The Battle

by Patrick Rambaud

  'Shove over, you rogues!'

  'Who's calling who a rogue?'

  An artillery train was coming out of the wood behind the ambulance men, its teams of horses foaming at the mouth as they hauled the heavy guns which lurched violently at every rut. A mounted gunner with a great red plume sticking up from his shako and a moustache as stiff as a bottlebrush was shouting himself hoarse al the head of

  the convoy. The drivers in sky-blue jackets blackened with gunpowder lashed the cruppers of their terrified animals.

  'Shove over!'

  'When it suits me,' shouted Fat Louis, and he slapped the lead horse's nostrils with the flat of his hand, making it rear. The gunner almost fell off and cursed as he struggled to recover his balance. The rest of the artillerymen rushed forward to surround Fat Louis; as he drew a knife from his belt, the gunner brought his musket to his shoulder and took aim at him.

  'All right,' Fat Louis said, putting his knife away.

  The ambulance men pushed their cart into the brambles to watch the cannon and empty caissons hurtle down the slope. A wheel came off on a patch of scree and one of the caissons rolled over. The drivers set their backs to the shaft to lift it upright.

  'That's what comes of being in a hurry,' muttered Fat Louis.

  The cart set off down the slope, but away from the regiments flooding towards the bottom corner of the field. Fat Louis steered it to the rear of the hut where Dr Percy, who had moved to the island, had had his ambulances. A throng of requisitioned vehicles, from barouches to hay carts, were waiting to cross the little bridge, all carrying the same odds and ends of cuirasses and muskets. Paradis went to wait by a mound and watch the troops' withdrawal. When he realized that he was leaning against a pile of arms and legs amputated by Percy and his assistants, he leapt up, his legs unsteady beneath him, rushed to the riverbank, fell on his knees and vomited. Afterwards, revolted, he wiped his lips with a handful of leaves and started chewing a blade of grass to get rid of the bad taste. As he walked

  back to the convoy, a mass of cavalry appeared on the brow of a hill. The re-formed squadrons were arriving. Bessieres broke away from them, urged his horse forward to stop in front of Massena and, steady in the saddle, flung two Austrian standards down on the grass. The cavalry, meanwhile, filed between the flares, which made their weapons and the facings of their uniforms gleam, and, on that night, the onlookers forgot how patched up and improvised those uniforms were. At their head came the 1st Division of heavy cavalry, led by Count de Nansouty, with brass combs jutting out of the black fur of their helmets, then the shining white breeches of the dragoons and the caribineers' scarlet lapels . . .

  'This is it, here comes the rain!' said Paradis.

  Large drops began to beat down and burst on the iron cuirasses piled on the cart.

  At three o'clock in the morning, a sudden gust of wind blew open his casement window and Henri immediately got out of bed. His teeth chattering, he pulled his nightcap down over his ears and slipped on a coat over his nightshirt. It was raining hard. As he was going to shut the window, he heard a muffled report: he put his head out to look at the street. The police Berline was still opposite the house, but another Berline with a team of drenched horses had pulled up beside it, blocking its doors. Who had fired? Had it even been a shot? Henri was no longer cold, his curiosity was too great for him to complain. People stampeding down the stairs, doors creaking, a sound of faint whispering: he was desperate to find out what was afoot, and quickly got dressed in the dark. When he leant out of the

  window again, he could see figures diving into the second carriage; he thought he recognized Anna's profile under a hood and the more fragile figures of her sisters and the governess. Men in broad-brimmed hats dripping with rain helped them climb in and then one of them leaped into the coachman's seat and cracked the whip. The carriage flew off. Henri ran out of his room, tore down the main staircase and landed on the ground floor. He started with fright when he saw someone lying in wait for him in the dark, but no one was there, only his own reflection in a mirror. He thought himself grotesque in this outfit he'd thrown on in haste: frock coat, overcoat on top, long johns tucked into boots and, worst of all, his hair spilling out from under a nightcap, which he tore off and stuffed in one of his pockets. He flung both doors of the carriage entrance open but didn't dare venture out into the downpour. Water streamed between the cobblestones and drenched him as it fell in torrents from the roofs. He thought of the soldiers on the plain which would be a quagmire by now, then of the scene he had just witnessed, and sneezed. He walked back towards the kitchens and checked the time on the clock. Calling out, he climbed the stairs and pushed open the bedroom doors: the beds hadn't even been slept in. Anna and her family's flight had been carefully planned, but who had she gone with and where to?

