Susan Johnson (31 page)

Pontoon men, spread out along the left bank in three divisions, waited for the signal to launch the boats. Foy, in command of the artillery, had all his artillery pieces, their wheels muffled in rags, silently rolled into place by 2
A.M.
Charged with protecting the assault troops, his gunners were at the ready.

The advance guard, grenadiers and skirmishers from the Tenth Light Brigade and the Thirty-seventh Demibrigade, commanded by Gazan—thirty-three and recently appointed general of brigade—were deployed in battle positions fifty feet from the river’s edge.

The brigades of Bontemp and Quetard were at Nieder-Urdorf and Dietikon; the reserve under Klein was in the valley of Schlieren, facing Zurich, ready to help Mortier’s left if the Russians attempted to leave the city.

By 3
A.M.
, everyone was deployed, all the units precisely in position, waiting for the signal to attack. The cavalry order “Roll cloaks!” came at 4:30, the practice synonymous in the French army with a sign that combat was imminent. The rolled cloak worn bandolier fashion protected against a cut to the left shoulder, the principal stroke of an enemy cavalryman.

Everyone checked their weapons for the last time.

At 4:45—first light—Duras gave the command to attack and the engineers raced forward to launch their assault
boats. In seconds, two of the overloaded skiffs were aground on some willow roots, the noise bringing the Russian sentries awake. Gunfire immediately erupted from the woods where the sentry posts were located. Foy’s artillery responded, blasting away at the enemy, and the Russians quickly withdrew.

Cries of
En avant!
, Forward!, Let’s go!, resounded from every direction and within three minutes six hundred men of the advance guard had crossed the Limmat.

Once the drumbeat of the charge sounded, Foy’s artillery moved to their new positions in support of the troops racing toward the plateau of Fahr. The Russians threw a brigade against Duras’s bridgehead, but French sharpshooters cut it to pieces and the Russians recoiled.

The boats continued transporting troops rapidly across to the other side and when Duras saw that there were sufficient troops to maintain their new position, he gave orders to have the pontoon equipment brought up.

At 5:00, work began on the bridge while sappers who’d gone across with the first wave were cutting a road through the woods for the use of the cavalry and artillery.

By 6:00, Gazan’s assault troops had taken the Russian positions on the heights and were in possession of Kloster-Fahr. By 7:30, eight thousand men were on the opposite bank and by 9:00 the entire division had crossed the Limmat.

In the meantime, Menard’s feint at Brugg had completely taken in the Russian general Dourasov, who immediately sent for help to meet what he considered the main French assault. Mares, one of Duras’s ADCs, sent to Brugg that morning to report on the feint, wrote back: “It seems to me, my dear general, that the enemy makes it very easy for you; it seems that they do not want to abandon their position and your decision to cut the Russian army in two is accomplished.”
¹⁸

Duras turned his attention on Zurich.

With hardly a pause, Duras sent two demibrigades to his left, while two others led by Oudinot moved toward Zurich. The immediate objective was the Zurichberg, the large hill that dominated the city’s northern approaches. As Oudinot’s men closed in on the Zurichberg, Mortier threw his entire division against the western approaches of the city. Shaken by the suddenness of the attack, the Russians abandoned their forward positions and retired hastily behind the city walls. Korsakov, however, recovered his nerve, sent up two fresh battalions and ordered a counterattack. Storming out of Zurich, the Russians blunted the French drive and pushed them back at the point of the bayonet.
¹⁹

Immediately ordering Klein’s reserves up from Schlieren, Duras rallied his men to stave off the onslaught. Recklessly brave, calmly indifferent to the showers of grapeshot and bullets, he was everywhere in the front lines, outdistancing his ADCs, who struggled to keep up to him, urging his men forward, riding in the midst of the attack columns, slashing right and left, sabering Russians with a wild ferocity, his presence inspirational to all who surrounded him.

Colonel Humbert, having been exchanged after his capture in Ireland, led his battalion of grenadiers and plunged headlong after Duras into the advancing Russians. For a few moments the foes remained locked in mortal combat, but it was the Russians who finally broke and went reeling back toward Zurich. In desperation Korsakov threw his cavalry reserve into action. Duras ordered up French field artillery batteries that galloped up, unlimbered, and firing canister at near point-blank range, shattered the Russian horsemen into a welter of screaming men and animals. The gunners then manhandled their cannon into positions from which they could support Oudinot’s attack.

