Cornu and Grandjean and Sauveur started to cry when they saw bread and biscuit and sausage. Lads, lads, take it slowly, said one of the Q men, here, have a swig of this cognac here, but slowly slowly. You needn’t be so eager to get it all down, there’s God’s fucking plenty in Vilna here. They reckon there’s four million biscuit rations and the same of meat, just about. By the living lord Jesus, Sauveur breathed, his mouth stuffed. The usual army fuckup, the Q man said, nothing where it’s needed, plenty where it’s not. And liquid nourishment too? Cornu asked in a finicking manner, already near pissed on a glass of brandy. Cognac, the Q man said, and rum and vodka, vodka being this Russ stuff. We all know all about Russ stuff, Grandjean said, properly glazed. Take advice of old soldier, Cornu swayed, don’t let bastards get hold of too mush liquizh nourizhnt.
When they woke up next noon, warm in twelve blankets each but with wooden mouths and coffin-makers hammering away in their skulls, Cornu and Grandjean and Sauveur heard from a sober bugger already dressed and going around the barrack room with the news, that there’d been a hell of a to-do in the night, some stupid bastards had broken into the Q stores and overpowered the NCO’s in charge and broken the necks of bottles and started to get pissed. They got pissed and went raging round the streets shouting where is he?, meaning His Imperial Majesty, or looking for women, and a lot fell kalied in the streets and alleyways and have died of the cold and the exposure. Jesus Christ, Cornu said, isn’t it what I was saying last night? Like fucking children, a lot of them. Where do we get breakfast.
For breakfast, sitting at a table with Camous, Matheron and an Austrian called Eichler, they had a lot of coffee with rum in it which cured the wooden-mouth nicely, and some boiled oatmeal with cream and syrup, and some cutlets and little beefsteaks with fried potatoes, a lot of hard-boiled eggs (stop you having the shits, Matheron said), very gamy sausage and bread, more bread with slabs of butter and raspberry jam, some cold roast chickens, a pint of red wine per man, more coffee with rum in it, some very nice creamy pastries, and a sort of rabbit and hare pie, followed by a glass or two of brandy and water. A bit of all right. There was also some pipe tobacco and clay pipes, so they lighted up, well-satisfied, and Eichler said: How long here we stay? Camous, who’d been around that morning in his new fur coat, watching them cart the bodies covered with frozen vomit from the streets, said that the orders were eight days’ rest at least here in Vilna before pushing on. Whose orders, Cornu wanted to know. His, of course. He’d given the orders himself to Murat, King of Naples, man in charge. Well now, Cornu said, a good question might be: Where is His Imperial Fucking Majesty, God bless and save him and chew his ballocks off? Oh, he’s gone, Matheron said. The whole of Paris is in an uproar because the rumor got round that he’d snuffed it in The Russian Snows, so now he’s gone to say here I am, alive and kicking and ready to fuck the first thing on two legs that offers. He shouldn’t have, Grandjean said, first rule of command is to stay with your men, that’s laid down, one of the fundaments of army law. He makes the fucking laws, Sauveur said. I don’t trust this Murat, Camous said, King of Naples indeed, big proud I-am of a bastard, he’ll have us out in the fucking snowy wastes again just to show how cunting brave he is. That Eugène should have been put in charge, all right young Eugène is, son by first marriage of poor old Jojo. She was all right too, better than this one he’s got now. Eichler said: You not say that, she Austrian lady. All right all right, keep your fucking Austrian shirt on, no offense meant, what time’s dinner?
