Bonaparte's Sons by Richard Howard

Author:Richard Howard [Howard, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RO:HIS
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2018-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

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The dead Austrian was in his early forties. A distinguished-looking man with a thick moustache and sideboards flecked with grey. His face was relatively unmarked, the wound which had killed him having been received to the back of his skull. In fact, both his eyes were still open and Delacor paused to peer into those lifeless pools as if fearing that the man was still watching him. He waited a moment as if mesmerised by the staring eyes then, gently, he reached forward and closed the lids. He moved away from the body, scuttling across to another Austrian who’d been killed by a musket ball which had struck him in the chest. Delacor swiftly and expertly went through his pockets and pack, coming up with some tobacco, a pair of socks and a piece of cheese wrapped in muslin. He took a bite before stuffing it into his own pack.

Several dragoons were shepherding some Austrian prisoners towards the French ridge, which was all but deserted now. The prisoners had been stripped of everything except their breeches and shirts and they trudged along, some with their hands behind their heads, some walking sullenly, others supporting injured comrades.

Lausard watched the dismal little procession from his saddle then allowed his gaze to drift once again over the ridge and the valley. The dead of both sides were being collected together by some infantrymen, who were dragging the corpses towards a series of large holes that had been dug in the rock-hard earth. Lausard guessed that none of the mass graves was deeper than about two or three feet, barely sufficient to cover the corpses and sure to attract scavengers. Every corpse was naked, clothes, equipment and personal effects having been taken by the burial parties. The clothes and weapons had been piled high into two wagons drawn by some scrawny-looking mules. General Augereau’s division of a thousand men, who had no firearms, had been forced to advance anyway and the captured enemy muskets were to be distributed amongst them.

A French artillery crew was busily limbering up an Austrian six-pounder in preparation for it to be hauled away. A shortage of horses for the campaign had ensured that not only were the bulk of the cavalry understrength but also the artillery lacked horses. Lausard was beginning to wonder if there was anything which the Army of Italy was not lacking. And yet, despite these shortcomings, they had won their first victory under Bonaparte and, again, Lausard found a certain irony in his situation. He, the son of an aristocratic family, forced to hide in the gutters of Paris, driven to fight and live alongside men he would normally have shunned, was fighting in an army commanded by a Corsican peasant who was forced to prove himself to older and so-to-say socially superior officers, many of whom resented both his youth and his lack of social skills.

He walked his horse slowly across the ridge, guiding it past one of the mass graves, through dry, burned grass, avoiding bodies where he could.

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