Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume II

CHAPTER XXII. L’HOMME ROUGE

On my way to the imperial quarters, I fell in with some squadrons of our dragoons, from whom I learned that General d’Auvergne had just received orders to repair to the Emperor’s bivouac, to which several officers in command were also summoned. As I saw, therefore, that I could have no prospect of meeting the Emperor, I resolved merely to hold myself in readiness, should he, which seemed little likely, think of me; and accordingly I took up my post with some young under-officers of our brigade, at a huge fire, where a species of canteen had been established, and coffee and corn-brandy were served out to all comers.

The recent escape of Napoleon at the outposts was already known far and near, and formed the great topic of conversation, in which, I felt hurt to remark, no mention of the part I took was ever made, although there were at least a dozen different versions of the accident. In one, his Majesty was represented to have rode down upon and sabred the advanced picket; in another, it was the Prussians who fired, he having penetrated within their lines to reconnoitre, – each agreeing in the one great fact, that the feat was something which no one save himself could have done or thought of. As for me, I felt it was not my part to speak of the incident at all until his Majesty should first do so. I listened, therefore, with due patience and some amusement to the various narratives about me; which served to show me, by one slight instance, the measure of that exaggeration with which the Emperor’s name was ever treated, and convinced me that it required not time nor distance to color every incident of his life with the strongest hues of romance. The topic was a fruitful and favorite one; and certainly few subjects could with more propriety season the hours around a bivouac fire than the exploits of the Emperor Napoleon.

Among those whose reminiscences went farthest back was an old sergeant-major of infantry, – a seared and seamed and weather-beaten little fellow, who, from fatigues and privations, was dried up to a mass of tendons and fibres. This little man presented one of those strange mixtures with which the army abounded, – the shrewdest common sense on all ordinary topics, with a most credulous faith in any story where Napoleon’s name occurred. It seemed, indeed, as though that one element, occurring in any tale, dispensed at once with the rules which govern belief in common cases.

The invulnerability of the Emperor was with him a fruitful theme; and he teemed with anecdotes of the Egyptian and Italian campaigns, in which it was incontestably shown that neither shot nor shell had any effect upon him. But of all the superstitions regarding Napoleon, none had such complete hold on his imagination, nor was more implicitly believed by him, than the story of that little “Red Man,” who, it was asserted, visited the Emperor the night before each great battle, and arranged with him the manoeuvres of the succeeding day.

“L’Homme Bouge,” as he was called, was an article of faith in the French army that few of the soldiers ever thought of disputing. Some from pure credulity, some from the force of example, and some again from indolence, believed in this famed personage; but even the veriest scoffer on more solemn subjects would have hesitated ere he ventured to assail the almost universal belief in this supernatural agency. The Emperor’s well-known habit of going out alone to visit pickets and outposts on the eve of a battle was a circumstance too favorable to this superstition not to be employed in its defence. Besides, it was well known that he spent hours by himself, when none even of the marshals had access to him; and on these occasions it was said “L’Homme Bouge” was with him. Sentinels had been heard to declare that they could overhear angry words passing between the Emperor and his guest; that threats had been interchanged between them; and on one occasion it was said that the “Red Man” went so ‘far as to declare, that if his advice were neglected Napoleon should lose the battle, see his artillery fall into the hands of the enemy, and behold the Guard capitulate.

“Mille tonnerres! what are you saying?” broke in the little man, to the grim old soldier who was relating this. “You know nothing of ‘L’Homme Rouge,’ – not a word; how should you? But I served in the Twenty-second of the Line, old Mongoton’s corps; the ‘Faubourg Devils,’ as they were called. He knew him well; it was ‘L’Homme Rouge’ had him shot for treason at Cairo. I was one of the company drawn for his execution; and when he knelt down on the grass, he held up his hand this way, and cried out, —

“‘Voltigeurs of the Line, hear me! You have all known me many years; you have seen whether I could face the enemy like a man; and you can tell whether I cared for the heaviest charge that ever shook a square. You know, also, whether I was true to our general. Well, it is “L’Homme Rouge” who has brought me to this. And now: Carry arms! – all together! Come, mes enfants! try it again: Carry arms! (ay, that’s better) present arms! fire!’

“Morbleu! the word was not well out when he was dead; and there, through the smoke, as plain as I see you now, I saw the figure of a little fellow, dressed in scarlet, – feather and boots all the same! He was standing over the corpse, and threatening it with his hands. And that,” said he, in a solemn voice, “that was ‘L’Homme Rouge!’”

