Текст книги "Officer's Prey"

Автор книги: Armand Cabasson

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‘Victory! Victory!’

The French were bewitched by this magic word. The roar spread faster than a powder trail, and muskets and sabres were brandished aloft. Margont could not resist a smile. He was alive and they had won! By the time they had regrouped they would be ready to follow hot on the heels of the Russians, and capturing them would be as easy as picking flowers.

‘Moscow, here we come!’ shouted Saber.

‘Moscow, here we come!’ replied the whole line in unison.

‘Long live the Emperor! Long live Prince Eugène!’

There was a proverbial saying that a soldier or junior officer could see no further than the end of his company. Nothing could be truer. The Huard Brigade, although it had broken through the Russian lines, had indeed advanced too fast and too far. It now found itself in the middle of the Russian army, cut off from all support. The risk of being encircled was the price it paid for its daring. Margont noticed a stirring in the wood opposite, which was separated from them by a clearing two hundred paces wide. Something was moving; something huge. Margont attempted to convince himself that it was merely an illusion produced by the wind making the bushes and the foliage sway. But it was not that. A sort of Leviathan of the forests was crawling towards them, camouflaged by the vegetation.

Margont was about to speak when someone yelled out: ‘They’re coming back!’

CHAPTER 14

SILHOUETTED figures appeared. They were everywhere, crowded against one another.

‘They pulled themselves together quickly,’ murmured Saber admiringly.

Margont knew that his friend was mistaken. The Russians were too numerous for them to be the remnants of the regiments that the French had just broken through. So what now? Were they going to fight again? And then? It wouldn’t be the first time. Margont realised that the shakos of these particular Russians were topped with long black plumes. Only certain regiments of grenadiers and carabineers wore this distinctive item of uniform. It meant that he was dealing with crack troops. Eventually, the enemy poured out into the clearing, wave upon wave of Russians in serried ranks. The wood and the forests seemed to be spewing them forth.

Russian reserve troops had rallied their fleeing comrades and were now launching a counterattack. The French opened fire and Margont saw the green coats turn red with blood, and dozens of Russians collapse in a single movement. The moment of contact produced a roar of explosions and shouting. Margont was running, his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other. He was aware only of what was happening immediately around him. A grenadier took aim at him. He hurled himself at the man, deflected the weapon by a sword stroke and thrust the blade into his torso. Another grenadier charged at him to run him through but Margont shot him in the chest with his pistol. Two grenadiers simultaneously impaled Margont’s neighbour to the right, while the one to his left was hit full in the face by a musket butt. Margont recoiled but tripped over a corpse and found himself on the ground. Just as he was getting up, he had to ward off another bayonet attack. His assailant brandished his musket aloft with the intention of shattering his skull. Swiftly, Margont struck him a violent blow to the heel with his sword. The grenadier collapsed, howling. A Russian sergeant, thinking that Margont was wounded, merely hit him on the shoulder with his musket butt without even stopping running. Margont let out a cry of pain. A grenadier ran over his body at the double and two other Russians leapt over what they assumed to be a dying man.

Margont jumped to his feet. There were still a few Frenchmen frantically jabbing away with their bayonets or whirling their muskets so as to knock out two Russians at a time. But most were fleeing, swept away by the tidal wave of Russians. Arms were raised, begging for mercy; men on the ground were being run through with bayonets … Margont broke into a run to get back to his own men. He went past a captain trying to get up at the same time as training a pistol. This officer shot a grenadier and, in reprisal, four Russians fired at him at point-blank range. The chaos was indescribable. A Russian was running in front of Margont but the captain refused to strike an enemy in the back, as much out of pity as out of a sense of honour, but also because he was himself terrified of feeling a searing pain, of falling and turning round to see a grenadier above him, wielding a bloodstained bayonet. Margont pushed the Russian forward with all the strength he could muster and the man fell sprawling to the ground.

Margont turned round. A horde of Russians were at their heels. He saw to his horror that a Croatian infantryman was rushing at him and getting ready to fire. It was indeed he, Margont, who was being aimed at and, what is more, by someone from his own side! He thought, Already … The weapon went off and Margont could no longer hear the yelling and the crackle of gunfire. The Croat overtook him at top speed, brushing past him without taking any more notice of him than if he had been a fallen tree. Margont could feel no pain. The bullet had missed him. He could still see the expression of terror on the soldier’s face. He said to himself that the man would have trampled over his own mother without noticing her if she had had the misfortune to be in his way.

