Dimly Ornella became aware of the officer yelling; through the fog of her failing eyes she saw him stretch out an arm and the rest of the Cossacks started shouting in unison. In the direction the officer was pointing, Ornella saw a blurry vision of thickset forms emerging from a forest. They drew nearer, massive, bearded creatures, in sheepskin kaftans. Holding scythes, axes and clubs in their hands or slung across their shoulders, they came closer, until the officer wheeled his horse abruptly around and led his Cossacks away: he was handing the prisoners over to the moujiks.
Instinctively the captives huddled together but the peasants beat them apart and lined them up, seizing a dead baby from its mother’s grasp and, as the woman began to howl uncontrollably, tossing it into the snow; they hit her in the stomach with a spade and she writhed about on the ground, leaving a trail of red in her wake. Not stopping to put her out her misery, the peasants forced the prisoners to set off again, thrashing them with sticks and scythe handles to keep the procession moving. They reached the forest and pushed their way through thorny bushes that scratched their bare skin. As she walked, Ornella looked at her legs and the beads of blood forming on them as if they were objects that didn’t belong to her.
At the edge of a clearing, woodcutters were toiling over a fir tree, wood chips flying as they cut deep into the base of the trunk, their axes rising and falling in tandem and the blows ringing out in perfect, obsessive, relentless time. What did these Russians want? Were they going to line up their prisoners under this tree and crush them in its fall? A hundred or more villagers crowded into the centre of the clearing, where the prisoners stood waiting to discover their fate. Most of the men had caps over their long hair, canvas patches at the knees of their trousers and rusty old guns slung over their shoulders; the women wore scarves and all had plaited bark shoes tied up with coloured bandages. When the fir came down, the moujiks lopped off its branches with axes. In no time the trunk was smooth and the villagers led the naked prisoners over to it; fifty stupefied, docile, broken men and women. A toothless peasant woman seized Ornella by the neck and forced her down with the back of her head on the trunk, looking up at the sky. All the captives were stretched out in the same fashion either side of the tree. The ceremony could begin.
Ornella thought that lying like that the cold would soon release her from her suffering, but the moujiks built large fires with the cut branches. A sudden pain coursed through her, as if her head was exploding. The trunk was vibrating. The peasant women were roaring songs, keeping time by hitting the tree with sticks as hard as their strength and rage permitted. The blows reverberated along the fir and roared in the prisoners’ brains; the women beat and sang like furies and the hammering drilled Ornella into the snow, mute, seeking refuge in this shooting pain that, like the cold, made her whole body shudder. The men watched this bacchanal and smoked their pipes with the serenity of those who are certain they are carrying out God’s will. Inflamed against these French by their priests, they were slowly murdering them in the name of Jesus Christ, the Tsar and all the saints of the Orthodox Church. And the termagants carried on hitting, full of hatred – hitting and bawling patriotic songs.
*
At the start of December, despite the intense cold, Napoleon was in cheerful spirits. He’d received encouraging news. Fourteen successive dispatches, held up until then, gave him an idea of the mood in France; Malet and his accomplices had been shot amid more or less total indifference and, lacking independently confirmed reports, Parisians were minimizing the army’s disasters. From Bassano, his governor, Napoleon learnt that Vilna’s warehouses, two marches away, were crammed with rations and supplies and that, although the Russian armies were approaching, so too were his Austrian allies. The one thing lacking for his peace of mind was the Polish light cavalry, whose presence he’d been requesting for weeks and whose lack of means Bassano had been slow making up for.
In the dark room in headquarters, Constant, Napoleon’s valet, was burning bars of resin, which he stood in a block of wood by way of a candlestick; the whole process had to be repeated every five minutes but this was how houses were lit in Lithuania. The light glowed red in Davout’s round glasses and glinted gold on Murat’s frogging, on Bessières’s powdered coiffure and Ney’s bushy side-whiskers and red hair; further from it, Lefebvre, a sullen Berthier, the lanky Mortier and Prince Eugène with his balding pate were half-hidden in shadow.
