The Retreat

by Patrick Rambaud

‘That’s what it says on the cart.’

  ‘That was you that burst out of your glad rags that day in Moscow, wasn’t it? You don’t forget something like that in a hurry.’

  ‘What if you put on another performance just for us?’ said his accomplice.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ cried Mme Aurore.

  ‘I didn’t hear anyone whistling for you, ma.’

  The Great Vialatoux and the juvenile lead, curled up under a mound of furs, didn’t move a muscle. Mme Aurore planted herself in front of them.

  ‘Get these verminous tramps out of here!’

  ‘This rheumatism has given me paralysis in my legs,’ complained Vialatoux.

  ‘They’re not asking for anything that bad,’ added the juvenile lead.

  The manageress furiously grabbed the pan that was on the fire and tipped it over one of the soldiers’ legs; he leapt to his feet, yelling, ‘You’re getting my goat, you mad old witch!’

  ‘Our beans,’ groaned Vialatoux.

  A gigantic explosion stopped them fighting. Rooted to the spot, they instinctively turned towards Moscow. Having remained behind with the Young Guard, Marshal Mortier had just lit the touchwood fuses of the gunpowder barrels with which he had mined the Kremlin.

  *

  ‘You, my friend, will be beside yourself with joy when you see the meadows in Normandy …’ The captain was talking to his horse and tenderly stroking its neck as he watched it eat a bundle of hay. On the sixth day the heavy rain that had been hampering their progress had stopped, and the men had taken heart again. Cutting across fields, they had rejoined the new Kaluga road, marched past forests, sped through gently rolling country and found forage and cabbages and onions to improve the soup. They had left Borowsk, the city of hazelnuts, behind, and now here they were, on a plain dotted with clumps of trees. Everything seemed peaceful. D’Herbigny saw the Emperor sitting at a table by the roadside with Berthier and the King of Naples. The chef Masquelet had prepared lentils with bacon on his mobile canteen, simmering them for a long time over a low heat. So far, no sign of any Russians or Cossacks. Except – just then two Cossacks appeared, pulled along on a leading rein by hussars taking them to the Emperor.

  The captain kept still. He tried to piece together the encounter from the gestures of the participants. The Emperor, a napkin around his neck, listened to the hussars’ explanations. The King of Naples, listless since the loss of his cavalry, continued to eat his lentils with a spoon. Where did these unattached Cossacks come from? How had they been captured? Were there others? How many and where? At the very least, it meant that the Russians knew of the army’s march on Kaluga. There was a roar of cannon. The Mamelukes fetched horses. The Emperor mounted up, then Caulaincourt, then Berthier, with more of a struggle, and they were about to hurry to the fighting when a trooper arrived at breakneck speed, one of Prince Eugéne’s Italians. He stopped in front of the Emperor and they spoke. Napoleon dismounted and went back into the relay, a simple hut where he was going to spend the night.

  D’Herbigny made enquiries. Two battalions of the vanguard had taken up position in a small town; built on an escarpment, it overlooked and covered the road the army had to take. Russians, in far superior numbers, had attacked. There was an English officer among them. Would they reach the south? the captain wondered. Could they withstand troops that had had time to raise a line of defences? Candles burned in the windows of the hut. His Majesty received a constant stream of dispatch riders. No one slept. Hands outstretched before their bivouac fires, grenadiers and cavaliers awaited orders. All night, horses galloped in the plain.

  A little before dawn, shadows began to move about the hut. Silhouetted in the windows, the captain made out the Mamelukes’ turbans topped with brass crescents; grooms brought round saddle horses, which they presented to the grand equerry. The Emperor was outlined in the frame of the door; he put on his cocked hat and sent an officer of his suite to the dragoons’ bivouac.

  ‘Captain, collect a troop to escort His Majesty.’

  ‘Did you hear that, you bunch of brigands?’ cried d’Herbigny.

  His troopers leapt into the saddle. Near the hut, the captain heard the Emperor arguing heatedly.

  ‘It’s still dark, sire,’ Berthier said to him.

  ‘I realize that, you idiot!’

  ‘You won’t see anything from the outposts.’

  ‘It will be light when we get there.’

  ‘Let us wait …’

  ‘No! Where is Kutuzov in all this? I must see for myself.’

