The Irish Witch rb-11

by Dennis Wheatley

  Standing up, Roger replied, ‘I am most grateful to Your Highness for your generous offer of hospitality; but from my youth, whenever in Paris, I have always stayed at La Belle Etoile, hard by the Louvre. The owner is a treasured friend of mine, who has often given me valuable information on the trends of popular opinion in Paris. Moreover he stores there for me a trunk containing a variety of clothes, weapons and other things which I am anxious to go through. I trust you will excuse me if I take up my old quarters there; but I shall be most happy to wait upon Your Highness daily and learn at what hours it would be convenient for you to receive me.'

  'As you will.' The Prince nodded. 'In any case, join me for dinner tomorrow. I have a number of people coming, most of whom will be known to you.'

  The reason that, on reaching Paris, Roger had gone straight to Talleyrand's mansion, was because he knew that the Prince was the one person in the city from whom he could learn if Austria had backed down or if there was still a possibility of her joining the Allies against Napo­leon; and that decision was of immense importance to all Europe, not least to Britain whose people, after twenty years of conflict, were now so utterly war-weary. He would otherwise have gone first to La Belle Etoile.

  Now, greatly cheered by the possibility that within a few months the slaughter might at last cease, having taken leave of the statesman he made his way to the ancient hostelry where many times he had known fear and joy. But on his arrival his elation was soon changed to grievous sorrow.

  The grey-haired ostler in the stable yard greeted him with the news that the old landlord, Maitre Blanchard, had died of a burst stomach ulcer the previous winter, and his widow had soon afterwards sold the property and returned to her native Normandy to live with her sister.

  On the first evening after arriving in Paris Roger had always supped with the good couple in their private par­lour off his favourite mushroom omelette, and duck cooked in the Normandy fashion, which was Madame Blanchard's speciality. He had been looking forward to that excellent meal, washed down with a couple of bottles of the Maitre's best Burgundy, while the three of them gossiped cheerfully over old times and new. Now, never again would he enjoy that good cheer, and the compan­ionship of the honest, big-hearted couple.

  The new landlord was a much younger man and, when he learned that Roger was Colonel Comte de Breuc, well known as one of the Emperor's paladins, became un­attractively servile. Bowing and scraping, he led Roger up to his old room, which happened to be free, and had his big, round-lidded trunk brought down from the attic. In it, among other clothes, he had a spare uniform, medals and an A.D.C.'s sash, so he was able to change into his proper military attire.

  While doing so, he was prey to many disturbing mem­ories. It was there he had lived, posing as a terrorist dur­ing the darkest days of the Revolution, while the good Blanchards had kept the secret that a few years earlier, in his true role as an exquisite, he had frequented the Court of Versailles. There, too, he had for a while concealed the beautiful Athenais de Rochambeau, later enjoyed the clandestine visits of Napoleon's lovely, lecherous sister, the Princess Pauline, and still later also made love to his divine Georgina when she had been secretly in Paris.

  Next morning, he went to the Ministry of War and sent his name up to the Minister, General d'Hanebourg Clarke, Duc de Feltre,.who was an old acquaintance. After a wait of ten minutes or so, Clarke received him and, knowing that he had been with the Emperor in the retreat from Moscow, heartily congratulated him on his re-appearance alive and well.

  Roger told him of his escape to Sweden and that from Stockholm he had gone to England. The General expres­sed surprise and wonder that, as a French officer, he had not been kept there as a prisoner-of-war.

  Raising his eyebrows, Roger replied, ‘I thought you were aware, as most of my friends are, that although I was born in Strasbourg, my mother was Scottish and that when she died I was sent to England to live with her sister. I was educated there, and returned to my own country at the time of the Revolution, as a young journalist in­spired by the new doctrine of Liberty, Equality and Frat­ernity. I have numerous relatives in England who believe that I've spent the greater part of my life travelling in distant lands while, in fact, I have been serving as an A.D.C. to the Emperor.'

  It was the story he had told for many years, and it was believed by everyone in the French Army who knew him well. After a moment, he added, 'The Emperor, of course, has long been aware of this and, on more than one occa­sion, I have gone back to England in order to report to him upon conditions there. That is why, on escaping from Russia, I took the opportunity to do so again, which brings me to the matter upon which I have come to see you.'

