"Bouvier's Own Clodhoppers ... Parade ... Rest!"
The heels go twelve inches apart and the gun butts thud into the ground next to their right feet.
"Good. Now, when, and if, the Emperor's carriage goes by here, I will say 'Order Arms' and you will come to Attention and bring your musket up before you like this"—and I take Papa Boule's musket from him and hold it rigidly in front of me, two inches from my nose, the barrel pointed straight up, the butt against my belly. "Do you have that? Answer."
"Yes, Sir!"
"Good. Let's try it. Bouvier's Own Clodhoppers ... Order ... Arms!"
And they do it reasonably well. It ain't the Royal English Horse Guards, but it will do.
I get out, front and center. "Dufour, you will stand by me, with your sticks at the ready, but you will not use them unless I tell you to. Right?"
He nods and comes to my side. I turn to face my squad.
"Now that the Emperor is here, you know that we will be marching very soon. I shall march with you till then, but when it comes to the actual battle, I will not be there." I feel my drummer boy stiffen at this news. "Non. I am assigned as a galloper, a messenger on horseback, conveying orders back and forth between the commanders. Your officer will be Captain Bardot. I have met him, and taken bread with him. He is a good man and will do his best by you. Follow the lead of Sergeant Boule and Corporal Laurent and you will be well led. That is all. Now we wait." I turn my back on them and face the road in front and go to Parade Rest myself, my hands clasped behind me, my sword still in its scabbard.
We do not wait too awfully long. Soon there is a great tumult down below us to the south. I see a cloud of dust, and I know he will come right by us.
"Steady, boys," I say, as I see the cloud approach. Soon a platoon of Cuirassiers march by, with their brass breastplates and high helmets with the mares' tails hanging down behind. Then a troop of the Light Cavalry, splendid in their red, green, and gold Hussar uniforms, with ... oh, my God, there's Jean-Paul among them! I lift my sword in salute and he sees me and our eyes lock, but we give no other sign of recognition. Later, Jean-Paul, I think to myself, and I am sure he thinks the same. He is looking very fine.
Then come the Lancers, then the Horse Grenadiers, then the Old Imperial Guard, itself, the Supreme Elite, the crème de la crème, the best soldiers in the entire world, wearing their tall bearskin hats decorated with a gold plate, red plumes, and white cords. The best in the world and they know it. The best in the world ... so far.
And then it comes. A single white carriage drawn by two horses. It draws up close to us and I say, "Clodhoppers ... Order Arms!"
The muskets come up, the eyes are cased, and the carriage draws up abreast of us and I see the acanthus wreath circling the letter N and above it the Imperial Eagle.
I whip out my sword and put the hilt to my face and then bring the blade down sharply to point next to my right foot.
The man in the carriage looks out the window and catches my eye and nods, two of his fingers to his forehead in a salute.
It is him. Without doubt.
The carriage moves on and, unaccountably, tears begin to pour out of my eyes. I look to Denis and see his face is equally covered with tears.
Tearing myself away, I turn back to my troops and try to collect myself, but it is so hard....Little Mary, Orphan of the streets of London, member in good standing of Rooster Charlie's Gang of Urchins, has just traded salutes with Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, and Ruler of much of the world.
As I look down my ranks, I see that my own is not the only wet eye here. I know that they love him, no question, and I know why. He has raised up worthy soldiers from the ranks and made them generals. He has set up schools for all children, rich or poor, all across his land—I have found that all of my men, well, at least the young ones born after the Revolution, can read and write. He has built roads and visited factories and shaken hands with common workers. I have heard that he has stopped the practice of flogging on his ships, and I have certainly seen no soldier whipped since I have been here, which I would have in any British unit or British ship. I do not know what to think about any of this. I know that he has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in his march to conquest, but still, I don't know. As I so often come to realize, I don't know nothin' about nothin'.
Shaking off these thoughts, I again address my squad. "The excitement is over. Let us go back to the drill. Today we march here, and tomorrow we march to Germany. Corporal Laurent, form the men and let us go over that hill and far away from all this ceremony. This is now for the Marshals and the Generals. Ready? Good. Forward March!"
Dear Jaimy, I hope you are well and quite recovered from your wound. I, myself, am in good condition, curled up in my bedroll and under my neat little tent, and am officially a Second Lieutenant in the French Army. How about that for the world turned upside down? 'Course if I am found out, I shall certainly be stood up and shot—while Boney doesn't flog his men much, he certainly doesn't hesitate to shoot them should they disobey their officers or desert their units.
I have a small squad of Infantry under my command—farm boys, really, who now proudly call themselves Jack Bouvier's Own Clodhoppers—and this afternoon, after we had drilled enough, I slipped them out of the camp and down to a little tavern I had spotted before and stood them to a treat for all their hard work. With muskets lined up against the wall, we had cakes and ale and sang some songs and had a very good time. Maybe the last one we shall have for a long time. On the way back to our tents, Private Gobin, perhaps having had a bit too much for his young self to drink, threw his arm around my neck in a most unmilitary way, and said, "I would follow you into Hell itself, Sir!" As the other men pried him off me, I replied, "That is good, Private Harve Gobin, for that is exactly where we might very well be marching to tomorrow"
I had gotten the money to pay for that treat from playing at cards with a certain Major Levesque, actually Chef de Bataillon August Levesque, as the French Military would have it. I wonder at what you would think of me cheating at cards, Jaimy, you being so upright and noble? Ah, well, I consider my skill in that regard as just another arrow in my quiver. Besides, Major Levesque had it coming. I will never tell you this to your face, for it would enrage you, but he spanked me in front of all the troops. Yes, spanked! He had it coming, for sure.
