The Battle

by Patrick Rambaud

  He articulated each syllable, as they do in the South, and spoke with a lilting, musical intonation.

  'Eighty boats, Count.'

  'Hullo! That's all, is it? And I'm supposed to conjure these tubs out of thin air, am I? What, is the army going boating down the Danube?'

  'They're to support a bridge.'

  'I thought as much.'

  Turning to his entourage, he snapped, 'Don't stand there like blockheads! Haven't you got enough work to do?'

  Then, as the others moved off with grave expressions, he continued, 'Colonel, there are no more boats in Vienna. Not a single one! The Austrians are not such simpletons! They've scuppered most of them or taken them downriver out of our reach, to Pressburg. No fools, eh? They don't want a sniff of us on the left bank of their beloved Danube!'

  Daru took Lejeune by the arm and led him into an office cluttered with crates and piles of furniture, put his felt cockade hat on a table, chased out with a roar two deputy commissaries who were unfortunate enough to be sitting there dozing and then, changing his tone like an actor, switched from fury to a feigned despondency.

  'It's chaos, Colonel, chaos! Nothing is turning out right! All I have is problems! This cursed blockade is working against us, I can tell you!'

  Three years earlier the Emperor had decided to isolate England by banning the sale of its goods on the Continent, but this had not put a stop to smuggling. Besides, the army's greatcoats were still made of cloth woven in Leeds and its shoes still came from Northampton. England dominated the world's commerce and it was Imperial Europe which was condemning itself to self-sufficiency, with the result that they had run out of sugar and the indigo they needed to dye the uniforms blue. Daru was complaining about this consequence in particular. 'Our soldiers dress any old how, in what they can get their hands on in the villages or after a battle. How does that make them look, eh? Like a troupe of tattered strolling players! They wear grey jackets they've thieved from the Austrians and then what happens? You don't know? I'll tell you, Colonel, I'll tell you.' He sighed heavily. 'At the first wound, even the slightest flesh wound, the blood spreads on a light material

  and it shows. A graze looks as if you've taken a bayonet thrust in the guts and that blood demoralizes the other men, it scares the life out of them, it paralyses them!'

  Daru suddenly started speaking like a gentleman's tailor. 'Whereas on a blue, a beautiful dark blue, those terrible stains show less.'

  He collapsed into a rococo armchair, which creaked loudly under his weight, and spread out a staff map.

  'His Majesty wants to plant woad near Toulouse, Albi and Florence. Fine. It grew there marvellously in the past, but now we haven't the time! And then have you seen the conscripts? Compared to them, last year's draft look like veterans! We're waging war with children in fancy dress, Colonel.'

  He looked at the map and, once again, changed his tone.

  'Where do you want it, this bridge?'

  Lejeune pointed to the island of Lobau on the outspread map. Daru gave an even heavier sigh.

  'We'll see to it, Colonel.'

  'Immediately?'

  'As immediately as possible.'

  'We also need to collect ropes, chains . . .'

  'That won't be so difficult. But come now, my guess is that you haven't had a bite to eat since this morning.'

  'No, I haven't.'

  'Well, make use of my cooks. They've prepared a squirrel stew today, just like they did yesterday and just like they'll do tomorrow. It's not too bad, it tastes a little like rabbit, and then there's so many of them in the park! After that, well, we'll just have to tuck into the tigers and kangaroos in the palace menagerie! Our jaded appetites have got a few shocks in store . . . Go and see Commissary

  Beyle, in the office just above this one; I'll leave you now, the hospitals aren't ready, the forage is poor, and your cursed boats . . . Bah, as the poet Horace said, my dear Horace, a well-prepared soul hopes for contentment in the midst of adversity.'

  'One last thing, Count.'

  'Tell me.'

  'It appears that the Genoese .. .'

  'Oh no! Colonel! Damn it all, will I never be left in peace about these imaginary millions! You're the third person Massena has sent to ask about them! All that I've found, apart from the guns of the Arsenal, is this . . .'

  He tipped over a wooden chest with his buckled shoe. Austrian florins tumbled out onto the floor.

  'We owe these to the fastidious work of M. Savary,' Daru explained. 'They're fakes. I use them to pay my local suppliers. Take a bundle or two.'

