The Marshal had left his valet on the island guarding his portmanteau. Marbot went and asked him for one of the Marshal's shirts of the finest material. He tied its openings with string, like a goatskin, went back to the riverbank, dipped the bag into the muddy water, and tied it to a low branch above a water bottle. The Marshal drank the cold water which had been filtered through the shirt with a sigh of relief.
'Thank you,' Lannes said, 'thank you, Captain. Why the deuce are you only a captain.' I'll see to it as soon as victory is ours. What would I do without you, eh : Without you and Pouzet, I'd already be dead, that's the truth of it, isn't it' Do you remember our first meeting''
'Yes, Your Grace, it was the day before the victory at Friedland. I had recently married.'
'You had been wounded at Eylau . . .'
'Yes, in the arm, by a bayonet thrust. A roundshot had torn a hole in my hat/
'You were serving under Augereau. He entrusted you to me, just as he did last year . .
'I joined up with you at Bayonne . . .'
'We were leaving for Spain to command the Army of the Ebro. You knew the country and I did not . .. Burgos, Madrid, Tudela . . .'
'Where we swept the enemy aside with our first onslaught.'
'Ah yes . . . Our first onslaught ... A wretched country, all the same! I came very close to losing you, Marbot.'
'I remember, Your Grace. A bullet grazed my heart before lodging in my ribs, a bullet as flat as a coin. It had teeth like the cog of a watch and was engraved with a cross like the Host.'
'Alberquerque was one of my aides-de-camp by then, wasn't he? At any rate, we brought him back from Spain, I think . . . Where is he? Why isn't he at your side?'
'He can't be far away, Your Grace.'
But he was: Alberquerque was a long way away and Marbot knew it. A roundshot had shattered the small of his back that evening and he had fallen to the ground, stone dead. Lannes spoke in an almost inaudible voice, 'Tell Alberuquerque to pass this on to Bessieres. It is imperative he send in his cuirassiers. We must be sprung from this trap, no matter what the cost!'
'It will be done.'
Lannes continued to move his lips, without any discernible words emerging. Then he closed his eyes and his cheek fell back on the coat which had been put under his head as a pillow. Marbot felt a surge of panic. 'Is that it? Is he
dead?'
'No, no, Captain,' a surgeon's assistant, whom Larrey
had appointed to stay by the marshal, reassured him. 'He is asleep.'
Not far away, near the imperial tent, Lejeune was assessing the fresh dangers of that night. He feared two things: the island being flooded by the Danube in spate and the Austrians suddenly deciding to bombard them from the riverbank above Aspern. He was unburdening himself to Perigord, who was more sceptical and considerably more confident of their position.
'I have studied the bark of the willows and maples, Edmond, and I can assure you that you can see signs of a previous flood.'
'You're a gardener now, are you, my dear friend?'
'I'm serious! Every island is vulnerable to flooding.'
'Except the lie de la Cite in Paris.'
'Stop joking! I'd be only too glad if you were right, but I can't help seeing this as a possible threat.'
'What, that our wounded would be drowned?'
'And our retreat jeopardized. We'd all be stuck here. On the other hand, if the Archduke Charles . . .'
'Your Austrian cannon don't frighten me, Louis-Francois. Are you blind? And deaf as well, for good measure? If the Archduke had wanted he could have driven us into the Danube, but he broke off at exactly the same time as us.'
'If he were in his place, the Emperor wouldn't have thought twice.'
'No, but that's what the Archduke is doing: he's thinking twice.'
Berthier had had the same thoughts as Lejeune. He had
ordered a blackout on the island and had campfires lit on the strip of ground between the villages, to create the impression of an army settling in for the night and ensure their escape. The Emperor had approved the measure. Lejeune and Perigord, therefore, were walking in pitch darkness, their hands stretched out in front of them so as not to bump into a tree. Suddenly Lejeune felt the tips of his fingers touching a jowly face and heard a man ask him in a thick Italian accent, 'Have you quite finished pawing my chin?'
'May it please Your Majesty to forgive me . . .'
'Coglionel You are forgiven, now lead us to the bank!'
The elms and willows were swaying and their leaves shook in the wind. Sighs and groans of agony could be heard from the thousands of wounded choking the river-banks or stretched out on the grass. Lejeune and Perigord walked ahead of the group made up of the Emperor, Berthier and the officers of his household.
