Memory of Flames

CHAPTER 43

On the morning of 30 March the call to arms went out across the faubourgs of Paris. The semi-circular French front extended across ten miles, constituting the external line of defence on the outskirts of the capital. It was organised in two sections with Marshal Mortier commanding the left flank to the west and Marshal Marmont the right flank to the east. Joseph Bonaparte positioned himself in the centre.

They had rallied as many troops as humanly possible: regular soldiers, trainee soldiers, National Guardsmen, policemen, students, firemen from Paris, firemen from the Imperial Guard, volunteers in civilian clothes, invalided soldiers, old veterans ... There were forty-five thousand combatants in all. But a great number of them had never fought. Only twenty-one thousand were deployed on the defensive exterior line. The others were garrisoned in Paris.

Their only chance of winning was to hold firm until Napoleon exploded behind the Allies, sowing chaos and horror. When that

happened the monumental coalition would find itself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea and would hopefully suffer a cataclysmic defeat.

The Allies had fully understood that and had decided to launch their assault even before they were properly deployed.

At six in the morning, from the heights of la Villette, Marshal Mortier gave the order to fire the first cannon shot. The Battle of Paris was launched.

Joseph Bonaparte had established his headquarters at the top of Montmartre. He was confident simply because he was not aware of the enormity of their situation. He had been told on the 26th that Napoleon had won a victory at Saint-Dizier and so had deduced that the Allies’ act of daring was nothing but a flash in the pan. He believed that his brother was forcing the enemy to retreat and that only a few isolated army corps would appear at the gates of Paris. He could hear cannon fire from the right, where Marmont was stationed. But no one was threatening Montmartre for the

moment.

The hill had been well fortified with ditches, palisades and earth bulwarks, and was equipped with seven cannons operated by sixty artillerymen. The infantry force defending these entrenchments was made up of two hundred and fifty firemen of the Imperial Guard.

Some troops had been positioned in front of them, including some of the 2nd Legion of the National Guard. Saber was there in his grand ‘commanding colonel of the legion’ uniform. He was furious because he had only been able to bring with him some of his troops. Only six thousand soldiers of the National Guard had been allocated to the exterior defence of Paris. The others had stayed inside Paris, to maintain order there and to bolster the interior defence at the barriers (which were just palisades in front of the gates of Paris, used to prevent people from evading the payment of border taxes). Saber deployed his soldiers as skirmishers in the vineyards, the meadows and the gardens.

‘We’re protecting a key position!’ he repeated. ‘No one can seize

Paris without first taking Montmartre. If you retreat, Paris will be lost! If you stand firm until the Emperor gets here, Paris will be saved! It’s quite simple - Paris is depending on you!’

He assumed an air of great assurance. ‘Make each tree, each hole, a bastion!’

He marched past his own positions, and began to inspect the line next to his. Margont, embarrassed, covered his face with his hand. How like Irenee! He had been a colonel for less than three months and here he was behaving like the general in charge of the whole battlefield. But there were so few experienced officers about that even soldiers not under his command listened to him, saluted him and exclaimed, ‘Long live Colonel Saber!’

Lefine and Piquebois organised their own entrenchment. They had felled a poplar and pruned its branches. Their men imitated them and trees were falling all around them.

This should have been done two weeks ago!’ fumed Lefine. Margont looked to the right. The din of the fighting over there was getting louder and louder...

On the right flank, an hour before sunrise, Marshal Marmont launched an audacious attack on the enemy. He wanted to take back the plateau of Romainville, which had been evacuated the night before. To this end he had led part of his troops to assault the plain. He had grossly underestimated the number of enemy forces but fortunately the enemy had also grossly overestimated the strength of his and had withdrawn into the village. So paradoxically, in this sector the fighting began with a spectacular French victory.

But the Allies had continued with their deployment and, having mobilised reinforcements, now attacked the French right flank from all sides.

