The Barbed Crown

Chapter 10





Napoleon watched England from a gray wooden gallery with glassed oval ends, nesting on a bluff above Boulogne. The pavilion was built near the legendary site of Caligula’s Lighthouse, erected when that mad Roman emperor dreamed of conquering Britain and fired catapults at the water when storms dashed his chances. Soldiers called the one-hundred-foot-long aerie “the Big Box.” When Channel squalls blew, the pavilion was a cozy refuge. On clearer days, a telescope gave a view of the white cliffs of Dover and the British navy between. A long table inside was strewn with maps of England and its shoaling shores.

There was only one chair. Attending generals were required to stand in order to keep meetings short. When Napoleon launched into monologues, they leaned on the hilts of their sheathed swords to give their legs relief.

The emperor’s panorama was like that of a giant child with an unlimited supply of toy soldiers. The Channel shore had been dubbed the Iron Coast for its menacing artillery batteries. On the sloping meadows around the French seaport was a vast military city of eighty thousand men, living in mud-and-wattle barracks with thatched roofs and smoking chimneys. It was no secret that there were thirty-five thousand more drilling in Saint-Omer, fourteen thousand at Dunkirk, twenty thousand at Ostend, and ten thousand at Bruges, along with ten thousand horses and hundreds of field guns. All of this I had duly put in coded messages with sympathetic ink and passed to Sir Sidney Smith, as Réal cheerfully suggested.

Waiting to take this army across the Channel were thirteen hundred boats classed as prame, chaloupe, bateau, or péniche, with another thousand under construction.

The quest was hung with history. Napoleon had displayed the famed Bayeux Tapestry in Paris the previous winter, reminding the French of their success with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. And William the Conqueror had led a platoon compared to this lot.

But patrolling offshore, like sentry dogs, were scores of English ships.

Elephant and whale, indeed.

My family and Catherine rode in a coach from Paris to Boulogne on the swift stage roads we’d avoided before, us chattering and our escort Pasques as mute as a mummy. Since the royalists had been crushed and I was supposedly working for both sides, I didn’t understand the need for a watchful policeman, but at least the giant was useful in getting men to slide out of the way at an inn table. He tended to get faster service and hotter food, too, with less need to check the arithmetic of the bill. I like large companions.

It didn’t require a spy to know we were approaching military encampments. Even in summer the roads were churned to wallows from a constant stream of supply wagons. The outskirts of Boulogne had a new tent city of sutlers, prostitutes, moneylenders, horse traders, food wagons, and casinos. As we rode past we were offered pigs, chickens, pastries, bare breasts, campaign equipment, loans, and gypsy fortunes, Harry taking in more of life’s realities than I would have preferred. He was most mesmerized by the uniforms and guns. Cannons thudded in practice drills. Muskets crackled on the firing range. Newly purchased mares were commanded and spurred next to a deliberate cacophony of cannon blast, bugle call, gunshot, drum, and practiced screams from a chorus of village women hired expressly for the purpose, to mimic the cries of combat.

“Why are they yelling at the horses, Papa?”

“A mount is useless if panicked by battle, and so horses have to be trained not to bolt when the noise starts. They have more sense than people and want to run away.”

“Aren’t the horses brave?”

“Nobler than their masters.”

We settled in Boulogne, a small port with cobbled quays and a new stone basin shaped like a half-moon. This was filled with the moored invasion fleet. Larger warships, floating batteries, and underwater chains formed a protective hedge beyond to deter British attack. Four gigantic army camps squatted upslope, three north of the city and one south. A letter from Réal directed me to seek out General Phillipe-Guillaume Duhèsme, to whom I was to offer my eccentric expertise. While the women and Harry explored, I went looking for him.

The scale was imposing. Men of an ordinaire, or squad, were housed fifteen to a hut in rows more than two miles long. Soldiers did their best to make these hovels a home. Some were whitewashed, had wooden floors, and some even had secondhand carpets. Next to each were plots for vegetables, flower gardens, and chicken coops. Officer villas were in a row beyond, and kitchens and latrines beyond that.

There were street signs with the names of French victories, such as Valmy, Fleurus, or Marengo. Veterans of the Egyptian campaign set up miniature pyramids or obelisks made of clay and seashells. Pet cats that helped keep away the vermin prowled longingly beneath the birds in the officers’ aviaries.

There were cheerful oddities everywhere. One hut I passed had a pilfered chandelier, another a pair of Spanish bull horns, and a third chairs fashioned from driftwood. Two veteran sergeants occupied these seats, smoking clay pipes and calling out advice and insults to all who wandered past. A garden statue of Venus was festooned with bawdy notes, and another hut had a mast and boom on the roof, with a rotating sail like a weathercock.

