by Max Hennessy
‘Marriage, for God’s sake!’ he snapped. ‘What did you think?’
She gave a little laugh. ‘But that’s ridiculous!’
‘I’m the right age. So are you.’
She leaned forward to kiss him. ‘I’d much rather simply go to bed with you,’ she said. ‘Suppose, after a week or two, I changed my mind.’ She smiled and kissed him again. ‘After all, with my experience I have no great admiration for men as a group. I think we would do much better to forget marriage and simply make love.’
He gazed at her, disappointed, but since he didn’t feel suicidal, he came to the conclusion that he was merely being businesslike and was far from being in love.
She was lying back on the pillow smiling at him, but as she lifted her arms and placed them round his neck, the door rattled. Colby sat bolt upright. Germaine didn’t turn a hair.
‘It’s locked,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a precaution I always take.’ She lifted her head. ‘Who is it?’
‘Me, Madame! Henriette, your maid. The footman’s just arrived from town to say there’s been another battle near Saarbrücken.’
Germaine beamed at Colby. ‘How nice,’ she said. ‘Everything seems to be going according to plan.’ She raised her voice again. ‘How kind of you to tell me, Henriette! Now run away and amuse yourself. I’m rather preoccupied.’
‘But, Madame–’ the voice outside the door became a wail ‘–he says that this time we’ve lost it. He says there’s also been a battle at Wissembourg, and we’ve been beaten there, too.’
Startled eyes turned to Colby. ‘But Wissembourg’s in France! That means the Prussians have invaded us. How can that be?’
Colby made for the door. ‘I think I’d better go and find out,’ he said.
Almost at once he bumped into Ackroyd who had come looking for him.
‘The French have been beaten near Saarbrücken,’ Colby said.
‘That they ’ave,’ Ackroyd agreed. ‘Chucked off the Spicherenberg. They say the general felt a bit isolated and thought ’e’d better move back, and the Prussians thought it was part of a general retreat and set about ’im. The whole bloody shebang will be back in Metz before long, because they caught Douay’s division at Wissembourg as well. MacMahon’ll be next on the list.’
They didn’t have far to go before they found themselves surrounded by swarms of French soldiers heading rearwards. With them were wagons, guns, ambulances, and carts full of wounded, their heads nodding to the shake and rumble of wheels. Forbach was full of them, lying in the streets in their hundreds, helped only by nuns, women and foreigners.
‘It’s nothing but a minor setback.’ It was the surgeon who had accompanied de Polignac to the Ile du Saulcy who spoke. He was bending over a wounded sergeant and seemed unperturbed by the defeat. ‘The French have never been afraid to take a step backwards to enable them to take two forward. We’re merely regrouping.’
It didn’t look like regrouping to Colby. There seemed to be nothing but confusion and panic and there was little evidence of organisation. French intelligence had broken down and, dependent for information on the civilian population and latrine rumour, they had marched and counter marched, their orders meticulous about encampments and dress but providing nothing whatsoever in the way of information or maps. Tramping in the blazing sunshine and soaking rain, the regiments had become more and more confused as the columns crossed each other’s routes and their colonels lost confidence in the high command.
There was no point in becoming enmeshed in the debris of a retreating division, but when they returned to Metz the stories had arrived before them and suspense added the beginnings of dread. The black shadow of disaster already brooded over the city and crowds began to form at the station and at the offices of the newspaper, waiting for information to come through on the telegraph. The rumours persisted throughout the day, with additional extras such as that General Douay had been killed by a shell and the Emperor had been mortally wounded. Then they heard that Ackroyd’s suspicion that MacMahon was next was sound. He had been caught at Wörth and driven from the field with disastrous losses.
‘They’ll not get the Italians and the Austrians on their side now,’ Colby said grimly. ‘Not after three defeats.’
As night came, people were still waiting on the corners, worried and anxious, trying to read the latest proclamations by the light of gas-lamps. Army headquarters at the Hotel Europa was surrounded by carriages, standing in a drizzling rain that had started, all full of people desperate for news, while more aimless groups stood in the Place Royale and on the Esplanade, sheltering under dripping café awnings despite the gesticulations of the harassed waiters trying to move them on.