  Downstairs, in the hall, people were walking about. Voices and the tread of boots echoed on the stairs. Henri hadn't time to shut himself in the first drawing room before he was surrounded by a swarm of gendarmes.

  'Who are you?' barked a sergeant in a soaking uniform.

  'I could ask you the same question.'

  'Oh, sir is a wily bird, is he?'

  'Leave Commissary Beyle in peace, he has nothing to do with this.'

  Schulmeister was climbing the stairs as his gendarmes jostled one another to let him past. He shook himself and handed his cape to the policeman following him, who was one of those Henri had seen in front of the Berline on the Jordangasse. He recognized the one behind as well, who was holding a sort of compress to his arm; a bullet fired through the coach window had torn his frock coat and given him a flesh wound.

  'Can you give me an explanation, Monsieur Schulmeister?'

  'There's no one left in the house?'

  'A desert.'

  The chief of police dismissed the gendarmes and led Henri into his room. One of his agents lit the candle while the other closed the window with his good hand.

  'Mile Krauss has gone to join her lover, Monsieur Beyle.'

  'Lejeune?'

  'Another colonel.'

  'Perigord? I don't believe it!'

  'Nor do I.'

  'Well, tell me who, for God's sake!'

  'An Austrian officer, Monsieur Beyle, some sort of field marshal to the Prince von Hohenzollern.'

  Henri fell into the only chair in the room, sneezed again and sat there dumbfounded, feverish tears glistening in his eyes.

  'You saw nothing?'

  'Nothing, Monsieur Schulmeister.'

  'I know, you never see anything . . .' 'Who took Anna away?'

  'Partisans, they say, troublemakers like M. Staps who are making things difficult for us! What's that?'

  'The bells of St Stephen's,' said Henri, sniffling.

  'They sound as if they're raising the alarm . . . Do you mind?' Schulmeister pointed at the window.

  'What difference does it make?' replied Henri. 'I'm already ill. Open it, open it. . .' And he blew his nose hard enough to make the windowpanes rattle.

  The bells of Vienna were pealing out, answering one another from church to church, and, beyond the ramparts, merging with those of the suburbs, perhaps even with those of every village within a ten-league radius. Despite the rain people were coming out onto the streets and shouting.

  'What are the Viennese saying, Monsieur Schulmeister?'

  'They're saying, "We have won," Monsieur Beyle.'

  'Who is this "we"?'

  'Let's go and find out.'

  They put on hats, capes and overcoats and set off through the streets like looters on the prowl. Townspeople clustered in little groups and talking animatedly. Schulmeister asked Henri to take the cockade off his dripping top hat and they mingled with Vienna's inhabitants who were spreading calamitous news in a state of high excitment:

  'The French are trapped on the island of Lobau!' 'They're being decimated by the Archduke's canister shot!'

  'The Emperor has been taken prisoner!' 'No, no, he has been killed!' 'Bonaparte is dea
d!'

  Schulmeister took a list which was being handed round and looked at it under the light of a lantern hanging in the porch of a house.

  'What does that piece of paper say?'

  'That fifty thousand French are dead, Monsieur Beyle. These are their names, well, some of them . ..'

  The bells rang out, deafening.

  The rumours going around Vienna were unfounded. The Emperor was at Schonbrunn, in conversation with Davout. He had caught up with the Army of the Rhine before the rain started and been met by cheering. Then the Marshal had accompanied him in his barouche, with a squadron of chasseur a cheval as escort. He gritted his teeth for the entire journey, but at the palace, in the Lacquer Saloon, he started to analyse the situation at the top of his voice. 'Tonight I have no love of rivers!'

