第38章 How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk(1)

I would have a stronger wine to-night, my friends, a wine of Burgundy rather than of Bordeaux.It is that my heart, my old soldier heart, is heavy within me.It is a strange thing, this age which creeps upon one.One does not know, one does not understand; the spirit is ever the same, and one does not remember how the poor body crumbles.But there comes a moment when it is brought home, when quick as the sparkle of a whirling sabre it is clear to us, and we see the men we were and the men we are.Yes, yes, it was so to-day, and I would have a wine of Burgundy to-night.White Burgundy--Montrachet --Sir, I am your debtor!

It was this morning in the Champ de Mars.Your pardon, friends, while an old man tells his trouble.You saw the review.Was it not splendid? I was in the enclosure for veteran officers who have been decorated.

This ribbon on my breast was my passport.The cross itself I keep at home in a leathern pouch.They did us honour, for we were placed at the saluting point, with the Emperor and the carriages of the Court upon our right.

It is years since I have been to a review, for I cannot approve of many things which I have seen.I do not approve of the red breeches of the infantry.It was in white breeches that the infantry used to fight.Red is for the cavalry.A little more, and they would ask our busbies and our spurs! Had I been seen at a review they might well have said that I, Etienne Gerard, had condoned it.So I have stayed at home.But this war of the Crimea is different.The men go to battle.

It is not for me to be absent when brave men gather.My faith, they march well, those little infantrymen!

They are not large, but they are very solid and they carry themselves well.I took off my hat to them as they passed.Then there came the guns.They were good guns, well horsed and well manned.I took offmy hat to them.Then came the Engineers, and to them also I took off my hat.There are no braver men than the Engineers.Then came the cavalry, Lancers, Cuirassiers, Chasseurs, and Spahis.To all of them in turn I was able to take off my hat, save only to the Spahis.

The Emperor had no Spahis.But when all of the others had passed, what think you came at the close? A brigade of Hussars, and at the charge!

Oh, my friends, the pride and the glory and the beauty, the flash and the sparkle, the roar of the hoofs and the jingle of chains, the tossing manes, the noble heads, the rolling cloud, and the dancing waves of steel! My heart drummed to them as they passed.And the last of all, was it not my own old regiment? My eyes fell upon the grey and silver dolmans, with the leopard-skin shabraques, and at that instant the years fell away from me and I saw my own beautiful men and horses, even as they had swept behind their young colonel, in the pride of our youth and our strength, just forty years ago.Up flew my cane."Chargez! En avant! Vive l'Empereur!"It was the past calling to the present.But oh, what a thin, piping voice!Was this the voice that had once thundered from wing to wing of a strong brigade? And the arm that could scarce wave a cane, were these the muscles of fire and steel which had no match in all Napoleon's mighty host? They smiled at me.They cheered me.The Emperor laughed and bowed.But to me the present was a dim dream, and what was real were my eight hundred dead Hussars and the Etienne of long ago.

Enough--a brave man can face age and fate as he faced Cossacks and Uhlans.But there are times when Montrachet is better than the wine of Bordeaux.

It is to Russia that they go, and so I will tell you a story of Russia.Ah, what an evil dream of the night it seems! Blood and ice.Ice and blood.Fierce faces with snow upon the whiskers.Blue hands held out for succour.And across the great white plain the one long black line of moving figures, trudging, trudging, a hundred miles, another hundred, and still always the same white plain.Sometimes there were fir-woods to limit it, sometimes it stretched away to the cold blue sky, but the black linestumbled on and on.Those weary, ragged, starving men, the spirit frozen out of them, looked neither to right nor left, but with sunken faces and rounded backs trailed onward and ever onward, making for France as wounded beasts make for their lair.There was no speaking, and you could scarce hear the shuffle of feet in the snow.Once only I heard them laugh.It was outside Wilna, when an aide-de-camp rode up to the head of that dreadful column and asked if that were the Grand Army.All who were within hearing looked round, and when they saw those broken men, those ruined regiments, those fur-capped skeletons who were once the Guard, they laughed, and the laugh crackled down the column like a feu de joie.I have heard many a groan and cry and scream in my life, but nothing so terrible as the laugh of the Grand Army.

But why was it that these helpless men were not destroyed by the Russians? Why was it that they were not speared by the Cossacks or herded into droves, and driven as prisoners into the heart of Russia? On every side as you watched the black snake winding over the snow you saw also dark, moving shadows which came and went like cloud drifts on either flank and behind.They were the Cossacks, who hung round us like wolves round the flock.

But the reason why they did not ride in upon us was that all the ice of Russia could not cool the hot hearts of some of our soldiers.To the end there were always those who were ready to throw themselves between these savages and their prey.One man above all rose greater as the danger thickened, and won a higher name amid disaster than he had done when he led our van to victory.To him I drink this glass--to Ney, the red- maned Lion, glaring back over his shoulder at the enemy who feared to tread too closely on his heels.I can see him now, his broad white face convulsed with fury, his light blue eyes sparkling like flints, his great voice roaring and crashing amid the roll of the musketry.His glazed and featherless cocked hat was the ensign upon which France rallied during those dreadful days.