the Emperor Napoleon made him tell the whole story of the admiral’s
assassination. Yet officially the death was announced as suicide,
and Guillemard met the leader of the five assassins walking in broad
daylight on the boulevards.
The lad kept his mouth shut.
Guillemard lived to fight in many of the emperor’s battles, to be one
of the ten thousand prisoners of the Spaniards on the desert island of
the Cabrera, whence he made a gallant escape; to be a prisoner of the
Russians in Siberia; to assist in King Murat’s flight from France; and,
finally, after twenty years of adventure, to return with many wounds
and few honors to his native village.
LI
A. D. 1812
THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
The greatest of modern adventurers, Napoleon Bonaparte, was something
short of a gentleman, a person of mean build, coarse tastes, odious
manners and defective courage, yet gifted with Satanic beauty of face,
charm that bewitched all fighting men, stupendous genius in war and
government. Beginning as a penniless lieutenant of French artillery,
he rose to be captain, colonel, general, commander-in-chief, consul of
France, emperor of the French, master of Europe, almost conqueror of
the world--and he was still only thirty-three years of age, when at
the height of his glory, he invaded Russia. His army of invasion was
gathered from all his subject nations--Germans, Swiss, Italians, Poles,
Austrians, numbering more than half a million men, an irresistible and
overwhelming force, launched like a shell into the heart of Russia.
The Russian army could not hope to defeat Napoleon, was routed again
and again in attempting to check his advance, yet in retreating laid
the country waste, burned all the standing harvest, drove away the
cattle, left the towns in ashes. Napoleon’s host marched through a
desert, while daily, by waste of battle, wreckage of men left with
untended wounds, horrors of starvation, and wolf-like hordes of
Cossacks who cut off all the stragglers, the legions were swept away.
In Lithuania alone Napoleon lost a hundred thousand men, and that only
a fourth part of those who perished before the army reached the gates
of Moscow.
That old city, hallowed by centuries of brave endeavor, stored with the
spoils of countless victories, that holy place at the very sight of
which the Russian traveler prostrated himself in prayer, had been made
ready for Napoleon’s coming. Never has any nation prepared so awful a
sacrifice as that which wrenched a million people from their homes.
The empty capital was left in charge of a few officers, then all the
convicts were released and provided with torches. Every vestige of food
had been taken away, but the gold, the gems, the silver, the precious
things of treasuries, churches and palaces, remained as bait.
Despite the horrors of the march, Napoleon’s entry was attended by all
the gorgeous pageantry of the Grand Army, a blaze of gold and color,
conquered Europe at the heels of the little Corsican adventurer with
waving flags and triumphal music. The cavalry found cathedrals for
stabling, the guard had palaces for barracks, where they could lie at
ease through the winter; but night after night the great buildings
burst into flames, day after day the foraging parties were caught in
labyrinths of blazing streets, and the army staled on a diet of wine
and gold in the burning capital.
In mortal fear the emperor attempted to treat for peace, but Russia
kept him waiting for a month, while her troops closed down on the line
of escape, and the winter was coming on--the Russian winter.
From the time when the retreat began through a thousand miles of naked
wilderness, not a single ration was issued to the starving army. The
men were loaded with furs, brocades, chalices, ingots of silver, bars
of gold and jewels, but they had no food. The transport numbered
thousands of carts laden with grain, but the horses died because there
was no forage, so all the commissariat, except Napoleon’s treasure
train, was left wrecked by the wayside.
Then the marching regiments were placed in the wake of the cavalry,
that they might get the dying horses for food, but when the cold came
there was no fuel to cook the frozen meat, and men’s lips would bleed
when they tried to gnaw that ice. So the wake of the army was a wide
road blocked with broken carts, dead horses, abandoned guns, corpses
of men, where camp followers remained to murder the dying, strip the
dead and gather the treasures of Moscow, the swords, the gold lace, the
costly uniforms, until they were slaughtered by the Cossacks. Then came
the deep snow which covered everything.
