The Great White Army Part 11

Be it said that the men were very merry and that a spirit of drunken hilarity prevailed in the place. None seemed to remember that it was a holy building, nor would it have been worth while to remonstrate with poor devils who had suffered so much. I saw usually sober officers dancing in the vestments of the priests and preaching mock sermons from a splendid pulpit. The organist was an accomplished fellow, and played the wildest dance with precision. Even the wounded cheered up at his music and tried to join in the songs which the army knew so well. It was pitiful to hear them moaning:

"Ram, ram, ram, tam, Plan, tire-lire ram plan":

those who would never see France again and might never quit that building.

One such I shall never forget. His leg had been amputated that very day, and yet in his drunken frenzy he reared himself up from the rude bed they had made him and rolled over and over until he was dead, like a mad dervish from the Indies. Scenes like this were repeated during that long and wonderful night, until, indeed, the organist, coming down the stairs for brandy, stumbled by the way and pitched headlong into the nave. Both his legs were broken, and although I did what I could for him, I knew that he, too, would never leave Slawkowo.

Valerie St. Antoine supported all this with wonderful fort.i.tude. We had had little converse with her hitherto, but now she began to talk to us very rationally, and we had some insight into that dual personality which many men have found so interesting.

Very frankly she told us that she had had no thought of returning to France until she had heard that her father was with the army. This was the more surprising since it would appear that she had not seen him since she was quite a child.

"He left Nice in the days of the Terror," she said. "We went--my brother and I--with my mother to Leipsic, and then to one of her kinsmen, who was a Pole. She died in Poland five years ago, and my brother had to enter Prince Nicholas's household and to take me to Moscow with him. You will imagine what happened to a child among a strange people and with none but an absent brother to protect her.

Rene was sent to St. Petersburg, and I was left alone with the Prince.

Sometimes I forgot altogether that I had been born in France. They surrounded me with riches, and anything for which I chose to ask was at my hand. Then came the story of General Bonaparte and of his victories. That did not interest me; I was still a Russian at heart, and remained so until your army entered Moscow and all was remembered.

It was the Emperor who set me dreaming again and made me remember my home by the Mediterranean Sea: I recalled my father in his uniform of green and gold; I recollected how we were taught as children to cry, '_Vive la Republique!_' but never '_Vive le Roi!_' Oh, yes, my heart went back to France and I became a Frenchwoman again. Now I shall go to Paris and try to earn my living there. It will be difficult, but I am not afraid; the world has taught me too many things that I should fear my own independence."

Leon told her gallantly enough that she had no need to fear any such thing. He, I made sure, was ready enough to set her upon the road of his choice; and yet there was something about the girl which forbade love-making as soldiers know it, and set her upon a pinnacle of which even my nephew was a little shy.

"Come to Paris," said he, "and you shall be as famous as any woman in the city. There is always a career for beauty there, and you, Valerie, have other gifts. I promise you that you will not be disappointed. I will make it my business to see that you are not."

She looked at him with curiosity. Perhaps there was a measure of pity in her tone when she said, "Ah, Captain Leon, if we ever see Paris again how lucky we shall be!"

This she said from her heart, and it saddened us all not a little when we perceived how true it was. None the less, Leon tried to laugh at it.

"There will be supplies at Smolensk," said he, "and after that the way will be easy. We shall be hungry for a day or two and perhaps eat some of your old friends the Cossacks--but the Grand Army has a good appet.i.te. The Emperor will not have been unprepared for such weather as this, and you will see how he will deal with it. Really, Mademoiselle Valerie, you were never born to be a pessimist."

She shook her head, but her interest was evidently roused when he mentioned the Emperor.

"Where is His Majesty now?" she asked. "Do you not remember that I must see him at once? It is for that that I left Moscow with the Baroness Nivois. The safety of the army may depend upon what I have to tell him. I appeal to you all to help me."

"We shall do that readily enough," said I, chiming in for the first time. "Nothing could be easier. His Majesty is at Slawkowo this very night. You can see him in the morning before the march begins--that is, if you have anything to say to him to which he will listen."

She smiled as though with some contempt at the doubt.

"I have that," said she, "which will save his army. If he does not see me, he is not the person I believe him to be."

And then to us all she said:

"Messieurs, I have the plans of General Kutusoff, as I read them in Prince Nicholas's house. Do you not think your Emperor will wish to see those?"

We were all greatly interested, and begged her to show us the doc.u.ments. Here, however, she was adamantine, and her native secrecy prevailed. To our questions she answered that she would tell the Emperor alone, and soon we perceived that it was futile to press her.

Indeed, had we the mind, that was not the opportunity, for just as we were at the height of the argument a loud knocking was heard upon the doors of the church, and someone cried out that the Cossacks were without.

Now this was a dreadful thing to hear, and one which sent every man in the church leaping to his feet--those of them who could stand, for there were many who could not. We did not stop to ask ourselves by what means the Russians had entered Slawkowo. Well we knew that they had been upon our flanks all day, and it did not seem impossible that they had made a sudden descent upon the church, and were already in the suburbs of the city. If that were so, our case was parlous. We knew that they would burn us out like rats, and would sabre every man who crossed the threshold. Can you wonder, then, that a great silence fell for an instant, and was succeeded by a wild shout of "Aux armes!"

I have lived through many a dangerous hour for the Emperor's sake, but never one, I think, so full of the sublime and the grotesque as that instant of alarm in the church at Slawkowo.

To see men, who had been brawling and singing but a moment before, spring to their feet and stagger towards the door, bayonets fixed or swords flourished; to hear the oaths and curses of drunken brutes, who believed that death had them by the shoulders; to be carried everywhere in a mob which slashed and hewed at an imaginary enemy, and even cut down its comrades in a mad debauch of fear and frenzy--all this, I say, surpa.s.sed experience.