  Napoleon seized the back of a little gilt chair and smashed it against a pedestal table, storming, 'Davout, I hate the Danube as much as your soldiers hate you!'

  'In that case, sire, I pity the Danube.'

  Bald, with bushy sideburns curling over his cheeks and round glasses perched on the tip of his nose on account of his chronic short sight, Marshal Davout, the Duke of Averstadt, knew that he was hated for his extreme severity and his foul language. He treated his officers like valets, but he had never been defeated and he was a rigorous tactician. This Burgundian aristocrat, a fervent republican at the start of the Revolution, had proved exceptionally loyal to the Empire. He remained calm, which made Napoleon even more furious.

  ,

  'There was nothing in it! You would have come out on Lannes's right and we would have had victory!' 'Most probably.' 'Like Austerlitz!' 'Everything was in readiness.'

  'If that ass Berthier had managed to repair the main bridge overnight, this morning we would have routed Charles's stupefied troops!'

  'Without any difficulty, sire: the Austrians are at the end of their tether. I would have crossed the Danube with my fresh divisions and we would have crushed them like beetles.'

  'Beetles! That's it! Like beetles!'

  The Emperor took a pinch of snuff and stuffed it into his nose.

  'What do you suggest, Davoutr'

  'God damn it! We could dine, sire. I'm dying of hunger and I wouldn't refuse a battery of plump Austrian chickens!'

  The island was filling up. Thousands of soldiers were slipping like shadows under the cover of the tall trees, the luckiest finding a tree trunk to lean against, sliding down onto the mossy ground and falling asleep, their feet in puddles of water. This billet threw the commissariat into a panic, since they'd never manage to feed such a number: the provisions Davout was sending across in skiffs - when, that is, they reached the island - were devoured the minute they were unloaded. The wounded now lay groaning under large awnings or against a wall of carts. The ambulance

  men had set out barrels to catch the rainwater and fashioned drainpipes out of reeds to channel the water that collected in pockets on the canvas stretched between the tree branches. They tried to heat their revolting horse broth under cover and kept the horses' heads and guts in tubs for the Austrian prisoners, crammed together on the sandy tip of the island, who would eat them raw. From time to time a medical orderly on his rounds of the prone bodies picked up a dead man, dragged him, amidst general indifference, to one or other beach and pushed him into the water.

  Across the river, in the meadow, the flames had long since been put out by the downpour, but Massena still hadn't moved. Stiff-backed, as immobile as a statue sunk in the mud, the rain streaming down his face, he was making sure that the entire army entrusted to him by the Emperor got off the left bank and took refuge in the forests on the island.

  'Only the Old Guard is left, Your Grace,' said Sainte-Croix, the plumes of his tricorn drooping pitifully. 'It's scarcely daybreak. We have succeeded.' 'Here come the last of them . . .'

  General Dorsenne was arriving at the head of a battalion of grey ghosts, wrapped in greatcoats made leaden by the rain. They floundered and skidded down the hill, still trying to keep step and, as they lifted their feet, clods of mud clung to the soles of their boots. The rain-soaked standards were wound round the flag pole s. Muted clarinets played an imperial march, but the drums were silent, covered with aprons so that the rain didn't stretch theii skins. Dorsenne halted beside Massena, and Sainte Croix

  had to help him dismount because he had been wounded in the head and seemed very weak. His gloves were tied round his forehead as a bandage. 'It's only a splinter,' he said.

  'Hurry up and get it looked at!' Massena roared. 'Lan-nes, Espagne, Saint-Hilaire: enough is enough!'

  'I will when my grenadiers and chasseurs have passed.' 'You stubborn ass!'

  'Marshal, I am hardly entitled to faint before the last act. It would set a very poor example.'

  Massena took him by the arm as they watched the grenadiers step onto the little bridge buffeted by the Danube.

