The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  We settled in Boulogne, a small port with cobbled quays and a new stone basin shaped like a half-moon. This was filled with the moored invasion fleet. Larger warships, floating batteries, and underwater chains formed a protective hedge beyond to deter British attack. Four gigantic army camps squatted upslope, three north of the city and one south. A letter from Réal directed me to seek out General Phillipe-Guillaume Duhèsme, to whom I was to offer my eccentric expertise. While the women and Harry explored, I went looking for him.

  The scale was imposing. Men of an ordinaire, or squad, were housed fifteen to a hut in rows more than two miles long. Soldiers did their best to make these hovels a home. Some were whitewashed, had wooden floors, and some even had secondhand carpets. Next to each were plots for vegetables, flower gardens, and chicken coops. Officer villas were in a row beyond, and kitchens and latrines beyond that.

  There were street signs with the names of French victories, such as Valmy, Fleurus, or Marengo. Veterans of the Egyptian campaign set up miniature pyramids or obelisks made of clay and seashells. Pet cats that helped keep away the vermin prowled longingly beneath the birds in the officers’ aviaries.

  There were cheerful oddities everywhere. One hut I passed had a pilfered chandelier, another a pair of Spanish bull horns, and a third chairs fashioned from driftwood. Two veteran sergeants occupied these seats, smoking clay pipes and calling out advice and insults to all who wandered past. A garden statue of Venus was festooned with bawdy notes, and another hut had a mast and boom on the roof, with a rotating sail like a weathercock.

  Duhèsme was a tall, thin, and restless officer with an anxiously friendly face; his head tended to bob when talking, like a rooster. He wore his bicorn hat at a jaunty angle, and muttonchops held his chin like calipers. His headquarters were in a requisitioned stone farmhouse, staff offices on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Three farmwives had been hired to keep house, and two hunting hounds lay like lazy sentries.

  “Ah, the American. Did you bring the Jaeger?”

  I’d wrapped the rifle in oilcloth to discourage thieves from its gleam of gold. It was opulent enough to be embarrassing. “I haven’t had an opportunity to use it, General.” I untied the bundle.

  His eyes gleamed at its craftsmanship as he reached out.

  “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  He turned it and sighted. “Pretty as a woman. And worth a small fortune.”

  “A present from the emperor.” The rifle gave me more credential than a satchel of medals.

  “An impressive patron to have in imperial France, though exactly where our empire is—a grand claim for a nation ringed by enemies—has eluded my discovery. I suppose the emperor is an optimist.” He grabbed a tin plate from the table by the house’s kitchen. “And you’re curious about your pretty gun, no? I certainly am. Do you have powder? No? We’ll requisition some. Come, come, let’s give it a try.”

  We trudged up a long sweeping hill with the general pointing out Napoleon’s pavilion. “He has an iron bed with a horsehair mattress there, but usually sleeps on feathers on the other side of town, in a mansion called Pont-de-Briques. That’s when he sleeps at all. Mostly he prowls from six in the morning until five in the afternoon, at which time he returns to headquarters to do paperwork, dashing off a hundred orders to all corners of France until midnight. It keeps men at their jobs, I can tell you. He’ll pinch your ear if you displease him, and give you a silver snuff box if he approves.”

  “I’m not sure why he brought me here. Perhaps to meet with him?”

  “Not today!” He laughed. “Our petit caporal took it in his head to be the first to shoot the mighty mortars we’ve installed to hold off the British ships. The monsters fire sixty-pound shells, and a single hit would be enough to sink a frigate. But as a

  former gunner Napoleon was too confident, and he stood so close that the roar and concussion deafened him. He’s had cotton in his bleeding ears the past two days and is sour as bad milk.”

  An injury report from famed spy Ethan Gage was something Smith could use, I thought. “You mean he can’t hear?”

