from the upper floors of Charleroi’s newly liberated houses were evidence of that longing.
A French General of Dragoons found a bespectacled infantry Colonel inside a tavern close to the river and angrily demanded to know why the barricaded bridge had not been captured. The Colonel explained that he was still waiting for orders, and the General swore like the trooper he had once been and said that a French officer did not need orders when the enemy was in plain sight. “Attack now, you damned fool, unless you want to resign from the Emperor’s service.”
The Colonel, trained in the proper management of war, diagnosed the General’s crude enthusiasm as excitement and gently tried to calm the old man by explaining that the sensible course was to wait until the artillery reached the town, and only then to mount an attack on the infantry who guarded the barricaded bridge. “Two volleys of cannon-fire will clear them away,” the Colonel explained, “and there’ll be no need for our side to suffer any casualties. I think that’s the prudent course, don’t you?” The Colonel offered the General a patronizing smile. “Perhaps the General would care to take a cup of coffee?”
“Bugger your coffee. And bugger you.” The Dragoon General seized the Colonel’s uniform jacket and dragged the man close so that he could smell the General’s garlic and brandy flavoured breath. “I’m attacking the bridge now,” the General said, “and if I take it, I’m coming back here and I’m going to tear your prudent bloody balls off and give your regiment to a real man.“
He let the Colonel go, then ducked out of the tavern door into the street. A Prussian musket bullet fluttered overhead to smack against a house wall that was smothered with posters advertising a fair, which was to be held on the feast day of St Peter and Paul. Someone had limewashed a slogan huge across the rash of posters: „Vive I’Empereur!“
„You!” The General shouted at an infantry lieutenant who was sheltering in an alley from the desultory Prussian fire. “Bring your men! Follow me. Bugler! Sound the assemble!” The General beckoned to his orderly to bring his horse forward and, ignoring the Prussian musketry, he pulled himself into his saddle and drew his sword. “Frenchmen!” he shouted to gather in whatever men were within earshot. “Bayonets! Sabres!”
The General knew that the town had to be taken and the momentum of the day’s advance kept swift, and so he would lead a rag-taggle charge against the Prussian infantrymen who lined the crude barricade. He fancied he could see a lower section at one end of the piled furniture where a horse might be able to jump the obstruction. He kicked his horse into a trot and the hooves kicked up sparks from the cobbles.
The General knew he would probably die, for infantry took pleasure in killing cavalry and he would be the leading horseman in the attack on the bridge, but the General was a soldier and he had long learned that a soldier’s real enemy is the fear of death. Beat that fear and victory was certain, and victory brought glory and fame and medals and money and, best of all, sweetest of all, most glorious and wondrous of all, the modest teasing grin of a short black-haired Emperor who would pat the Dragoon General as though he was a faithful dog, and the thought of that Imperial favour made the General quicken his horse and raise his battered sword. “Charge!” Behind him, spurred on by his example, a ragged mass of dismounted Dragoons and sweating infantry flooded towards the bridge. The General, his white moustaches stained with tobacco juice, spurred on to the bridge.
The Prussian infantry levelled their muskets over the furniture barricade.,
The General saw the glitter of sunlight flashing from the brass decorations of the muskets. “Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards!” he screamed to persuade himself that he was not frightened, and suddenly the barricade dissolved in an explosion of smoke through which the musket flames stabbed like shivers of light and the General’s long white moustache was whipped by a bullet that went on to tear away his left ear-lobe, but that was the only injury he took for he had always been a lucky man, and he caught a glimpse of long weeds shivering under the silvery water beneath the bridge, then he kicked his heels hard back, and his awkward ugly horse clumsily jumped the heaped chairs at the right-hand end of the barricade. The horse soared through the foul-smelling smoke and the General saw a bayonet reach towards the animal’s belly, but he slashed down with the sword, knocking the bayonet aside, and suddenly the horse had landed safely beyond the furniture and was running free of the smoke. The Prussian Hussars, who had waited fifty yards from the bridge to give themselves room to charge any attacker who broke through the infantry, spurred forward, but the General ignored them. He wheeled his horse back to the barricade and drove the animal hard at the frightened infantrymen.
“Bastards! Bastards!” He killed a Prussian soldier, slicing the sword hard into the man’s neck above the stiff black collar. The remaining infantrymen were running. There had not been many Prussians at the bridge, for at best they had only been supposed to delay the French advance. Flames stabbed across the furniture from the French side, and the General shouted at his men to hold their damned fire and to pull the barricade down instead.
The Prussian infantry was running north. The cavalry, seeing that the French had captured the bridge with an insolent ease, turned to follow the foot soldiers. The French General, knowing he had earned his pat on the head from the Emperor, shouted derision at their retreat. “You lily-livered bastards! You boy-lovers! You lap-dogs! Stay and fight, you scum!” He spat, then sheathed his sword. Blood from his torn ear was soaking his left epaulette with its tarnished chains and gilded eagle.
French infantry began to dismantle the barricade. The single dead Prussian infantryman, his uniform already looted of food and coins, lay by the bridge. A Dragoon sergeant hauled the body aside as more cavalrymen poured across the bridge. A woman ran from one of the houses on the northern bank and was almost knocked down by a clattering troop of Dragoons. The woman carried a bouquet of dried violets, their petals faded almost to lilac. She went to the French General’s stirrup and held the pathetic bouquet up to the grim-faced man. “Is he coming?” she asked.
There was no need for her to say who ‘he’ was; her eager face was enough.
The bloodied General smiled. “He’s coming, mapoule.”
“These are for you.” She offered the General the drooping flowers. Throughout Napoleon’s exile the violet had been the symbol of the Bonapartistes, for the violet was the flower which, like the deposed Emperor, would return in the spring.
The General reached down and took the little bouquet. He fixed the fragile blossoms in a buttonhole of his braided uniform, then leaned down and kissed the woman. Like her, the General had prayed and hoped for the violet’s return, and now it had come and it would surely blossom more gloriously than ever before. France was on the march, Charleroi had fallen, and there were no more rivers between the Emperor and Brussels. The General, scenting victory, turned his horse to search for the infantry Colonel who had refused to attack the bridge and whose military career was therefore finished. France had no need of prudence, only of audacity and victory and of the small dark-haired man who knew how to make glory bright as the sun and as sweet as the violet. Vive I’Empereur.
CHAPTER 3
A single horseman approached Charleroi from the west. He rode on the Sambre’s northern bank, drawn towards the town by the sound of musketry which had been loud an hour before, but which now had faded into silence.
The man rode a big docile horse. He did not like horses and rode badly.
He was a tall man with a weathered face on which a blade had slashed a cruel scar. The scar gave his face a mocking, sardonic cast except when he smiled. His hair was black, but with a badger’s streak of white. Behind his horse a dog loped obediently. The dog suited the man, for it was big, fierce, and unkempt.
The man wore French cavalry boots, much patched, but still supple and tight about his calves. Above the scarred boots he wore French cavalry overalls that had been reinforced with leather where the crutch and inside legs took the saddle’s chafing. The red stripes on the overall’s outer seams had long faded to a dull purple. Outside the overalls he wore a faded green jacket that was decorated with the remnants of black piping. The jacket was the uniform of Britain’s 95th Rifles, though it was now so threadbare and patched that it might have belonged to a tramp. The man’s brown tricorne hat had come from neither the French nor the British army, but had been bought at the market in the Norman town of Caen. The scarlet, gold and black cockade of the Netherlands was gaudy on the hat.
In a holster on the man’s saddle was a British-made Baker rifle. Stuck into his snake-clasped belt was a