'The boat is ready, sire,' said Berthier, holding onto Caulaincourt's shoulder as he walked in front of him, feeling his way with the tips of his cavalry boots.
Terfetto?
'I have personally chosen fourteen rowers, two pilots, two swimmers . . .'
'Swimmers? Perche?'
'In case the boat capsizes, sire . . .'
'It will not overturn!'
'It will not overturn, as you say, but one has to allow for every eventuality, even the worst. . .'
'I detest the worst, Berthier, you damn ass!' 'Yes, sire.'
Walking in single file, Napoleon and his staff reached
the windswept riverbank without falling or crashing into anything. The boat was waiting. The Emperor took out his fob watch and sounded it. 'Eleven o'clock.'
The river could only vaguely be seen by the light of the new moon, but the noise of it made any sort of conversation hard. Waves broke against the island's sloping banks, throwing up a fine spray like rain, the waters rolled like a torrent and the wind whistled in their ears.
'Berthier!' shouted the Emperor. 'I'm going to dictate the order for retreat!'
'Lejeune!' yelled Berthier.
Perigord had managed to light a torch by sheltering under a copse. In its yellow, trembling light, Lejeune laid his sabretache across his knees like a desk, and, with the paper and inked quill he'd been handed by the secretary who was in attendance, he took down the order, improvising when he couldn't understand something above the roar of the river and the wind. At midnight, the Emperor dictated, Massena and Bessieres were to withdraw onto Lobau with all the troops. Once the entire army had reached this refuge, the little bridge was to be destroyed and the pontoons and trestles brought over on wagons to repair the main bridge.
When Lejeune had finished, Berthier signed the document and it was dried with a handful of sand. Then Napoleon climbed down the bank to the large boat; the brawny rowers who were holding it steady took him under both arms and helped him aboard. Perigord handed his torch to one of the pilots. Berthier, Lejeune and the others staying behind watched the Emperor draw away from the island. For a moment, they could see his expressionless face and his tail-coat flapping in the wind. When the boat had
pulled away a few arms' length, the torch guttered and died in a gust of wind and the Emperor disappeared into pitch darkness, as if swallowed up by the Danube.
It was Lejeune's job to take the Emperor's order for retreat to Massena, but he no longer had a mount. His mare had twisted a leg during their last gallop, and since his orderly officer was still kicking his heels on the right bank after returning from Vienna, he had had no choice but to leave the horse with Perigord's valet — even though the fellow hadn't the first idea of what treatment she needed. Time was short. The Colonel caught sight of a sapper leading a Hungarian hussar's mount by the bridle.
'I need that animal.'
'It's not mine, it's the lieutenant's.'
Tm borrowing it!'
'I don't know if the lieutenant will agree . . .' 'Where is he?'
'On the main bridge which is being repaired.' 'There's no time for that! Anyway, this horse has been stolen.'
'No, it hasn't! It's been captured.' 'I'll bri
ng it back within the hour.' 'I can't take that responsibility . . .' 'If I don't bring it back, I'll pay for it.' 'What proof have I got?'
Exasperated by this slow-witted sapper, Lejeune thrust the letter addressed to Massena and signed by the major-general under his nose. Dumbfounded, the man let go of the reins. Before he could change his mind, Lejeune leapt
into the red, fur-covered saddle fringed with gold braid and, taking a guess at the right direction, rode back against the tide of wounded still crossing onto the island. The closer he got to the little bridge, the more heavily congested the road became, but Lejeune urged his horse into the crowd, not hesitating to knock over fusiliers with bandaged heads, soldiers without arms, the mutilated and the lame who shook their fists at him and lashed out at his boots. The crush on the little bridge was tragic. The fugitives formed a tightly packed crowd that was inching forward only a step at a time.
'Make room! Make room!' yelled the colonel.
The mass of bodies flooded round him, forcing him backwards. He persevered, shoving the crippled away from his horse's neck and even raising his whip, although he couldn't bring himself to strike the survivors of . They looked up at him blankly or with hard, threatening eyes.
'By order of the Emperor!'
