‘I have come to ask your orders, your grace.’
‘Let your Marquis approach, if he will.’
‘And then?’
‘The Emperor wishes to attack tomorrow, our enemies know that and they are quaking with fear at the thought of it. According to your man Maubreuil, the allies intend to pull back to Meaux: that is the only interesting piece of information in his note, and I shall pass it on to His Majesty.’
‘But what about him?’
‘He can fail when he is near to his goal, can’t he?’
‘Without a doubt.’
‘If he is killed, would that not harm your reputation with the royalists?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘So, if he turns up ...’
‘If he turns up you kill him. Word will circulate outside the palace that an over-excited marquis has failed, and you will remain uninvolved in the eyes of his partners, whom you will still be able to keep under surveillance. Are you armed?’
‘No.’
‘I will give you a few men, you will just have to point out our prey to them.’
‘I’d prefer to deal with it on my own, your grace.’
‘As you wish.’
‘But...’
‘But?’
‘I’d need a hunting knife.’
‘That’s easily done.’
Bassano called for a servant, and asked for a knife to be brought immediately. As they waited for the weapon, the Duke asked: ‘This man Maubreuil, do you think he’s a hard-liner?’
‘Better than that: he’s being paid.’
‘With promises or gold coins?’
‘Promises. From what he told me the first time, at Boiron the shoemaker’s, Talleyrand himself has offered him the title of duke, the governorship of a province, an income of two hundred thousand livres ...’
‘Pffft! He’ll faint at the first obstacle.’
‘How can we know that?’
‘If he’s hoping for a title, a province and an income, it means he’s fond of life.’
‘And if he’s fond of life?’
‘He’s not going to risk death.’
A chamberlain came in, bringing a knife in a leather case. Octave slipped it under his belt, beneath his frock-coat, saluted and left the room. Maubreuil, this supposed murderer, this elegant hired killer, barely worried the Duke of Bassano. In any case, Octave would do what needed to be done. On the other hand, Prefect Pasquier’s remarks about the Jacobins were spinning around in Bassano’s head. He thought about Fouché. The former Minister of Police, who had been dismissed, could play the Jacobins’ game, and he was fierce. He had retained the names of his informers in the Faubourg Saint-Germain as though they were in the army or at court; but events happened to be keeping him in Lyons. And the rest? Small fry. It was the marshals that worried Bassano. If they couldn’t rely on the marshals, the Empire was lost.
Napoleon wasn’t suspicious enough of them, he thought they were obedient, he told them time and again that without him they would fall. However, two weeks previously, by the flames of Arcis-sur-Aube, some of them had begun to conspire in the face of the enemy, those 40,000 Bavarians and Austrians that they could no longer contain; Ney had even called the Emperor a scourge. The marshals were grumbling. Their wives, their town-houses and belongings were in Paris: would they march on the capital to destroy their own possessions, and risk the deaths of their own families? An intrepid rogue, jealous and choleric, self-seeking, Ney was becoming dangerous. His brother-in-law lived in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, that den of aristos, and while his wife Eglé had been at school with Hortense de Beauharnais, she was also the daughter of one of Marie-Antoinette’s chambermaids, Madame Auguié, who had thrown herself from a window to escape Robespierre’s detectives, a few days before 9 Thermidor that would have saved her life.
*
Michel Ney, Prince of the Moskva, had a face as red as his unruly hair. He was furious, and strode around the gallery, spurs clanking. ‘I’ll tell him, oh yes, I’ll tell him!’ He repeated those words as a litany to fire himself up. The other marshals lengthened their steps to keep up with him, feathers quivering on their hats. They had donned their gold-embroidered costumes, their brightly coloured silk sashes, rows of medals awarded in the past; their riding-boots gleamed with wax. Old Lefebvre grumbled, wheezed, clutched his side. Oudinot looked lost, round-eyed, his eyebrow raised in a circumflex. Honest Moncey, who used to love weapons so much, was not so fond of them now. Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, joined this group on the threshold of the Imperial apartments. He had been running, and his anxiety was apparent on his normally placid face.
Caulaincourt had walked ahead of them into the drawing-room adjoining the Emperor’s study; he stopped talking to Bertrand and Bassano when the marshals entered the room in a single determined block. They looked at one another and said nothing, tense and quaking. Finally, Major General Berthier, more taciturn than usual, his back bent, sighed and half-opened the communicating door.
‘Gentlemen, His Majesty awaits you ...’
Jostling one another, they silently entered the study together, cocked hats under their arms, huddled like schoolboys fearing punishment, not so strong all of a sudden. The only sound was their panting breath and the rustle of the maps that Napoleon, at his desk, was moving about and marking with a pencil. The Emperor cast a distracted eye over the group, noticed the latest arrival to Fontainebleau, Macdonald, who had just come from Melun, and stared him in the eye.
‘Greetings, Lord Tarentum, how are your men bearing up?’
‘Very badly, sire.’
‘And?’
‘Having failed to save Paris ... We’re all devastated.’
