The Fencing Master by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)
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The Fencing Master by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)

Alexandre Dumas, Delphi Classics

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eBook - ePub

The Fencing Master by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)

Alexandre Dumas, Delphi Classics

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This eBook features the unabridged text of 'The Fencing Master' from the bestselling edition of 'The Collected Works of Alexandre Dumas'.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Dumas includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

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CHAPTER I

I HAD not yet lost the buoyancy of youth; I was in possession of a sum 4,000 francs, an inexhaustible treasure so it seemed to me, and I had heard Russia described as a veritable Eldorado for any artist of more than average ability, and as I was not lacking in self-confidence I decided to set out for St. Petersburg.
This resolution once taken was soon put into execution; I was a bachelor, I left nothing behind, not even debts; I had merely to get a few letters of introduction and a passport, a simple business, and a week after deciding to go, I was on the Brussels road.
I preferred to travel by land, in the first place because I intended to give some assaults at arms in the towns I should pass through, thus defraying the expenses of the journey as I went along, and secondly because, like a patriotic Frenchman, I wanted to see those famous battlefields, where I thought that nothing but laurels should grow, as on Virgil’s tomb.
I stopped two days in the capital of Belgium; on the first, giving an assault at arms and on the second, fighting a duel. As I came off as well in the one as the other, some very tempting proposals were made to me to settle in the town. However I declined them all; an uncontrollable impulse urged me forward in spite of myself.
Nevertheless I stopped a day at Liège, as a former pupil, now employed in the record office of that town, was living there, and I did not like to pass through without paying him a visit. He had a house in the Rue Pierreuse, and from the garden terrace I made the acquaintance both of the famous Rhine wine and of the town spread out beneath my feet, from the village of Herstall, the birthplace of Pepin, to the Château de Ranioule whence Godfrey set out for the Holy Land. My pupil’s account of the old buildings was diversified with five or six legends each more curious than the last. One of the most tragic, was undoubtedly the “Banquet of Varfusée,” which detailed the murder of the Burgomaster Sébastien Laruelle whose name is still borne by one of the streets.
I spoke to my pupil, when getting into the diligence for Aix-la-Chapelle, of my idea of inspecting the chief towns and visiting the famous battlefields, but he laughed at my suggestion and told me that in Prussia travellers do not stop where they like, but where the conductor chooses, and that once seated in his vehicle they are absolutely in his hands. Truly enough from Cologne to Dresden, where I had resolved to stay three days, we were not allowed out of our cage, except for meals, and then only just long enough to absorb the nourishment necessary to keep life in us. At length we reached Dresden after three days of this imprisonment, against which no one but myself raised any protests, so reasonable does it appear to the subjects of his Majesty Frederick William of Prussia.
It was at Dresden that Napoleon, on the eve of invading Russia, called for the great halt of 1812, where he summoned to meet him an Emperor, three Kings and a Viceroy; as for Sovereign Princes, they pressed in such crowds round the door of the Imperial tent that they were undistinguishable from mere aides-de-camp and orderlies; the King of Prussia was kept three days dancing attendance.
Vengeance is being prepared against Asia for the incursions of the Huns and the Tartars. From the banks of the Guadalquivir and from the Calabrian Sea, six hundred and seventeen thousand men, shouting—’’ Vive Napoleon “in eight different languages, have been pushed forward by the hand of the giant to the banks of the Vistula; they drag with them thirteen hundred and seventy-two field pieces, six sets of pontoons and a siege train; and in the van toil four thousand commissariat carts, three thousand artillery waggons, fifteen hundred ambulances and twelve hundred herds of cattle, and as they pass along, the plaudits of Europe accompany them.
On the 29th May Napoleon leaves Dresden, halting at Posen only long enough to speak a few friendly words to the Poles, passes Warsaw scornfully on one side, leaves on his right Friedland of glorious memory, halts at Thorn only for the time absolutely necessary for inspecting the fortifications and the stores accumulated there, and at length reaches Kônigsberg, where moving down the river towards Gumbinnen, he reviews four or five of his army corps. The order to advance is given; the whole country extending from the Vistula to the Niemen is one mass of men, carts and baggage wagons; the Pregel which flows from one river to the other, like a vein connecting two large arteries, is crowded with heavily laden barges. At length on the 23rd of June Napoleon arrives at the edge of the Prussian forest of Pilviski; a chain of hills stretches in front of him, and on the other side of the hills flows the Russian river. The Emperor, who had been driving up till then, mounts a horse at two o’clock in the morning, and coming up to the outposts near Kovno, seizes the cap and cloak of a Polish light cavalryman and departs at a gallop with General Haxo and a few men, to reconnoitre the river in person. On reaching the bank, the horse stumbles and flings its rider on to the sand.
“That is an unlucky omen,” says Napoleon, picking himself up, “a Roman would have beaten a retreat.”
The reconnaissance is accomplished, the army will maintain its position in concealment from the enemy during the day, and at night cross the river on three bridges.
