the Carrousel, and then one of the men close by Napoleon thrust out his arm.
‘Here they come!’
Chapter 6
The royalists spilled out of the avenue leading from the Rue Saint-Honore and flowed into the Carrousel. At the head of the mob came a white-coated officer in a gaudy feathered hat. He was clutching a standard from which the sodden Bourbon colours hung limply. Behind him were a score of drummer boys, beating out a deafening rhythm. The men following them made no attempt at holding a formation as they strode boldly across the square towards the palace. The blue-coated militiamen were armed with muskets, as were many more of the royalist volunteers. The rest of the mob were armed with staves, axes, clubs and knives.Their cheering reached a climax now that their enemies were in sight.
Napoleon stood up and drew his sword, raising it high above his head. ‘Prepare to fire!’
On either side the muskets came up, thumbed back to full cock, and the defenders squinted down the long length of their barrels towards the dense mass of rebels advancing towards them. The royalists made no attempt to stand in line and fire a volley. All along the front of the crowd there was a constant stabbing of flames and puffs of smoke as they fired freely. There was no chance to reload as those behind pressed the first rank on.
‘Hold your fire!’ Napoleon bellowed, keeping his arm erect. On either side musket balls whipped through the air, or splintered the wooden material in the barricade with sudden loud crashes. Close by, a young grenadier’s head snapped back in a welter of blood that spattered across Napoleon’s cheek as the body tumbled back on to the cobbles.
‘Hold steady!’ Junot shouted from nearby.
The crowd surged forward, the white-coated officer waving the banner from side to side to try to loosen its waterlogged folds and inspire his men.They were now close enough for Napoleon to see that he was an older man with a powdered wig beneath his bicorn hat.
When they were a scant fifty paces from the palace gate, Napoleon swept his sword arm down and roared out the command. ‘OPEN FIRE!’
As the muskets spurted flame and smoke in a rolling volley the gun crews lowered their portfires on to the firing tubes and the cannon roared out, belching fire and great plumes of acrid smoke as they discharged a torrent of grapeshot into the mob. At once the infantry and the gun crews hurried to reload their weapons.
For a moment all sight of the rebels was lost in a thick bank of rolling gunpowder smoke. Then as the breeze dispersed it Napoleon could see the terrible impact of that first volley. The four cannon had cleared great lanes into the mob and left scores of dead and injured sprawled on the ground, and all along the front of the crowd many more of the rebels had been struck down by musket fire. Only one of the drummers was still beating his instrument. The others, like most of the crowd, stood aghast at the devastation around them. The cheering had died in their throats and they stopped dead. As the cries and screams of the wounded filled the air the spell was broken and the white- coated officer thrust his banner above his head.
‘Charge! For France and the monarchy!’
He broke into a run, and the braver souls in the crowd surged forward after him, heading straight towards the barricaded gate, and Napoleon beyond. The two officers’ eyes met for an instant and then Napoleon turned to give a fresh order to his men. ‘Fire at will!’
The defenders fired on the crowd in a long, rolling crackle of shots that echoed back from the surrounding buildings and then the cannon boomed out again, dashing swaths of men to the ground. Miraculously the royalist officer still lived, and he paused at the barricade to plant his banner before he drew his sword and swept it overhead to rally his nearest men.
‘Come on! One charge and the palace is ours!’
Junot calmly drew and cocked his pistol, stepped up to the barricade, thrust the weapon towards the man’s chest, and fired. The royalist fell back, a livid red stain spreading across his white coat. His sword clattered to the ground as the standard slipped and fell into Junot’s grasp. At once he snatched it and threw it on to the ground a short distance behind the barricade.
‘First blood to us, and one colour already taken,’ he called out to Napoleon.
But Napoleon’s attention was fixed on the enemy. He was standing with the nearest cannon directing the crew to aim to the left, where a section of the mob, having managed to escape the earlier blasts of grapeshot, was edging towards the barricade.The sergeant in charge of the gun stepped back and fired the weapon. The concussion from the blast punched into Napoleon’s ears as the cone of deadly lead shot cut the leading ranks to bloody shreds. All the time the infantry on either side of Napoleon loaded and fired their muskets into the mob at point-blank range, cutting the rebels down. Slowly, the mob stopped moving forward. A few amongst them still had the presence of mind to fire back, and some of them just waved their weapons and screamed with fury or tried to sound defiant as they cried their royalist slogans. But already scores of them were falling back, wide-eyed with horror at the slaughter and terrified of sharing the fate of the dead and mangled littering the cobbles of the Carrousel. The panic spread through the crowd like a wind rippling across a field of wheat and then they were all in retreat, more falling all the time as Napoleon’s men continued to fire after them.
He waited until only a handful of the rebels were left, huddled down behind the wagons in the square, before he gave the order to cease fire.The last patches of smoke cleared and revealed to the defenders the full scale of the destruction they had caused. The ground in front of the palace was covered with the still forms of the dead and the writhing bodies of the injured. Blood pooled around them, and lay splashed over clothes and flesh. Thin cries of agony and low moans rose from the carnage.
‘Good God, what have we done?’ muttered one of the gunners.
‘Our duty,’ Napoleon responded curtly.‘And when they come back for more we must do it all over again. And again, until we break their will to continue this treachery. Now then, reload the cannon and stand by.’
The gunner nodded, still dazed by the awful scene stretching across the square, but carried out his orders as efficiently as if he were on an exercise. Napoleon rose up and called out to the rest of his command.
‘Reload!’
The sound of ramrods rattling in the musket barrels briefly interrupted the cries of the injured and then all was still once more along the barricade in front of the palace. A quick glance either side showed that only five of his men were down, with a handful of wounded who were being helped inside the palace to the dressing station in the grand entrance hall. Napoleon quietly summoned Junot.
‘Go to Barras.Tell him that we’ve repulsed the first attack. My guess is they’ll try one of the other strongpoints next. Barras is to send runners to the other commanders to let them know we’ve beaten off the first attack. That should help to stiffen their resolve.’
Junot ran across the courtyard and disappeared into the palace, and Napoleon settled down to wait for the enemy to make their next move. The royalists wasted little time, and half an hour later there was a sudden burst of musket fire from the direction of the Riding School, punctuated by the dull blasts of cannon. For a moment the soldiers around Napoleon turned to face the noise with anxious expressions. The sounds of the assault soon faded away with a last crash of cannon fire that told them the defenders still held their position.
A few moments later Junot came hurrying back to Napoleon.
‘They’re coming back this way! Up the Rue Saint-Honore.’
Napoleon thought for a moment, pulling at his ear lobe. The royalists had been driven back twice already, and much of the fight must have been beaten out of them. Very well, this attack must be the last. This was the decisive moment, and when they broke they had to be pursued without mercy so that the rebellion would be utterly crushed.
Napoleon snapped an order to Junot. ‘Find Major Murat. I want him and his men mounted and ready in the courtyard, out of sight of the barricades.They are to wait there for my order to move. Once they have the order they are to clear the Carrousel and pursue the enemy as far as they can. They are to take no prisoners and show no mercy to those traitors. Make sure he understands it. I want that mob out there to be in no doubt about the cost of defying the government.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Junot nodded, then ventured a question.‘And what if we don’t hold them back? What are the major’s orders then?’
Napoleon shook his head. ‘It won’t come to that . . . But, if it does, then Murat is to cover our withdrawal to
