along the sides of a valley at the bottom of which flowed a river, the Borysthen. On the left bank stood the old town, surrounded by a red-brick wall with whitewashed battlements. These fortifications were twenty-four feet high, eighteen feet wide and included twenty-nine towers. On the other bank the dwellings were more recent and unfortified.
When the 84th entered the city, a deathly silence hung over it. Whole areas had been reduced to ashes. The column progressed through the smoking rubble among which lay bodies that were charred, shrunken and twisted like vines. In the streets strewn with wreckage and corpses, blood was mingled with mud. Here, a shell had torn a dozen or so Russian grenadiers to shreds. Death had taken them by surprise: they still had their muskets slung across their chests. There, a large shack had been the scene of fighting before collapsing in flames, killing the combatants on each side indiscriminately. No sooner had a fire been put out than fighting flared up again amongst the rubble. The fires had been so extensive that they had covered everything with a fine layer of dust, a sort of grey, warm shroud that disintegrated when touched.
Most of the inhabitants had fled with the Russian troops, but some had remained or were coming back. They were looking for relatives, begging for help in removing huge piles of wreckage, recovering anything that had escaped destruction. Although the dead were being tossed into carts and mass graves were being dug everywhere, some of the bodies had begun to decay and the air was contaminated by a vile, clinging odour. You had to press your sleeve against your nostrils to block out the smell of death. Hunger and confusion had unhinged the minds of most of the soldiers who were indulging in a frenzy of looting. They were storming grocers’ and butchers’ shops – or at least what was left of them – and smashing in the doors of houses that had withstood the flames with the aid of charred timbers.
The 84th reached the area allotted to it and was given permission to seek out supplies. Colonel Pegot reminded everyone that ill treatment of civilians or prisoners, theft, rape or the refusal to obey gendarmes would result in severe punishment, which often meant death. No sooner had he finished speaking than his regiment vanished about their business.
Margont was marching in the company of Saber and Piquebois.
‘Why did our corps arrive after the battle?’ asked an outraged Saber. ‘We are incredibly badly led! What can Prince Eugene have been thinking of? There’s more of the Eugene than the Prince about that one!’
Neither Margont nor Piquebois replied. It was quite impossible to discuss this subject with Saber. Saber detested Prince Eugene, who, in his opinion, was the Viceroy not of Italy but of upstarts. The son of Alexandre and Josephine de Beauharnais, he found his life transformed when his mother had taken as her second husband a certain up-and-coming Bonaparte who quickly became known simply as Napoleon. Thus, in 1805, at the age of twenty-four he had been promoted Viceroy of Italy by his stepfather. Saber had already taken his revenge mentally many times on what he considered to be the ultimate betrayal. He frequently imagined himself – albeit in a few years’ time – receiving his marshal’s baton from the Emperor’s own hands and declaring loudly enough for Prince Eugene to hear: ‘I thank Your Majesty with all my heart. My mother will be overjoyed to learn of this appointment to which she has contributed so much … by educating me and helping to make me the man I am.’
The prince was not totally devoid of qualities as a military leader. Everyone acknowledged his courage at least. Or rather, almost everyone, because Saber could not be made to accept this indisputable fact. ‘Of course it’s disputable, because I dispute it! He’s just the stepson of the right person!’ he would say angrily. And he would draw an unfortunate parallel with the prince’s opera dancer, asserting that it was natural that someone who was so good at mimicking a real general should have fallen in love with a ‘stage Cleopatra’.
Two dogs suddenly leapt out of a narrow street and barked at the three officers.
‘Look – even the curs hate us now!’ fumed Piquebois.
Saber reached for his sword. ‘They’re as hungry as we are. It can’t be nice to be seriously wounded and have to contend with the likes of them.’
A little further on he picked up a Russian shako decorated with a brass grenade with three flames shooting up from it, symbolising an explosion. He prised the metal plaque off with the point of his knife and stuffed it into his pocket.
