The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE CAMP.
"Our souls are parched with agonizing thirst,
Which must be quenched though death were in the draught:
We must have vengeance."
ONE evening towards the end of October, and just when the first snow of the year was beginning to fall, Ivan Pojarsky and Michael Ivanovitch entered the head-quarters of the Russian army at Tarovtino. Their fleet Arabian horses were flecked with foam, for they had traversed the ten leagues which divided them from Moscow without once drawing rein. As they dashed along, they shouted to all whom they passed, "Napoleon has quitted Moscow!" and answering "houras" and cries of joy cheered them on their way.
"Bring us at once to Count Rostopchine," said Ivan to the soldiers who crowded around them. "He is here, is he not?"
"He is here, gospodin; but the Marshal—"
"With all due respect to the dignity of his Highness the General-in-Chief, our business is with the Count, brothers," returned Ivan.
He was accordingly conducted to the presence of Rostopchine, who, after a lengthened interview, dismissed him to seek rest and refreshment, desiring him to return early in the morning.
Rostopchine's aide-de-camp offered his hospitality, and Ivan thanked him courteously, but inquired whether Captain Adrian Wertsch, of the Moscow militia, was not then in the camp. The aide-de-camp answered in the affirmative, and agreed to bring Ivan to his tent, though very reluctantly; for he was sorry to lose the honour and pleasure of entertaining one who could give him so many interesting details about the French occupation of Moscow.
Adrian was standing outside his tent when Ivan approached, and he greeted him with joyful astonishment, as one risen from the dead.
"I did not think to see your face again," he said.
"Life is still left me," returned Ivan in a broken voice; for, after so many horrors, the sight of a familiar face proved at the moment almost more than he could bear.
"Come in," said Adrian, drawing his arm affectionately within his own. "A good draught of champagne is what you want now."
"Will you tell your orderly to take care of my friend Michael Ivanovitch? He has behaved like a hero."
"Certainly."
Adrian gave a few rapid directions, then led Ivan into his tent, and before he would listen to a word, poured for him a sparkling goblet of the beverage which he considered a panacea for all the ills, mental and bodily, of the noble, as vodka was for those of the mujik.
Ivan needed the stimulant, for he was worn out with fatigue and excitement. He said, as he finished the draught, "You got my letter, Adrian?"
"Yes. My poor mother!"
"No one was to blame. We did all we could, but nothing would induce her to leave the old home; and when the French entered Moscow, the shock was more than she could bear. We buried her honourably, by the side of her husband, in the Church of St. Eustacius. Pope Yefim performed the funeral services."
"That was nobly done, Ivan, and I thank you most heartily.—By the way, your friend Pope Yefim has made himself famous."
"How? By remaining in the city?"
"By daring to celebrate, with a solemn service, the Czar's coronation day, under the very beard of Napoleon.[1] We have all heard of it."
"He never supposed he was doing anything extraordinary. The Prior of the Dominican Monastery, whom he consulted, agreed that he was right. I can tell you, Adrian, that good man himself was by no means in love with his countrymen. Though his religion is their own, and he kept his church open the whole time of the Occupation, scarcely a Frenchman darkened its doors, except a few officers of noble birth belonging to the old régime. As a rule, the soldiers of Napoleon are infidels. Sometimes, out of curiosity, they would stray into our churches. On the coronation day, a poor young fellow, a mere lad, stole into Pope Yefim's church, and was near paying dearly for his rashness; for a party of mujiks set upon him after the service, taking him for a spy. They might have killed him; but—strangest chance of all—my friend Michael, whose thoughts by day and dreams by night are only of slaying Nyemtzi, interposed to save this one, saying he knew him, and had received a kindness at his hands. I spoke to the youth, and he told me he had been religiously brought up, and said the very sound of a church-bell, and the sight of men kneeling in prayer, seemed to do him good, though he could not understand a word of the service."
"A queer taste," said Adrian, shrugging his shoulders. Then to his orderly, who had just entered the tent, "Bring us the best supper you can get, and more champagne."
"Adrian," asked Ivan, "where is Leon?"
Adrian's face assumed a sorrowful expression. "Gone to our mother," he answered. "He was wounded at Borodino, though not severely. He insisted upon going out again, and met his death in a skirmish ten days ago."
Ivan felt and showed real sorrow. Of the two companions of his youth, Leon had been his favourite, and he could not hear unmoved the tidings of his death. "Death—death everywhere," he murmured sadly.
"Come, my friend," said Adrian kindly, "you must not give way. It is only the fate of war. You have been so long in that horrible den of a city that your nerves are shattered. Take some more wine."
"That horrible den!" Ivan repeated. "A lair of wild beasts! Such it has been indeed. The count, who is as hard as this," laying his hand upon Adrian's iron camp-bedstead, "has been asking me for reports and descriptions. I cannot describe, I can scarcely even report facts. Picture to yourself nine-tenths of the town in ashes—or in charred blackened ruins—with thousands of the wretched inhabitants, who could not, or did not, make good their escape, wandering about homeless and starving, filling the air with their lamentations. Then think of the French, like a host of demons turned loose upon their prey, ransacking the smoking ruins in search of plunder. I have seen the gold-laced uniform of the general and the woollen jacket of the private side by side, contending for the spoils of our desolated homes; while all the dangerous classes, all the thieves and ruffians who are to be found amongst the scum of the populace in every great city, joined them in the horrible work and added to the confusion and misery."
