The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire (34 page)

Part 5

The Tide Turns

Chapter 52

The Kremlin, Moscow

October 1812

Napoleon had not had a good night’s sleep since arriving in Moscow. He woke several times a night in his canvas camp bed, his eyes squinting in the darkness as he waited for the message he knew must be coming.

Night after night, he waited for a message from Tsar Alexander.

How long will it take this Russian to sue for peace? We have captured his most cherished city, his holy capital. Moscow! Does he not understand that he has lost? That France has won the war?

But that correspondence never came. Night after night he twisted the linen bedsheets in wrath. Then dread.

This Russian dog! We have won! Is Alexander so stupid he does not understand that?

But Napoleon remembered gazing long and hard at Alexander when they had signed the peace treaty of Tilsit. He remembered Alexander’s blue eyes, quick and soulful, that exquisite mind that grasped Rousseau, Voltaire, and all the progressive thinkers of the day. Capricious, indecisive, yes. Stupid, no. Never.

Then what is his game?

The ticking of the clock was all he heard in the night. His steward silently entered the room.

“Who’s there?”

“It is I, Your Excellency, Guichet.”

“Have you brought me word from St. Petersburg? From Tsar Alexander?”

“No, I am sorry, Your Highness. I have only brought you blankets—the night is so terribly cold. It has snowed again, Emperor. Drifts as high as my thigh have accumulated in the last two hours.”

Snow. And it is only early October.

“With your permission, Your Excellency,” said the steward. “May I add the extra blankets?”

“And fetch a bed warmer. It is as cold as a dead man’s teeth under those sheets!”

Napoleon rose from his bed, his bare feet on the cold marble of the floor.

“And find a rug to put at my bedside! I shall lose my toes to frostbite.”

All this marble! Where have they hidden the Ottoman carpets, those bastards!

Puffs of vapor burst into the air with Napoleon’s agitation. The steward lit a taper, handing it to the emperor, who moved closer to the ceramic-tiled stove that radiated heat.

“Move my bed closer to the stove, steward.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

The candle cast an elliptical pool of light. Napoleon saw his novel lying on the table where he had left it earlier that evening.

Reduced to reading novels in the Kremlin while the Tsar refuses to admit he has lost!

After his morning ablutions at daybreak, Napoleon, clean shaven and angry, summoned General Caulaincourt, his master of the horse.

“How are the fires?”

“There are still some burning in the Kitay-Gorod district. The Kremlin site here is secured.”

“Have more of the Russian arsonists been arrested?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. At least ten more in the past two days have been taken prisoner. They proclaim their innocence.”

“Innocence? I suppose they suggest spontaneous combustion for destroying three quarters of the city?”

“The prisoners maintain it is our French soldiers who have torched their sacred city.”

Napoleon stroked peevishly at his chin, where he felt a minute patch of hair he had missed when shaving.

This Caulaincourt has spent too much time in St. Petersburg as ambassador! I sense too much empathy with the Russians.

“And the horses? How fare they?”

Caulaincourt shuffled his feet. “There is very little forage, Your Majesty. It is a very bad situation, indeed! I have sent squadrons out to search for stores of grain or hay, but I fear to send them too far abroad, with Kutuzov’s army somewhere to the south and the Cossacks and peasant militias lurking beyond Moscow’s walls.”

“Damn the Cossacks! Take care of the horses, General. That is your job.”

Napoleon’s left cheek spasmed with rage.

We are the prisoners! Incarcerated in Moscow.

“Many of the horses are wounded and the cold weather takes a toll on them. I fear we will lose most of them or they will not have the strength to press on—”

Napoleon’s face turned purple with fury. “Give the horses shelter in the churches of these infidels!”

“Your Majesty! Horses within the churches?” said Caulaincourt.

“Make an enormous fire in the sanctuary of that big cathedral in front—”

“The Cathedral of the Annunciation?”

“It will keep our soldiers and horses warm. That is all I care about. And while they have the fires going, they can melt down all the silver and gold in the churches. To the devil with their pagan beliefs!”

Caulaincourt lifted his chin to stifle a deep swallow.

“What’s wrong with you, Caulaincourt?” snapped Napoleon. “Move! That’s an order!”

“I shall send three squadrons out this morning to scour the countryside for forage, Your Excellency,” said Caulaincourt.

“And transfer those horses who need shelter into the churches. No French horse or soldier shall suffer from this miserable Russian cold.”