Ackroyd appeared. ‘They’ve come out against Napoleon in Paris,’ he said. ‘Newspaper feller told me. ’E’d ’eard it on the telegraph. They’re talking revolution.’
As they pushed through the city streets, they had to dodge country wagons coming from the frontier full of people, mattresses, chairs and tables. A long straggling column followed in carriages and traps, pushing small wheeled carts, carrying children, or driving a cow or a few goats or sheep. The news grew steadily worse. A hospital train organised for the wounded had been taken over at Wörth by panic-stricken soldiers, Strasbourg was surrounded, the cavalry was useless, and the Emperor too old and slow.
The first troops from Forbach arrived the following day, crossing the city to the camps on the west in an interminable stream, staggering with weariness, some of them without weapons or equipment. There was a smell of defeat in the air and the weary men were throwing away their rifles and knapsacks and stumbling into doorways to fall asleep.
The rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves went on all night and occasionally they heard outbreaks of drunkenness. The wagons were still struggling through the following morning, with the artillery trains, baggage carts, field smithies and spare horses, the soldiers begging for food and water so that women were running in and out of the houses with pails and plates. Then they heard that a train had been derailed at Commercy by Uhlans and they rode the thirty miles south to find out. It turned out that the Uhlans had had no part in it, but a troop train had run into a civilian train. As the surviving soldiers were formed up alongside the track and marched off, the dead were being brought out and laid in a nearby field. Dozens of foreigners, some of them with their own carts and carriages, the only organised help there seemed to be, were working in the wreckage and Colby and Ackroyd helped to drag out a woman with both her legs broken. Her chest was crushed and the bones were sticking out, and she was covered with blood and wailing that her child was still in the debris.
It was late when they got back to Metz where they learned that the story about the Prussians cutting the line was not so wrong after all. It was merely a different line – the one to the west that was needed for the retreat.
Every seething alley and courtyard was overflowing with troops now, every square and islet packed as the outflanked units streamed back. Obstructing them everywhere was the flood of civilians, smelling of wet wool, poverty and fear. Panic lay just below the surface and nerves seemed to be stretched until they twanged like violin strings, while the telegraph confirmed Ackroyd’s story about Paris, where the government had resigned.
During the day the sky filled with clouds and it began to drizzle so that the plethora of flags about the streets grew wet and stuck to their poles. There wasn’t half enough room for the troops flooding in, and fires were going in the Esplanade. Officers were ransacking their baggage among the café tables and cavalry horses picketed on the trodden lawns were dragging at the juniper trees.
Germaine was in a state of icy calm. About her the servants were throwing belongings and clothes into trunks and tying them with ropes, while the concierge was flinging dust sheets over the furniture and locking the shutters. The house was filled with gloom.
‘Colbee–’ As she saw him, Germaine quietly poured him a drink and handed it to him, her hand shaking ‘–you m
ust save us. The army is defeated! The Empire is collapsing about our ears! The Emperor has been shot and the Marshals have all gone over to the enemy!’
‘Not yet!’ He tried to calm her. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’
‘Where is Narcisse?’ Her eyes grew moist. ‘Why doesn’t he come to help me? This is the moment I need him.’
‘He’s probably busy,’ Colby said. ‘I think a lot of people are busy just now.’
‘Then please do something! I can’t stay here. I should be back in Paris where it’s safe. It is up to you to take me!’
Four
The slow shifting of troops from the east into the city continued – deep columns of blue, white and red, the metallic August sun on unsheathed bayonets. The soldiers were shouting that they had been betrayed, and sullen eyes stared from under shakoes and brass cuirassier helmets. A rancid smell of sweat, fear and anger rose amid the clouds of grey dust stirred up by thousands of shuffling boots.
During the day, news came in that Napoleon had turned the command of the army over to Marshal Bazaine and there was a marked lifting of spirits, because the French hadn’t been badly hurt, despite the defeats, and were still strong enough to hold off a few Prussians.
