Admiral Hornblower

by C. S. Forester

  ‘No sign of any retreat there,’ was Clausewitz’s comment as he watched the fierce struggle from the gallery of the church beside Essen and Hornblower.

  And if confirmation was needed the attacking party could supply it when it came drifting back in the darkness, decimated. The besiegers had met their sally with spirit; they had had patrols out in no-man’s-land, and the trenches were adequately guarded. In retaliation, the besiegers opened fire with their breaching batteries; the ground shook to the rumble of the discharges, and the black night was stabbed again by the flames of the guns. It was impossible to maintain good aim or elevation in the darkness; it was only a short time before the shots were flying wild, all over the village, so that the defenders as far back as the Dwina river had to keep low in their trenches. Shells were coming over, too, curving in high arcs from the mortar batteries which the besiegers had established in their second parallel. They fell and burst here, there, and everywhere, one every two or three minutes, in fountains of fragments and flame, save when chance guided them into deeper snow which extinguished the fuses.

  ‘They have plenty of ammunition to waste,’ grumbled Essen, shivering in his cloak.

  ‘Perhaps they plan a counter-assault in the darkness,’ said Clausewitz. ‘I have kept the trenches fully manned in case they try it.’

  Immediately under Hornblower’s gaze there was a battery of four heavy pieces, firing regular salvoes at short intervals. He noted the four bursts of flame over and over again, so that when there was a longer interval he was surprised first by the absence of sound and then by its unexpected coming. The flashes endured their brief moment, to be succeeded again by night, but Hornblower found himself wondering what difference there had been between this salvo and the last, apart from the longer interval which had preceded it. One flash – the right-hand one – had not been as distinct as the other three, longer and yet intense. Some error in loading, perhaps. Then came the next salvo, and only three flashes; the right-hand gun had not fired. Maybe it had ‘unbushed’ itself – blown out its vent fitting, as guns sometimes did. Another long interval, and then another salvo – two sharp flashes, and one longer one. The next salvo only two guns fired, and Hornblower realised what had been going on. He plucked at Essen’s sleeve.

  ‘They are destroying their guns over there,’ he said. ‘They are firing some shots at us while at each salvo they fire a shot against the trunnions of one of the guns. There were four guns over there, Your Excellency. Now – see – there are only two.’

  ‘Possibly,’ admitted Essen, staring into the darkness.

  ‘The firing is dying away,’ agreed Clausewitz, ‘but perhaps they are only growing tired of wasting ammunition.’

  There was only one flash from the battery next time, and there was something clearly odd about it.

  ‘The last gun in the battery,’ commented Essen. ‘Probably they have burst it by overloading.’

  He trained his telescope in the darkness.

  ‘Look over there at their main camps,’ he added. ‘Watch those fires. They seem to be burning brightly, but—’

  Hornblower directed his gaze to the distant rows of camp-fires, sparkling very dimly in the thick night. He looked backwards and forwards along one of the rows, trying to keep track of them all. He thought he saw one fire wink and go out, but he could not be sure. His eyes were watering with the cold and with the strain, and as he rubbed them Essen shut his telescope with a snap.

  ‘They are dying down,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it, and no troops would allow their camp-fires to die down on a night like this. Clausewitz, get your men ready to attack again. Diebitch—’

  The Governor began rapping out orders. Hornblower had a momentary feeling of pity for the Russian soldiers, huddled in their freezing trenches, dispirited by their recent repulse and losses, now ordered to go out again to what would seem to them to be certain disaster in the night. The wind suddenly shrieked down upon them, piercing him to the bone, despite the cloak he clutched round himself.

  ‘’Ere you are, sir,’ said Brown’s voice unexpectedly in his ear. ‘I’ve brought you up a blanket. Let’s put it round you under your cloak. And ’ere’s your gloves, sir.’

  Deftly in the darkness Brown draped the blanket over him, so that his cloak held it down over his shoulders. It would look fantastic in daylight, but fortunately it was still dark. Hornblower was shivering, and he stamped his frozen feet in an endeavour to warm them.

