The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (37 page)

‘But you failed to carry out your promise.'

‘That I admit,' Roger replied quickly. ‘But only because it proved impossible for me to do so. No sooner had I rejoined the Emperor at Finckenstein than he despatched me with a military mission he was sending to Turkey and Persia. From Persia I made my way back to Lisbon and there became so involved with the flight of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil that I was forced to accompany them.'

‘We are aware of that, Mr. Brook. You informed us of it when we met again later, at the Conference of Erfurt. May we remind you that, on that occasion, you expressed the hope that at some future time you might be of service to us?'

‘Yes, Your Imperial Majesty,' Roger murmured, feeling slightly sick, for he now realised what was coming.

‘Well, now is that time. We would here remark that yours is a case unique in our experience. Spies are ordinarily
regarded as despicable people, and quite outside the pale, yet you give the impression of being a gentleman.'

Roger bridled. ‘That, Sire, at least I can claim. My father was an Admiral, and while I do not suggest that I am the equal of a Romanoff, the McElfics have an ancestry as old as theirs. My grandfather was the last but one of a long line of Earls of Kildonan. As for spies, I find nothing despicable in a man who serves his country by obtaining information about the intentions of his country's enemies.'

Alexander sat back and laughed. ‘Mr. Brook, you are fallen completely into our little trap. You could not more clearly have declared yourself to be a man of honour. Of course, we have no means of compelling you to it, but we are convinced that you will now honour your given word. Nay, more. I pray you, in the interests of your own country, which are now identical with ours, to rejoin Napoleon and transmit to us such knowledge of his plans as you are able.'

Seeing no alternative, Roger endeavoured to resign himself to this commitment with as good a grace as possible. Giving a wry smile, he said, ‘So be it, Sire. When do you wish me to set out?'

‘Tomorrow we leave St. Petersburg ourselves, and we desire you to accompany us.'

That quashed a niggling question that had entered Roger's mind. A man of honour he might be, in that he did not cheat at cards or seek to trick anyone other than his country's enemies, but simply because the Czar had had him, when a prisoner of war, exchanged for a Russian officer, was he really bound again to risk his life for an indefinite period; or should he slip away across the Baltic? It was now clear that he was not to be given the option. Alexander evidently did not trust him enough, but meant to take him to the front and push him over it.

Next day the great cavalcade of coaches, escorted by the Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard, set out. Now that spring had come, only remnants of the snow, where it had formed big drifts, remained. The flat country was a greenish brown, the roads rivers of mud, and every rivulet now swollen to a river in spate. But there were constant relays of good horses and the Imperial party reached Vilna, the capital of the province of Lithuania, and the last city on the Russian side of the Polish frontier, on April 26th.

During the weeks that followed, had Roger been acting as a secret agent for Napoleon, he could not have been better placed, as everyone at Alexander's headquarters talked freely in his presence of their hopes and fears, and of the preparations going forward to resist invasion.

The Count de Narbonne had been sent by Napoleon to Alexander with lying messages of continued goodwill; but obviously he was to find out all he could of the Russian dispositions. Tactfully, but firmly, the Czar sent the Count back with a message to the effect that he was anxious to avoid war, so had no intention of sending his troops across the Polish frontier, and he had so far not entered into an alliance with England; but would do so once the first shot was fired. Both sides now knew that war was inevitable, but were manoeuvring to gain time.

Napoleon had arrived in Dresden and was holding Court there. Never before had there been such an assembly of Royalties and Great Captains: his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, his two reliable allies the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria, the brow-beaten King of Prussia, Murat, King of Naples, Prince Poniatowski, the leader of the Poles, a score of Princes, Grand Dukes, Margraves and Landgraves, a dozen of the most famous Marshals, sullen but obedient Generals commanding troops from Denmark, Switzerland, Holland and even Spain.

Surrounded by this brilliant throng of fawning sycophants, the majority of whom wished him dead but dared not refuse his demands that they should raise ever more troops from the conquered territories, the Master of Europe built up the most mighty army that had ever existed, while Berthier worked night and day, despatching division after division, until six hundred and fifty thousand troops were concentrated in east Prussia and Poland.

