The Generals

Chapter 18

Five days later the French army entered Milan.The people of the city thronged the streets to welcome the ragged soldiers who had come to liberate them from Austrian oppression. The aristocrats and the wealthy merchants and bankers were more circumspect in their greeting and Napoleon accepted their gifts and praise for what they were: attempts to bribe him and appeal to his vanity so that he would not subject Milan to the liberal values of the French revolution. Napoleon treated them courteously enough, before announcing his ambition to establish a democratic republic in Milan, allied to France. His proclamation was greeted by wild celebration that spilled out into the narrow streets of the poorer quarters of the city. Meanwhile, several battalions of infantry surrounded the small Austrian garrison that had been left behind to defend the citadel.The force, under the command of General Despinois, would not only contain the Austrians, but also ensure the loyalty of the Milanese.

The celebrations in the city were short lived.While Napoleon plundered the local banks, his troops roamed the city, taking food, wine and women as they wished. As soon as he heard what was happening Napoleon issued stern orders to his officers to stop their men from looting the city. But it was already too late. Discipline had broken down and there was nothing that could be done until appetites had been sated.

Napoleon waited impatiently for the men to return to their units and then, a week after the army had entered the city, it marched out to continue the war against Austria. But this time the streets were quiet as the Milanese cowered in their homes, waiting until the last sounds of marching boots had faded into the distance before they dared to emerge and stare in shock, and then bitter anger, at their ransacked city.

Napoleon and his staff paused on a low hill a short distance from the city and watched as the men marched past, haversacks bulging with looted goods.

‘They’re in good spirits, sir,’ commented Berthier. ‘I just hope it lasts until they go up against the Austrians, once we catch up with them.’

Napoleon glared at a passing column of infantry, sullenly acknowledging their cheerful greetings. ‘What concerns me is that if they conduct themselves in this fashion again, then we’ll be spending as much time putting down revolts in the lands we’ve taken from Austria as we do fighting the enemy.’

Berthier shrugged. ‘I hope not, sir.’

Napoleon turned to him with a bitter smile. ‘You hope not? I don’t think we can avoid it.There’s hardly a single Milanese, rich or poor, that we’ve not offended. Our men have had a free hand with the common folk, while I’ve thoroughly plundered the rich.’

In the last few days Napoleon had demanded over ten million francs from the dukes of Parma and Modena, the money to be paid into banks in Genoa before being transferred to Paris. More cash was being squeezed from the kingdom of Piedmont and every city and town under French control.Very soon it would be flowing into the treasury in Paris. Napoleon fervently hoped that it would convince the Directors not to meddle any further with his command in Italy. The bitter truth was that while he might buy them off, he would now be forced to continue his advance with an outraged population at his back. Still, he reflected, the army was grateful to him, especially as some of the money he had exacted from the local rulers had been used to make good the arrears in their pay. In his growing awareness of the need to think politically, Napoleon realised that a loyal army was as good a power base as any mob in Paris.

The army had only marched as far as Lodi when a message arrived from General Despinois. The people of Milan had risen up against the French occupiers. Despinois assured his commander that the uprising would be put down swiftly. But there was also more disturbing news of a further uprising in the town of Pavia.

‘Pavia?’ Napoleon stared at the courier, a young officer of hussars. ‘What’s happened in Pavia?’

‘Sir, the garrison there surrendered to the townspeople.’

‘Surrendered?’ Napoleon struggled to control his anger. ‘Was there a fight?’

‘Not as far as I know, sir. The commander, Captain Linois, agreed to lay down arms if he and his men were spared. They’re being held in the citadel.’

‘Are they, by God?’ Napoleon balled his hand into a fist and rapped it against his thigh. ‘Very well, Lieutenant. Return to General Despinois. Tell him that he has full authority to put down the revolt in Milan by any means necessary. Now go.’

The hussar saluted and swung himself back on to his mount before spurring it back towards Milan. Napoleon turned to his staff officers.

‘Berthier, Junot, over here!’ He led them to one side, out of earshot of any other officers, and explained the situation before giving his orders. ‘The army will continue towards Brescia. Keep pushing the Austrians back as far as the Mincio river. If they fall back to the far bank it will buy me a little time.’

‘Time?’ Junot raised his eyebrows. ‘Time for what, sir?’

Napoleon removed his hat and ran a hand over his dark lank hair. ‘Time to teach the Italians a lesson. I have to make an example of those rebels in Pavia, and deal with Captain Linois. I’ll need two thousand picked troops. Grenadiers are the best men for the job, and I need a good field officer. Someone brave and with the stomach for . . .’ he paused and pursed his lips for a moment before continuing, ‘the stomach for distasteful work. Whom can you recommend?’