‘What do your men say?’
‘That you’re calling on us to march on the capital.’
‘They’re right.’
‘Sire, they don’t want to expose Paris to the same fate as Moscow ...’
‘Moscow was deserted, Paris isn’t.’
‘Exactly, sire, no civil war!’
‘The Senate has just pronounced your deposition,’ ventured Marshal Ney, gritting his teeth and hissing like a rattlesnake.
‘The new government is calling the Bourbons back,’ added Moncey, who had fought fiercely on the Paris barricades.
‘The provisional government, gentlemen, is provisional: it admits as much itself! Those scoundrels will soon be bowing down to the Bourbons, certainly, but they’ll be doing it in England!’
‘Sire,’ Macdonald went on, ‘my soldiers are dying of hunger, they are discouraged. Many of them have gone home, and what are the others going to live on in Fontainebleau, in the middle of a forest?’
‘Are you refusing to fight? I have sergeants enough to replace you.’
‘The army will not march on Paris!’ stated Marshal Ney furiously.
‘The army will obey me!’
‘No, sire, the army obeys its generals.’
The Emperor fell silent and studied them one by one. They lowered their eyes, even Ney, and then, in a dry voice, Napoleon asked, ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Your abdication,’ replied Ney, studying the slats of the parquet.
‘You may go.’
They backed out of the room. Marshal Ney’s eyes revealed that he was at once frightened and proud of his refusal. The Emperor kept Bassano and Caulaincourt behind.
‘Has the Guard been paid?’ he asked in a calmer voice.
‘Yes, sire, but from your personal funds. We haven’t a penny left for the other regiments.’
‘And what about the Treasury?’
The great treasurer, Peyrusse, who made grammatical errors but never miscalculated, had been sent to Orléans to recover the booty removed from the Tuileries by the Empress and Cambacérès, about twenty million in all. Peyrusse had not yet returned, and there was no news of his mission. The Emperor leapt to his feet.
‘The regency! Have you heard! It’s all they can talk abo
ut! The regency! No one believes in it! The allies aren’t as naïve as that!’
He paced around the room, hurling to the ground all the objects his hand happened to rest on - the oval snuffbox, a monogrammed pencil-box, some maps - then he abruptly asked for writing material. An aide-de-camp brought paper, Caulaincourt uncorked the inkpot, and Bassano held out a finely trimmed crow’s feather. The Emperor took up position at his desk and wrote, for once without making too many mistakes.
‘Abdication! We’ll give them abdication all right! Everyone will be reassured, cajoled, rocked to sleep! The allies will believe that we’re not going to attack, bene! Let’s gain some time.’
He spoke and wrote at the same time. His pen scratched nervously.
‘Caulaincourt, go to Paris, negotiate their damned regency as best you can, play the part, take that great idiot Ney with you, and Macdonald, that’ll calm them down . . .’
‘Recall the marshals!’ called the Duke of Bassano, half-opening the door of the antechamber. Shortly afterwards, the marshals came back; some valets had caught up with them by running down the gallery to the steps of the external staircase. Taken by surprise, the group were unsure about what attitude they should adopt. The Emperor could have had them shot for disobedience, but no, Napoleon stood there, letter in hand, waving it around to dry the ink, and his voice was soft.
‘Am I an obstacle? So be it. The Duke of Bassano will read you the note that I have just written.’
Bassano took the letter held out to him by his Emperor, and deciphered his small, jerky, sloped hand, all in lower case with words joined to one another. He read in a loud voice, amid a heavy silence.
The allied powers having proclaimed the Emperor Napoleon to be the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, Emperor Napoleon, true to his oath, declares that he is prepared to descend from the throne, to leave France and to leave even his life for the good of the fatherland, which is inseparable from the rights of his son, those of the Empress’s regency and the maintenance of the laws of the Empire.
The marshals were dumbfounded. They surrounded Napoleon, clutched his arms, kissed his hands. The Emperor looked at them with a certain disdain, but they didn’t notice.
*
That accursed day was not over. Octave was sitting on a green taffeta love-seat, head on his folded arms, fighting fatigue, forcing himself to be vigilant. On the other side of the partition he heard the Emperor pacing around his study, ceaselessly, like an animal in its cage. Octave thought of the following day’s reply. It seemed inevitable, even with battalions reduced by death and desertion, and soldiers many of whom seemed very young, but who had seen active service in the plains of Champagne; their rage stood in for experience. Waiting for Napoleon to head for bed, to brood over the imminent battle, Octave would then go into the study and put everything away, and sweep up the coarsecut snuff that His Majesty scattered around the place.
A vague sense of unrest somewhere in the palace shook Octave from his dreamy torpor. Sounds were getting closer, faint voices. Roustan had risen to his feet and gripped his sabre. Octave patted the hip where he had attached his knife; he parted his livery to draw it at the first sign of danger. Doors slammed. Calls rang out in the corridors. A stamping of feet, now, in the François I gallery. The aide-de-camp suddenly pushed wide the door to the antechamber. General Belliard and a helmeted cuirassier, serious and annoyed, urgently asked to see the Emperor. Octave tapped at the door to his study.
