Kitabı oku: «The Bronze Eagle: A Story of the Hundred Days», sayfa 20

IV

"Up, guards, and at them!"

Maitland's brigade of guards had been crouching in the corn—crouching—waiting for the order to charge—red-coated lions in the ripening corn—ready to spring at the word.

And Death the harvester in chief stands by with his scythe ready for the mowing.

"Up, guards, and at them!"

It is Maitland and his gallant brigade of guards—out of the corn they rise and front the three battalions of Michel's chasseurs who were the first to reach the highest point of the hill. They fire and Death with his scythe has laid three hundred low. The tricolour flag is riddled with grapeshot and Général Michel has fallen.

Then indeed the mighty wave of steel can advance no longer: for it is confronted with an impenetrable wall—a wall of living, palpitating, heroic men—men who for hours have stood their ground and fought for the honour of Britain and of her flag—men who with set teeth and grim determination were ready to sell their lives dearly if lives were to be sold—men in fact who have had their orders to hold out to the last man and who are going to obey those orders now.

"Up, guards, and at them," and surprised, bewildered, staggered, the chasseurs pause: three hundred of their comrades lie dead or dying on the ground. They pause: their ranks are broken: with his last dying sigh brave Général Michel tries to rally them. But he breathes his last ere he succeeds: his second in command loses his head. He should have ordered a bayonet charge—sudden, swift and sure—against that red wall that rushes at them with such staggering power: but he too tries to rally his men, to reform their ranks—how can they re-form as for parade under the deadly fire of the British guards?

Confusion begins its deathly sway: the chasseurs—under conflicting orders—stand for full ten minutes almost motionless under that devastating fire.

And far away on the heights of Frischemont the first line of Prussian bayonets are seen silhouetted against the sunset sky.

Wellington has seen it. Blücher has come at last! One final effort, one more mighty gigantic, superhuman struggle and the glorious end would be in sight. He gives the order for a general charge.

"Forward, boys," cries Colonel Saltoun to his brigade. "Now is the time!"

Heads down the British charge. The chasseurs are already scattered, but behind the chasseurs, fronting Maitland's brigade, fronting Adam and his artillery, fronting Saltoun and Colborne the Fire-Eater, the Old Guard is seen to advance, the Old Guard who through twelve campaigns and an hundred victories have shown the world how to conquer and how to die.

When Michel's chasseurs were scattered, when their General fell; when the English lines, exhausted and shaken for a moment, rallied at Wellington's call: "Up, guards, and at them!" when from far away on the heights of Frischemont the first line of Prussian bayonets were silhouetted against the sunset sky, then did Napoleon's old growlers with their fur bonnets and their grizzled moustaches enter the line of action to face the English guards. They were facing Death and knew it but still they cried: "Vive l'Empereur!"

Heads down the British charge, whilst from Ohain comes the roar of Blücher's guns, and up from the east, Zieten with the Prussians rushes up to join in the assault.

Then the carnage begins: for the Old Guard is still advancing—in solid squares—solemn, unmoved, magnificent: the bronze eagles on their bonnets catch the golden rays of the setting sun. Thus they advance in face of deadly fire: they fall like corn before the scythe. A sublime suicide to the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" and not one of the brigade is missing except those who are dead.

They know—none better—that this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps they do not care to live if their Emperor is to be Emperor no longer, if he is to be sent back to exile—to the prison of Elba or worse: and so they advance in serried squares, while Maitland's artillery has attacked them in the rear. Great gaps are made in those ranks, but they are quickly filled up again: the squares become less solid, smaller, but they remain compact. Still they advance.