On the left flank, the Allies were already a little behind with their battle plan, since it was incredibly complex to organise such a vast quantity of troops. But they now prepared to launch a blistering attack on the heights of la Villette.

By ten o’clock the battle was intensifying everywhere. From the top of Montmartre the enemy troops could be seen arriving from the north, still quite far away, level with Bourget. The mass of soldiers swelled bigger and bigger as they drew nearer. It looked like one division - no, it was a few divisions ... One army corps. No, perhaps it was two ... No, it wasn’t, it was several corps ...

Joseph finally grasped the appalling reality. Wherever he pointed his telescope, he saw the enemy. The town of Saint-Denis was surrounded and thousands of skirmishers were invading the plain in front of him like swarms of grasshoppers. Joseph became increasingly anxious. A messenger brought him a note from the Tsar inviting him, somewhat menacingly, to negotiate. He decided to return to Paris with some of his closest advisers.

‘Where’s he going?’ asked Margont.

‘Perhaps where the situation is critical?’ hazarded Piquebois.

Saber snorted. ‘There’s only one place Joseph should be and that’s at the top of Montmartre, which is the cornerstone of our centre. And that’s why he’s fled. So there we have it. The defence of Paris has just been made leaderless right in front of our eyes.

Now well all have to manage as best we can.’

At Chateau des Brouillards Joseph had a brief consultation with his defence council, which included General Clarke, Minister for War, and General Hulin, Governor of Paris. He showed them the Tsar’s letter. The council decided to call a halt to the fighting. Joseph sent a message to Marshal Marmont to inform him that he was authorised to enter into talks with the Allies.

Marmont received the missive. But it did not order him to cease battle, it merely allowed him to do so should he and Mortier no longer be able to hold their positions. So Marmont, who was managing to contain the enemy attacks, felt he could continue to fight and possibly hold out until Napoleon came. He immediately sent Colonel Fabvier to inform Joseph of his point of view, in the hope of changing his mind.

Fabvier went to the top of Montmartre in search of Joseph. When he could not be found there, Fabvier turned round and set off to look for him, but he failed, because Joseph was already galloping off to Saint-Cloud.

Marshal Marmont decided to go on fighting.

The hours passed and the French continued to resist doggedly. The situation was, however, deteriorating for them.

The right flank was being steadily pushed back.

The defence of the village of Montreuil had collapsed under the combined bombardment of the Russian Guard, the Prussian Guard and the Baden Guard.

The village of Pantin had been taken and was still in the hands of the Russians and the Prussians, despite the frenzied attacks of General Curial, who was trying to take it back.

The Russians and Prussians had also taken over the gardens of Romainville and had immediately stationed a battery there, which bombarded the French to keep them back. General Raevski, the hero of the defence of the Great Redoubt during the Battle of Borodino, had sent a division of grenadiers to meet Marshal Marmont, who was leading a counterattack in the hope of retaking the

plain, and managed to force him back.

Marmont had fallen back to Le Pre-Saint-Gervais and alternated between counterattacking and defending.

Wurtemberger and Austrian troops reinforced by Russian cavalry were pressing round to the south-east to see whether they could get round the French line. The Chateau of Vincennes, firmly held by General Daumesnil and well served by large-calibre cannons, represented a significant obstacle. But they skirted round it and gained control of Saint-Maur, Charenton and Bercy. Pahlen’s Russian cavalry — hussars, uhlans, dragoons and Cossacks — tried to get past Marshal Marmont but were stopped by twenty-eight cannons, manned by students, backed up by National Guardsmen, a few policemen, dragoons and cuirassiers.

Allied reinforcements continued to flow in from all sides, like bees coming to cluster around each French position.

The French left wing was also severely buffeted.

After violent fighting, the village of Aubervilliers was taken by the Russians under General Langeron, a French aristocrat who had

joined the Russian army shortly after the Revolution.

The villages of la Villette and la Chapelle had resisted for hours, under a deluge of artillery fire. But they had finally succumbed to the incessant attacks of Generals Kleist, Yorck and Woronzow. Cossacks, sent out as scouts, reached the Bois de Boulogne looking for the breach that would allow the Allies to get round Marshal Mortier and attack him from behind.

