The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI.
OVER THE BERESINA.
"Milder yet thy snowy breezes
Pour on yonder tented shores,
Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,
Or the tent-brown Danube roars.
Oh, winds of winter, list ye there
To many a deep and dying groan;
Or start, ye demons of the midnight air,
At shrieks and thunders louder than your own!
Alas! even your unhallowed breath
May spare the victim, fallen low;
But man will ask no truce to death,
No bounds to human woe."
ROUGEARD and his companions succeeded in reaching Smolensko, but only to find it a scene of intolerable wretchedness and unutterable confusion. The Emperor and the Old Guard had left some days previously, and for the disorganized troops pouring every hour into the miserable, ruined city, there was neither food nor shelter, neither order nor discipline. So our little coterie still kept together, and hoping against hope determined to continue their march towards the frontier.
Ten or twelve weary days of marching followed. Always hungry, always cold, always tired, Henri would have given up the struggle once and again, but for the thought which kept for ever
"Beating in upon his weary brain,
As though it were the burden of a song"—
"I must see my mother and my sister again; I cannot die without my mother's forgiveness."
Usually their only food was a little horse-flesh, but even that failed them frequently; nor could fuel be always found for the fire of their bivouac. From the bodies of their comrades that strewed the way they sometimes obtained articles of clothing—a sad resource, but all, even the gentle Henri, were now becoming inured to sights of horror. Sometimes they would meet with other coteries whose condition was as pitiable as their own, or they would be alarmed by a few stray shots from the "clouds of Cossacks" that hovered about them. Rougeard informed them that the enemy was beside, not behind them; the Russians having very prudently chosen their lines of march parallel to that of the retreating French armies, which were thus kept from straying to the right or to the left, and sternly restricted to the track their own cruelty had already rendered a desert.
At last a serious misfortune happened to the little band. A long day's march, absolutely without food and in piercing cold, had exhausted them all. Rougeard, who was by far the strongest of the party, said to his companions, "Rest in the shelter of this wall, while I go a little further towards the lights I see yonder. I daresay some of our people are there; perhaps they will respect my uniform, and spare us a little food." He moved away, but turned back for a moment to add, "Keep up your hearts, my lads. If your strength is good for one day's marching more, I think you may see the Beresina before to-morrow night."
That was the last time they looked upon the face or heard the voice of Pierre Rougeard. Whether he was buried in the snow, was murdered or made prisoner by the Russians, they could not tell. His loss dissolved the coterie which his influence had held together. Its members went their several ways, and far too sad a task would it be for us to follow them. Each in his own measure fulfilled the awful doom that had fallen upon the host to which he belonged. For the word had gone forth: "Thus saith the Lord, Such as are for death, to death; such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for the captivity, to the captivity."
We may, however, follow for a little way the fortunes of Rougeard. The bivouac fires he saw at a distance proved to be those of a Russian regiment of volunteers. He fell into the hands of the sentries, and in spite of a resistance as desperate as his exhausted condition permitted him to make, was secured, and brought at once to the colonel, a Russian nobleman named Demidoff. To his questions Rougeard replied with proud fearlessness; but he owned, upon being asked, that he was famishing with hunger. Demidoff, who perhaps had been reading the Book his sovereign loved so well, led the prisoner to his own tent, where an elegant and abundant dinner had just been served. "Sit down, my friend," he said to him, "eat and drink; you are welcome."
But the veteran did not obey. His brave, proud heart, which no peril of field or flood or wilderness had ever daunted, was melted, was crushed by the unexpected kindness. A great shudder passed over his frame. Trembling "as certainly he never would have trembled before the enemy," he said with uncontrollable emotion, "Can it be that a Russian, an officer, bids me sit down to eat and drink with him, after all the horrors we have committed in his country, and against his Emperor?"[1]
But it could not be expected that all Russians would take their revenge after the manner of Demidoff. Many of the mujiks, who had been insulted and plundered, or had seen their relatives murdered by the French, put the prisoners that fell into their hands to a cruel death. Fortunately, reports of these outrages soon reached St. Petersburg, and a ukase was despatched immediately by the hand of a special courier, forbidding all such practices on pain of the Czar's highest displeasure; and, as the most effectual mode of preventing them, offering the reward of a ducat of gold for every prisoner brought safely to head-quarters.