But now close behind them Blücher's guns begin to thunder and Zieten's columns are rapidly gaining ground: all round their fur bonnets a hailstorm of grape-shot is raging whilst Adam's artillery is in action within fifty paces at their flank. But the old growlers who had suffered death with silent fortitude in the snows of Russia, who had been as grand in their defeat at Moscow and at Leipzic as they had been in the triumphs of Auerstadt or of Friedland—they neither staggered nor paused in their advance. On they went—carrying their muskets on their shoulders—a cloud of tirailleurs in front of them, right into the cross-fire of the British guns: their loud cry of "Vive l'Empereur" drowning that other awesome, terrible cry which someone had raised a while ago and which now went from mouth to mouth: "We are betrayed! Sauve qui peut!"

The Prussians were in their rear; the British were charging their front, and panic had seized the most brilliant cavalry the world had ever seen.

"Sauve qui peut" is echoed now and re-echoed all along the crest of the plateau. And the echo rolls down the slope into the valley where Reille's infantry and a regiment of cuirassiers, and three more battalions of chasseurs, are making ready to second the assault on Mont Saint Jean. Reille and his infantry pause and listen: the cuirassiers halt in their upward movement, whilst up on the ridge of the plateau where Donzelot's grenadiers have attacked the brigade of Kempt and Lambert and Pack, the whisper goes from mouth to mouth:

"We are betrayed! Sauve qui peut!"

Panic seizes the younger men: they turn their horses' heads back toward the slopes. The stampede has commenced: very soon it grows. The British in front, the Prussians in the rear: "Sauve qui peut!"

Ney amongst them is almost unrecognisable. His face is coal-black with powder: he has no hat, no epaulettes and only half a sword: rage, anguish, bitterness are in his husky voice as he adjures, entreats, calls to the demoralised army—and insults it, execrates it in turn. But nothing but Death will stop that army now in its headlong flight.

"At least stop and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of honour," he calls.

But the voice which led these same men to victory at Moskowa has lost its potency and its magic. The men cry "Vive Ney!" but they do not stand. The stampede has become general. In the valley below the infantry has started to run up the slope of La Belle Alliance: after it the cavalry with reins hanging loose, stirrups lost, casques, sabretaches, muskets—anything that impedes—thrown into the fields to right and left. La Haye Sainte is evacuated, Hougoumont is abandoned; Papelotte, Plancenoit, the woods, the plains are only filled with running men and the thunder of galloping chargers.

Alone the Old Guard has remained unshaken. Whilst all around them what was once the Grand Army is shattered, destroyed, melted like ice before a devastating fire, they have continued to advance, sublime in their fortitude, in their endurance, their contempt for death. One by one their columns are shattered and there are none now to replace those that fall. And as the gloom of night settles on this vast hecatomb on the plateau of Mont Saint Jean the conquerors of Jena and Austerlitz and Friedland make their last stand round the bronze eagle—all that is left to them of the glories of the past.

And when from far away the cry of "Sauve qui peut" has become only an echo, and the bronze eagle shattered by a bullet lies prone upon the ground shielded against capture in its fall by a circling mountain of dead, when finally Night wraps all the heroism, the glory, the sorrow and the horrors of this awful day in the sable folds of her all-embracing mantle, Napoleon's Old Guard has ceased to be.

And out in the western sky a streak of vivid crimson like human blood has broken the bosom of the clouds: the glow of the sinking sun rests on this huge dissolution of what was once so glorious and unconquered and great. Then it is that Wellington rides to the very edge of the plateau and fronts the gallant British troops at this supreme hour of oncoming victory, and lifting his hat high above his head he waves it three times in the air.

And from right and left they come, British, Hanoverians, Belgians and Brunswickers to deliver the final blow to this retreating army, wounded already unto death.

They charge now: they charge all of them, cavalry, infantry, gunners, forty thousand men who have forgotten exhaustion, forgotten what they have suffered, forgotten what they had endured. On they come with a rush like a torrent let loose; the confusion of sounds and sights becomes a pandemonium of hideousness, bugles and drums and trumpets and bagpipes all mingle, merge and die away in the fast gathering twilight.