  When he had told the General of his anxiety to trace Charles St. Ermins, whom he stated was his nephew’ Clarke replied, 'Certainly - I will do what I can to help you and, as you are so close to our master, I've no doubt he will grant your request to have this young milord ex­changed as soon as possible. But we have many thousands of prisoners in camps here in France, in Saxony and also in Holland and the Rhineland; so it may take several days before I can let you know in which he is.'

  Having thanked him, Roger enquired about the pros­pects of the present campaign.

  The General shrugged. 'As you must be aware, much depends on whether Austria comes in against us. But, even should she do so, I think our chances of defeating this new Coalition far from bad. According to my latest intelli­gence, the Russian field army is some one hundred and eighty thousand strong, the Prussians about one hundred and sixty thousand, the Swedes and Mecklenburgers about thirty-nine thousand. That totals approximately three hundred and eighty thousand men, and between them they have some one thousand one hundred guns. Should Austria join our enemies that would bring the Allied strength up to roughly six hundred thousand men and one thousand four hundred guns. Against that, we and our allies have over eight hundred and sixty thousand men under arms. They are not, of course, all with the Emperor but, including reinforcements now on the way to him, he should have well over six hundred thousand in the German lands.'

  When Roger left the Ministry, he was considerably perturbed by the figures that had been given him. A large percentage of Napoleon's troops must, he knew, be raw recruits, and also he was short of cavalry. But, although Austria was coming in, he would still have superiority in numbers; and, while it was certain that the councils of the Allies would be divided, the Emperor alone would control the dispositions of his great army. Moreover, he was unquestionably a greater strategist than any of die Generals opposed to him.

  Among those of the twenty-four people known to Roger who sat down to dinner at Talleyrand's that afternoon were Goudin, Duc de Gaete, once a junior official at the Treasury, whom Napoleon, on becoming First Consul, had made Minister of Finance and who had by his bril­liant measures rescued France from bankruptcy, and Car­dinal Fesch. The latter was the half-brother of Napoleon's mother. As an Abbe, at the time of the Revolution, he had fled with the Bonapartes from Corsica to the South of France, but there renounced the Church to become a supplier of army stores, and in that capacity accompanied Napoleon on his first victorious campaign in Italy, return­ing to Paris with an ill-gotten fortune. Later, feeling that it could prove useful to have a prelate in the family, Napo­leon had made him Bishop of Lyons then, on the rap­prochement with the Papacy, a Cardinal and Grand Almoner. 'Uncle' Fesch, as he was known, was a sly fellow and insatiably avaricious. Like all the other Bonapartes, he showed little gratitude for his elevation and, as Ambas­sador to Rome, had proved an expensive failure; but he had great influence with his half sister Madame Mere, and was not a man of whom to make ah enemy.

  Later that evening Roger told Talleyrand that La Belle Etoile had changed hands, and he did not at all care for the new landlord, so the Prince renewed his invitation which Roger now gladly accepted, and the following morning he moved into the mansion.

  That day he attended the levee of the plump, stupid young Austrian Arch-Duchess Marie Louise, who
was now Empress of the French, and made his bow to her son, the King of Rome, a charming little boy who was old enough to stand beside her, dressed in a miniature uni­form.

  From the Tuileries, Roger went on to pay his respects to Madame Mere, the only other Bonaparte then in Paris. The gaunt old lady had a forbidding presence and could be very tart at times; but she liked Roger because he had never shown any fear of her, and talked to him in her atrocious French for over half an hour about Napoleon and her other children, whose well-being was the one con­cern of her life.

  Having made his duty calls, Roger rode out on the Sunday to Malmaison, to see the ex-Empress Josephine. They had been friends for many years. She received him with delight, took him round the hothouses, in which she grew a remarkable collection of tropical plants, and insis­ted that he stayed on to dine with a number of other friends she had coming out to visit her.

