Allied reinforcements continued to flow in from all sides, like bees coming to cluster around each French position.
The French left wing was also severely buffeted.
After violent fighting, the village of Aubervilliers was taken by the Russians under General Langeron, a French aristocrat who had
joined the Russian army shortly after the Revolution.
The villages of la Villette and la Chapelle had resisted for hours, under a deluge of artillery fire. But they had finally succumbed to the incessant attacks of Generals Kleist, Yorck and Woronzow. Cossacks, sent out as scouts, reached the Bois de Boulogne looking for the breach that would allow the Allies to get round Marshal Mortier and attack him from behind.
General Langeron had been slowed down for hours, partly because of the unforeseen and energetic resistance of Savarin and his eight hundred men in the town of Saint-Denis. Six thousand Russians had been held in check and their general, Kapzevich, had finally informed Langeron that it would be impossible for him to take Saint-Denis. Langeron had to come to terms with this unexpected problem. And now that the previous points of resistance of Aubervilliers, la Villette and la Chapelle had been annihilated, he could focus all his attention on the principal objective: Montmartre.
Leaume had asked all his members to a meeting. But only fifteen of them had turned up. Out of forty! They would all willingly show up to talk and quibble, to squabble and criticise. But now that it was time to take action ...
Vicomte de Leaume and the members who had responded to his call set about trying to alarm the Parisians. They went to the gates of the city where volunteers in civilian clothes asked the National Guard to provide them with arms. They mingled with the volunteers as if they were on their side and tried to demoralise them by harping on the dangers. ‘We’re going to have to get a move on; it’s ten of them for every one of us. If we delay any longer, all will be lost!’ ‘What, no rifles for us? How are we going to fight? We might as well open the gates to the Prussians straight away!’ ‘Hear that din? That’s the Allies coming to get us!’ After a while the others started to look at them suspiciously. Time to slip away, saying that they would try to find arms elsewhere ... Royalists from other groups were operating the same tactics at other gates.
Honoré de Nolant was satisfied with their strategy. Varencourt -who had regained the confidence of the group when it was discovered, as they fled, that the police were not surrounding the treasure-trove - had removed the bullet that Margont’s sidekick had lodged in his arm. Nolant, however, was still in pain and felt that he had already taken his fair share of gunfire.
But Leaume and Chatel wanted to do far more. They abandoned Honoré de Nolant, who complained that he was weakened by his wound and that he couldn’t walk any further, and took the rest of the men and armed them with pistols and swords from one of their secret caches. When they went out onto the streets again, they were all sporting the cockades, white scarves and emblems of the Swords of the King.
Vicomte de Leaume led the little troop towards the Montmartre gate. It was the perfect place, because a little further north Joseph Bonaparte had established his headquarters on the top of the hill of Montmartre. If Leaume and his men caused trouble inside the gate, the French constituting the external defence would panic. They would think that some of the enemy had managed to slip
round them and into the city. The royalists were taking a huge risk, but if they succeeded they would be spectacularly rewarded! Should Joseph lose his nerve - and that would be just like him - if he were to gallop down the hill to take refuge in Paris for fear of being killed or captured, everyone around him would abandon their posts in panic and flee with him. And then it would have been he, Vicomte de Leaume, who, by a daring coup, would have allowed the Allies to take the deserted hill of Montmartre. What a triumph that would be! A masterstroke! A kingly stroke!
But his hopes were dashed when he saw the Montmartre gate. There were far more guards posted there than he had imagined. He could see at least a hundred National Guardsmen, invalid soldiers pressed back into service, volunteers keen to get their hands on rifles ... Yet normally the gate was one of the least used. The group stopped, undecided.
Leaume had assumed that because the Allies had so many more troops at their disposal, the French would post almost all their defenders on the exterior line. That’s why he had chosen somewhere he thought would be poorly defended for his point of attack. But that part of his planning had backfired. In Leaume’s opinion, the interior defence had been overmanned at the expense of the exterior line. Then he thought again. Was this not proof that royalist groups had succeeded in well and truly frightening Joseph?