'By order of the Emperor,' repeated a sergeant of dragoons, grinding his teeth, and he held up the stump of his left arm bandaged in a piece of linen.
After what seemed an eternity, Lejeune completed his ordeal and once on the left bank galloped down the slope and across the blackened countryside. Hurrying from one bivouac fire to the next, he headed for Aspern where Massena should have been encamped, but how to be sure? The sombre bulks of the first houses loomed up, then a lane, but his horse couldn't get through the rubble of shattered walls and he rode on to the next lane to cut through to the church square. Seeing a sentry lighting a
pipe, he made straight for him to get information. The sentry had heard him coming and, before the colonel said a word, he asked, 'Wer da?'
The man was an Austrian, shouting, 'Who goes there?' Instead of turning tail and losing himself in the night, thereby earning himself a musket shot, Lejeune's sensible instinct was to reply in the same language that he was a headquarters staff officer: 'Stabsoffizierl'
A second figure, a major in Baron Hiller's regiment, stepped out of the lane and asked him the time in German. Without wasting time taking out his watch, Lejeune replied that it was midnight, *litternacht . . .'
The sentry had leaned his musket against a low wall and the major was walking towards him; Lejeune wheeled his horse and fled through a thicket of trees. He heard bullets whistle through the air. He roamed at a slow trot along a sunken road, straining to catch any sound, passing campfires that were alight but deserted, and then plunged into a wood which led him back to the oxbow of the Danube. He was riding between two trees when a man seized his horse by the bit and another grabbed him by the arm and tried to pull him off his saddle. They weren't wearing shakos, but by the remnants of their uniforms and their cross-straps, Lejeune thought he recognized French voltigeurs and shouted, 'Colonel Lejeune! On the Emperor's service!'
The two voltigeurs apologized. 'We couldn't tell . . .'
'You've got a Hungarian horse there, so, you know, we said, "This is a good catch."'
'Where is Marshal Massenar'
'We're not too sure.'
'Meaning?'
'We saw him with the general not an hour ago.'
'Which general is that?'
'Mohtor.'
'And where did you see them ; " 'Over there, by the edge of this wood.' 'Are you on patrol?' 'Something like that.'
'Don't go too near the village, the Austrians are setting up there.'
'We know.' 'Thank you!'
Lejeune rode deeper into the wood, several times almost being shot to pieces by French patrols because of his Hungarian horse. Finally a non-commissioned officer directed him towards Massena's temporary camp, pitched by reed beds that bordered an expanse of marshy ground — a natural defence which they knew the enemy wouldn't be able to breach. A great number of fires and torches indicated an important bivouac and by their flickering light Lejeune recognized Sainte-Croixs thin silhouette surrounded by officers wrapped up in their coats. Lejeune took the last part of his journey on foot, until he stumbled over a body lying on the ground. A voice yelled, 'Hey! Who's walking on my legs?'
'Your Excellency?'
Massena had been drowsing for an hour or two while he waited for the order to retreat. He stood up, shook himself, cursed the cold and damp and, by the light of a torch held by a half-asleep skirmisher, read the Emperor's message. He folded it in two, slipped it into a pocket of his
long coat, adjusted his tricorn hat, thanked Lejeune and set off, without any noticeable urgency, towards the group of officers chatting by the fire.
Fayolle had accompanied the cart and its cargo of cuirasses as far as Essling. The fusiliers of the Young Guard were striking tinderboxes to light fires they'd made of planks and branches, as if they were settling in for the night, but they kept their muskets slung over their shoulders and their knapsacks on their backs. Everywhere corpses were tossed pell-mell into heaps: uhlans, voltigeurs, Austrians, French, Hungarians, Bavarians, stripped of their boots and uniforms, naked, mutilated, horrifying. Some had been half-burned.
Fayolle sat down on a bench in the small ransacked garden of a low house, next to a hussar whose eyes were closed but who wasn't snoring. Cartridge papers fluttered on the grass.
'Know where there's any powder?'
The hussar didn't reply. Fayolle shook him by the shoulder and the trooper slumped forward; he was dead; someone must have thought he was asleep for him still to have a uniform. Fayolle searched him, took the powder and bullets from the bag slung over his shoulder and stared at his elegant soft leather boots. He smiled. was over but at last he had found some boots that would fit. He pulled them off. He took off his espadrilles and put them on. Then he squatted down by the nearest fire, in which chairs and branches were burning. He stretched out his hands, glad for the warmth. Behind him, someone called out, 'Hey, you there!'