As the fighting raged in front of Zurich, Oudinot led the men from the Tenth Light Brigade, the Thirty-seventh, Fifty-seventh, Second, and 102nd Halfbrigades, a Swiss
unit, and a cavalry regiment toward the suburbs of Zurich and the Zurichberg. Realizing the full extent of the French threat, Korsakov launched a violent counterattack in a desperate effort to keep open his only escape route. As the Russians poured out of Zurich the French field guns opened fire. Tearing huge gaps in the Russian lines, the gunners succeeded in bringing the enemy to a virtual standstill. Duras’s men then closed in. They engaged the shaken Russians in vicious no-quarter combat and drove them back to the very foot of the Zurichberg.

At noon a silence fell over the carnage. Neither the French nor the Russians, both stunned by their losses and the bitterness of the fighting, had the strength to resume combat. The generals, however, soon rallied their men. In front of Zurich, Mortier’s sharpshooters began to enter the western suburbs. To the north, French infantry moved up the Zurichberg. Russian bayonet charges rolled them off the slopes. Duras then sent men around the Russian right. Having committed his last reserves, Korsakov was unable to check this new threat and had to abandon control of the mountain. He pulled his troops back into the northern suburbs and ordered them to fortify the houses for a last-ditch stand. The French pursued. The Russians poured a withering fire into the French assault columns, which recoiled, leaving the streets carpeted with their dead. Renewed attacks made no headway, but shortly after dark, Oudinot pushed combat patrols to the top of the Zurichberg. During the night he strengthened his hold on the mountain, a move that spelled doom for the Russian army.

As fighting raged before Zurich, Soult’s division was also on the move. Prior to the general assault, Soult had created a special commando unit to seize a foothold on the Austrian side of the Linth River. On the night of September 24 the commandos plunged into the icy Linth and reached the Austrian bank undetected. Moving with murderous silence, the commandos sabered the Austrian sentries,
captured several artillery emplacements, and slipped a cable back to their own side of the river. Soult then rushed fresh troops to the Austrian bank and by 5
A.M.
on September 25, twelve hundred infantrymen were probing into the Austrian lines. Von Hotze, the Austrian commander, received word of the French attack and dashed off into the foggy morning to rally his troops. Racing through the mist, he inadvertently blundered into Soult’s leading elements. French fusiliers cut him down. Von Hotze’s death made effective resistance impossible. As Soult’s engineers threw a pontoon bridge across the Linth, Austrian officers mounted a series of ill-coordinated company and battalion-strength counterattacks. These the French easily repulsed and then plunged deep into the Austrian positions. By early evening Soult’s brigades had penetrated the Austrian main line of resistance, unhinged the center of the Allied front, and made it impossible for the Austrians to detach units to assist Korsakov’s embattled regiments at Zurich.

During the night Korsakov rejected Duras’s offer to arrange a peaceful evacuation of the city, keeping Duras’s peace envoy prisoner in defiance of the rules of war. Korsakov then called a war council that resolved to break out of the French trap and escape northward into Germany. Korsakov detailed five battalions and a cavalry regiment to hold the French in the western suburbs. Four battalions were to retake the Zurichberg and six more were to hold the city itself while the rest of the corps with its supply and artillery elements dashed north.

In the early morning hours of September 26—before daybreak—Russian infantry stormed out of Zurich, raced up the mountain slopes, and bayoneted the surprised Frenchmen off the peak. Swarming into the suburbs, Russian troopers in bitter hand-to-hand fighting cleared the narrow streets and houses of French sharpshooters. The main column then moved out, but Duras quickly recovered his balance and initiative and threw in a series of violent and
effective attacks. His horse artillery galloped forward and pounded the city. Packed into the narrow streets, hundreds of Russians perished helplessly under the hail of shot and shell. Meanwhile on the Zurichberg, Oudinot reorganized his command and lunged back up the slopes. Snipers decimated the Russians and storming columns smashed through the weakened lines. Oudinot’s battalions regained the peak and then raced for the city gates where Korsakov’s grenadiers prepared for a last desperate stand. Under a withering blast of musketry the Russians held their ground and died where they stood.