  'Henri!'

  'Louis-Francois!'

  Louis-Francois Lejeune and Henri Beyle, who had not yet started calling himself Stendhal, had known each other for nine years. When they were stationed in Milan they had vied for the provocative charms of a local woman, but Lejeune had carried the day and Henri, secretly, had been glad. He preferred his desires to remain unfulfilled and, anyway, would that excessively beautiful Italian woman have been satisfied with him? At the time he thought of himself as extremely ugly and it made him bashful, despite his green uniform of the 6th Dragoons and his helmet bound in lizard-skin with a plume of horsehair. A few

  years later they had bumped into each other in a lottery booth in the Palais Royal and gone out onto the boulevards, to Verys, to eat oysters at twelve sous a dozen under gilt candelabras. Lejeune had paid. Henri, who had left the army and hadn't a sou to his name, made the most of this treat by devouring a whole chicken. Lejeune was preparing to rejoin his regiment in Holland: Henri, meanwhile, was envisaging a future either as a planter in Louisiana, or as a banker, or, largely because of the actresses, as a successful playwright.

  Now they had met again near Vienna, by the chance of active service. One was surprised, the other not. Nothing could be more natural than Lejeune's being a colonel, because he had chosen his career and applied himself to it. But Henri? At the time, he was a fat twenty-six-year-old with shiny skin, a thin mouth with almost no lips, almond-brown eyes and tousled hair which stood high over his broad forehead. Lejeune, astonished, asked him what on earth he was doing in that commissariat's office.

  'Ah! Louis-Francois, to be happy I need to live at the heart of great events.'

  'As a commissary of war?'

  'Deputy, only deputy.'

  'But Daru sent me to Commissary Beyle.'

  'He is too kind, he must be ill.'

  Count Daru had little regard for Henri. He invariably treated him as a scatterbrain, harshly ordering him about and only delegating jobs to him if they were irritating or of absolutely no interest.

  'What are my orders?' he asked his friend, delighted to see him again but at the same time anxious as to what was going to be asked of him.

  'Nothing too elaborate. You are to give me some squirrel stew at Count Daru's expense.'

  'My God! Is that what you want?' 'No.'

  Henri buttoned his morning coat, snatched up his hat with the tricolour cockade and seized on this chance to flee his office as if it were a godsend. Passing through the next room, he informed his secretaries and book-keepers that he would be gone for the day and seeing Lejeune's uniform, they conspicuously did not ask the reason, assuming it to be significant. Outside, Lejeune asked, k Do you get on with those pen-pushers?'

  'Oh no, Louis-Francois! You don't have to worry about that. They're a vulgar, scheming, imbecile, worthless lot.'

  'Tell me more.'

  'Where are we going?'

  'I've requisitioned a house in the old town, I'm lodging there with Perigord.'

  'Good, let's go there, as long as you're not ashamed of my civilian clothes and my horse. I'm warning you, it's a real carthorse.'

  On the stable road they talked about their lives, particularly Henri's. No, he hadn't given up the theatre: he studied Shakespeare, Gozzi and Crebillon fils whenever he could, even when he was travelling, but writing comedies didn't make one a living and he didn't want to be indebted to his family any longer. In the mea
ntime he had accepted the patronage of Daru, who was a distant relative. From the Imperial Intendance he hoped to manoeuvre himself into the post of Auditor to the State Council, which was not, in itself, a profession, but a stepping stone to all the other professions and, first and foremost, an annual income.

  Henri had just spent two years in Germany where he had divided his time between the commissariat, the opera, hunting and young girls.

  'In Brunswick,' he said, 'I learnt how not to be so shy and how to hunt.'

  'Are you a good shot?'

  'On my first duck shoot, I bagged two crows!' 'No Austrians?'

  'I still haven't seen real fighting, Louis-Francois. I missed Jena by a few days. On the outskirts of Neuburg I thought I heard cannon-fire; it was a thunderstorm.'

  Henri had, however, crossed the Ebersberg bridge when the town was still in flames. His coach had driven over corpses whose faces had been burnt away. He had seen entrails spilling out under the wheels. To prove he was made of stern stuff, he had continued chatting nonchalantly despite a fierce desire to vomit.