Meanwhile the Russians were making their dispositions with the far smaller forces at their disposal. Before leaving St. Petersburg, the Czar had dismissed his pacific-minded Minister, Speranskii, and his War Minister, Arakeheyev, had become his principal adviser. But this brutal sadist, who delighted to have soldiers knouted to death before him for quite trivial offences, although a bulwark of the throne, was no strategist; so Alexander placed himself in the hands of a German General named von Phull.

This man had gained for himself a reputation as a master of the art of war. He was a marvellous theoretician and had made the plan by which Prussia was to overwhelm Napoleon in 1806. The result had been catastrophic for the Prussians. Nevertheless, he had, immediately afterwards, been received at St. Petersburg as an infallible pundit, and was listened to there with awe, in spite of the fact that he was irritable, stubborn, openly regarded the Russian Generals with contempt and, in six years at the Czar's Court, had not bothered to learn a word of Russian.

The plan he produced was that the main Russian army should be divided into two unequal halves, with a considerable gap between them. The larger, under Barclay de Tolly, a Lithuanian of Scottish ancestry, and a cautious man, on the left front with one hundred and eighteen thousand troops; the smaller, under Prince Bagration,
one of Russia's best generals, who believed in attacking the enemy at every opportunity, on the right front with thirty-five thousand.

There were, in addition, two smaller armies: that of General Wittgenstein, consisting of twenty-five thousand men, which was to be stationed further in the rear, guarding the road to St. Petersburg, and another under Admiral Tormasov, which also lay far to the rear, in the east.

However, von Phull's great inspiration was to turn the little town of Drissa, on the Dvina, some two hundred miles behind the frontier, into a huge, fortified area where, if forced back, both armies could make a stand and equally well bar the road either to St. Petersburg or Moscow.

Early in June news reached the Czar that greatly cheered him. For six years past he had been at war with Turkey. On May 22nd, by a clever piece of trickery, the veteran General Kutuzov had induced the Turks to sign a peace treaty. This meant that Russia was now safe from attack on both her flanks, and could bring her army from the Danube to assist in repelling the French.

On the night of June 24th a ball was given for the Czar in Vilna. While he was at it, news was brought to him that Napoleon's army had begun to cross the Niemen by the bridge at Kovno and three others not far from it, built by his sappers. Next day Alexander sent for Balashov, his Minister of Police, and said to him:

‘The mission on which we are about to send you will not stop the war; but we wish to prove to the world that we did not start it.' He then handed Balashov a letter for Napoleon, which said in effect that if the Emperor was willing to enter on negotiations, they could begin at once. But only on condition that his troops retired beyond the frontier, otherwise the Czar gave his word of honour that, as long as a single armed French soldier remained on
Russian soil, he would neither utter nor listen to a single word about peace.

Owing to obstruction by, first Murat, then Davoust and several subordinate officers, it was not until the 29th that Balashov was interviewed by Napoleon, and then it was in the same room in Vilna in which he had received his instructions; for Alexander had withdrawn and the Emperor occupied the city on the previous day.

Napoleon read the Minister of Police a long lecture about the shortcomings of his master, and even insulted him; but Balashov cleverly got his own back. When the Emperor remarked that the Russians were barbarians and irreligious, he replied, ‘The piety of nations varies; but in Russia,
as in Spain
, the masses are fanatically religious.' The Emperor then facetiously asked him the way to Moscow, to which he promptly answered, ‘There are several. Charles XII took that via Polotsk.' A neat crack, for the Swedish King's army had been thoroughly routed and he had narrowly escaped with his life. Balashov had then tried to persuade Napoleon that he was making a terrible mistake by invading Russia, because the Russians would never surrender, but fight on to the last man.

Berthier, Bessières and Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, were present at the interview. The last-named had not long since been French Ambassador at St. Petersburg. He had got on well with the Russians and had done everything he could to strengthen the Franco-Russian alliance. With the spiteful playfulness to which he was prone at times, Napoleon struck him lightly on the cheek and said, ‘Why don't you say something, you old pro-Russian?'

