There they met strong opposition from an Austrian corps under General Ott, but, with the aid of Victor’s division and Murat’s cavalry, on June 9th at Montebello, Lannes inflicted a crushing defeat on the enemy.
By the time Bonaparte reached Milan, Masséna was in desperate straits. In Genoa, horses, dogs, cats and rats were being used as food and whenever a sortie was made from the city thousands of the starving inhabitants followed the troops out to gather grass and nettles to boil for soup. Driven to the last extremity by Masséna’s refusal even to consider surrender, they broke into open revolt. He put it down with the utmost ruthlessness and gave orders that whenever more than four citizens were seen gathered together they should be fired upon.
But by June 4th his position became hopeless. Still refusing to surrender, he informed the Austrians that he meant to evacuate Genoa and if they refused to let him pass he would cut his way through them with the bayonet. His courageous defiance led to the enemy’s allowing him and the eight thousand troops that had survived the siege to march out with colours flying and the honours of war.
Melas meanwhile was concentrating his forces round the great stronghold of Alessandria and ordered his troops on the Var to join him there. Suchet immediately recrossed the river, recaptured Nice and furiously harassed their retreat. Now that the Austrians were almost encircled, Bonaparte was preparing to give battle. On June 9th he left Milan and advanced through Stradella. With Genoa open to him Melas’ wisest course would have been to retire on the city and evacuate his Army in the British ships, but pride decided him to stand at Alessandria and fight with the hope of breaking right through the French. And, although he was unaware of it, his decision had much to recommend it; as Bonaparte’s forces were now spread over a great area and when he arrived opposite Marengo, a village some three miles southeast of Alessandria, on June 14th, he had only eighteen thousand men under his hand to oppose the breakout of thirty-one thousand Austrians.
A few days earlier, Desaix had arrived unexpectedly upon the scene. This paladin was Bonaparte’s favourite General; but as his decision to leave Egypt had been taken so abruptly and Desaix was then commanding a corps far up the Nile, he had had to be left behind. Having succeeded in getting back to Europe, Desaix had at once decided to rejoin his former Chief, and Bonaparte was overjoyed to see him. Detaching six thousand men from the twenty-four thousand he by then had available, he sent Desaix off with them in the direction of Genoa to prevent the Austrians from retiring on the port and escaping from it. Now, as battle was joined, he realised too late that he had made a big mistake and was heavily outnumbered.
At dawn Melas opened the attack by pouring his troops across the Bormida river. They drove the French outposts back on Marengo but met with stout resistance from Victor, who was holding the village. This gave time for Lannes to bring up his division; but by ten o’clock the full force of the Austrian assault had developed. Marengo was captured and Lannes, although contesting every inch of the ground, was being driven back. An hour later Bonaparte came up from the rear to find his troops giving way in the centre and outflanked on both wings. He at once threw his only reserve, the Consular Guard, into the battle. For an hour its one thousand men, formed up in square, fought valiantly, and by their stand enabled Victor and Lannes to get their battered divisions back into better shape. But by two o’clock only St. Cyr, on the right flank, was holding his ground. All but five of Marmont’s guns had been put out of action, and the flood of white-coated Austrians was again forcing back the centre and the left. Despite threats, pleas and exhortations from their officers and Bonaparte himself, many of the men were throwing down their weapons and several units were in full retreat. There could be no doubt about it, the French were being beaten.
Early that morning Desaix had heard the distant sound of gunfire and, turning his columns about, set off in that direction. Then, in mid-morning, one of Bonaparte’s A.D.C.s came galloping up to him with an urgent order to hasten to his Chief’s assistance; but to reach Marengo meant many hours of forced marching. Despite his doing his utmost it was not until five o’clock that he arrived on the field of battle. By then, although many French units were still fighting gallantly, the line was broken in several places and the Austrian cavalry through, cutting down fleeing men from shattered battalions.
As Desaix rode up Bonaparte said to him glumly, ‘What do you think of it?’
Glancing at the terrible scene of carnage, Desaix replied, This battle is lost, but there is still time to gain another.’
Bonaparte swiftly made fresh dispositions. Marmont had just brought up a reserve battery of thirteen guns from the rear. They were deployed to fire through the gaps torn in the French line. Desaix was despatched to take up a position behind Marengo village and a nearby hill. Kellermann, the son of the veteran General, was in command of the heavy cavalry. It had already done good service throughout the day and had suffered heavy casualties, but was still capable of making a charge, and was sent round behind Desaix to the extreme French left. When these troops had taken up their positions Bonaparte launched his counter-attack.
The sudden appearance of Desaix’s six thousand tired, but still unused, troops advancing in parade ground formation over the hill put new life into the other divisions; their impact on the enemy stayed the retreat, but was not sufficient to force them back. For another hour the terrible struggle raged, swayed first one way then the other, and it remained uncertain which Army would emerge victorious.
Throughout most of the day, with his staff sitting their horses behind him, Bonaparte had been stationed on a rise in the ground watching the battle; now and then, after a glance through his spy glass, sending one of his A.D.C.s off with an order to the commander of a unit.