‘A souvenir. I have an infantryman’s grenade with one flame, a grenadier’s grenade with three flames, and the double-headed eagle of the soldiers of the Guard. A complete set.’
Piquebois merely shook his head, whereas a few years earlier he would have rolled up his sleeves for fisticuffs over this trophy.
‘You’re missing the cross of the national guards, which has the engraved inscription, “For Faith and the Tsar”.’
‘I don’t take account of the militiamen,’ Saber retorted contemptuously.
‘Well, you’ll see when you come across them whether they take account of you.’
Margont’s horse whinnied frequently. Swarms of insects were swirling around the carrion-choked city and clusters of flies were massing on the animal’s eyes as if they were lumps of caviar. The three Frenchmen went past an Orthodox church. The walls had been blackened by smoke but the gilded cupolas of the bell towers sparkled in the sun. It looked like a palace out of the Arabian nights. Families in tears crowded around the altars. A few heaps of rubble further on, they joined a handful of inhabitants in clearing away wreckage as they’d been told it was an inn famous for its larder. When they eventually cleared the trapdoor to the cellar it opened to reveal not smoked hams but a pale-eyed, terror-stricken young girl and her mother. The woman was clutching the child in her arms and could not be persuaded to let go of her. The man who had spoken of the larder explained in halting French that he had ‘lied a bit’ to save his wife and daughter.
‘But why lie like that?’ exploded Saber. ‘We are French officers. Had you told us the truth we would have worked twice as fast.’
All the Russian understood of course was the word ‘lie’ and he quickly handed over a bag to Saber. It contained slices of meat. The French were reluctant to deprive this family but the man rubbed his stomach and smiled. Piquebois, whey-faced, looked closely at the food.
‘It’s not beef.’
‘They wouldn’t poison us, would they?’ said Margont with a worried look.
‘It’s not horsemeat, is it? You wouldn’t have dared …’ asked Piquebois.
The Russian nodded several times. ‘Good horse, yes. Killed yesterday.’
Piquebois was a sorry sight. His slavering mouth gave him away but he declared: ‘Not for me.’
‘You won’t last long if you don’t eat as much as you can when you have the chance,’ Margont pointed out to him.
‘By chewing horsemeat I’d feel as if I were eating one of you because you and the horses are my best friends.’
He walked off, a pitiful sight, while Saber was already skewering the slices with the bayonet of a musket found lying on the ground and was holding them over the still-glowing embers of a beam.
As soon as Margont had eaten his fill, he abandoned Saber and went off in search of Lefine. He decided to do the rounds of the hospitals. He reached what had been a fine-looking square. Sappers were chopping down blackened trees to prevent them from crashing on to the buildings. The park was turning into a wasteland. Four blocks of houses gave the rectangle an elegant symmetry. But their facades were riddled with bullet holes and one of them had lost its roof. A phenomenal number of cannonballs were scattered on the ground. Wurttemberg gunners, easily recognisable by their black-crested helmets, were placing the ones that could still be used in a cart. They roared with laughter when someone held up a cannonball that had been flattened like a pancake or taken on a bizarre shape. This must be what Wurttemberg gunners found amusing.
Carts were piling up at the foot of the three buildings left intact and more were constantly arriving. They were carrying all the world’s woes: the wounded. The forest of arms raised in pleas for help, the chorus of groans, the trails of blood, the mangled bodies … Margont had the greatest admiration for those who tended to these men: medical orderlies, helpers, surgeons, physicians, pharmacists … He wondered whether Lefine was somewhere among these unfortunates. One of them escaped by hopping from a wagon as if leaving this place meant escaping death itself. Two soldiers tried to reason with him but he yelled: ‘They’re going to cut my leg off! Without my leg who’s going to look after my farm?’ How far away the fine ideas about humanism and freedom now seemed …
Margont noticed Jean-Quenin Bremond. The physician was going from cart to cart, a dazed look on his face. His dark blue uniform was spattered with bloodstains. Bremond pointed with his finger at those who were to be