Deeply insulted, the ex-Ambassador said to the Emperor when Balashov had been dismissed, ‘I will now prove myself to be a good Frenchman, by telling Your Majesty that this war is foolish and dangerous. It will destroy the Army, France and yourself.'

Many of Napoleon's Marshals and Ministers were of the same opinion, but it was the first time that anyone had plucked up the courage to say so to his face.

He laughed the matter off, remarking that it might take two or three summers to conquer Russia, but conquer her he would.

All this was related to Roger that same evening, as he had rejoined the French army without difficulty twenty-four hours earlier. After the Russians left, he had simply gone down into the cellar, remained there during the bombardment, and emerged on the arrival of the French. As he spoke the language perfectly and declared himself to be a Frenchman, he had been in no danger of coming to any harm, and had had only to wait there another hour or so before an advance party of the Emperor's staff arrived to take over the Czar's evacuated headquarters.

As usual, Roger's old friend, Duroc,
Maréchal de Camp
and Duc de Friuli, was in charge. His astonishment at coming on Roger there in civilian clothes was soon allayed by the account that Roger gave of his doings during the past two years. He said he had been falsely imprisoned in Berlin, escaped and stowed away in an American ship which had unfortunately carried him to England, where he had been made a prisoner of war, escaped again and managed to get to Portugal, been wounded and captured again, then sent back as a prisoner to England, escaped from there a second time and secured a passage in a ship that had brought him into the Baltic and landed him at Riga. As everyone there knew that the Emperor was about to invade Russia, he had hurried to Vilna a week ago, feeling certain that it must soon fall to the French. He then produced a stack of documents and maps that, in their haste to be gone, the Russians had left behind. None of them was of any particular value, but the gesture was good evidence that he was still a keen and useful officer.

That evening he repeated his story in more detail to the Emperor and a number of his officers. It happened that Davoust, Ney and Junot were all present. The first knew of his imprisonment in Berlin while both the latter had been at Masséna's headquarters when he was there and knew of the mission on which he had been sent to Soult; so they were not surprised that he had been captured and did not for a moment doubt that it was by the English. Napoleon and everyone else present congratuated him upon his three escapes.

Next day the uniform of a Colonel of Hussars, who had been killed during the taking of the city, was produced for him, and he took up his old duties as one of Napoleon's A.D.C.s under General Count Rapp, who was now Napoleon's A.D.C.-in-Chief.

Rapp was a blunt-spoken Alsatian and an old friend of Roger's. In fact, Roger owed his life to Rapp and General Savary. They had both been A.D.C.s to the gallant Desaix and had, together with Roger, climbed the Great Pyramid when in Egypt. Later, Desaix and his two A.D.C.s had succeeded in getting back to Europe just in time to rejoin Napoleon before the battle of Marengo. In this battle Desaix had been killed and Roger seriously wounded. Both had been left on the field among the dead and dying. The two A.D.C.s had gone out with lanterns to search for their dead General, and chanced upon Roger, thus saving him from either dying there from loss of blood, or being murdered by the human hyenas who prowled the battlefields by night, robbing the dead and dying alike.

Savary had become Napoleon's Minister of Police. It was he who had lured the unfortunate young Duc d'Enghien back over the French frontier and then been responsible for his murder. He had also lored the King of Spain and his son over the frontier, to Bayonne so that Napoleon could force them to abdicate. Roger loathed the
crafty, unscrupulous Minister of Police; but he was very fond of Rapp and it was from him that he obtained most of the information about the strength and dispositions of the Grand Army.

The force that had crossed the Niemen consisted of one hundred and forty-five thousand French, forty-five thousand Italians, thirty thousand Austrians, thirty thousand Prussians, twenty-five thousand other Germans and seventy thousand troops of other nations. In addition to these there was an immense cavalry reserve and the Old and Young Guards; so they totalled something over four hundred thousand troops, besides which there were estimated to be roughly one hundred thousand camp-followers.