Duhèsme was a tall, thin, and restless officer with an anxiously friendly face; his head tended to bob when talking, like a rooster. He wore his bicorn hat at a jaunty angle, and muttonchops held his chin like calipers. His headquarters were in a requisitioned stone farmhouse, staff offices on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Three farmwives had been hired to keep house, and two hunting hounds lay like lazy sentries.

“Ah, the American. Did you bring the Jaeger?”

I’d wrapped the rifle in oilcloth to discourage thieves from its gleam of gold. It was opulent enough to be embarrassing. “I haven’t had an opportunity to use it, General.” I untied the bundle.

His eyes gleamed at its craftsmanship as he reached out.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

He turned it and sighted. “Pretty as a woman. And worth a small fortune.”

“A present from the emperor.” The rifle gave me more credential than a satchel of medals.

“An impressive patron to have in imperial France, though exactly where our empire is—a grand claim for a nation ringed by enemies—has eluded my discovery. I suppose the emperor is an optimist.” He grabbed a tin plate from the table by the house’s kitchen. “And you’re curious about your pretty gun, no? I certainly am. Do you have powder? No? We’ll requisition some. Come, come, let’s give it a try.”

We trudged up a long sweeping hill with the general pointing out Napoleon’s pavilion. “He has an iron bed with a horsehair mattress there, but usually sleeps on feathers on the other side of town, in a mansion called Pont-de-Briques. That’s when he sleeps at all. Mostly he prowls from six in the morning until five in the afternoon, at which time he returns to headquarters to do paperwork, dashing off a hundred orders to all corners of France until midnight. It keeps men at their jobs, I can tell you. He’ll pinch your ear if you displease him, and give you a silver snuff box if he approves.”

“I’m not sure why he brought me here. Perhaps to meet with him?”

“Not today!” He laughed. “Our petit caporal took it in his head to be the first to shoot the mighty mortars we’ve installed to hold off the British ships. The monsters fire sixty-pound shells, and a single hit would be enough to sink a frigate. But as a

former gunner Napoleon was too confident, and he stood so close that the roar and concussion deafened him. He’s had cotton in his bleeding ears the past two days and is sour as bad milk.”

An injury report from famed spy Ethan Gage was something Smith could use, I thought. “You mean he can’t hear?”

“Temporarily, the doctors say. Meanwhile, he shouts because he thinks we can’t hear him.” Duhèsme laughed again, an officer of rare good humor. His face was weathered from coastal duty, pockmarked from some earlier disease, and handsome in the lean way of a hound. “His enthusiasm is always getting him into trouble. He’s fallen out of boats and had to swim for his hat, and been thrown by his horse while crossing the river. But his frenzy produces respect. He’s caught sentries napping. He also came upon one soldier they forgot to relieve and took his place on a blustery night, saving the man from freezing. Or so the story goes. Bonaparte is as much legend as fact anymore. What do they think of him in America?”

“The hope was that he’d sustain a democratic republic.”

“Copy the chaos of your United States? I think not.”

“Then what was your revolution for?”

“Liberty. But people in France are tired of freedom. It’s when people can vote that they realize how catastrophic and stupid are the opinions of their neighbors. Better to have a Bonaparte in charge whom you can never remove, and always blame.” He laughed again.

There was a thunder of hooves behind. The general jerked me off the track, and a captain of the Hussars rode past, whooping drunkenly and holding a champagne bottle. Duhèsme gave him a wry salute.

“Your officers gallop intoxicated?”

“It’s his initiation after a promotion. To confirm his new rank, the cavalryman is given three horses and has three hours to gallop a twenty-mile course, all while drinking three bottles of champagne and rutting three whores. The order with which he accomplishes these tasks is entirely up to him.”

“And they accomplish it?” Even I was astounded, and a bit envious.

He winked. “We’re a highly trained army. Are you a military man, Gage?”

“Not by profession. Armies seem to scoop me up.”

“You’ve seen action in the Orient and the Americas, I understand, and by reputation are quite a shooter.”

“I learned on the American frontier but am out of practice.”

“Let’s see you practice now.” We reached a camp firing range set against a dune. Duhèsme placed the plate a hundred paces away. “Show me what your pretty gun is capable of.”

I loaded the Jaeger. Unlike a soldier’s musket ball, a rifle bullet is tightly squeezed in the barrel so it can grip the grooving and spin for accuracy. That means ramrodding takes care, strength, and time. I spent a full minute inserting powder cartridge, ball, wadding, and primer.

“My God, the battle would be over by now,” Duhèsme judged, looking at his pocket watch. “This is how you won the American wars?”

“For speed, use a musket. You can almost drop the bullet in. But to actually hit anything, use a rifle.” I primed the pan, cocked, aimed slowly, and squeezed the trigger. There was a bang, kick, and a puff of powder smoke. Through its haze, the distant tin plate twitched. I felt satisfied. I was rusty but could still shoot.