  ‘Aren’t those men of yours ever going to attack, Clausewitz?’ grumbled Essen. ‘What’s the time? One o’clock? Send down to your brigadier and tell him I’ll have him cashiered if he does not pull his men together for an immediate advance.’

  There was a long freezing interval, before the darkness before them was pricked by a few little pin-points of flame – musket-shots in the second parallel.

  ‘Ha!’ said Essen.

  There was another long wait before the message came back. The sortie had found the advanced trenches abandoned save for a few posts. They were pushing forward now through the snow and the darkness towards the main camp.

  ‘They’re going, then,’ said Essen. ‘Have the cavalry paraded two hours before dawn. I’ll catch their rear-guard at daylight. I want all troops across the river then. And now a glass of tea, for the love of God.’

  Warming himself at the fire burning on the flagged floor of the church, drinking hot tea through his chattering teeth, Hornblower looked round at these men of iron who showed no sign of fatigue and hardly any of cold. He himself was too chilled, and, oddly, too fatigued, to gain much benefit from the chance of resting for a couple of hours on the trusses of straw laid out beside the high altar, but Essen snored volcanically until the moment when his aide-de-camp shook him awake. Outside it was still dark, and colder than ever, when the horses were brought up to the church door for them to mount.

  ‘I better come with you, sir,’ said Brown. ‘I got myself a ’orse.’

  How Brown had done that Hornblower could not imagine, seeing the difficulties of language. Hornblower supposed Brown had learned to ride in those incredibly distant days at Smallbridge. The cavalcade moved slowly in the darkness towards the Mitau suburb, the horses slipping and stumbling in the snow; Hornblower found himself wishing he had been able to retain his blanket when he mounted, for it was colder than ever in the faint grey light. Suddenly from far ahead of them came a sullen flat thud, and another, and another – field-guns firing a long way off.

  ‘Diebitch is up to their rear-guard,’ said Essen. ‘Good!’

  There was enough light now to reveal the desolation of their surroundings as they approached the deserted siege-works. They could look down into the littered trenches; there were the batteries, with the shattered siege-guns standing drunkenly at the embrasures, and here was a dead horse, lying on its back, its belly shrouded with snow, out of which its legs pointed stiffly at the grey sky. And here was the main camp, rows and rows of little huts; mostly only two or three feet high, with the dead remains of camp-fires already buried in snow. Outside one hut, larger than the others, lay a soldier swathed in the grey capote of the French Army. He was face downwards and not dead, for they saw his feet move.

  ‘Have they been fighting here?’ conjectured Essen, puzzled; there was no sign of blood.

  Someone dismounted and turned him over; his face was mottled with mulberry-coloured marks, and his eyes, though open, were unseeing.

  ‘Keep away!’ shouted one of the aides-de-camp suddenly. ‘That is the plague!’

  Everyone drew away from the dying man, and then they realised that the plague was all around them. One of the huts was full of dead, another was full of the dying. Essen shook his horse into a trot, and the party jingled away.

  ‘It is in our ranks already,’ said Essen to Hornblower. ‘Kladoff had ten cases in his division two days ago.’

  This, the first march in retreat of the invading army, was already finding out the weaklings. There were dead men, sick men, dying
men alongside the track they were following, despite the fact that no fighting had taken place along it – Diebitch at the head of the pursuing force was on the Mitau road away on the left front, where the guns were still firing occasionally. When at last they reached the point where the track joined the high road the signs of real fighting began; dead and wounded soldiers, Russian, French, and German, where the Russian advance-guard had clashed with the rear-guard. Then they caught up with the Russian columns plodding sturdily up the road, and trotted past their interminable length, one division and then another; the men were silent with the exertion of stepping out as fast as their legs would carry them under their heavy knapsacks, and this ten miles of fast marching had greatly modified the first jubilation of pursuit.

  ‘Macdonald has made a good retreat,’ said Clausewitz ‘at the cost of leaving his sick and his guns behind. I wonder how long he will be able to keep this pace up?’