"Did not Napoleon shoot or hang a great number of our people?"
"If you call three hundred a great number; so many at least he executed as incendiaries—and indeed most of them were taken in the act. They died in silence, without asking for mercy, and without accusing any one as having instigated them to the deed."
"How did you escape?" asked Adrian.
"There was little difficulty in escaping. It was easy enough to hide in the ruins or in the cellars, many of which had been left well stocked with provisions when the city was abandoned. But have you heard about our wounded men?" he asked, with a return of animation, and even of something like cheerfulness.
"No; I have heard nothing."
"The count was obliged to leave two thousand men, who were too desperately wounded to bear removal, concealed in the cellars of the city. Here they managed to drag on their lives, though in a state of extreme wretchedness. We found them out, and used to bring them food and other comforts. That work was even more hazardous than setting the city on fire; for discovery would have cost, not our lives alone, but theirs. Napoleon's last act before he left the city was to order ten sick men, found in a cellar, to be shot."
"Wretch!" cried Adrian, clenching his hand.
"The half has not been told you, or you would find no name to call him by," returned Ivan fiercely. "He has defiled our holiest sanctuaries; he has torn open our imperial tombs; he has stabled his horses in the church where our Czar was crowned; he has carried everything away upon which he could lay his sacrilegious hands, even to the cross upon the tower of Ivan Veliki, and the Tartar banners which hung as trophies in the Arsenal. Well may Count Rostopchine curse him, as only he knows how to curse. But those wounded—we contrived somehow to keep them alive; and I think a goodly number may be saved yet. I asked the count not to lose an hour in sending them succour."
"I hope he has had the grace to do justice to your courage and your exertions."
"He has condescended to approve my conduct," said Ivan with modest satisfaction. "And now he offers me three things, by way of recompense, as he is pleased to say. If I choose to return with him to the city, he will give me an appointment in the civil service, with the rank of titular counsellor, which, as you know, answers to that of senior captain in the army."[2]
"Surely you will not do that! You could not sheathe your sword now," Adrian exclaimed.
"So much I said to the count; and he answered that, if I pleased, he would request the marshal to put me on his staff."
"Capital! What more could you desire?"
"He made another proposal—to send me to the Czar with the report of what I had seen and done."
"And which did you accept?"
"The last," said Ivan. At that moment a sound, dull, prolonged, and loud, like distant thunder, smote upon their ears. Again it came, and yet again, making the air tremble around them and the earth shake beneath their feet. "What is that?" cried Ivan.
"Not musketry or cannon," said Adrian, with a look of alarm and perplexity. "We are tolerably familiar with those sounds. This is different."
"More like an explosion—if so, a terrible one. Perhaps a great powder magazine. But where?" mused Ivan.
Adrian hurried out in search of information, and soon returned to tell his friend that the noise evidently came from the direction of Moscow. More than that no one knew.
Morning brought the explanation. Ivan was still enjoying the profound slumber of youth and weariness, when a brother officer of Adrian's rushed into the tent. "The Kremlin is destroyed!" he cried. "That demon Napoleon had it undermined before he left, and last night it was blown into fragments!"
"The Kremlin?—Impossible!" cried Adrian, who was dressing for parade.
"Too possible, and too true," said his informant. "A messenger from the city has just arrived to bring the tidings to the marshal and the count."
Meanwhile Ivan, who had been suddenly awakened, started up in horror, exclaiming, "The Czar! oh, what will it be to him?"
"Blown into fragments, did you say?" returned Adrian. "Utterly impossible! The masonry is as solid as the rocks beneath our feet, and the walls of the arsenal are three yards in thickness."
"Those walls are now level with the ground," said the officer; "and the palace—the Czar's ancient palace—is in ruins."
Ivan uttered a bitter cry, and Adrian asked breathlessly, "What of the churches?"
"One of them, I have not heard which, is thrown down. The mines were fired by slow-consuming fusees; and our men, who arrived just before the messenger left, were beginning a perilous search for powder, to prevent further mischief, if they could."
"But," said Ivan, who had risen now,—"but there must be a mistake somewhere; for the French kept their own sick and wounded in the Kremlin, and I happen to know that those unfit to be moved were still there when I left the city. That Napoleon could have exposed them to a horrible death is simply inconceivable."
"Yet too true," the officer answered. "He has sacrificed his own helpless followers to his revenge and hatred. For this barbarous deed can have had no other motive. There was nothing to be gained by it."
Adrian laid his hand upon Ivan's shoulder. "Do not go to St. Petersburg," he said. "Stay with us, and fight. We will pay this Napoleon double for all his atrocities."
"I wish his neck were there," said Adrian's comrade, grinding the earth with his strong heel. "But I would not kill him," he added, after a pause. "No. I would drag him in chains to the feet of the Czar, and let him kill him with his own hand."
"I think," said Ivan slowly and with deliberation,—"I think every Russian, from the Czar himself down to the lowest mujik, should swear a solemn oath not to sheathe the sword until we have taken such vengeance upon Napoleon and his Frenchmen as the world has never yet seen."
"So be it," said Michael, who came in while he was speaking. "I, a mujik, will be the first to swear.—Barrinka, what is the name of Napoleon's great city, where he has his palace and all his treasures? Suppose the Czar were to make a blaze of that some day! It may be. God is just!"