This anecdote was conclusive. There was no gainsaying the assertions of a man who had, with his own eyes, seen the celebrated “Red Man;” and from that instant he enjoyed a decided monopoly of everything that concerned his private history.

According to the sergeant-major’s version, – and who could venture to contradict him? – “L’Homme Rouge” was not the confidential adviser and friendly counsellor of the Emperor; but, on the contrary, his evil genius, perpetually employed in thwarting his plans and opposing his views. Each seemed to have his hour of triumph alternately. Now it was the Bed Man, now Napoleon, who stood in the ascendant. Fortune for a long period had been constant to the Emperor, and victory crowned every battle. This had, it seemed, greatly chagrined “L’Homme Bouge,” who for years past had not been seen nor heard of. The last tradition of him was a story told by one of the sentinels on guard at the general’s quarters at Mont Tabor.

It was midnight: all was still and silent in the camp. The soldiers slept as men sleep before a battle, when the old grenadier who walked his short post before General Bonaparte’s tent heard a quick tread approaching him. “Qui vive?” cried he; but there was no reply. “Qui vive?” called the sentry once more; but as he did so he leaped backwards and brought his musket to the charge, for just then something brushed close by him and entered the tent.

For a moment or two he doubted what should be done. Should he turn out the guard? It was only to be laughed at; that would never do. But what if it really were somebody who had penetrated to the general’s quarters? As this thought struck him, he crept up close to the tent; and there, true enough, he heard the voices of two persons speaking.

“Ah! thou here?” said Bonaparte. “I scarce expected to see thee so far from France!”

“Alas!” said the other, with a deep sigh, “what land is now open to me, or whither shall I fly to? I took refuge in Brussels; well, what should I see one morning, but the tall shakos of your grenadiers coming up the steep street. I fled to Holland; you were there the day after. ‘Come,’ thought I, ‘he’s moving northwards; I’ll try the other extreme.’ So I started for the Swiss. Sacrebleu! the roll of your confounded drums resounded through every valley. I reached the banks of the Po; your troops were there the same evening. I pushed for Rome; they were preparing your quarters, which you occupied that night. Away, then, I start once more; I cross mountains and rivers and seas, and gain the desert at last. I thank my fortune that there are a thousand leagues between us; and here you are now. For pity’s sake, show me, on that map of the world, one little spot you don’t want to conquer, and let me live there in peace, and be sure never to meet you more.”

Bonaparte did not speak for some minutes, and it seemed as though he were intently considering the request of “L’Homme Rouge.”

“There,” said he at length, “there! You see that island in the great sea, with nothing near it; thou mayest go there.”

“How is it called?” said “L’Homme Rouge.”

“St. Helena,” said the general. “It is not very large; but I promise thee to be undisturbed there.”

“You ‘ll never come there, then? Is that a pledge?”

“Never; I promise it. At least, if I do, thou shalt be the master, and I the slave.”

“Enough! I go now. Adieu!” said the little man. And the same instant the sentinel felt his arm brushed by some one passing close beside him; and then all was silent in the tent once more.

“Thus, you see,” said the sergeant-major, “from that hour it was agreed on the Emperor should conquer the whole world, and leave that one little spot for ‘L’Homme Rouge.’ Parbleu! he might well spare him that much.”

“How big might it be, that island?” said an old grenadier, who listened with the deepest attention to the tale.

“Nothing to speak of; about the size of one battalion drawn up in square.”

“Pardieu! a small kingdom too!”

“Ah! it would not do for the Emperor,” said the sergeant-major, laughing, – an emotion the others joined in at once; and many a jest went round at the absurdity of such a thought.

I sat beside the watchfire, listening to the old campaigning stories, till one by one the speakers dropped off to sleep. The bronzed veteran and the boy conscript, the old soldier of the Sambre and the beardless youth, lay side by side: to some of these it was the last time they should slumber on earth. As the night wore on, the sounds became hushed in the camp, and through the thin frosty air I could hear from a long distance off the tramp of the patrols and the challenge of the reliefs as the outposts were visited. The Prussian sentries were quite close to our advanced posts, and when the wind came from that quarter, I often heard the voices as they exchanged their signals.

Through the entire night, officers came and went to and from the tent of the Emperor. To him, at least, it seemed no season of repose. At length, when nigh morning, wearied with watching and tired out with expectancy, I leaned my head on my knees, and dropped into a half-sleep. Some vague sense of disappointment at being forgotten by the Emperor, was the last thought I had as I fell off, and in its sadness it colored all my dreams. I remembered, with all the freshness of a recent event, the curse of the old hag on the morning I had quitted my home forever, – her prayer that bad luck should track me every step through life; and in the shadowy uncertainty of my sleeping thoughts I believed I was predestined to misfortune.

