Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812

"Let us then hasten to pursue this impious enemy, while other Russian armies, once more occupying Lithuania, act in concert with us for his destruction! Already do we behold him in full flight, abandoning his baggage, burning his war carriages, and reluctantly separating himself from those treasures, which his profane hands had torn from the very altars of God. Already starvation and famine threaten Napoleon with disaster; behind him arise the murmurs of his troops like the roar of threatening waters. While these appalling sounds attend the retreat of the French, in the ears of the Russians resounds the voice of their magnanimous monarch. Listen, soldiers! while he thus addresses you! 'Extinguish the flames of Moscow in the blood of our invaders!' Russians, let us obey this solemn command! Our outraged country, appeased by this just vengeance, will then retire satisfied from the field of war, and behind the line of her extensive frontiers, will take her august station between Peace and Glory!

"Russian warriors! God is our Leader!

(Signed) Marshal Prince Golenishcheff Kootoozof,"General-in-Chief of all the Armies."

CHAPTER XXIII

To give any kind of description of the horrors of the retreat of the Grande Armée is very far from the intention of the writer of this history; the theme is both unpleasant and threadbare. An incident or two will suffice.

Louise, marching with her regiment, which formed a portion of Marshal Ney's command, walked with her companions into an ambush of desperate Cossacks, who rode tumultuously into the midst of the French ranks from the shelter of a belt of pine forest, freely dealing death and wounds before they were driven back by their spirited opponents. Louise was knocked down by a small Cossack pony and trodden upon by more than one of its companions, the great majority of which, however, adroitly avoided stepping upon her; for the little Cossack horse hates to plant his foot upon a recumbent human form and displays marvellous ingenuity in avoiding so sacrilegious an act.

Louise lay a while unconscious. When she recovered her senses and sat up her companions had already moved forward and were out of sight, all but the grim lines of dead men and a few wounded fellows who sat or lay and conversed.

"Sapristi!" said Louise, "I don't think I am very badly hurt. Can you stand and walk, any of you? I have a mind to move on."

Most of those about her replied that they preferred to remain and chance being picked up by the ambulances. "The Marshal himself is still behind," one said; "he will make dispositions for us."

One or two attempted to stand and move forward with Louise, but soon found that the exertion was too much for them. Louise hastened forward alone. Her head ached terribly and she felt pain in her breast, doubtless the result of being trodden upon or kicked by a passing horse. For the rest she was unwounded.

For a mile she trudged forward, hoping to catch sight of the regiment. This she presently did, but hurrying onward, in order to gain ground upon them, she suddenly became aware that her head swam; she reeled, went on a few paces and sat down.

"I cannot," she muttered; "I am fainting."

There was a deserted village close at hand, and Louise presently contrived to struggle onward as far as the nearest hut, which she entered. The single room was dirty and smoky, the air fœtid and horrible, but Louise felt that she had reached paradise; she was cold and ill and miserable; she sank upon the floor with her back to the stove, which was still warm, and prepared to sleep.

"It is a risk, I know," she told herself, "for the peasants may return at any moment, but I must sleep or die. Mercy of Heaven, what a pain is in my breast!" She tore open her military tunic and bared her bosom; it was badly bruised but not actually wounded. "It is nothing. Mon Dieu, I must sleep this moment," Louise murmured.

Automatically pulling together the clothes which she had torn apart the weary girl fell fast asleep with the task half accomplished.

Half an hour later a dozen peasants and some women crept back to the village, having hidden themselves at the approach of the French soldiers in the early afternoon. It was now dusk. A man and a woman entered the hut in which Louise lay, the man entering first.

He started back upon seeing the French soldier asleep, turning towards his wife with finger to lip.

"See," he whispered, "what lies at the stove! God is good to us—here is an accursed Frenchman delivered into our hands! He has a rifle, a sword, a uniform and possibly money in his pocket!" The fellow fumbled with the axe which hung at his girdle.

"He has touched none of our things—the village has not been destroyed or pillaged; spare the poor wretch, God will requite us," said the woman, who gazed not without admiration at the handsome sleeping face.

