However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.
War is the gambling of kings. Napoleon, the arch-gambler, from that
Southern sea where men, lacking cards or dice and the money to buy
either, will yet play a game of chance with the ten fingers that God
gave them for another purpose--Napoleon had dealt a hand with every
monarch in Europe before he met for the second time that Northern
adversary of cool blood who knew the waiting game.
It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely players, idly
fingering the fallen cards, return in fancy to certain points--to this
trick trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over again. But
when the result is great it overshadows the game, and all men's thoughts
fly to speculation on the future. How will the loser meet his loss? What
use will the winner make of his gain?
The results of the Russian campaign were so stupendous to history that
the historians of the day, in their bewilderment, sought rather to
preserve these than the details of the war. Thus the student of to-day,
in piecing together an impression of bygone times, will inevitably find
portions of his picture missing. As a matter of fact, no one can say for
certain whether Alexander gently led Napoleon onward to Moscow or was
himself driven thither in confusion by the conqueror.
Perhaps each merely pushed on from day to day, as men who are not
Emperors must needs do in the stress of life. It is only in calm weather
that the eye is able to discern things afar off and make ready; but in
a storm the horizon is dimmed by cloud and spray. All Europe was so
obscured at this time. And even Emperors, being only men, could look no
farther than the immediate and urgent danger of the moment.
Napoleon's generals were scarcely social lights. Ney, the hero of the
retreat, the bravest of the brave, was a rough man who ate horseflesh
without troubling to cook it. Rapp, whose dogged defence of an abandoned
city is without compare in the story of war, had the manners and the
mind of a peasant. These gentlemen dealt more in deeds than in words.
They had not much to say for themselves.
As for the Russians, Russia remains at this time the one European
country unhampered and unharassed by a cheap press--the one country
where prominent men have a quiet tongue. A hundred years ago Russians
did great deeds, and the rest was silence. Neither Kutusoff nor
Alexander ever stated clearly whether the retreat to Moscow was
intentional or unavoidable; and these are the only men who knew. Perhaps
Napoleon knew; at all events, he thought he did, or pretended to
think it long afterwards at St. Helena, for Napoleon the Great was a
consummate liar.
Be that as it may, the Russians retreated, and the French advanced
farther and farther from their base. It was a great army--the greatest
ever seen. For Napoleon had eight monarchs serving with the eagles;
generals innumerable, many of them immortal--Davoust, the greatest
strategist; Prince Eugene, the incomparable lieutenant; Ney, the
fearless; four hundred thousand men. And they carried with them only
twenty days' provision.
They had marched from the Vistula, full of shipping, across the Pregel,
loaded with stores, to the Niemen, where there was no navigation.
Dantzig, behind them--that Gibraltar of the North--was stored with
provision enough for the whole army. But there was no transport; for the
roads of Lithuania were unsuitable for the heavy carts provided.
The country across the Niemen could scarce sustain its own sparse
population, and had nothing to spare for an invading army. This had once
been Poland, and was now inimical to Russia; but Russia did not care,
and the friendship of Lithuania was like many human friendships which we
make sacrifices to preserve--not worth having.
All the while the Russians retreated, and, stranger still, the French
followed them, eking out their twenty days' provision.
“I will make them fight a big battle, and beat them,” said Napoleon;
“and then the Emperor will sue for peace.”
But Barclay de Tolly continued to run away from that great battle. Then
came the news that Barclay had been deposed; that Kutusoff was coming
from the South to take command. It was true enough; and Barclay
cheerfully served in a subordinate position to the new chief. September
brought great hopes of a battle, for Kutusoff seemed to retreat with
less despatch, like a man choosing his ground--Kutusoff, that master of
the waiting game.
Early in September Murat, the impetuous leader of the pursuit,
complained to Nansouty that a cavalry charge had not been pushed home.
“The horses have no patriotism,” replied Nansouty. “The men will fight
on empty stomachs, but not the horses.”
An ominous reply at the beginning of a campaign, while communications
were still open.
At last, within a few days' march of Moscow, Kutusoff made a stand. At
last the great battle was imminent, after a hundred false alarms,
after many disappointed hopes. The country had been flat hitherto. The
Borodino, running in a wider valley than many of these rivers, which are
merely great ditches, seemed to offer possibilities of defence. It was
the only hope for Moscow.
“At last,” wrote Charles to Desiree on September 6, “we are to have a
great battle. There has been much fighting the last few days, but I have
seen none of it. We are only eighty miles from Moscow. If there is a
great battle to-morrow we shall see Moscow in less than a week. For
we shall win. I have now found out from one who is near him that
the Emperor saw and remembered me the day he passed us in the
Frauengasse--our wedding-day, dearest. Nobody is too insignificant for
him to know. He thought that my marriage to you (for he knows that you
are French) would militate against the work I had been given to do in
Dantzig, so he gave orders for me to be sent at once to Konigsberg and
to continue the work there. De Casimir tells me that the Emperor is
pleased with me. De Casimir is the best friend I have; I am sure of
that. It is said that under the walls of Moscow the Emperor will dictate
his terms to Alexander. Every one wonders that Alexander of Russia did
not make proposals of peace when Vilna and Smolensk fell. In a week we
may be at Moscow. In a month I may be back at Dantzig, Desiree....”
And the rest would have been for Desiree's eyes alone, had it ever been
penned. For next in sacredness to heaven-inspired words are mere human
love letters; and those who read the love-letters of another commit a
sacrilege. But Charles never finished the letter, for the dawn surprised
him where he wrote in a shed by the miserable Kalugha, a streamlet
running to the Moskwa. And it was the dawn of September 7, 1812.