Almost every man has experienced the fact, that there are times in life when impressions, the slightest in their origin, will have an undue weight on the mind; when, as it were, the clay of our natures become softened, and we take the impress of passing events more easily. Some vague and shadowy conception – a doubt, a dream – is enough at moments like these to attain the whole force of a conviction; and it is wonderful with what ingenuity we wind to our purpose every circumstance around us, and what pains we take to increase the toils of our self-deception. It would be a curious thing to trace out how much of our good or evil fortune in life had its source in these superstitions; how far the frame of mind fashioned the events before it; and to what extent our hopes and fears were but the forerunners of destiny.

My sleeping thoughts were of the saddest; and when I awoke, I could not shake them off. A heavy, dense fog clothed every object around, through which only the watchfires were visible, as they flared with a yellow, hazy light of unnatural size. The position of these signals was only to mark the inequality of the ground: and I now could perceive that we occupied the crest of a long and steep hill, down the sides and at the bottom of which fires were also burning; while in front another mountain arose, whose summit for a great distance was marked out by watchfires. This I conjectured, from its extent and position, to be the Prussian line.

At the front of the Emperor’s quarters several led horses were standing, whose caparison bespoke them as belonging to the staff; and although not yet five o’clock, there was an appearance of movement which indicated preparation. The troops, however, were motionless; the dense columns covered the ground like a garment, and stirred not. As I stood, uncertain what course to take, I heard the noise of voices and the heavy tramp of many feet near, and on turning perceived it was the Emperor, who came forth from his tent, followed by several of his staff. A large fire blazed in front of his bivouac, which threw its long light on the group; where, even in a fleeting glance, I recognized General Gazan, and Nansouty, the commander of the Cuirassiers of the Guard.

“What hour is it?” said the Emperor to Duroc, who stood near him.

“Almost five o’clock, Sire.”

“It is darker than it was an hour ago. Maison, where is Bernadotte by this? – at Domberg, think you?”

“Not yet, Sire; he is no laggard if he reach it in three hours hence.”

“Ney would have been there now,” was the quick reply of Napoleon. “Come, gentlemen, into the saddle, and let us move towards the front. Gazan, put your division under arms.”

The general waited not a second bidding, but wheeled his horse suddenly round, and followed by his aide-decamp, rode at full speed down the mountain.

“There is the first streak of day,” said the Emperor, pointing to a faint gray light above the distant forest; “it breaks like Austerlitz.”

“May it set as gloriously!” said old Nansouty, in his deep low voice.

“And it will,” said Napoleon. “What sayest thou, grognard?” continued he, turning with an affected severity of manner to the grenadier who stood sentinel on the spot, and who, with a French soldier’s easy indifference, leaned on the cross of his musket to listen to the conversation; “what sayest thou? Art eager to be made corporal?”

“Parbleu!” growled out the rough soldier, “the grade is little to boast of; were I even a general of division, there might be something to hope for.”

“What then?” said Napoleon, sharply, “what then?”

“King of Prussia, to be sure; thou ‘lt give away the title before this hour to-morrow.”

The Emperor laughed aloud at the conceit. Its flattery had a charm for him no courtier’s well-turned compliment could vie with; and I could hear him still continuing to enjoy it as he rode slowly forward and disappeared in the gloom.

CHAPTER XXII. JENA AND AUERSTÄDT

“He has forgotten me!” said I, half aloud, as I watched the retiring figures of the Emperor and his staff till they were concealed by the mist; “he has forgotten me! Now to find out my brigade. A great battle is before us, and there may still be a way to refresh his memory.” With such thoughts I set forward in the direction of the picket-fires, full sure that I should meet some skirmishers of our cavalry there.

As I went, the drums were beating towards the distant left, and gradually the sounds crept nearer and nearer, as the infantry battalions began to form and collect their stragglers. A dense fog seemed to shut out the dawn, and with a thin and misty rain, the heavy vapor settled down upon the earth, wrapping all things in a darkness deep as night itself. From none could I learn any intelligence of the cavalry quarter, nor had any of those I questioned seen horsemen pass near them.

“The voltigeurs in the valley yonder may perhaps tell you something,” said an officer to me, pointing to some fires in a deep glen beneath us. And thither I now bent my steps.

