The Eagle of the Empire Part 4

"Fall upon the flank of the unsuspecting Prussian, burst through his line, break his center, turn to the right or left, beat him in detail, drive him back, relieve Paris, and then----"

"And then, Sire?"

"Come back and do the same thing with Schwarzenberg!"

"Your majesty!" cried the young soldier, as the whole mighty plan was made clear to him.

"Ha! It brightens your eyes and flushes your cheek, does it not? So it will brighten the eyes and flush the cheeks of France. I will show them. In six weeks I will drive them across the Rhine. In another month they shall sue for peace and the Vistula shall be our boundary."

"What does your majesty desire of me?"

"That you go at once. Take with you whomsoever you will. Bring or send me reports. You are educated?"

"I was a student at your majesty's Military College," answered the young man.

"Did you finish there?"

"I finished in your majesty's army last year."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two, Sire."

"You belong to the foot, but you can ride?"

"Anything."

"Marshal Berthier will give you horses. I shall be at Sezanne the day after to-morrow night. You will have news for me then?"

"Or be dead, Sire."

"I have no use for dead men. Don't get yourself taken. Any fool can die, or be made prisoner. It is a wise man who can live for me and France."

"I shall live," said the young man simply. "Have you any further command, Sire?"

"None."

The hand of Marteau was raised in salute.

"Stop," said the Emperor, as the soldier turned to the door.

"Sire?"

"Come back with news, and let us but escape from this tightening coil, and you shall be a lieutenant colonel in my guard."

"I will do it for love of your majesty alone," cried the soldier, turning away.

It was not nearly dawn before Berthier and Maret, who had been pondering over the dispatch to Caulaincourt, who was fighting the envoys of the allies at the Congress at Chatillon, ventured to intrude upon the Emperor. Having come to his decision, as announced to the young soldier, who had got his horses and his comrade and gone, the Emperor, with that supreme command of himself which few men possessed, had at last got a few hours of rest. He had dressed himself with the a.s.sistance of his faithful valet, Constant, who had given him a bath and shaved him, and he now confronted the two astonished marshals with an air serene--even cheerful.

"Dispatches!" he said, as they approached him. "It is a question of a very different matter. Tell Caulaincourt to prolong the negotiations, but to concede nothing, to commit me to nothing. I am going to beat Blucher. If I succeed, the state of affairs will entirely change, and we shall see what we shall see. Tell Marmont to give orders for his corps to march immediately after they get some breakfast. No, they may not wait till morning. Fortune has given the Prussians into my hands.

Write to my brother in Paris; tell him that he may expect news from us of the most important character in forty-eight hours. Let the Parisians continue their misereres and their forty-hour-long prayers for the present. We'll soon give them something else to think of."

"But, Sire----" feebly interposed Berthier.

"Do as I tell you," said the Emperor, good-humoredly, "and leave the rest to me." He was in a mood apparently that nothing could dash that morning. "And you will be as much surprised as the Prussians, and I believe that n.o.body can be more amazed than they will be."

CHAPTER III

THE ARMY MARCHES AWAY

Gallantly on his errand rode young Marteau. Napoleon's order to Berthier, by him transmitted down the line, had secured four of the best horses in the army for his messengers. For young Marteau went not alone. With him rode a tall grenadier of the Imperial Guard, whose original name had been lost, or forgot, in a sobriquet which fitted him perfectly, and which he had richly earned in a long career as a soldier. They called him "Bullet Stopper," "Balle-Arretante," the curious compound ran in French, and the soldiers clipped it and condensed it into "Bal-Arret!" He used to boast that he had been wounded in every country in Europe and in Asia and Africa as well. He had been hit more times than any soldier high or low in the army. He had distinguished himself by valor, and, but for his humble extraction and meager education, might have risen to a high command. As it was, he was personally known to the Emperor, and was accounted as one of the favorite soldiers of the army.

He, too, had been a dweller on the Aumenier estates. It was his tales of adventure which had kindled the martial spirit in young Marteau, whom he had known from his birth. A warm friends.h.i.+p subsisted between the young officer and the old soldier, which no difference in rank or station could ever impair. When the Emperor had given him leave to take with him whomsoever he would, his thoughts had at once turned to old Bullet Stopper. The latter had gladly accepted the invitation.

Behold him now, his huge body astride of an enormous horse--for, although the grenadier was a foot-soldier, he could still ride after a fas.h.i.+on--plodding along through the mud and the wet and the cold on the mission which, if successful, would perhaps enable Napoleon to save the army and France, to say nothing of his throne and his family.

Captain Marteau, or Major Marteau, to give him his new t.i.tle, had said nothing as to the nature of his mission, upon which they had been dispatched, to the humble comrade, the faithful follower who accompanied him. He had only told him that it was difficult, dangerous, and of vital importance, and he had explained to him that his familiarity with the country, as well as a warm-hearted admiration and respect for his shrewdness and skill and courage, had caused his selection. That was enough for the old soldier; dangers, difficulties, were as the breath of life to the veteran. And he was always happy to follow Marteau, in whose career he took an interest almost fatherly.