And the tidal wave of steel recedes down the slopes of Mont Saint Jean, into the valley and thence up again on Belle Alliance, with a mêlée of sounds like the breaking of a gigantic line of surf against the irresistible cliffs, or the last drawn-out sigh of agony of dying giants in primeval times.

V

On the road to Genappe in the mystery of the moonlit night a solitary rider turned into a field and dismounted.

Carried along for a time by the stream of the panic, he found himself for a moment comparatively alone—left as it were high and dry by the same stream which here had divided and flowed on to right and left of him. He wore a grey redingote and a shabby bicorne hat.

Having dismounted he slipped the bridle over his arm and started to walk beside his horse back toward Waterloo.

A sleep-walker in pursuit of his dream!

Heavy banks of grey clouds chased one another with mad fury across the midsummer sky, now obscuring the cold face of the moon, now allowing her pale, silvery rays to light up this gigantic panorama of desolation and terror and misery. To right and left along the roads and lanes, across grassland and cornfields, canals, ditches and fences the last of the Grand Army was flying headlong, closely pursued by the Prussians. And at the farm of La Belle Alliance Wellington and Blücher had met and shaken hands, and had thanked God for the great and glorious victory.

But the sleep-walker went on in pursuit of his dream—he walked with measured steps beside his weary horse, his eyes fixed on the horizon far away, where the dull crimson glow of smouldering fires threw its last weird light upon this vast abode of the dead and the dying. He walked on—slowly and mechanically back to the scene of the overwhelming cataclysm where all his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked on—majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on—silent, exalted and great—great through the magnitude of his downfall.

And to right and left of him, like the surf that recedes on a pebbly beach, the last of his once invincible army was flying back to France—back in the wake of those who had been lucky enough to fly before—bodies of men who had been the last to realise that an heroic stand round a fallen eagle could no longer win back that which was lost, and that if life be precious it could only be had in flight—bits of human wreckage too, forgotten by the tide—they all rolled and rushed and swept past the silent wayfarer . . . quite close at times: so close that every man could see him quite distinctly, could easily distinguish by the light of the moon the grey redingote and the battered hat which they all knew so well—which they had been wont to see in the forefront of an hundred victorious charges.

Now half-blinded by despair and by panic they gazed with uncomprehending eyes on the man and on the horse and merely shouted to him as they rushed galloping or running by, "The Prussians are on us! Sauve qui peut!"

And the dreamer still looked on that distant crimson glow and in the bosom of those wind-swept clouds he saw the pictures of Austerlitz and Jena and Wagram, pictures of glory and might and victory, and the shouts which he heard were the ringing cheers round the bivouac fires of long ago.

CHAPTER X
THE LAST THROW

I

It was close on half-past nine and the moon full up on the stormy sky when a couple of riders detached themselves out of the surging mass of horses and men that were flying pell-mell towards Genappe, and slightly checking their horses, put them to a slower gallop and finally to a trot.

On their right a small cottage gleamed snow-white in the cold, searching light of the moon. A low wall ran to right and left of it and enclosed a small yard at the back of the cottage; the wall had a gate in it which gave on the fields beyond. At the moment that the two riders trotting slowly down the road reached the first angle of the wall, the gate was open and a man leading a white horse and wearing a grey redingote turned into the yard.

"My God! the Emperor!" exclaimed one of the riders as he drew rein.

They both turned their horses into the field, skirting the low, enclosing wall until they reached the gate. The white horse was now tethered to a post and the man in the grey redingote was standing in the doorway at the rear of the cottage. The two men dismounted and in their turn led their horses into the yard: at sight of them the man in the grey redingote seemed to wake from his sleep.

"Berthier," he said slowly, "is that you?"

"Yes, Sire,—and Colonel Bertrand is here too."

"What do you want?"

"We earnestly beg you, Sire, to come with us to Genappe. There is not the slightest hope of rallying any portion of your army now. The Prussians are on us. You might fall into their hands."