General Langeron had been slowed down for hours, partly because of the unforeseen and energetic resistance of Savarin and his eight hundred men in the town of Saint-Denis. Six thousand Russians had been held in check and their general, Kapzevich, had finally informed Langeron that it would be impossible for him to take Saint-Denis. Langeron had to come to terms with this unexpected problem. And now that the previous points of resistance of Aubervilliers, la Villette and la Chapelle had been annihilated, he could focus all his attention on the principal objective: Montmartre.

Leaume had asked all his members to a meeting. But only fifteen of them had turned up. Out of forty! They would all willingly show up to talk and quibble, to squabble and criticise. But now that it was time to take action ...

Vicomte de Leaume and the members who had responded to his call set about trying to alarm the Parisians. They went to the gates of the city where volunteers in civilian clothes asked the National Guard to provide them with arms. They mingled with the volunteers as if they were on their side and tried to demoralise them by harping on the dangers. ‘We’re going to have to get a move on; it’s ten of them for every one of us. If we delay any longer, all will be lost!’ ‘What, no rifles for us? How are we going to fight? We might as well open the gates to the Prussians straight away!’ ‘Hear that din? That’s the Allies coming to get us!’ After a while the others started to look at them suspiciously. Time to slip away, saying that they would try to find arms elsewhere ... Royalists from other groups were operating the same tactics at other gates.

Honoré de Nolant was satisfied with their strategy. Varencourt -who had regained the confidence of the group when it was discovered, as they fled, that the police were not surrounding the treasure-trove - had removed the bullet that Margont’s sidekick had lodged in his arm. Nolant, however, was still in pain and felt that he had already taken his fair share of gunfire.

But Leaume and Chatel wanted to do far more. They abandoned Honoré de Nolant, who complained that he was weakened by his wound and that he couldn’t walk any further, and took the rest of the men and armed them with pistols and swords from one of their secret caches. When they went out onto the streets again, they were all sporting the cockades, white scarves and emblems of the Swords of the King.

Vicomte de Leaume led the little troop towards the Montmartre gate. It was the perfect place, because a little further north Joseph Bonaparte had established his headquarters on the top of the hill of Montmartre. If Leaume and his men caused trouble inside the gate, the French constituting the external defence would panic. They would think that some of the enemy had managed to slip

round them and into the city. The royalists were taking a huge risk, but if they succeeded they would be spectacularly rewarded! Should Joseph lose his nerve - and that would be just like him - if he were to gallop down the hill to take refuge in Paris for fear of being killed or captured, everyone around him would abandon their posts in panic and flee with him. And then it would have been he, Vicomte de Leaume, who, by a daring coup, would have allowed the Allies to take the deserted hill of Montmartre. What a triumph that would be! A masterstroke! A kingly stroke!

But his hopes were dashed when he saw the Montmartre gate. There were far more guards posted there than he had imagined. He could see at least a hundred National Guardsmen, invalid soldiers pressed back into service, volunteers keen to get their hands on rifles ... Yet normally the gate was one of the least used. The group stopped, undecided.

Leaume had assumed that because the Allies had so many more troops at their disposal, the French would post almost all their defenders on the exterior line. That’s why he had chosen somewhere he thought would be poorly defended for his point of attack. But that part of his planning had backfired. In Leaume’s opinion, the interior defence had been overmanned at the expense of the exterior line. Then he thought again. Was this not proof that royalist groups had succeeded in well and truly frightening Joseph?

‘We should turn back,’ advised Jean-Baptiste de Chatel.

‘No! There are wounded everywhere - they must have removed them from the front to pile them up here. Look at that confusion! The guards are demoralised. Let’s incite them to abandon their posts!’ Leaume gestured to the others to advance.

