‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘accused me of being pessimistic. So I am. This is a desperate adventure, but that does not mean it should not be undertaken. But we must enter upon it in no light-hearted spirit. We must look for no glorious or dramatic successes. It will be inglorious, long, and hard. It will mean shooting French soldiers from behind a tree and then running away. Crawling up in the night to knife a sentry. Burning a bridge, cutting the throats of a few draught horses – those will be our great victories.’
He wanted to say, ‘those will be our Marengos and our Jenas’, but he could not mention Bonaparte victories to a Bourbon gathering. He raked back in his memory for Bourbon victories.
‘Those will be our Steinkerks and our Fontenoys,’ he went on. To describe the technique of guerrilla warfare in a few sentences to people absolutely ignorant of the subject was not easy. ‘The Lieutenant-General for the King in the Nivernais will be a hunted fugitive. He will sleep among rocks, eat his meat raw lest a fire should betray him. Only by being reconciled to measures of this sort can success be won in the end.’
‘I am ready to do those things,’ said the Count, ‘to my last breath.’
The alternative was exile until his death, Hornblower knew.
‘I never doubted that I could rely on the loyalty of the Ladons,’ said the Duchess. ‘Your commission will be ready immediately, M. le Comte. You will exercise all royal power in the Nivernais.’
‘What does Your Royal Highness intend to do in person?’ asked Hornblower.
‘I must go on to Bordeaux, to rally Gascony.’
It was probably the best course of action – the wider spread the movement the greater Bonaparte’s embarrassment. Marie could accompany the Duchess, too, and then if the enterprise ended in complete disaster escape would be possible by sea.
‘And you, milord?’ asked the Duchess.
All eyes were upon him, but for once he was not conscious of it. It was an entirely personal decision that he had to make. He was a distinguished naval officer; let him make his way to England and the command of a squadron of ships of the line was his for certain. The vast fleets would range the seas again, and he would play a major part in directing them; a few years of war would see him an admiral with a whole fleet, the man upon whom the welfare of England would depend. And if he stayed here the best he could hope for was the life of a hunted fugitive at the head of a ragged and starving brigand band; at worst a rope and a tree. Perhaps it was his duty to save himself and his talents for England, but England had able naval officers by the score, while he had the advantage of knowing much about France and the French, and even of being known to them. But all these arguments were beside the point. He would not – could not – start a little feeble squib of a rebellion here and then run away and leave his friends to bear the brunt of failure.
‘I will stay with M. le Comte,’ he said. ‘Provided that Your Royal Highness and he approve of such a course. I hope I will be of assistance.’
‘Certainly,’ said the Duchess.
Hornblower caught Marie’s eye, and a horrid doubt suddenly assailed him.
‘Madame,’ he said, addressing her, ‘you will accompany Her Royal Highness, I presume?’
‘No,’ said Marie. ‘You will need every man, and I am as useful as a man. I know every ford and bridle-path round here. I stay with M. le Comte too.’
‘But Marie—’ said the Count.
Hornblower made no protest at all. He knew he might as well protest about the fall of an elm-tree branch or a change in the direction of the wind. He seemed to recognise destiny – the utterly inevitable – in all this. And one glance at Marie’s face silenced the Count’s expostulations.
‘Very well, said the Duchess.
She looked round at them; it was time for the rebellion to begin in earnest. Hornblower put aside his personal feelings. There was a war to be fought; war with all its problems of space and time and psychology. He set himself, almost without willing it, to pick up the tangled threads. Above the desk where the Prefect had sat to execute instructions from the Paris Government was a large-scale map of the Department. On the other walls hung even larger-scale maps of the sub-prefectures. He looked over at them. Roads, rivers, forests. Goodbye to England.
‘The first important thing to know,’ he began, ‘is where the nearest regular troops are stationed.’
The campaign of the Upper Loire was begun.
XIX
The forest track which they were following met another at right angles. It was frightfully hot even here in the shade of the pines, thunderstorm weather. Hornblower’s feet were badly blistered, and he was hobbling along with difficulty even on the soft pine-needle mould underfoot. There was no wind to call forth any sound from the trees; everything was silent. Even the hoofs of the horses made no sound – the three pack-horses that carried food and ammunition, the two horses carrying wounded men, and the one horse that carried His Excellency the King’s Lieutenant-General for the Nivernais. Twenty men and two women were shuffling along the trail with Hornblower, the main body of His Most Christian Majesty’s army. There was an advance guard of five under Brown out ahead, a rearguard of five far behind.
Where the tracks crossed a man was waiting for them, a connecting file that Brown, like a prudent officer, had left behind so as to leave the main body in no doubt about which track he was following; as they came up he turned and pointed to something hanging beside the trail – something grey and white. It was the dead body of a man, clothed in peasant’s dress, hanging by his neck from a pine-tree limb; the white colour was a large placard fastened to his chest.
‘Frenchmen of the Nivernais!’ it said. ‘With my arrival at the head of a large body of troops all foolish attempts to resist the Government of our august Emperor Napoleon must cease forthwith. It is gratifying to me to find that so poor a reception has been given to the Count de Graçay’s insane attempt to oppose the Emperor, recalled to his throne by the supplication and suffrages of forty million of his loyal subjects. Yet some unfortunate people have been deluded into taking up arms.