"Vzdor! nonsense! God will, on the contrary, punish us if we allow to escape one of the invaders of Holy Russia. How do we know this fellow has not helped to rob a church or to assault a woman, or to desecrate the Holy Place in one of God's own houses? He comes from Moscow, where, it is said, many such detestable acts were done!"

"Well, have your will, but let me first go out of sight," said the woman, "for I am afraid of bloodshed."

A moment later the moujik rushed out of the hut to his wife, who stood and shivered without in the cold rain which was half snow.

"Masha!" he cried, "come and see; it is a woman!"

"Vzdor—it cannot be; it is a soldier; you have not struck?"

"Not yet—I was startled and held my hand; there is some mystery here, it is certainly a woman."

Masha entered the hut and stole softly towards the stove. Louise lay breathing peacefully, her bosom, half bared, rising and falling in the measured cadence of quiet slumber.

"Yes, it is a woman. You shall not strike, Mishka; there is certainly mystery here; probably it is some poor soul who strives to escape more safely by donning the uniform of a French soldier of which she has robbed a dead man by the way. She may be a Russian maiden who has sought her wounded lover upon the battlefield."

"My God, it may be as you say. We will let her lie. Who knows she may be rich and will reward us. Here is her wallet, I will see if it contains money."

The wallet contained a few silver pieces, which Mishka quickly transferred to his own pocket. Then he added wood to the stove and the pair ate their supper. Louise slept peacefully through it. Presently both man and woman lay down to sleep.

"The warning bell will soon wake us if we must clear out again," Mishka had said; "or shall one of us watch a while and afterwards the other?"

"God forbid!" exclaimed Masha, yawning; "last night there was no sleep and the night before but an hour or two; I am tired to death."

Soon after midnight Louise awoke at the sound of running feet without. She started up and looked about, but could see nothing in the darkness. Some one came to the door and called out "Dmitry Vannkof—Mishka—awake and come to the door, I have news for you".

"Mon Dieu!" thought Louise. "Perhaps I had better be substitute for Dmitry Vannkof, whoever he may be, and attend to this visitor; it is dark and I should not be seen." She was about to rise and go to the door, when the unseen visitor continued to shout and to knock impatiently with some hard object, probably an axe; Louise remembered that though she had picked up much Russian during the campaign, she was not a sufficiently good scholar to carry on a conversation without suspicion and discovery. She therefore lay still.

"Mishka, curse you, are you drunk or dead?" roared the unseen one.

To the horror and surprise of Louise some one shuffled close beside her on the floor, and a woman's voice said aloud: "Mishka, we are called—awake—séchasse idyóm, soodar! (we're just coming, sir!)".

Mishka grunted and awoke with imprecations. "What is it?" he shouted; "are we never to be allowed to sleep again? Who's there?"

"It is I, the Starost; the Hetman of the Mojaisk Cossacks is in the village; we are to assemble at four in Toozof's field, bringing pitchforks and pickaxes. There is to be an oblava (battue). It is said that the best general of all these accursed cut-throats is to pass at daybreak; he is sleeping at Biéloy; he is to be ambushed with all his guard; we shall not have lived in vain if we succeed in this; we shall be three thousand Cossacks and the moujiks of twelve villages; be ready at four and thank God meanwhile for all His mercies."

The man departed.

"By the Saints!" exclaimed Mishka, yawning; "if one were not so deadly sleepy that would be good news. See, Masha, what we will do. I will sleep until four, while you wake; when I have departed you shall sleep, if you will, for a score of hours!" Masha agreed to this arrangement, and within a minute his snoring was sonorous proof that her goodman had wasted none of his time.

Louise lay and listened to Masha's yawning and half-uttered exclamations of weariness. Why had these people not despatched her at sight? Had they entered in the dark and failed to detect her? The thing was a mystery. She felt refreshed and her head scarcely ached; Biéloy was, she remembered, but a league away, towards Moscow. So far as she had understood the Starost's words, it was Marshal Ney and his guards who were to be ambushed. "I shall warn them, of course," she reflected; "but there is no need to disturb them too soon, for Heaven knows every man of us requires all the sleep he can get."

Poor Masha gaped and muttered for an hour; then she snored at intervals in concert with her husband; then she fell asleep in earnest and this time very soundly.