  Some Italians of Prince Eugéne’s guard charged up at that moment and gave more detailed information. ‘The Viceroy is standing fast, sire.’

  ‘Has he held the town?’

  ‘He has taken it and retaken it seven times.’

  ‘The Russian armies?’

  ‘It looks as if they are falling back.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘By the enemy’s camps. There are only Cossacks and peasant militias left.’

  The sky began to brighten. The little band set off in a half-light. They had barely gone a few hundred metres before hurrahs rang out. Cossacks rushed at the drivers and canteen-women; others whirled between the guns of the artillery park ahead, urging on their horses with their whips; a third party swarmed round the Emperor’s escort, lowered their lances and prepared to charge. Napoleon drew his épée with its gold pommel in the shape of an owl. The generals surrounding him formed a line in front of him and drew their swords as well. D’Herbigny and his dragoons rode for the attackers, who were so hard to make out in the panic of that dawn. They threw themselves into the mêlée; the air rang with the impact of sabres on the wood of the pikes and horses clattering to the ground; riders cannoned into one another, veered out of the way, wrenched their horses aside, yelled and struck out. D’Herbigny found himself behind a green-coated rider brandishing a lance; he drove his blade in under the man’s collarbone. Eventually squadrons of chasseurs and Polish lancers came to the rescue, the remaining Cossacks turned their horses’ heads and the French gave chase. Some grenadiers helped Dr Yvan lay the wounded out in the grass. D’Herbigny noticed they were carrying the man he had run through.

  ‘He doesn’t look very Tartar,’ he said to the acting stretcher-bearers.

  ‘Oh no, not him.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘One of our major general’s aides-de-camp. He’d broken his sabre off in the guts of one of those fiends and taken a Russian lance to carry on fighting.’

  Full of pride at having saved his Emperor’s life, the captain thought that anyone could make a mistake in the dark.

  *

  Around six o’clock that evening, the council of war convened in a barn. Leaning his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, without having taken off either his overcoat or his hat, Napoleon gloomily studied the maps unrolled before him. Murat had thrown himself on a bench by the wall and put his plumed cap down near the candlestick. The other marshals stood waiting for the Emperor to decide which route to take. He had spent the day reconnoitring the town in which his battalions had fought with fixed bayonets, except that it wasn’t a town anymore, it was more like a field after the stubble had been burned off; not a single house had withstood the Russian cannon, nor even the forests flanking them to the top of the hill. The lines of bodies roughly indicated the street plan; only the church was still recognizable, down below, near the bridge over the river. Prince Eugène had shown him the place where General Delzons had been killed by three bullets …

  Eventually the Emperor said, ‘Kutuzov has pulled his armies back, his baggage is slowing him down, he has lost thousands of men, now is the moment to rout him.’

  ‘Perhaps he is merely changing position, sire …’

  ‘If we attack now, we will open the southern route.’

  ‘With what troops, sire?’

  ‘We have all we need! I’ve seen Kutuzov’s dead, do you hear! I’ve seen them! Most are young recruits in grey jackets who�
�ve only been serving two months and have no idea how to fight. His infantry? Only the front rank is made up of real soldiers. Behind them? Those youngsters, moujiks, peasants armed with pikes, militiamen levied in the capital. . .’

  ‘Sire, we have just lost at least two thousand men, and how many wounded are we going to take in this pursuit? Let us return us quickly as possible to Smolensk before the cold of winter sets in.’

  ‘The weather is superb,’ the Emperor declared. ‘It will hold for another week and by then we will be under cover.’

  ‘In Kaluga?’

  ‘We will rest there, resupply, dispatch reinforcements to meet us there …’

  ‘Winter can come overnight, sire.’

  ‘A week, I tell you!’

  ‘Let’s hurry,’ Murat suggested. ‘By forced march, we’ll be in Smolensk before the week is out.’

  ‘By forced march …’ Davout echoed ironically. ‘Through devastated country and on an empty stomach? Because, naturally, the King of Naples is suggesting we go back the way we came!’

  ‘It’s the quickest!’

  ‘What about you, what do you suggest?’ the Emperor curtly asked Davout.

  ‘Here, towards Juchnow, by the middle road,’ answered the marshal, a pair of round spectacles on the tip of his nose, bending over the map.