Walking back from the empty station, Colby heard that the Emperor had arrived in the city and was attending Mass in the cathedral. Quickening his pace, he arrived just as Napoleon came out. He looked haggard and shabby. A cloak was thrown over his uniform and straggling grey hair escaped from under the gold-encrusted red képi. The Prince Imperial, just behind him, seemed only a frightened boy struggling to hold back his tears. The square was filled with a brooding suspicion that Metz was being betrayed. There were no cheers, and the heavy faces of the Messins were hard and unforgiving as they watched the Emperor, his eyes desperate in a face that had been painted to hide his illness, climb heavily into his carriage.
Late in the morning, they heard the mutter and rumble of guns from the east again. As the sounds came, the westwards movement halted and everybody stopped to stare back to where the cathedral spire shone golden in the sun. A few frantic staff officers appeared, forcing their way through the mass of men and trying to turn them back the way they had come.
Ackroyd popped up from nowhere. ‘Prussians ’ave bumped into the rearguard,’ he announced. ‘They’ve ’alted the retreat to face ’em.’
As they rode towards the fighting, they could hear the rumble of guns growing louder and the ugly grinding sound they recognised as the mitrailleuses. When they arrived, the ambulances – most of them still foreign – were at work. Through the halo of mist, they saw what appeared to be miles of dead and wounded, lying where they’d been caught by the guns, French on one side, Prussians on the other. Carts full of straw were jolting them across the slopes towards Metz.
Deciding it was wiser to get on the road to Verdun before it was too late, they returned to pack Germaine among the trunks in the carriage, still calm and clear-headed but protesting loudly that she was not in the habit of travelling like a servant. It was impossible to move, however. The whole French army, a hundred and sixty thousand strong, with all its guns, pontoon bridges, horses and four thousand supply wagons, their numbers swollen by the vehicles of escaping civilians, were struggling out of the city by the Longeville route. It had been going on for two days now in one huge ill-policed convoy.
With the aid of a few bribes, Colby managed to halt the stream long enough to force the carriage into the throng and they began to move at a snail’s pace out of the city, surrounded by a winding straggle of peasants and people sitting in carriages filled with china and furniture. The last information Ackroyd had brought from the station was that there was no guarantee that any more trains would arrive from the south either to bring reinforcements or carry away refugees. It was clear that organisation had totally collapsed.
During the morning the sky filled with clouds and the day grew dismal with drizzle. The flags hanging from abandoned houses slapped and smacked in the breeze over the columns of men plodding up the hill, their clothes filthy, their boots heavy with mud, the driving storm beating at their backs. Zouaves, the spoils of robbed hen-roosts hanging at their belts, threaded in and out of hay-carts filled with women and children. Grenadiers of the Guard mingled with stocky Lignards, and hussars and lancers jostled each other in an attempt to pass to the front. Furious staff officers cursed and gesticulated, while men edged to the side of the road from the path of the towering train of pontoon barges that had been intended to bridge the river to make the passage of troops more easy.
As the afternoon came, the rain stopped and the sun appeared, hot, stifling and exhausting. The rumour passed down the ranks of the slowly-shifting column that the troops defeated near Strasbourg were retreating on Chalôns and that it was hoped that the Army of the Rhine would join them there. But the news was vague and no one knew where the Prussians were.
‘The French cavalry,’ Colby observed, ‘seem to think their only job’s to spruce up their bloody millinery. The whole army’s mesmerised and like a lot of undertakers creeping round a corpse. If that damned carpet-bagger, Bazaine, stays in Metz much longer he’s never going to move until they cart him off a prisoner to Germany.’
As it grew dusk and torches appeared, tempers grew worse, then they heard guns rumbling to the west and heads came up as ears cocked. From a mounted officer covered with mud who was trying to fight his way through to headquarters, they got the information that Uhlans were on the left bank of the Meuse and to the south of the road, and that the French cavalry screen, feeling its way gingerly forward, had been stopped near Mars-la-Tour. As the head of the column halted, the whole bewildered struggling mass concertina-ed to a stop. The civilians climbed from the carriages trapped among the carts, fourgons and guns, and sat wearily at the roadside, eating their picnic meals and waiting for the route to be cleared.