The general snapped open his telescope. “Just centimeters off the center. Impressive, American. Try again.”

I shot five more times. Every bullet pierced the plate. Then Duhèsme followed, hitting three of four shots.

“Impressive, Frenchman.”

“It’s the gun. The inaccuracy of firearms is the intriguing dilemma of the battlefield. We’ve run tests with our infantry firing at targets the size of horses. With a musket, just half struck the target at a hundred yards. At three hundred, the accuracy dropped to one hit in four. Charging cavalry can gallop that distance in half a minute.”

“Meaning your soldiers get off just one or two volleys.”

“And that’s on a firing range. Put peasant boys on a smoky and hellish battlefield, men bleeding and horses screaming, guns going off in their ears, and we’re fortunate to get them to point their muskets in the enemy’s direction. It took more than four hundred shots at Marengo to produce each Austrian casualty.”

“You might as well wait for them to keel over from consumption.”

“Our soldiers stagger from sixty-five pounds of gun and kit. You need bright uniforms to tell friend from foe in the murk of powder smoke. Drums and bugles because no one can hear their officers. And should the rank be one deep, two, or three? It’s not uncommon for the third rank to shoot the ears off those in the first.”

“The British stand two deep, I’m told.” This was no secret.

“All those men must be fed. A cannon requires ammunition and gunners, and the gunners food, and so a battery of field pieces requires a hundred horses that need to eat in turn. Any economy saves lives and francs. What if our army was armed with Jaegers?”

So that was in it. This Frenchman wanted to mimic Daniel Morgan’s frontiersmen in our Revolutionary War, picking the British off from an impregnable distance. “Rifles are fussy,” I warned. “They take too long to load, are more apt to foul and misfire, and are easily broken. Muskets can take the abuse of an oaf and be loaded by a village idiot.”

“An elite rifle unit, then. Lafayette brought back enthusiasm for skirmishers from your Revolutionary War.”

“Red Indians are most expert, so perhaps you should go back to arrows. They’re silent and don’t emit smoke.”

The idea was meant as a joke, but he took it seriously. “Do you know how to shoot a bow?”

“Regrettably, no. Years of practice are required, I’m guessing.”

“Crossbows, perhaps. Let me ponder that.” Duhèsme had more imagination than most army officers I’ve encountered.

“For every advantage there is a disadvantage.”

He nodded. “You understand war, Monsieur Gage. People think generalship is arrows on a map, but it really is difficult choices, and getting men to function when they’re hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. They seldom know exactly what they’re fighting for, so they fight for friends and flag. Their reward is proof of their own courage.”

“Men fight wars to become men.”

“Indeed.” He cocked his head. “So why are you here, so far from home?”

“My goal is peace, which no one seems to share.”

“You’re not loyal to a flag?”

“I understand being loyal to yourself, your family, and even the country that protects them. If that’s represented by the flag, then of course. But if the flag represents a king’s quest for glory, or a vainglorious general? Then I’m loyal to reason. I’ll retreat or desert if it will save my life.”

Duhèsme was disappointed in me, as so many people are. “You’re missing the meaning of life, Monsieur Gage. You need a cause and companions! Someday, perhaps, you’ll experience the exhilaration of dedicating yourself to a banner, melding with your unit, and feeling as one. It’s transforming: a touch of the Divine.”

“The transformation comes when a cannonball shreds your extremities. And I hope the Divine is dedicated to beauty, not butchery. Yes, I know my selfishness makes me a poor soldier. But a sensible man, don’t you think?”

“A morally impoverished one.” He shook his head.

That’s the nut of things, isn’t it? Do you live for yourself or your country? For reason or passion? Are you responsible for your actions, or do you hand responsibility to an army and commit glory and crimes on its behalf?

“I mean no insult,” Duhèsme said, “but one’s country is all. And unity is what we’re drilling here, and why we’ll cut through English militia like a knife through butter if we can cross the Channel. Nearly half our number here has already seen combat. No army in history has the preparation of Napoleon’s Army of England. But we constantly seek advice, even from independent Americans, to improve even more.”

“I’m flattered but mystified, General. You already know the advantages and disadvantages of rifles.”

“I’m asking if they are practical.”

I rummaged for something useful. “In America the colonials fought from behind trees and rocks. The British regulars couldn’t close without breaking apart their lines in rough terrain. Washington wanted to fight on level fields, but I never understood the point of it. Fight like Indians! The English called cowardice what I call cunning.”

“I want you to work with us on tactics, Gage. And when you’re finished, go tell your British friends they can’t stand against us. Your incorrigible character will convince them you’re betraying us, so they’ll believe you.”

I sighed at this assessment. For all my skepticism of following a flag, I had effectively been drafted into the French army. Some spy! “This is what Napoleon called me here for?”

“Napoleon called you for a different purpose. When his ears heal, he’ll give you your true mission.”