Seven Men of Gascony

by R. F Delderfield

  He felt curiously depressed by Nicholette’s departure. The gradual whittling down of their group, its reduction now to a mere trio, seemed to him symbolic of the process that was going on in every battalion. New faces appeared and disappeared; the old spirit of unity that had existed right up to the day when they marched out of Moscow was gone, sped on the wings of triumphs that had once been yesterday’s bivouac topic and now seemed as remote as the epic of Roncevalles.

  Across the fire Dominique still fiddled, while the recruits lay listening apathetically. The veterans cleaned their firearms, methodically still but without the conscious showmanship that had been a feature of earlier eve-of-battle scenes. It occurred to Gabriel that Dominique’s doleful tunes and Jean’s drooping moustaches were all that was left of the past, these and the eternal undertones of a hundred thousand men living in the open.

  The Grand Army was awaiting extinction.

  Soon after dawn on October 16th, 1813, the Allies attacked all along the line. Blücher, who flung himself on Mockern, saw his leading files carried away by the murderous volleys of the French, firing from behind cover. Time after time the furious Prussian infantry recoiled while Napoleon brought up the Guard, determined to break the enemy centre and snatch a victory before weight of numbers or shortage of ammunition compelled the French to withdraw over the Elster and cut their way back to the Rhine. He must have known that the effort would be useless. In spite of substantial gains during the first day’s fighting, the second found new wedges of Prussians and Austrians advancing over the ground piled with the previous day’s dead. Russian and Austrian reserves arrived by the thousand and Bernadotte’s Swedes moved up to support the hard-hit Blücher. The Emperor drew in his lines and sent Bertrand over to Weissenfels to secure the line of retreat to the Elbe.

  The French withdrew sullenly, leaving the villages they had occupied piles of smoking rubble. Jean stayed behind for a few moments to fill his haversack in a field of unripened beetroot.

  On the third day the Allies put over a quarter of a million men in the field, and the French positions on the edge of the city became untenable.

  Jean, Gabriel and Dominique fired until their muskets were too hot to hold. Conscripts lay on their backs to load for the three veterans, and no enemy came within twenty yards of the low stone wall they occupied in the garden of the elegant suburban dwelling-house to which they had retreated. Soon after noon there came a short lull broken by confused shouting to the right.

  “Maybe they’ve got through; crawl over and find out,” Jean told Gabriel, addressing him over his shoulder.

  Gabriel ran along under the garden wall and through the house to the street. He was just in time to see thousands of the Saxons who had been guarding their right wing march into the enemy skirmishing points firing their muskets in the air. The entire corps had deserted.

  He hurried back to the garden and told Jean what had occurred. The sergeant wiped the powder sweat from his forehead and slung his musket.

  “That’s good,” he grunted. “At least we know where we stand!” He addressed the staring conscripts, “Get back out of here and make for the city wall where our reserves are mustered!”

  Gabriel went after the recruits, reflecting that Jean’s comment had been made by almost every soldier in history when faced with the consequences of an ally’s desertion in the field. At least they knew where they stood! It seemed poor consolation for the loss of an army corps.

  Making for one of the town gates, they saw Nansouty’s cuirassiers ride out with the Young Guard, the last available reserves, launched with the object of remedying the Saxon desertion. Inevitably the counter-attack was beaten back, but the survivors withdrew in good order, filing through the narrow streets towards the single bridge over the Elster. As dusk fell, the Allies closed on the town, firing from the windows and roofs of houses that had been barricaded by citizens against the French, but were opened to the first Allied troops to cross the city boundaries. The confusion in the city centre was indescribable and the din hellish. Soon after sunset fighting virtually ceased, since no man had sufficient elbow-room to ply the bayonet.

  The French columns began to defile across the bridge, horse, foot, artillery and baggage, moving slowly, interminably, like a ghost of the ragged cavalcade that had recrossed the Berezina less than a year before.

  The survivors of the second company bivouacked on the eastern bank, secure for an hour or so from the advance of the enemy. Not even artillerymen firing grape could have forced a passage just then through the main streets approaching the bridge.

