Soldier of the Queen (22 page)

Every seething alley and courtyard was overflowing with troops now, every square and islet packed as the outflanked units streamed back. Obstructing them everywhere was the flood of civilians, smelling of wet wool, poverty and fear. Panic lay just below the surface and nerves seemed to be stretched until they twanged like violin strings, while the telegraph confirmed Ackroyd’s story about Paris, where the government had resigned.

During the day the sky filled with clouds and it began to drizzle so that the plethora of flags about the streets grew wet and stuck to their poles. There wasn’t half enough room for the troops flooding in, and fires were going in the Esplanade. Officers were ransacking their baggage among the café tables and cavalry horses picketed on the trodden lawns were dragging at the juniper trees.

Germaine was in a state of icy calm. About her the servants were throwing belongings and clothes into trunks and tying them with ropes, while the concierge was flinging dust sheets over the furniture and locking the shutters. The house was filled with gloom.

‘Colbee–’ As she saw him, Germaine quietly poured him a drink and handed it to him, her hand shaking ‘–you must save us. The army is defeated! The Empire is collapsing about our ears! The Emperor has been shot and the Marshals have all gone over to the enemy!’

‘Not yet!’ He tried to calm her. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’

‘Where is Narcisse?’ Her eyes grew moist. ‘Why doesn’t he come to help me? This is the moment I need him.’

‘He’s probably busy,’ Colby said. ‘I think a lot of people are busy just now.’

‘Then please do something! I can’t stay here. I should be back in Paris where it’s safe. It is up to you to take me!’

The slow shifting of troops from the east into the city continued – deep columns of blue, white and red, the metallic August sun on unsheathed bayonets. The soldiers were shouting that they had been betrayed, and sullen eyes stared from under shakoes and brass cuirassier helmets. A rancid smell of sweat, fear and anger rose amid the clouds of grey dust stirred up by thousands of shuffling boots.

During the day, news came in that Napoleon had turned the command of the army over to Marshal Bazaine and there was a marked lifting of spirits, because the French hadn’t been badly hurt, despite the defeats, and were still strong enough to hold off a few Prussians.

Walking back from the empty station, Colby heard that the Emperor had arrived in the city and was attending Mass in the cathedral. Quickening his pace, he arrived just as Napoleon came out. He looked haggard and shabby. A cloak was thrown over his uniform and straggling grey hair escaped from under the gold-encrusted red képi. The Prince Imperial, just behind him, seemed only a frightened boy struggling to hold back his tears. The square was filled with a brooding suspicion that Metz was being betrayed. There were no cheers, and the heavy faces of the Messins were hard and unforgiving as they watched the Emperor, his eyes desperate in a face that had been painted to hide his illness, climb heavily into his carriage.

Late in the morning, they heard the mutter and rumble of guns from the east again. As the sounds came, the westwards movement halted and everybody stopped to stare back to where the cathedral spire shone golden in the sun. A few frantic staff officers appeared, forcing their way through the mass of men and trying to turn them back the way they had come.

Ackroyd popped up from nowhere. ‘Prussians ’ave bumped into the rearguard,’ he announced. ‘They’ve ’alted the retreat to face ’em.’

As they rode towards the fighting, they could hear the rumble of guns growing louder and the ugly grinding sound they recognised as the mitrailleuses. When they arrived, the ambulances – most of them still foreign – were at work. Through the halo of mist, they saw what appeared to be miles of dead and wounded, lying where they’d been caught by the guns, French on one side, Prussians on the other. Carts full of straw were jolting them across the slopes towards Metz.

Deciding it was wiser to get on the road to Verdun before it was too late, they returned to pack Germaine among the trunks in the carriage, still calm and clear-headed but protesting loudly that she was not in the habit of travelling like a servant. It was impossible to move, however. The whole French army, a hundred and sixty thousand strong, with all its guns, pontoon bridges, horses and four thousand supply wagons, their numbers swollen by the vehicles of escaping civilians, were struggling out of the city by the Longeville route. It had been going on for two days now in one huge ill-policed convoy.