  In her youth and the early years of her marriage to Napoleon, while he was absent on his campaigns she had given free play to her amorous inclinations; but, belatedly, she had fallen in love with her husband and became furi­ously jealous about his affairs with other women. At the time of the divorce, losing him had been a more severe blow to her than losing her position as Empress. But Roger was glad to find that she had become resigned to living in retirement at Malmaison which, with her boundless extravagance—paid for willingly by the Emperor—she had made one of the most beautiful homes in France and where, owing to her intelligence and charm, she never lacked for company.

  During the days that followed Roger found plenty to occupy him. When it became generally known that Aus­tria had declared war on the 14th, distinguished visitors to Talleyrand's mansion, who wished to discuss the new situation, became more numerous than ever. Old ac­quaintances of Roger's invited him to their houses, and on two further occasions he rode out to Malmaison and spent several hours with Josephine. Having heard nothing from Clarke by the Friday, he called again at the Minis­try of War, but the General told him that there were still a whole series of files to be gone through. Impatiently he waited until the following Monday. That evening a note was brought to him, which read:

  'My dear de Breuc,

  'I much regret to have to tell you that we have drawn a blank. My people tell me that after the Brunswickers were shipped by the English from Spain they were landed in north-west Germany and employed there against the forces of the Marshal Prince d'Eckmuhl in Hanover; so your relative is probably in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Prince's command; and of the occupants of these we have no records.

  'With my most distinguished sentiments, etc.’

  Giving a sigh, Roger laid the letter down. Obviously the mission on which he had set out was not yet anywhere near accomplishment.

  15

  The War Reopens

  As Roger had had good reason to expect that Charles had been sent south to a camp somewhere in France or, at the worst, in the Rhine Provinces, General Clarke's letter was a grievous disappointment. Not only did it mean another journey of at least six hundred and fifty miles, but the Prince d'Eckmuhl was Marshal Davout, a dour man who had no liking for Roger, so it would be useless to go direct to him. The only course was to go first to the Emperor and obtain from him an order to the Marshal to release Charles.

  All that was known in Paris of the situation in the north was that the French were holding the line of the Elbe and that the Emperor's headquarters were somewhere in the neighbourhood of Dresden. So, on the morning of August 24th, Roger took leave of his charming host and set off in that direction.

  Again averaging fifty miles a day, he travelled by way of Chalons, Nancy, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Nurnberg, Plauen and Chemnitz.

  At officers' Messes in garrison towns through which he passed he picked up news of the conflict that had re­opened when Austria entered the war. On the 18th Mar­shal Macdonald's army in Silesia had been defeated by Blucher and forced back over the river Katzbach; but on the 21st the Emperor had arrived on the scene and re­stored the situation. Two days later he hurried back to Dresden. Macdonald was said to have believed that the allies were retiring, but they were not, so the two armies, this time unexpectedly, again came into collision. Blucher's Prussians were severely handled, but the Russian cavalry broke through the French flank and drove the centre of Macdonald's army in great confusion down into the flooded river Neisse. After further severe fighting, by September 1st the allies had driven die French out of Silesia, so could claim their first substantial victory.

  In the meantime, on August 22nd, Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, who had been nominated Generalissimo of the Allied forces, had invaded Saxony with his Austrians, and advanced on Dresden. As the Emperor had by then gone to the assistance of Macdonald in Silesia, the city was covered only by St. Cyr's corps. Schwarzenberg, presumably unaware of this, and at all times a hesitant General with an obsessive fear of Napoleon, decided to await further reinforcements; so he did not open the attack until the morning of the 26th, and then only half­heartedly.

  But for this dilatoriness he could almost certainly have taken the Saxon capital. As things turned out, St. Cyr's three divisions proved staunch enough to hold off the first assaults and, that very morning, Napoleon returned. Halting on the bridge over the Elbe, he swiftly deployed the army he had brought back with him from Silesia, and despatched General Vandamme with a strong force to Pima, from where he could fall on the Allies' rear.

  Early on the 27th Napoleon launched a full-scale attack and, although the Allied army exceeded the French by some forty thousand men, by afternoon their left wing had been shattered, which led to a general retreat. The weather was appalling, the roads bad and that night Rus­sians, Prussians and Austrians were fleeing in hopeless disorder. They had lost ten thousand killed and wounded, and fifteen thousand had been taken prisoner. On the fol­lowing day they were relentlessly pursued, and lost a further five thousand men.