  Jean drew Gabriel and Dominique aside. “We’d better get out of here. Alone!”

  Gabriel listened incredulously, finding it difficult to believe that Jean was proposing to abandon the wretched conscripts and dodge away in the darkness towards the bridge. The sergeant must have divined his thoughts, for he snapped: “I told you in Russia that I wouldn’t start it all over again! These children are nothing to me. Suppose I did get them over the river? How long do you think they’d last?”

  Gabriel said nothing. Dominique slung his musket decisively.

  “Let’s move!” he said.

  They edged off into the darkness and Gabriel followed, casting a last look at the miserable little fire around which the half-dozen conscripts were trying to boil a saucepan of rice and sliced beetroot. They were working quietly and methodically in the manner taught them by Jean when they had first joined the company four months ago. Their deliberation now was pathetic, for they behaved as though they were preparing supper at home after a hard day in the fields. Behind them the ear-splitting discharges of artillery moved regularly nearer and a dull roar of despair rose from the embattled city.

  The three voltigeurs left the boulevard and crept cautiously along the river bank, heading for the column that surged around the first span of the bridge. Bomb-shells, fired from a battery in the Halle suburb, had set fire to a row of houses facing the river gardens, and in the light of the flames they saw that the mob of men between the bridge and themselves numbered several thousands, stragglers of all units. Baggage wagons abandoned by their drivers blocked the approaches and had to be manhandled into the river. It took the three men the greater part of the night to reach the bridgehead.

  At first light the tumult multiplied from the direction of the city centre, and enemy skirmishers began to infiltrate along the river bank. Stragglers from Poniatowski’s corps and Macdonald’s rearguard, left behind to cover the remainder of the army’s passage over the Elster, joined the vast press of men waiting to cross.

  About an hour after dawn, when stray shots were beginning to fall into the crowd, the voltigeurs heard a deafening explosion immediately to their front. A wave of panic seized the men around them as, within seconds, the truth became known. The engineers, alarmed by the rapid advance of Austrian and Prussian skirmishers, had blown the bridge. When the smoke cleared away Frenchmen on the town side of the river looked across the water to see a ragged gap in the centre span of the structure.

  Old Jean was unmoved.

  “We’d have done better to stay with our unit,” he grunted.

  Dominique spoke and even this disaster could not efface his habitual grin. “I was in Halle hospital once,” he said. “I used to walk up the river looking for fish. I never found any, but there’s fish there, they told us, up by the ford!”

  It was a long speech for Dominique and when he had finished he looked slightly embarrassed and glanced down at his feet. Jean swore.

  “Ford! Are you sure there’s a ford?”

  Dominique nodded.

  “How far up?”

  “Short march.”

  Jean reflected a moment, then began to bellow at the top of his voice.

  “March north to the ford! Get to the ford, all of you!”

  The men nearest Jean stopped cursing. The crowd began to surge slowly along the river bank, passing the end of the broken bridge and scattering a knot of Austrian grenadiers who had worked t
heir way round the French rearguard and appeared from the far side of the town. Progress was easier when the crowd thinned. Dominique led the way, musket at the ready, slopping through the mud at the water’s edge and scaling the network of slime-coated breakwaters and mooring posts.

  There was little or no opposition for the moment. The bulk of the enemy advance guard was still battling in the centre of the town. Word had got through to Macdonald’s companies that the bridge was blown, and they were staying on, half-crazy with rage, to fight it out in the houses of the town. So the shambling procession moved along the bank until Dominique stopped, a short distance past the second curve beyond the bridge.

  “About here,” he told Jean.

  They stared across the river and saw the tattered columns of the French moving slowly along the road parallel to the bank. Gabriel could guess what confusion existed among the men over there; but they were the lucky ones, they had at least put a river between themselves and the enemy.

  It did not look much like a ford. The river was not wide, but the current flowed swiftly. Men began to throw off their equipment and toss aside arms, and when the first few entered the water, watchers from the bank saw the water rise over their shoulders. Soon they were swept off their feet and only two strong swimmers reached the farther bank.