The weather was frightful. It had snowed and then thawed. The temperature was now just above the freezing point. The rough wind was raw, the fierce winter gale was laden with wet snow. The roads, like all country cross-roads in France, or anywhere else, for that matter, in that day, were a sea of mud. It was well that the pair had brought two extra horses. By changing mounts from time to time they were enabled to spare their beasts and make the greater speed. The Emperor had impressed upon his young aide the necessity for getting the information to him at the earliest possible moment. Haste was everything. So they pressed on.

Without waiting for their report, and presuming on his general knowledge of Blucher's character and shrewdly deducing the exact state of affairs Napoleon was already acting as if he possessed absolute and accurate information. The drums were beating the long roll as they rode through the still dark streets of the little town of Nogent.

Horses were being harnessed to guns, baggage wagons were being loaded, ammunition caissons were being got ready. The troops were a.s.sembling out of houses and tents, and coming from around fires, where many of them had pa.s.sed an unsheltered night.

There was little of the joy, the gaiety, the _elan_ of the French soldier, to be seen in the faces of the men thus summoned to the Eagles. They came, indeed, they answered the call, but with black looks and sullen faces and a manner almost despairing. They had fought and fought and fought. They had been beaten back and back and back, and when they had not been fighting they had been retreating. And always they were hungry. And always they were cold.

The enormous armies of Schwarzenberg had been extended on either side.

They were constantly threatened with being outflanked. Most of them were young soldiers, weary and dispirited, and many of them unarmed.

Every battle had reduced the stock of good muskets. Many of those still in possession of the troops had been ruined by their unskillful handling.

The supply of regimental officers was utterly inadequate to the demand.

The bravest and the best are usually the first to fall; the boldest and most venturesome the most liable to capture. Perhaps, if the Emperor had broken up his guard and distributed the veterans among the raw troops, the effect might have been better, but in that case he would have destroyed his main reliance in his army. No, it was better to keep the guard together at all hazards. It had already been drawn heavily upon for officers for other corps.

War was popularly supposed to be a thing of das.h.i.+ng adventure, of victory, and plunder. It had been all that before. Experience had thrust them all unprepared face to face with the naked reality of defeat, disease, weary marches over awful roads in freezing cold, in drifting snow, or in sodden mire. They had no guns, they had little food, thank G.o.d, there was some clothing, such as it was, but even the best uniforms were not calculated to stand such strains as had been imposed upon these.

Only the old guard, staunch, stern, splendid, indomitable, a magnificent body of men, held the army together--they and the cavalry.

Murat, peerless horseman, was playing the traitor to save his wretched Neapolitan throne. But Grouchy, Nansouty, Sebastiani and others remained. Conditions were bad in the cavalry, but they were not so bad as they were in the infantry. And Druot of the artillery also kept it together in the retreat. Guns, cannon, were more precious almost than men.

Now early that morning, while it was yet dark, they were called up from their broken sleep to undertake what to them was another purposeless march. Even the Eagles drooped in the hands of their bearers. The soldiers did not know, they could not see. The great high roads that led to Paris were being abandoned; they were plunging into unfathomable mora.s.ses; they were being led through dark, gloomy, dreadful woods to the northward. Where? For what purpose? The dumb, wrathful, insubordinate, despairful army indeed moved at the will of its master, but largely because it realized that it could not stay where it was, and largely because it was better to move on and die than to lie down and die. They were at least warmer on the march!

The spirit of the guard and of the subordinate officers, say from the colonels down, was good enough, but the generals and the marshals were sick of fighting. They had had enough of it. They had gained all that they could gain in their world-wide campaigns, in fame, money, t.i.tles, estates. They had everything to lose and nothing to win. They wanted rest, an opportunity to enjoy. Some of them were devoted to the Emperor, in fact, all of them were, but their own comfort and self-interest bulked larger and larger before them. They saw nothing but defeat at the end of their endeavors, and they wanted to negotiate peace with such honor as could be had while they were still a force to be reckoned with.

Their unwillingness and mutinous spirit, however, had not yet reached its highest development. That came later, and brought treachery in its train. The awful will of the Emperor still overruled them.

Wrathfully, insubordinately, protestingly, they still marched when he gave the word.

The Emperor had been working with that furious concentration which he alone of all men seemed to be able to bring about, and which was one of the secrets of his power. Orders borne by couriers had streamed in all directions over the roads. Napoleon was about to undertake the most daring and marvelous campaign of his whole history. The stimulus of despair, the certainty of ruin unless the advance of the allies could be stayed, had at last awakened his dormant energies, filled his veins with the fire of youth and spring.