Yet such was the result of that wild alarm.

The Cossacks were at the gates; the church was fired. From without and within the roar and the brawl waxed deafening. Those in the snow beat fiercely upon the doors, and splintered them with axe and musket; those within fired their pistols from every window, and called on G.o.d and the devil to help them. When it was apparent that the doors were giving way, a panic ensued such as the meanest mercenary might have been ashamed of. Men howled in fear or supplicated an enemy still invisible; others flew to the bottle, and drank prodigious draughts; some capered like women round and round the fires in a drunken paean of death. But all surely believed that the Cossacks were there; and we of the Guard, determining at length that a.s.sault was better than defence, threw the doors wide open and charged headlong through the blinding storm.

Ah! what a night that was--what a mockery! Perceived but not seeing, for the aureole of light must have shown our figures clearly to the enemy, we slashed and hewed at hazard--here in snow to our knees, there falling upon the slippery ground, now locked arm in arm with the aggressors, or again standing alone seeking vainly for an enemy.

Whence the a.s.sault had come or by whom we knew no more than the dead.

Either the light blinded us or we stood in such black darkness that a man might have slain his own brother unawares.

In truth, we had been doing this all along, and we must have fought a full ten minutes before someone cried out that we were killing Frenchmen, and instantly there arose a terrible uproar and the ghastly truth was discovered.

It had not been the Cossacks at all who had come to the place, but a regiment of cha.s.seurs of the line, of whom no fewer than forty now lay dead before the porch of the church. Who can describe our chagrin and dismay when this was made known? Our own comrades! Many a man there would as soon have slain his own children.

V

Well, we dragged brands from the fire and began to do what we could.

Many of the poor fellows were dead, and the snow fell so heavily that their bodies were already but whitened mounds. Others crawled here and there in their pain, fearing the vengeance of the Russians whom they believed to be in the church. When we cried out to them that we were Frenchmen, they could hardly believe their ears. How they reproached us then, and how difficult we found it to answer them! Few words, indeed, were spoken; but, dragging the wounded and even the dead into the building, we began our pitiful task.

Naturally, my own services were much in request. There was another surgeon from the Velites of the company, but he was a very young man, and the situation had unnerved him. The mischief of it was that so many had been attacked with sword and bayonet that the wounds we had to deal with were very terrible. One poor fellow I remember particularly--a fine man of more than middle age in a cloak and colonel's uniform, an officer of the _cha.s.seurs a pied_, who tried to make light of his wounds, but evidently was dying. Someone told me presently that his name was St. Antoine, and it came to me in a flash that he might be Valerie's father.

Now, it became very difficult to know what to do. The girl herself was then helping the wounded upon the far side of the church, but she came over to me presently, and I had no alternative but to tell her what had been said. The man was dying, and, if he were her father, then she must know it.

I shall not attempt to recite the moving scene I was now to witness--a scene between a child who had become the woman of the world and a man who had lost his daughter to find her at the hour of his death! Be sure we did what we could for him, giving him the best place by the fire, and cloaks from willing shoulders, and brandy from the flask which was left to us. It was all of no avail, and he died just as the dawn broke and the distant bugles were sounding the reveille.

Valerie's grief was not such as I had expected to see.

There are some women, however, whose souls no man can read, and hers was such a one. What she suffered in that hour I make no pretence to say, but her anger against those who had killed their fellow-countrymen was typical of a pa.s.sionate nature. This Grand Army now stood to her for a thing of contempt. She railed upon us piteously--applauding our skill in killing Frenchmen and running away from Russians. When, to turn her thoughts, Leon told her that she would now find the Emperor in Slawkowo, she derided the idea that she wished to see him, and taking some papers from her breast she burned them before we could raise a finger to stop her.

"Your army shall perish!" she cried almost triumphantly; and then she asked, "Well, what does it deserve? To kill your comrades! My G.o.d--to kill my own father!"

Her courage was no longer capable of supporting this thought, and she sank down upon the pavement and was overtaken by pa.s.sionate weeping, which endured for many minutes.

The destruction of the doc.u.ments had been so swift that its moment hitherto had not occurred to us, but now I took Leon aside and began to question him.

"The papers came from Kutusoff," said I. "They are of the greatest importance, and possibly the Russian plan of campaign is among them.

Certainly the Emperor should know of this; we must make it our business to go to him immediately. If the woman has burned the doc.u.ments, at least she will have read them. We must make her speak at head-quarters."

He agreed with me, but declared that she was in no fit state to tell a story.

"I know the kind," he said. "Her anger is like a tempest, and will pa.s.s as quickly. Then she will regret what she has done. Let us go to head-quarters and report. It will be for them to act in the matter."

I thought this wise at the time, and did not hesitate to set off with him. It was evident that the Russians had prepared some great plan of campaign the moment our retreat was known, and the importance of this to the general staff could not be exaggerated. It was amazing to think that a mere child amidst us had knowledge which might save the lives of thousands of men, and that the papers which contained it were but so many ashes upon the pavement before us. None the less, we might yet compel her to speak, and with this in our minds we quitted the building and made our way as best we could to the guest house at which the Emperor was staying.

This was no light task, for the snow was often up to our knees, and the dead were everywhere.

It had been a terrible night, and the army had paid a bitter price for the ruin it had inflicted upon Slawkowo on the outward journey. We could not help but reflect how many thousands might have been saved in those houses we had burned, how many might have been fed by that food we had so wantonly destroyed in the days of our abundance. This day there was not a loaf of bread in all that perished town; men were eating horse at every bivouac. The night, for those who lived, had been an orgy amid the cellars, when men raved and died in their drunkenness, and those who perished from starvation had nothing but brandy for their lips.

All this was reflected in that scene at dawn.