He looked round to be confronted with the suspicious stare of a grenadier of the Guard, hands on hips, immaculate in his white gaiters.
'Are you French' Where've you come from.' What regiment? Are those hussar's boots you're wearing?'
'Stow it, can't you, you and your damn jaw!'
'Deserter, are you?'
'If I'd deserted, you sap, I'd be a long way from here by now.'
'That's true enough. So who are you.''
'Cuirassier Fayolle. My squadron was cut to pieces by the cannon. I fell off my horse, got knocked senseless and I woke up when those vultures from the ambulances were trying to pick me clean.'
'Can't stay round here. We're clearing out.'
'Don't try and tell me what's good for me, eh . . .'
Troopers riding four abreast walked their horses between the blazing fires on the square. The French battalions followed, in disarray, and in turn disappeared down the main street. The army was leaving Essling. The grenadier let Fayolle be with a shrug of his shoulders; he spat on the ground and added that he'd warned him. Fayolle went and sat down by another fire. He took Captain Saint-Didier's pistol out of his belt, cleaned it because the powder had got wet, loaded it with the hussar's fresh powder, and slid a bullet into the barrel. Weapon in hand, he stood up, proud of his new boots, and walked along the main street under the elms. Most of the houses had been destroyed or were on the verge of collapse, their roofs shattered by roundshot, and plumes of smoke rose from the fires still smouldering in some of them. The peasant girl's house, which he'd entered two days ago with his dead
friend Pacotte, was barely standing, an entire section of the wall facing the garden having given way. Fayolle wanted to go in but he needed a torch. Retracing his steps, he picked up a stick and lit it at one of the dummy campfires. It didn't give much light, but it couldn't be help
ed. Holding this firebrand, he stepped through one of the breaches in the wall. The staircase seemed to be intact, at least intact enough to risk it. He walked through the gloom of the first floor as if he had lived there for a long time and pushed open the door of the room at the back of the house. He saw the shape of a body on the mattress. His heart beat like a drummer of the Guard. He bent over with his light and looked at the body: probably a skirmisher, stripped of his uniform but recognizable by his sideburns. What if the peasant girl of the other night had never existed? He put his torch down on the bed, which caught fire; then he pressed Captain Saint-Didier's pistol to his temple and blew his brains out.
Rounding a final clump of elms, the cart piled with armour halted in the tall grass and Paradis and his colleagues suddenly saw the spectacle of the French army in retreat. Below them, the smoke of hundreds of flares rose above a meadow which fell away towards the start of the little bridge and was hidden by a thick wood from the villages and the plain. On a rise, in front of his commissioned officers, Massena was directing the evacuation with his riding crop as if he were staging an opera. The order of the regiments drawn up in line succeeded the chaotic throng of the wounded. The men were in rags, they stank, they were caked with dirt and almost fully bearded, but
they were happy to be alive, to have two arms and two legs and eyes to remember what they'd seen and voices to put it into words. They knew how lucky they were and rosaries could be seen looped round some of the officers' wrists. They smiled with exhaustion: it was over. The hooves of Oudinot's horses drummed on the boards of the mended bridge, then came the shattered remains of Saint-Hilaire's division and Molitor's voltigeurs, a flash of yellow at the tips of their green plumes, a sergeant at their head who had tied the regimental colours to his musket and was holding it up like a standard. At that distance, the ambulance men of course could barely make out the colours, but Paradis swore he could see them, from having seen them too many times already. General Molitor stepped forward and saluted Massena, who doffed his feathered hat, and then fell in at the rear of the two thousand men of his who had been spared. Behind them marched the other voltigeurs, fusiliers and chasseurs a pied who had been regrouped by Carra-Saint-Cyr and Legrand; the latter, a powerfully built man, was wearing his huge tricorn, which had had a half moon taken out of its brim by a cannonball. Not a murmur, only jingling and the thud of boots on the earth and then on the wooden roadway. One by one the battalions disappeared under the black trees of Lobau.
The Battle Page 21