‘I know just the man for you, General,’ Junot answered at once. ‘There’s a Gascon, Colonel Lannes. As fierce as they come.’

‘Good. Then fetch him. I’ll take Bourrienne with me as well. Have the grenadiers ready to move. They’re to take a day’s rations, powder and shot. They’re to leave everything else here, and pick it up when we march back to the main army. See to it.’

The small column covered the twenty miles to Pavia by dawn the following day and formed up behind a wood a short distance from the crumbling walls of the ancient town. Napoleon and Lannes crept forward and surveyed the defences from just inside the treeline. A handful of armed men were sitting on a bench to one side of the gate that bestrode the main road leading into the town. On the other side of the road stood several pens of pigs, their occupants still asleep in their filth.The men were sharing a loaf of bread and talking animatedly with scant regard for the surrounding landscape they should have been keeping watch on. Napoleon’s gaze tracked along the edge of the town. Crude attempts had been made to block the gaps between the buildings with carts, wagons, barrels and pieces of furniture. Here and there he could see the head and shoulders of a defender. He turned his attention to the small citadel in the centre of the town. A green and red banner hung from the highest bastion. Napoleon did not recognise the design and guessed that the people of Pavia had ambitions towards some kind of independence.

‘I don’t think they present much of a danger,’ Napoleon decided.‘If we bring the men up through these trees we can cross the open ground and be in the town before they can react.’

Lannes considered the defences for a moment and then nodded. ‘And what then, General?’

‘We disarm them, round up the ringleaders and make an example of them.’

Lannes lowered the telescope and turned to Napoleon. ‘An example?’

‘They will be hanged from the walls of the citadel. I have to be sure that the Italians know what will happen to those who rebel against us.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lannes nodded. ‘I’ll see to it.’

‘Off you go then. Have the men load their weapons, but none are to be cocked. I’ll flog any man who fires before the order is given. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lannes rose to a crouch and hurried off between the trees, leaving Napoleon to watch the town. He waited a while longer, but there was still no sign that the alarm had been raised. Then he crept back a short distance and returned to his men.

A few minutes later Napoleon glanced to either side at the men waiting in the shadows, muskets poised at the advance, then nodded to Colonel Lannes. The big Gascon drew his sword and filled his lungs before bellowing out the order.

‘Grenadiers! . . . Forward!’

The uneven blue line rustled through the undergrowth, twigs snapping and cracking beneath their boots as they emerged from the gloom of the wood and trotted across the open ground towards Pavia. Napoleon took up position behind the centre company and hurried forward with them, his heart pounding with excitement. The men at the gate saw them almost at once and jumped up from their bench, snatching at their weapons. One turned to shout out a warning and then, realising the need for a more urgent call to arms, raised his musket into the air and fired.The shot sounded dull and flat as it carried across the fields, but it was enough to alert the defenders to the danger, and Napoleon knew there was no further need to keep his men quiet. His sword rasped from its scabbard and he thrust it forward towards the town.

‘Charge!’ he shouted. ‘Charge them!’

The officers and sergeants took up the call until the whole force surged towards the flimsy defences in a great roar of battle cries. The first shots from the defenders stabbed out from the barricades, but the grenadiers surged on heedlessly. Only one of the men on watch stood his ground, bayonet lowered and legs braced as he glared at the Frenchmen. The others simply turned and ran, fleeing back down the street into the town. Their comrade parried aside the first attacker and slammed his butt into the grenadier’s face, and then he was knocked to the ground and the point of a bayonet punched into his chest. The Frenchman tore the blade free and ran on, leaving his victim squirming on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the blood pumping from his wound in a great hot rush of crimson.

Such was the momentum of the attack that the grenadiers had scrambled over the barricades and were streaming through the streets before they encountered the first organised resistance. Napoleon was at the head of a loose company of his men when they turned a sharp corner into a small piazza. He just had time to register a line of levelled muskets and throw himself to the ground before they disappeared in a thick swirl of smoke and flame. The musket balls whipped overhead and struck several of the attackers down. At once Napoleon thrust himself up, stretched out his sword and bellowed at his men. ‘Forward! Forward! Get them!’

He rushed on, conscious of the grenadiers behind him stepping and jumping over their fallen comrades as they raced after their general. Napoleon ran into the swirl of gunpowder smoke and saw the dim grey shapes of the defenders ahead of him. The point of a bayonet pierced the gloom and stabbed forward towards his face. Napoleon let out a ragged gasp as he smashed the hilt of his sword against the bayonet and knocked the weapon away.Abruptly he was shouldered aside by one of the grenadiers who slammed his blade into the enemy’s guts and pushed him back into the ranks of his comrades. More grenadiers swept past as Napoleon stood close to the wall of the house, chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. Ahead, the fight was already over, and when he moved on to catch up with his men he stepped over a dozen of the townspeople, cut down in the furious onslaught. Some were wounded and one was screaming as he clamped a hand tightly over the glistening guts protruding from his torn stomach.