  The crowd behind began to curse again, while some of the stragglers who had followed the voltigeurs roundly abused Dominique.

  “It’s a good enough ford for a porpoise!”

  They moved on upstream, occasionally wading out waist deep and sounding the river bed with their muskets.

  Dominique became sulky. “I tell you I forded here, Jean,” he complained.

  “Maybe you did, in high summer,” said Jean.

  Suddenly there was a burst of firing from houses close to the river, and a body of horsemen forced their way through the indecisive crowd to the water. Gabriel recognized two of the marshals, Prince Poniatowski and the Scotsman Macdonald. Poniatowski had been wounded and was supported in his saddle by an aide-de-camp. A troop sergeant of the Polish lancers rode up to Jean.

  “How deep is the river at this point?” he demanded.

  Jean shrugged. “My comrade here says there is a ford, but several men have been drowned trying to cross.”

  “It’s either that or the Prussian bayonets,” said the lancer, turning back to the two marshals. After a moment’s deliberation the group moved forward, coaxing their exhausted horses into the stream. At the same instant volley-firing commenced from the houses about half a musket shot along the embankment, scattering the fugitives between the river and the town in all directions. The horsemen bunched into the stream, the two marshals and their staff in the lead. Jean chewed his moustache for a moment, glancing upstream and then towards the town. He made a rapid decision.

  “Into the water, both of you, and get hold of a tail!”

  The three of them plunged into the current. Several of the horses, terrified by the uproar immediately behind them, reared in the shallows, resisting the shouts and spurs of their riders. The three voltigeurs seized a tail apiece, other infantrymen followed their example, and the struggling mass blundered forward. Jean and Gabriel were lucky in their choice. Their horses fought the current to midstream, then settled down to swim diagonally across. Dominique’s horse floundered and lost way, but the farm boy hung on, turning and twisting in an effort to dodge the thrashing hooves. Its rider lost his seat half-way across, and, freed of his weight, the horse quickly recovered, breasted the flow and finally struggled up on the far bank. Dominique staggered clear of the shallows before collapsing. He had been kicked twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest. He lay on his face in the ooze, and a party of dragoons who had forded the river lower down dragged him up the bank, hailing Jean as the sergeant waded ashore.

  About half the Poles had succeeded in crossing, but among the missing was Marshal Poniatowski. His aide-de-camp cantered about in a distracted manner, while Marshal Macdonald collected a party and rode off downstream in an effort to recover the body. Over on the other side the fugitives had disappeared, but Austrian skirmishers were standing on the embankment taking potshots at swimmers. Jean saw them as he ran over to Dominique.

  “Look at those bastards,” he shouted. “They’ve run away from us forty times since Lodi!”

  On the French side the confusion was scarcely less than in the town. Men of all units scrambled up to the road and joined the rabble pressing westward. Here and there a field officer stood on the bank, trying to infuse some sort of order into the retreat, but all such attempts were hopeless. Three days’ continuous fighting and the pitiless slaughter in the town had demoralized the battalions; their one thought was to put distance between themselves and the Prussians. A new note had entered the war since the resumption of hostilities. With the whole of Europe now on their side, the Prussians were determined to make it a war of extermination. They hated better than the Austrians and the Russians, and the poet Körner’s songs were showing grim dividends.

  They found Dominique where the dragoons had left him. He was unconscious, blue in the face. Jean forced some brandy down his throat, and the farm boy’s eyelids fluttered. He looked up at them stupidly, unable to speak.

  They stripped him and examined the huge purple bruise on the right side of his chest. Probing cautiously, Jean’s thick fingers found a displaced rib. Dominique began to shiver violently, and the movement seemed to cause him intense pain. Blood flowed freely from the gash on his shoulder, but Gabriel saw that this was a mere flesh wound; the injuries meant that Dominique would be unable to march.