  Such was Napoleon's great victory at Dresden, but he was robbed of its fruits a few days later. While the Allies strove to stem the retreat and bring up reinforcements, the King of Prussia appealed to the Russian General Ostermann to use the reserve division he commanded in an endeavour to check the French advance. On the 30th the fifteen thousand Russians fought heroically against great odds, lost half their number, but succeeded in holding Vandamme before Kulm. By the following day von Kleist's Prussians had outflanked the French, and both the Russians and Austrians, now fifty thousand strong, attacked them fiercely. At Kulm two divisions laid down their arms, and ten thousand prisoners were taken, includ­ing Vandamme himself. For him this was a great mis­fortune, as he was one of Napoleon's ablest Generals and, but for this defeat, might soon have been made a Marshal.

  Such was the situation, as far as it was known to Roger, when he rode into the great camp just outside Dresden on the afternoon of September 6th.

  Whenever Roger rejoined Napoleon, it had always been his custom first to see Duroc, the Grand Marshal of Palaces and Camps, who had long been a close personal friend of his, to learn from him how matters were going and the mood of the Emperor. Stopping a Lieutenant, he enquired of him the whereabouts of Duroc's quarters.

  The young officer looked up at him in surprise and replied, 'Did you not know, Sir, the Duc de Friuli is dead? He was killed by a cannon ball that ploughed right through the Emperor's staff on the day after the battle of Bautzen.'

  This was a great blow to Roger, as he knew it must also have been to the Emperor, since for nearly twenty years Duroc had been Napoleon's constant companion, and a man for whom he had a very deep affection.

  For a few minutes Roger remained seated on his halted horse, his head bowed in sadness; then another horseman cantered by, glanced at him in passing, abruptly pulled up and exclaimed:

  r Mon Dieu! If it's not le brave Breuc! We thought you long since dead on the plains of Russia.'

  Swinging round, Roger recognised Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicenza, a soldier-diplomat whom he had known for many years, and said, ‘I got cut
off, but had the good luck to escape. At the moment though, I am quite over­whelmed, for I have only just learnt that poor Duroc is dead.'

  The Duc nodded. 'Alas, yes. Without him at head­quarters things will never be the same. Neither will the Imperial Guard without Bessieres as its commander. He was killed at Lutzen.'

  ‘I must then condole with the Emperor on the loss of both when I report to him.'

  'You would do better to wait for a more propitious moment, both to report and to condole. He got back to Dresden from one of his reconnaissances in force only this morning, so is up to his eyes in business and in a far from good humour. Wait until this evening, and in the mean­time accompany me to my quarters, where I can provide you with refreshment and you can rest for an hour or two.'

  Roger happily agreed, as Caulaincourt was one of the Emperor's closest confidants. He came of a noble Picardy family and, when Bemadotte was Minister of War, had been given by him the command of a crack cavalry regi­ment. Under the Consulate Talleyrand had, on discover­ing that Caulaincourt had an excellent brain, sent him as Ambassador to Russia. On his return Bonaparte had made him an A.D.C., and it was then that Roger had first come to know him.

  Later, when Napoleon had become Emperor, he had made Caulaincourt, Grand Equerry then, in 1807, sent him again as Ambassador to Russia. He had got on excel­lently with the Czar and his advisers, and done everything he possibly could to prevent war between the two coun­tries, but failed. Having accompanied Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow, he had left the shattered army with him when he abandoned it to return in haste to Paris, and since had handled the negotiations that had led to the armistice of June-July.

  In his marquee, over a bottle of excellent hock, he gave Roger the inside information about what had been going on. As one of Napoleon's most loyal subordinates, he lamented the state into which his master had fallen. He said that the Emperor, unlike his old self, was now a prey to constant indecision, wasted hours and sometimes days in sleeping or lazing about and, instead of concentrating his forces, tended to disperse them. It was his failure to follow up and swiftly support Vandamme which had led to that General's defeat and capture; and his attempt to take Berlin had been both ill-judged and disastrous.