Now, with perfect timing, he turned, looked at Roger and snapped, Tell Kellermann to charge.’
Instantly Roger repeated the order, set spurs to his horse, and galloped off across the plain.
During the battle he had, like the other A.D.C.S, carried several orders, either verbally or scribbled by Bonaparte on a pad, to various senior officers, and two of his companions had failed to return. That did not necessarily mean that they had been killed or seriously wounded. When delivering their messages gallopers were, at times, caught up in the fighting and, although it was their duty to rejoin their General as soon as possible, two or three hours might elapse before they were able to do so. Nevertheless Roger greatly disliked such missions.
It was not that he was a coward. Far from it. He had fought several duels and would have met any man with sword or pistol. He had, too, never openly displayed fear in the numerous battles in which he had been forced to take part. But he had gained his sobriquet of ‘Le Brave Breuc’ largely under false pretences.
Bonaparte had originally formed the impression that he was a courageous man because, within a week or so of their first meeting, Roger had, with the Corsican looking on, led on foot a charge against a battery of Spanish guns; but only because, in the particular circumstances, he had had no option. Admittedly he had personally and alone defended the General from an attack by a dozen conspirators while in Venice, and received a Sword of Honour as a reward for his gallantry; but that had been more in the nature of a duel against odds. The truth about his having brought a Turkish standard to Bonaparte at the siege of Acre was not that he had fought desperately to capture it, but that while unobserved he had simply picked it up from a dead soldier in a trench and walked off with it; while the exploit that had clinched his reputation throughout the Army for bravery was his having, presumably, been taken prisoner by the British at the Battle of the Nile and afterwards making his escape in full daylight with them shooting at him—but shooting to miss because he was escaping with their connivance.
So as he now rode at full tilt across the bullet-scarred ground, littered with dead and wounded, smashed gun carriages and abandoned weapons he felt none of the exhilaration that a Murat or a Lannes would have experienced. Instead he was praying that he would on
ce again manage to carry out his orders without getting involved in the indiscriminate killing which he so heartily disliked.
As for twelve hours without cessation some sixty thousand men had been blazing off with cannon and muskets, a great pall of smoke hung over the battle-field creating a premature dusk on this summer evening. Smoke, too, obscured the greater part of the conflict that was still raging, so Roger could catch only glimpses here and there of groups of soldiers either firing volleys or going forward at an uneven run. The din was terrible, the boom of cannon and the continuous rattle of musketry being pierced every few moments by a shouted order or the scream of a badly wounded man.
When he crossed the ground over which Desaix’s troops had made their first charge the fallen became thicker, and several times he had to jump his horse over twisted corpses or groaning men who were endeavouring to staunch the blood seeping from their wounds. Here and there groups of stretcher bearers were at work seeking in the murk to carry off casualties whose wounds they judged unlikely to be fatal, but their numbers were hopelessly inadequate to cope for many hours yet with the carnage that had taken place.
Behind the village the smoke grew denser. Many of the buildings were already burnt out, but others were still blazing and the flames from them showed as patches of lurid glare in the semi-darkness.
The air stank of gunpowder, burning wood, sweat and excrement to a degree that made Roger want to vomit, and he was half choked by the smoke that he could not escape drawing down into his lungs with every breath he took. As he pressed on he caught the sound of cheering and the thunder of massed hoofbeats. A minute later there came surging towards him out of the murk a long line of cavalry approaching at a furious gallop. Instantly he realised what had happened. Young Kellermann had also judged it time for him to bring his heavy Brigade into action and, anticipating Bonaparte’s order, had already launched his charge.
The onrushing line of horsemen was over a hundred yards long and three men deep. Roger was almost in the centre of it. There was no time for him to turn his horse and gallop clear of either end of the line. Kellermann flashed past him waving his sword on high. All Roger could do was to cause his horse to rear and swing it round on its hind legs. Even as he did so he found himself almost wedged between two dragoons yelling like maniacs. After being carried with them a hundred yards, he tried desperately to rein in his mount, so that the two rear lines of horsemen should pass him and leave him free to make his way back to Bonaparte. But by then, maddened by the shouting and thunder of several hundred hooves, his horse was out of control. After frantically sawing at its jaw for a minute he realised that, even if he could bring the beast up and pull out of the crush, it would afterwards be said that he had acted as a coward. There was nothing for it but, as had happened to other A.D.C.s in similar circumstances, to take part in the charge.
Within a few minutes they were crossing the ground from which Desaix had launched his first attack, trampling down dead, dying and wounded alike, it being impossible to avoid them. Through the smoke Roger caught a glimpse of the white-uniformed enemy. The charge, delivered on their flank, had taken them by surprise, but they were swiftly forming square in order to resist it. Irregular flashes of flame stabbed the semi-darkness as they fired a ragged volley. Roger felt a hammer blow well up on the left side of his chest. It knocked him right back on to the crupper of his saddle. His hands lost their grip on the reins, and his feet were jerked free of the stirrups. His mount jumped some unseen obstacle. He bumped in his saddle and was then flung off. In an attempt to protect his head from the flying hooves of the other horses he flung his arms round it. As he crashed to the ground the breath was driven out of his body. Gulping for air he felt the salt taste of blood in his mouth. The sound of the battle grew dim in his ears and then he lost consciousness.