Berthier—conqueror and Prince of Wagram—spoke very earnestly and with head uncovered, but more abruptly and harshly than he had been wont to do of yore in the salons of the Tuileries or on the glory-crowned battlefields at the close of a victorious day.

"I am coming! I am coming!" said the Emperor with a quick sigh of impatience. "I only wanted to be alone a moment—to think things out—to . . ."

"There is nothing quite so urgent, Sire, as your safety," retorted the Prince of Wagram drily.

The Emperor did not—or did not choose to—heed his great Marshal's marked want of deference. Perhaps he was accustomed to the moods of these men whom his bounty had fed and loaded with wealth and dignities and titles in the days of his glory, and who had proved only too ready, alas!—even last year, even now—to desert him when disaster was in sight.

Without another word he turned on his heel and pushing open the cottage door he disappeared into the darkness of the tiny room beyond. With an impatient shrug of the shoulders Berthier prepared to follow him. Colonel Bertrand busied himself with tethering the horses, then he too followed Berthier into the building.

It was deserted, of course, as all isolated cottages and houses had been in the vicinity of Quatre Bras or Mont Saint Jean. Bertrand struck a tinder and lighted a tallow candle that stood forlorn on a deal table in the centre of the room. The flickering light revealed a tiny cottage kitchen—hastily abandoned but scrupulously clean—white-washed walls, a red-tiled floor, the iron hearth, the painted dresser decorated with white crockery, shiny tin pans hung in rows against the walls and two or three rush chairs. Napoleon sat down.

"I again entreat you, Sire—" began Berthier more earnestly than before.

But the Emperor was staring straight out before him, with eyes that apparently saw something beyond that rough white wall opposite, on which the flickering candle-light threw such weird gargantuan shadows. The precious minutes sped on: minutes wherein death or capture strode with giant steps across the fields of Flanders to this lonely cottage where the once mightiest ruler in Europe sat dreaming of what might have been. The silence of the night was broken by the thunder of flying horses' hoofs, by the cries of "Sauve qui peut!" and distant volleys of artillery proclaiming from far away that Death had not finished all his work yet.

Bertrand and Berthier stood by, with heads uncovered: silent, moody and anxious.

Suddenly the dreamer roused himself for a moment and spoke abruptly and with his usual peremptory impatience: "De Marmont," he said. "Has either of you seen him?"

"Not lately, Sire," replied Colonel Bertrand, "not since five o'clock at any rate."

"What was he doing then?"

"He was riding furiously in the direction of Nivelles. I shouted to him. He told me that he was making for Brussels by a circuitous way."

"Ah! that is right! Well done, my brave de Marmont! Braver than your treacherous kinsman ever was! So you saw him, did you, Bertrand? Did he tell you that he had just come from Genappe?"

"Yes, Sire, he did," replied Bertrand moodily. "He told me that by your orders he had sent a messenger from there to Paris with news of your victory: and that by to-morrow morning the capital would be ringing with enthusiasm and with cheers."

"And by the time de Marmont came back from Genappe," interposed the Prince of Wagram with a sneer, "the plains of Waterloo were ringing with the Grand Army's 'Sauve qui peut!'"

"An episode, Prince, only an episode!" said Napoleon with an angry frown of impatience. "To hear you now one would imagine that Essling had never been. We have been beaten back, of course, but for the moment the world does not know that. Paris to-morrow will be be-flagged and the bells of Notre Dame will send forth their joyous peals to cheer the hearts of my people. And in Brussels this afternoon thousands of our enemies—Belgians, Dutch, Hanoverians, Brunswickers—were rushing helter-skelter into the town—demoralised and disorganised after that brilliant charge of our cuirassiers against the Allied left."

"Would to God the British had been among them too," murmured old Colonel Bertrand. "But for their stand . . ."

"And a splendid stand it was. Ah! but for that. . . . To think that if Grouchy had kept the Prussians away, in only another hour we . . ."

