It was a two hour ride to Ney’s country house at Coudreaux, east of Paris. At least it was if you knew where you were going. By the time I had got a horse and ridden outside the city it was mid-afternoon. I had to ask for directions three times before I found myself trotting down the gravel drive and by then it was dusk. I had considered a myriad of plots and schemes that could have been underway while I rode, although I never contemplated what had happened as that would have been too ridiculous. I had also wondered what would serve Britain’s cause. Perhaps things would be better for the allies if Ney stayed at home. But without knowing what was afoot it was hard to judge and Ney seemed a steadying influence. He had said he would do what was best for France and a peaceful and stable France was in Britain’s best interests.
I rapped on the front door and it was pulled open by a footman who had the bearing of an old soldier written all over him. Mind you, he can’t have been a lucky trooper for as he stood back and invited me to enter I saw that he had lost his right arm and his left leg ended in a wooden peg. Seeing that I was an army colonel he was already saluting with his remaining arm as he enquired, “Good evening, sir, is the marshal expecting you?”
As I stepped into the house I saw a young boy standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was about the same age as my Thomas, but dressed in a perfect miniature of a French lieutenant’s uniform. He was throwing me a salute as well, aping the mannerisms of the old trooper now closing the door. The boy must have been one of Ney’s sons and so I brought myself smartly to attention and returned his salute with a grin and a wink as I replied to the doorman. “No, but I must see the marshal urgently.”
But before the old retainer had had the chance to make a move, a door to my right opened. Ney himself strolled out wearing some patched britches and what looked like a thick woollen smock over an old shirt.
“Michel,” he called to the boy, “I thought I told you to go to bed... Colonel Moreau, what on earth are you doing here?” The marshal did not look pleased to see me and waved again at the boy, who scampered away up the stairs.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice came from the room Ney had just left.
“It is one of my staff officers,” replied Ney over his shoulder before adding, “he will not be staying long.”
“Nonsense,” called out the woman. “You cannot send him back to Paris now, it is dark. He must join us for dinner.”
Ney growled a noise over his shoulder that could just be taken for assent. Then he turned back to me. “Well, what is it? Has Clarke sent you to check up on me? You should know better than to disturb me with my family.”
“My apologies, sir, but I come from Marshal Soult. He has asked me to bring you straight away to him about a matter of the utmost importance.”
“So what is going on? Surely you know.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t. But something is happening. There were a lot of senior officers in the War Ministry for a Sunday. Soult was very clear that I should ride straight to you and bring you directly back to him without talking to anyone else on the way.”
Ney gave another growl of annoyance. “It will be those bloody Orleanists getting them excited again. Soult never can resist playing politics, the damn fool.”
“I am not so sure, sir. There were several generals in Soult’s office, including Souham, and they looked scared rather than excited. Are we going to leave now, Marshal? Should you explain to your wife?”
“You have not met my wife, have you?” asked Ney with a grin. “No, we will leave in the morning and there is no need to tell her anything of this. I have just been summoned to an urgent staff meeting, do you understand?”
I agreed and was shown into the drawing room to meet his wife. From his comment I had expected a formidable woman, but she was most welcoming, giving me a seat by the fire to get warm after my ride and chattering gaily about her family. The marshal, though, was lost in thought and did not join the conversation. He slumped down in a chair on the other side of the hearth and stared moodily into the flames. At one point he looked up and asked, “Who else was in Soult’s office when you were there?”
“They were all senior officers but I only recognised Souham,” I told him. I am sure his wife missed nothing as she kept glancing across at him with a look of concern, but she left her husband with his thoughts and continued to prattle on to me.
The next morning the one-armed valet woke me just before dawn to advise that the marshal would be leaving as soon as it was light. I met Ney in the hall a short while later, he was still dressed in civilian clothes.
“Well let’s get going and find out what this nonsense is about,” he said briskly. “I am calling at my Paris house for my uniform. I am also seeing my attorney there, he should know if any plots are afoot. I am not walking into a meeting with Soult unprepared.” In a few minutes we were mounted up and riding hard back to the city. With hardly anybody on the roads it seemed like no time at all before we were back in the capital. I looked anxiously about, but there was no sign of any insurrection. No barricades, no smoke from fires. If anything it was too quiet, with few people on the move for the start of the week. Our horses were soon trotting up the cobbles of the Rue de Bourbon where Ney had his town house. The marshal went to get changed while I waited in the salon eating a boiled egg and a bread roll, which was all the breakfast the elderly housekeeper could provide at short notice. Her husband had been sent off to fetch the attorney and no sooner was Ney back downstairs than the man was hammering at the door for admittance.
The little lawyer was bursting with excitement as he was shown into the room, “What extraordinary news, Marshal.”
“What news?” asked the marshal impatiently. “Do you know what is going on? For my aide doesn’t,” he added gesturing at me.
“You don’t know? Why Bonaparte has landed near Cannes to retake the country. The king’s brother is already heading south to arrest him. It is all in the Moniteur this morning.”