  As they reached the commissariat's stables, Lejeune exclaimed, 'So that's your horse?'

  'That's the one they've given me, yes. I warned you.'

  'You're right. All it's missing is a plough!'

  As dissimilar in their dress and mounts as could be imagined, but unconcerned by any ridicule this might provoke, the two friends set off on the road to Vienna. In the distance, they could see the city's ramparts and the tall spire of St Stephen's.

  Vienna had two defensive rings. The first, a simple earthwork embankment, bounded its heavily populated suburbs, where low red-roofed houses crowded in on each other; the second, a strong defensive wall fortified with moats,

  bastions, pillboxes and covered walkways, enclosed the old town, but because the Viennese no longer feared the Turks or Hungarian rebels, hotels and shops had proliferated along the length of its fortifications and trees had been planted to form promenades on the slope.

  Lejeune and Beyle passed under the arch of a large gate and made their way at a walk through the city's twisting streets, between tall, elongated houses, a mixture of medieval and baroque, all painted in delicate colours in the Italian manner and with window sills covered in blue flowers and birdcages. The spectacle presented by the other wayfarers was less entrancing: wherever one looked, there was nothing but soldiers.

  A conqueror is an ugly thing, Henri thought to himself at the sight of the motley troops. Napoleon had recently handed over Vienna - a city barely the size of a Parisian quartier — to his men for four or five days and they were already taking full advantage. It reminded Henri of a pack of hunting dogs. They had risked death a thousand times, it was true, and been brutally forced to leave behind friends' bodies, the maimed, the blind, an arm, a leg, but did the fact that their fear had subsided justify this excess? Dragoons were lowering furniture by ropes into the street, while their accomplices threatened the owners: this could not fail to turn a naturally mild and welcoming people against them. A cuirassier in an iron helmet, swathed in a long white Austrian coat, was attempting to auction off a pile of theatre costumes, clarinets and stolen furs which he had thrown on the ground. Other stalls lined an alleyway where these brigands were selling their plunder: glass and pearl necklaces, dresses, sacramental vessels, chairs, mirrors, chipped statuettes. The throng jostled and seethed like a

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  Cairo souk, speaking twenty languages and hailing from twenty different countries to merge into a single arrogant army: Poles, Saxons, Bavarians, Florentines (who were nicknamed 'jabberers') - even one of Kirmann's Mamelukes, although the only thing Arabic about him was his baggy trousers, since he had been born at Saint-Ouen. Muskets were stacked in squares and at the junctions of avenues. Infantrymen in high-buttoned gaiters snored on heaps of straw in a church square. Chasseurs in dark blue uniforms flogged black horses through the streets and a group of heavy cavalrymen on foot rolled along barrels of Riesling. Some hussars were sitting outside a cafe eating boiled beef, their chests puffed out, mightily proud of their sky-blue breeches, their bright red waistcoats, their heavy braided locks to cushion sabre cuts and the extravagant plumes billowing out of their shakos. A rifleman emerged from under a porch wearing a string of sausages as a lanyard; he staggered a little as he held onto a wall to piss.

  'Look!' Lejeune said to his friend. 'We could be in Verona.'

  He gestured towards a fountain, a narrow building and the pale light which picked out the facades of a little square. Lejeune affected to see nothing else. He was not like other officers. From his tours of garrison duty and his campaigns he had brought back a number of sketches and highly accomplished paintings. Napoleon, when he was First Consul, had bought his Battle of Marengo. At Lodi and Somosierra, he went to war as if he was setting up before an artist's model. His figures captured in motion served as props: for example, in the assault on the monastery of Santa Engracia at Saragossa, where a massacre was taking place in the foreground in front of a white stone

  statue of the Virgin. What held the eye in that composition was the Arabicized building, the stone carving around the cloister, the square tower, the sky. At Aboukir, it was the harsh glare, the heat which made the greys and yellows shimmer. Louis-Francois, therefore, ignored the soldiers on their drunken spree. He admired the aspect of the Pallavi-cini palace and was reminded of Palladio by the pediment of the Trautson palace. This enduring love of beautiful things was what had first brought Louis-Francois and Henri Beyle together, and it had given rise to a friendship, which neither war nor the long absences from each other's company had strained since.