‘We are heading towards our reinforcements,’ the Emperor was saying. ‘The Russians away from theirs. The situation is picking up. Berthier, have you sent one of your aides-de-camp to Paris?’
‘Montesquiou set off as planned.’
‘Which is to say?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Then it’s time I went too.’ The Emperor explained to his marshals that he would be of more use in the Tuileries than with the army, to raise new contingents and counter the machinations of a seditious Europe. The men should rest in Vilna, get medical treatment, eat properly and buy themselves decent clothes. A week’s rest was becoming possible and desirable. Napoleon then revealed that the 29th bulletin, which Montesquiou had taken with him, was going to be published in Paris; it described something close to reality, and so he would have to go back in order to moderate its effect and reassure his subjects by his presence. He asked Baron Fain to elaborate, and Fain in turn asked his clerk to speak. Sebastian began to read the text, which he had helped draft and a copy of which he carried in his secretariat portfolio. Until 6 November the weather was perfect, and the army’s movement was carried out with the greatest success. The cold weather began on the 7th: since then, we have lost several hundred horses each night. There followed details on Russian strategy, the fall of the thermometer, the loss of the entire cavalry and a good deal of the transport. The Emperor blamed the winter. He reviled the Cossacks in the harshest terms. The fatal bulletin ended, like the previous one, with reflections on his perfect health, but the tone did not disguise an army put to rout, and it would have a huge impact in France. The marshals were agreed on that.
‘When do we leave, sire?’ asked Berthier.
‘I’m leaving tonight but without you. By his rank, the King of Naples will replace me and you will hold yourself at his disposal. The army needs its major general.’
‘The army …’
Berthier and Murat had turned pale. The former was missing his income of a million and half, his estate at Grosbois and his Parisian mansion which he had never had a chance to enjoy; the latter thought only of resuming control of his kingdom from Caroline, who was regent; no doubt she was abusing her position and praying every morning that he would never return from this ill-fortuned expedition. Having made his pronouncement, Napoleon left the room. Murat grumbled, I’m to command an army that doesn’t exist any more, am I?’
‘Obey,’ said Davout. ‘You are a king as I am a prince.’
‘Oh no! Naples is a reality, not your make-believe principality, your hollow title!’
‘You’re the one who is hollow!’
‘Bernadotte was right!’
‘He has betrayed us.’
‘He reigns over Sweden!’
‘He was elected by the Diet of Stockholm!’
‘I must think of my people!’
‘You think about your throne more than anything!’
‘Yes!’
‘We’re here to obey!’
‘Whom?’
‘The Emperor who crowned you!’
‘That crown is on my head!’
‘Ingrate!’
‘We hav endured the vorst,’ Lefebvre said to stop the quarrel. ‘At Vilna we will be safed.’
‘Saved? For how long?’ sighed a very downcast Berthier.
Constant and the other valets were packing the Emperor’s bags; Sebastian helped Roustam the Mameluke stow sixty thousand francs in gold in a silver-gilt chocolate box, which was then secreted in a false bottom in His Majesty’s dressing case; Roustam then locked the whole thing up. With that money t
he grand equerry would pay the journey’s expenses at the post stages to which he had already sent messengers. Caulaincourt was hurrying along the preparations for leaving. A troop of chasseurs à cheval of the Guard, with dark green coats and black bearskin busbies, had set off first to open the road; there’d been signs of Cossacks. A sleigh had followed with a Polish count, one of the Emperor’s orderlies who would be the interpreter, and an outrider. During the day, Caulaincourt had bought some little Lithuanian horses in town to complete the teams of the three carriages. Napoleon would take the coupé with Caulaincourt; Sebastian and Roustam were stowing provisions in it. Dressed in thick wool, the Emperor got in the travelling carriage, made himself comfortable and slid his legs into a bearskin bag, tiny icicles on his eyebrows and under his nose. ‘Let’s be off, Your Grace!’ he said to Caulaincourt. Roustam perched on the footman’s step. Sebastian was about to get out when the grand equerry stopped him. ‘Since you’re here, Monsieur le secrétaire, stay.’
