Shooting Stars (11 page)
Authors: Stefan Zweig
However, it would have been a heroic death, and not such a pitiful twilight fate as lies in store for Rouget. For the unlucky man survives the one really creative day of his life by more than forty years, by thousands and thousands of days. He has been stripped of his uniform, his pension goes unpaid; the poems, operas and other texts that he writes are not printed or performed. Fate does not forgive the dilettante for forcing an entrance, unsummoned, into the ranks of the immortals. The little man lives out his little life by dint of working at petty and not always entirely honest businesses. Carnot and later on Bonaparte try in vain to help him. But something in the character of Rouget has been poisoned and distorted beyond redemption by the cruel chance that made him a
godlike
genius for three hours, and then scornfully cast him back
into his own insignificance. He quarrels acrimoniously with all the authorities, he writes audacious and emotional letters to Bonaparte, who wanted to help him; he boasts openly of having voted against him in the constitutional referendum. His business involves him in dubious affairs, and he even becomes an inmate of the Sainte-Pélagie debtors’ prison over the matter of an unpaid bill of exchange. Unpopular everywhere, hunted by his debtors, always in bad repute with the police, he finally hides somewhere in the provinces and, as if forgotten and departed in his grave, he listens there to the fate of his immortal song. He still remembers that the
Marseillaise
stormed all the countries of Europe with the
victorious
armies, that no sooner had Napoleon become emperor than he had it banned from all public musical programmes as being too revolutionary, and then the Bourbons had its performance entirely forbidden. Only with amazement does the embittered old man see how, after an age in human terms, the July revolution of 1830 resurrects his words and melody with their old force at the barricades of Paris, and the Citizen King, Louis-Philippe, grants him a small pension. It seems to the ruined and forgotten man like a dream that anyone still remembers him at all, but it is not much of a memory, and when he dies at last in 1836 in Choisy-le-Roi, when he is seventy-six, no one knows or can even give his name. Another human age must pass before the
Marseillaise
, by now well established as the national anthem, is sung again in the Great War at the French fronts in warlike conditions, and orders are given for the body of little Captain Rouget to be buried in the same place, the cathedral of Les Invalides, as
the mortal remains of little Lieutenant Bonaparte. And so, at last, the creator of a famous song who was never famous himself lies in his native land’s place of fame, resting after the disappointment of having been nothing but the poet of a single night.
D
ESTINY MAKES
its urgent way to the mighty and those who do violent deeds. It will be subservient for years on end to a single man—Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon—for it loves those elemental characters that resemble destiny itself, an element that is so hard to comprehend.
Sometimes, however, very seldom at all times, and on a strange whim, it makes its way to some unimportant man. Sometimes—and these are the most astonishing moments in international history—for a split second the strings of fate are pulled by a man who is a complete nonentity. Such people are always more alarmed than gratified by the storm of responsibility that casts them into the heroic drama of the world. Only very rarely does such a man forcefully raise his opportunity aloft, and himself with it. For greatness gives itself to those of little importance only for a second, and if one of them misses his chance it is gone for ever.
The news is hurled like a cannonball crashing into the
dancing
, love affairs, intrigues and arguments of the Congress of Vienna: Napoleon, the lion in chains, has broken out of his cage on Elba, and other couriers come galloping up with more news. He has taken Lyons, he has chased the king away,
the troops are going over to him with fanatical banners, he is in Paris, in the Tuileries—Leipzig and twenty years of murderous warfare were all in vain. As if seized by a great claw, the ministers who only just now were still carping and quarrelling come together. British, Prussian, Austrian and Russian armies are raised in haste to defeat the usurper of power yet again, and this time finally. The legitimate Europe of emperors and kings was never more united than in this first hour of horror. Wellington moves towards France from the north, a Prussian army under Blücher is coming up beside him to render aid, Schwarzenberg is arming on the Rhine, and as a reserve the Russian regiments are marching slowly and heavily right through Germany.