No words of mine could ever tell the story, but here are passages from
the _Memoirs_ of Sergeant Burgogne (Heineman). I have ventured to
condense parts of his narrative, memories of the lost army, told by one
who saw. He had been left behind to die:--
“At that moment the moon came out, and I began to walk faster. In this
immense cemetery and this awful silence I was alone, and I began to cry
like a child. The tears relieved me, gradually my courage came back,
and feeling stronger, I set out again, trusting to God’s mercy, taking
care to avoid the dead bodies.
“I noticed something I took for a wagon. It was a broken canteen cart,
the horses which had drawn it not only dead, but partly cut to pieces
for eating. Around the cart were seven dead bodies almost naked, and
half covered with snow; one of them still covered with a cloak and a
sheepskin. On stooping to look at the body I saw that it was a woman. I
approached the dead woman to take the sheepskin for a covering, but it
was impossible to move it. A piercing cry came from the cart. ‘Marie!
Marie! I am dying!’
“Mounting on the body of the horse in the shafts I steadied myself
by the top of the cart. I asked what was the matter. A feeble voice
answered, ‘Something to drink!’
“I thought at once of the frozen blood in my pouch, and tried to get
down to fetch it, but the moon suddenly disappeared behind a great
black cloud, and I as suddenly fell on top of three dead bodies. My
head was down lower than my legs, and my face resting on one of the
dead hands. I had been accustomed for long enough to this sort of
company, but now--I suppose because I was alone--an awful feeling of
terror came over me--I could not move, and I began screaming like a
madman--I tried to help myself up by my arm, but found my hand on a
face, and my thumb went into its mouth. At that moment the moon came
out.
“But a change came over me now. I felt ashamed of my weakness, and a
wild sort of frenzy instead of terror took possession of me. I got up
raving and swearing, and trod on anything that came near me ... and I
cursed the sky above me, defying it, and taking my musket, I struck at
the cart--very likely I struck also at the poor devils under my feet.”
Such was the road, and here was the passing of the army which Burgogne
had overtaken.
“This was November twenty-five, 1812, perhaps about seven o’clock in
the morning, and as yet it was hardly light. I was musing on all that I
had seen, when the head of the column appeared. Those in advance seemed
to be generals, a few on horseback, but the greater part on foot. There
were also a great number of other officers, the remnant of the doomed
squadron and battalion formed on the twenty-second and barely existing
at the end of three days. Those on foot dragged themselves painfully
along, almost all of them having their feet frozen and wrapped in rags,
and all nearly dying of hunger. Afterward came the small remains of
the cavalry of the guard. The emperor came next on foot, carrying a
baton, Murat walked on foot at his right, and on his left, the Prince
Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Next came the marshals--Berthier, Prince of
Neuchâtel, Ney, Mortier, Lefevre, with other marshals and generals
whose corps were nearly annihilated. Seven or eight hundred officers
and non-commissioned officers followed walking in order, and perfect
silence, and carrying the eagles of their different regiments which
had so often led them to victory. This was all that remained of sixty
thousand men. After them came the imperial guard. And men cried at
seeing the emperor on foot.”
So far the army had kept its discipline, and at the passage of the
River Berezina the engineers contrived to build a bridge. But while
the troops were crossing, the Russians began to drive the rear guard,
and the whole herd broke into panic. “The confusion and disorder went
on increasing, and reached their full height when Marshal Victor was
attacked by the Russians, and shells and bullets showered thickly
upon us. To complete our misery, snow began to fall, and a cold wind
blew. This dreadful state of things lasted all day and through the
next night, and all this time the Berezina became gradually filled
with ice, dead bodies of men and horses, while the bridge got blocked
up with carts full of wounded men, some of which rolled over the edge
into the water. Between eight and nine o’clock that evening, Marshal
Victor began his retreat. He and his men had to cross the bridge over a
perfect mountain of corpses.”
Still thousands of stragglers had stayed to burn abandoned wagons, and
make fires to warm them before they attempted the bridge. On these the
Russians descended, but it was too late for flight, and of the hundreds
who attempted to swim the river, not one reached the farther bank. To
prevent the Russians from crossing, the bridge was set on fire, and
so horror was piled on horror that it would be gross offense to add
another word.
