The Price of Glory (30 page)

“No-one else is offering me anything,” said Buonaparte.

Junot fumbled in his pockets for some change and the two men began to make their way through the tables. After watching them for a moment and for reasons he did not at all understand, either then or later, Nathan followed them.

The Convention was still housed in the old royal theatre of the Tuileries, where it had been in the time of the Terror. The lobby was crowded with civilians, almost certainly members of the Convention, Nathan reckoned, from the noise they were making and the poses they were striking. Junot forced a way through with some difficulty and they found Barras with a group of army officers gathered around a map of the city spread upon a table. He had a brow like thunder and it didn't clear when he looked up and saw Buonaparte standing before him.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I've got people all over the city looking for you.”

“I'm here now,” Buonaparte pointed out.

“Then you can make yourself useful,” Barras informed him. “The sections have assembled their forces at the Peletier. Their next step will be to march on the Tuileries. Your job is to defend it. And you had better make a better job of it than the Swiss Guard.”

“Very well,” said Buonaparte coolly, “but I want absolute command.”

“Bollocks,” said Barras. He almost laughed in his face. “The members of the Convention have appointed me to the command of the Army of the Interior.”

Buonaparte bowed politely. “Then the best of luck to you,” he said, turning to leave. “And the members of the Convention.”

“Hang on, hang on, hold your horses,” Barras growled. “You can be second in command, how's that?”

“And Italy ?”

“We can talk about Italy when you've saved Paris.”

“How many men have you got?”

“About five thousand.”

Buonaparte appeared sceptical. “Regulars?”

“About half of them. The rest are volunteers.”

Nathan wondered if they were all from the theatre like Talma. It would not have surprised him. There were a score or so officers gathered about the table, though they didn't seem to be taking much interest in the proceedings. Most were smoking and chatting. He saw that one of them was Murat. He avoided his eye.

“I suppose it could be worse,” murmured Buonaparte.

“They've got at least thirty thousand. With Danican commanding.”

“Danican couldn't command his own bowel movements.”

“You say that about all the generals,” Barras said, but his brow had cleared.

“Very well, but I make the dispositions.”

“Be my guest,” said Barras, standing back from the map.

Buonaparte glanced at it briefly. Then he looked around the table.

“You, sir.” He pointed at Murat who regarded him askance.

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, you sir. Where's your horse?”

“My horse, sir?” Murat leaned back, hand on his sword, and looked down his nose. “I imagine he is with my groom, sir.”

Some of the officers began to snigger.

“Don't give me that Horse Guards shit, Murat. Your father was an innkeeper. You were drummed out of the army and worked in a candle shop before the Revolution. And you address me as ‘my General,' do you understand.”

Murat stiffened. “Yes, my General.”

“Good. Do you know Les Sablons?” Murat looked blank. Buonaparte stabbed a finger on the map at a point to the west of the city, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Nathan remembered going to see Imlay there when he had lived with Mary Wollstonecraft. “Where they grow the potatoes.”

“Not intimately,” replied Murat, with something of his former manner. Then he caught Buonaparte's eyes. “Yes, my General.”

“And do you think you can find it in the dark? Without your groom to help you?”

“Yes, my General, but …”

“Take two hundred men. You'll find thirty or forty field pieces there, in the park, with horses and men. Bring them back as fast as you can. And if anyone tries to stop you, cut them down with your sabres. You'll enjoy that.”

Murat had entirely lost his languor. He saluted. “Yes, my General.” And he was gone.

Nathan looked at Buonaparte in total bemusement. Could it be possible that he knew what he was doing?