While they were all kipping down in the barrack room, wrapped in twelve blankets with the stove nicely going, the sober bugger with the early news about the drunk and dying feeding it with wood like a fucking madman, Sergeant Brincat came in, all smart and shaved and his belly full of grub, shouting: Right right lads, marching orders, pay attention, come on, show a leg. There were grumbles and disbelieving shouts of fuck off, pull the other one, get your head down until they saw that he meant it, and everybody sat up, a bit bleary with food and liquor and shut-eye. The Cossacks are coming, Sergeant Brincat said, and they’ll be in here to slice everybody’s balls off, you know what they’re like, so draw rations and dress up warm and get fell in on the road. Jesus Christ, Grandjean said, isn’t that the bleeding army all over? What did I tell you? Matheron said. Didn’t I tell you that the first rule of the army is when in doubt fuck everything up?
So snow and snow and everything was snow
And slow in snowy woe the soldiers go
Groaning at snowy woe and moaning: oh.
We eventually came to Ponarskaia, where it was necessary to negotiate a great hill which was nothing more than a slithering obstacle course of polished frost (so Captain Gontier was to write to his old Latin master, Auguste Longevialle, in the lycée at Lyons). It was possible, with immense difficulties, for officers and men to claw their way, occasionally clinging at dead roots and stones and thorn-bushes, but the horses slipped continually, snorting in panic, and it became necessary, after hours of fruitless attempts, to abandon the wretched animals to snow and, it was to be hoped, a speedy death. The death, we knew, of the twenty thousand hospital casualties left behind in Vilna to the mercies of Cossack raiders would be less speedy and far more terrible. Nature is fierce, but not so fierce as man. The abandonment of the horses meant also the abandonment of carts, limbers, carriages, and hence all remaining artillery and supplies. There was a kind of relief in the recognition we all now conceived that we are at the total mercy of the pursuing forces.
But what will probably most interest you, sir, and, I should imagine, knowing you, incite you to a gust or so of Democritan laughter, is the fact that we had to abandon the entire remnant of the treasury of the Great Army on those inhospitable slopes. I, as the sole remaining representative of the department, was left with the decision. It was suggested by some of the greedier and stupider field officers that the money, which was all in gold, should be distributed among the personnel proportionately according to rank, but I had a vision of men tearing at each other in the icy blizzards of the hill-slopes for possession of mere dull metal, their pockets never full enough, and the survivors falling under the sheer weight of their greed. There were, by my computation, something over ten million francs in gold left there in the unmanageable coffers. Fr 10,000,000—now you have it in figures that dazzle the eye. Whatever became of that useless bounty I know not, but I am sure that, if found by our pursuers or by nomadic bands in the Russian spring, it will be a cause of dissension, death, and whatever other modes of misery gold, as we know, can breed. My compliments to madame. You will perhaps be pleased to know that I am rereading Juvenal.
And so, though slow, to snowy Kovno go
With pouch and pocket loaded low with snow
Forty-odd cannon sitting there grinning at us, but not a single horse to draw. Crammed with supplies, but how do you carry them? The town hardly to be defended, and the enemy closing in for the kill. Seven thousand only under arms now, gentlemen. Seven thousand under arms now, men. Under arms now, lads, they reckon about seven thousand. Seven thousand under arms, all that’s left, Jesus Christ almighty. It is recommended that only such supplies as can reasonably be transported by nonvehicular means be taken, and that, in view of the danger of enemy harassment, the town be evacuated with all speed. Grab what you can and fuck off.