Two days later General Caulaincourt opened the cathedral door. He took a step back, his hand flying to his nose. The stench of stale piss—both human and horse—assailed his nostrils. A second later the heavy fetid odor of manure registered.

The bare beauty of the cathedral—its spacious open floor for the standing congregation—was now occupied with horses, dirty straw, and an enormous cauldron over an open fire. Soldiers hung from ladders, prying silver and gold from the moldings while their comrades gathered frames from holy icons, chalices, and chandeliers to throw into the pot, melting down the precious metals.

A soldier pissing in the corner turned to Caulaincourt. Recognizing Napoleon’s master of the horse, he quickly saluted, his penis still flopping from his pants.

Caulaincourt turned away, looking up toward the empty altar.

What sins we have committed here in this holy space! God will never forgive us!

“General Caulaincourt!” said a colonel, supervising the destruction.

“Do me the favor to tell me, please,” he said, lowering his voice. “Is it true that our emperor plans for us to winter here in Moscow?”

“Why do you ask, Colonel?” said Caulaincourt.

“Two squadrons of my regiment were sent to gather cabbages from the fields—the only thing the Russians bastards did not burn! They were ordered to make
sauerkraut
.”

“Choucroute?”

“Yes,
choucroute
! And I am from Alsace, monsieur. I know that
choucroute
takes many weeks to ferment. Why would the emperor order us to make
choucroute
if he were not planning to be here when it is ready?”

Caulaincourt took one last look around the smoke-filled cathedral. His eyes took in the emaciated horses, the boiling cauldron, the piles of holy icons stripped from the walls and dumped in a corner.

“I can tell you I have no earthly idea what our emperor plans next. Excuse me, Colonel.”

Caulaincourt turned away toward the door he entered, his boots resonating on the marble floor. He pressed his thumbs to his watering eyes as he walked blindly ahead into the sunlight.

Snow collected on the corners of the window. Napoleon looked out across the city, silently cursing.

He threw the novel he was reading across the room. It thudded against the oak box that held his traveling library.

Why have I not had word from St. Petersburg? Did Kutuzov not deliver the message to Alexander? It is outrageous to refuse my offer to go personally to the Winter Palace.

But Napoleon knew very well what Alexander and Kutuzov were thinking. Moscow was a cold stone—no nourishment, no sustenance would it give. They were like rats on a block of wood in the sea.

Napoleon thought of Corsica and the battles against the French in his father’s time. The Corsicans knew their territory, the island’s rocks hiding their ambushes. But the Corsicans were few and the French prevailed.

Russia was different.

“Send for Caulaincourt! Send for all my generals!” ordered Napoleon. His icy brow turned hot with passion.

“We shall leave for Paris at once!”

Chapter 53

Warsaw, Poland

November 1812

The late autumn sunlight filtered through the gauzy drapes of Adam Czartoryski’s study. In his hand, he held an enameled portrait of Alexander, sent by the Tsar himself, and he peered at it closely, examining his best friend’s face.

He is changing. Those eyes that looked at the world with kindness and optimism. Napoleon has murdered that innocence forever. This war has left its scars. Like the trickle of water on limestone. I can see the lines of worry, the pinching of his forehead—even as the artist tries to flatter him.

Does he even remember the reforms we spoke about? Rousseau, Voltaire. The liberation of the serfs! The independence of Poland! Nothing more than pretty thoughts now, like silk ribbons in a young girl’s hair. The smoke of cannons choke him, death surrounds him. To defeat the enemy, to survive each day, those are the only thoughts that can register in his brain.

Czartoryski looked out his window over Warsaw’s Castle Square, the red marble column of Sigismund piercing the sapphire-blue sky.

Forty-five miles outside of Minsk, Napoleon saw that the Russian armies had destroyed the two bridges crossing the Berezina River, blocking his retreat. The bitter cold of late November had cast blocks of ice in the water, a crystalline lacework edging the shore. The waters of the Berezina flowed sluggishly, the ice not yet hard enough for a crossing.

“
Mon empereur? Vos commandes?
”

“Build a bridge!” ordered Napoleon. “Two bridges. At once!”

The order was a death sentence for many of the four hundred bridge builders who plunged into frigid waters. Breath-sucking cold and exhaustion claimed their lives, their bodies lying stiff and frozen on the banks of the river or floating with the broken ice downstream.