Clambering over the bodies of their slaughtered foes, the French burst into the northern section of Zurich. There they found the rear-guard battalions and most of the main column, delayed by Duras’s artillery barrage, still bottled up in the streets. Unable to deploy, the Russians could do nothing to prevent the French from pouring volley after volley into their helpless lines at point-blank range. The French mowed down rank after rank of green-clad Russian infantry, while bolting horses dragged guns and wagons into the mass of dead and dying men, adding further horror to the slaughter. Additional French units broke through the south-central gates and their muskets added to the growing carnage. When the smoke finally drifted off at the end of the day, over three thousand Russian corpses littered Zurich’s streets. Over five thousand men including 142 officers remained as Duras’s prisoners, as well as all the Russian artillery and baggage, while the remnants of Korsakov’s column, no longer a coherent fighting force, fled painfully along the roads to Germany.
²⁰

Having shattered the Allied front in Switzerland, Duras immediately prepared to pursue Korsakov’s remnants and crush them. He made plans to head two infantry divisions and his cavalry reserve in their pursuit northward.

At a hastily called staff meeting, he said to his weary officers, “I’m asking for volunteers—a small company of cavalry
to accompany me on a personal mission to overtake and kill Korsakov.” He surveyed the men seated around the table, his gaze neutral. “There’s no need to tell anyone he’s well protected with his Cossacks. I’d prefer men without family obligations.”

“Count me in,” Vigée said, “and my troopers to a man will go. They’d consider it an honor to lend assistance to the countess.”

No one questioned Duras’s reasons for putting himself at risk, and one after another, his officers offered themselves and their men.

“Thank you,” Duras said with a faint smile, “but thirty will suffice. I’ll let you gentlemen decide who will go. We leave at daybreak. Your best horses, no added baggage, but a ration of oats for your horses. We’ll be traveling fast to overtake him.” As he stood, Bonnay rose with him. A myriad of details had yet to be arranged for the French forces moving toward Constance to drive Condé’s émigré forces from the town and those moving south with orders to destroy Suvorov.

“Make sure your sabers are newly sharpened,” Duras added as he turned to go. “The Cossacks handle their blades well.”

“You’re not to go with me,” Duras said to Bonnay as they walked into an adjacent room. “That’s an order. Someone has to stay behind and coordinate the army movements.”

“Will Lecourbe be able to hold Suvorov?” On September 24, Suvorov’s advance guard had reached the St. Gotthard Pass and slashed its way through the French defenders at a cost of two thousand men. The French had then retreated to the Devil’s Bridge, an immensely strong position on the Reuss River. A tunnel-like path, five feet wide, flanked by solid rock on one side and a seventy-five-foot drop on the other, led to the bridge.

“Lecourbe has his cannon on the path. That should delay Suvorov for a time even with the Russian propensity for using soldiers as human cannon fodder. All I need is two days, and if everyone weren’t so tired, I’d leave tonight. With the bulk of our army swinging south in forced marches to reinforce Lecourbe and Soult, I expect our lines to hold until I return.”

“You’re putting your life at risk when victory is almost ours.”

“I need to do this for Teo.”

“And for yourself.”

“Is that so strange?” Duras countered. “How else will she be safe from him?”

Bonnay grimaced. “It’s just that time’s so critical now. What if Suvorov breaks through? He walked right through our armies in Italy.”

“He walked through Moreau, which is a simple task. Moreau lost the battle of Trebbia as well when he sat back and did nothing for MacDonald. And Joubert was too young and inexperienced to have been given a command. There. Do you feel better now?” Duras drolly inquired.

“Tell me Lecourbe and Soult can hold and I’ll feel better.”

“They can.” An unequivocal response typical of Duras’s style of command. He had confidence in the men he’d invited to serve under him. “Now what final orders have to be sent out before I leave in the morning?”

The discussion was over.

It was still dark when Duras woke and dressed, his quest for vengeance compelling. He didn’t wake his orderly, but quietly slipped out of his quarters and walked down the shell-scarred street to headquarters. He hadn’t slept much, debating the routes in his mind most likely taken by Korsakov; he couldn’t afford to be wrong. The fate of the Republic was still under threat.