recounted.
He was so proud of his lance that every time he mentioned it, he flourished it and did battle with the branches of the birch trees.
‘Of course, I was thinking about the filthy Cossacks! They appear from nowhere, shoot you in the back and by the time you’ve turned round, they’re far away. And they can certainly gallop! It’s hard work catching up with those scoundrels! They’re devilish clever with their bark-coloured pelisses that make them invisible. You don’t see them, you don’t capture them and they vanish. In short, after a while, if you’ll pardon this unsavoury detail, I started to relieve my bladder against a tree trunk when all of a sudden I said to myself: “Watch out, Edgar, make sure you’re not pissing on a Cossack’s boots …”’
His audience laughed, he stopped talking to save his breath and then, a few minutes later, he came out with another anecdote or philosophical observation. Fanselin had such confidence in himself and in the French, and the Guard enjoyed such prestige, that his presence lifted the soldiers’ spirits a little.
The column was making slow progress. The road was littered with the frozen corpses of soldiers and half- eaten horses. There was also silver cutlery, vases and gold coins that people had dumped to lighten their load. Suddenly, there was a long whistling noise that became more and more piercing, followed by the roar of an explosion. A birch tree collapsed with a snapping sound and trapped some of the men in a tangle of branches. Cannonballs bounced this way and that. But the march continued. The troops were being bombarded at regular intervals by cannon that the Russians had had the detestable idea of mounting on sledges. The outline of a figure on horseback drew closer in the fog. Muskets were levelled in that direction because two times out of three a horse meant a Cossack. The figure suddenly emerged from the icy fog like an apparition. It probably was one. It was an adjutant, impeccably dressed, his trousers and gloves spotless. He was young and very angry.
‘Soldiers, they’re shelling us! Do something! Are you fighters or rabbits? Fix your bayonets and follow me!’
He galloped off in the direction of the enemy batteries, which were blasting away for all they were worth.
‘Who was that?’ asked a soldier wrapped in a series of shawls.
‘The phantom of the Grande Armee,’ replied a figure. ‘The one that haunts us all.’
Fanselin began to talk again. Margont could hardly hear his voice any more. His lips, welded together by ice, and his legs were giving him terrible pain. His legs were so heavy to lift that he looked at them often, convinced that they had caught on something. They felt stuffed and swollen with pain. Sometimes the pain exploded into thousands of pinpricks all over his body. It was almost more than he could bear because it made him think of death and being eaten by worms. Worse than that: sometimes he lost all sensation in his lower limbs. It was as if he had lost both legs and they now belonged to someone else. So he extricated his hands from the depths of his muff and frantically rubbed his thighs to bring back the circulation. When the pain returned he felt as if his body was at last whole again. He looked enviously at those being transported on carts or gun carriages. But rest proved to be a trap. Death crept up in silence. The cold gradually numbed their minds and the passengers fell into a pleasant sleep from which they never awoke. The choice was simple: march or freeze.
Margont frequently thought about his childhood or certain moments in his life. He recalled in particular the birth of his friendship with Piquebois because that day he had almost died. Piquebois, then at the height of his hussar period, had noticed him reading while he was slashing away at pumpkins on stakes topped with Austrian helmets. Piquebois, sabre in hand and probably running out of pumpkins, had called him a ‘book-devouring little squirt’. He would have been only too happy to see the ‘infantry librarian’ unsheathe his sword. But Margont had replied that he only used his weapon for opening letters, not for slicing off the heads of French hussars. Piquebois had burst out laughing before dragging Margont off for a drinking session that it would have been unwise to refuse. However, these memories were rather a bad omen. When you reach the end of a long journey or a project that took a long time to complete, you often think back to its beginning. Margont had the impression that his mind was going back over his life one last time, before gently fading away …
A little further on, Lefine fell. Margont bent his knees to crouch down, which caused him intense pain, as if the bulging muscles in his thighs had ripped his frozen skin. He wanted to remove his friend’s knapsack but was surprised by its weight. He opened it and discovered silver ingots, jewellery and gold plate. He started to empty it. Lefine groaned, stuck out his hand and with considerable difficulty picked up a gold snuffbox that he stuffed into one of his pockets. But Margont was throwing away far more than he could retrieve.