‘You must find a hotel – an inn,’ Germaine said firmly. ‘I can’t sleep upright in a carriage.’
She was still calm but her insistence on comfort made Colby feel like hitting her over the head with something.
Point du jour was crammed by the convoy carrying the Imperial household, huge fourgons and carts in the Imperial colours marked with ‘N’ and guarded by Cuirassiers and Dragoons of the Guard. The royal comforts congested the whole road and the soldiers filing by made no attempt to hide their feelings. Moving sullenly, their silence was in sharp contrast to the cheers of a fortnight before. Occasionally, even, one of them raised his voice. ‘A cheer for the Emperor,’ he yelled, and the cry came back immediately with a ‘One, two, three merde!’ that spoke of constant repetition.
Reaching Gravelotte, with a great deal of difficulty and a lot of bribery they managed to get a room in the inn. It was hardly up to Germaine’s standard and consisted of a bare uncomfortable attic.
‘Stay here with me,’ she pleaded.
‘I can’t,’ Colby pointed out. ‘Bazaine’s bound to bring up troops to clear the road ahead. It can’t be held by more than a couple of squadrons of Uhlans, and I ought to go and see what’s happening so we’re ready to move on in the morning.’
‘Stay with me! I beg you!’
‘Germaine, be sensible!’
‘This isn’t a time for sense!’ The calm shivered and broke. ‘It’s a time to lose ourselves in despair! You can sleep in my bed. I shall not take up much room.’
He backed hurriedly from the room as the maid struggled in with a suitcase containing the thousand and one bottles of unguents and powders Germaine used to keep her skin creamy. Downstairs, he fought his way to where the landlord of the inn was beating off hysterical customers.
‘There is no food,’ he yelled at Colby. ‘It has all gone! We don’t expect such numbers!’
Colby slipped a handful of silver across. ‘Bread and cheese will do,’ he said.
The landlord glanced at the money and gestured to a door behind his bar. ‘In the kitchen,’ he said quietly. ‘I daren’t bring it out h
ere.’
Collecting the food in a handkerchief with a bottle of thin wine from the frightened wife of the proprietor, Colby headed outside to where Ackroyd was guarding the horses.
‘You ain’t leavin’ me with ’er, are you?’ Ackroyd said indignantly. ‘She’s got a maid and a manservant.’
‘Just for the night, Tyas, old son,’ Colby said.
Climbing into the saddle, he began to head westward, taking to the fields and picking his way between the weary civilians standing in groups near their vehicles. No one stopped him or told him he had no right to be on the road the army was using. Soldiers were quarrelling everywhere. Having expected orders to continue, they were bewildered and angry because none had arrived. Tents had been erected and the cavalry had unsaddled, with long lines of horses with their heads down at streams. No patrols seemed to have been sent out.
Eating the food he had brought among the trees alongside the road, Colby struggled on again before daylight, aware of a stirring about him and eyes turned towards the west. A rumour had spread that French troops were approaching on a converging route from the south. Near Vionville, a cavalry mess was being erected and bivouacs set up in the growing daylight, and there was a smell of coffee in the air. The only discordant note came from an over-keen officer who was asking that he might be permitted to take out a patrol to investigate small bodies of troops which had been seen on high ground to the west.
‘It’s Ladmirault’s corps coming up.’ The general he approached shook his head firmly. ‘There’s no need to worry.’
The Emperor had got through, it seemed, with an escort of dragoons and chasseurs, insisting that Bazaine should push on after him, but nobody seemed to be aware of any urgency, and in the increasing heat officers’ servants were unpacking shaving kits and trotting off towards Vionville to find rooms where their officers might wash and brush up. Jacketless soldiers had removed their heavy brass helmets and unslung their sabres, and were laying blankets on the ground and placing saddles for back rests.