  Hornblower did not trouble to enter into the discussion. Saddle soreness was making him abstracted, apart from his fatigue and his general feeling of malaise. But he had to be able to report to his government that he had followed up the retreating army for at least one march on its way back to Germany; it would be better if it were two or three. And there was something else. He wanted to catch up with the Prussians, even if it were the last thing he did – and it was odd that he had this feeling that it was the last thing he was ever going to do. His head was whirling, and there was something comforting about the knowledge that Brown was just back there with the mounted orderlies.

  A messenger brought back news from the advance-guard, and Hornblower heard Clausewitz’s explanation as if in a dream.

  ‘The Prussians are making a stand at the fork in the roads ahead,’ he said. ‘They are covering the retreat while the other two army corps get away by the two roads.’

  It was strange that this was just what he was expecting, as if it were a story he had already heard being retold.

  ‘The Prussians!’ he said, and without willing it he pressed his legs against his horse’s sides to urge it to a faster pace towards where the flat reports of the guns showed where the Prussians were holding back the advance-guard. The headquarters party was clear of the main body now, trotting along the deeply rutted road, hemmed in here by a dense wood of coniferous trees. Beyond the wood the desolate landscape opened up to reveal a low ridge up which the road mounted ahead of them. On either side of the road here a brigade of the Russian advance-guard was halted, a battery of artillery was in action, and up on the ridge could be seen the Prussian infantry columns, black blocks against grey fields. Over on the right a grey-clad Russian column was plodding across country to turn the flank of the position, while between the two forces Russian horsemen – Cossacks – trotted in ones and twos on their shaggy ponies, their long lances vertical at their sides. A watery sun broke through the clouds at this moment, seeming merely to accentuate the gloominess of the landscape. A general came up to salute Essen, but Hornblower did not want to listen to what he had to say. He wanted to press forward towards the Prussians, and as the horses of the party followed the example of his own they moved steadily up the road, Essen half unconscious of the movements of his horse as he listened to the general’s report. He was only recalled to his surroundings by the howl of a cannon-shot which pitched at the roadside near him, throwing snow and earth in all directions.

  ‘What do we think we’re doing?’ he asked. ‘We’ll be getting ourselves shot in a moment.’

  Hornblower was staring forward at the Prussian army, at the glitter of bayonets and the flags black against the snow.

  ‘I want to go up to the Prussians,’ he said.

  The discharge of the battery close at hand drowned the words Essen said in reply, but what he meant to say was plain enough.

  ‘I am going,’ said Hornblower stubbornly. He looked round and caught Clausewitz’s eye. ‘Are you coming too, Colonel?’

  ‘Of course he cannot,’ expostulated Essen. ‘He cannot risk being taken.’

  As a renegade, a man fighting against his own country, Clausewitz was likely to be hanged if ever the Prussians laid hands on him.

  ‘It would be better if he came,’ said Hornblower, woodenly. This was a strange feeling of simultaneous clairvoyance and illness.

  ‘I’ll go with the Commodore,’ said Clausewitz suddenly, making what was probably the bravest decision of his life. Perhaps he was carried away by Hornblower’s automaton-like recklessness.

  Essen shrugged his shoulders at this madness which had descended upon them.

  ‘Go, then,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I may be able to capture enough generals to exchange for you.’

  They trotted forward up the road; Hornblower heard Essen bellow an order to the battery commander to cease fire. He looked back; Brown was trotting after them, a respectful five lengths behind. They passed close to some of the Cossack light horse, who looked at them curiously, and then they were in among Prussian skirmishers, who, from the shelter of bushes and inequalities in the ground, were taking long shots at the Cossacks. No one fired at them as they rode boldly through. A Prussian captain beside the road saluted them, and Clausewitz returned the salute. Just beyond the skirmishing line was the first formed infantry, a Prussian regiment in battalion columns of companies, two on one side of the road and one on the other. The colonel and his staff were standing in the road staring at the odd trio approaching them – the British naval officer in his blue and gold, Clausewitz in his Russian uniform with the row of medals, and the British seaman with cutlass and pistols at his belt. The colonel asked a question in a loud dry tone as they approached, and Clausewitz answered it, reining in.