Leading a charge only a little earlier the gallant Desaix had been shot through the body and killed instantly. But he, and Kellermann’s charge, had saved the day for the French. At Bonaparte’s Headquarters on the night of the battle the loss of Desaix was lamented as a great blow. Roger, too, was mourned as dead.
6
Idyll by the Sea
It was several hours later when Roger came to. At first he could not think what had happened to him and knew only that his chest hurt excruciatingly. Then he became conscious that he was very cold. Slowly it dawned upon him that he had been shot during the charge, left for dead on the battlefield and was now naked.
The last fact did not surprise him, because he knew that swarms of camp followers always hovered in the rear of every army, and that among them were many human vultures who made a living by robbing the dead after every battle and stripping them of their clothes.
After some moments, making a great effort, he managed to half sit up; but the pain of his wound stabbed him violently, blood welling up into his mouth choked him and, his eyes starting out of his head, he fell back into a dead faint.
When he came round he lay still for a long time then, very cautiously, raised himself on one elbow. In that position he could make out by the moonlight his immediate surroundings. Here and there, some way off, he could see small groups of shadowy figures carrying lanterns. They might be stretcher bearers looking for wounded whose lives could be saved, or ghouls seeking fresh bodies to plunder; but he now had nothing to lose and he desperately craved water. Even body robbers might give him that, so he assayed to attract the attention of the nearest group by a shout. No sound issued from his cracked lips; a flush of blood strangled it in his throat.
Temporarily suffocated and half stupefied by pain he fell back once more, now convinced that he was doomed to die there. When he got back his breath he moaned at the thought. He had performed no gallant action, rendered no great service to his own country and had not even delivered the message from Bonaparte. That he should lose his life through having unwillingly got himself mixed up in a cavalry charge seemed to him monstrously unfair. Again he raised himself a little and endeavoured to attract the attention of the group by, waving his arm.
It was then that he heard Georgina’s voice. It came to him clearly out of the night. He recognised it immediately and it did not even occur to him that he might be the victim of an hallucination. Owing to her sensitivity as a psychic and the strong affinity that bound them, she had often felt unaccountably uneasy when he was in danger; and more than once when he was faced with a major threat to his life, during sleep she had come to him and saved him by her counsel. Now, she said urgently:
‘Lie still, Roger! Lie still! Conserve your strength. ’Tis your only hope of remaining alive until someone finds you.’
In spite of the awful pains in his chest and back and his terrible thirst, he forced himself to do as she bade him, shut his eyes and lay there endeavouring to check his spasmodic movements.
Not long afterwards he was rewarded. Through his closed eyelids he became conscious of a rosy glow. Opening his eyes he saw a man with a lantern bending over him and a voice said, ‘This is not he.’
Then came another with a heavy German accent, ‘No. But! … But, teufel nochmal, ‘tis le brave Breuc!.…’
Roger knew that voice. It seemed to have some connection with the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Then he remembered. It was that of German-born Colonel Rapp, and the other voice must be that of Colonel Savary. One sweltering day in Egypt he had climbed the Pyramid with them. They were Desaix’s two A.D.C.s. From their next few sentences Roger dimly gathered that the General was dead and they were searching for his body.
While Rapp went to look for a stretcher party, Savary knelt down beside Roger and from his flask gave him enough water to rinse out his mouth. Ten minutes later, covered with a blanket, he was lying on a stretcher. After wishing him a good recovery, the two A.D.C.s resumed their search for their dead General, and he was carried away to a field hospital.
For some days he knew very little about what was happening to him as, to keep him quiet, whenever he roused from unconsciousness, he was given a draug
ht of opium. Gradually, as the doses were reduced he learned from General Soult, who was in the bed next to his, where he was, and what had been taking place.
Soult had been wounded and captured some while before the battle, and the Austrians had put him in a special ward in their Military Hospital in Alessandria, Roger had been transferred to it two days after he had been wounded.
The General told him that on learning that Roger was still alive Bonaparte had sent his own doctor, Corvisart, to attend him and had given orders that he should be given the very best attention. A musket ball had passed through the upper part of his left lung and had gone out through his back. For some days his life had been feared for, but he was now expected to recover provided he made no violent movement that would bring about a haemorrhage. He must, however, resign himself to a long convalescence as it would be many months before he would be able again to exert himself without danger.
Kellermann’s charge had proved the turning point of the battle. It had taken the Austrians completely by surprise and cut deep into their flank. The troops there who, a few minutes before, had still been fighting in good heart had suddenly ceased to resist and begun to run. The panic spread right through their army and it gave way along the whole front. The French everywhere attacked with new vigour and the withdrawal swiftly developed into a rout. A scene of wild confusion followed and, as night fell, thousands of Austrians were either being sabred by the pursuing French or plunging into the Bormida River. Bonaparte’s victory was complete.
The Wanton Princess Page 8