Of half a million men who had entered Russia, there were only
twenty-five thousand left after that crossing of the Berezina. These
were veterans for the most part, skilled plunderers, who foraged for
themselves, gleaning a few potatoes from stripped fields, shooting
stray Cossacks for the food they had in their wallets, trading with
the Jews who lurked in ruined towns, or falling back at the worst on
frozen horse-flesh. Garrisons left by Napoleon on his advance fell
in from time to time with the retreating army, but unused to the new
conditions, wasted rapidly. The veterans found their horses useful for
food, and left afoot, they perished.
Even to the last, remnants of lost regiments rallied to the golden
eagles upon their standards, but these little clusters of men no
longer kept their ranks, for as they marched the strong tried to help
the weak, and often comrades would die together rather than part. All
were frozen, suffering the slow exhaustion of dysentery, the miseries
of vermin and starvation, and those who lived to the end were broken
invalids, who never again could serve the emperor.
From Smorgony, Napoleon went ahead, traveling rapidly to send the
relief of sleighs and food which met the survivors on the German
border. Thence he went on to Paris to raise a new army; for now there
was conspiracy in France for the overthrow of the despot, and Europe
rose to destroy him. So on the field of Leipsic, in the battle of the
nations, Napoleon was overwhelmed.
Once again he challenged fate, escaped from his island prison of
Elba, and with a third army marched against armed Europe. And so came
Waterloo, with that last banishment to Saint Helena, where the great
adventurer fretted out his few sore years, dreaming of glories never to
be revived and that great empire which was forever lost.
LII
A. D. 1813
RISING WOLF
This is the story of Rising Wolf, condensed from the beautiful
narrative in _My Life as an Indian_, by J. B. Schultz.
“I had heard much of a certain white man named Hugh Monroe, and in
Blackfoot, Rising Wolf. One afternoon I was told that he had arrived in
camp with his numerous family, and a little later met him at a feast
given by Big Lake. In the evening I invited him over to my lodge and
had a long talk with him while he ate bread and meat and beans, and
smoked numerous pipefuls of tobacco.” White man’s food is good after
years without any. “We eventually became firm friends. Even in his old
age Rising Wolf was the quickest, most active man I ever saw. He was
about five feet six in height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and his firm
square chin and rather prominent nose betokened what he was, a man of
courage and determination. His father, Hugh Monroe, was a colonel in
the British army, his mother a member of the La Roches, a noble family
of French émigrés, bankers of Montreal and large land owners in that
vicinity.
“Hugh, junior, was born on the family estate at Three Rivers (Quebec)
and attended the parish school just long enough to learn to read and
write. All his vacations and many truant days from the class room were
spent in the great forest surrounding his home. The love of nature, of
adventure and wild life were born in him. He first saw the light in
July, 1798. In 1813, when but fifteen years of age, he persuaded his
parents to allow him to enter the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and started westward with a flotilla of that company’s canoes that
spring. His father gave him a fine English smoothbore, his mother a
pair of the famous La Roche dueling pistols and a prayer book. The
family priest gave him a rosary and cross and enjoined him to pray
frequently. Traveling all summer, they arrived at Lake Winnipeg in the
autumn and wintered there. As soon as the ice went out in the spring
the journey was continued and one afternoon in July, Monroe beheld
Mountain Fort, a new post of the company’s not far from the Rocky
Mountains.
“Around about it were encamped thousands of Blackfeet waiting to trade
for the goods the flotilla had brought up and to obtain on credit
ammunition, fukes (trade guns), traps and tobacco. As yet the company
had no Blackfoot interpreter. The factor perceiving that Monroe was
a youth of more than ordinary intelligence at once detailed him to
live and travel with the Piegans (a Blackfoot tribe) and learn their
language, also to see that they returned to Mountain Fort with their
furs the succeeding summer. Word had been received that, following
the course of Lewis and Clarke, American traders were yearly pushing
farther and farther westward and had even reached the mouth of the
Yellowstone. The company feared their competition. Monroe was to do
his best to prevent it.