Evening is at hand, Napoleon approaches the Niemen; a few sappers pass across the stream in a skiff; the Emperor follows them with his eyes until they are lost in the darkness; they reach the Russian bank and land.
The enemy who were there on the previous evening seem to have vanished. After a moment’s absolute silence, a Cossack officer appears on the scene: he is alone and seems astonished that strangers should be on the river bank at such an hour.
“Who are you?” says he.
“Frenchmen,” answer the sappers.
“What do you want?”
“To cross the Niemen.”
“What is your business in Russia?”
“To make war, pardieu!”
Without replying to the subaltern’s words, the Cossack gallops off in the direction of Vilna and disappears like a spectre of the night.
Three musket shots are fired at him without result. Napoleon starts at the noise; the campaign has opened.
The Emperor at once orders three hundred light infantry to cross the river to cover the building of the bridges; and despatches orderlies to every position. Then the massed troops get under way in the darkness and advance, hidden by the woods, and crouching in the growing rye; so dark is it that the van-guard approaches within two hundred paces of the river before being sighted by Napoleon; he hears nothing but a dull noise like an impending storm; he dashes forward; the order to halt, repeated in a low tone, passes down the whole line; no fires are lighted, strict silence is enjoined, ranks are not to be broken, but every man must sleep with his arms ready. By two o’clock in the morning the three bridges are completed.
Daylight appears and the left bank of the Niemen swarms with men, horses and wagons; the right bank is deserted and dismal; the ground itself, on becoming Russian, seems to have changed its aspect. When it is not gloomy forest, it is barren sand.
The Emperor hastens from his tent, pitched on the summit of the highest hill and in the centre of the camp; his orders are immediately given and the aides-decamp dart forth with their various despatches, diverging like the rays of a star.
At the same time the confused masses are set in motion, they blend into army corps and deploy in column, winding over the undulating ground like streams flowing down to a river.
At the very moment that the vanguard was setting foot on Russian territory, the Emperor Alexander who happened to be patronizing a ball given in his honour at Vilna, was dancing with Madame Barclay de Tolly, the wife of the Commander-in-chief. At midnight he heard from the Cossack officer who encountered our sappers of the approach of the French army to the Niemen, but he did not wish to interrupt the festivities.
The vanguard has scarcely reached the right bank of the Niemen by the triple passage now prepared for it, before I Napoleon dashes up to the middle bridge and crosses it, followed by his staff. Arrived on the opposite bank he feels troubled, then dismayed; the absence of an enemy which is for ever escaping him, seems more formidable than its presence. For a moment he pauses, thinking he hears cannon shots; he is mistaken, it is only thunder; a storm is gathering over the army, the sky becomes overcast and gloomy as if night were approaching. Napoleon surrounded by a handful of men only, cannot restrain his impatience, and putting spurs to his horse is soon lost to sight in the grey tones of the dense forest. The weather continues threatening.
Half-an-hour later a flash of lightning reveals the Emperor; he has ridden more than two leagues without encountering a living soul. Now the storm bursts; Napoleon seeks the shelter of a Monastery.
About five o’clock in the evening while the army continues its passage of the Niemen, Napoleon tormented by the silence and absence of life, rides on till he comes up to the Wilia, about a quarter of a league from its junction with the Niemen. The Russians in full retreat have burnt the bridge; it will take too much time to build another; the Polish light cavalry must find a ford.
By Napoleon’s orders a squadron of cavalry plunges into the river; at first the squadron preserves its ranks and the issue seems hopeful, but little by little men and horses begin to sink, and are carried off their feet; but none the less they push forward, and soon in spite of all efforts they break rank. The middle of the stream once attained, the violence of the current overwhelms them; some horses have already disappeared; the others become terrified and neigh frantically in their distress; the men struggle and flounder, but the power of the water is such that they are swept away. A few with difficulty reach the opposite bank, the others sink and disappear, shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” and the rest of the troops on the Niemen get the first news of their vanguard by watching the corpses of men and horses floating down the stream.
It took the French army three whole days to make the passage.
In two days Napoleon gains the passes which protect Vilna; he hopes that the Emperor Alexander will be waiting for him in a position so admirably suited to the defence of the capital of Lithuania; the defiles are deserted, he can hardly believe his eyes; the vanguard has already made the passage without the least opposition; he storms, he scolds, he threatens; not only is the enemy unapproachable, it is invisible. It is a preconceived plan, a skilfully arranged retreat; he knows the Russians from past experience, and when once they have received orders to fight, they become living walls which may be thrown down but never recoil.