There was a stifled sound of someone half choking on boiled egg before Ney gasped out “What!” and sank down on a chair. There were those afterwards who swore that Ney was in league with Bonaparte from the start, but I for one can confirm that he wasn’t. The man looked as stunned as a beaten prize-fighter. He wasn’t the only one, as I thought it could not possibly be true. Bonaparte had been beaten and humiliated, forced to abdicate and driven to obscurity. It had to be a false rumour, but no, for the little lawyer was waving a copy of a newspaper in front of Ney’s face to show him.
“But that is madness,” the marshal murmured as he read. “He has no army and no support. The bloody fool, why couldn’t he have stayed where he was? He could have lived with respect and honour, but now this...”
He looked distraught. The emperor’s departure from his little kingdom of Elba seemed the ultimate folly. It was doomed to failure. As the little lawyer pointed out in the report from the Moniteur, already his advance party had been arrested in Antibes and he had been forced to flee into the hills to escape the wrath of the loyal populace of the Provence region. It was absurd to think that the allies would ever accept Bonaparte back on the throne of France.
“He must be stopped,” said Ney decisively and then he looked at me. “It is time that we met Soult.”
Chapter 10
I tried to look grim as we rode to the ministry, but I could not share the marshal’s grief. While I have been present at many historic moments, you often did not appreciate their importance at the time. Usually you are simply struggling to survive. Here was one momentous event that I was right at the heart of. For there was no doubt that this would be a time that people would talk of for years to come. I had met Bonaparte once before in ‘02, when he was at the height of his power. He had stood astride my time like Caesar or Alexander, dominating Europe and influencing the whole world. And like Caesar, he seemed oblivious of the fact that his time had come to an end.
Now as a British agent I would have a ringside seat at his downfall. I would be able t
o spy on what would be a national tragedy for France, as it brought down its Corsican demon once and for all. I did not need to go to the embassy for instructions, for I knew that they would want me to stick to Ney like a hungry limpet. What a diplomatic coup it would be for me. Why, I would be famous, the man who was there at the end of Napoleon, a modern day Brutus. That was, of course, assuming that some angry frog mob had not lynched the bastard before we got there. No, he had nearly a thousand men with him; it would be down to a stalwart regiment or two to stop him. Ney leading his men forward, with Flashy encouraging them on – from the rear, if I had anything to do with it. It would be a capital victory and if I did not end up with a British knighthood, well there would be no justice.
Now that we understood what was going on, the near empty streets made more sense. It was as though the whole city had woken up to the news and was now holding its breath to see what would happen next. There were no public shows of support for either the former emperor or the king. The few people we saw were just scurrying about their business. A number recognised Ney riding in his marshal’s uniform. Most now avoided his eye and hurried away, but a few watched him with suspicion, no doubt wondering where his loyalties now stood.
We rode in silence for a while and then Ney looked at me curiously. “Do you not have to report what is happening to Clarke or the British?” It was the first time he had mentioned my link with the British embassy since the day we first met. It unsettled me for I had begun to convince myself that I had been accepted as a French officer. But Ney only knew that I reported to the embassy; he had no cause to suspect that I was, in fact, a former British officer.
“No sir, I imagine that they are reading the papers as well as us.” Then for sauce I gestured to a baker who was hurrying into his shop as we approached. “Do you think they are wondering if you will declare for the king or the emperor?”
He stiffened at that and growled, “They should know that I will always declare for France.”
If the streets were nearly empty, the War Ministry was not. It resembled a kicked ants’ nest as officers and attendants hurried about with orders and maps and occasionally shouted to each other about the whereabouts of units and their commanders. Bonaparte might only have landed from Elba with the five hundred men of his Old Guard and a similar number of cavalry that he was allowed to keep, but no one could accuse the War Ministry of not taking the threat seriously. As Ney swept through the throng I saw people nudging each other and pointing in his direction. He was a rare visitor and if anything his presence served to highlight the importance of the situation. Soult welcomed us into his office, appearing tired and dishevelled as though he had been in the room ever since I had last seen him.
“It is good to see you,” he said to Ney, shaking him warmly by the hand. Then the minister turned to me and indicated I should take a seat, gesturing to chair in front of his desk. “I need to speak to the marshal in private,” he told me.
There was a small balcony in Soult’s office overlooking the city and the minister led Ney onto it, shutting the glass doors behind them. For a moment the two old campaigners, in their best dress uniforms stood silently staring out over the capital and its people that they had fought so long for. Then I saw Soult start to talk in urgent tones. This was one conversation I wanted to listen in on. The window next to the balcony was open a few inches and I moved swiftly towards it. Crouching down on the window seat, I put my ear to the gap and was just in time to hear Ney say, “If that is what you think you must do. But you know he must be stopped and it would be better if one of us did it.”