“‘At last,’ Monroe told me, ‘the day came for our departure, and I
set out with the chiefs and medicine men at the head of the long
procession. There were eight hundred lodges of the Piegans there, about
eight thousand souls. They owned thousands of horses. Oh, but it was
a grand sight to see that long column of riders and pack animals, and
loose horses trooping over the plains. We traveled on southward all
the long day, and about an hour or two before sundown we came to the
rim of a valley through which flowed a cotton wood-bordered stream. We
dismounted at the top of the hill, and spread our robes intending to
sit there until the procession passed by into the bottom and put up
the lodges. A medicine man produced a large stone pipe, filled it and
attempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit of punk (rotten
wood), but somehow he could get no spark. I motioned him to hand it to
me, and drawing my sunglass from my pocket, I got the proper focus and
set the tobacco afire, drawing several mouthfuls of smoke through the
long stem.
“‘As one man all those round about sprang to their feet and rushed
toward me, shouting and gesticulating as if they had gone crazy. I also
jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they were going to do me
harm, perhaps kill me. The pipe was wrenched out of my grasp by the
chief himself, who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had drawn but a
whiff or two when another seized it, and from him it was taken by still
another. Others turned and harangued the passing column; men and women
sprang from their horses and joined the group, mothers pressing close
and rubbing their babes against me, praying earnestly meanwhile. I
recognized a word that I had already learned--Natos--Sun--and suddenly
the meaning of the commotion became clear; they thought that I was
Great Medicine; that I had called upon the Sun himself to light the
pipe, and that he had done so. The mere act of holding up my hand above
the pipe was a supplication to their God. They had perhaps not noticed
the glass, or if they had, had thought it some secret charm or amulet.
At all events I had suddenly become a great personage, and from then on
the utmost consideration and kindness was accorded to me.
“‘When I entered Lone Walker’s lodge that evening--he was the chief,
and my host--I was greeted by deep growls from either side of the
doorway, and was horrified to see two nearly grown grizzly bears acting
as if about to spring upon me. I stopped and stood quite still, but
I believe that my hair was rising; I know that my flesh felt to be
shrinking. I was not kept in suspense. Lone Walker spoke to his pets,
and they immediately lay down, noses between their paws, and I passed
on to the place pointed out to me, the first couch at the chief’s
left hand. It was some time before I became accustomed to the bears,
but we finally came to a sort of understanding with one another. They
ceased growling at me as I passed in and out of the lodge, but would
never allow me to touch them, bristling up and preparing to fight if I
attempted to do so. In the following spring they disappeared one night
and were never seen again.’
“Think how the youth, Rising Wolf, must have felt as he journeyed
southward over the vast plains, and under the shadow of the giant
mountains which lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for he
knew that he was the first of his race to behold them.” We were born a
little too late!
“Monroe often referred to that first trip with the Piegans as the
happiest time of his life.”
In the moon of falling leaves they came to Pile of Rocks River, and
after three months went on to winter on Yellow River. Next summer
they wandered down the Musselshell, crossed the Big River and thence
westward by way of the Little Rockies and the Bear Paw Mountains to the
Marias. Even paradise has its geography.
“Rifle and pistol were now useless as the last rounds of powder and
ball had been fired. But what mattered that? Had they not their bows
and great sheaves of arrows? In the spring they had planted on the
banks of the Judith a large patch of their own tobacco which they would
harvest in due time.
“One by one young Rising Wolf’s garments were worn out and cast aside.
The women of the lodge tanned deerskins and bighorn (sheep) and from
them Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts and leggings, which he
wore in their place. It was not permitted for women to make men’s
clothing. So ere long he was dressed in full Indian costume, even
to the belt and breech-clout, and his hair grew so that it fell in
rippling waves down over his shoulders.” A warrior never cut his hair,
so white men living with Indians followed their fashion, else they were
not admitted to rank as warriors. “He began to think of braiding it.