"Poor soul!" thought Louise; "let her sleep! We shall have one pitchfork the less to contend with!"

Long before four o'clock she was afoot and on the way to Biéloy, having left the worthy moujik and his wife snoring in peaceful harmony.

She reached Biéloy, a large village or selo, which means the principal of a group of villages, containing the church and perhaps a shop or two. The place was occupied by French soldiers. A picket was placed upon the road half a mile from Biéloy and the soldiers sat and talked and laughed over their fire. They challenged Louise, who showed herself in the firelight and explained her errand.

"That is well," laughed a man. "I thought you must have fallen in love with some Russian wench in Moscow and were returning to her embraces. This we should have been obliged to prevent. Love is good when time and opportunity serve. Think of the women of Paris, mon brave, they wait for you and for me!" Louise laughed also.

"You will allow me to carry my news to the Marshal?" she said.

"Sapristi! While the Marshal sleeps? My friend, cannot this danger wait until we are all refreshed and fit to contend with it?"

"It will wait until marching time," said Louise; "especially if you will give me food meanwhile."

"There is food to-day, and you shall share it; also there is a drink called kvass, which I think the devil invented for the confusion of human stomachs; you shall taste it and suffer pain, as I have done; what matter! we are brought into the world to suffer and to enjoy. To-morrow we may starve; but one day we shall reach Paris!"

At daybreak the village was astir. Marshal Ney himself rode out in the midst of his guards and Louise was brought before him, for she had refused to tell her tale except to his ears.

"I may as well have the advantage of my luck, if any advantage there be!" she had told herself.

Ney listened, frowning.

"You are in luck, mon brave," he said. "What is your name?"

"Michel Prevost, Excellence."

"Good; you are a sergeant, I see; call yourself a lieutenant; do you know this place the fellow referred to—the place of ambush?"

"I was myself ambushed there yesterday with my regiment, Excellence; it is well adapted for a surprise."

"Good; you shall be guide; the surprise this time shall be to the Cossacks and your friends with the pitchforks. If you guide us cleverly you shall call yourself captain, though, entre nous, I think most of us are more likely to need our titles for paradise than for Paris!"

On this occasion the Cossacks were caught napping and Louise came out of her adventure with the epaulettes of a captain, which Ney bestowed upon her with his own hands.

CHAPTER XXIV

The rear-guard of the Grand Army fared worse and worse as the days and weeks passed, its numbers diminished until there remained but a straggling remnant which crept into Vilna, only to be chased out again within a few hours of their arrival there. Louise, in her captain's epaulettes, was still alive and well, though thin and haggard almost beyond recognition for want of good food and rest.

At Vilna she came across several officers of Henri d'Estreville's Lancer regiment, and these she questioned—in terror for their reply—in hopes of news of her friend, who was not with them.

"D'Estreville?" cried one of them, laughing grimly. "Where is he, you ask? I should say that depends, for those who believe in a future existence, upon his past life. Henri was the best of bons camarades, but it may be that good comradeship is a quality which is not highly valued by those who will make up our accounts!"

"Do you mean," poor Louise murmured, "that he has actually died; did you see him die, or was he merely wounded? If so, where has he remained?"

"My friend," said the other, "I did not see him struck down; I know nothing of him. In these days, one thanks God if one is alive at sundown and not buried by these accursed Russian snows, with a thrice-damned Cossack bullet to keep one company. There is no time for friendship and philanthropy and so on."

"He is my dearest friend," Louise murmured; "if only I knew where he had fallen, I would return."

"Mon ami, hell is behind us, in the shape of Platof and Chechakof and their most damnable Cossacks. You would find it even more impossible to go backward than forward. Your friend may be alive and well for aught I know. Can either of you give this gentleman any information?"

"Who is it he wants—one of ours?" asked a second officer who sat by the stove almost too exhausted to eat the mess of stewed horseflesh which had been set before him.

Louise mentioned Henri's name.

