Against a Crimson Sky

by James Conroyd Martin

  “Your family money, Jan!” she rasped. “It’s all gone?”

  “Not all,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “And it is our family money, Anna.”

  She nodded. “Just as Topolostan is ours, Jan.—You never said a word!”

  “I’m sorry, Ania. There should be no secrets between man and wife.”

  Anna thought her heart would break—for the secret that he had kept—and the one she still held.

  “You’re crying, Anna,” Jan said. “I’m sorry to have kept this from you.”

  Anna gave a shake of her head. “No, it’s not that.—Jan, I’ve been living with a secret, too.”

  “What—what is it?”

  “It was I, Jan—I who killed Doliński. I did it!”

  Jan took her face into his hands, and what seemed a smile formed on his lips. “I know,” he said. “Just desserts, no?”

  “You know?”

  He nodded. “And that Jan Michał killed Feliz Paduch, the man responsible for your father’s death.”

  “But—how could you know?”

  “Jan Michał told me.”

  “Michał?—He confided in you?’

  “He did—and why not? I’m his father, yes?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, dizzy, her heart was too full to say more. It was at that moment that her old worry that Jan had not truly accepted Jan Michał as his own son vanished.

  “Don’t worry, Anna,” he said, his arm encircling her at her waist and his mouth going to her ear. “I’ll bring Michał back home.”

  “Bring him back if you can, Jan,” Anna said, kissing him. “But come back to me. Come back to me, do you hear?”

  She sent him off dry-eyed and with a smile on her face.

  Nuremburg

  April 1813

  “My God, Jan,” Paweł said, “to see you in uniform again—well, I can scarcely believe it!”

  Jan laughed. He saw the amazement on Paweł’s face, felt it in the powerful bear hug. “Now don’t go thinking I’ve changed my mind about the little Corsican.”

  “Oh, I don’t expect that. I know you’re here for Jan Michał.”

  “Yes. And for Tadek, too, you know. I need to unhorse a few in his memory.”

  “Still a soldier, you are.”

  Jan shrugged. “Once a soldier, always a soldier, isn’t that what they say?”

  “There’s truth in it, too.—You came with Poniatowski from Kraków?—Any engagements?”

  “None. Not a skirmish. Has Napoléon come back from France?”

  “He’s due any day now.”

  “How’s Michał?”

  “Good! He’ll be so glad to see you.” Paweł’s face darkened. “You can’t imagine what he and Tadek went through in the retreat to Wilno. He stood by his brother every step of the way in weather that seldom rose above zero. And Tadek almost made it, too, Jan. Near the end, in Wilno when he knew he wasn’t going to—my God, how he cursed the fact that he was dying in a hospital and not on the battlefield.”

  “I imagine it crushed his spirit.”

  “It did. I had to remind him his wound occurred on the field. Thousands like him died just from the cold or typhus. I made certain he was given the cross of the Legion of Honor for his bravery. He insisted on sitting up in bed for the little ceremony even though the end was just a few hours away.—Jan, your boy died peacefully.”

  “He died a man,” Jan said, wiping at his eye.

  “He did, indeed.”

  “Now, where is Jan Michał?”

  Minutes later, Jan was walking toward the campsite of the Young Guard. It did feel good to be in uniform again. His blood seemed to travel through his body at an accelerated rate. Poniatowski had welcomed him back into the fold with a genuine warmth and enthusiasm. Jan had brought to the effort a hundred horses he had raised at Sochaczew. These Polish-Aabians, smaller than the Grande Armée’s horses, were easy to maneuver—and very welcome, for the shortage of horses had been more difficult for Napoléon to remedy than the shortage of men.

  Poniatowski was to take the remnants of the Fifth Corps and piece them together with the remnants of several other legions, incorporating them into the Eighth Corps. Here was a man who had served as an Austrian general, received Prussian decorations, and acted as Poland’s Minister of War under Russia’s overview. If he saw Poland’s future with France, turning down Aleksandr’s bribe of a crown in the process, Jan would do no differently.