‘We should turn back,’ advised Jean-Baptiste de Chatel.
‘No! There are wounded everywhere - they must have removed them from the front to pile them up here. Look at that confusion! The guards are demoralised. Let’s incite them to abandon their posts!’ Leaume gestured to the others to advance.
The soldiers watched the arrival of the royalists in stupefaction. What were these apparitions? The Vicomte’s men began to distribute flyers, printed thanks to Margont. When the soldiers did not take them, they laid them on the ground for all to read.
‘Long live the King! Long live Louis XVI11! Long live the Bourbons!’ chanted Chatel, and the others followed suit.
A detonation rang out and one of the royalists fell to the ground -
a National Guardsman had opened fire. Then gunfire came from all sides. Several members of the Swords of the King were old hands and were not about to give up so easily. Leaume wanted to charge the Montmartre gate. That would show everyone! But Jean-Baptiste de Chatel took his arm to hold him back. Another National Guardsman took aim at the Vicomte, whom he discerned was the leader of the band. He was only a few feet from his target. Chatel saw the danger and placed himself deliberately between Louis de Leaume and the shooter as he fired. The bullet struck him full in the chest and he was killed instantly. Leaume and the others fled.
That little battle had lasted barely a minute.
General Langeron organised all his troops in two columns. The eight thousand men of St-Priest’s VIII Corps on one side and the five thousand of Kapzevich’s X Corps on the other. Then he launched them straight at Montmartre and its handful of defenders.
The French at the front of the defence were firing and firing ... The Russians fell on all sides but were not firing much so as not to slow their progress. Those who did not bolt in the face of the Russian advance were skewered by bayonets and then trampled over. The last cavalry of Belliard - the cavalry brigade of Dautencourt’s Imperial Guard, which was made up of chasseurs, lancers and General Sparre’s dragoons - charged the enemy in the hope of pushing them back. Any cavalrymen who managed to get through the Russian dragoons blocking them found themselves surrounded by assorted hordes slashing and skewering; they were engulfed and disappeared.
Saber, who was everywhere at once, gesticulated with his sword. ‘Fire away!’
Lefine had grabbed a rifle from one of the dead - there were not enough to go round and the NCOs of the National Guard had not been given any - and adjusted his sights onto Russian officers, easily recognisable by their bicornes or plumed shakos.
Margont shouted orders. But he could not take his eyes from the
tidal wave that was sweeping towards them, engulfing everything in its way. As the Russians charged he felt the earth tremble beneath his feet.
The defenders were rammed by the masses of attacking forces. The guardsmen were riddled with balls at point-blank range; blows from rifle butts and bayonets rained down on those at the front. Margont found himself on the slope of Montmartre - he ran forward and took cover behind a palisade. The Russians were mad with fervour. They had been waiting for this day for so long! They were trampling the corpses of their comrades that were filling the ditches. They were trying to scale the parapets, digging under the stakes to try to destabilise them. Margont noticed Lefine and Piquebois, who
were defending the entrance of an entrenchment along with firemen from the Imperial Guard, National Guardsmen and soldiers of the line. There was smoke everywhere. The cannons of Montmartre thundered, propelling a volley of cannonballs over the Russians, tearing through their lines and disrupting the waves of attackers. Chasseurs, riflemen, musketeers, grenadiers, drummers, officers, horses and aides-de-camp were flattened. Not far from Margont there were guttural shouts of‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ It was the war cry of the Russians! The enemy attackers had breached the first line of defence. They burst into the entrenchment, slashing everything. Soldiers fled, knocking into Margont and dragging him along with them. He tried to join the second line, which was backing up the first. The French, panicked, were falling into the ditches they had themselves dug a little earlier. Margont raised his head. He wished that the hill were much higher. Already they had lost the base of it; the sky was much nearer. They would have to do everything they could to slow the Russians down, because once the French reached the summit they would find themselves trapped there like rats. Margont could see the officers up there amongst the windmills. Windmills! What a joke! He was going to die at the foot of a windmill. A quixotic death.