"I saw him alive in the forest of Gusinof," said the man; "that is where Platof ambushed us and we got finally separated. He may be a prisoner, or of course Platof's devils may have cut him to pieces; he would not be the only one that died in that accursed wood, not by two thousand! That was the most detestable night I ever spent. Go and look for him in the forest, my friend, if your affection will carry you to so great a length. Good Lord! It is a thing David would have refused to do for Jonathan!" The weary man laughed and filled his mouth with the savoury horseflesh.

"If you are wise," he added, with his mouth still half full, "you will get to Paris the best and quickest way you can, and hope that your friend will find his way there also! Sapristi, it is not likely that either he or you or any of us will get much farther than this. Listen—is that the Cossacks already? Curse them, I must sleep or go mad!"

Fagged, dazed, starved, desperate, the unfortunate rear-guard, led by their indomitable chief, straggled forward. Dogged by hordes of pitiless Cossacks they contrived eventually to reach the river Niemen, and to cross into safety, the last survivors of Napoleon's army; their miserable story is well known and need not be recapitulated.

Louise seemed to bear a charmed life. Though, believing that Henri d'Estreville was among the large majority of the Grande Armée lying beneath the snows of Russia, she would gladly have remained, like her lover, among the ten who stayed behind rather than be the one who escaped—for of Napoleon's half million of men scarcely a tithe returned to their homes—yet Louise saw her companions fall around her and never a bullet touched her or a sword or a spear grazed her.

"You and I are wonders, Prevost," said her colonel. "Are we preserved for great military careers, think you? Nom d'un Maréchal, I think I could be another Ney if I had the opportunity! Sapristi, he is splendid!"

"As for me, I have done with war," Louise sighed. "My days of fighting are over."

"Why, you are but a lad—a conscript of 1812; the year is only now ending and you wear a captain's epaulettes! Nonsense, my son, go home and rest and dream of glory; you will tell a different tale when you have recovered."

Then Louise walked one day into her father's salon while the old man, with Marie, sat and listened as young Havet read out Napoleon's latest bulletin. The Emperor had been in Paris for some little while, having deserted his army, and was already busy with his new project of raising 300,000 men, in order to regain the prestige he had undoubtedly lost in the disastrous Moscow campaign.

"Stop, Havet, who is this that enters without knocking?" exclaimed old Dupré angrily; his temper had not improved of late, owing to the reverses of the French arms and the absence of news of Louise, as to whose safety neither his heart nor his conscience was at rest. Marie uttered a cry of delight. "Father, it is Louise!" she screamed. "Louise—sister. Oh, how thin, how worn, how–"

The sisters embraced one another warmly; old Dupré held his daughter to his heart, endeavouring, after his manner, to suppress every sign of emotion. His arms came in contact with her epaulettes. "Why," he cried, "Marie, Havet, see what is here, the epaulettes of an officer; Louise, you have won promotion—glory—is it not so?"

"I received a commission; what glory can any one claim—on our side—and such a war! There must be officers, nine in ten were killed; do not talk of the war, my father; are you well?"

The old man gazed at his daughter in pride and exultation.

"Listen to her modesty—no glory, says she; a little conscript returns a captain, and no glory! Hola, there, Havet, order food and wine. Mon Dieu, Louise, you have seen adversity, you are thin and in rags, to-morrow you shall have new uniform!—the Emperor already assembles a new army to chastise these Cossacks. Mort de ma vie, my daughter, you shall die a marshal, I swear it!"

Louise did not think it necessary to chill the old man's happiness by telling him that to-morrow she would return to the ordinary costume of her sex; that she was sick of man's attire and of war and all that appertained to the profession of arms; that she was, indeed, weary of life itself and longed to be where Henri d'Estreville was, at rest among the frozen pine-trees in some snow-covered Russian forest.

The evening proved a painful one for Louise, who did her best, however, to maintain a cheerful demeanour, while her father—to whom this was, perhaps, the happiest hour of his life—held forth upon his favourite theme of glory and honour and a marshal's baton in store for Louise, and so forth. Young Havet was to take part in the coming war; if possible he should enlist in Michel Prevost's regiment (the old man laughed heartily as he pronounced the name!), and perhaps Louise would do her best to assist him in his military career.

When the trying evening was over and Louise parted with her sister for the night, Marie took her aside.

