The museum was born of the scandalous pillaging of artworks from the countries vanquished by the republican and imperial armies, but nevertheless the result was fabulous. It was based on two principles. The first was the republican idea that art must be available for the public to see. The message was that the possessions of the aristocracy were being redistributed to the people, not physically, for that would have been to cause further inequalities, but visually, in public museums. In 1801 the Directory had created them all over the country and others had appeared later. The second principle was that art should be used as propaganda. Napoleon was adept at this - he liked to exhibit ‘trophies’ taken
from the enemy. And he had renamed the French Museum or Central Museum of the Republic, the Napoleon Museum.
It made Margont smile to think that Napoleon’s religious marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria had taken place not in Notre-Dame but in the Louvre, in the large square hall, which had been transformed for the occasion into a chapel. In republican and imperial France, museums were the new cathedrals.
Fie went past the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which adorned the square between the Tuileries Palace and the Louvre. It had been erected to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty between France and England at Amiens in 1802. Alas, in the years following the treaty the English and French fought more often than ever. They confronted each other all over the world: in Europe, in the colonies, on the seas ... They would even have fought under the seas, had someone succeeded in realising the crazy plan of the tunnel under the Channel. The only real product of the treaty of Amiens, as it turned out, was the impressive Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel.
The museum was not open, but Margont slipped one of the attendants a good tip to open it for him. Again, Margont was stupefied to see that Paris continued to live almost normally.
He began to walk through galleries of indescribable opulence. He wandered slowly, sometimes hurrying towards a work, then turning back to see another one. He was immersing himself in the labyrinth of art, freeing his mind of rigorous classifications and didactic organisation and allowing his subjectivity to direct him like Ariadne’s thread. Around him satyrs chased nymphs; he was disconcerted by the beauty of a Venus, aroused by the erotic pose of another; Eros sat astride a centaur; Diana received the allegiance of stags and does in a clearing; gladiators slaughtered each other; the draping of togas and robes was so realistic he fully expected to see their stone folds stirring in the breeze; a marble Cupid gently gathered up a butterfly; the paintings were exuberant with here an azure sky filled with cherubs, there a ferocious evocation of a medieval battle; there were the subtle contrasts of chiaroscuros and the seductive charms of Mademoiselle Caroline
Riviere painted by Ingres; the flamboyant depictions of Ancient Rome, bright with colour and movement, contrasted with the calm intimacy of the Three Graces, naked and taken by surprise by the unwelcome spectator. Margont was surrounded by Raphael, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, Correggio, Veronese, Poussin, David, the Van Eyck brothers. He was drunk on beauty. Then he arrived in front of the Mona Lisa. Yes, if the world were about to be destroyed, he would be quite content to die contemplating that smile.
As he was roaming about in that fashion, he was struck by one particular work, an ancient mosaic imported from Italy. He had never heard of it, and its position in the museum, stuck in the corner of one of the galleries, indicated that Dominique Vivant De-non, the director of the museum and the mastermind behind this ‘Louvre of all the conquests’, knew little more. But what emotion! Margont was overcome by vertigo. The large mosaic fragment represented the face of a woman. Why did he find her so haunting? Her beauty upset him. He reflected that at that very moment, his friend Fernand was in the arms of his lover, whilst here he was with a two-thousand-year-old beauty made of pieces of coloured stone ... His thoughts darkened further. A Prussian cannonball might very well blow him to smithereens in a few hours, turning him into a mosaic of flesh ...
He still could not tear himself away from that face. He stretched out a hand and brushed her cheek; he was enraptured. The woman seemed to be trying to tell him something. His gaze moved from tessera to tessera, taking in the whole picture, then focusing on a single detail. Sometimes he saw a Roman beauty, sometimes all he saw were little fragments of colour. He was reminded of the investigation. Each clue and each of his deductions was like one of those tesserae. And piecing them together in the right order would reveal the whole picture in all its clarity. He had understood everything! Everything fitted, everything made sense! He kept repeating that to himself, but the woman seemed to be murmuring, ‘Not exactly ...’
He decided to embark on a sort of exercise. He would go once
more through all the elements of the inquiry, treating each like a piece of mosaic and building a complete solution.
As he did this, he was able to clear up a few little mysteries without it altering the overall picture. Varencourt had stolen documents about the defence of Paris from Colonel Berle’s house to confuse investigators about the motives for the murder. He hadn’t used curare to kill Berle, because he didn’t yet have any. He had procured it later, thanks to the contacts of the secret society and used it to kill Count Kevlokine in a sort of run-through before attempting to murder the Emperor with it. Varencourt had not imagined that the investigator would call on a doctor for help, still less that the doctor in question would be brilliant enough to be able to discover the true cause of death. People were supposed to assume that Kevlokine’s heart had not been able to stand the pain of the burns. Varencourt was extremely intelligent, but he did sometimes underestimate his enemies. None of this changed Margont’s initial conclusions.