I’ll sing you a song of Marshal Ney
Whose fame will live for many a day
The scourge of Austria and Prussia
And the last man out of Russia
At Smolensk the Emperor had ordered him
When everything seemed gray and grim
To act as rear guard
While the rest of the army moved westward
But then in all the snow and sleet
The Emperor speeded up his retreat
But by oversight Ney never heard
One single solitary word
And so his Third Corps from Smolensk he led
When the rest of the army was well ahead<
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Along a ghastly road he went
With supplies near nonexistent
And a gap in front and a gap behind
Which the enemy was quick to find
So confronted him with huge forces
Men and guns and horses
The Russian general in charge of which
Was one named Miloradovitch
Who with no hesitation
Asked for Ney’s capitulation
But for some strange reason the Russian forgot
To order cease-fire so shell and shot
Continued strong and unyielding
While parleying should be proceeding
So this reply brave Ney then tenders:
A Marshal never never surrenders
Under enemy fire no parleying sir
Consider yourself my prisoner
But he could not break through their shot and shell
And so as the freezing nighttime fell
Brave Marshal Ney drew his men over
To the village of Danikova
And many bivouac fires he ordered lit
The enemy laughed and thought that it
Was a camping down for the night
They would capture them at first light
But Marshal Ney’s plan was cleverer and deeper
He nightmarched his men to the river Dnieper
And when the Cossacks got there
They found a fighting square
On Ney went only looking back
To parry another Cossack attack
His Gascon fire all kindled
Although his force steadily dwindled
A Polish officer with might and main
Galloped with a message for brave Eugène
Who sent troops out right away
To help the exhausted Ney
The Emperor believed that the Third Corps
Was finished and would be seen no more
Imagine his surprise
When on Ney he casts his eyes
Three hundred million from my treasury
I’d rather give than that such as he
Should go to an untimely grave
He is bravest of the brave
Hero of Russia and Prussia and Spain
Bravest of the brave he was again
When of all but two thousand bereft
All of our army that was left
He came at last to the Niemerts bank
He said brave boys it is God we thank
And his men cried May God save
Our bravest of the brave
Never again shall any see
A Marshal so courageous as he
His fame will live for aye
And we’ll drink to Marshal Ney
A great raft floated, and on it was a superstructure of exquisite workmanship designed and executed exquisitely to the imperial exquisite specifications. An ice mirage, oh God God God. One bridge enough, shambling along and then over. Over.
Dumdy DUM
dee dum dee dumdy
DUM
DUM
DUM did dum did dum
DUM
DUM
He stopped his pacing and tuneless dumming as they began to troop into his quarters at Smorgoni. Murat, Eugène, Lefebvre, Bessières, Mortier, bravest of the brave Ney (but he had made a shambles at Tarragona), Davout. Berthier was already there, grinning as though good news was coming, getting fat. He said, amazingly without stuttering, life was always full of surprises, “Do please be seated, gentlemen.” N said, while they were looking for chairs:
“I have dictated what in effect are the final orders of the campaign. I have also written this—” He waved it at them, what looked like the manuscript of a sizeable book. “The Twenty-ninth Bulletin of the Great Army, gentlemen.” How the hell did he find the time? “This sets out, for the benefit of Paris, the present situation of the Great Army in the closing phases of what, as must freely be admitted, has not been the most successful of the various campaigns in which you and I have sought and found glory together.” Lefebvre grinned at that humor but then saw, in the great gray lamps that turned on him, freezingly burning, that no humor was really intended. “Paris, gentlemen,” N said. “Civilians, flighty, tremulous, panicky, disposed to believe the worst.” And right too, Davout thought, right to believe the. “Alarmism,” N said. “I trust none here have been sending alarmist letters.” Not sending any letters at all, Lefebvre replied silently. No time for letters. “No time for letters, eh?” N said, looking straight at Lefebvre. “Quite right, too. They’d be censored anyway, be quite sure of that.”
He paced, belched tinily though sourly, then said: “I tell the truth, naturally. One must always tell the truth. Some of it. Truth is a heady and dangerous brew for the common sort, but we have a duty to the truth. I speak frankly here of incompetence among the marshalate, for instance.” He double-gunned them grayly. “Lack of initiative where initiative is called for, too much initiative where unquestioning execution of orders is, ah, in order. You know the sort of thing.” He waved at them in a dismissive manner, as if they all accepted the necessity of being occasionally traduced. “But chiefly I blame the weather, gentlemen. The weather.”