The Russians were falling, slipping, tripping over one another and killing each other. Their corpses littered the slope. But they were
persevering. Their sappers were attacking the palisades with axes, their infantry giving their comrades a leg up over the sides. All that separated them from Margont were some posts and earth bulwarks. He could not believe his eyes. The enemy were blithely approaching the mouths of the French cannons pointing out of the portholes. How could they do that, knowing the batteries were about to fire? They took aim at the artillerymen, picked off one here, wounded another there ... Finally the cannons fired, belching forth a hail of cannonballs that massacred everyone. There was a moment of hesitation as the smoke cleared, revealing a gaping hole in the Russian ranks. Then the enemy converged anew, closing up the gaps and resumed felling the sides of the palisades. Some Russian riflemen succeeded in heaving themselves onto the top of the palisades, but were cut down immediately. Margont called over a group of firemen and guardsmen, only to see them torn apart in front of his eyes. Some other Russians had got hold of one of the French cannons and turned it on their enemy, even though in doing so they sprayed as many of their compatriots with fire as they did French soldiers. The cannon was already being reloaded by the Russians. Margont threw himself forward to reclaim it. He thought the soldiers that went with him were helping him, but in fact they were fleeing another breach, unaware that they were throwing themselves at further danger. There were only a handful of Russians manoeuvring the cannon. They continued to load the cannon instead of defending themselves; they let themselves be massacred. There were only two of them left. One of them protected his companion by standing in front of him, and was mown down by three musket balls. The other fired off a shot before collapsing, mortally wounded. Margont threw himself to the ground just in time, sheltering behind the corpses. A hail of shot pulverised everyone around him. When the smoke had cleared it seemed as if the entire world had perished, as if he were the only survivor.
He spotted Saber addressing his soldiers. There were Lefine and Piquebois too. He hurried towards his friend. ‘We’ll have to fall back ... But where to?’ he demanded.
Saber looked at him, not seeming to recognise him, and retorted: ‘I will never give up! If there’s only one man left standing it will be me! I will be the last Parisian!’
He brandished his sabre in the direction of Paris.
‘Counterattack with bayonets!’
‘You’re mad, Irenee! We’re surrounded! We’ve lost! Look around you! There is no one left, everyone is dead!’
‘The dead are coming with me!’ he yelled.
And he dashed forward, straight at the Russians, who were cutting off their escape route. He ran down the slope towards Paris, followed by about forty defenders, charging with their bayonets at the ready. Piquebois was amongst them, brandishing his sabre that seemed to promise death to anyone who tried to stand in his way. ‘Counterattack!’ yelled Margont in his turn, throwing himself into the turmoil, followed by Lefine. It was impossible to stay still; either they had to move up the hill or go down and Margont had just had a kind of premonition. Up there at the foot of one of the Montmartre windmills - maybe even at the same spot where he had lain daydreaming the other day - his tomb awaited him. He preferred to throw himself into the jaws of death rather than to wait for it to catch him.
The rank and file had no idea what to do in the midst of the collapse. Whenever they saw a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, a captain or other foot soldiers attacking the Russians they imitated them, hoping that those officers would guide them to their salvation.
Up until that point, the Russians had been the assailants, and they were very surprised to see the French charging desperately down the slope straight at them and slicing down anyone in their path. The Russians behind those felled in this way were flung backwards. They retreated, not because they wanted to, but because they were being shoved back by this group of mad Frenchmen, who were swept along on a wave of incredible determination. They were slipping and losing their footing, stumbling and rolling over, but nevertheless these men knocked into the enemy, destabilising them in their turn. The slope was so steep it was very difficult to stay upright. This was not so much a counterattack as the frenetic
flinging of a pack of French dogs into a Russian game of skittles. The French, encouraged by the miraculous success of their efforts, rampaged through the Russians, pressing them ever further back. The French combatants were mad with fury. They felt invincible, immortal. Although they were being cut down by bullets and bayonet thrusts, they succeeded in crossing through the enemy lines, which immediately closed up behind them.