When he reached the main square, Napoleon found Colonel Lannes and most of the men, already being re-formed into their units by their sergeants. In the far corner of the square, up against the side of the town hall, stood a small crowd of prisoners under close guard. Colonel Lannes was interrogating a tall thin man in fine clothes as Napoleon hurried up to him.

‘Who’s this?’

‘The mayor, sir. He’s offered to surrender the town. I told him, not until I have the garrison and Captain Linois safely in our hands. He’s sent a man to order their release.’

‘Good,’ Napoleon replied in relief. ‘Then it’s over.’

He turned to the mayor. ‘You must identify the ringleaders of this revolt.’

‘I will not betray them,’ the mayor replied in French.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Napoleon said curtly. ‘Take him over to the other prisoners.’

There was a sudden shout from one side of the square and the two officers turned to see what was happening. One of the grenadier companies had broken ranks and was running away from a tall house that overlooked the market. On the roof Napoleon could see a handful of men throwing tiles down on the French soldiers. Three men were already down and as Napoleon watched another tile thudded into the shoulder of a fourth man, and he collapsed with a sharp cry of agony.

‘Don’t just stand there!’ Colonel Lannes bellowed. ‘Shoot the bastards!’

Musket fire crackled in the square and the tiles around the men on the roof exploded into fragments. They hurriedly ducked back out of sight and after a few more shots the grenadiers lowered their weapons.

‘Find those men,’ ordered Napoleon. ‘They can join the prisoners.’>

Within moments the company that Lannes led down either side of the buildings that the men had fled across came under bombardment from more roof tiles. The example had been set and soon more of the townspeople were on the roofs, raining tiles down on the French soldiers. Napoleon watched with growing frustration as the injured men were carried back into the square. Meanwhile Bourrienne and the colour party had found a clear route through the streets to join their general, and the secretary looked round in shock at the number of men lying on the paving stones having their wounds dressed before he approached Napoleon.

Napoleon nodded a greeting and shook his head wearily. ‘Christ, I hate fighting civilians. Reminds me of the time we had to put down that rebellion in Lyons.’

Bourrienne nodded at the memory of the first action that he and Napoleon had shared as junior lieutenants in the Régiment de la Fère. Napoleon took off his hat and mopped his brow. ‘For most of them it’s just some kind of game. They’ll hurl insults at soldiers one day, rocks the next, and the moment we open fire they cry “massacre” and accuse us of committing some kind of atrocity.’ Napoleon replaced his hat and gave it an extra push to fix it on his head, as if that might protect him from a stray tile. ‘They’re costing me too many men. It’s time the Italians were taught a lesson. We can’t afford to have this mess repeated in every major town behind our lines.’

He turned to a sergeant. ‘Find Colonel Lannes. Tell him that every time a tile is thrown at his men they are to break into the house concerned and kill everyone inside and then torch the place.’

The sergeant smiled cruelly, saluted, and then turned to trot across the piazza, following the sounds of musket fire. Bourrienne looked at his general warily.

‘Is that wise?’ he asked softly.

‘Wise?’ Napoleon shrugged. ‘I think so. Why? What are you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking that if we start butchering the people of Pavia then you are setting a standard for the behaviour of our men.And once word of this spreads to the other cities we’ll make enemies of all those who welcomed us as liberators.’

‘That may be so,’ Napoleon reflected. ‘On the other hand, it might be argued that I am saving lives in the long term. Once people hear of the fate of Pavia it will surely dampen any rebellious flames that burns in their hearts. It will save the lives of our men as well, Bourrienne, and that’s what really matters, is it not?’

‘If you say so, General.’

The fighting continued through the town until early in the afternoon, when flames and thick clouds of dark smoke rose into the sky and a dirty pall lay across Pavia. The bodies of those killed inside the buildings were dragged out into the streets and left in heaps to serve as a warning to others. Not a man, woman or child was spared and Napoleon hardened his heart at the sight as he made his way round the town after the fighting had ended.

‘They have only themselves to blame,’ he muttered to Bourrienne. ‘If they had not chosen to defy us, none of this would have happened. I swear it.’

Colonel Lannes was waiting for them in the main piazza once Napoleon had completed his inspection of the grenadiers’ checkpoints. A small band of older and sickly-looking French soldiers stood to attention behind Lannes.

‘Is this the garrison?’ Napoleon asked.

‘Yes, sir.They’ve been held in the cells beneath the citadel for the last three days. They’ve had no food and were left in their own filth.’

‘Where’s Captain Linois?’

Lannes turned and indicated a stoop-shouldered man with a thin moustache standing in front of the garrison.