“Sire,” Eugène said. N looked at him, sadly, fondly, his mother’s eyes, poor bitch. “The bad weather only really began after the crossing of the Berezina.” They could all hear the bad weather howling outside the commandeered nondescript dacha. N nodded kindly and said:
“You are brave, Eugène, it is altogether like you to wish to diminish the reality of hardship. Ah, listen to that gale, that blizzard. It is moving west, gentlemen.” He looked at them frowning; they knew what he meant. “Bad weather all over Europe. Chimneys toppling, windows breaking, slates dislodged. The master of the house must see that all is in order within. The bulletin ends with these words: His Majesty’s health has never been better.” He agitated his body minimally and thinly smiled, as in a charade depicting good health. “You have heard, of course,” he said, frowning anew, “of this damned Malet plot. A lunatic going round Paris saying I was dead. I,” he repeated in contempt, “dead. And then the stupid panic, instead of at once proclaiming the King of Rome Emperor of the French.” Ney kept well behind his eyes the horrible sad truth that that was one thing nobody was ever likely to do; for some reason they always forgot about the King of Rome and N knew it. A family was not in charge of Europe, only a man. Everybody knew this. Everybody knew, accordingly, what N was going to say next.
“I am going back to Paris,” he said. “I cannot hold Europe together from a sleigh in the wilds of Russia. Europe has to be controlled from the Tuileries.” He looked at them fiercely, daring them to respond as some had responded when, so many centuries ago, he had decided to walk out of Egypt. But the eyes of the marshals betrayed, a little too quickly, concern only with the question of who was to take over. “You see this?” he cried. “You see the necessity for my action?”
Oh yes yes certainly no doubt about it the best course certainly no possible doubt of it your place is in it is obviously the obvious thing obviously to—
“I want no shouts of treachery” he shouted. And then, reasonably: “You all know the way home. Vilna, Ponarskaia, Kovno, and then you’re on the river Niemen. Tilsit,” he darkened. “If there is to be talk of treachery,” he cried in agony, “let the word be thundered in the proper area. You may all, crossing the Niemen near Tilsit, cry out that word treachery. Alexander,” he whispered, as though at the invocation of spirits. “What right does he have to such a name? He has conquered nothing. We have been conquered by nature, gentlemen, not by the toy-soldiering of pouting pretty petty potentates. He has one skill, and that is treachery. Well, we may now expect his treachery to inspire the princelings of Austria and Prussia to conceive of new hope—hope doomed, need I say, at the outset. I go back to Paris to prepare our people for new glory, to form new armies, raise money. Watch,” he said, looking at them all narrowly, “the treasury of the Great Army. Ten
million francs in gold. You may have difficulty in getting it over the hump of Ponarskaia. Baron Caulaincourt was, as he would freely admit were he here, remiss about ice-shoeing.”
Why the devil didn’t he say who was going to take over?
“You are undoubtedly saying to yourselves,” he said, pacing anew, “why the devil does he not say who is going to take over?” He smiled at them and it was as though a thaw had set in. “I will come to that in a moment. First, my departure. I shall leave at ten—that is, in approximately three hours’ time—accompanied only by Caulaincourt, Duroc, Lobau and poor Roustam. Roustam looks positively purple in this snow, gentlemen. I shall take also somebody to help me to interpret when I come to the Duchy of Warsaw and, ah yes, I shall go incognito, as first secretary of Baron Caulaincourt. Two calèches and a sleeping coach—no more. And, as a tribute to His Majesty of Naples here, an escort of Neapolitan cavalry.” He smiled long at Murat, and everybody then knew who was going to be in charge. A bad choice, too arrogant, all right in attack, hopeless in retreat, not liked by the men, everybody thought except Murat. “The news of imperial departure is to be kept secret for several days and then released along with the imperial decree to the effect that the King of Naples is appointed lieutenant-general and will command the Great Army in my, our, absence. It is not, of course, to be revealed that I am proceeding to Paris. Warsaw, gentlemen. No lie. I shall stop at Warsaw on my way home.”
Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Page 21