With the aid of a few bribes, Colby managed to halt the stream long enough to force the carriage into the throng and they began to move at a snail’s pace out of the city, surrounded by a winding straggle of peasants and people sitting in carriages filled with china and furniture. The last information Ackroyd had brought from the station was that there was no guarantee that any more trains would arrive from the south either to bring reinforcements or carry away refugees. It was clear that organisation had totally collapsed.

During the morning the sky filled with clouds and the day grew dismal with drizzle. The flags hanging from abandoned houses slapped and smacked in the breeze over the columns of men plodding up the hill, their clothes filthy, their boots heavy with mud, the driving storm beating at their backs. Zouaves, the spoils of robbed hen-roosts hanging at their belts, threaded in and out of hay-carts filled with women and children. Grenadiers of the Guard mingled with stocky Lignards, and hussars and lancers jostled each other in an attempt to pass to the front. Furious staff officers cursed and gesticulated, while men edged to the side of the road from the path of the towering train of pontoon barges that had been intended to bridge the river to make the passage of troops more easy.

As the afternoon came, the rain stopped and the sun appeared, hot, stifling and exhausting. The rumour passed down the ranks of the slowly-shifting column that the troops defeated near Strasbourg were retreating on Chalôns and that it was hoped that the Army of the Rhine would join them there. But the news was vague and no one knew where the Prussians were.

‘The French cavalry,’ Colby observed, ‘seem to think their only job’s to spruce up their bloody millinery. The whole army’s mesmerised and like a lot of undertakers creeping round a corpse. If that damned carpet-bagger, Bazaine, stays in Metz much longer he’s never going to move until they cart him off a prisoner to Germany.’

As it grew dusk and torches appeared, tempers grew worse, then they heard guns rumbling to the west and heads came up as ears cocked. From a mounted officer covered with mud who was trying to fight his way through to headquarters, they got the information that Uhlans were on the left bank of the Meuse and to the south of the road, and that the French cavalry screen, feeling its way gingerly forward, had been stopped near Mars-la-Tour. As the head of the column halted, the whole bewildered struggling mass concertina-ed to a stop. The civilians climbed from the carriages trapped among the carts, fourgons and guns, and sat wearily at the roadside, eating their picnic meals and waiting for the route to be cleared.

‘You must find a hotel – an inn,’ Germaine said firmly. ‘I can’t sleep upright in a carriage.’

She was still calm but her insistence on comfort made Colby feel like hitting her over the head with something.

Point du jour was crammed by the convoy carrying the Imperial household, huge fourgons and carts in the Imperial colours marked with ‘N’ and guarded by Cuirassiers and Dragoons of the Guard. The royal comforts congested the whole road and the soldiers filing by made no attempt to hide their feelings. Moving sullenly, their silence was in sharp contrast to the cheers of a fortnight before. Occasionally, even, one of them raised his voice. ‘A cheer for the Emperor,’ he yelled, and the cry came back immediately with a ‘One, two, three merde!’ that spoke of constant repetition.

Reaching Gravelotte, with a great deal of difficulty and a lot of bribery they managed to get a room in the inn. It was hardly up to Germaine’s standard and consisted of a bare uncomfortable attic.

‘Stay here with me,’ she pleaded.

‘I can’t,’ Colby pointed out. ‘Bazaine’s bound to bring up troops to clear the road ahead. It can’t be held by more than a couple of squadrons of Uhlans, and I ought to go and see what’s happening so we’re ready to move on in the morning.’

‘Stay with me! I beg you!’

‘Germaine, be sensible!’

‘This isn’t a time for sense!’ The calm shivered and broke. ‘It’s a time to lose ourselves in despair! You can sleep in my bed. I shall not take up much room.’

He backed hurriedly from the room as the maid struggled in with a suitcase containing the thousand and one bottles of unguents and powders Germaine used to keep her skin creamy. Downstairs, he fought his way to where the landlord of the inn was beating off hysterical customers.

‘There is no food,’ he yelled at Colby. ‘It has all gone! We don’t expect such numbers!’

Colby slipped a handful of silver across. ‘Bread and cheese will do,’ he said.

The landlord glanced at the money and gestured to a door behind his bar. ‘In the kitchen,’ he said quietly. ‘I daren’t bring it out here.’