But there were two little mysteries that did not fit. First, why did
Charles de Varencourt not burn Count Kevlokine’s face as he had burnt Colonel Berle’s? And secondly, why had he left the Swords of the King emblem on the second corpse, if his motivation was vengeance for the fire of Moscow? Margont was annoyed. The two details were like tesserae left over after he had completed the mosaic! He had been so happy, so proud that he had been able to unmask his adversaries. But now there were these two annoying grains of sand. He would almost have liked to sweep them under the carpet ...
A memory came to him. He loved to talk medicine with Jean-Quenin. One day he had asked him what, in his opinion, was the hardest thing to learn in his field. Margont had been prepared for anything - complicated anatomical drawings bristling with Latin terms, or exotic illness, pharmacology - except for the response he received. Jean-Quenin had said, The hardest thing is having the modesty and courage to reconsider a diagnosis.’ Now Margont finally understood what his friend had meant.
He remembered that Pinel had confirmed that the question of which part of the body had been burnt should not be overlooked. He mentally swept away the old mosaic and started again with the two surplus tesserae, which he placed in the middle of the new picture. But he was incapable of fitting the other elements round them.
The Roman lady continued to smile at him, relishing her unalterable beauty. Meanwhile, Margont now felt more fragmented than she was.
CHAPTER 42
ON 29 March, Napoleon rose at two in the morning. The French army set off on a frenzied march.
But it was not fast enough to worry the Allies, so the Emperor decided he needed to take more dramatic risks. He sent an advance guard of only a thousand cavalry commanded by General Guyot. The rest of the army would follow as quickly as possible. It was important for the French to show themselves, to appear with a great fanfare behind the enemy. Their only hope was to play on the fear that Napoleon inspired and to fool the enemy into thinking that he would suddenly materialise with all his troops.
That day Parisians were alarmed to watch Empress Marie-Louise and her son, the King of Rome, leaving Paris for Blois, escorted by two thousand soldiers.
The evening before, Joseph Bonaparte had convened the regency council to decide whether the Empress should
leave or stay.
Talleyrand had proposed that the Empress and her son remain in Paris, and most of the council agreed. Marie-Louise herself wanted to stay. But Joseph produced a letter from Napoleon dated 6 March in which he ordered that his wife and son should be helped to leave Paris if the city were menaced. The order was intended to ensure that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy. Everyone agreed to obey Napoleon’s injunction, which also included a number of dignitaries, ministers and members of the Senate. Joseph hoped to lessen the impact of the Empress’s departure by having a proclamation posted all over Paris stating that he would be staying. But all that did was give rise to a little ditty:
Great Kingjoseph wan and pale
Stayed behind to save us all
But if this plan of his should fail
Rest assured he’ll save himself!
Marshals Marmont and Mortier arrived on the outskirts of the capital and immediately positioned their twelve thousand men to protect the city.
The Allies, on their side, were organising their multitudes of combatants. Troops were dispatched to occupy various strategic points, others were held back to support the troops in front or to await Napoleon’s arrival. The attack on Paris was to be led by thirty-five thousand men split into three giant columns, which would descend on Paris like three Titans. The Allies expected little resistance, but they were nevertheless going to throw all their available resources into the battle. They wanted to conquer Paris as quickly as possible.
The Allied regiments rejoiced as they arrived in sight of the capital. Thousands of voices could be heard crying, ‘Paris! Paris!’ as the soldiers brandished rifles and sabres.
CHAPTER 43
On the morning of 30 March the call to arms went out across the faubourgs of Paris. The semi-circular French front extended across ten miles, constituting the external line of defence on the outskirts of the capital. It was organised in two sections with Marshal Mortier commanding the left flank to the west and Marshal Marmont the right flank to the east. Joseph Bonaparte positioned himself in the centre.
They had rallied as many troops as humanly possible: regular soldiers, trainee soldiers, National Guardsmen, policemen, students, firemen from Paris, firemen from the Imperial Guard, volunteers in civilian clothes, invalided soldiers, old veterans ... There were forty-five thousand combatants in all. But a great number of them had never fought. Only twenty-one thousand were deployed on the defensive exterior line. The others were garrisoned in Paris.
Their only chance of winning was to hold firm until Napoleon exploded behind the Allies, sowing chaos and horror. When that
happened the monumental coalition would find itself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea and would hopefully suffer a cataclysmic defeat.
The Allies had fully understood that and had decided to launch their assault even before they were properly deployed.
At six in the morning, from the heights of la Villette, Marshal Mortier gave the order to fire the first cannon shot. The Battle of Paris was launched.
Joseph Bonaparte had established his headquarters at the top of Montmartre. He was confident simply because he was not aware of the enormity of their situation. He had been told on the 26th that Napoleon had won a victory at Saint-Dizier and so had deduced that the Allies’ act of daring was nothing but a flash in the pan. He believed that his brother was forcing the enemy to retreat and that only a few isolated army corps would appear at the gates of Paris. He could hear cannon fire from the right, where Marmont was stationed. But no one was threatening Montmartre for the
moment.
The hill had been well fortified with ditches, palisades and earth bulwarks, and was equipped with seven cannons operated by sixty artillerymen. The infantry force defending these entrenchments was made up of two hundred and fifty firemen of the Imperial Guard.