  Old Jean began to fume again. He cursed the medical orderlies for never being where their services were in demand, cursed the engineers for blowing the bridge so precipitately, abandoning a third of the army to the enemy’s bayonets, and cursed Nicholette for driving off with a dead man when her wagon would have been of inestimable service to the living. Gabriel had never seen him in this mood before. Throughout all the disasters of the Peninsular and Russian campaigns he could not once remember the old sergeant losing his temper and that characteristic sense of balance which made him such an efficient N.C.O. He bent down and dressed Dominique as gently as he could. They had no bandages, no salves, no hope of getting the man on his feet to continue the march towards Erfurt.

  Gabriel went up to the road and watched the rout. He had been there nearly an hour before a small convoy of wagons lurched past. He approached them hopefully, but a glance showed him that the interiors were already crammed with wounded of all ranks. The drivers looked neither left nor right, but sullenly flogged their horses through the press. At each jolt screams came from the men under the canopies.

  Presently a riderless horse struggled up the bank. Gabriel saw from its saddle-cloth and beaded holsters that it had belonged to a cuirassier unit, probably Nansouty’s, which had made the futile charge after the Saxon desertion the previous day. He caught it listlessly and led it over to Jean, who was plying Dominique with more brandy. The injured man tried to rise, but fell back with a sharp yelp of agony, clutching at his side.

  “It’s his ribs,” said Jean, more calmly. “He’d be all right if he could lie up for a week or two.”

  “There’s a farm higher up,” said Gabriel. “Maybe we could find a cart or something.”

  “Stay here and watch him,” muttered Jean. “I’ll take the horse!”

  A doubt pricked Gabriel like the point of a dart. Two days ago the possibility of Jean taking the horse and moving off down the road by himself would have been absurd, but now it was different. Jean’s conscripts were still somewhere on the other side of the river, most likely dead round the ruins of their fire, at best prisoners being herded in batches through the reeking streets.

  The doubt passed and Gabriel felt as though he had been caught out in a schoolboy lie. Jean swung himself into the saddle, trotting off towards a group of buildings on the far side of the road. An hour later he returned, towing a two-wheeled cart
of the type used by German farmers for the transport of pigs and manure.

  It was an ungainly little vehicle with solid wheels. Gabriel thought that it looked like one of those war chariots used by the barbarians against Roman legions. He had seen a crude illustration of one in an old pictorial history that Nicholas had found among the books in the doctor’s house at Moscow. The cart had no springs, its axle creaked monotonously, but it nevertheless seemed to be the means of restoring Jean’s confidence in himself. He bustled about making a litter and wedging it against the unplaned sides of the chariot. When this was done he checked the rope harness; then, between them, he and Gabriel lifted Dominique onto the stretcher. They joined the stream of fugitives with their faces towards Erfurt, Jean leading the horse, Gabriel marching in the rear, trying to keep his eyes from the contorted features of Dominique whenever the wheels crunched over a pitted section of road. There were many pits. The Saxons had not been greatly interested in road-making.

  The beaten army trailed across the territory of its former ally, the King of Saxony, rallying somewhat at Markrundstadt before traversing the field of Lützen. No effort was spared by the marshals to help forward the process of reorganization. Macdonald, with a fresh uniform and a borrowed charger, galloped up and down the line of retreat promising rest and refit in Erfurt. They crossed the Saale at Weissenfels and crawled towards the arsenals of the Elbe, where the grumblers were disappointed for once. There were clothing, rations and ammunition in abundance, enough for an army of two hundred thousand.

  Dominique did not get as far as Erfurt. For five days he lay groaning in the chariot while they pushed on, Jean beating off all stragglers who attempted to board the vehicle. Perhaps Jean’s diagnosis had been correct and Dominique’s injuries were limited to a cut on the shoulder and a couple of broken ribs; or perhaps the blow of the iron-shod hoof had caused a more serious internal injury. Gabriel never knew the truth, but marched stolidly along behind the cart and watched the farm boy grow weaker each day. His rational periods became rarer and by the time they trundled into Weissenfels they had ceased altogether.