Collecting the food in a handkerchief with a bottle of thin wine from the frightened wife of the proprietor, Colby headed outside to where Ackroyd was guarding the horses.

‘You ain’t leavin’ me with ’er, are you?’ Ackroyd said indignantly. ‘She’s got a maid and a manservant.’

‘Just for the night, Tyas, old son,’ Colby said.

Climbing into the saddle, he began to head westward, taking to the fields and picking his way between the weary civilians standing in groups near their vehicles. No one stopped him or told him he had no right to be on the road the army was using. Soldiers were quarrelling everywhere. Having expected orders to continue, they were bewildered and angry because none had arrived. Tents had been erected and the cavalry had unsaddled, with long lines of horses with their heads down at streams. No patrols seemed to have been sent out.

Eating the food he had brought among the trees alongside the road, Colby struggled on again before daylight, aware of a stirring about him and eyes turned towards the west. A rumour had spread that French troops were approaching on a converging route from the south. Near Vionville, a cavalry mess was being erected and bivouacs set up in the growing daylight, and there was a smell of coffee in the air. The only discordant note came from an over-keen officer who was asking that he might be permitted to take out a patrol to investigate small bodies of troops which had been seen on high ground to the west.

‘It’s Ladmirault’s corps coming up.’ The general he approached shook his head firmly. ‘There’s no need to worry.’

The Emperor had got through, it seemed, with an escort of dragoons and chasseurs, insisting that Bazaine should push on after him, but nobody seemed to be aware of any urgency, and in the increasing heat officers’ servants were unpacking shaving kits and trotting off towards Vionville to find rooms where their officers might wash and brush up. Jacketless soldiers had removed their heavy brass helmets and unslung their sabres, and were laying blankets on the ground and placing saddles for back rests.

There was some activity ahead but the army seemed in no hurry, so, begging coffee from the mess, Colby watched a string of chargers being led past to water at a nearby pond. Tables had been set among the trees and officers were breakfasting, while the narrow village streets, acrid with the smell of horses, were jammed with wagons, carts, pack animals, and soldiers buying eggs and vegetables in the sunshine.

Colby had just finished his coffee when he heard faint distant popping noises billowed by growing whirring sounds. As he looked up, there was a series of crashes in the trees beyond the road and he realised that what had been believed to be Ladmirault’s corps was in fact the Prussians, and they were opening the ball.

As he headed for his horse, an officer came thundering between the tents, his arm flung out towards the south.

‘Les Prusses!
’ he was yelling.
‘Les Prusses!’

Probing along the flanks of the retreat, the German cavalry had discovered that Bazaine’s left lay unguarded and, establishing horse batteries on the hills, were already coming into action. Other troops, heading for the sound of the guns, were barring the Verdun road, and the whole jam-packed mass of people, horses and vehicles just heaving into movement, had come to a standstill again.

Officers had appeared, their jackets unbuttoned, their faces half-shaved and, as they stood in a group, staring bewilderedly to the west, the first shell burst on the outskirts of the village. As more shells crashed down there was a hasty scuttle for shelter. Men jumped barebacked on to their horses and galloped off; officers began to run wildly backwards and forwards, trying to rally them, searching for grooms or chargers, buckling on sabres and shouting orders nobody seemed willing to listen to. The transport drivers were fleeing in a body across the fields, followed by the inhabitants of the village, the civilian refugees, and several dragoons whose heavy knee boots were not designed for such an occupation. In a matter of minutes, the whole brigade had disappeared over the horizon, crashing through the infantry which had turned out as the firing had started.

The cannonade was not followed by an attack, however, and the French infantry began to take up their places behind walls and buildings. The sun was hot by this time and the ground was steaming, and a few stampeded chargers were still galloping across the fields, their tails up, their stirrups swinging, as the French hurriedly tried to face left. There were so many of them in so small an area, however, they were getting in each other’s way. Several houses were already in flames and it was possible to see rolling clouds of smoke and dark blue blocks appearing out of the valleys to the south. Determined to halt the movement west, the Prussians had committed their infantry, but their numbers seemed few compared with the mass of men waiting for them along the road.