The soldiers watched the arrival of the royalists in stupefaction. What were these apparitions? The Vicomte’s men began to distribute flyers, printed thanks to Margont. When the soldiers did not take them, they laid them on the ground for all to read.

‘Long live the King! Long live Louis XVI11! Long live the Bourbons!’ chanted Chatel, and the others followed suit.

A detonation rang out and one of the royalists fell to the ground -

a National Guardsman had opened fire. Then gunfire came from all sides. Several members of the Swords of the King were old hands and were not about to give up so easily. Leaume wanted to charge the Montmartre gate. That would show everyone! But Jean-Baptiste de Chatel took his arm to hold him back. Another National Guardsman took aim at the Vicomte, whom he discerned was the leader of the band. He was only a few feet from his target. Chatel saw the danger and placed himself deliberately between Louis de Leaume and the shooter as he fired. The bullet struck him full in the chest and he was killed instantly. Leaume and the others fled.

That little battle had lasted barely a minute.

General Langeron organised all his troops in two columns. The eight thousand men of St-Priest’s VIII Corps on one side and the five thousand of Kapzevich’s X Corps on the other. Then he launched them straight at Montmartre and its handful of defenders.

The French at the front of the defence were firing and firing ... The Russians fell on all sides but were not firing much so as not to slow their progress. Those who did not bolt in the face of the Russian advance were skewered by bayonets and then trampled over. The last cavalry of Belliard - the cavalry brigade of Dautencourt’s Imperial Guard, which was made up of chasseurs, lancers and General Sparre’s dragoons - charged the enemy in the hope of pushing them back. Any cavalrymen who managed to get through the Russian dragoons blocking them found themselves surrounded by assorted hordes slashing and skewering; they were engulfed and disappeared.

Saber, who was everywhere at once, gesticulated with his sword. ‘Fire away!’

Lefine had grabbed a rifle from one of the dead - there were not enough to go round and the NCOs of the National Guard had not been given any - and adjusted his sights onto Russian officers, easily recognisable by their bicornes or plumed shakos.

Margont shouted orders. But he could not take his eyes from the

tidal wave that was sweeping towards them, engulfing everything in its way. As the Russians charged he felt the earth tremble beneath his feet.

The defenders were rammed by the masses of attacking forces. The guardsmen were riddled with balls at point-blank range; blows from rifle butts and bayonets rained down on those at the front. Margont found himself on the slope of Montmartre - he ran forward and took cover behind a palisade. The Russians were mad with fervour. They had been waiting for this day for so long! They were trampling the corpses of their comrades that were filling the ditches. They were trying to scale the parapets, digging under the stakes to try to destabilise them. Margont noticed Lefine and Piquebois, who were defending the entrance of an entrenchment along with firemen from the Imperial Guard, National Guardsmen and soldiers of the line. There was smoke everywhere. The cannons of Montmartre thundered, propelling a volley of cannonballs over the Russians, tearing through their lines and disrupting the waves of attackers. Chasseurs, riflemen, musketeers, grenadiers, drummers, officers, horses and aides-de-camp were flattened. Not far from Margont there were guttural shouts of‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ It was the war cry of the Russians! The enemy attackers had breached the first line of defence. They burst into the entrenchment, slashing everything. Soldiers fled, knocking into Margont and dragging him along with them. He tried to join the second line, which was backing up the first. The French, panicked, were falling into the ditches they had themselves dug a little earlier. Margont raised his head. He wished that the hill were much higher. Already they had lost the base of it; the sky was much nearer. They would have to do everything they could to slow the Russians down, because once the French reached the summit they would find themselves trapped there like rats. Margont could see the officers up there amongst the windmills. Windmills! What a joke! He was going to die at the foot of a windmill. A quixotic death.