‘Who is it?’
‘Belliard, sire!’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s eleven o’clock, sire.’
‘What’s so important, Belliard?’ said the Emperor, opening the door himself.
‘Bad news.’
‘Bad news is your lot.’ (This was the same Belliard who had announced the capitulation of Paris to Napoleon when the Emperor arrived too late to enter the city.)
The General entered the study, and the door closed once more. Octave saw some officers hanging around in the gallery: what was going on? The officers themselves were very keen to know, but the General was clearly keeping his information to himself. Further off, some colonels had turned a drawing-room into a gambling den, and decided to keep watch while frittering away their last gold coins, perhaps before dying in a few hours’ time. Octave thought he could make out the silhouette of Maubreuil, in the uniform of a chasseur of the Guard. Did Maubreuil see him?
Rather than coming over to him, the figure made off and disappeared around a corner in the corridor. Octave set off in pursuit. Soldiers and servants carrying lanterns were arriving, perhaps in response to Bassano’s news. Octave pushed against the current: he didn’t want to lose Maubreuil, and spotted him at the bottom of the staircase. He raced down the steps, dashed through the doors and down the grand staircase, forcing his way past cheveauleágers and hussars with great queues hanging down their necks coming pell-mell in the opposite direction. Could the enemy have launched a night offensive on the Essonne front? Octave found himself wondering what all this agitation was about: he hoped it would help him eliminate Maubreuil discreetly, and thus solve the problem. Clearly the royalist was fleeing because there were too many people around the Emperor; he didn’t much fancy being torn to pieces, but even if he had abandoned or postponed his enterprise, he still had to be liquidated.
Octave concentrated his attention on this pitiful would-be assassin, who was now crossing the main courtyard, his back illuminated by the chandeliers that were currently being lit behind the palace windows.
Octave quickened his pace. It was a moonless, starless night, and there was similar confusion in the streets of the town of Fontainebleau: soldiers forming processions, brandishing smoking torches, burning branches covered with dry leaves to cook their grub. Octave kept his eye trained on Maubreuil’s shoulders as he pushed his way through the yelling and indignant columns. Threatening-looking grenadiers with walrus moustaches, muskets sloped, were heading towards the castle yelling, ‘To Paris! To Paris!’ The young conscripts, admonished by their elders, broke away from their officers and joined the free-for-all. For a moment Octave lost sight of his quarry, but no, there he was, over there, turning into a side-alley. Octave speeded up once more, and the two men emerged almost together into a little square lit by campfires, where the chasseurs of the Guard were saddling their horses. Octave reached Maubreuil and was about to raise his knife when his foot slipped in the stream of dung flowing through the middle of the cobbles; he tumbled to the ground and dropped his knife. The chasseur turned around at the sound of his pratfall.
‘You look a sight, Monsieur, with your four paws in the air!’
It wasn’t Maubreuil. And besides, from close up and in the light of the flames, his uniform was less shiny than the assassin’s. Cavalrymen gathered around them to look at the valet sitting with a sore bottom in the gutter. Octave started explaining himself.
‘Forgive me, Lieutenant, I mistook you for someone else ...’
‘And what grudge did you bear against that someone else?’
‘The individual I was chasing wears the same uniform as you do, he’s stolen it, and his plan was to approach His Majesty ...’
‘Well, blow me! Since when have servants been acting as detectives?’
‘I’m a detective acting as a servant.’
‘Have you come from the palace?’ asked someone else.
‘Indeed I have.’
‘Has the betrayal been confirmed?’
‘What betrayal?’
‘You’re coming from the palace and you don’t know what people are saying?’
‘I thought only of the man I was attending to.’
‘False valet,’ said the false Maubreuil, ‘the 6th Corps have just defected.’
Octave struggled to his feet, white stockings and boots stained with Fontainebleau mud. The chasseur explained.
‘Eleven thousand of our men have gone over to the enemy, monsieur.’
*
When the defection became known, Napoleon did not react. Outside, his Guard were storming furiously through the town; some emissaries had told them they still had the weak division of the incorruptible General Lucotte on their side, that the rearguard squadron of Polish cavalrymen had refused to go along with the suspicious deployment; that Mortier was requesting instructions, that he was stretching out his corps as far as Corbeil to protect Fontainebleau.
The Emperor had gone to bed.
He had not risen by late morning, when Caulaincourt, looking distraught, climbed out of a barouche from Paris. The Duke hurried towards the mezzanine apartments, and bumped into Napoleon’s chief valet.
‘I’ve got to see the Emperor straight away !’
‘But he’s asleep ...’
‘I don’t care! Wake him, Monsieur Constant, wake him!’
As the valet didn’t dare do anything so familiar, Caulaincourt burst into the room and roughly shook the sleeping man until he opened his hooded eyes and sighed, ‘Ah! Caulaincourt...’
Napoleon's Exile Page 9