‘I’m to travel with His Majesty?’
‘If he needs to dictate a letter, you’ll be to hand.’
‘I haven’t told Baron Fain and …’
‘It doesn’t matter. In a few hours he’ll come on in the third carriage, with Monsieur Constant and Dr Yvan.’
They talked; the temperature was so low that as their breath rose, it condensed and covered the hood with a hard frost. Before the coupé had even moved off, during this hushed conversation, Napoleon had fallen into a heavy sleep. Moonlight on the snow lit the way but Sebastian only saw its milky glow through the misted-up windows. The Emperor slept, Caulaincourt’s teeth chattered and Sebastian thought about the strangeness of his fortune; he wasn’t slow drifting off either.
The aide-de-camp riding in the sleigh in front of the coupé roused everybody in the next town. The Cossacks had raided the previous evening and been seen off by musket fire; now they were bivouacking west of the Vilna road.
‘What time is it?’ asked the Emperor.
‘Two o’clock in the morning, sire. Do you want to wait for it to get light? Do you want the commander of the garrison to send a patrol on reconnaissance?’
‘No, that would draw attention to us.’
‘The Russians are ahead of us on the left this time.’
‘What troops are there at this post?’
‘Poles, Germans, three squadrons of lancers …’
‘Will I have an escort?’
‘Lancers, sire.’
‘Are they ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Deploy the escort around the carriage, we will set off immediately.’
‘In the pitch dark?’
‘One must always reckon on good luck, otherwise one never gets anywhere.’
The Emperor passed his pistols through the door and said to his interpreter, ‘Count, if you think danger is certain, kill me, never let me be captured.’
The sleigh, the coupé and the escort of a hundred Polish lancers set off immediately towards Vilna. Far away, to the left of the road, the Cossacks’ fires could be seen but, in the middle of the night and in that cold, they wouldn’t think of venturing forth. How were they to know that Napoleon was escaping towards the Niemen? The only sounds came when horses fell, brought down by the ice. They were a hundred when they set off; at dawn there were only thirty-six left. The thermometer showed twenty-eight degrees below zero.
*
For security, the Emperor wanted to travel incognito. He refused to go into Vilna, where, if they recognized him, the inhabitants wouldn’t be able to refrain from talking and the rumour of their excited chatter would reach the Russians. He did, however, consent to stop for an hour in a modest house in the suburbs. Roustam took the opportunity to shave him and Bassano, the governor, whom Caulaincourt notified, came to receive instructions. Sebastian caught a powerful smack because the ink had frozen and he could not make a fair copy of the orders he’d written in pencil.
They set off again in the dark with an escort of the Neapolitan cavalry garrisoned in Vilna, where Caulaincourt had prepared the relay posts and halting places, and bought fresh horses and fur-lined boots for His Majesty’s travelling companions. Impatient to get back to France, Napoleon had no desire to sleep and Sebastian listened to his long conversation with his grand equerry in the carriage.
‘In Vilna,’ the Emperor was saying, ‘the army will lack nothing, Bassano assures me. The Austrians will keep the Cossacks at bay, and the Poles will never let the Russians cross the Niemen. The Tsar is mistrusted in Warsaw as much as in Vienna.’
‘You are more mistrusted than anybody, sire.’
‘Come, come!’
‘You imposed a military regime on Europe, the peoples complain …’
Caulaincourt got a slap on the cheek.
‘How ridiculous you are! Our laws are just and we will administer Belgium, or Germany, exactly the same as France. I only do what I think useful, Your Grace. I like peace too, but the English have driven me to incessant wars.’