Ap-ah’-ki, the shy young daughter of the chief, made his footwear--thin
parfleche (arrow-proof)--soled moccasins (skin-shoes) for summer,
beautifully embroidered with colored porcupine quills; thick, soft warm
ones of buffalo robe for winter.
“‘I could not help but notice her,’ he said, ‘on the first night
I stayed in her father’s lodge.... I learned the language easily,
quickly, yet I never spoke to her nor she to me, for, as you know, the
Blackfeet think it unseemly for youths and maidens to do so.
“‘One evening a man came into the lodge and began to praise a certain
youth with whom I had often hunted; spoke of his bravery, his kindness,
his wealth, and ended by saying that the young fellow presented to Lone
Walker thirty horses, and wished, with Ap-ah’-ki, to set up a lodge of
his own. I glanced at the girl and caught her looking at me; such a
look! expressing at once fear, despair and something else which I dared
not believe I interpreted aright. The chief spoke: “Tell your friend,”
he said, “that all you have spoken of him is true; I know that he is a
real man, a good, kind, brave, generous young man, yet for all that I
can not give him my daughter.”
“‘Again I looked at Ap-ah’-ki and she at me. Now she was smiling and
there was happiness in her eyes. But if she smiled I could not. I had
heard him refuse thirty head of horses. What hope had I then, who did
not even own the horse I rode? I, who received for my services only
twenty pounds a year, from which must be deducted the various articles
I bought. Surely the girl was not for me. I suffered.
“‘It was a little later, perhaps a couple of weeks, that I met her in
the trail, bringing home a bundle of fire-wood. We stopped and looked
at each other in silence for a moment, and then I spoke her name. Crash
went the fuel on the ground, and we embraced and kissed regardless of
those who might be looking.
“‘So, forgetting the bundle of wood, we went hand in hand and stood
before Lone Walker, where he sat smoking his long pipe, out on the
shady side of the lodge.
“‘The chief smiled. “Why, think you, did I refuse the thirty horses?”
he asked, and before I could answer: “Because I wanted you for my
son-in-law, wanted a white man because he is more cunning, much wiser
than the Indian, and I need a counselor. We have not been blind,
neither I nor my women. There is nothing more to say except this: be
good to her.”
“‘That very day they set up a small lodge for us, and stored it with
robes and parfleches of dried meat and berries, gave us one of their
two brass kettles, tanned skins, pack saddles, ropes, all that a lodge
should contain. And, not least, Lone Walker told me to choose thirty
horses from his large herd. In the evening we took possession of our
house and were happy.’
“Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company a number of
years, raising a large family of boys and girls, most of whom are alive
to-day. The oldest, John, is about seventy-five years of age, but still
young enough to go to the Rockies near his home every autumn, and
kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few beavers. The old man never
revisited his home; never saw his parents after they parted with him
at the Montreal docks. He intended to return to them for a brief visit
some time, but kept deferring it, and then came letters two years old
to say that they were both dead. Came also a letter from an attorney,
saying that they had bequeathed him a considerable property, that he
must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in order to take possession
of it. At the time the factor of Mountain Fort was going to England
on leave; to him, in his simple trustfulness Monroe gave a power of
attorney in the matter. The factor never returned, and by virtue of
the papers he had signed the frontiersman lost his inheritance. But
that was a matter of little moment to him then. Had he not a lodge
and family, good horses and a vast domain actually teeming with game
wherein to wander? What more could one possibly want?
“Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe sometimes worked for the
American Fur Company, but mostly as a free trapper, wandered from the
Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg.
The headwaters of the South Saskatchewan were one of his favorite
hunting grounds. Thither in the early fifties he guided the noted
Jesuit Father, De Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes just
south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge wooden cross and named the
two bodies of water Saint Mary’s Lakes.” Here the Canada and United
States boundary climbs the Rocky Mountains.
“One winter after his sons John and François had married they were
camping there for the season, the three lodges of the family, when one
night a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them. The daughters
Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been taught to shoot, and together they
made a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight,
with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he
was about to let down the bars of the horse corral.