The Retreat Read Free Page A

warehouses.
    The army grew impatient.
    Apart from the officers’ conference, it was unnervingly silent. Everyone held their breath. Nothing, they heard nothing, barely even the wind: no birds, no dogs barking, no echo of voices or footsteps, no clop of hooves, no creak of cartwheels on Moscow’s cobblestones, none of the usual hum of a substantial city. Major General Berthier, his telescope to his eye, scrutinized the walls, the mouths of the deserted streets, the banks of the Moskova, where a number of barges were moored.
    â€˜Sire,’ he said, ‘it’s as if there’s no one …’
    â€˜Your good friends have flown, have they?’ the Emperor snarled at Caulaincourt, to whom he had been unfailingly unpleasant since his return from the embassy to St Petersburg: this scion of an old aristocratic family had made the mistake of liking the Tsar.
    â€˜Kutuzov’s troops have carried on past it,’ the grand equerry replied glumly, his hat under his arm.
    â€˜That superstitious oaf Kutuzov refuses to engage, does he? We gave him a good hiding at Borodino, then!’
    The officers of the general staff exchanged impassive glances. At Borodino they had lost far too many men in terrible hand-to-hand combat, and forty-eight generals, one of whom was Caulaincourt’s brother. The latter sank his chin in the folds of his cravat; he was smooth-skinned, witha straight nose, close-cropped brown hair and mutton-chop whiskers. Created the Duke of Vicenza, he may have had the manner of a maître d’hôtel, but he did not have the matching servility; unlike most of the dukes and marshals, he had never hidden his disapproval of this invasion. From the start, when they had crossed the Niemen, he had been telling the Emperor in vain that Tsar Alexander would never give in to threats. Events had proved him right. The cities had gone up in flames; all they took possession of was ruins. The Russians slipped away, laying their country waste. Sometimes a party of Cossacks attacked; they swirled about, fell on a marauding squadron and then vanished. Often in the evening they’d see Russians bivouacked; they’d prepare themselves, post men on watch, but by dawn the enemy would be gone. There were brief, bloody bouts of fighting, but no Austerlitz or Friedland or Wagram. At Smolensk the Russians had resisted long enough to kill twenty thousand men and set the city on fire; most recently, a few days earlier, near Borodino, ninety thousand from both sides had been left dead or wounded on a field riddled with shell holes. The Russians had been able to withdraw towards Moscow, although they didn’t seem to be there now, or at least not any longer. After half an hour without moving, Napoleon turned to Berthier. ‘Give the order.’
    *
    The sky-blue gunners of the Old Guard were waiting for the signal to light the match; they fired the shot that triggered a great rush amongst the scattered men. Troopers mounted, squadrons re-formed, infantrymen fell in in their battalions and the drummers played. Reinvigorated by being so close to his Emperor, d’Herbigny had no intentionof lagging behind with the baggage. ‘I’m going on,’ he said to his servant. ‘Find me at the Guard’s camp tonight.’ A look of panic crossed Paulin’s face; to reassure him, the captain added, terrifying him still more, ‘I can still run these Mongol pigs through with my left hand!’ He touched the flanks of his kind-of pony with his whip and disappeared into the tide of troops.
    Barely had he caught up with his brigade, General Saint-Sulpice’s, than all over the hillside officers, half turned towards their men, raised their bare sabres. Yelling, the troopers broke into a gallop, the cannon and caissons followed at full tilt, sending up showers of sand, and the voltigeurs and grenadiers set off towards the city at a run. Everyone bawled at the tops of their voices; the