The French were hurriedly withdrawing to the wood they had gone through in triumph a few moments earlier. Three Russian foot chasseurs suddenly emerged from a tangle of bushes. They levelled their muskets, calmly took aim at the routed Frenchmen and killed one apiece. Two more appeared further on and claimed two more victims. Then another, but he missed his target. They had been hiding during the Russian defeat and were now taking advantage of the reversal of the situation. Each time a chasseur showed himself, a terrible lottery began. The fleeing soldiers continued to run, repeating inwardly: ‘Not me, not me.’ The shot was fired, a man collapsed and the others breathed a sigh of relief.

In this odious little game, Margont’s officer’s epaulettes increased tenfold his chance of being picked. Margont trusted himself to his lucky star but, by the look of it, that star was not shining as much as his golden epaulettes because a chasseur hidden behind a tree stump suddenly stood up and took aim at him. Margont risked his all and rushed towards the soldier, yelling as he did so. The Russian was taken aback. He took longer than planned to aim and this delay annoyed him. Just at the moment when he was at last going to fire, Margont leapt to one side, then unexpectedly changed direction once more, while continuing to run towards the Russian, shouting and brandishing his sword. Margont was near, very near; the chasseur had him in his line of sight. Margont made as if to jump to the side once more. The Russian anticipated this change of direction, which never happened, and fired too much to the left. Suddenly, he threw his weapon to the ground and fled.

Margont stopped to get his breath back. He turned round towards his pursuers. The Russians were progressing, pointing their bayonets in front of them. He noticed a Russian captain intrepidly leading his company on. The officer had lost his shako. He was running, brandishing his sabre in his outstretched arm. Margont did not want him to be killed. Here was someone of the same rank, the same age and the same enthusiasm that had driven him in his early battles, before Eylau and Spain. It was like seeing his own image reflected in a Russian mirror. The grenadier must have been hit by a bullet since he crumpled on to his side. Margont felt a tug on his sleeve.

‘Got to get out of here, Captain. Things are going badly,’ someone declared in a tense voice.

‘Leave him. He’s already dead,’ another called out.

The soldier let go of his sleeve. The Russian officer straightened up by leaning on his elbows. Margont started to retreat again. He noticed Colonel Delarse at the edge of the wood and hurried towards him. Delarse was furious.

‘Those wretched Russians. They’re like swings: the further you push them away the faster they come back at you. Get your breath back, Captain Margont. You’re more asthmatic than I am.’

‘Colonel, where’s General Delzons? Where’s the Roussel Brigade? And the Sivray and Alméras Brigades?’

‘The whole handsome lot are on their way, Captain Margont.’

The reply was only for form’s sake because it was quite obvious that the colonel had no idea of what was happening.

Margont turned round and gazed at the French artillery at the other end of the plain. He peered at the groups of troopers and the comings and goings of the messengers. Somewhere over there was Prince Eugène and his general staff. Margont knew that his chances of survival depended on decisions being made there. Prince Eugène seemed as remote a figure as God and, at this moment, more powerful than the Almighty Himself. The Russians were still following on the heels of the Huard Brigade. Margont told himself that he had to keep on running, running to the other end of the plain, to the French artillery. That was where his own side was: batteries, fresh troops eager to fight it out, Eugène, Murat … Then he noticed Russian hussars galloping across the plain. The French were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Colonel Delarse urged his horse into a trot. He looped back and met up with Margont again after a brief but unsuccessful attempt to rally the fleeing band of soldiers.

‘Let’s go straight through them,’ he exclaimed, pointing at the troopers with his sabre.

