Folk-Tales of Napoleon Part 4

When the kings of Europe heard of this trouble, they came to blows over the question who should give him a wife. He finally married, they told us, an Austrian woman. She was a daughter of Caesar's--a man of ancient times who is much talked about, not only in our country, where they say he made everything, but in Europe. It's true, anyhow, that I have myself been on the Danube, and have seen there the remains of a bridge that this man Caesar built. It appears that he was a relative of Napoleon's in Rome, and that's why the Emperor had a right to take the inheritance there for his son.

Well, after his marriage, when there was a holiday for the whole world, and when he let the people off ten years' taxes (which were collected all the same, because the tax-gatherers didn't pay any attention to what he said), his wife had a little boy who was King of Rome. That was a thing which had never been seen on earth before--a child born king while his father was still living. A balloon was sent up in Paris to carry the news to Rome, and it made the whole distance in a single day. Now will any of you tell me that that was natural? Never! It had been so written on high.

Well, next comes the Emperor of Russia. He had once been Napoleon's friend; but he got angry because our Emperor didn't marry a Russian woman. So he backs up our enemies the English. Napoleon had long intended to pay his respects to those English ducks in their own nests, but something had always happened to prevent, and it was now high time to make an end of them. So he finally got angry himself, and said to us: "Soldiers! You have been masters of all the capitals of Europe except Moscow, which is the ally of England. In order to conquer London, as well as the Indies, which belong to London, I find it necessary to go to Moscow."

Well, there a.s.sembled then the greatest army that ever tramped in gaiters over the world; and the Emperor had them so curiously well lined up that he reviewed a million men in a single day.

"Hourra!" shout the Russians. And there they were--those animals of Cossacks who are forever running away, and the whole Russian nation, all complete! It was country against country--a general mix-up, where everybody had to look out for himself. As the Red Man had said to Napoleon, "It's Asia against Europe."

"All right!" replied the Emperor, "I'll take care." And then came fawning on Napoleon all the kings of Europe,--Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, Italy,--all flattering us and going along with us. It was splendid! The French eagles never cooed as they did on parade then, when they were held high above all the flags of Europe. The Poles couldn't contain themselves for joy, because the Emperor intended to set them up again as a nation--and for that reason the French and the Poles have been like brothers ever since.

"Russia shall be ours!" cried the army.

We crossed the frontier,--the whole lot of us,--and marched, and marched, and marched. No Russians! At last we found the rascals, camping on the bank of the Moscow River. That's where I got my cross; and I take leave to say that it was the d.a.m.nedest of battles! Napoleon himself was worried, because the Red Man had appeared again and had said to him, "My son, you are going too fast; you will run short of men, and your friends will betray you." Thereupon the Emperor proposed peace; but before the treaty was signed he said to us, "Let's give those Russians a drubbing!"

"All right!" said the army.

"Forward!" shout the sergeants.

My clothes were going to pieces and my shoes were all worn out from tramping over the bad roads out there, but I said to myself, "Never mind; since this is the last of the rumpus, I'll make 'em give me a bellyful!"

We were drawn up near the edge of the great ravine--in the front seats!

The signal was given, and seven hundred pieces of artillery began a conversation that was enough to bring the blood from your ears. Well, to do justice to one's enemies, I must admit that the Russians let themselves be killed like Frenchmen. They wouldn't give way, and we couldn't advance.

"Forward!" shouted our officers. "Here comes the Emperor!" And there he was, pa.s.sing at a gallop, and motioning to us that it was very important to capture the redoubt. He put new life into us, and on we ran. I was the first to reach the ravine. Ah! Mon Dieu! How the colonels are falling, and the lieutenants, and the soldiers! But never mind! There'll be all the more shoes for those who haven't any, and epaulets for the ambitious fellows who know how to read.

At last the cry of "Victory!" rang all along the line; but--would you believe it?--there were twenty-five thousand Frenchmen lying on the ground! A trifle, eh? Well, such a thing had never been seen before. It was a regular harvest field after the reaping; only instead of stalks of grain there were bodies of men. That sobered the rest of us. But the Emperor soon came along, and when we formed a circle around him, he praised us and cheered us up (he could be very amiable when he liked), and made us feel quite contented, even although we were as hungry as wolves. Then he distributed crosses of honor among us, saluted the dead, and said, "On to Moscow!"

"All right! To Moscow!" replied the army.