“There is the sun of Austerlitz,” said Napoleon to those who were near
him when it arose. But it was not. It was the sun of Borodino. And
before it set the great battle desired by the French had been fought,
and eight French generals lay dead, while thirty more were wounded.
Murat, Davoust, Ney, Junot, Prince Eugene, Napoleon himself--all were
there; and all fought to finish a war which from the first had been
disliked. The French claimed it as a victory; but they gained nothing by
it, and they lost forty thousand killed and wounded.
During the night the Russians evacuated the position which they had
held, and lost, and retaken. They retreated towards Moscow, but Napoleon
was hardly ready to pursue.
These things, however, are history, and those who wish to know of them
may read them in another volume. While to the many orderly persons who
would wish to see everything in its place and the history-books on the
top shelf to be taken down and read on a future day (which will never
come), to such the explanation is due that this battle of Borodino is
here touched upon because it changed the current of some lives with
which we have to deal.
For battles and revolutions and historical events of any sort are the
jagged instruments with which Fate rough-hews our lives, leaving us to
shape them as we will. In other days, no doubt, men rough-hewed, while
Fate shaped. But as civilization advances men will wax so tender, so
careful of the individual, that they will never cut and slash, but move
softly, very tolerant, very easy-going, seeking the compromise that
brings peace and breeds a small and timid race of men.
Into such lives Fate comes crashing like a woodman with his axe, leaving
us to smooth the edges of the gaping wound and smile, and say that we
are not hurt; to pare away the knots and broken stumps; and hope that
our neighbour, concealing such himself, will have the decency to pretend
not to see.
Thus the battle of Borodino crashed into the lives of Desiree and
Mathilde, and their father, living quietly on the sunny side of the
Frauengasse in Dantzig. Antoine Sebastian was the first to hear the
news. He had, it seemed, special facilities for learning news at the
Weissen Ross'l, whither he went again now in the evening.
“There has been a great battle,” he said, with so much more than his
usual self-restraint that Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of
anxiety. “A man coming this evening from Dirschau saw and spoke with
the Imperial couriers on their way to Berlin and Paris. It was a great
victory, quite near to Moscow. But the loss on both sides has been
terrible.”
He paused and glanced at Desiree. It was his creed that good blood
should show an example of self-restraint and a certain steadfast,
indifferent courage.
“Not so much among the French,” he said, “as among the Bavarians and
Italians. It is an odd way of showing patriotism, to gain victories for
the conqueror. One hoped--” he paused and made a gesture with his right
hand, scarcely indicative of a staunch hope, “that the man's star might
be setting, but it would appear to be still in the ascendant. Charles,”
he added, as an afterthought, “would be on the staff. No doubt he only
saw the fighting from a distance.”
Desiree, from whose face the colour had faded, nodded cheerfully enough.
“Oh yes,” she answered, “I have no doubt he is safe. He has good
fortune.”
For she was an apt pupil, and had already learnt that the world only
wishes to leave us in undisputed possession of our anxieties or sorrows,
however ready it may be to come forward and take a hand in good fortune.
“But there is no definite news,” said Mathilde, hardly looking up from
the needlework at which her fingers were so deft and industrious.
“No.”
“No news of Charles, I mean,” she continued, “or of any of our friends.
Of Monsieur de Casimir, for instance?”
“No. As for Colonel de Casimir,” returned Sebastian thoughtfully,
“he, like Charles, holds some staff appointment of which one does not
understand the scope. He is without doubt uninjured.”
Mathilde glanced at her father not without suspicion. His grand manner
might easily be at times a screen. One never knows how much is perceived
by those who look down from a high place.
The town was quiet enough all that night. Sebastian must have heard the
news from some unofficial source, for none other seemed to know it. But
at daybreak the church bells, so rarely used in Dantzig for rejoicing,
awoke the burghers to the fact that the Emperor bade them make merry.
Napoleon gave great heed to such matters. In the churches of Lithuania
and farther on in Russia he had commanded the popes to pray for him at
their altars instead of for the Czar.
When Desiree came downstairs, she found a packet awaiting her. The
courier had come in during the night. This was more than a letter.
A number of papers had been folded in a handkerchief and bound with
string. The address was written on a piece of white leather cut from
the uniform of one who had fallen at Borodino, and had no more need of
sabretasche or trapping.
“Madame Desiree Darragon--nee Sebastian,
Frauengasse 36,
Dantzig.”
Desiree's heart stood still; for the writing was unknown to her. As she
cut the network of string, she thought that Charles was dead. When the
enclosed papers fell upon the table, she was sure of it; for they were
all in his writing. She did not pick and choose as one would who has
leisure and no very strong excitement, but took up the first paper and
read:
“Dear C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed
report. His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful. I was
quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here,
they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river
half the night, listening at the open stern window of a Reval pink to
every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed,
he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that
which they call patriotism, and we, treason. But I can only repeat what
His Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the
ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and
what he is about, you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to
Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address--I beg of you--if only in
acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed.”
The letter was unsigned, but the writing was the writing of Charles
Darragon, and Desiree knew what he had sacrificed--what he could never
recover.
There were two or three more letters addressed to “Dear C.,” bearing no
signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with
a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her
memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be
some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? Was Charles
dead?
At last she came to a sealed envelope addressed to herself by Charles.
Some other hand had copied the address from it in identical terms on
the piece of white leather. She opened and read it. It was the letter
written to her by Charles on the bank of the Kalugha river on the eve of
Borodino, and left unfinished by him. He must be dead. She prayed that
he might be.
She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to
prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door--a
messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.
One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing--the
writing on the white leather.
“Madame,” it read, “The enclosed papers were found on the field by one
of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue
to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance.
Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to
inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day.”
The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote
“Surgeon” after his name.
Desiree had read the explanation too late.