Napoleon immediately assesses the deadly danger. He knows there is no time to wait for the pack to assemble. He must separate them and attack them separately, the Prussians, the British, the Austrians, before they become a European army and the downfall of his empire. He must hurry, because otherwise the malcontents in his own country will awaken, he must already be the victor before the republicans grow stronger and ally themselves with the royalists, before the double-tongued and incomprehensible Fouché, in league with Talleyrand, his opponent and mirror image, cuts his sinews from behind. He must march against his enemies with vigour, making use of the frenzied enthusiasm of the army. Every day that passes means loss, every hour means danger. In haste, then, he rattles the dice and casts them over Belgium, the bloodiest battlefield of Europe. On 15th June, at three in the morning, the leading troops of the great—and now
the only—army of Napoleon cross the border. On the 16th they clash with the Prussian army at Ligny and throw it back. This is the first blow struck by the escaped lion, terrible but not mortal. Stricken, although not annihilated, the Prussian army withdraws towards Brussels.
Napoleon now prepares to strike a second blow, this time against Wellington. He cannot stop to get his breath back, cannot allow himself a breathing space, for every day brings reinforcements to the enemy, and the country behind him, with the restless people of France bled dry, must be roused to enthusiasm by a draught of spirits, the fiery spirits of a victory bulletin. As early as the 17th he is marching with his whole army to the heights of Quatre-Bras, where Wellington, a cold adversary with nerves of steel, has taken up his
position
. Napoleon’s dispositions were never more cautious, his military orders were never clearer than on this day; he considers not only the attack but also his own danger if the stricken but not annihilated army of Blücher should be able to join Wellington’s. In order to prevent that, he splits off a part of his own army so that it can chase the Prussian army before it, step by step, and keep it from joining the British.
He gives command of this pursuing army to Marshal Grouchy, an average military officer, brave, upright, decent, reliable, a cavalry commander who has often proved his worth, but only a cavalry commander, no more. Not a hot-headed berserker of a cavalryman like Murat, not a strategist like Saint-Cyr and Berthier, not a hero like Ney. No warlike cuirass adorns his breast, no myth surrounds his figure, no visible quality gives him fame and a position in the heroic world of
the Napoleonic legend; he is famous only for his bad luck and misfortune. He has fought in all the battles of the past twenty years, from Spain to Russia, from the Netherlands to Italy, he has slowly risen to the rank of Marshal, which is not undeserved but has been earned for no outstanding deed. The bullets of the Austrians, the sun of Egypt, the daggers of the Arabs, the frost of Russia have cleared his
predecessors
out of his way—Desaix at Marengo, Kléber in Cairo, Lannes at Wagram—the way to the highest military rank. He has not taken it by storm; twenty years of war have left it open to him.
Napoleon probably knows that in Grouchy he has no hero or strategist, only a reliable, loyal, good and modest man. But half of his marshals are dead and buried, the others, morose, have stayed on their estates, tired of the constant bivouacking. So he is obliged to entrust a crucial mission to a man of moderate talent.
On 17th June, at eleven in the morning, a day after the victory at Ligny, a day before Waterloo, Napoleon gives Marshal Grouchy an independent command for the first time. For a moment, for a single day, the modest Grouchy steps out of the military hierarchy into world history. Only for a moment, but what a moment! Napoleon’s orders are clear. While he himself challenges the British, Grouchy is to pursue the Prussians with a third of the army. It looks like a simple mission, straightforward and unmistakable, yet it is also pliable as a double-edged sword. For at the same time as he goes after the Prussians, Grouchy has orders to keep in touch with the main body of the army at all times.
The marshal takes over his command with some hesitation. He is not used to acting independently, his normal preference for circumspection rather than initiative makes him feel secure only when the emperor’s brilliant eye tells him what to do. He is also aware of the discontent of the generals behind him, and perhaps he also senses the dark wings of destiny beating. Only the proximity of headquarters is reassuring, for no more than three hours of forced marching separate his army from the imperial troops.
Grouchy takes his leave in pouring rain. His men move slowly after the Prussians, or at least going the way that they think Blücher and his soldiers took, over the spongy, muddy ground.