  Jan sighted Michał standing in a small, lively cluster of the Young Guard. “Michał!” Jan called, waving. Jan Michał, in the midst of some story or joke looked up with a jerk. His eyes narrowed and his mouth dropped a little. He abruptly left his friends and ran the thirty paces to his step-father.

  For a long moment they stood vis à vis, silent as stones. The look of shock on Jan Michał’s face seemed to shift into one of awkwardness. Finally, as if at a loss what to do, he saluted his father. Jan did not return the salute. He laughed instead, and pulled his son into his arms.

  After a while, he could feel Michał trembling against him. “I tried to watch out for Tadek, Papa,” Michał choked out. “I did try.”

  Jan could feel on his neck the wetness of Michał’s tears. He thought his own heart would break. He struggled—unsuccessfully—to hold back his own flood of tears. “I know you did your best, Michał. I know.”

  On the last day of April, Napoléon rejoined the Grande Armée. His strategy, Paweł learned, was to move on Dresden by way of Leipzig, retake Gdańsk and push the enemy behind the River Vistula. He wasted no time, staging a victory at Weissenfeld on 1 May. There the emperor lost an old comrade, Marshal Bessières, who was struck by a cannonball. Napoléon took it badly.

  The next day fighting accelerated at Lutzen as the emperor set his green recruits upon the Russian veterans. By mid-afternoon, the tide had so turned against the French that Napoléon boldly rode to the front, barking out orders, adjusting plans, shoring up spirits. A series of maneuvers then brought a reversal of fortune, and both the Young Guard and Old were moved to the front. The allies’ line cracked and broke.

  Only the French shortage of horses prevented the fullest victory. Nonetheless, it was a victory and Napoléon seemed to everyone a prodigy once again.

  The French wasted no time in pursuing the retreating enemy cavalry and artillery. During the march to Dresden, Paweł witnessed constant skirmishes between their advance guard and the rearguard of the enemy. They entered Dresden on 8 May and on the eighteenth left for Bautzen, reaching it the same day. It was there that news filtered down through the ranks that the King of Saxony had stopped dithering and joined the French side, providing fresh troops. On the twentieth, Napoléon drew up his forces against the Russian and Russians at Bautzen, and by nightfall they had control of the town.

  The following day, however, the French found that the allies fought with what Napoléon called a fanaticism. The day-long battle was protracted and brutal. It was only by sending in his last-ditch Guard at the end of the day that the allies withdrew. The French lost twenty thousand and estimated the allies’ losses as just as many.

  The French followed the next day and a confrontation at Reichenbach took another of Napoléon’s best loved and trusted men. General Christophe Duroc, Napoléon’s greatest friend, was struck in the middle by a ricocheting cannonball. He died with doctors standing helplessly by, the victim himself apologizing to the emperor—who had maintained an all-night vigil—that his service had come to an end. “Napoléon has lost most of his best generals,” Paweł told Jan. “And yet three of his worst—MacDonald, Soult, and Ney—go on, often misunderstanding or outright disobeying orders.”

  Napoléon called off the pursuit and accepted an offer from Austria to negotiate terms. A truce ensued. Because his Austrian wife, Maria-Louise, was French regent, the emperor trusted in the neutrality of the mediator. Surely her father would not move against his daughter who ruled France in her husband’s stead.

  Still, well out of earshot of
the emperor, officers argued the subject. Many, like Jan and Paweł, found the current struggle between the French-led forces and the Russian-led allies an even one. Should Austria discard her neutrality and throw her support behind one or the other, however, it would make all the difference.

  Just days after the truce was established, Jan learned that an old friend and longtime lancer, Dezydery Chlapowski, had asked to be discharged. Jan found him in his tent making preparations to leave. “What is it? This isn’t like you.”

  The man sat on his cot. He didn’t look up from some papers he was organizing and gave no answer. He seemed thoroughly depressed.

  “Your family in Poznań?” Jan pressed. “Is that it?”

  Dezydery shrugged. “No.”

  “Then what is it? Why can’t you say?”

  “Jan, my reason needs to remain confidential.”

  “Then you may swear me to it. I swear, Chlapowski. I swear by the Black Madonna.”