The dreamer paused in his dream of the might have been: then he continued more calmly:

"But I was not thinking of that just now. I was thinking of those who fled to Brussels this afternoon with the news of our victory and of Wellington's defeat."

"Even then the truth is known in Brussels by now," protested Berthier.

"Yes! but not before de Marmont has had the time and the pluck to save us and our Empire! . . . Berthier," he continued more vehemently, "don't stand there so gloomy, man . . . and you, too, my old Bertrand. . . . Surely, surely you have realised that at this terrible juncture we must utilise every circumstance which is in our favour. . . . That early news of our victory . . . we can make use of that. . . . A big throw in this mighty game, but we can do it . . . Berthier, do you see how we can do it . . . ?"

"No, Sire, I confess that I do not," replied the Marshal gloomily.

"You do not see?" retorted the Emperor with a frown of angry impatience. "De Marmont did—at once—but he is young—and enthusiastic, whereas you. . . . But don't you see that the news of Wellington's defeat must have enormous consequences on the money markets of the world—if only for a few hours? . . . It must send the prices on the foreign Bourses tumbling about people's ears and create an absolute panic on the London Stock Exchange. Only for a few hours of course . . . but do you not see that if any man is wise enough to buy stock in London during that panic he can make a fortune by re-selling the moment the truth is known?"

"Even then, Sire," stammered Berthier, a little confused by this avalanche of seemingly irrelevant facts hurled at him at a moment when the whole map of Europe was being changed by destiny and her future trembled in the hands of God.

"Ah, de Marmont saw it all . . . at once . . ." continued the Emperor earnestly, "he saw eye to eye with me. He knows that money—a great deal of money—is just what I want now . . . money to reorganise my army, to re-equip and reform it. The Chamber and my Ministers will never give me what I want. . . . My God! they are such cowards! and some of them would rather see the foreign troops again in Paris than Napoleon Emperor at the Tuileries. You should know that, Maréchal, and you, too, my good Bertrand. De Marmont knows it . . . that is why he rode to Brussels at the hour when I alone knew that all was lost at Waterloo, but when half Europe still thought that the Corsican ogre had conquered again. . . . De Marmont is in Brussels now . . . to-night he crosses over to England—to-morrow morning he and his broker will be in the Stock Exchange in London—calm, silent, watchful. An operation on the Bourse, what? like hundreds that have been done before . . . but in this case the object will be to turn one million into fifty so that with it I might rebuild my Empire again."

He spoke with absolute conviction, and with indomitable fervour, sitting here quietly, he—the architect of the mightiest empire of modern days—just as he used to do in the camps at Austerlitz and Jena and Wagram and Friedland—with one clenched hand resting upon the rough deal table, the flickering light of the tallow candle illuminating the wide brow, the heavy jaw, those piercing eyes that still gazed—in this hour of supreme catastrophe—into a glorious future destined never to be—scheming, planning, scheming still, even while his Grand Army was melting into nothingness all around him, and distant volleys of musketry were busy consummating the final annihilation of the Empire which he had created and still hoped to rebuild.

Berthier gave a quick sign of impatience.

Rebuild an Empire, ye gods!—an Empire!—when the flower of its manhood lies pale and stark like the windrows of corn after the harvester has done his work. Thoughts of a dreamer! Schemes of a visionary! How will the quaking lips which throughout the length and breadth of this vast hecatomb now cry, "Sauve qui peut!" how will they ever intone again the old "Vive l'Empereur!"

The conqueror of Wagram gave a bitter sigh and faithful Bertrand hung his head gloomily; but de Marmont had neither sighed nor doubted: but then de Marmont was young—he too was a dreamer, and an enthusiast and a visionary. His idol in his eyes had never had feet of clay. For him the stricken man was his Emperor still—the architect, the creator, the invincible conqueror—checked for a moment in his glorious work, but able at his will to rebuild the Empire of France again on the very ruins that smouldered now on the fields of Waterloo.