  'I'm bringing back more than half,' Dorsenne explained. 'Sainte-Croix,' said Massena, 'take the general to Dr Yvan.'

  'Or Larrey,' said Dorsenne, alarmingly pale.

  'Oh no, you poor man! Larrey would be quite capable of amputating your head! He's like Dr Guillotine, you know: anything that sticks out, he cuts off.'

  They took their leave of one another on this piece of banter. Massena ordered his officers, 'Your turn now, gentlemen. I will follow.'

  The officers were on the island when a salvo rang out in the vicinity of Aspern. Massena smiled. 'The beggars are waking up!'

  But no. It was nothing of consequence, only a few Austrian soldiers emptying their muskets into a deserted bivouac. The Archduke was unaware of the true extent of the damage suffered by the main bridge and afraid that the sappers would quickly finish their repairs and allow the French reinforcements to cross to the right bank, as on

  the previous day. Anxious and uncertain, he had brought the greater part of his troops back to their former positions. It hadn't even crossed his mind to attack. His army had been bled dry.

  All alone, on foot, slowly and without looking back, Marshal Massena was the last to cross the little bridge. The Seamen of the Guard and sappers were already preparing to dismantle it. Long, narrow, open-sided carts were waiting to take the pontoons to the other side of the Lobau to restore the main bridge, which was fifteen boats short. At six o'clock in the morning, of Essling had come to an end. More than forty thousand dead covered the fields.

  Seven

  AFTER THE HECATOMB

  Colonel Lejeune spent two gruelling days on the island of Lobau, waiting impatiently for the bridge to be restored and, once Hiller's men had taken up position in the abandoned villages, expecting to be bombarded. The Aus-trians were fortifying the riverbank and it was likely that they would bring up cannon. He drank rainwater and tried the horse broth (which Massena found delicious), but thought only of Mile Krauss, not knowing that she had fled. As soon as the main bridge was rebuilt, the Colonel gained permission to leave for Vienna. He paid too high a price for a hussar's horse and hurried to the Jordangasse, where he found only disappointment and bitterness. His first response was anger, a fit of mad rage unassuaged by the speeches which Henri had prepared, clearly foreseeing his friend's fury and grief. Lejeune burst into the room of the faithless one,, the deceiver, the conceited hussy, the she-devil — he accused Anna of every conceivable failing -and tore her clothes out of the wardrobes, ripped them to pieces and trampled them on the floor, crying that he had been betrayed and unable to bear the idea thai he had been duped and made to look ridiculous. When he had destroyed the contents of three trunks and several wardrobes, he lit ;i fire of his drawings - Henri was only able to save one -

  then lay on his bed fully dressed, barely breathing, staring at the painted wooden ceiling. He stayed like that for several hours. In his concern, Henri took the opportunity ot Dr Canno's daily visit to ask him to treat the Colonel. Lejeune sent the doctor packing.

  'My condition. Monsieur, is not the sort to be cured bv your potions'*
/>
  Henri, meanwhile, continued to take his medicine and, exposed to Lejeune's distress, he began to recover: the greater suttering of another can sometimes make one forget one's own, and often the body heals more easily than the mind. He was helped by Perigord, who had returned to take up his quarters in the pink house, and brought with him his tat valet and his silver-gilt cartridge pouch containing the essentials ot a dressing-case, from a tongue-scraper to pots ot rouge. Together Perigord and Henri sought ways to revive their friend's good humour, trying to drag him with them to the Opera and scouring the booksellers for rare editions on the Venetian painters. Perigord even bribed one of the cooks from Schonbrunn who came at night to prepare irresistible ragouts, which simmered for hours over a low heat, but Lejeune resisted them. He had lost his appetite. He didn't want music or entertainment or literature. He refused to go to taverns, to take the air in the Prater, to visit the zoo, to eat an ice at the Bastion cafe. One morning, Perigord and Henri entered his room with a resolute look on their faces.

  'My clear friend,' said Perigord, 'we are taking you to Baden.'