“I agree,” said Soult wearily. “You are right, it has to be done. The Duc de Berry is planning to ride south to Besançon. I’ll not see that royal popinjay claim the credit for capturing him. The sixth military division covers the area, but he will have no idea how to organise it. I will give you command. The men will be more confident with you in charge and you can make sure that the matter is handled properly.”
“The duke is better than most of them,” grumbled Ney. “He has at least seen a battle, if only from amongst the staff. But I agree, the men will have more confidence in me and we need to finish this quickly.” He paused for a moment or two before adding, “I will leave as soon as I have seen the king.”
“The king,” replied Soult sounding surprised. “What do you want to see him for? He is ill and not seeing anyone at the moment.” There was another pause and then Soult continued, “I think my news unsettled him. He probably thinks we are all suspect now.”
“Yes,” agreed Ney, “and that is why I must see him.” They started to wish each other good luck then and I realised that they were about to come back in. I sprang away from the window to lounge back in my original chair, picking up a magazine to pretend I had been reading it all along. They took a few moments longer to emerge from the balcony than I expected and I spent the time studying this extraordinary publication. It was a cross between a court journal and one of our sporting papers. The front page carried a feature on what the well-dressed royalist should wear when hunting on his reclaimed estate. So help me it absolutely recommended a powdered wig for hunting, as though the last thirty years had not existed.
Ney came in alone, leaving Soult still with his thoughts on the balcony. I sprang up like the attentive staff officer, but Ney barely noticed. “We are going to the Tuileries Palace,” he murmured as he strode towards the door.
The royal court was just a short walk away, but as Soult had predicted, seeing the king was not going to prove easy. He was rarely seen in public and in all my time in Paris my only visions of him had been in very unflattering cartoons which gave him the dimensions of a plum pudding. There was also a famous portrait which had been exhibited, showing him picking up a bare-breasted female figure that was meant to represent a fallen France. I remembered the painting well as it appeared to me that instead of picking the girl up he was reaching down to fondle her right tit.
This being my first visit to the palace, I hoped that I might finally get the chance to meet the royal dumpling, but it seemed not to be. After waiting for over an hour, while watching Ney pace up and down in an anteroom, he sent me away to try to find de Briqueville. I spent three hours searching all of his favourite haunts, even checking on a general’s daughter that I knew he had been tupping on the side, but there was no sign of him. I returned to the palace to find Ney still pacing in the anteroom.
“Are you still waiting, sir?” I found myself blurting out the obvious.
He ignored my question. “Did you find de Briqueville?”
“No sir, he is not at home or at any of his usual places.”
“Mmm, General Dupré mentioned that he had been paying court to his youngest daughter. The blackguard wanted me to warn de Briqueville off as not good enough for his precious Persephone.” Ney grunted in amusement before adding, “This from a man who started out as a butcher’s boy. You don’t think he could be with her, do you?”
“I know he is not, sir,” I replied looking the marshal in the eye.
“Very good. Well I have told them that I am not leaving until I have seen the king and so you had better get comfortable, it might be a while yet.”
We waited an hour together with me stretched out on a bench seat reading some periodicals about court life that had been left on a table for visitors. Ney spent most of this time pacing slowly up and down the room, lost in thought. Twice flunkeys came in and whispered to him about delays. They were trying to get us to return the next day, but I saw the marshal vigorously shaking his head at the suggestion. Eventually some bewigged steward in a coat dripping in gold braid arrived to show us into the royal presence. We entered an audience chamber, but there was no sign of the king. At one end was a curious pyramid of cloth with a few courtiers loitering nearby and there were several other groups of the nobility gathered in huddles around the room talking among themselves. It was certainly a grand place with gilt decoration everywhere you looked and silk fleur de lys, the royal
symbol, sewn every few feet on the carpet. I expected our steward to lead us through this chamber to another smaller room to meet the king, but instead he guided us to the cloth pyramid.
I have seen some astonishing sights in my time, but that one stays long in the memory for it was so unexpected. There we were, striding across that grand hall and then the steward was gesturing for us to stop and I was vaguely aware of Ney starting to bow. I was still gazing around for sight of the king when some movement caught my eye. I realised with a start that there was a head at the pinnacle of the pyramid. It was a huge fat head with flabby jowls under the chin and dark, pig-like eyes that were staring at me with curiosity. I still did not quite understand what I was seeing until a fat bejewelled hand appeared through a fold in the middle of the cloth and at last the penny dropped.
The king was sitting on a large throne raised up on steps several feet above the floor. What I had taken as a triangle of cloth was a long cloak that had been artfully draped around the monarch to disguise his immense girth. But as he now moved I caught a glimpse of the vast bulk underneath. Rarely can fabric and fastenings have been put under greater strain. The silver buttons on his waistcoat could have had one of our eyes out if he had sneezed. I saw now that the painting I had seen of him fondling the tit of Madame France had been a monstrous flattery. Indeed, what I had taken as cruel cartoons in the news sheets could actually have underestimated the reality of the situation.
Flashman's Waterloo (Adventures of Thomas Flashman Book 6) Page 8