‘The blockade of their merchandise is impoverishing the peoples, sire …’
‘Stupid! One must take the larger view, Caulaincourt, stop considering one’s immediate advantage to think of the general interest. These English! If the Austrians or Germans or Russians want to sell their products, they ask London for permission, and that’s the truth. On the one hand there is Europe, on the other the English manufacturers and their ubiquitous fleet; they control the Adriatic, Malta, Gibraltar and the Cape, they hold sway over trade, exercising an utterly pernicious monopoly. The blockade? It must be strengthened! England must be brought to its knees and then – picture it – a federate Europe will know prosperity, industry will be able to develop, the nations will support each other, they will have the same currency, the pound will collapse.’
‘Will the reverses of this campaign allow us to impose our views on other countries?’
‘If only I hadn’t stayed so long in Moscow, I would have won. Winter has defeated us and not those pathetic Russian generals.’
‘In Spain …’
‘You think Spain should have been wound up first? It’s not certain. The English army has been mobilized there. Besides, is there anywhere they would not attack me? Belgium? Brittany? In time the Spanish will understand as well, but they don’t realize that we have entered a new era! Their colonies in the Americas, too far from Madrid and too close to the United States, will declare independence one after the other, like Paraguay, like Mexico, and they were what laid the foundations for Spain’s power … You’ll see.’
At five o’clock in the morning, still preceded by the sleigh, the Emperor’s coupé stopped in Kovno outside a sort of tavern run by an Italian. There had been a heavy snowfall overnight, but servants brandishing spades had already cleared a path from the road to the door. Logs were burning in a tall fireplace, where three cook’s boys turned three rows of chickens on spits. Those members of the escort who had been lucky enough not to freeze to death stretched out their bloodless hands to the flames, while Caulaincourt explained in vain to their captain the danger of warming frozen fingers up too quickly. The innkeeper showed His Majesty to his best table; Sebastian, the Mameluke, the interpreter and the outrider sat in a corner but were entitled to the same hot meal, with crusty bread and served on tablecloths, which they had almost forgotten existed for so many months. They heard the birds’ fat dripping into the fire, drop by drop, and listened to Caulaincourt questioning the innkeeper on the state of the roads; with such deep snow and ice, was there no way they could get sleighs?
‘I know the senatore, he has one,’ said the innkeeper.
‘What senator?’
‘The Polish senatore, squire of Kovno.’
‘The Poles are our friends.’
‘But I know he no will sell.’
‘He’ll think again with ten thousand francs in front of him.’
‘It a keepsake for him, this sleigh.’
Senator Wybicki, on the occasion of his daughter
’s marriage, had commissioned a light berline to be built on sleigh runners. He was extremely fond of it, the innkeeper was correct. The interpreter went to visit his compatriot, who refused at first, and then, learning that his enhanced sleigh was intended for Napoleon, agreed enthusiastically, declining any consideration other than that he should be presented to the Emperor, which he duly was that same night. The encounter lapsed into an exercise in mutual admiration; His Majesty spoke of his love for Poland, the senator paid him homage. The outrider, meanwhile, took the opportunity to put the horses to. The travellers took the fur-lined coats and arms and not much luggage because there was not much space; in any case the provisions had frozen and the bottles of Chambertin had cracked in the cold. The interpreter sat opposite the Emperor and Caulaincourt, and next to Sebastian. Roustam and the outrider were to follow in a smaller sleigh. They set off for the bridge and crossed the Niemen, frontier to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, in an uncomfortable but fast carriage, travelling alone and without escort. No one said anything.
At the sight of the river they all recalled the same event. It was at the very start of the campaign, on the eve of entering Russian soil: 23 June. Napoleon had wanted to reconnoitre the ford in person and had borrowed a black silk forage cap from a Polish chevau-léger. He’d been trotting along, wearing this disguise, when a hare rushed between Friedland, his horse’s, hooves; His Majesty toppled off into the wheat, picking himself up moments later, unassisted, very pale. Caulaincourt was there. Berthier too. The story leaked out; it was repeated frequently and people saw an ill omen in the accident.
Six months later, in December, crossing the Niemen in the other direction, the Emperor, curiously enough, was smiling.
The Retreat Page 22