The northern rain streams down incessantly. Napoleon’s regiments trot along in the dark like a herd of wet livestock, every man with two pounds of mud on the soles of his boots; there is no shelter in sight, no house, not so much as a roof. The straw is too soggy for anyone to lie down on it, so groups of ten or twelve soldiers gather close together and sleep sitting upright, back to back, in the torrential rain. The emperor himself does not rest. His nervous febrility keeps him pacing up and down, for the men who go out to reconnoitre find the rain impenetrable, and reports brought back by scouts are at best confused. He still does not know whether Wellington will accept his challenge to give battle, and no news of the
Prussians has come from Grouchy yet. So at one in the
morning
, ignoring the cloudburst as the rain goes on, he is striding along the line of outposts to within firing range of the British bivouacs, which show a faint, smoky light in the mist now and then, and thinking about his plan of attack. Only as day begins to dawn does he return to the little hut in his shabby headquarters at Le Caillou, where he finds Grouchy’s first dispatches: confused reports of the retreat of the Prussians, but at least there is the reassuring promise to keep
following
them. The rain gradually slackens. The emperor paces impatiently up and down his room and stares at the yellow horizon to see whether the terrain in the distance will be revealed at last—and with it his decision.
At five in the morning—the rain has stopped—his inner cloud, a cloud of indecision, also clears. The order is given: the whole army is to form up in rank and file, ready to attack, at nine in the morning. Orderlies gallop off in all directions. Soon drums are beating to summon the men. Only now does Napoleon throw himself on his camp bed to sleep for two hours.
Nine in the morning, but the troops are not yet assembled in their full numbers. The ground underfoot, sodden after three days of rain, makes every movement difficult, and slows down the artillery as the guns come up. The sun appears only slowly, shining in a sharp wind, but it is not the sun
of Austerlitz, radiant in a bright sky and promising good fortune; this northerly light is dull and sullen. But at last the troops are ready and now, before the battle begins, Napoleon rides his mare all along the front once more. The eagles on the banners bow down as if in a roaring gale, the cavalry shake their sabres in warlike manner, the infantry raise their bearskin caps on the tips of their bayonets in greeting. All the drums roll, the trumpets sound to greet their field marshal, but above all these sparkling notes, rolling thunderously above the regiments, rises the jubilant cry of
Vive l’empereur!
from the throats of 70,000 soldiers.
No parade in Napoleon’s twenty-year reign was more spectacular and enthusiastic than this, the last of them. The cries of acclamation have hardly died away at eleven o’clock—two hours later than foreseen, two fateful hours later!—than the gunners are given the order to mow down the redcoats on the hill with case-shot. Then Ney, “the bravest of the brave”, advances with the infantry, and Napoleon’s
deciding
hour begins. The battle has been described a thousand times, but we never tire of reading the exciting accounts of its vicissitudes, whether in Sir Walter Scott’s fine version or in Stendhal’s episodic rendering. It is seen from both near and far, from the hill where the field marshals met or from the cuirassier’s saddle, as a great incident, rich in diversity; it is a work of art with tension and drama brought to bear on its constant alternation of hope and fear, suddenly resolving into a moment of extreme catastrophe. And it is a model of a genuine tragedy, because the fate of Europe was determined in one man’s destiny, and the fantastic firework of Napoleon’s
existence shoots up once more into the skies, before flickering as it falls and goes out.
From eleven to one o’clock, the French regiments storm the heights, take villages and military positions, are thrown back, storm into the attack once more. Ten thousand men already lie dead on the wet, muddy hills of the empty landscape, and nothing has been achieved but the exhaustion of the two adversaries. Both armies are tired to death, both
commanders
are uneasy. They both know that the victory will go to whichever of them gets reinforcements first, Wellington from Blücher, Napoleon from Grouchy. Napoleon keeps nervously raising his telescope, he keeps sending more orderlies out. If his marshal arrives in time, the sun of Austerlitz will shine over France again.