‘I’ve left you your jewels. Otherwise you’d probably have stayed here,’ Margont said in a whisper as he was out of breath.
Lefine was getting to his feet with the aid of Saber and Fanselin when loud cries of ‘Huzza! Huzza!’ rang out. In an instant, men on horseback swept down on the column from all sides at once. Most of the attackers were Cossack irregulars, Bashkirs and Kalmucks. Everything about them – their Mongol features, their strangely shaped red hats, the fact that some of them were armed with bows – caused fear and panic. Accompanying them were hussars, who yelled as they set upon the French with their sabres.
There was total confusion. Infantrymen were fleeing, putting their arms in the air or trying to defend themselves with anything that came to hand. Hands stiffened by the cold managed to wield muskets and fire at the horsemen or, more often, at the horses. The Russians, better fed, less tired, drunk with victory but also just plain drunk, were indulging in a massacre. The hussars galloped along the column laughing, leaving a bloody trail behind them. Fanselin wielded his lance. He had jammed the end of it against a large stone. A Bashkir charged at him, and the lancer, bending down at the last minute to avoid the point, impaled the Russian. He immediately clung on to the horse’s mane but the animal did not interrupt its headlong charge, carrying the Frenchman away with it. Fanselin eventually rolled on to the ground. He picked himself up, pistol in hand, ready to grab hold of another mount. The Bashkirs who had witnessed the scene had no desire to take on such a madman.
Margont felt an uncontrollable frenzy come over him. He shot dead a Bashkir with his pistol and wounded another with his other weapon. This second assailant was bleeding from the shoulder. His weakened hand had let go of the reins and his horse was galloping round and round a cart. Margont wanted to finish the Russian off but his sword failed to pierce the thick cloak. So he seized the Russian and threw him to the ground. He sat astride him and brandished his knife. He wanted to gouge his opponent’s eyes out to make him finally understand what suffering could be. He revelled in the Bashkir’s fear. The man had a round face with prominent cheekbones. His head was shaven except at the back, where he had a long, dangling plait. He had a very thin moustache, the ends of which drooped down to his chin. His eyes were so narrow and slanting that his pupils were barely visible. Despite all these differences, Margont saw his own reflection in this face. The Bashkir had been hit; for him the war was over. Margont put away his knife, took the bag that the Cossack was wearing on his belt and moved away. At once he flung himself on his stomach because a Frenchman was taking aim at him, mistaking him for a partisan.
‘French! 84th!’ he yelled.
Realising his mistake, the marksman shot a Kalmuck for good measure.
The assailants left as suddenly as they had arrived. As they rode off, they thrust their lances into the backs of bodies, occasionally striking an infantryman who was pretending to be dead. A scream of pain told them when they had been ‘lucky’.
Fanselin was engaged in a lance duel with a regular Cossack officer. The Russian was swiftly whirling his lance around to parry an attack. When he had deflected his opponent’s weapon sufficiently, he stopped flourishing his own and thrust its point towards the Frenchman’s chest. With surprising agility, Fanselin leapt to the side before counterattacking. Changing tactics, Fanselin pretended to attack with the point of his lance only to suddenly turn it in an arc and strike his opponent with the other end. The Cossack received a violent blow to the chin and fell from his horse. A chorus of explosions stopped the fleeing horse dead in its tracks. They were not going to let such a heap of meat get away. Fanselin kept the prisoner at bay with his lance.
‘Long live our Red Cossack!’ exclaimed Margont weakly.
More shouts greeted the ‘Red Cossack’ and Fanselin smiled at the compliment. The Cossack exclaimed ‘Huzza!’ and to general amazement hurled himself at the lance to impale himself. Fanselin immediately withdrew the point but it was too late.
Everyone rushed for the carcasses of the horses to eat their fill, gnawing on the bones like dogs, without even taking the time to cook them because the Cossacks were still prowling around.
Margont opened the Bashkir’s bag. Inside it he found black bread mixed with bits of straw. The loaf had
