of the newly arrived sergeants, with as many slashes as an old patched shirt, propped himself up on one elbow and loudly proclaimed: ‘We’ve come from Aspern, troops! We recaptured that damned village! Long live Marshal Masséna!’
This news was greeted with cries of ‘Long live Masséna!’ and ‘Long live the Emperor!’ Margont thought of Lefine, Saber and Piquebois. Were they still wandering around amongst the heaped ruins, suffocated by the smoke, and fighting the Austrians bullet for bullet? Or had the regiment been relieved, was it resting at the rear, in reserve? Perhaps his friends were lying broken, in a boat, their hands trailing in the water, drifting …
News and rumours continued to spread, and became more and more exaggerated. Aspern and Essling had been attacked again, and lost, or almost, then retaken, nearly … And in the plains separating the two villages, the killing continued as ever. Meanwhile the bridges had been repaired again and soldiers swarmed over them. Boats continued to cross to and fro, so weighed down with casualties that they became dangerously flooded. A major from the 57th of the Line was brought in, along with some cuirassiers furious at having been stopped in the middle of a charge.
‘Silence for the major!’ shouted a quartermaster sergeant.
‘Yes, listen to the major!’ echoed the cavalrymen.
The officer was placed in the shadow of a willow tree and the soldiers fell silent. His thigh was bleeding but he paid no attention to that and focused on his audience.
‘The Emperor is crushing the Austrian centre!’ he announced vigorously.
An explosion of ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Long live the Emperor!’ followed. In fact the major, intoxicated by finding himself propelled into the limelight, had made his declaration more convincing than the attack he had participated in warranted. While the casualties on Lobau rejoiced at the demise of the Austrian army, in reality that army’s artillery was destroying the ranks of their attackers, and even the French cavalry, called in to back up the ranks, could not defeat them decisively. But it was true that the extreme aggression of an adversary far inferior to them in number had shaken the Austrians’ confidence and had forced them to exercise caution and moderate their hotheadedness.
Margont spotted Jean-Quenin Brémond, an old childhood friend. Brémond had reddish light brown hair and large side whiskers. Despite his boundless energy, he radiated calm. He indicated which of the wounded were to be operated on as soon as possible, teaching an orderly in passing how to tie bandages more securely and requisitioning the more able-bodied to help out the others … His practised eye picked out Margont immediately. He turned pale and strode rapidly over to examine the wound.
‘It’s not serious.’
Margont breathed a sigh of relief.
‘But even so, there is still the risk of gangrene.’
‘I know, Jean-Quenin. I’ll change my bandages when they’re dirty and I’ll make sure that I eat properly. Have you treated anyone we know?’
‘No. But that doesn’t mean anything. There are wounded all over the place.’
‘And here come even more!’ cried several soldiers.
The Danube swept away the remains of the little bridge, which had just collapsed again. Pontoniers and infantry, carried away on the current, waved their arms frantically. While the thousands of soldiers of Marshal Davout’s III Corps found themselves trapped on the island, Napoleon fulminated on the east bank, searching for reinforcements to sustain his attack on the Austrian centre.
‘It’s going increasingly badly for the citizen emperor,’ said Brémond worriedly.
He had been a revolutionary from the outset and did not approve of the transition from republic to empire, even though the Empire did respect several of the fundamental principles of the Revolution. So from time to time the medical officer referred to Napoleon as ‘the citizen emperor’ because he considered that all citizens were perfectly equal. To him, being emperor was a job like any other, and more important than ‘emperor’ was the word ‘citizen’. Nothing annoyed him as much as people who used the term in an ironic or pejorative fashion, to insult their servants. He came across people like that more and more often, republicans who were not prepared to make any concessions. If he had been a colonel, a ‘citizen colonel’, Napoleon would probably have entrusted him with the garrison of a town. A far-off town and a small garrison. But as he was a doctor, he could at least speak freely about bandages and amputated limbs.
Margont had a more complex point of view. Aged nine in 1789, he had become immediately impassioned by the revolution, understanding only a minuscule part of what was happening, and imagining the rest. Twenty years later, like Jean-Quenin, he was a humanist and a republican but his opinion of Napoleon was slightly different. Monarchies and empires, Austrian, Prussian or English … they had all brought war to the French Republic, and its product, the French Empire. Mostly because this empire did not believe in aristocracy by right of blood, and accorded everyone the same rights. The proponents of each of these models, monarchy and republic, wanted to eradicate the other model in order to mould the world in their own image. Now France found itself truly isolated in this struggle. The only other republic lay all the way across the Atlantic, in the United States of America. Who should one support? There were really only two possibilities. Either Napoleon, the military genius who, although he had transformed the Republic into a ‘republican-inspired empire’, defended some of the core principles of the Revolution with his thundering victories. Or one could support a government – but made up of whom? – that would not be able to stay in power when faced with enemy armies, at which point a French king would rise again, extracted from some unknown dusty prison cell. A king that the European monarchies would hasten to install on a throne in Paris before arguing about who should control the strings of this puppet monarch. Margont therefore served the Emperor because there was no choice. To him, ideas were more powerful than men. Whether people marched crying ‘Long live the Republic!’ as he had done, or ‘Long live the Emperor!’ did not matter; they all carried with them the ideals of the Revolution: liberty, equality, respect for everyone … And these notions infected those they were fighting. If republican ideals did not triumph immediately, they would win out in the end. The question was what would happen until then. For war followed war without respite, year upon year …
‘Since your wound is superficial, you can make yourself useful,’ said Brémond. ‘I think there’s someone you should meet.’
The medical officer pointed, but all Margont could see were the wounded and suffering.
‘She’s Austrian but she speaks good French.’
Margont spotted her. She was wearing an ivory-coloured dress with bloodstains at the foot, like a deathly hem.
Many women chose to follow the army although it was forbidden if they were not actually employed by it. Canteen workers and supervisors, laundresses, young bourgeois girls dreaming of adventure, society women, Austrian women who fell in love for the duration of a campaign, prostitutes: these distressing times rendered them all equal, all in the same boat. The sentries tried to prevent them from reaching Lobau, but in the general confusion several had, in spite of everything, managed to get there. These women searched for their husbands or lovers amongst the sufferers, praying all the while that they were not there, offering water and trying to get information … Stationing themselves on the south side of the island, where the prisoners and wounded were sent, they were far enough from the fighting not to be exposed to any danger. The front line was in fact four miles to the north-east and could not be seen because of the woods covering the island and the banks of the Danube. It was possible to tell where it was only because of the thunderous noise, and the plumes
