THE ARMY MARCHES AWAY
Gallantly on his errand rode young Marteau. Napoleon's order to
Berthier, by him transmitted down the line, had secured four of the
best horses in the army for his messengers. For young Marteau went not
alone. With him rode a tall grenadier of the Imperial Guard, whose
original name had been lost, or forgot, in a sobriquet which fitted him
perfectly, and which he had richly earned in a long career as a
soldier. They called him "Bullet Stopper," "Balle-Arrêtante," the
curious compound ran in French, and the soldiers clipped it and
condensed it into "Bal-Arrêt!" He used to boast that he had been
wounded in every country in Europe and in Asia and Africa as well. He
had been hit more times than any soldier high or low in the army. He
had distinguished himself by valor, and, but for his humble extraction
and meager education, might have risen to a high command. As it was,
he was personally known to the Emperor, and was accounted as one of the
favorite soldiers of the army.
He, too, had been a dweller on the Aumenier estates. It was his tales
of adventure which had kindled the martial spirit in young Marteau,
whom he had known from his birth. A warm friendship subsisted between
the young officer and the old soldier, which no difference in rank or
station could ever impair. When the Emperor had given him leave to
take with him whomsoever he would, his thoughts had at once turned to
old Bullet Stopper. The latter had gladly accepted the invitation.
Behold him now, his huge body astride of an enormous horse--for,
although the grenadier was a foot-soldier, he could still ride after a
fashion--plodding along through the mud and the wet and the cold on the
mission which, if successful, would perhaps enable Napoleon to save the
army and France, to say nothing of his throne and his family.
Captain Marteau, or Major Marteau, to give him his new title, had said
nothing as to the nature of his mission, upon which they had been
dispatched, to the humble comrade, the faithful follower who
accompanied him. He had only told him that it was difficult,
dangerous, and of vital importance, and he had explained to him that
his familiarity with the country, as well as a warm-hearted admiration
and respect for his shrewdness and skill and courage, had caused his
selection. That was enough for the old soldier; dangers, difficulties,
were as the breath of life to the veteran. And he was always happy to
follow Marteau, in whose career he took an interest almost fatherly.
The weather was frightful. It had snowed and then thawed. The
temperature was now just above the freezing point. The rough wind was
raw, the fierce winter gale was laden with wet snow. The roads, like
all country cross-roads in France, or anywhere else, for that matter,
in that day, were a sea of mud. It was well that the pair had brought
two extra horses. By changing mounts from time to time they were
enabled to spare their beasts and make the greater speed. The Emperor
had impressed upon his young aide the necessity for getting the
information to him at the earliest possible moment. Haste was
everything. So they pressed on.
Without waiting for their report, and presuming on his general
knowledge of Blücher's character and shrewdly deducing the exact state
of affairs Napoleon was already acting as if he possessed absolute and
accurate information. The drums were beating the long roll as they
rode through the still dark streets of the little town of Nogent.
Horses were being harnessed to guns, baggage wagons were being loaded,
ammunition caissons were being got ready. The troops were assembling
out of houses and tents, and coming from around fires, where many of
them had passed an unsheltered night.
There was little of the joy, the gaiety, the _élan_ of the French
soldier, to be seen in the faces of the men thus summoned to the
Eagles. They came, indeed, they answered the call, but with black
looks and sullen faces and a manner almost despairing. They had fought
and fought and fought. They had been beaten back and back and back,
and when they had not been fighting they had been retreating. And
always they were hungry. And always they were cold.
The enormous armies of Schwarzenberg had been extended on either side.
They were constantly threatened with being outflanked. Most of them
were young soldiers, weary and dispirited, and many of them unarmed.
Every battle had reduced the stock of good muskets. Many of those
still in possession of the troops had been ruined by their unskillful
handling.
The supply of regimental officers was utterly inadequate to the demand.
The bravest and the best are usually the first to fall; the boldest and
most venturesome the most liable to capture. Perhaps, if the Emperor
had broken up his guard and distributed the veterans among the raw
troops, the effect might have been better, but in that case he would
have destroyed his main reliance in his army. No, it was better to
keep the guard together at all hazards. It had already been drawn
heavily upon for officers for other corps.
War was popularly supposed to be a thing of dashing adventure, of
victory, and plunder. It had been all that before. Experience had
thrust them all unprepared face to face with the naked reality of
defeat, disease, weary marches over awful roads in freezing cold, in
drifting snow, or in sodden mire. They had no guns, they had little
food, thank God, there was some clothing, such as it was, but even the
best uniforms were not calculated to stand such strains as had been
imposed upon these.
Only the old guard, staunch, stern, splendid, indomitable, a
magnificent body of men, held the army together--they and the cavalry.
Murat, peerless horseman, was playing the traitor to save his wretched
Neapolitan throne. But Grouchy, Nansouty, Sebastiani and others
remained. Conditions were bad in the cavalry, but they were not so bad
as they were in the infantry. And Druot of the artillery also kept it
together in the retreat. Guns, cannon, were more precious almost than
men.
Now early that morning, while it was yet dark, they were called up from
their broken sleep to undertake what to them was another purposeless
march. Even the Eagles drooped in the hands of their bearers. The
soldiers did not know, they could not see. The great high roads that
led to Paris were being abandoned; they were plunging into unfathomable
morasses; they were being led through dark, gloomy, dreadful woods to
the northward. Where? For what purpose? The dumb, wrathful,
insubordinate, despairful army indeed moved at the will of its master,
but largely because it realized that it could not stay where it was,
and largely because it was better to move on and die than to lie down
and die. They were at least warmer on the march!