  ‘Waste of time!’ said Murat.

  ‘This region, at least, has not seen any fighting and we’ll find the provisions there that we are starting to run short of.’

  ‘That’s enough shouting!’ said Napoleon, sweeping the maps off the table with his sleeve. ‘It is for me to choose.’

  ‘We await your instructions, sire.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  They were leaving on this note of indecision when the Emperor detained the major general.

  ‘Berthier, what do you think?’

  ‘We are no longer capable of doing battle.’

  ‘I’m right, though, I know it. Kutuzov! Just one push and he’d fall.’

  ‘A rapid troop movement, sire, would mean abandoning our wounded and the civilians …’

  ‘Civilians, what a curse!’

  ‘We have promised them our protection. As for the wounded, we have to take them, otherwise what soldiers we have left will lose faith in Your Majesty.’

  ‘Tell Davout to send out cavalry to reconnoitre his famous route. But what about you, Berthier, what’s your inclination?’

  ‘Let’s make haste for Smolensk.’

  ‘By that sacked road?’

  ‘It is in fact the shortest way.’

  ‘Send for Dr Yvan, I want to see him immediately.’

  The Emperor gathered up the maps he had thrown on the floor, his plans of Russia, Turkey, Central Asia, the Indies. Events were shattering his dreams. He weighed the arguments. Should they shut themselves up in Smolensk and spend the winter there? He was hesitating when Dr Yvan entered the barn.

  ‘Yvan, you damned charlatan, prepare that thing of yours.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  The Emperor was asking for the poison that Cabanis had invented for Condorcet, and that Corvisart, the Emperor’s doctor in Paris, had recreated: opium, belladonna, hellebore … He would carry the mixture in a pouch under his woollen waistcoat. If a Cossack chief had identified him that morning, he would have tried to capture him and then what? Send him to St Petersburg in a cage? It could happen again; he refused to fall into Russian hands alive.

  *

  And so it was that the convoy turned northwards to rejoin the road that it had followed in the opposite direction at the start of autumn. A wind blew colder and colder and everyone bundled up as best they could. D’Herbigny wore his fox-fur-lined coat under his cloak; Paulin had unearthed a red cape with an ermine trim, which he wore with the hood up and his hat squashed down on top of it; it made him look like a prelate. They rode their horses at a walk through the firs and birch trees.

  ‘Sir,’ the servant called out, urging his donkey alongside his master’s horse. ‘Sir, I’ve got a feeling we’re going round in circles.’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet! Do you think you’re cleverer than the Emperor now?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand what he’s up to, sir.’

  ‘He has his reasons.’

  ‘We’ve been marching for ten days and we can’t be more than ten or twelve leagues from Moscow.’

  ‘What would you know about it?’

  ‘I recognize this countryside …’

  The road came out onto a river whose icy waters rolled over a ford. The artillery were already halfway across; the cannon wheels were spinning on the muddy riverbed, blocking the way; the soldiers, water up to their knees, were trying to help the draught animals haul the mud-clogged gun carriages up onto the bank – a waste of effort in some cases and then they had to unhitch the guns and surrender them to the current.

  D’Herbigny recognized the place too: they were approaching Borodino. He saw the stunted, buckled trees, mutilated by constant shelling, the battered hills, the scene of utter havoc. He saw the line of flat-topped rises where the Russians had built their redoubts, the broken palisades, the parapets that had collapsed on the dead or dying in craters like mass graves. The green wheat had come through but it barely hid the marks of the battle. The standards’ shoes constantly struck a helmet or a cuirass or a drum case and these iron sounds rang out in the cold air. When the captain decided to carry on on foot, to lessen the chances of his horse missing its footing, it felt as if he was walking on twigs; but it was bones beneath his feet, not wood. The rain had disinterred thousands of bodies and the crows were eating them; the birds progressively flew away, cawing, as the cortege advanced. High up, looking down from one of the redoubts, a group of skeletons greeted the survivors as they passed. One of them, nailed by a lance to a birch tree, clad in the tattered remnants of a grey greatcoat, still had his boots and a horsetail helmet on his death’s head.

  No one wanted to linger.

  They marched with lowered heads.