And yet those hundreds of deaths were scarcely noticed, a tiny fraction of the many thousands—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands—who had died on the bitter retreat from Moscow. Without food, without warmth, without hope, harassed by Cossacks and forced into battle against the massed Russian armies, the Grand Armée was broken and battered.

And still, here at the Berezina, two pontoon bridges were built, despite artillery fire from the Russians.

With his vanguard, Napoleon crossed first. His sixty thousand imperial troops rode across the river, the pontoon floats shifting and bobbing under the horses’ weight.

“Blow up the bridge. At once!” ordered Napoleon, reaching the other side. “The Russians will use it and destroy us all.”

“But my emperor! The troops behind us. Thousands—”

“Blow up the bridge, General. Now! That’s an order!’

Soldiers who had battled loyally across Russia to Moscow and then back again to this frozen hell shouted in disbelief as their passage was blocked and sappers set the charges.

“
Arrêtez!
”
shouted General Oudinot, who had already crossed the bridge. “Stop! By order of the emperor Napoleon! The bridge is to be exploded!”

“Don’t abandon us!” cried a lieutenant, barely able to cling to his saddle. “We stand loyal to the emperor! Don’t forsake us!”

Horsemen rushed the bridge and were shot by the Imperial Guard from the safety of the other bank.

“Save yourselves!” shouted General Oudinot. “Stay off the bridge!”

An echoing cry grew, stretching kilometers beyond.

“Emperor! My emperor!”

Panicked riders spurred their near-dead nags, charging the bridge as it blew up, hurling metal, wood, and ice into the frigid air. Remaining fragments left a snake of fire winding across the river. On both banks soldiers looked on horrified, hearing the dying cries of their comrades and the whinnying of horses as they sank below the surface of the Berezina.

Napoleon turned his horse toward Paris, his collar turned up against the cold and the roar of pitiful cries from the far side of the river.

The remnants of Napoleon’s Grand Armée who had managed to cross still had to face the Russian army of General Chichagov. But with the desperation of those already dead, they battled their way through the Russian forces and continued their retreat toward home.

And even as they marched on westward, Cossacks harassed them, stealing their already-diminished supplies, picking off small groups as they straggled toward Smolensk.

On November 7, the temperature plummeted to below thirty degrees centigrade. The snow shrieked under the feet of the soldiers, spittle crusting their lips shut. Half-mad drivers ran their wagons over their comrades who fell exhausted in their path. Fingers, toes, and genitals blackened and withered, plagued with frostbite. Soldiers wandered aimlessly, stricken with snow blindness.

Frenchmen staggered and fell in the snow. Their comrades stripped their still-living bodies of their clothes. Thousands of ill-shod horses slipped on the ice, breaking their legs. The starving soldiers fell upon them like wolves, their mouths bloody with raw horseflesh.

Shrill wails pierced the air, cursing the name of Napoleon. The Grand Armée reeled forward, madmen lost in the driving snow.

On the fifth of December, in the little town of Smorgoniye, known only for its academy of dancing bears, Napoleon was told there had been a revolt in Paris. General Claude-Francois de Malet had forged a document declaring the death of Bonaparte in Moscow. General Moreau had been appointed interim president.

“A coup? What has become of my son, my wife?”

“They are safe. The coup has been crushed, the perpetrators imprisoned. But, Your Majesty, there is great unrest in the streets of Paris.”

“The French are like women, damn them!” said Napoleon, his hand chopping the frigid air. “You mustn’t stay away from them for too long. We must break with the army and travel directly to Paris.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Murat! I leave you in charge.”

General Murat, the emperor’s brother-in-law, looked around at the pathetic troops, limping, shoeless, dressed in rags. He saluted the emperor.

“Caulaincourt!” Napoleon said. “We must travel fast as possible. What will it take—two weeks?”

“On our own, without an army—possibly, Your Majesty.”

“Take the swiftest, strongest horses. We must reach Paris!”

In little time, the small group broke away from the French forces and headed west.

“Our emperor deserts us!” shouted an officer, shivering in the cold, despite having wrapped himself in a crimson evening gown of shredded satin, looted from a Russian landowner’s mansion along the route of the retreat. Frozen spit glittered on his ragged fur collar.

“March on, Lieutenant!” snapped General Murat. “Or you shall be shot.”

And so the final fragments of Napoleon’s Grand Armée, shredded like that satin gown, headed on toward the Niemen River, where they finally crossed into safety. Of the six hundred fifty thousand who had begun the invasion, perhaps sixty thousand were still alive to again set foot on their native soil of France.