  “Temporarily, the doctors say. Meanwhile, he shouts because he thinks we can’t hear him.” Duhèsme laughed again, an officer of rare good humor. His face was weathered from coastal duty, pockmarked from some earlier disease, and handsome in the lean way of a hound. “His enthusiasm is always getting him into trouble. He’s fallen out of boats and had to swim for his hat, and been thrown by his horse while crossing the river. But his frenzy produces respect. He’s caught sentries napping. He also came upon one soldier they forgot to relieve and took his place on a blustery night, saving the man from freezing. Or so the story goes. Bonaparte is as much legend as fact anymore. What do they think of him in America?”

  “The hope was that he’d sustain a democratic republic.”

  “Copy the chaos of your United States? I think not.”

  “Then what was your revolution for?”

  “Liberty. But people in France are tired of freedom. It’s when people can vote that they realize how catastrophic and stupid are the opinions of their neighbors. Better to have a Bonaparte in charge whom you can never remove, and always blame.” He laughed again.

  There was a thunder of hooves behind. The general jerked me off the track, and a captain of the Hussars rode past, whooping drunkenly and holding a champagne bottle. Duhèsme gave him a wry salute.

  “Your officers gallop intoxicated?”

  “It’s his initiation after a promotion. To confirm his new rank, the cavalryman is given three horses and has three hours to gallop a twenty-mile course, all while drinking three bottles of champagne and rutting three whores. The order with which he accomplishes these tasks is entirely up to him.”

  “And they accomplish it?” Even I was astounded, and a bit envious.

  He winked. “We’re a highly trained army. Are you a military man, Gage?”

  “Not by profession. Armies seem to scoop me up.”

  “You’ve seen action in the Orient and the Americas, I understand, and by reputation are quite a shooter.”

  “I learned on the American frontier but am out of practice.”

  “Let’s see you practice now.” We reached a camp firing range set against a dune. Duhèsme placed the plate a hundred paces away. “Show me what your pretty gun is capable of.”

  I loaded the Jaeger. Unlike a soldier’s musket ball, a rifle bullet is tightly squeezed in the barrel so it can grip the grooving and spin for accuracy. That means ramrodding takes care, strength, and time. I spent a full minute inserting powder cartridge, ball, wadding, and primer.

  “My God, the battle would be over by now,” Duhèsme judged, looking at his pocket watch. “This is how you won the American wars?”

  “For speed, use a musket. You can almost drop the bullet in. But to actually hit anything, use a rifle.” I primed the pan, cocked, aimed slowly, and squeezed the trigger. There was a bang, kick, and a puff of powder smoke. Through its haze, the distant tin plate twitched. I felt satisfied. I was rusty but could still shoot.

  The general snapped open his telescope. “Just centimeters off the center. Impressive, American. Try again.”

  I shot five more times. Every bullet pierced the plate. Then Duhèsme followed, hitting three of four shots.

  “Impressive, Frenchman.”

  “It’s the gun. The inaccuracy of firearms is the intriguing dilemma of the battlefield. We’ve run tests with our infantry firing at targets the size of horses. With a musket, just half struck the target at a hundred yards. At three hundred, the accuracy dropped to one hit in four. Charging cavalry can gallop that distance in half a minute.”

  “Meaning your soldiers get off just one or two volleys.”

  “And that’s on a firing range. Put peasant boys on a smoky and hellish battlefield, men bleeding and horses screami
ng, guns going off in their ears, and we’re fortunate to get them to point their muskets in the enemy’s direction. It took more than four hundred shots at Marengo to produce each Austrian casualty.”

  “You might as well wait for them to keel over from consumption.”

  “Our soldiers stagger from sixty-five pounds of gun and kit. You need bright uniforms to tell friend from foe in the murk of powder smoke. Drums and bugles because no one can hear their officers. And should the rank be one deep, two, or three? It’s not uncommon for the third rank to shoot the ears off those in the first.”

  “The British stand two deep, I’m told.” This was no secret.

  “All those men must be fed. A cannon requires ammunition and gunners, and the gunners food, and so a battery of field pieces requires a hundred horses that need to eat in turn. Any economy saves lives and francs. What if our army was armed with Jaegers?”