  As he marched along, the captain thought he could hear reveille being sounded and in his mind’s eye, the landscape reverted to how it had been before that battle at which the Emperor had husbanded his Guard. They’d had the sun in their eyes, that morning. He remembered the smoke, the explosions, the cuirassiers’ lethal charges up the slopes, the roundshot falling around Napoleon and him, sick, kicking them away like balls to follow the movements of the troops through his theatre glasses. Shots rang out; the captain started. Bonet and the troopers had brought down a brace of crows and were running to retrieve them from amongst the corpses that were beginning to freeze in the cold.

  ‘It’s only us, sir!’

  ‘We’re thinking about soup, sir!’

  They brandished the plump black birds, holding them by the feet.

  ‘Are you going to eat those rot-eaters?’

  ‘If they’ll stay down …’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘What is it, Bonet? Have your soup birds been pecking one of your old barrack mate’s guts?’

  ‘Come and have a look, sir.’

  The column continued on its way but the captain broke off for a moment to look at his sergeant’s discovery. Something vaguely human, without legs, was squirming between the stalks of wheat, its face encrusted with blood and earth. The dragoons shrank back from the monster.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ said Bonet.

  ‘He’s come out of the open stomach of that dead horse,’ said Trooper Chantelouve. ‘He must have kept himself warm in there and eaten its insides and drank rainwater perhaps.’

  ‘Impossible!’ said the captain roughly to disguise his terror.

  ‘No, look, he’s even opening his eyes …’

  *

  Standing on a hillside, protected by a close-planted birch wood, the Kolotskoi abbey resembled a fortress with its battlemented grey walls, towers and stark belfries; poking through a long plank fence, cannon were trained on the valley through which the Moskova flowed. The Imperia
l suite spent a night there without getting out of their carriages, since the rooms were full of wounded, nearly twenty thousand of them who had been looked after since the horrific battle; it had also been used as an arms depot. A snowstorm blew for part of the night. In the secretaries’ berline, Baron Fain and his passengers disappeared under an avalanche of greatcoats and furs. Sebastian was delighted with himself for having bought a pair of velvet boots lined with flannel for two diamonds from a canteen-woman. By morning the snow had stopped but it covered everything. Shaking the handle of the frosted door he was sitting next to, Sautet the bookseller fretted and fumed, ‘I feel certain, absolutely certain, that we can find something edible in this cloister!’

  ‘Have some more white wine from the crate,’ Baron Fain said without opening his eyes.

  ‘Get drunk in front of my daughter? Heavens, no! A fine example that would be!’

  ‘Eat the peas.’

  ‘Raw?’

  ‘Eat your dog.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘I’ll go and see what there is,’ offered Sebastian.

  ‘No, no,’ the bookseller puffed. ‘I’m cold and I’m ankylosed and I jolly well want to lose my temper!’

  ‘Leave him be, Monsieur Roque,’ said the baron. ‘The exercise will warm up our friend.’

  ‘I am not your friend.’

  The bookseller hazarded a step outside, skidded and crumpled in the snow, squealing, ‘My leg! My leg! I’m wounded! I’m entitled to the wounded’s hot soup!’

  Sebastian got out to help the fat man, but he had trouble standing up himself and slipped every time he took a step.

  ‘My leg, I tell you!’

  ‘There isn’t a single person in the entire world who gives a damn about your leg.’

  ‘But … Where are the horses?’ asked the bookseller.

  The postilion, after covering the wounded lying on the roof with a tarpaulin, had got in a canvas sack the night before. Now he shook the snow off his cloaks and sleeping bag, drank some grain alcohol and answered, ‘In the stable, they’re having a feed.’

  ‘Oh, bravo! The horses are eating. What about us?’

  ‘Do you want some straw?’

  The forage in fact consisted of unripe wheat harvested by the abbey’s garrison, a pittance which had been supplemented by straw from the pallets of the dying – they, at any rate, wouldn’t have to endure this life for longer. When the horses had finished, they were put back between the shafts, and the vehicles of His Majesty’s household rejoined the main body of the convoy. Württemberg chasseurs had stowed more wounded on the roofs of the carriages, on limbers, wherever they could, sometimes tying them on with ropes if they were too weak to hang on to the hood or the check straps.