Henri de Talmont bore in mind Rougeard's parting words, and determined at all hazards to try to reach the Beresina. He was strengthened in his belief that he was drawing near some point of general rendezvous by the constantly increasing crowds. At length, instead of a vast and solitary plain, he found himself traversing a broad high-road, frozen hard, and thronged with a disorderly rabble of soldiers and camp-followers, amongst whom vehicles of all kinds were moving with difficulty. Some of these were baggage-waggons, but the great majority contained women and children connected in various ways with the French army, and endeavouring with it to make their escape from a hostile country. Most pitiable was the fate of those unhappy fugitives.
As Henri stumbled wearily along, the velvet cap of a little child dropped from one of the carriages and fell at his feet. He picked it up and restored it to its owner, a pretty fair-haired boy about four years old.
"Thank you, poor soldier," lisped the child in soft Italian, a language of which Henri had learned a little from his mother.
"I think, Guido, we could make room for the poor soldier here," said the child's mother, a gentle-looking lady with an infant in her arms; "he seems very tired."
Most thankfully did Henri accept the proffered help. He soon ascertained that the lady was an Italian singer who had come to Russia, with the band of professional artists to which she belonged, in the train of the fantastic and pomp-loving King of Naples. These poor children of pleasure, dragged unawares into the midst of a horrible tragedy, seemed like butterflies caught in a thunderstorm. Madame Leone told Henri, with many tears, that her husband had been made prisoner by the Cossacks, and that she knew not whether he was alive or dead. Henri tried to console her, helped her to take care of the children, and defended her as well as he could from the rude assaults of the famishing soldiers who surrounded the carriage, begging for food, or rather demanding it.
At last they reached the bank of the Beresina, but it was to find themselves in the midst of untold confusion and unutterable horror. The frozen marsh beside the river was thronged with an innumerable crowd, increasing in density as it neared the heads of the two bridges which had been thrown across the current. Hundreds of vehicles were there, vainly attempting to force a passage through the living mass. Oaths and shrieks, cries, groans, and entreaties resounded upon every side. To add to the terrors of the scene, the Russians were pouring a continuous fire upon the troops which were endeavouring to cross the river.
In the midst of all this bewildering, maddening confusion, Henri found himself thinking dreamily of his mother's stories of the terrible passage of the Loire by the defeated Vendéans. "It was like the day of judgment," she used to say. "And what," asked Henri, "would she have thought of this?"
He was startled by a voice near him. "Monsieur Henri, is it you? Is it really you?" cried some one in the crowd, seizing his hand and grasping it. "This is indeed a miracle."
"Féron! dear Féron!" exclaimed Henri, springing from his seat in the carriage and throwing himself into the arms of his comrade.
Questions and explanations followed, and each told the other his adventures since they parted.
"Where is our regiment?" asked Henri.
"It has ceased to exist," returned Féron. "'Sauve qui peut' is our only marching order now."
"Ah, friend," said Henri, "I see you have suffered. Your hand—"
"Frost-bitten one bitter night. I could not help thinking when I lost it of that poor Russian whom we branded in the hand before we came to Moscow. Do you remember him, Monsieur Henri?"
"I ought to remember him. I saw him again in the city, and he did me a good turn.—Now, Féron, I want you, if you can, to help me to protect this lady and these two helpless little children."
"If I can. But we must be patient. Those who are rushing madly forward to try and reach the bridge only increase their own danger. Already they are trampling one another down by dozens."
"Ay," said Henri, "because they are afraid the bridges will be burned or broken as soon as the effective troops have passed over them, to protect the retreat of the Emperor."
"Fools! Do they think the Emperor will let the bridges be touched so long as one Frenchman or Frenchwoman remains upon this side? They do not know him," returned Féron.
"Perhaps not," said Henri sadly. "Ah, what is this?" he cried the next moment, as a bullet whizzed close by them through the air.
"I believe our rear-guard and the Russians are fighting it out, and we are near enough to come in for a stray shot or two."
"Then help me to turn this carriage over, that we may make a shelter for the lady."
This was accomplished, not without some difficulty. Anxious hours of suspense and forced inactivity followed. Night fell, but an awful light still illumined the landscape. What looked like a semicircle of flame environed half the sky. It was the fiery breath of the Russian cannon.
Suddenly there came a sound of fearful shrieks, and a frantic swaying and tossing of the crowd. One of the bridges—that constructed for the artillery—had broken down, precipitating its living freight into the freezing waters beneath; and the miserable multitude on the bank, who were suffering more and more from the cannonade of the enemy, now rushed forward in blind terror to gain the only remaining bridge.
Henri lost sight of Madame Leone and the baby in the press, and it was with difficulty that he saved little Guido from being trodden under foot, by holding him continually in his arms.