  So that was in it. This Frenchman wanted to mimic Daniel Morgan’s frontiersmen in our Revolutionary War, picking the British off from an impregnable distance. “Rifles are fussy,” I warned. “They take too long to load, are more apt to foul and misfire, and are easily broken. Muskets can take the abuse of an oaf and be loaded by a village idiot.”

  “An elite rifle unit, then. Lafayette brought back enthusiasm for skirmishers from your Revolutionary War.”

  “Red Indians are most expert, so perhaps you should go back to arrows. They’re silent and don’t emit smoke.”

  The idea was meant as a joke, but he took it seriously. “Do you know how to shoot a bow?”

  “Regrettably, no. Years of practice are required, I’m guessing.”

  “Crossbows, perhaps. Let me ponder that.” Duhèsme had more imagination than most army officers I’ve encountered.

  “For every advantage there is a disadvantage.”

  He nodded. “You understand war, Monsieur Gage. People think generalship is arrows on a map, but it really is difficult choices, and getting men to function when they’re hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. They seldom know exactly what they’re fighting for, so they fight for friends and flag. Their reward is proof of their own courage.”

  “Men fight wars to become men.”

  “Indeed.” He cocked his head. “So why are you here, so far from home?”

  “My goal is peace, which no one seems to share.”

  “You’re not loyal to a flag?”

  “I understand being loyal to yourself, your family, and even the country that protects them. If that’s represented by the flag, then of course. But if the flag represents a king’s quest for glory, or a vainglorious general? Then I’m loyal to reason. I’ll retreat or desert if it will save my life.”

  Duhèsme was disappointed in me, as so many people are. “You’re missing the meaning of life, Monsieur Gage. You need a cause and companions! Someday, perhaps, you’ll experience the exhilaration of dedicating yourself to a banner, melding with your unit, and feeling as one. It’s transforming: a touch of the Divine.”

  “The transformation comes when a cannonball shreds your extremities. And I hope the Divine is dedicated to beauty, not butchery. Yes, I know my selfishness makes me a poor soldier. But a sensible man, don’t you think?”

  “A morally impoverished one.” He shook his head.

  That’s the nut of things, isn’t it? Do you live for yourself or your country? For reason or passion? Are you responsible for your actions, or do you hand responsibility to an army and commit glory and crimes on its behalf?

  “I mean no insult,” Duhèsme said, “but one’s country is all. And unity is what we’re drilling here, and why we’ll cut through English militia like a knife through butter if we can cross the Channel. Nearly half our number here has already seen combat. No army in history has the preparation of Napoleon’s Army of England. But we constantly seek advice, even from independent Americans, to improve even more.”

  “I’m flattered but mystified, General. You already know the advantages and disadvantages of rifles.”

  “I’m asking if they are practical.”

  I rummaged for something useful. “In America the colonials fought from behind trees and rocks. The British regulars couldn’t close without breaking apart their lines in rough terrain. Washington wanted to fight on level fields, but I never understood the point of it. Fight like Indians! The English called cowardice what I call cunning.”

  “I want you to work with us on tactics, Gage. And when you’re finished, go tell your British friends they can’t stand against us. Your incorrigible character will convince them you’re betraying us, so they’ll believe you.”

  I sighed at this assessment. For all my skepticism of following a flag, I had effectively been drafted into the French army. Some spy! “This is what Napoleon called me here for?”

  “Napoleon called you for a different purpose. When his ears heal, he’ll give you your true mission.”

  CHAPTER 11

  What Astiza calls fate I call luck, and Napoleon has bad luck with the sea. He lost an entire fleet to Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. He’d turned his back on Fulton’s nautical ingenuity. And I reunited with him on a day that was stormy in more ways than one.

  It was July 20, 1804, the kind of sullen summer day that promises thunder. Our audience with the emperor had yet to be scheduled, but General Duhèsme sent word that Napoleon had ordered an invasion exercise in Boulogne’s harbor and suggested we might enjoy viewing the rehearsal.