Margont, Piquebois and Lefine were among those who escaped and made for Paris. At the very top of the hill, meanwhile, the Russians were massacring the last remaining gunners. Margont was crying: Saber was not with them.
One of Marmont’s aides-de-camp had tried to reach the summit ofMontmartre to find out if Joseph had left someone in command of its defence.
Fie was unable to fulfil his mission because Langeron had launched his attack. But he was there during the last few minutes of the resistance of Montmartre and Saber’s charge. He returned to present his report to Marshal Marmont.
‘That’s extraordinary!’ Marmont exclaimed. 'King Joseph is supposed to be in command of us all, but he’s left! And it’s a colonel who’s distinguishing himself instead! What’s the name of this colonel?’
‘He’s Colonel Saber of the 2nd Legion, Your Excellency.’
‘I want the Emperor notified that I would respectfully ask that this colonel be promoted to the rank of general. He has succeeded in causing the accursed Langeron a lot of trouble with the help of only a handful of men!’
‘But ... Your Excellency ... the colonel is dead. I saw him fall with my own eyes.’
The marshal’s face hardened. ‘That changes nothing. He is to be made a general posthumously.’
The regiments of the Army of Silesia, the Russian Guard and the
Prussian Guard finally managed to seize the heights of Chaumont. There were so many Prussians there that all along the slopes and heights their blue forms could be seen like so many ants. It was like a flood submerging the grassy heights, about to spill over and engulf the capital below.
These troops overwhelmed Marshal Marmont’s men from the rear, forcing them to withdraw to Belleville, and then hurried to set up their batteries of cannons and twelve-pounders. When they opened fire their shots battered the city of Paris itself.
The room was tiny, perched right at the top of an old house. Its walls and beams were covered with dozens of paintings, shunted together, their frames touching. There were depictions of naval battles with ships on fire sinking into the waves, the Great Fire of London in 1666, a forest fire, setting suns that
seemed to set the sky ablaze ... It was a display of scarlets, oranges, vibrant yellows and other fiery hues, amidst expanses of sooty black, making it seem as if the room were permanently on fire.
Varencourt was standing facing the only window, watching the distant battle and counting the plumes of smoke. He distinctly saw black shapes crossing the sky and falling on the houses. In most cases, he didn’t witness any impact but from time to time a projectile struck the roof of a building at full tilt, spraying up debris, or clipped a corner, sending a wall crashing down, releasing clouds of dust. As he watched, a house burst apart, and another shell knocked a roof into the air. The detonations merged into one another, eventually making one continuous crackling. Now buildings were falling on all sides. A plume of black smoke over there -the first fire! Then somewhere else a building collapsed, burying an entire street. Debris showered over north-west Paris and the columns of smoke accumulated. Varencourt took a flask of vodka that he had bought in the ruins of Moscow after the French had left. He had never tasted it, keeping it instead for this very occasion. He poured himself a glass and drank a toast to the cannonballs destroying Paris. As the spirit slipped down his throat he felt as if he were swallowing the fire of Moscow.
Napoleon was still advancing. He was accompanied now only by those closest to him and about a hundred cavalry. All he wanted now was to reach Paris and take command of the defence of the city.
In the end the entire French front simply folded under the weight of the enemy. The heights were lost and the exterior defences overwhelmed, and still there was no sign of the Emperor. At four o’clock Marshal Marmont, who was wounded in the arm and had narrowly avoided capture, sent three officers to the enemy vanguards to ask for a suspension of hostilities.
Memory of Flames Page 24