  “Very well.” Dezydery sighed. “I escorted General Caulaincort for the negotiations of this truce. While he was in consultation with the enemy’s representatives, the emperor’s secretary, Baron Fain, showed me terms that Napoléon had dictated.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Oh, Fain has seen me for so many years as part of the guard that he has come to think of me as French rather than Polish.”

  “I see.—And the terms?”

  Dezydery looked up at Jan, eye-to-eye for the first time. His face had become empurpled, his tone deliberately restrained. “There, Jan, at the very beginning of concessions he would make to Aleksandr—at the very beginning!—was the Duchy of Warsaw!”

  “Good God, man! You’re certain?”

  “I saw it myself, Jan! We’re to be the first sold down the goddamn river!”

  Stunned, Jan watched his friend pull the paperwork and letters together and place them in a satchel.

  “I’ve served that man since I was scarcely more than a boy, Jan!” Dezydery said, his voice low and cracking. “It’s been my life. My life! And to find it worth nothing at all. Nothing!”

  “What will you do, my friend? Poznań is occupied.”

  Dezydery stood. “I’ll go to Paris—and then maybe England. I just know I’d rather dig ditches than see that man again. You know they say he had a grand strategy for Europe. He had no strategy! He’s good at tactics, that’s all.”

  Jan walked over and hugged his old friend. “Godspeed, Dezydery. May we meet again one day.”

  Dezydery held Jan at arm’s length. “And what about you, Jan, now that you know?”

  “Me?” Jan asked, giving a tortured little smile. “For me it’s different, my friend. I haven’t believed in the little Corsican for some years. I don’t know that I ever did.”

  Jan left the tent, his head down. He would keep the news to himself, as he had sworn. He would not even tell Paweł, who served north of Leipzig, in Dąbrowski’s division. To what end? Jan thought. Paweł had regarded the emperor as a demi-god for too long.

  In later years, the events leading up to the Battle of Leipzig would become a blur in the memory of its survivors. While Napoléon longed for one decisive battle that would tell the tale, his allied enemies played tag and run, teasing and taunting him, causing him to move his armies from one place to another, wearing his soldiers down, bit by bit. Skirmish warfare became a day-to-day thing. His army soon became exhausted and hungry. Their uniforms were tattered, and some soldiers even went bootless.

  News coming into camp worsened. Bavaria defected from the French, and her army went to strengthen the allies. In Spain, Napoléon’s forces were beaten back by the English under Wellington. It seemed all of Europe was aligning itself against the little emperor. Nonetheless, Napoléon held fast to the idea that his was the new order of things, one favoring the rights of man, as opposed to the old order and the privileges of a few. To hear him tell it, one great battle was all that was needed to turn the tide.

  Prince Murat deployed Poniatowski’s Eighth Corps, as well as the forces of Generals Victor and Lauriston, to guard the south and southeast perimeters of Leipzig. On 14 October, Russian forces under General Wittgenstein came against the French in six powerful waves, each one beaten back by courageous cavalry charges. Despite the years, Jan fought much as he had as a young man, staying as close to his son as possible without being too conspicuous. While Tadek had been a perfect reflection of Jan’s light eyes and complexion, Michał’s appearance was very different since he carried in his Groński blood certain darker Tatar traits. Nonetheless, Jan saw his younger self in Michał—in his vigor and horsemanship and prowess with the saber.

  After that battle and all battles in which they partook, neither father nor son spoke to the other of lives they had taken. There was no counting, no boasting. The killing was something they stored away in their memories, not to be visited willingly. Jan was just glad that they both lived to see another day.

  The battle for Leipzig was in no way finished, but the 8th Corps so impressed Napoléon with that day’s fighting—despite significant Polish losses—that in a makeshift ceremony on the putrid and body-littered battlefield, he presented Prince Józef Poniatowski with a marshal’s baton. He was the only non-French officer ever so honored. Among the able-bodied and wounded Poles alike, chests were swollen and eyes moist with pride. Even Jan—who had had his fill of war and killing and Napoléon—found himself wiping at his eyes.