It appeared that he did. He began by forming the disorderly representatives of the people into a “patriot battalion” which was distributed along the elegant frontage of the building facing towards the Tuileries Gardens. The regular soldiers were formed into two line battalions to defend the more vulnerable approaches from the rear, in the direction of the city. The general himself kept moving, striding about the perimeter, placing men here and there, a brisk little figure in his greatcoat but still without his hat, followed by Junot, in the role of aide de camp, and a train of soldiers and civilians to whom he issued instructions from time to time and sent scurrying with orders to one or other of the posts. As the lobby emptied, Nathan snatched up the map of the city, rolled it up under his arm and followed the general out into the night. Whenever Buonaparte stopped and gazed about him, Nathan unrolled the map for his inspection with a helpful and attentive air. For the first time since his arrival in the city he felt glad there was no-one from the
Unicorn
with him, but he was curious to see what would happen and this was as good a place as any to observe the unfolding events of the counter-Revolution.

Not that it was unfolding at any great pace. They heard drums from time to time from the direction of the Palais Egalité and the river, but of the hordes of which Barras had spoken, not a sign. It had begun to rain and Nathan wondered if they would simply pack up and go home, as they had on 9
^th
Thermidor when the commune had summoned the sections to the defence of Robespierre and the Jacobins. Shortly after midnight they heard the clatter of hooves and iron wheels from down the Rue Saint-Honoré and out of the darkness came Marat and his two hundred sabres with a long train of artillery behind them. Nathan counted thirty-six guns as they circled round the appropriately-named Cour du Carousel, mostly 6-pounders with limbers for powder and shot. They looked impressive enough but he was at a loss to know what the general was going to do with them, in the middle of a city. He was not long left in doubt.

“Map!” Nathan hurried up and spread it out on one of the limbers, holding it down against the wind and driving rain while Junot lifted a storm lantern for the general to see by while he made his dispositions. Four cannon were placed at each end of the Rue Saint-Nicolas guarding the approaches from the Palais Egalité and the Louvre; four more in Port Saint-Nicolas pointing up the quay; six at what used to be called the Pont Royal—Nathan had no idea what it was called now—which was the only direct route to the Tuileries from across the river; two in each of the little side roads leading on to the Rue Saint-Honoré; and the rest lined up along the elegant frontage of the building facing out across the gardens of the Tuileries.

Buonaparte personally supervised the positioning of every cannon, poking his long nose into the caissons to make sure the powder was dry and the cartridges were protected from the rain. He ordered the guns loaded up with grapeshot: canvas bags bulging with metal slugs and chain links. It would be devastatingly effective at close range—Nathan had witnessed just how effective on the crowded decks of a man-o'-war—but he had never seen it used on a crowded street before. For all the violence of the Revolution he knew of no circumstances in which cannon had been used in the streets of Paris, not during the storming of the Bastille in '89 or the massacre on the Champs de Mars when Lafayette had ordered the National Guard to fire their muskets into the crowd; not during the last attack on the Tuileries when it was still a royal palace, garrisoned by the King's Swiss Guard who had died, almost to a man, trying to defend it. In fact, he could think of no instance in the history of warfare where cannon had been used
inside
the walls of a city and he doubted if they would be now. What general in his right mind would order French gunners to fire grapeshot into the massed ranks of their own citizenry, most of whom wore the patriotic blue-and-white uniform of the National Guard? And even if he did, what gunner would obey ?

Still, they worked through most of the night, manoeuvring the heavy pieces into position in the cobbled streets while the rain came down in sheets, whipped into their faces by a chill wind. So much for the Indian summer, Nathan thought as he followed the little general from one post to another, wishing he had a tarpaulin to keep him dry. The map had become a soggy pulp in his hands but Buonaparte had no more use for it: the entire perimeter and most of the streets leading to it seemed to be engraved on his brain. Yet Nathan marvelled that anyone took any notice of him for he looked an outlandish, almost impish figure with his sharp features and his long hair plastered to his face by the rain, his clothes more than ever resembling those of a tramp looking for some doorway in which to spend the night. But there was something decisive in his manner that seemed to impress the officers around him and the men toiling at the guns. Certainly, throughout that long night Nathan never heard a single one of his orders questioned and he noticed that men looked towards him with increasing confidence.