  My relationship with the leader of France was complicated. Other English spies had been summarily shot, and yet our family of agents, Harry and Catherine included, was invited to review invasion preparations! I knew enough to be insulted. Napoleon judged me liable to seduction and meant to win me over by a combination of flattery, reward, and demonstration of France’s inevitable victory.

  Why he cared about us at all I still didn’t understand, but would shortly.

  First, though, we witnessed disaster that provided opportunity.

  Bonaparte had gone on his daily inspection ride and would return to Boulogne in time for the review in a galloping column of aides, bodyguards, and couriers. We waited for him at a harbor overlook amid a cluster of generals and admirals. The officers kept peeking at my lovely wife and governess while Harry crawled between their boots, impish mischief that they found amusing and I found embarrassing. “Harry, stay with Papa,” I’d commanded.

  “He has his father’s restlessness,” Duhèsme observed.

  “And willfulness,” Catherine said.

  The day was humid, pregnant with storm. Word came that Admiral Etienne Eustache Bruix had canceled the maneuver. Bruix was a quietly self-possessed officer as popular with the navy as Napoleon was with the army, and he had a seaman’s caution. Black clouds were building to the northeast. We were about to return to our lodging to stay dry when Duhèsme put his hand on my arm.

  “Don’t leave yet. Napoleon is approaching, and Bruix is as stubborn as the emperor is adamant.”

  “They don’t get along?” Another possible note for my spy book.

  “On the contrary, the emperor respects the admiral. But Bonaparte is as impetuous as Bruix is judicious. Napoleon loves to leap aboard boats and be recklessly rowed around the harbor flotilla. In a recent skirmish with the British navy he insisted that he round a point to see the action. Bruix countermanded the order. You can imagine the plight of the sailors, their emperor pointing one direction and their admiral the other. They finally obeyed their own officer, to Bonaparte’s fury, and he became even angrier when a boat that ventured where he’d proposed was blown to pieces by English gunnery. There’s nothing worse than being proved wrong in front on your entire navy and army. Rather than thank the admiral for saving his life, the Corsican stalked away, seething with anger, and then challenged a gun crew to shoot the bowsprit off a British ship to divert attention from his folly. They actually did so,
skipping a cannonball across the water to clip the spar like a twig. The emperor gave the crew some gold pieces. Now he’s given a naval order again, and once again Bruix has countermanded it. Let’s see what happens.”

  As he spoke, Napoleon’s column rode into town in a blue serpentine line and reined to a halt at our overlook, hooves clacking on cobble. Seated on his gray mare, face flushed from the exertion of riding, the newly elected emperor looked more the hero of the Pyramids and Alps than he’d seemed at the sumptuous ceremony in Paris. His bicorn hat was set to emphasize the width of his shoulders, and under a dusty overcoat a plain green chasseur uniform with two medals again stood out for its martial plainness. He swung off his horse without help, the turbaned Mameluke sentry Roustan keeping a protective eye. Then the emperor strode to a low parapet to survey the harbor.

  He’d already achieved a miraculous transformation. Boulogne, formerly a muddy estuary home to a few fishermen, now had a gigantic stone harbor filled with hundreds of boats that were crammed with thousands of soldiers.

  Nothing was moving.

  Thunder growled, dirt swirled in the wind, and the tails of his officers’ coats lifted like bird wings poised for flight.

  “Where’s my review?” Napoleon held a riding crop in his hand.

  “I’m very sorry, sire, but the review can’t be held today,” Admiral Bruix replied. The two men looked somewhat alike, but while Napoleon was fiery and brittle, Bruix was stolid and calm.

  “What?”

  “The review cannot be held. We sailors are captives of the weather, and the weather is threatening indeed.” He pointed to the thunderheads sweeping down from Belgium. The afternoon sun lit them to imposing blackness, and trees rustled warning.

  Napoleon’s face also clouded. This was the second time the admiral had publicly countermanded him, and the emperor had become accustomed to sycophantic obedience. His voice rose, pale eyes as cold as a glacier. “You won’t carry out my orders?”

  “A terrible storm is preparing. Your Majesty must see this as well as I do. Surely you’ll not risk the lives of so many brave men unnecessarily?”