Féron kept by his side throughout. At last, however, he cried aloud suddenly, "Comrade, I am done for! That bullet—"
Henri saw it was too true. In great distress he knelt down beside him and tried to stanch the blood that was flowing from his breast.
Almost at the same moment a company of the rear-guard came thundering by, forcing their way through the living mass, and cutting down without remorse or pity all who obstructed their retreat.
"Time to go now," said Féron with an effort. "Monsieur Henri, don't stay for me. I thought I would have brought home news of you; now you—but go, I entreat of you, go at once. No time to lose."
"Never, while you breathe. Besides, as you said, the Emperor will not leave a Frenchman behind him." Recollecting that Madame Leone had filled with wine the flask Féron himself had left with him, he mixed some of its contents with snow-water, and put the reviving draught to the lips of his comrade.
"Monsieur Henri," murmured Féron, "can you say a prayer for me? You used to pray, though we laughed at you for it in the regiment."
"There is one prayer I have often prayed since all this trouble came upon us," said Henri. "It is good, and it is short; you can say it for yourself—'God be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus Christ's sake.'"
"God be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus Christ's sake," Féron repeated earnestly; and during the hour that followed—an hour that seemed like a year to Henri—the cry was often on his lips.
But he grew weaker and weaker, until at last he fell into a kind of stupor, while Henri watched silently beside him.
Just about the dawning of the day, a cry, great and terrible, thrilled every heart, and reached even the dulled ear of the dying man. He roused himself, and murmured faintly, "What is it, Monsieur Henri?"
Henri knew too well. All around him were repeating, in tones that expressed every variation of anguish and despair—"The bridge is on fire! the bridge is burning!" So, after all, Napoleon had not waited until every Frenchman was safe on the other side!
"'The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep,'" thought Henri bitterly. "But thou shalt never know, Féron. This pang at least shall be spared thy dying hour."
He bent once more over his friend, who was feebly repeating the question—"Monsieur Henri, what is it?"
"Nothing that concerns you or me," Henri answered firmly. "Do you suffer, comrade?"
"No—no pain. Only I am sinking—sinking. I want to say that prayer again. God be merciful—for Christ's sake."
With these words on his lips, Féron passed away. Henri had scarcely time to close his eyes before he was forced by the strong current of the crowd from the spot where he had been standing. He kept fast hold of Guido: just now he cared but little what became of himself; his only thought was to save the child. He was at last pushed into a position from which he could see the river; but he turned shuddering from the sight, which indeed was horrible beyond description. Men, women, and children were struggling in the icy waters, or sinking for the last time beneath them. Here and there a strong swimmer gained the opposite bank in safety; but the weak, the famished, the wounded perished by hundreds. Pieces of the broken bridge, to which drowning wretches were clinging, floated about amidst débris of every conceivable kind; and those on board the few sorely overcrowded boats were violently thrusting away their despairing comrades who tried to enter.
One of these boats was just putting off from the bank when Henri called aloud, "Take this child with you, for God's sake!"
A tall man stood upright in the boat. "Hold him up, man," he cried; "give us a sight of him."
Henri did so.
"The very child we are seeking—eh, comrades?" said the man, turning to his companions. "About three or four years old, fair-haired, with a crimson velvet cap. Well worth our while—a thousand ducats reward." Then to Henri: "Throw him in, my lad."
This was much more easily said than done. Little Guido clung to his protector with all his might, absolutely refusing to be separated from him. Henri found it impossible to unclasp those soft arms from about his neck, though he tried hard to do it.
Meanwhile the men in the boat were disputing with one another. Some were willing to take Henri as well as the child; others objected, afraid of losing the reward or of having to share it with him. But the tall man who had spoken first decided the question. "Let the lad come with us," he said. "Anything to save time."
So Henri stepped into the boat with his little companion still in his arms. It did not occur to him until afterwards that Madame Leone would have been by no means able to offer a reward so large as a thousand ducats for the recovery of her child. Happily during the crossing Guido engrossed all his attention. Terrified by everything around him, he cried violently for his mother, and refused to be comforted; so that a child's tears drew away the eyes of Henri from the agonized faces of strong men, who were looking up to Heaven with their last appeal for mercy ere they sank to rise no more.
Scarcely had the boat touched the opposite bank of the stream, when a lady ran down to meet it, and stretched out her arms to receive the boy. But the next moment a cry of bitter disappointment rang through the air. This was not her child—not the darling for whose recovery she had offered all her golden store. The broken-hearted mother turned away, and Henri saw her no more. Still holding Guido in his arms, he followed listlessly and mechanically the stream of fugitives who were taking the road to Vilna.
- ↑ A fact.