Nathan stayed as close to the general as he dared in the hope of finding out what was happening in the rest of the city. He heard that the Royalists had made their headquarters in the old convent of Notre-Dame des Victoires in the Le Peletier section a few blocks to the north of the Tuileries and it occurred to him that he might quite easily find his way there. But he could just as easily get himself shot. And what use would he be? He would stay here, he decided. He might even find an opportunity to knock Buonaparte on the head if at any time he looked like winning. The Royalists had apparently called on Barras to surrender and he had told them to go to hell. The President of the Convention had issued a more poetic rebuttal, instructing his fellow representatives to die fighting and “with the audacity that belongs to the friends of Liberty.” As politicians they doubtless found this inspiring.

Nathan heard other rumours, too. That the British had landed at Île d'Yeu, off the coast of the Vendée, with the Comte d'Artois, brother to the French king. If this was true it seemed particularly ill-advised, for it was even further from Paris than Quiberon and it was a mystery to Nathan how the seizure of an island off the French coast could at all aid the Royalist cause in the capital. He would have thought that a landing in the Pas de Calais or even Normandy would have given more encouragement to the men preparing to fight and die in the streets of Paris—but, as would doubtless have been pointed out to him by my lord Spencer or one of his underlings at the Admiralty, he was not paid to think.

The rain stopped shortly before dawn. The men waited by the guns in a restive silence, the only sounds coming from the horses in the rear as they champed on their bits, their hooves clattering on the cobbles. A cold grey light spread over the roofs of the city. Nathan would have killed for a cup of coffee. Then, shortly before five, the attack came.

It was announced by a sudden volley of musketry from the Rue Saint-Nicolas which ran the length of the Tuileries on the side nearest the city. It appeared that a number of men had slipped into the Hôtel de Noailles during the night and opened fire from the upper floors of the building, aiming down into the Cour du Carousel and on to the steps of the Convention. There were no cannon at this particular point but it soon became apparent that Buonaparte's talents were not confined to the artillery. He directed a withering musket fire from the Tuileries and then personally led a contingent of regular infantry in a charge. They were still fighting their way up the stairs, floor by floor, when a runner came with news of an attack on the far side of the palace across the Pont Royal.

When Nathan arrived there with the rest of the general's makeshift “staff,” it was to see a column of blue-coated National Guards advancing in good order across the bridge, flags flying and drums beating for all the world like regular infantry. The rising sun, peering warily through the clouds still gathered over the city, glinted on their bayonets. They looked unstoppable. But they were not regulars. They were citizen soldiers. Working men, shopkeepers and artisans, drilling at weekends on the Champs de Mars. Family men, too, for the most part, their uniforms washed and brushed by their loving wives and daughters, their boots and belts polished by their proud sons before they sent them out to fight and, in this case, die.

They were three quarters of the way across the bridge when Buonaparte gave the order to fire.

Six cannon had been placed wheel to wheel at the end of the Quai du Louvre facing directly down the bridge. They fired singly, with a space of about five seconds between each gun and at a range of about fifty yards.

The canvas bags were ripped apart and the grapeshot spread out like shotgun pellets, but with far more lethal effect. It tore through the front ranks hurling them to the ground, each discharge exposing the ranks behind to the fire of the next gun so that to Nathan, watching from the far bank, it was as if a terrible wind had swept along the length of the bridge. The final gun fired. Deafened by the blast, even at a greater distance than he was used to on the deck of a ship, it seemed to Nathan that there was an eerie silence. The drums had stopped beating; the flags were no longer flying. Then he heard the wailing and the screaming.

The cannon were loaded and ready for the next rippling volley but there was no need. The column was broken, shattered into its individual parts, each fighting and struggling with his comrades in a mindless panic to reach the far bank, out of that terrible wind. And left on the bridge, lying where they had fallen, were thirty or forty mangled bodies and as many wounded, crying piteously or crawling away from the still smoking guns, dragging their shattered limbs behind them.