It was at that moment that the hussars charged. The French infantrymen were too disorganised to form square, a formation that would have provided effective protection against cavalry. They immediately paid the price: the cavalrymen wove in and out of the scattered groups, encircled some and began slashing and hacking on all sides. Some hussars went at it furiously, as if intent on massacring the brigade single-handedly. Others were content merely to gallop towards a handful of men and fire pistol shots before tugging the reins and pulling away. This tactic bore fruit: groups harried in this way were slowed down considerably. The Russian infantry eventually caught up with them and slaughtered them. Margont heard the sound of a horse galloping behind him. His neighbour to the left collapsed whilst a hussar rode past with a blood-soaked sabre in his hand. Another hussar suddenly appeared from behind him. He stood up in his stirrups until he was almost fully erect, holding his sabre aloft. Margont brandished his sword above his head and managed to deflect the blow. The horse continued running and curtailed the engagement, and the two men escaped with only sore wrists. Another cavalryman, coming in from the right, pointed his sabre towards Margont and spurred his horse into a gallop. Margont faced up to him and stared at the blade he was to ward off. The hussar veered away at the last moment and gave up on him.

Margont turned round and saw the frightening spectacle of the green infantry arriving at the double, bristling with bayonets and now close to him. He raced once more towards his own lines. In turn a hussar spurred his horse on towards Margont. If Margont did not stop to face up to him, the cavalryman would kill him. And if he did stop, his opponent would ride off, like the previous one, leaving him in the hands of the infantry. Margont threw his sword to the ground like a panic-stricken deserter. This gesture convinced the hussar that he was being handed an easy victory and he did not turn his horse away. But at the last minute, Margont spun round. The Russian was standing up in his stirrups, flourishing his sabre. Margont leapt at him and clung on to his pelisse. As he leant to the side to deliver his blow, the hussar lost his balance and the two men fell. Margont immediately picked himself up and ran towards the horse as the hussar recovered from his concussion but not from his surprise. Margont mounted the animal and spurred it into a gallop, roaring with laughter.

He caught sight of Delarse grappling with three hussars, attracted like wasps to his honey-coloured braiding. Margont would have attempted to help him if he’d been armed. He had to make do with trying to find where the Russian hussars stowed their horse pistols. The colonel was amazing. Staying perfectly straight on his mount, he thrust his sabre into the side of the adversary to his right. He immediately withdrew the blade and swung round sharply to slash the face of the cavalryman attacking him on the left. The last Russian, who was further behind, trained his pistol at the colonel’s back. Darval, Delarse’s adjutant, who had himself just finished dealing with another hussar, brought his sabre down on the pelisse slung over the Russian’s left shoulder. This popular mode of dress protected the arm undefended by the sabre. The blade sliced through the garment, which softened the blow enough to prevent a serious wound. The hussar turned tail and fled.

Margont was stunned. He, who was always criticising his friends for judging people by appearances and having preconceptions, was now quite by accident being taught a lesson on the subject by Delarse! Margont had thought the colonel was at death’s door but he now had to admit that there was far more life in him than in those two hussars who had set upon him. He immediately restored Delarse to the status of possible suspect.

The situation remained critical: the Huard Brigade was pouring back to the French position in disarray. A captain galloped up to Margont and bombarded him with questions. Where was General Huard? What were the enemy forces? Margont did not reply. He was merely an empty shell, staring at a man who was gesticulating and raising his voice. The officer trotted away, shaking his head.

Russian and French soldiers were engaging in bayonet duels, shattering bodies with their musket butts, relentlessly shooting one another … The artillerymen, in their blue coats and trousers, were regrouping around their precious guns. A chaotic mêlée was taking place amidst swirling dust. The hussars had changed tactics. They were no longer harrying but charging and slashing at anything blue. Their dexterity was impressive. Margont noticed one galloping his way through. A horizontal sword-stroke to the right sent a gunner crashing to the ground, then a sideways stroke to the left made a soldier fall to his knees clutching his face, and a vertical stroke to the right sent a lieutenant toppling backwards … His horse shuddered and collapsed on to its hindquarters, like a dog sitting! Margont had never seen anything like it. The animal was bleeding profusely from its right flank.

Someone grabbed him by the arms and shook him frantically.

‘Captain, do something! Save us!’

It was the young soldier who had criticised him for not displaying his Légion d’Honneur. Tears were streaming down his face. He was talking incoherently. He ended by saying that they had to run away but, confused and distraught, he made straight for the Russians. A musketeer whirled his weapon about and brought it down on the nape of the boy’s neck, sending him to the ground. The Russian brandished his bayonet but Margont rushed at him and smashed straight into him, this time knocking him down. He picked up the musket and hammered his opponent with the butt.