‘Know, therefore, I am instructed by the clemency of His Imperial Majesty to proclaim that any Frenchman, with the exceptions mentioned below, who hands in his arms and makes personal surrender to any troops under my command before fifteen days from the date of this proclamation will receive amnesty and pardon. He will be free to return to his farm, to his shop, to the bosom of his family.
‘Anyone remaining in arms will receive sentence of death, to be carried out immediately.
‘Any village offering shelter to the rebels will be burned to the ground, and its leading inhabitants shot.
‘Any person giving assistance to the rebels, whether by acting as guide or by giving them information, will be shot.
‘Exceptions to the amnesty. The above-named Count de Graçay. His daughter-in-law, known as the Vicomtesse de Graçay. With them are included the Englishman, known as Lord Hornblower, who is required to pay for a life of outrage and crime.
‘Signed,
EMMANUEL CLAUSEN, Count, General of Division.
June 6th, 1815.’
The Count looked up at the blackened face of the corpse.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Paul-Marie of the mill, sir,’ said the man who had waited for them.
‘Poor Paul-Marie!’
‘So they have crossed this track already,’ said Hornblower. ‘We’re round behind them.’
Somebody reached up a hand to the corpse, perhaps to tear off the placard.
‘Stop!’ said Hornblower, just in time. ‘They must not know that we have come this way.’
‘For the same reason we must leave the poor devil unburied,’ said the Count.
‘We must keep marching,’ said Hornblower. ‘Once over the ford and we shall have time to take breath.’
He looked round at his pitiful little army. Some of them, at the moment of halting, had sunk to the ground. Some were leaning on their muskets, and
some were spelling out the placard that hung on the breast of the dead Paul-Marie. It was not the first copy of it they had seen.
‘Come on, my children,’ said the Count.
The old man’s face was white with weariness, and he drooped in his saddle; the wretched horse he rode was hardly in better condition, moving forward reluctantly with hanging head at the prod of the spurs. Shambling, hungry, and ragged, the others followed him, most of them looking up at the dead Paul-Marie as they passed. Hornblower noticed some who lingered, and dropped back to be with them; he had pistols in his belt. Deserters, as well as being a loss of strength, would give information of their intention to cross the ford. Clausen had scored a distinct point with his offer of amnesty, for there were many in the band – Hornblower could list in his mind a number of them – who must already be wondering whether it was worth going on with the struggle. Men with nothing save certain death ahead of them fight far harder in a losing battle than those with a chance to surrender, and his followers must be thinking regretfully of the rapid passing of the fifteen days allowed them in the proclamation. This was June 18th – Sunday, June 18th, 1815. He had to keep his men together for three more days to make sure that they would fight on with their necks at stake.
His blistered feet were causing him agony, for the short pause beside Paul-Marie’s hanging body had brought back the life into them, and he would have to walk on them for some distance farther before they would be numb again. He had to drive himself to quicken his stride to catch up Marie, walking in the middle of the group with a musket slung across her back and Annette beside her. Marie had cut off her masses of hair – sawed them off with a knife after her first night as a guerrilla soldier – and the ends hung irregularly round her face, which was wet with sweat and streaked with dirt. But both she and Annette were in far better physical condition than Hornblower, stepping out with unblistered feet and still with a certain freedom of stride as compared with Hornblower’s leg-weary stagger. They were ten and fifteen years younger than he.
‘Why not leave Pierre behind and take his horse, ’Oratio?’ asked Marie.
‘No’ said Hornblower.
‘He will die anyway,’ argued Marie. ‘That wound will gangrene.’
‘Bad for the other men to leave him here to die alone in the forest,’ said Hornblower. ‘Besides, Clausen might find him before he died and find out from him what we intend to do.’
‘Kill him and bury him, then,’ said Marie.
Women when they go to war are fiercer than men and inclined to carry the logic of war to still greater logical extremes. This was the tender, gentle Marie, the kind and understanding, who had wept for love of him.
‘No,’ said Hornblower again. ‘We’ll capture some more horses soon.’
‘Providing we do,’ said Marie.
It was hard to keep horses alive in these conditions; they died or went lame while men still lived and marched. Only two weeks had passed since Clausen, marching down from Briare, had forced them to evacuate Nevers, and in the fierce man-hunts that had followed horses had died in dozens. Clausen must be an active and energetic officer; his columns had marched hotfoot after them in unceasing pursuit. Only night-march after night-march, stratagems and cunning, had kept them out of his clutches. Twice there had been fierce little rearguard actions; once they had ambushed a troop of pursuing Hussars – Hornblower remembered the gaily uniformed soldiers tumbling from their saddles as the volley blazed from the roadside – and now here they were with half their strength gone already, marching by day, having marched the night before, to cross the rear of one of Clausen’s circling columns. Marie knew of a dangerous and little-known ford across the Loire ahead. Once over that they could rest for a day in the forest of Runes before showing themselves in the valley of the Allier and causing fresh turmoil there. Clausen would be after them at once, but that was far enough to look ahead; the next move would depend on the new circumstances.