And then there is the matter of Jean-Paul de Valdon. I think you would like him, Jaimy, if you two were ever to meet. He is my contact out here on the field, and is, therefore, a traitor to his country, yet he is going to march out with us as a lieutenant in the Light Cavalry and risk his life for Napoléon. 'Course he doesn't see it that way. He sees it as fighting for France, not for Boney. He is still a loyal Frenchman and will fight for his country, no matter what. Don't expect me to work all this out ... male honor and all that, which I have never really understood.
I do know I am training troops that might someday fight and kill British boys. I don't know what to think about that. I just take it day by day. At night I tell myself that I should not care how my pack of farm boys acquit themselves when it comes down to it ... but I do ... oh, yes, I do.
And y'know, Jaimy, they are just boys, and just like ours ... It is such a pity.
Good night, Jaimy. I hope I will dream of you tonight. Now I will go to sleep.
PART V
Chapter 33
"An army moves on its stomach." That is one of the Emperor's more often quoted sayings, and it is true, at least of this army—it moves across the land like an enormous slug, sucking up everything in its path. Yes, there are endless supply wagons that trail behind us, but woe be to any chicken or pig we happen to encounter. I find that my Clodhoppers, for all their lack of military skills, prove to be very good poachers, and we have dined very well on the fruits of their efforts. Several very succulent geese that paid the ultimate price of being delicious come to mind—and I would advise any farmer who had daughters to keep them well under lock and key.
I ride alongside Bouvier's Own Clodhoppers as we march merrily along, across Flanders and the Rhine into High Germany itself. Napoléon's Pontonniers, engineers adept at getting the Grande Armée across rivers and such, have constructed bridges so Mathilde and I do not even have to get our feet wet. Well, I generally ride alongside—Dubois had developed a blister on his heel, and after I'd poured pure alcohol on it and bandaged it up, I let him, bearing the hoots of derision from his comrades, ride Mathilde till it got better, while I marched along with the others. It is good for me, I think. I would not like to believe I am getting soft.
Though I pitch my tent with my men and see that they are taken care of, I now spend most of my time as a member of General Charpentier's staff, running messages back and forth between the generals and field marshals. It often turns out that I am given a message—rolled, sealed, and put into the leather pouch that hangs over my shoulders—and Mathilde and I pound off to deliver it, only to be told to wait while another correspondence is prepared, and then I am given that to deliver to yet another high officer. When not occupied doing that, I hie back to the Sixteenth Fusiliers to rest and to await further orders. That rest is hard to come by, as Bonaparte has ordered many forced marches on this trek to battle. While a normal army counts itself lucky to move fifteen miles in a day, the French Army, when ordered to, can do twenty or even twenty-five. It is a great advantage when armies are jockeying for position, which is exactly what we are doing now. But it is hard on my men, and I hate to see them suffer.
"Asleep, lad?" asks Captain Bardot. I jerk up my head, which had nodded and finally had fallen onto Mathilde's soft mane. I see, to my shame, that Captain Bardot has pulled his own horse up next to mine, and I realize that sometime a while back Corporal Laurent must have noticed my fallen reins and had taken them up to walk alongside and lead me along as I slept.
"Sorry, Sir. Afraid so," I say, rubbing my eyes and setting my shako straight. I had been awake most of last night, galloping between lit-up tents that held the senior staffs of the three columns, many of them miles and miles apart. But that's no excuse, and I know it.
"That's all right, Bouvier. Get all the rest you can. I've got a strong suspicion that we'll see l'Empereur steal a march on these Germans before we finally meet," says Captain Bardot, pulling back on the reins to his horse, so that its pace will match that of my Mathilde.
Stealing a march! That means marching all one day, then marching all night and into the next day! Mon Dieu!
I rub the sleep out of my eyes and take the reins back from Laurent, thanking him for his trouble and giving Matti a chuck to bring her up to speed. Poor baby, you certainly got no nap. I pat her neck and hope it gives her some comfort. We round the top of a hill and look out over the Grande Armée de la République.
Bonaparte has one hundred and sixty thousand soldiers in this army, almost all battle-hardened veterans, and on this march he has divided them into three parallel columns: The left column is led by the V Corps, commanded by Marshal Lannes; the center one led by I Corps, with Marshal Bernadotte at the head; and the right column headed by IV Corps under Marshal Soult. The other three Corps commanded by Marshals Davout, Ney, Augereau formed up behind. The front of the Army is about thirty-eight miles wide, and its length is about the same. Prince Murat's Cavalry Reserve, seventeen thousand strong, fans out across the front of the Army as a protective screen. I learned all this from Captain Bardot, who is turning out to be an excellent source of information.