‘Enough! Enough! Enough!’ he yelled as if he were the one being hit.

But he continued to strike him. When the Russian raised his arms to his face he gave him a blow to the stomach and when the Russian put his hands on his stomach he smashed his jaw or his ribs.

A hussar arrived at a gentle trot as his horse had been slowed down by the hand-to-hand fighting. Margont left the musketeer in order to hit the cavalryman in the stomach with the musket butt. The horse decided to take its master back towards his lines, bent double. The pounding of horses’ hoofs could be heard. Its intensity was increasing rapidly until it became deafening. Murat’s lancers were charging, flying to the rescue of the artillerymen and the Huard Brigade. The Russian infantry were well and truly run through. By flinging themselves flat on their stomachs they were beyond reach of the cavalry’s sabres but not of the lances, which struck them in the back. The 92nd of the Line arrived in a column and enthusiastically joined in the fray. Then it was the turn of the 8th Hussars to charge. The Russians were at last pushed back after suffering considerable losses.

CHAPTER 15

THERE were dead and wounded everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Margont, still suffering from concussion, was leaning against a weeping willow – a bittersweet irony. In some places, bodies were lying still locked in a deadly embrace. A magnificent grey horse was lying on its side, scraping the ground with its hoofs, trying to get back on its feet. All that was left of its forelegs was stumps. Everywhere men were groaning, crying, calling for help, pleading with the survivors or insulting them for their indifference. Many of the wounded were clamouring for a drink. Margont began to wander among them, tossing aside an empty gourd here and picking up a full one there from a dead body where it was no longer needed. He wondered about this question of thirst. Was this how the body tried to make up for the loss of blood? Or was it a psychological reaction? People often said, ‘If you’re wounded, drink some wine.’ Did they think the body short-sighted enough to mistake one sort of red liquid for another?

‘Thank yer, officer, sir. Will yer ’ave some wine as well?’ asked a French grenadier, handing his gourd to Margont.

His thick blond moustache glistened with drops of water. He was clenching his stomach to stanch the flow of blood.

‘Sorry, too much wine is bad for the health,’ Margont answered him.

The soldier began to laugh but pain contorted his smile. ‘That’s a good one, Captain!’

Margont only had to stretch out his arm to open the knapsack of a Russian musketeer lying flat on his stomach. He took out a flask, opened it, tasted the contents and handed it to the grenadier.

‘Vodka?’

The man’s moustache twitched with pleasure. ‘Is it Russian wine?’

‘Stronger stuff than that.’

The grenadier downed what was left in the flask in one gulp.

‘I feel like searching all the kitbags on this bloody plain!’

Margont patted him on the shoulder and moved on, motioning to some exhausted stretcher-bearers.

He stopped in front of a young hussar. He had been slashed across the chest with a sabre. Something was poking out of his slit coat. Intrigued, Margont took hold of the object. It was a small Russian icon of a slender Virgin Mary holding the newborn Christ in her arms. Strangely, the look on the mother’s face was uncertain: her joy seemed tinged with sadness, as if she had an intuition that her happiness would end in suffering. Margont replaced the icon on the corpse’s heart. A little further on he came across the body of the musketeer he had struck. The Russian was breathing oddly, breathing in and out in short gasps, as if wanting to taste life a little longer, on the tip of his tongue, before dying. Margont again motioned to the stretcher-bearers and moved on. He was lucky enough to find his sword, then spent the night going from one wounded soldier to the next, giving them a drink, promising to have a letter delivered to a wife or relative …

Just before dawn, he was so exhausted that he could hardly keep his eyes open, so he slowly made his way back to his regiment. Despite all his efforts and those of the numerous volunteers, there seemed to be just as many calls for help. He passed a dozen or so infantrymen of the 92nd attempting to put out a fire by urinating on it in one concerted effort. But the men were so drunk that the spurts of urine merely soaked their trousers, giving rise to screams of laughter or scuffles. This scene encouraged Margont to indulge in his favourite game: watching people.