  'We're nearly there,' said Lejeune as they turned into the rather more elegant Jordangasse district.

  Suddenly, rounding a corner, Lejeune made his horse rear. Ahead of them, dragoons were entering a pink house and leaving with their arms full of linen, china, flagons and smoked hams which they were stacking on an army cart. 'Oh! Those dirty scoundrels!' Lejeune shouted and spurred his horse forward to burst into the swarm of looters. Taken by surprise, they dropped a chest, which split open; one lost his helmet in the scuffle, another was sent flying into a wall. Henri rode nearer as his friend, still on horseback but now in the hall, lashed out with his whip and riding boots.

  'The city is ours, sir!' said a tall cuirassier in a greatcoat cut from the sackcloth of a Spanish monk: he wore spurs on his espadrilles and gave the impression of being determined to continue emptying the house of its contents.

  'Not this house!' Lejeune yelled.

  'The whole city, sir!'

  'Leave here or I'll crack your skull open!'

  Lejeune cocked his horse-pistol and pointed it at the

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  forehead of the insubordinate soldier, who broke into a smile. 'Very well, go ahead and fire, Colonel!'

  Lejeune struck him a violent blow with the barrel of his gun; the cuirassier, his face badly bruised, spat out three teeth and a mouthful of blood, then drew his sabre, but his companions grabbed him round the waist and pinned his arms to his side.

  'Get the hell out! Get the hell out of here!' Lejeune shouted in a hoarse voice.

  'If you go into battle, sir, make sure you never turn your back on me!' the cuirassier snarled, his jaw covered in blood.

  'Out! Out!' Lejeune said, randomly striking any backs or heads within his reach.

  The veterans left the devastated house, abandoning a large part of their spoils, and either mounted their horses or clung onto the cart as it pulled away. The tall cuirassier in the brown greatcoat shook his fist and bellowed that his name was Fayolle and that his aim was true.

  Lejeune was trembling with fury. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the ring on the front door. A coatless lieutenant, his hair awry, was slumped on a solitary bench, panting and groaning. It was Lejeune's aide-de-camp, who had been unable to stand up to the rampaging mob. Henri caught up with them at the far end of the vast, austere hall.

  'Did they go u
pstairs?'

  'Yes, Colonel.'

  'Mile Krauss?'

  'With her sisters and governess, Colonel.' 'Were you alone?' 'Almost, Colonel.'

  'Perigord is here?'

  'In his rooms on the first floor, Colonel.'

  Followed by Henri, Lejeune rushed up the steep main staircase, while his aide-de-camp started picking up the foodstuffs which the dragoons had forgotten.

  'Perigord?'

  'Come in, old man,' a voice echoed along the empty corridors.

  Lejeune, with Henri behind, went into an enormous, unfurnished drawing room where, standing bare-chested and in red breeches before a cheval glass in a mahogany frame, Edmond de Perigord was waxing his moustache, helped by his manservant, a plump, heavy-jowled individual in a wig and a suit of livery trimmed with silver lace.

  'Perigord, you let those blackguard soldiers invade this house!'

  'It stands to reason that those brutes must amuse themselves before they go into action.' 'Amuse themselves!'

  'A brute's amusement, yes. They're hungry, my dear friend, they're thirsty, they're not rich and they have a pretty shrewd idea that they've been condemned to death.'

  'Did they go up to Mile Krauss's floor.3 '

  'There's no need to be alarmed, Louis-Francois,' said Perigord, leading his colleague through the anterooms on the first floor. Two dragoons were sprawled on the steps of a second staircase which led to the upper floors.

  'These imbeciles wanted to do a little looting up there,' Perigord said in a weary voice, 'but I forbade them. They tried to force their way through.'

  'Did you kill them?'

  'Oh, no, I don't think so. They caught a chair full in the

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  face and I can assure you, my dear friend, those chairs are devilishly heavy. Having said that, when they fell, they might perhaps have snapped their necks; I haven't had a proper look. In any case, I'll have them removed.' 'Thank you.'