The Russians were falling, slipping, tripping over one another and killing each other. Their corpses littered the slope. But they were

persevering. Their sappers were attacking the palisades with axes, their infantry giving their comrades a leg up over the sides. All that separated them from Margont were some posts and earth bulwarks. He could not believe his eyes. The enemy were blithely approaching the mouths of the French cannons pointing out of the portholes. How could they do that, knowing the batteries were about to fire? They took aim at the artillerymen, picked off one here, wounded another there ... Finally the cannons fired, belching forth a hail of cannonballs that massacred everyone. There was a moment of hesitation as the smoke cleared, revealing a gaping hole in the Russian ranks. Then the enemy converged anew, closing up the gaps and resumed felling the sides of the palisades. Some Russian riflemen succeeded in heaving themselves onto the top of the palisades, but were cut down immediately. Margont called over a group of firemen and guardsmen, only to see them torn apart in front of his eyes. Some other Russians had got hold of one of the French cannons and turned it on their enemy, even though in doing so they sprayed as many of their compatriots with fire as they did French soldiers. The cannon was already being reloaded by the Russians. Margont threw himself forward to reclaim it. He thought the soldiers that went with him were helping him, but in fact they were fleeing another breach, unaware that they were throwing themselves at further danger. There were only a handful of Russians manoeuvring the cannon. They continued to load the cannon instead of defending themselves; they let themselves be massacred. There were only two of them left. One of them protected his companion by standing in front of him, and was mown down by three musket balls. The other fired off a shot before collapsing, mortally wounded. Margont threw himself to the ground just in time, sheltering behind the corpses. A hail of shot pulverised everyone around him. When the smoke had cleared it seemed as if the entire world had perished, as if he were the only survivor.

He spotted Saber addressing his soldiers. There were Lefine and Piquebois too. He hurried towards his friend. ‘We’ll have to fall back ... But where to?’ he demanded.

Saber looked at him, not seeming to recognise him, and retorted: ‘I will never give up! If there’s only one man left standing it will be me! I will be the last Parisian!’

He brandished his sabre in the direction of Paris.

‘Counterattack with bayonets!’

‘You’re mad, Irenee! We’re surrounded! We’ve lost! Look around you! There is no one left, everyone is dead!’

‘The dead are coming with me!’ he yelled.

And he dashed forward, straight at the Russians, who were cutting off their escape route. He ran down the slope towards Paris, followed by about forty defenders, charging with their bayonets at the ready. Piquebois was amongst them, brandishing his sabre that seemed to promise death to anyone who tried to stand in his way. ‘Counterattack!’ yelled Margont in his turn, throwing himself into the turmoil, followed by Lefine. It was impossible to stay still; either they had to move up the hill or go down and Margont had just had a kind of premonition. Up there at the foot of one of the Montmartre windmills - maybe even at the same spot where he had lain daydreaming the other day - his tomb awaited him. He preferred to throw himself into the jaws of death rather than to wait for it to catch him.

The rank and file had no idea what to do in the midst of the collapse. Whenever they saw a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, a captain or other foot soldiers attacking the Russians they imitated them, hoping that those officers would guide them to their salvation.

Up until that point, the Russians had been the assailants, and they were very surprised to see the French charging desperately down the slope straight at them and slicing down anyone in their path. The Russians behind those felled in this way were flung backwards. They retreated, not because they wanted to, but because they were being shoved back by this group of mad Frenchmen, who were swept along on a wave of incredible determination. They were slipping and losing their footing, stumbling and rolling over, but nevertheless these men knocked into the enemy, destabilising them in their turn. The slope was so steep it was very difficult to stay upright. This was not so much a counterattack as the frenetic

flinging of a pack of French dogs into a Russian game of skittles. The French, encouraged by the miraculous success of their efforts, rampaged through the Russians, pressing them ever further back. The French combatants were mad with fury. They felt invincible, immortal. Although they were being cut down by bullets and bayonet thrusts, they succeeded in crossing through the enemy lines, which immediately closed up behind them.

Margont, Piquebois and Lefine were among those who escaped and made for Paris. At the very top of the hill, meanwhile, the Russians were massacring the last remaining gunners. Margont was crying: Saber was not with them.