Many others had also decided to give some meaning to their lives by helping the wounded. Some acted out of high-mindedness; others out of superstition, to thank Heaven or fate for having spared them; others out of a sense of guilt, to justify having survived. Margont called them the ‘saviours’. But a considerable number of soldiers preferred to avoid this harsh reality by drinking themselves into a stupor or deserting. Some even ended up committing suicide. These were the ‘runaways’. There were other categories: the profiteers, who stole from the dead and the wounded who were too weak to defend themselves.

Margont sat down against a birch tree, utterly spent. A few feet away a strange spectacle was unfolding: in front of other lancers and laughing French hussars, a Polish lancer was embracing a Russian hussar. The two men were not fighting but dancing, albeit clumsily. A waltz. The Russian appeared to be dead drunk. Another Pole also wanted to dance with the hussar but he accidentally let go of him and he collapsed. He was not so much dead drunk as dead. The second Pole got him back on his feet, grabbed him around the waist and in turn began to dance, egged on by the audience. These belonged to the category of the ‘exorcists’. They indulged in morbid games and their imagination was boundless. But the rule was always the same: to poke fun at death, to demystify it, to debunk it. By acting like this they were less afraid. However, they sacrificed some of their humanity in the process. Were they really winners in the end? Then there were the ‘dumbstruck’, who wandered about aimlessly, silent, cut off from the world, unable to take the slightest initiative; the ‘desperate’, who wept endlessly and who needed to be watched in case they blew their brains out; the ‘believers’, who prayed, hoping to find a mystical meaning in this chaos … Then, to bring this incomplete catalogue to a temporary conclusion, there was the vast group of those who thanked one another for having provided mutual support, who celebrated the baptism of fire of the younger ones, who boasted of their exploits … These Margont dubbed the ‘reckless but harmless’ or the ‘humane’, because one way or another everyone belonged in part to this group.

Margont slid slowly down the tree trunk and stretched himself out on the ground. The grass stroked his face. Sleep felled him more effectively than the gunfire from a whole Russian battery.

The Russians withdrew the following day. It was not the titanic confrontation between the two armies that the Emperor so greatly longed for. It was ‘only’ the fighting at Ostrovno.

*

Margont felt himself being unceremoniously lifted up. He mumbled something, was dropped and went crashing to the ground. He leapt back up, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Two infantrymen in bloodstained uniforms were staring at him in consternation, open-mouthed and pale-faced with huge purple rings around their eyes.

‘We had no idea, Captain …’

‘Yes, we had no idea …’

‘But we would have realised, Captain …’

‘You had no idea what?’ yelled Margont.

His anger paralysed the two men. Then he noticed a cart on which French corpses were being piled up. There was another for the Russians.

‘You wanted to throw me into that cart, didn’t you?’ he shouted.

‘But the thing is … you were lying there like that …’

‘But we would have realised that you weren’t … that you weren’t you know what,’ the second gravedigger assured him.

Margont looked at his uniform. It was spattered with blood, the blood of those he had wounded or killed, the bodily remains of men blown to pieces by round shot.

‘Check that all those you’ve put in that wretched cart really are dead,’ he ordered, more by way of punishment than in the vain hope of saving anyone.

The soldiers carried out the order, still terrified by what they had superstitiously thought was someone rising from the dead.

Margont ascertained the whereabouts of his regiment. On his way there he looked at his watch, an extravagance that had cost him a fortune but whose mathematical precision was in keeping with his own methodical mind. It was four o’clock. He did not grasp immediately what the two hands were stubbornly telling him. He called out to a cavalryman from the 9th Chasseurs who was wandering about in search of a comrade. The fellow confirmed that it was already late afternoon. Margont also learnt that more fighting had taken place that very morning, near Vitebsk, though it had not lasted long.

Margont bought a handsome horse with a brown coat and a black mane from a crafty mounted chasseur, who swore that he had set off on the campaign with a spare mount. The beast was surprisingly robust and well fed.

‘He’s called Wagram,’ the seller explained.

‘For the price you’re charging me, you could have included its Russian saddle.’

‘Not at all, Captain! It’s my horse! He’s called Wagram!’

‘That horse is more likely to be called Ostrovno than Wagram.’

At that moment Lefine arrived.

‘So you’ve just joined the hussars of the Russian Guard, have you, Captain?’

‘He’s called Wagram!’ the chasseur stubbornly maintained.

Margont shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wagram or Jena, as long as it’s not called Eylau or Spain.’