"I can do it, Sire," he had cried exultantly, when his Emperor first expounded his great, new scheme to him. "I can be in Brussels in an hour, and catch the midnight packet for England at Ostend. At dawn I shall be in London, and by ten o'clock at my post. I know a financier—a Jew, and a mightily clever one—he will operate for me. I have a million or two francs invested in England, we'll use these for our operations! Money, Sire! You shall have millions! Our differences on the Stock Exchange will equip the finest army that even you have ever had! Fifty millions? I'll bring you a hundred! God has not yet decreed the downfall of the Empire of France!"

So de Marmont had spoken this afternoon in the enthusiasm of his youth and of his hero-worship: and since then the great dreamer had continued to weave his dreams! Nothing was lost, nothing could be lost whilst enthusiasm such as that survived in the hearts of the young.

And still wrapped in his dream he sat on, while danger and death and disgrace threatened him on every side. Berthier and Bertrand entreated in vain, in vain tried to drag him away from this solitary place, where any moment a party of Prussians might find and capture him.

Unceremoniously the Prince of Wagram had blown out the flickering light that might have attracted the attention of the pursuers. It was a very elementary precaution, the only one he or Bertrand was able to take. The horses were out in the yard for anyone to see, and the greatest spoil of victory might at any moment fall into the hands of the meanest Prussian soldier out for loot.

But the dreamer still sat on in the gloom, with the pale light of the moon streaming in through the narrow casement window and illumining that marble-like face, rigid and set, that seemed only to live by the glowing eyes—the eyes that looked into the future and the past and heeded not the awful present.

Close on a quarter of an hour went by until at last he jumped to his feet, with the sudden cry of "To Genappe!"

Berthier heaved a sigh of relief and Bertrand hurried out to unfasten the horses.

"You are impatient, Prince," said the Emperor almost gaily, as he strode with a firm step to the door. "You are afraid those cursed Prussians will put the Corsican ogre into a cage and send him at once to His Victorious Bourbon Majesty King Louis XVIII. Not so, my good Berthier, not so. The Star of my Destiny has not yet declined. I've done all the thinking I wanted to do. Now we'll to Genappe, where we'll rally the remnants of our army and then quietly await de Marmont's return with the millions which we want. After that we'll boldly on to Paris and defy my enemies there . . . En avant, Maréchal! the Corsican ogre is not in the iron cage yet!"

Outside Bertrand was holding his stirrup for him. He swung himself lightly in the saddle and turned out of the farmyard gate into the open, throwing back his head and sniffing the storm-laden air as if he was about to lead his army to one of his victorious charges. Not waiting to see how close the other two men followed him, he put his horse at once at a gallop.

He rode on—never pausing—never looking round even on that gigantic desolation which the cold light of the moon weirdly and fitfully revealed—his mind was fixed upon a fresh throw on the gaming table of the world.

Overhead the storm-driven clouds chased one another with unflagging fury across the moonlit sky, now obscuring, now revealing that gigantic dissolution of the Grand Army, so like the melting of ice and frost under the fierce kiss of the sun.

More than men in an attack, less than women in a retreat, the finest cavalry Europe had ever seen was flying like sand before the wind: but the somnambulist rode on in his sleep, forgetting that on these vast and billowing fields twenty-six thousand gallant French heroes had died for the sake of his dreams.

Bertrand and the Prince of Wagram followed—gloomy and silent—they knew that all suggestions would be useless, all saner advice remain unheeded. Besides, de Marmont had gone, and after all, what did it all matter? What did anything matter, now that Empire, glory, hope, everything were irretrievably lost?

And in faithful Bertrand's deep-set eyes there came a strange, far-off look, almost of premonition, as if in his mind he could already see that lonely island rock in the Atlantic, and the great gambler there, eating out his heart with vain and bitter regrets.