Richard Woodman - Baltic Mission

The horses of the two squadrons of Cossacks were labouring as they breasted the low ridge dominating the shallow valley and the frozen river behind them. They were almost blown by the speed of their recent charge and the violence of their clash with the enemy along the line of the river. As the officer at their head caught sight of the red roofs of the village of Schloditten, he threw up his bloodstained sabre, stood in his stirrups and ordered the fur-swathed cavalry to wheel their shaggy mounts. They reined in, faced about and halted as their officers trotted back to their posts.

'Well done, my children!' the Russian officer called with patriarchal familiarity, smiling and nodding his clean-shaven face to the swarthy and bearded troopers who grinned back at him. The Cossack horses tossed their heads in a jingle of harness, edging their tails round into the biting northerly wind. Breath erupted in clouds from their distending nostrils and the snowflakes that were again beginning to fall melted on contact with their steaming flanks. Lowering their lances across their saddle-bows, the Cossacks exchanged ribaldries and remarks, incongruously crossing themselves as they called the unanswered names of men they had left behind them in the valley. A few bound each other's wounds, or ran their filthy hands gently down the shuddering legs of horses galled by the enemy. Most remained in their saddles, reaching under their sheepskins for flasks of vodka, or for carcasses of chickens that hung in festoons from their belts. Reaching his post at their head, the clean-shaven officer abandoned the dialect of the Don.

'Hey, my friend! Come!' he called in French to another officer. Sheathing his sabre he fumbled in a pistol holster for a flask which he beckoned the other to share.

'What does the esteemed representative of the staff think of today's work?' He held out the flask, his blue eyes intently observing him. 'We made short work of those French bastards, didn't we, eh?'

The staff-officer grinned, but his eyes kept returning to the valley below them, into which they had charged twenty minutes earlier.

'They were Lasalle's bastards, you know, Count. The best light cavalry in the Grand Army'

'And we beat them, by Almighty God.' The count crossed himself piously and his companion raised a sardonic eyebrow at the practice.

'We haven't finished the business yet,' he said, pointing to the southward, where the little town of Preussisch-Eylau lay engulfed in smoke. Only its church belfry showed above the pall as, house by house, it crumbled beneath the storm of shot from two massive Russian batteries close to its eastern outskirts. Beyond the town and spreading out over the gently rolling snow-covered countryside of East Prussia, the dark masses of the Grand Army of France and her allies attempted to roll up the Russian left wing.

Four miles away to the north, just beyond the frozen river at the other extreme of the contending armies and immediately in front of the Cossacks, Lasalle's repulsed hussars were re-forming. Between them the bloody corpses of two dozen men were already stiffening like the trampled and frozen reeds of the river margin. To the south of the French cavalry, the dark swirl of Marshal Soult's Fourth Army Corps had been thrown back from their own assault upon the Russians. The Cossack commander slapped his thigh and laughed with satisfaction.

'Ha! You see, my friend, they are beaten! And was it not us, the squadrons of Count Piotr Petrovich Kalitkin, that took the very orders of the great Napoleon himself from the hands of his courier? Eh? Well, wasn't it?'

'Indeed, your Excellency,' said his companion with exaggerated courtesy, I think we may take a measure of credit for today' He returned the vodka flask amid an outburst of indignation.

'Measure of credit! Measure of credit!' spluttered Kalitkin. 'As a result of us, Marshal Bernadotte never received his orders, and ...' he waved his gloved hand over the battlefield, 'is not here to support his Emperor.'

The staff-officer nodded, his expression of amused irony altering to one of concern. It was quite true that Napoleon's courier had fallen into the Cossacks' hands at Lautenberg, but the staff-officer had a wider appreciation of events than Count Kalitkin.

'You are quite right, Count, but Ney is not here either, and that worries me.'

'Bah! You know too much and it makes you worry too much.'

'That,' said the staff-officer, leveling a small telescope to the north where snow was falling thickly from a leaden sky, 'is my business, Count, and the reason for my attachment to your brilliant command.'

'Ah, you and your damned reports. I know you are a spy; though whether you spy for Bennigsen on me, or for St Petersburg on Bennigsen, I have not yet determined.'

The staff-officer lowered his telescope and grinned at the Count. 'You are too suspicious, Count, and too good a light-cavalryman to need a nursemaid.'

'Bah!' repeated Kalitkin good naturedly, apparently unconcerned at the purpose of the staff-officer's attachment to his squadrons. 'You are an impudent rascal and I should have you whipped, but you would report me and I should be reduced to a troop again, damn you.'

'If I were you, my dear Count,' said the staff-officer, staring again through his glass, I should forget about whipping me and send a patrol to find out who is approaching from the northward; if it's Ney we shall be outflanked.' He passed the glass to Kalitkin whose manner was immediately transformed.

'I'll go myself.' He turned in his saddle. 'Hey! Khudoznik, stop doing that and mount up with your men!' A score of Cossacks fastened their saddle-bags and slung their lances, detaching themselves from the main body and forming a loose column. Kalitkin turned to the staff-officer. I shall leave the fate of Holy Russia in your hands and save Bennigsen's reputation again.' Kalitkin threw the vodka flask to his friend and kicked his horse to a trot. In a few moments he was no more than a blur in the swirling snow.

The staff-officer edged his horse forward to catch a glimpse of the battlefield before more snow flurries obscured it. To his left a battery of 60 cannon kept up a ruthless fire into the re-forming battalions of Soult. Beyond, the orange flashes of a further 120 guns pounded Eylau; but in the far distance heavy columns of French infantry could be seen advancing to attack. For a while the snow curtained everything, even deadening the concussion of the guns, but when it cleared again the French attack seemed to have failed.

Nearer at hand a greater drama was unfolding. About a mile away from the ridge a huge column of Russian infantry, grey-coated and with feet muffled in sacking, hurled themselves forward against the houses of Eylau. Six thousand peasant soldiers followed their officers with the obedience of small children and fought their way into the town like furies. Unseen by the distant Cossacks, Napoleon was driven from his post in the church belfry and only escaped by the self-sacrifice of his bodyguard. But the Cossacks observed his angry response to this insolent bravery; they shook up their horses' heads and grasped their lances, in case they were called upon to react to the great counterattack that burst out of the French position.

The snow cleared completely, torn aside by the biting wind as swiftly as it had come, and this lull was accompanied by a sudden brightening of the sky as Napoleon's brother-in-law, Marshal Murat, led forward more than ten thousand horsemen to burst through the Russian line. Wheeling in its rear and repeatedly breaking the centre, they sabred the indomitable gunners and cut up the devoted Russian infantry that had so recently threatened their Emperor. Behind Murat's cuirassiers and dragoons, Marshal Bessieres followed with the Horse Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, big men on huge black horses who trampled the remains of Bennigsen's frontal assault beneath their hooves. But the tide of cavalry had reached its limit. It was unsupported and ebbed inexorably back towards Eylau. The guns of the Russian centre were re-manned and began to pour shot into the enemy as they retreated. Then another curtain of snow closed over the mass of dying and mutilated men, so that their cries and groans were unheard.