And then what did the Russians do but burn their city! It made a six-mile bonfire which blazed for two days. The buildings fell like slates, and there was a rain of melted iron and lead which was simply horrible! Indeed, that fire was the lightning from the dark cloud of our misfortunes. The Emperor said: "There's enough of this. If we stay here, none of my soldiers will ever get out." But we waited a little to cool off and to refresh our carca.s.ses; because we were really played out. We carried away a golden cross that was on the Kremlin, and every soldier had a small fortune.

On our way back, winter came upon us, a month earlier than usual,--a thing that those stupid scientific men have never properly explained,--and the cold caught us. Then there was no more army; do you understand? No army, no generals, no sergeants even! After that it was a reign of misery and hunger--a reign where we were all equal. We thought of nothing except of seeing France again. n.o.body stooped to pick up his gun, or his money, if he happened to drop them; and every one went straight on, arms at will, caring nothing for glory. The weather was so bad that Napoleon could no longer see his star--the sky was hidden. Poor man! It made him sick at heart to see his eagles flying away from victory. It was a crushing blow to him.

Well, then came the Beresina. And now, my friends, I may say to you, on my honor and by everything sacred, that never--no, never since man lived on earth--has there been such a mixed up hodgepodge of army, wagons, and artillery, in the midst of such snows, and under such a pitiless sky! It was so cold that if you touched the barrel of your gun you burned your hand.

It was there that Gondrin--who is now present with us--behaved so well.

He is the only one now living of the pontooners who went down into the water that day and built the bridge on which we crossed the river. The Russians still had some respect for the Grand Army, on account of its past victories; but it was Gondrin and the pontooners who saved us, and [pointing at Gondrin, who was looking at him with the fixed attention peculiar to the deaf] Gondrin is a finished soldier and a soldier of honor, who is worthy of your highest esteem.

I saw the Emperor that day, standing motionless near the bridge, and never feeling the cold at all. Was that natural, do you think? He was watching the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptian soldiers. It was the end of everything. Women, wagons, cannon--all were being destroyed, demolished, ruined, wrecked! A few of the bravest guarded the eagles; because the eagles, you understand, stood for France, for you, for the civil and military honor that had to be kept unstained and that was not to be humbled by the cold.

We hardly ever got warm except near the Emperor. When he was in danger, we all ran to him--although we were so nearly frozen that we would not have held out a hand to our dearest friend. They say that he used to weep at night over his poor family of soldiers. n.o.body but he and Frenchmen could ever have pulled out of there. We did pull out, but it was with loss--terrible loss. Our allies ate up all of our provisions, and then began the treachery which the Red Man had foretold.

The blatherskites in Paris, who had kept quiet since the formation of the Imperial Guard, thought that the Guard had finally perished. So they got up a conspiracy and hoodwinked the Prefect of Police into an attempt to overthrow the Emperor. He heard of this and it worried him. When he left us he said: "Good-by, boys. Guard the posts. I will come back to you."

After he had gone, things went from bad to worse. The generals lost their heads; and the marshals quarreled with one another and did all sorts of foolish things, as was natural. Napoleon, who was good to everybody, had fed them on gold until they had become as fat as pigs, and they didn't want to do any more marching. This led to trouble, because many of them remained idle in forts behind the army that was driving us back to France, and didn't even try to relieve us by attacking the enemy in the rear.

The Emperor finally returned, bringing with him a lot of splendid recruits whom he had drilled into regular war-dogs, ready to set their teeth into anything. He brought also a bourgeois guard of honor, a fine troop, which melted away in battle like b.u.t.ter on a hot gridiron. In spite of the bold front that we put on, everything went against us; although the army performed feats of wonderful courage. Then came regular battles of mountains--nations against nations--at Dresden, Lutzen, and Bautzen. Don't you ever forget that time, because it was then that Frenchmen showed how wonderfully heroic they could be. A good grenadier, in those days, seldom lasted more than six months. We always won, of course; but there in our rear were the English, stirring up the nations to take sides against us. But we fought our way through this pack of nations at last. Wherever Napoleon showed himself, we rushed; and whenever, on land or sea, he said, "I wish to pa.s.s," we pa.s.sed.

We finally got back to France; and many a poor foot-soldier was braced up by the air of his native country, notwithstanding the hard times we had. As for myself, in particular, I may say that it renewed my life.

It then became a question of defending the fatherland--our fair France--against all Europe. They didn't like our laying down the law to the Russians, and our driving them back across their borders, so that they couldn't devour us, as is the custom of the North. Those Northern peoples are very greedy for the South, or at least that's what I've heard many generals say. Then Napoleon saw arrayed against him his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made kings, and all the scoundrels whom he had put on thrones. Finally, in pursuance of orders from high quarters, even Frenchmen, and allies in our own ranks, turned against us; as at the battle of Leipsic. Common soldiers wouldn't have been mean enough to do that! Men who called themselves princes broke their word three times a day.

