At least they seem peaceful enough. A few pieces of wood lying nearby give promise of a warm night. They haven’t anything to eat. At least, I can’t see any evidence that they do. That’s good for us. On account of the calf.
The men aren’t priests at all. They’re from a regiment of Badensers. They’ve stolen the priestly robes from a church. Because of the cold. All’s well in cold and war. Who can blame them? It turns into a wonderful night. Only a pity there’s no salt to put in the broth and on the roast veal.
We sleep into the early morning hours around the hospitable fire. We feel much better. It’s good to know there are decent people, even among the rough, neglected soldiers. The ostensible priests round the campfire are an example of such. They only steal Konrad’s knife, not our furs or our boots, which we need to live. They even have a present for us. Overnight some of those little creatures that tickle their possessor with bites and suck his blood have crept into our furs.
The days and nights are indistinguishable. They take place on and close to the marching route. With a little luck, there’s some horse meat, warm snow water, and a little fire for the night. And our boots are holding up. So we don’t often suffer from wet feet.
It turns warm again overnight. Snow turns to slush, and our feet move slowly and heavily through it.
More pressure on us from the Russians. Cossacks are now hovering around the broken Grande Armée, incessantly and mercilessly setting about its poor remnants. Only the Imperial Guards and a few fresh Polish regiments can still make a stand.
Suddenly, the fugitive stream stops. We hear violent thunder of cannons. A wrecked town. There’s no way through. Impacts from howitzer balls. Terrified crowds of men washing this way and that.
Konrad’s uncle and the Excellency are caught up in the chaos in their sleigh. So they haven’t gotten any farther ahead than we have. There’s no way forward and no way back.
“Thunder and lightning!” curses the colonel. “There you are again.” Konrad Klara fights his way toward his uncle with knees, elbows, and feet. There’s no way through. The frightened horses are lashing out. Men are shouting and pushing and trying to get through the crush of people. The colonel is just getting up to try to force his way over to his nephew when the ball strikes. It wrecks the sleigh, the horses, and the fur-wrapped Excellency.
We are terrified.
Konrad Klara vaults over corpses and screaming wounded. His uncle is past help. His shattered legs are lying beside him. But he takes his time dying.
“Thunder and lightning!” he says to his nephew. “That had to have been a seven-pounder at least! Well, at this point I’m handing in my commission!”
And that’s it.
Konrad Klara is weeping again. Even though he never particularly liked his uncle.
He was born with a soft heart. It will never be hard.
31
The fleeing army is stopped again. No getting through.
“Beresina’s in the way!”
“What, a woman?”
“No, of course not.”
“The Beresina’s a wide-ish river. There are apparently no more bridges across it. The Russians have burned them all.”
“We’ll be pretty safe when we’re on the other side.”
“Well then, let’s get across!”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Over the ice!”
“The ice is too thin. It’s already cracked.”
“Then there’s nothing for it but to build bridges!”
“That’s what they’re trying to do. If the Russians will allow.”
“We’ll have to hold them off that long.”
“Napoleons seeing what he can do. He needs to get across himself. Apparently, he’s leading the Russians a dance. He’s distracting them with a false maneuver and is secretly building a couple of bridges. Right here.”
“He’d better be quick about it, then, before the Russian army gets here. The first of them are already up there, with a couple of cannons. Once they find their range …”
This, more or less, is the conversation of a couple of ragged Saxon officers.
From up on a hilltop, the Russians a
re shelling us with heavy howitzers.
Konrad Klara and I have crept under a fir tree. We press ourselves against the trunk. Konrad Klara is listening to the Saxons’ conversation. He can’t understand everything they say. French would be easier for him. The officers pull in their heads. A cannonball digs a big hole nearby. The Russians have a good view of everything. They shoot at anything that moves. No one stops them. It’s just as well we’re standing under the shelter of a tree.
We try to make ourselves as small as we can.
“If only we were already on the other side!” repeats one of the Saxons. And he sighs with deep longing.
“I’ve been told by a general,” another fellow pops up self-importantly, “that the Russians are coming up with fresh troops. They want to cut off Napoleons escape route. They want to trap him here on the Beresina and finish him off. For good.”
Another hole. Very close. The Russians are getting in range of the tree. Perhaps they suspect Napoleon is hiding under it?
We run off. By various detours, we find ourselves down by the river. Things are quieter down here. We’re out of range of the cannons, for a start. Also, the men fleeing from the Russians aren’t milling about down here, but over where the bridges are going up. They want to get across fast, if the bridges hold.
“Beresina’s a nice name.”
“But its water is deep and icy cold.”
A mild spell of weather has softened the ice and made it impassable. There are some who would rather not believe it. A few daredevils keep trying their luck and plunge into the icy cold. They grab hold of beams and boards, and try to swim across. Most don’t even get halfway. There the current grabs them, and they vanish between the blocks of ice.
Upstream, Napoleon’s engineers are working on the bridges. The very last remnants of the Grande Armée are backed up nearby. They’re waiting impatiently for the crossings to be finished. They are unable to go forward or back, and fresh arrivals keep coming. The Russians are on a slope to the east and shelling the mass of men with cannons and howitzers. It’s an unfair, one-sided battle.