Some troops had been positioned in front of them, including some of the 2nd Legion of the National Guard. Saber was there in his grand ‘commanding colonel of the legion’ uniform. He was furious because he had only been able to bring with him some of his troops. Only six thousand soldiers of the National Guard had been allocated to the exterior defence of Paris. The others had stayed inside Paris, to maintain order there and to bolster the interior defence at the barriers (which were just palisades in front of the gates of Paris, used to prevent people from evading the payment of border taxes). Saber deployed his soldiers as skirmishers in the vineyards, the meadows and the gardens.
‘We’re protecting a key position!’ he repeated. ‘No one can seize
Paris without first taking Montmartre. If you retreat, Paris will be lost! If you stand firm until the Emperor gets here, Paris will be saved! It’s quite simple - Paris is depending on you!’
He assumed an air of great assurance. ‘Make each tree, each hole, a bastion!’
He marched past his own positions, and began to inspect the line next to his. Margont, embarrassed, covered his face with his hand. How like Irenee! He had been a colonel for less than three months and here he was behaving like the general in charge of the whole battlefield. But there were so few experienced officers about that even soldiers not under his command listened to him, saluted him and exclaimed, ‘Long live Colonel Saber!’
Lefine and Piquebois organised their own entrenchment. They had felled a poplar and pruned its branches. Their men imitated them and trees were falling all around them.
This should have been done two weeks ago!’ fumed Lefine. Margont looked to the right. The din of the fighting over there was getting louder and louder...
On the right flank, an hour before sunrise, Marshal Marmont launched an audacious attack on the enemy. He wanted to take back the plateau of Romainville, which had been evacuated the night before. To this end he had led part of his troops to assault the plain. He had grossly underestimated the number of enemy forces but fortunately the enemy had also grossly overestimated the strength of his and had withdrawn into the village. So paradoxically, in this sector the fighting began with a spectacular French victory.
But the Allies had continued with their deployment and, having mobilised reinforcements, now attacked the French right flank from all sides.
On the left flank, the Allies were already a little behind with their battle plan, since it was incredibly complex to organise such a vast quantity of troops. But they now prepared to launch a blistering attack on the heights of la Villette.
By ten o’clock the battle was intensifying everywhere. From the top of Montmartre the enemy troops could be seen arriving from the north, still quite far away, level with Bourget. The mass of soldiers swelled bigger and bigger as they drew nearer. It looked like one division - no, it was a few divisions ... One army corps. No, perhaps it was two ... No, it wasn’t, it was several corps ...
Joseph finally grasped the appalling reality. Wherever he pointed his telescope, he saw the enemy. The town of Saint-Denis was surrounded and thousands of skirmishers were invading the plain in front of him like swarms of grasshoppers. Joseph became increasingly anxious. A messenger brought him a note from the Tsar inviting him, somewhat menacingly, to negotiate. He decided to return to Paris with some of his closest advisers.
‘Where’s he going?’ asked Margont.
‘Perhaps where the situation is critical?’ hazarded Piquebois.
Saber snorted. ‘There’s only one place Joseph should be and that’s at the top of Montmartre, which is the cornerstone of our centre. And that’s why he’s fled. So there we have it. The defence of Paris has just been made leaderless right in front of our eyes.
Now well all have to manage as best we can.’
At Chateau des Brouillards Joseph had a brief consultation with his defence council, which included General Clarke, Minister for War, and General Hulin, Governor of Paris. He showed them the Tsar’s letter. The council decided to call a halt to the fighting. Joseph sent a message to Marshal Marmont to inform him that he was authorised to enter into talks with the Allies.
Fabvier went to the top of Montmartre in search of Joseph. When he could not be found there, Fabvier turned round and set off to look for him, but he failed, because Joseph was already galloping off to Saint-Cloud.
Marshal Marmont decided to go on fighting.
The hours passed and the French continued to resist doggedly. The situation was, however, deteriorating for them.
The right flank was being steadily pushed back.
The defence of the village of Montreuil had collapsed under the combined bombardment of the Russian Guard, the Prussian Guard and the Baden Guard.
The village of Pantin had been taken and was still in the hands of the Russians and the Prussians, despite the frenzied attacks of General Curial, who was trying to take it back.
The Russians and Prussians had also taken over the gardens of Romainville and had immediately stationed a battery there, which bombarded the French to keep them back. General Raevski, the hero of the defence of the Great Redoubt during the Battle of Borodino, had sent a division of grenadiers to meet Marshal Marmont, who was leading a counterattack in the hope of retaking the
plain, and managed to force him back.
Marmont had fallen back to Le Pre-Saint-Gervais and alternated between counterattacking and defending.
Wurtemberger and Austrian troops reinforced by Russian cavalry were pressing round to the south-east to see whether they could get round the French line. The Chateau of Vincennes, firmly held by General Daumesnil and well served by large-calibre cannons, represented a significant obstacle. But they skirted round it and gained control of Saint-Maur, Charenton and Bercy. Pahlen’s Russian cavalry — hussars, uhlans, dragoons and Cossacks — tried to get past Marshal Marmont but were stopped by twenty-eight cannons, manned by students, backed up by National Guardsmen, a few policemen, dragoons and cuirassiers.
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