The spirit of the guard and of the subordinate officers, say from the
colonels down, was good enough, but the generals and the marshals were
sick of fighting. They had had enough of it. They had gained all that
they could gain in their world-wide campaigns, in fame, money, titles,
estates. They had everything to lose and nothing to win. They wanted
rest, an opportunity to enjoy. Some of them were devoted to the
Emperor, in fact, all of them were, but their own comfort and
self-interest bulked larger and larger before them. They saw nothing
but defeat at the end of their endeavors, and they wanted to negotiate
peace with such honor as could be had while they were still a force to
be reckoned with.
Their unwillingness and mutinous spirit, however, had not yet reached
its highest development. That came later, and brought treachery in its
train. The awful will of the Emperor still overruled them.
Wrathfully, insubordinately, protestingly, they still marched when he
gave the word.
The Emperor had been working with that furious concentration which he
alone of all men seemed to be able to bring about, and which was one of
the secrets of his power. Orders borne by couriers had streamed in all
directions over the roads. Napoleon was about to undertake the most
daring and marvelous campaign of his whole history. The stimulus of
despair, the certainty of ruin unless the advance of the allies could
be stayed, had at last awakened his dormant energies, filled his veins
with the fire of youth and spring.
With that comprehensive eye which made him the master of battlefields
and nations he had forseen everything. Soldiers were coming from
Spain. He had given instructions to magnify their number and their
strength. He shrewdly surmised that their appearance on the left flank
would cause the cautious Schwarzenberg to pause, to withdraw his
flankers, to mass to meet them. There would be a halt in the advance.
The allies still feared the Emperor. Although much of his prestige was
gone, they never made little of Napoleon. He intended to leave some of
the best troops to confront Schwarzenberg between Nogent and Montereau,
under Victor and Oudinot, hard fighters both, with instructions not to
engage in any decisive battle, not to allow themselves to be trapped
into that, but to stand on the defensive, to hold the River Seine, to
retreat foot by foot, if pressed, to take advantage of every cover, to
hold the enemy in check, to contest every foot of the way, to assume a
strength which they did not have.
He promised that so soon as he had fallen upon Blücher he would send
the news and see that it got to Schwarzenberg and the allied monarchs
who were with him. Reverses which he hoped to inflict on the Prussian
Field Marshal would increase the Austrian hesitation. The Emperor
believed that the pressure by Oudinot and Victor would be effective.
They would draw in their columns and concentrate.
After he had finished with Blücher and his army, he intended to retrace
his steps and do the same thing with Schwarzenberg. Of course, if he
failed with Blücher it was all over. He was the last hope of
France--he and his army. If his magnificent dash at the Prussians and
Russians was not successful, nothing could delay the end. Napoleon was
staking all on the throw, taking the gambler's chance, taking it
recklessly, accepting the hazard, but neglecting no means to insure the
winning of the game.
The Emperor flung a screen of cavalry in front of Marmont, to patrol
every village, to control every farmhouse, to see that no news of his
advance came to the unsuspecting old Prussian. And then he himself
stayed back in Nogent to see his own orders carried out. He personally
inspected every division, as it marched to the front through the waning
night, the cheerless dawn, the gray dark day. It cut him to the heart
to see his soldiers go so silently and so sullenly. Here and there a
regiment did cry: "_Vive l'Empereur_"; here and there a voice sounded
it, but in the main the men marched dumbly, doggedly. It was only the
old guard that gave him the imperial salute in full voice in the old
way.
Nothing indicated to the Emperor more thoroughly the temper of the
soldiers than that open indifference. Why, even in Russia, ere their
stiffened lips froze into silence, they had breathed out the old
acclaim. The Emperor remembered that grenadier who, when told by the
surgeon that he feared to probe for a ball that had pierced his breast
because he did not know what he would find, "If you probe deep enough
to reach my heart," said the soldier with his dying breath, "you will
find the Emperor."
Grave-faced and frowning, shivering from time to time in the fierce,
raw cold, the Emperor watched the troops march by. Well, the day after
to-morrow, if there were any left, they would acclaim him loud enough.
The Emperor was cold and cynical. He had never allowed the life of men
to stand in the way of his desires, but even his iron nerve, his icy
indifference had been shaken. He gave no outward evidence of it, but
in his heart he realized more plainly than ever before that when these
were gone there were no more. And so, perhaps, his shudder was not
altogether due to the cold.
Whatever his emotions, he steeled his heart, he made his preparations
for the last try with fortune, the last card to be played, the last die
to be thrown. What would be the end of it? What would be the result
of that final desperate game? The Emperor was a master player--could
even his finesse and skill and talent and genius make up for the poor
hand that had been dealt him because the pack had been so drawn upon
that the good cards had been exhausted, used up, long since?
Did the Emperor realize that even he was not what he had been? Did he
comprehend that he was no longer the soldier, the man, of the past?
Did he realize that at last he had tried the patience of that fortune
he had worshiped, beyond the limit; and that whatever favor might be
vouchsafed him would only delay the end?
The boys might march and fight, the old guard might sustain its ancient
fame, the genius of the Emperor might flash out in full effulgence once
more--and it would make no difference. The stars on their courses
fought against Sisera. The doom sentence was written. Postponement he
might look forward to, but no final stay of judgment! A few thousand
more lives he might throw away, but these late sacrifices would avail
nothing. Oh, no; the Emperor's shudder was not altogether due to the
cold that winter morning.