Well, then came the invasion. Wherever Napoleon showed his lion face the enemy retreated; and he worked more miracles in defending France than he had shown in conquering Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia. He wanted to bury all the invaders in France, and thus teach them to respect the country; so he let them come close to Paris, in order to swallow 'em all at a gulp and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the others--a regular mother of battles!

But those cowardly Parisians were so afraid for their wretched skins and their miserable shops that they opened the gates of the city. Then the good times ended and the "ragusades" began. They fooled the Empress and hung white flags out of the palace windows. Finally the very generals whom Napoleon had taken for his best friends deserted him and went over to the Bourbons--of whom n.o.body had ever before heard. Then he bade us good-by at Fontainebleau. "Soldiers!"

I can hear him, even now. We were all crying like regular babies, and the eagles and flags were lowered as if at a funeral. And it was a funeral--the funeral of the Empire. His old soldiers, once so hale and spruce, were little more than skeletons. Standing on the portico of his palace, he said to us:

"Comrades! We have been beaten through treachery; but we shall all see one another again in heaven, the country of the brave. Protect my child, whom I intrust to you. Long live Napoleon II!"

Like Jesus Christ before his last agony, he believed himself deserted by G.o.d and his star; and in order that no one should see him conquered, it was his intention to die; but, although he took poison enough to kill a whole regiment, it never hurt him at all--another proof, you see, that he was more than man: he found himself immortal. As he felt sure of his business after that, and knew that he was to be Emperor always, he went to a certain island for a while, to study the natures of those people in Paris, who did not fail, of course, to do stupid things without end.

While he was standing guard down there, the Chinese and those animals on the coast of Africa--Moors and others, who are not at all easy to get along with--were so sure that he was something more than man that they respected his tent, and said that to touch it would be to offend G.o.d. So he reigned over the whole world, although those other fellows had sent him out of France.

Well, then, after a while he embarked again in the very same nut-sh.e.l.l of a boat that he had left Egypt in, pa.s.sed right under the bows of the English vessels, and set foot once more in France. France acknowledged him; the sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; and all the people cried, "Long live the Emperor!"

In this vicinity the enthusiasm for the Wonder of the Ages was most hearty. Dauphiny behaved well; and it pleased me particularly to know that our own people here wept for joy when they saw again his gray coat.

On the 1st of March Napoleon landed, with two hundred men, to conquer the kingdom of France and Navarre; and on the 20th of the same month that kingdom became the French Empire. On that day THE MAN was in Paris.

He had made a clean sweep--had reconquered his dear France, and had brought all his old soldiers together again by saying only three words: "Here I am." 'Twas the greatest miracle G.o.d had ever worked. Did ever a man, before him, take an empire by merely showing his hat? They thought that France was crushed, did they? Not a bit of it! At sight of the Eagle a national army sprang up, and we all marched to Waterloo. There the Guard perished, as if stricken down at a single blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times, at the head of his troops, on the enemy's cannon, without being able to find death. The battle was lost.

That evening the Emperor called his old soldiers together, and, on the field wet with our blood, burned his eagles and his flags. The poor eagles, who had always been victorious, who had cried "Forward!" in all our battles, and who had flown over all Europe, were saved from the disgrace of falling into the hands of their enemies. All the treasure of England couldn't buy the tail of one of them. They were no more!

The rest of the story is well known to everybody. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is; France was crushed; and the old soldiers, who were no longer of any account, were deprived of their dues and sent back to their homes, in order that their places might be given to a lot of n.o.bles who couldn't even march--it was pitiful to see them try! Then Napoleon was seized, through treachery, and the English nailed him to a rock, ten thousand feet above the earth, on a desert island in the great ocean. There he must stay until the Red Man, for the good of France, gives him back his power. It is said by some that he is dead. Oh, yes! Dead! That shows how little they know him! They only tell that lie to cheat the people and keep peace in their shanty of a government. The truth of the matter is that his friends have left him there in the desert to fulfil a prophecy that was made about him--for I have forgotten to tell you that the name Napoleon really means "Lion of the Desert."

This that I have told you is gospel truth; and all the other things that you hear about the Emperor are foolish stories with no human likeliness.

Because, you see, G.o.d never gave to any other man born of woman the power to write his name in red across the whole world--and the world will remember him forever. Long live Napoleon, the father of the soldiers and the people!