Active and energetic Clausen certainly was – he must have learned about fighting guerrillas in Spain. But he had a considerable force to back him up; Hornblower knew of the 14th Leger and the 40th Ligne – the 14th Light Infantry and the 40th of the Line – and there was another regiment with which he had not yet come into contact, and at least one squadron of the 10th Hussars. Nine battalions or more – six or seven thousand men – all chasing his ragged thirty. He was doing his duty, for those seven thousand men could be better employed on the Belgian frontier, where undoubtedly some action was stirring. And if he could only keep up the struggle he could wear down even those seven thousand men, wear out their boots and wear down their spirits. He could! Hornblower gritted his teeth and marched on; his feet were numb again now and had ceased to pain him. Only the terrible weariness in his legs distressed him now.
He became aware of a low muttering roar in the distance.
‘Guns?’ he asked, a little puzzled.
‘Thunder,’ said Marie.
They had chattered so light-heartedly once; had walked carefree and gay, hand in hand. It hardly seemed as if it were they two who had walked like that, in that breathing space of peace before Bonaparte returned from Elba. Hornblower was too fatigued to love now. The thunder muttered again; the heat was more oppressive. Inside his clothes Hornblower could feel the prickliness of his sweat. He was thirsty, too, but his thirst was not as severe as his physical weariness. In the forest it was growing dark, not with the approach of evening, which was still far off, but with the massing of stormclouds overhead. Somebody close behind him groaned, and Hornblower made himself look round and grin.
‘Who’s that lowing like a cow?’ he asked. ‘Old Father Fermiac? Five years younger than me, and they call him Father Fermiac and he lows like a cow! Cheer up, Father. Maybe we’ll find a bull for you the other side of the Loire.’
That raised a cackle of laughter – some of it pure hysteria, some of it amusement at his not-quite-perfect French, some of it roused by the incongruity of a great English lord cracking jokes with French peasants. The thunder crashed almost overhead, and they could hear the rain beginning to patter on the trees. A few drops found their way down on their sweating faces.
‘Here comes the rain,’ said someone.
‘I’ve had water underfoot for the past two days,’ said Hornblower. ‘You ought to see my blisters. Even the good Jesus never walked on as much water as I have.’
The daring blasphemy raised another cackle, got the men along for another hundred yards. The heavens were opening overhead, and the rain was falling in cataracts. Hornblower dropped back to the pack-horses, to make sure that the leather covers were securely over the panniers. He had two thousand rounds of musket ammunition there which he did not want spoiled – it would be harder to replace than food or even shoe-leather. They plodded on, in the semi-darkness, their clothes growing heavier with the rain soaking into them. The earth beneath their feet grew spongy and soggy, while the storm showed no sign of diminishing. The thunder still roared and the lightning flashed, lighting up the dark spaces under the trees.
‘How much farther?’ asked Hornblower of Marie.
‘Two leagues and a half, perhaps.’
Three hours more of marching; it would be almost dark, if not quite, by the time they arrived.
‘This rain will deepen the ford,’ said Marie, sounding the first note of a new anxiety.
‘My God!’ said Hornblower before he could check himself.
There were eighteen half-battalion columns scattered in pursuit of them, and he was threading his way through the midst of them. He was risking almost everything on being able to cross the river at this unexpected point, which would throw off pursuit for a time at least. Their danger would be extreme if they were unable to pass. This was a rocky country in general, with a shallow topsoil, among the headwaters of the great river, and rain would affect the level of the water after only a short interval. He turned on his weary legs to urge the men to lengthen their stride. That was something he had to do every few min
utes during the rest of that dreadful march, as darkness closed in prematurely about them, as the rain roared down upon them incessantly, as the led horses stumbled and plunged and the two wounded men groaned in agony. The Count rode without a word, bowed forward in the saddle with the water streaming from him. He was in the last stages of exhaustion, Hornblower knew.
Someone ahead challenged through the rain and dark; it was a man sent back from Brown’s advanced guard. Brown had reached the edge of the forest, and the river lay a short distance ahead across the rocky flood plain. They all halted together under the last of the trees while scouts moved cautiously forward to discover if this lonely stretch of river bank were patrolled – there could not be too many precautions taken, even though any self-respecting sentry would sneak away to find shelter on a night like this.
‘The river sounds loud,’ said Marie. They could hear it even through the noise of the rain where they lay in the wet mud, and Hornblower dared not think what that implied.
Brown’s messenger came back; he had explored the river bank and found no sign of the enemy, as was to be expected. Clausen’s division would be sufficiently dispersed guarding likely places, let alone the unlikely ones. They got to their feet, Hornblower feeling new agony as his weight came again on his blisters. He could hardly step at first, and his legs were stiff and weary as well and hardly obeyed his wishes. The Count was able to mount his horse, but the poor brute seemed as leg weary as Hornblower himself. It was a sorry party that limped and hobbled and stumbled forward in the gathering darkness. The thunder had long ceased, but the rain continued to fall steadily, with every promise of going on through the night.
The turbulent surface of the river gleamed in the half-light ahead of them.