In spite of possible danger Napoleon must profit by the retreat of the enemy. Accompanied by an escort of Poles he enters Vilna. The Lithuanians welcome with shouts of joy and enthusiasm the men whom they regard as compatriots and the leader who will bring them salvation; but Napoleon, harassed with anxiety, passes through Vilna, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, and hurries to the outposts who are already beyond the city walls. At last, he receives news of the Russians; the 8th Hussars, who had rashly plunged into a wood without any support, have been cut to pieces. Napoleon breathes again, he has no longer to deal with a phantom army; the enemy is retreating in the direction of Drissa; the Emperor hurls Murat and his cavalry after them, then he returns to Vilna and takes possession of the palace, deserted by Alexander only the previous evening. There he halts and pressing business claims his attention. Meanwhile the army continues to advance under the direction of his officers. Since a Russian army does exist, every effort must be made to force an engagement. Our convoys, our baggage waggons, our ambulances are not yet upon the scene; no matter, the indispensable thing now is a battle, for a battle means a victory, and Napoleon is thrusting four hundred thousand men into a country which failed to feed Charles XII. and his twenty thousand Swedes.
Most disastrous reports are brought in from every direction; the army, short of provisions, can only subsist by pillage; at last pillage no longer suffices. Then, although the country is friendly, recourse is had to threats, violence and incendiarism; doubtless this last mishap is due to carelessness, but whole villages fall victims to these accidents. In spite of everything the army begins to suffer, depression makes its appearance; there are ugly tales how young conscripts, less inured to hardships than the old campaigners, and unable to endure the prospect of long days of torture such as those they are experiencing, have turned their weapons upon themselves and left their brains scattered by the roadside. On both sides of the track are to be seen deserted ammunition limbers, and baggage wagons lying open and plundered as if they had been captured by the enemy, for more than ten thousand horses have died from eating the unripe rye.
Napoleon receives all these reports, but feigns disbelief. When visited in his apartments he is always to be seen poring over immense maps endeavouring to surmise the route the Russian army will follow; lacking positive data, he relies on his genius and believes he has discovered Alexander’s plan. The Czar’s patience will hold out so long as the French do not trample the soil of old Russia and only march across the modern conquests, but doubtless he will strain every nerve to defend Muscovy. But Muscovy does not begin until eighty leagues beyond Vilna. Two great rivers mark its borders — the Dnieper and the Dvina, the former rising above Viazma, the latter near Toropetz; they flow side by side for a distance of nearly sixty leagues from east to west, hugging the slopes of that great chain, the backbone of Russia, which extends from the Carpathian mountains to the Urals. They separate abruptly at Polotsk and Orsha, one to the right, the other to the left, the Dvina making for Riga on the Baltic, and the Dnieper for Kherson of the Black Sea, but before finally parting they almost reunite to embrace Smolensk and Vitebsk, the keys of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Unquestionably this is the spot where Alexander will await Napoleon.
In a moment the Emperor perceives the situation: Barclay de Tolly is retiring by Drissa on Vitebsk and Bagration on Smolensk by way of Borisov; together they will oppose the entry of France into Russia.
The following orders are hurriedly distributed: Davoust is to seize the Dnieper and with the assistance of the King of Westphalia, attempt to overtake Bagration before he can reach Minsk: Murat, Oudinot and Ney are to hasten after Barclay de Tolly; and Napoleon himself with his army of picked men, the Italian and Bavarian divisions, the Imperial Guard and the Poles, a total of a hundred and fifty thousand men, will march between the two forces, ready to make a rapid deviation and unite with Davoust or with Murat, should either have need of his assistance to stave off an attack or to accomplish a victory.
A quarrel as to precedence between Davoust and the King of Westphalia gave Bagration his opportunity. Davoust at length overtakes him at Moghilev, but what should have been a battle degenerates into a skirmish; however, the desired end is partly attained, Bagration is compelled to abandon the direct route to Smolensk and make a wide dĂŠtour.
On the left wing the same thing happens to Murat, who at length succeeds in getting in touch with Barclay de Tolly and every day there is an affair of outpost between the Russian rearguard and the French van; then Subervic and his light cavalry attack the Russians on the Visna and capture two hundred prisoners, while Montbrun’s artillery annihilates Korf’s division, when the latter is trying in vain to destroy a bridge in the rear, meanwhile Sébastiani enters Vidzi which had been abandoned by the Emperor Alexander only the previous evening.
Barclay de Tolly decides to wait for the French in the entrenched camp at Drissa where he hopes to be joined by Bagration; but at the end of three or four days he learns of the check to the Russian Prince and the point scored by Napoleon. If he does not hurry the French will be at Vitebsk first; so orders to advance are given and the Russian army, after this momentary halt, is once more in full retreat.
As for Napoleon, on the 16th he left Vilna, by the 17th he had got to Sventrioni and on the 18th he was at Klupokoé. There he learns that Barclay has evacuated his camp at Drissa; he supposed him to be already at Vitebsk; perhaps there is time for him to get there before him. He starts immediately for Kamen. Six days are spent in forced marches, but the enemy is not even sighted. The army marches forward on the alert, ready to wheel round at the call of danger. At length on the 24th the rumbling of cannon is heard in the direction of Bezenkovitzi; it is Eugène engaged on the Dvina with Barclay’s rearguard. Napoleon dashes in the direction of the firing, but all is over before he can come up with the combatants, and when at length he arrives on the scene he finds Eugène busy repairing the bridge, destroyed by the retreating Doctorov. He crosses the instant it is possible; not that he is in a ...

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