One of Marmont’s aides-de-camp had tried to reach the summit ofMontmartre to find out if Joseph had left someone in command of its defence.

Fie was unable to fulfil his mission because Langeron had launched his attack. But he was there during the last few minutes of the resistance of Montmartre and Saber’s charge. He returned to present his report to Marshal Marmont.

‘That’s extraordinary!’ Marmont exclaimed. 'King Joseph is supposed to be in command of us all, but he’s left! And it’s a colonel who’s distinguishing himself instead! What’s the name of this colonel?’

‘He’s Colonel Saber of the 2nd Legion, Your Excellency.’

‘I want the Emperor notified that I would respectfully ask that this colonel be promoted to the rank of general. He has succeeded in causing the accursed Langeron a lot of trouble with the help of only a handful of men!’

‘But ... Your Excellency ... the colonel is dead. I saw him fall with my own eyes.’

The marshal’s face hardened. ‘That changes nothing. He is to be made a general posthumously.’

The regiments of the Army of Silesia, the Russian Guard and the

Prussian Guard finally managed to seize the heights of Chaumont. There were so many Prussians there that all along the slopes and heights their blue forms could be seen like so many ants. It was like a flood submerging the grassy heights, about to spill over and engulf the capital below.

These troops overwhelmed Marshal Marmont’s men from the rear, forcing them to withdraw to Belleville, and then hurried to set up their batteries of cannons and twelve-pounders. When they opened fire their shots battered the city of Paris itself.

The room was tiny, perched right at the top of an old house. Its walls and beams were covered with dozens of paintings, shunted together, their frames touching. There were depictions of naval battles with ships on fire sinking into the waves, the Great Fire of London in 1666, a forest fire, setting suns that seemed to set the sky ablaze ... It was a display of scarlets, oranges, vibrant yellows and other fiery hues, amidst expanses of sooty black, making it seem as if the room were permanently on fire.

Varencourt was standing facing the only window, watching the distant battle and counting the plumes of smoke. He distinctly saw black shapes crossing the sky and falling on the houses. In most cases, he didn’t witness any impact but from time to time a projectile struck the roof of a building at full tilt, spraying up debris, or clipped a corner, sending a wall crashing down, releasing clouds of dust. As he watched, a house burst apart, and another shell knocked a roof into the air. The detonations merged into one another, eventually making one continuous crackling. Now buildings were falling on all sides. A plume of black smoke over there -the first fire! Then somewhere else a building collapsed, burying an entire street. Debris showered over north-west Paris and the columns of smoke accumulated. Varencourt took a flask of vodka that he had bought in the ruins of Moscow after the French had left. He had never tasted it, keeping it instead for this very occasion. He poured himself a glass and drank a toast to the cannonballs destroying Paris. As the spirit slipped down his throat he felt as if he were swallowing the fire of Moscow.

Napoleon was still advancing. He was accompanied now only by those closest to him and about a hundred cavalry. All he wanted now was to reach Paris and take command of the defence of the city.

In the end the entire French front simply folded under the weight of the enemy. The heights were lost and the exterior defences overwhelmed, and still there was no sign of the Emperor. At four o’clock Marshal Marmont, who was wounded in the arm and had narrowly avoided capture, sent three officers to the enemy vanguards to ask for a suspension of hostilities.

The Allies had lost nine thousand men, either injured or killed, and the French, four thousand.

The silence was eerie. The soldiers’ ears still rang with the cacophony of combat, as if they could not believe that calm had returned. The silence spoke to Catherine de Saltonges, huddled in a torpor in the corner of her cell. It was murmuring something to her: the Allies had won. But she herself had lost everything. Almost everything. She still had her pride! In spite of the torment her ex-husband had put her through, in spite of the hardships of the Revolution, of her inability to keep her lover in her arms, the loss of her child, yes, in spite of all that, nothing would ever succeed in breaking her spirit.

She stood up, walked over to the door and began to beat on it with the flat of her hand and called out to her gaolers, This is it, Messieurs. It’s time for us to change places.’