"You are depressed, sister, what ails you?" she said. "Oh, I can see plainly that all is not well. Are you ill in body?"

"I am worn and weary, sister; yes, I am depressed; who would not be, that has seen the sights that I have seen since Moscow?"

"Ah—ah! You are not so much in love with war as father would have you?"

"In love with war—bah! It is devil's work, Marie, unsuccessful war, at any rate."

"Tell me, sister, have you seen Henri d'Estreville, is he well?"

Louise flushed and caught at the chair back. "Yes, I have seen him many times. I know not whether I shall see him again. Who can tell who has returned and who not? Nine in each ten have remained."

"Oh, sister, and you love him—is it not so?"

"Love—bah! One has other things to think of than love when one is running in front of the Cossack sabres. Let us talk no more of the war, sister, nor yet of love; let me thank le bon Dieu that I have done both with one and the other; I would rest and rest and again rest."

"Poor Louise," said Marie, kissing her; "poor Louise!"

Afterwards she added, speaking of this to her husband, that Louise must indeed have supped her fill of horrors since even love had been forgotten in the tumults and terrors of war.

Louise submitted to be presented with a new uniform, which her father bought for her the very next day. She would rather have donned her woman's skirt, but for several reasons she consented to figure a while at least as Michel Prevost. One of these was the distaste she felt in her present condition of weakness and utter fatigue of mind and body for any sort of argument or discussion with her father. Another was an irresistible desire to move among those who had returned from the war, in order that she might gather any information there might be with regard to the fate of Henri.

Louise had not altogether despaired of him. Soldiers and officers still dribbled daily into Paris, emaciated, tattered, half-alive; men who had somehow lagged, through wounds or illness, and had contrived to escape the countless dangers which assailed them in their solitary retreat through a hostile country. Why should not Henri have escaped, like others? She would allow herself to hope a little; just a very little.

And about a month after her own arrival a wonderful day dawned for her. Seated at a restaurant close to a table at which sat four officers of Henri's regiment, Louise suddenly caught the sound of his name.

"That makes seven alive," some one was saying; "one better than we thought. Certainly no one could have supposed that D'Estreville would reappear. His has been, I think, the narrowest escape of all. His trials have depressed even his spirit. Have any of you ever seen Henri depressed? He will be here, presently, you shall judge for yourselves. Sapristi! he has left his gaiety with all Ney's guns in the Niemen. Seven officers out of forty–"

Flushed, giddy, almost swooning for joy, Louise stumbled out of the restaurant. "I will return immediately," she told the astonished waiter.

CHAPTER XXV

If any one had informed Henri d'Estreville on the morning when, departing for the war, he took a somewhat affectionate farewell of Louise Dupré, that his strange sensation of particular tenderness for the girl would not only prove an abiding sensation, but would actually develop into something remarkably like the tender passion itself, and that without any further communication, meanwhile, with the object of his affection, he would have laughed the idea to scorn.

It was not in accordance with Henri's temperament that his heart should linger over soft recollections of charms which his eyes no longer beheld. If Chloe were absent, Phyllis, who was present, would fill her place excellently well. No woman had as yet proved herself essential to him. He took his pleasure from the society of the other sex where and when he found it, and this sufficed.

But somehow the memory of Louise had lingered. Perhaps the combination of certain womanly qualities with her splendid skill and courage in manly exercises had impressed him. Certainly he had not forgotten her magnificent eyes, he often recalled these when his recollection of her other features had faded. Louise had made no secret of her preference for Henri over every other man of her acquaintance. That alone, however, would not have greatly attracted the Baron, for he was a favourite with the sex, and Louise was not the first who had been simple enough to lay bare to him her heart of hearts.

"I am a fool," thought Henri; "but there is no doubt that I wish to see her. Perhaps the best medicine for my sickness will be to do so as soon as possible. Probably the first glance will disenchant me. I have somehow, and most foolishly, so embellished my recollections of her that I am remembering an ideality! The reality will soon set me right again!"

Thus it was that one morning as old Pierre sat with his daughter Marie, Louise being absent with Karl Havet, a servant announced the Baron Henri d'Estreville.