‘Linois!’ Napoleon barked. ‘Come here!’

‘Yes, sir.’ The captain saluted and trotted over. As he stood before his general Napoleon’s nose wrinkled at the stench that hung round the man.

‘Linois, do you have any idea how much damage you have done to our cause?’

The captain’s gaze fell and Napoleon struck him on the side of the head and continued in a low harsh voice. ‘Once word reaches other cities that a French garrison has surrendered to the local rabble without firing a shot, what do you imagine they will think? As a result of your cowardice I’m going to have to double the size of the garrisons, and bolster them with good combat troops, instead of this rubbish that you command. Troops that I am counting on to defeat the Austrians. Well, what have you to say for yourself, Linois?’

The captain shook his head and looked up at his general with a wretched expression. ‘Sir, they surprised us. There were hundreds of them. What could we do?’

‘You could have fought them! That’s what!’ He stepped up to the captain and thrust an arm into his chest, sending the man reeling back. ‘God damn you, Linois, you useless bastard.’ For a moment he sensed that he was on the edge of a great rage and he had to force himself to be calm. He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring. ‘So, what am I to do with you, Linois?’

Linois’s eyes widened. He sensed his peril. ‘Sir, break me to the ranks. It’s the least I deserve.’

‘Too true,’ Napoleon muttered with contempt. ‘By virtue of the power vested in me by the Directory and the War Office, I sentence you to death.’ He turned to Lannes.‘Take ten men from the garrison. Arm them.They will serve as Captain Linois’s firing squad. He will be shot here in the piazza at once.’

Linois dropped to his knees and reached out a hand imploringly. ‘No, sir! Please spare me! Send me to the front. Let me die like a soldier!’

‘It’s too late for that,’ Napoleon replied coldly. ‘You had your chance, and you proved that you are no soldier. Take him away.’

Linois made a light keening noise and bit his lip as two soldiers pulled him to his feet and half led, half dragged him across the piazza to join the other prisoners. Napoleon turned away, sickened by the sight, and caught Bourrienne’s eye. His secretary stared at him, then shook his head faintly.

‘Are you questioning my judgement?’ Napoleon asked softly.

‘I would not presume to do that, sir,’ Bourrienne replied.

‘Good. Perhaps if you were a general you would understand.’

‘Then I thank God I am not a general, sir.’

Napoleon stared at him briefly before he responded. ‘Yes. Thank God. For the sake of France if no other reason.’

The men of the firing squad stood to attention facing the town hall. Opposite them Captain Linois leaned against the wall, his head covered with a piece of sacking and his hands bound behind his back. His body trembled and Napoleon hoped that he would spare himself the indignity of falling over before the sentence was carried out. He turned away from the man to address the three companies of grenadiers assembled to bear witness to the execution.

‘Through his cowardice this man has endangered the lives of every one of his comrades in the Army of Italy. His death will act as a signal to every French soldier that betrayal of one’s comrades is beyond contempt and will never go unpunished! Tell every soldier you meet what you witness here today so there will be no doubt about the fate reserved for those who fail France, fail their comrades and fail in their own duty as a soldier! Colonel Lannes, carry out the sentence.’

He moved to one side as Lannes drew his sword, raised it overhead, and barked out the commands.

‘Firing party . . . present arms! Take aim!’

There was a final sob from Linois, a horrible animal noise from deep in his chest, and then Lannes swept his sword down.

‘Fire!’

The volley thundered out, echoing off the tall walls of the town hall as the musket balls ripped into Captain Linois, flattening him against the wall before he tumbled to the side, twitched once, and was still. Colonel Lannes marched stiffly across to his commander.

‘Sentence has been carried out.What are your orders, sir?’

Napoleon drew a breath to help strengthen his resolve. His work in Pavia was not yet complete. One final task remained to be carried out. He gestured across the Piazza to the prisoners. ‘Hang them. All of them.’

There was only the faintest look of surprise in Lannes’s face before he nodded solemnly and turned away to carry out his orders.

The grenadiers were in a subdued mood as they marched out of Pavia late in the afternoon. Napoleon did not want to linger in the devastated town overnight and resolved to let his men rest for the night only when they were some distance from the scene. Several wagons had been seized to carry the wounded back to the army, as well as the bodies of their fallen comrades. Napoleon did not wish to have them buried where the townspeople could desecrate their graves. They would be given full honours by the army once the column reached Brescia.

Behind them Pavia lay under its shroud of smoke, still and quiet as a ghost town. Napoleon drew rein and stared at the scene, feeling cold and tired. For a moment he yearned for a different life, or at least a period of respite away from the monstrous deeds that he had been compelled to carry out. Then he turned his horse away from the town and trotted forward to take up his place at the head of the column.