  In the early morning hours of 16 October, Napoléon’s one decisive battle came to him. The enemy allies attacked, their plan—it was clear—to outflank the French right that was defended by Prince Murat and Generals Victor, Lauriston, and Poniatowski.

  Two hundred enemy cannon—followed by massive columns of soldiers—descended six times in all, each time beaten back by Murat, each time suffering ten times more casualties than the French. By night Jan learned that elsewhere on the Leipzig battlefield the French had held—but at the cost of twenty-five thousand men.

  The seventeenth passed without fighting. A small Saxon force and General Bernadotte’s command of seventy thousand bolstered the French, but reinforcements were being welcomed into the Russian camp, too, starting with General Bennigsen and his estimated forty thousand troops. On the eighteenth, it was the enemy again that initiated the attack on the right flank. Employing French artillery to the fullest, Murat’s generals held off the allies, triumphing by the end of the day. Late into the night, however, word filtered down that 220,000 rounds of artillery had been sacrificed to the little victory. There remained a scant 16,000 rounds, or enough for a two-hour battle. Napoléon ordered an immediate and full retreat westward to the nearest ammunition depot at Erfurt.

  To reach the first town along the way, Lindenau, some six bridges had to be crossed, necessitating troops to march in narrow files. Just the same, by the early morning hours of the nineteenth, two thirds of the Grande Armée had evacuated Leipzig. Generals MacDonald, Lauriston, and Poniatowski served as rearguard during the operation.

  The morning light, however, made Napoléon’s intentions clear to the allies, and they came down in force upon the rearguard. Jan kept one eye on Michał as cavalry battled cavalry. The Poniatowski force purposely yielded ground as the tail of the Grande Armée moved toward the main bridge between Leipzig and Lindenau. Jan knew that the bridge had been laid with mines the night before, and that once the last of the rearguard passed over it, Napoléon’s engineers would send it sky high, effectively leaving the allies on the wrong side of the River Elster.

  But long before the crossing could be completed, an explosion rang so loudly in Jan’s ears that he faltered for a moment and beat back the thrust of a Russian’s saber only at the last moment. After he had dispatched the enemy, he turned to look toward the bridge. Of course, he knew what he would see.

  With at least ten thousand soldiers and hundreds of wagons yet to cross, the bridge had been destroyed. Why had it been blown to pieces so prematurely? Those unhappy souls who had been una
ble to cross would likely be slashed to ribbons.

  Chaos ensued as the French forces tallied the situation and made for the river’s bank. The allies gave no respite and began to close in, killing as they went.

  Jan found Michał at the river. They both quickly sized up the situation. The bank was steep and slippery, a pitfall for the horses. While the river was not particularly wide, they could see that the current’s power was deadly. The roiling water pulled at the broken timbers of the bridge, making short work of ripping them free and sending them on their way. Jan looked about for Poniatowski. In the confusion he found no sign of the general. The choices were clear to both father and son. If they stayed and fought, they would die. If they stayed and laid down their arms, they might be spared, in which case they would spend the rest of the war as prisoners. If they attempted to cross the river, the risks were high.

  Already, hundreds of their comrades had made their decisions, choosing the river over capture. Horses and men slipped down the bank and into the water. In the moments that Jan and Michał watched, it seemed that for every soldier that held his own in the water—mounted or not—another was carried away by the river. One faltering horse could take with it several other horses and soldiers.

  To the rear Jan could see the allies descending in a swarm, shooting and slicing their way. He knew that every moment he and his son hesitated could be their last. Michał nodded to his father. Their thoughts were the same, it seemed, words unnecessary. The two directed their horses down the bank and into the icy cold water.

  In no time water was washing over the horses’ manes. “Hold tight to your mount, Michał!” Jan called. “And keep your head down and your sights forward. Only forward!”

  It was at that moment that Jan felt a stinging sensation. His hand went to his neck and came away bloody. He had been hit by carbine fire. While he had suffered his share of lance and saber wounds, he had never been hit by gunfire. Dumb Russian luck, he thought, for the aim of guns fired from horseback was notoriously bad.