The chasseur walked away grumbling about his poor old father who’d bled himself dry, struggling to plough a barren field in order to be able to buy Wagram for his son from the meagre proceeds of his hard toil. His poor father must now be turning in his grave, hearing today the insults of ‘certain people’.

Lefine felt the horse’s flanks. ‘I’ve never seen such a fat horse.’

‘But all our horses were like that before the start of the campaign.’

Lefine continued to stroke the animal’s belly. He was envious of this stomach, which was so much fuller than his own.

‘He’s so impressive that next to him our cavalry look as if they’re mounted on dogs. What’s he to be called, then?’

‘Macbeth.’

‘Macbeth. What gibberish is that? I prefer Wagram. I can show you a good shop for a saddle,’ he added, indicating the battlefield with a broad sweep of his arm.

‘Let’s go back to the regiment for news of our friends.’

‘On that very subject I’m pleased to find you still in one piece. Antoine, Irénée and I have been looking for you everywhere.’

‘I was knocked out by a musket butt,’ Margont lied.

‘Before returning to the regiment, I’m going to take you somewhere. But first I want to tell you what Colonel Delarse has been up to. The farce began as soon as the fighting had ended. The colonel wanted an interpreter. While everyone was scurrying around trying to find one for him, he was moving from one prisoner to another trying to make himself understood, because patience isn’t his strong point. Dozens of people were staring at him goggle-eyed, not understanding a word. He was shouting: “Where is Lieutenant Nakalin? Lieutenant Nakalin, you ignorant peasants!” In the end they found a Russian trumpeter who spoke French.’

‘Why didn’t they get a Polish lancer to act as an interpreter?’

Lefine looked up to the heavens. ‘They’d brought the colonel at least fifteen of them but he sent them all packing. He’s no longer on speaking terms with the Poles. He thinks they waited too long before charging to extricate us from the green coats.’

Margont gritted his teeth.

‘Well, yes. It is pretty stupid, of course,’ Lefine concluded.

‘As he can’t blame it on bad luck, he’s blaming it on the Poles. It’s a typical reaction. The Russians, Prussians and Austrians have been doing the same thing for centuries. So then what happened?’

‘In a nutshell, the Russian translated but they were still no better off. Would the colonel give up? No chance. He then did the rounds of the hospitals. He didn’t find out anything about the mysterious Nakalin, so off he went to walk around the battlefield with his musician, questioning the wounded who hadn’t yet been picked up.’

‘Does your story have an ending? I should remind you that you’re not being paid for wasting your breath.’

‘The colonel eventually found his Nakalin. His horse had been disembowelled by a cannonball and had fallen over, trapping his rider’s leg. I’m taking you to them. They’re playing chess.’

The scene was unreal, absurd. Whilst all around them men were limping about or supporting their bleeding companions, Colonel Delarse and his Russian lieutenant were playing chess. Each seated on a box, they were moving their pieces whilst the grass about them was strewn with remains: sabres, shakos, bayonets, cannonballs, knapsacks, muskets.

‘No sooner has he emerged from one slaughter than he’s rushing into the next,’ muttered Margont.

French officers were watching the game, which cannot have helped the concentration of the Russian, a solitary red pawn surrounded by fifteen or so dark blue pawns. Nakalin was barely twenty. His dark curly hair was dishevelled and his uniform speckled with blades of grass. He had a disconcerting way of playing. He almost never looked at the chessboard and when it was his turn, his startled look gave the impression that he was seeing the position of the pieces for the first time. He would immediately seize one of them and move it somewhere else. You could have sworn that his decisions were totally random. He would look away before he had even finished placing his bishop or his knight and would once more immediately lose himself in contemplation of the flood of wounded. Colonel Delarse seemed puzzled. He would think long and hard but when he placed his fingers on a piece, it was to play it. ‘A piece touched is a piece played’: he adhered strictly to the rules. When attacked by the queen, the Russian responded by moving his knight, without even a cursory glance at the chessboard. Margont was fascinated by the fact that this man was capable of memorising the game so well that he could play in his head. Delarse took the knight and smiled. Not for long. The Russian had conceded the centre of the board but, when he unleashed his attack to the side, his moves considerably restricted Delarse’s room for manoeuvre.