Gerard had to tear the frozen rag away from the lock of his musket with his knife to check and prime it. The oil-saturated cloth was stiff as wood with the cold, just like his own body. Luckily, the flash-hole was clear and the lock still sparked well enough. He closed the pan after filling it with fresh powder, then looked up at the steely sky. At least it wasn’t raining. He’d have to walk then, a hard thing to ask when a man had no toes.
The snow had stopped yesterday, and now was trampled flat by the passing French columns, hard as rock and slippery. The horses and mules, what were left anyway, had enough difficulties with keeping upright from lack of food, as did the men. Still, it was better than some weeks ago, when the temperature was higher and autumn rains had turned the landscape to a sea of mud. Whole trains of supply wagons and guns had been left behind, submerged in muck up to the barrels and axels.
Then the cold had come down from the north, with waves of sleet and finally snow, freezing the ground solid. The troops could walk, as long as they could thaw occasionally by a fire, though they exchanged trench foot for frostbite, and lost skin on iron wheel rims as their few gloves rotted. It wasn’t long before their trousers were stained with dysentery from improperly cooked rations, while others died trying to eat unthawed food. Their still gray forms were like mannequins tossed aside, faces glued to the ground by icicles of vomit or clotted with snow, bandages frozen and brown, limbs blackened or missing altogether. None had coats or boots, having been stripped by more needy soldiers before their bodies had cooled. The nude ones had been robbed by local serfs. Cest le guerre, that’s war, some pompous fop would say back in Paris. But then, there were always those who never saw the field in any war.
If this could be called war. It was more like leprosy, eating away bits and pieces of a once ‘Grande Armee’. Russia in November was a hungry wolf, and, this particular year, the beast was more ravenous than usual. First, enough rain to drown cattle and men by the hundred in floods or ditches, then snow up to their necks. The Russian army itself was as nothing, fought off in one big battle after another, but at a cost that added to the season’s tally nonetheless.
Nearly 600,000 had left Eastern Europe with Bonaparte, enjoying early successes in the fields of Poland and the Ukraine. They had entered the Russian capital in triumph, but Napoleon waited too long in Moscow, thinking the Czar would acquiesce to his surrender demand. For the first time in the Emperor’s career, the capture of a key city meant nothing to his supposedly vanquished enemy. The summer and fall dragged on, while the Czar’s White Armies stayed out of range and the Grand Army sat frustrated. Even the burning of the city, whether accidental or deliberate, did little but rile the populace, an increasingly troublesome guerrilla war now cutting off French supplies and communications. They’d had no choice but to finally leave.
That had been some ages ago. They were not even halfway to the Polish frontier by now, and a fifth of the army was gone. The Persians, at least, had gotten out before winter.
Now, Gerard hefted his musket, hoping no moisture from his hands had got in the pan to deaden the powder. The captain who had ridden down the column, warning of the detected presence of an enemy force somewhere ahead, had seemed more than usually agitated. Raids were becoming common, with Cossacks swooping in to kill a dozen or so, then riding away like bandits with whatever they could carry. Their furry horses, raised and fed wild on the farm-field stubble and snow-buried grass of the Steppes, shod with leather and felt snow shoes, seemed immune to the hardships of winter. The French animals, most now confiscated from local farms as the originals had rapidly died from lack of grain or hay, were barely managing to keep up the sporadic march. As many soldiers had, some just sat down and died, stranding men and wagons in the middle of the road as the rest crawled around them…
The irregular popping of musketry toward the front of the column brought him out of his reverie. Shouts and screams followed, then a dark mass appeared out in the white-blanketed fields beside the road. Fur-coated infantry, in line and with bayonets fixed. Merde!
White smoke blossomed in front of the Russians, a shouted order from a sword-wielding officer triggering the volley. Angry bees of lead zipped around the Frenchmen, one ball clipping the tail of a mule ahead of them, sending it braying from the track. So much for that cart, he thought, watching men spilling off in every direction or being run over. Gerard felt a tug through his coat as he heard a wooden thud, another thumb-sized ball having punched a hole near his knee and into the caisson’s bench. The driver startled, heaving back on the reins and stopping the horse-team.
They never even saw the riders coming from behind.
The first thing Gerard knew of the ambush, an arrow had struck the gunner and protruded mid-chest, rolling him off the back of the ammunition cart and under the gun carriage behind. There was a sickening crunch as the cannon backed over him. Another arrow sent the second gunner off his seat into a struggling heap on the road. Gerard swung his musket behind him. Just in time, it turned out.
The Cossack was swinging his saber for a head-strike when he received the blast at spitting range, bowling him off his charger. The horse kept on going past the caisson at a gallop, the man skidding to a stop some yards on, face down on the roadway. Gerard noticed the Czar's issue wool coat, and the Mongol-style short bow that had clattered to the ground next to his sword. Damned barbarian, he thought as he grabbed for the cart’s dropped reins. No time for that now, have to get control of this thing before it tips over!
Other riders had already swept past the wagons and squads ahead, knocking soldiers over or scattering them before they could face about. A general melee broke loose wherever bayonet could counter saber, but most had little warning. Gerard couldn’t see much of the fight, but he felt a vicarious sense of divine revenge when he heard a distant bugle sounding. The Cossacks heard it too, and began to retreat back through the fields for the trees beyond. Soon, the white-and-red pennants of Polish Lancers, were streaming past the column, their pistols barking like pursuing hounds as they chased the Russians. The 1st Regiment of Lighthorse was one outfit these barbarians still respected, knowing they would show no more mercy than the Cossacks had in their own depredations in Poland. There were a few skirmishes out on the flat snow as one or two slower riders were caught up, and then nothing but silence.
Mere minutes since the first warning, and the attack was over. Officers rode back and forth along the column, steadying the troops and getting wagons back into formation. Most of the enemy riders had struck the line of wagons farther forward, sparing Gerard and those behind further danger. Still, he was relieved when the column fitfully started rolling again.
The caisson rolled past a number of bodies by the side of the road, most downed by arrow and sword instead of gunfire, some still writhing in pain as their lives drained onto the track. Their shed blood was already freezing into the rutted ice. Few stayed behind to tend their last moments, either out of fear or fatigue. Gerard stopped briefly to allow a couple of unwounded troopers to take seat beside him, then moved on.
This war grew ever stranger, Gerard thought, as if savages from a dark past had risen to tear civilized men from their affected manners. What was next, clubs and rocks? The grenadier shook his head sadly, speculating as to how far home was, and wondering how many of his comrades would see it. He remembered how proud he’d been in 1809 when General Dorsenne had his third horse killed under him by cannon fire. His commander had spat “Bunglers!” at the opposing Austrians, dusted himself off and calmly mounted his fourth horse in the face of the bombardment, to the cheers of his men…
Cold and fatigue were making his mind wander. Few of those comrades now remained. Snow was beginning to fall once more, and he pulled his coat’s collar higher, daydreaming of a green-surrounded farmstead in Alsace. He hoped Father had remembered to do the evening milking, as he was so forgetful these days since Mother had gone…