The dull rolling of the drums gradually swelled into one continued roar, through which the clank of steel and the tremulous tramp of marching columns could be heard. Spirit-stirring echoes were they, these awakening sounds of coming conflict! and how they nerved my heart, and set it bounding again with a soldier’s ardor! As I descended the hill, the noise became gradually fainter, till at length I found myself in a narrow ravine, still and silent as the grave itself. The transition was so sudden and unexpected, that for a moment I felt a sense of loneliness and depression; and the thought struck me, “What if I have pushed on too far? Can it be that I have passed our lines? But the officer spoke of the voltigeurs in front; I had seen the fires myself; there could be no doubt about it.” I now increased my speed, and in less than half an hour gained a spot where the ground became more open and extended in front, and not more than a few hundred paces in advance were the watchfires; and as I looked I heard the swell of a number of voices singing in chorus on different sides of me. The effect was most singular, for the sounds came from various quarters at the same instant, and, as they all chanted the same air, the refrain rang out and filled the valley; beating time with their feet, they stepped to the tune, and formed themselves to the melody, as though it were the band of the regiment. I had often heard that this was a voltigeur habit, but never was witness to it before. The air was one well known in that suburb of Paris whence the wildest and most reckless of our soldiers came, and which they all joined in celebrating in this rude verse: —

As they came to the conclusion of this song, they kept up the air without words, imitating by their voices the roll of the drum in marching time. Joining the first party I came up with, I asked the officer in what direction of the field I should find the cuirassier brigade.

“That I can’t tell you, Comrade,” said he. “No cavalry have appeared in our neighborhood, nor are they likely; for all the ground is cut up and intersected so much they could not act. But our maître d’armes is the fellow to tell you. Halloo, François! come up here for a moment.”

Before I could ask whether this was not my old antagonist at Elchingen, the individual himself appeared.

“Eh, what?” cried he, as he lifted a piece of firewood from the ground, and stared me in the face by its light. “Not my friend Burke, eh? By Jove! so it is.”

Our cordial greetings being over, I asked Maître François if he could give me any intelligence of D’Auvergne’s division, or put me in the way to reach them.

“They’re some miles off by this time,” said he, coolly. “When I was below the Plateau de Jena last night, that brigade you speak of got their orders to push forward to Auerstadt, to support Davoust’s infantry. I mind it well, for they were sorely tired, and had just picketed their horses, when the orderly came down with the despatch.”

“And where does Auerstadt lie?”

“About four leagues to the other side of that tall mountain yonder.”

“What, then, shall I do? I am dismounted, to begin with.”

“And if you were not, if you had the best horse in the whole brigade, what would it serve you now, except to pass the day riding between two battle-fields, and see nothing of either? for we shall have hot work here, depend upon it. No, no; stay with us. Be a voltigeur for to-day, and we ‘ll show you something you ‘ll not see from your bearskin saddle.”

“But I shall be in a sad scrape on account of my absence.”

“Never mind that; the man that takes his turn with the voltigeurs of the Twenty-second won’t be suspected of skulking. And here comes the major; report yourself to him at once.”

Without waiting for any reply, Maître Francois accosted the officer in question, and in a very few words explained my position.

“Nothing could come better timed,” said the major. “One of ours has been sent with despatches to the rear, and we may not see him for some hours. Again, a light cavalryman must know how to skirmish, and we ‘ll try your skill that way. Come along with me.”

“To our next meeting, then,” cried Francois, as I hurried on after the major; whilst once more the voltigeur ranks burst forth in full chorus, and the merry sounds filled the valley.

I followed the major down a somewhat steep and rugged path, at the foot of which, and concealed by a low copse-wood, was a party consisting of two companies of the regiment, who formed the most advanced pickets, and were destined to exchange the first shots with the enemy.

Before us lay a defile, partly overgrown with trees on either side, which ascended by a gradual slope to the foot of the hill on which the Prussian infantry was stationed, and whose lines were tracked out by a long train of watch-fires. A farmhouse and its out-buildings occupied the side of the hill about half-way up; and this was garrisoned by the enemy, and defended by two guns in position in the defile. To surprise the post and hold it until the main columns came up, was the object of the voltigeur attack; and for this purpose small bodies of men were assembling secretly and stealthily under cover of the brushwood, to burst forth on the word being given.

There was something which surprised me not a little in the way all these movements were effected. Officers and men were mixed up, as it seemed, in perfect confusion; not approaching in regular order, or taking up a position like disciplined troops, they came in twos and threes, crouching and creeping, and suddenly concealing themselves at every opportunity of cover the ground afforded.

Their noiseless and cautious gestures brought to my mind all that I had ever read of Indian warfare; and in their eager faces, and quick, piercing looks, I thought I could recognize the very traits of the red men. The commands were given by signals; and so rapidly interchanged were they from party to party, that the different groups seemed to move forward by one impulse, though the officer who led them was full a mile distant from where we were.