  ‘Tell them we must see the general,’ said Hornblower in French to Clausewitz.

  There was a rapid exchange of dialogue between Clausewitz and the colonel, ending in the latter calling up two or three mounted officers – his adjutant and majors, perhaps – to accompany them up the road. Here they saw a larger infantry force formed up, and a line of guns, and here was a party on horseback, the feathers and braid and medals and mounted orderlies indicating the presence of a general’s staff. This must be the general – Yorck, Hornblower remembered his name to be. He recognised Clausewitz at once, and addressed him abruptly in German. A few words on each side seemed only to add to the tension of the situation, and there was a short pause.

  ‘He speaks French,’ said Clausewitz to Hornblower, and they both turned and waited for him to speak.

  ‘General,’ said Hornblower; he was in a dream, but he made himself speak in his dream. ‘I represent the King of England, and Colonel Clausewitz represents the Emperor of Russia. We are fighting to free Europe from Bonaparte. Are you fighting to maintain him as a tyrant?’

  It was a rhetorical question to which no answer was possible. Silent perforce, Yorck could only await the rest of what Hornblower had to say.

  ‘Bonaparte is beaten. He is retreating from Moscow, and not ten thousand of his army will reach Germany. The Spaniards have deserted him, as you know. So have the Portuguese. All Europe is turning upon him, having found out how little his promises mean. You know of his treatment of Germany – I need not tell you about that. If you fight for him you may keep him on his tottering throne for a few days longer. You may drag out Germany’s agony by that length of time. But your duty is to your enslaved country, to your King who is a prisoner. You can free them. You can end the useless pouring-out of the blood of your men now, at this moment.’

  Yorck looked away from him, over the bleak countryside, at the Russian army slowly deploying, before he replied.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ he said.

  That was all Hornblower wanted to hear. If Yorck was willing to ask questions, instead of immediately making prisoners of them, the matter was as good as settled. He could leave the discussion to Clausewitz, and sink back into the weariness which was rising round him like a tide. He brought Clausewitz into the conversation with a glance.

  ‘An armisti
ce,’ said Clausewitz. ‘An immediate suspension of hostilities. The definitive terms can be settled easily enough at leisure.’

  Yorck still hesitated for a moment. Hornblower, despite his weariness and illness, could study him with a renewed flicker of interest; the hard face, sunburned to mahogany, the white hair and moustache in strange contrast. Yorck was on the edge of his fate. At present he was a loyal subject of the King of Prussia, a comparatively undistinguished general. He had only to say two words, and they would make him a traitor now and conceivably an historic figure in the future. Prussia’s defection – at any rate, the defection of the Prussian army – would reveal the hollowness of the Napoleonic Empire in a way nothing else could do. It rested with Yorck.

  ‘I agree,’ said Yorck.

  That was all Hornblower wanted to hear. He could lapse into his dream – his nightmare – now, let the rest of the discussion take whatever course it would. When Clausewitz turned back down the road Hornblower’s horse followed him without any guidance from Hornblower. Brown appeared, just his face; there was nothing else that Hornblower could see.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ said Hornblower automatically.

  The earth that Hornblower found himself treading was soft, as though he were walking on feather beds or on a loosely stretched bit of sailcloth. It might be better to lie down. And Hornblower was suddenly conscious that there was something beautiful about music after all. He had gone all his life thinking that it was only an irritating muddle of noises, but revelation had come to him at last. It was lovely, ecstatic, this music that he heard, peals and peals of it, great soaring melodies. He had to raise up his voice to join in with it, to sing and sing and sing. And then the music ended in a final crashing chord, leaving a silence in which his voice sounded hoarse, like a crow’s. He stopped, feeling rather embarrassed. It was as well that somebody else was available to take up the song. The boatman was singing as he pulled at his sculls.