Berthier, Bessieres and Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, were present at the interview. The last named had not long since been French Ambassador at St. Petersburg. He had got on well with the Russians and had done everything he could to strengthen the Franco Russian alliance. With the spiteful playfulness to which he was prone at times, Napoleon struck him lightly on the cheek and said, 'Why don't you say something, you old pro-Russian?'
Deeply insulted, the ex-Ambassador said to the Emperor when Balashov had been dismissed, 'I will now prove myself to be a good Frenchman, by telling Your Majesty that this war is foolish and dangerous. It will destroy the Army, France and yourself.
Many of Napoleon's Marshals and Ministers were of the same opinion, but it was the first time that anyone had plucked up the courage to say so to his face.
He laughed the matter off, remarking that it might take two or three summers to conquer Russia, but conquer her he would.
All this was related to Roger that same evening, as he had rejoined the French army without difficulty twenty-four hours earlier. After the Russians left, he had simply gone down into the cellar, remained there during the bombardment, and emerged on the arrival of the French. As he spoke the language perfectly and declared himself to be a Frenchman, he had been in no danger of coming to any harm, and had had only to wait there another hour or so before an advance party of the Emperor's staff arrived to take over the Czar's evacuated headquarters.
As usual, Roger's old friend, Duroc, Marechal de Camp and Due de Friuli, was in charge. His astonishment at coming on Roger there in civilian clothes was soon allayed by the account that Roger gave of his doings during the past two years. He said he had been falsely imprisoned in Berlin, escaped and stowed away in an American ship which had unfortunately carried him to England, where he had been made a prisoner of war, escaped again and managed to get to Portugal, been wounded and captured again, then sent back as a prisoner to England, escaped from there a second time and secured a passage in a ship that had brought him into the Baltic and landed him at Riga. As everyone there knew that the Emperor was about to invade Russia, he had hurried to Vilna a week ago, feeling certain that it must soon fall to the French. He then produced a stack of documents and maps that, in their haste to be gone, the Russians had left behind. None of them was of any particular value, but the gesture was good evidence that he was still a keen and useful officer.
That evening he repeated his story in more detail to the Emperor and a number of his officers. It happened that Davoust, Ney and Junot were all present. The first knew of his imprisonment in Berlin while both the latter had been at Massena's headquarters when he was there and knew of the mission on which he had been sent to Soult; so they were not surprised that he had been captured and did not for a moment doubt that it was by the English. Napoleon and everyone else present congratulated him upon his three escapes.
Next day the uniform of a Colonel of Hussars, who had been killed during the taking of the city, was produced for him, and he took up his old duties as one of Napoleon's A.D.Cs under General Count Rapp, who was now Napoleon's A.D.C.-in-Chief.
Rapp was a blunt spoken Alsatian and an old friend of Roger's. In fact, Roger owed his life to Rapp and General Savary. They had both been A.D.Cs to the gallant Desaix and had, together with Roger, climbed the Great Pyramid when in Egypt. Later, Desaix and his two A.D.Cs had succeeded in getting back to Europe just in time to rejoin Napoleon before the battle of Marengo. In this battle Desaix had been killed and Roger seriously wounded. Both had been left on the field among the dead and dying. The two A.D.C.S had gone out with lanterns to search for their dead General, and chanced upon Roger, thus saving him from either dying there from loss of blood, or being murdered by the human hyenas who prowled die battlefields by night, robbing the dead and dying alike.
Savary had become Napoleon's Minister of Police. It was he who had lured the unfortunate young Due d'Enghien back over the French frontier and then been responsible for his murder. He had also lured the King of Spain and his son over the frontier, to Bayorme so that Napoleon could force them to abdicate. Roger loathed the crafty, unscrupulous Minister of Police; but he was very fond of Rapp and it was from him that he obtained most of the information about the strength and dispositions of the Grand Army.
The force that had crossed the Niemen consisted of one hundred and forty-five thousand French, forty-five thousand Italians, thirty thousand Austrians, thirty thousand Prussians, twenty-five thousand other Germans and seventy thousand troops of other nations. In addition to these there was an immense cavalry reserve and the Old and Young Guards; so they totalled something over four hundred thousand troops, besides which there were estimated to be roughly one hundred thousand camp followers.
The vast cavalry screen was commanded by Murat, the central corps by Davout, Ney, Eugene de Beauhamais and Prince Poniatowski, with a corps under Reynier in reserve and Victor's corps, also in reserve, back on the Polish frontier. In the rear centre, too, were the Old Guard commanded by Bessieres and the Young Guard by Mortier. Upon the left were Oudinot and St. Cyr's corps with, beyond them, Macdonald's corps and, still nearer the coast, the Prussians. Upon the right, slightly back, there was a corps under King Jerome of Westphalia and far out the Austrians under Prince Schwarzenberg. Another one hundred and fifty thousand men under Augereau, who had taken over from Davout, were still occupying Poland and north Germany.
But, as Roger well knew, in spite of Napoleon's famous doctrine that 'God is on the side of the big battalions', in war numbers are not everything. If Talleyrand and his friend Metternich had had anything to do with it, the Austrians would be under orders not to fire a shot except in their own defence. The Prussians were there under duress and, if things went badly for the Emperor, might even go over to their old allies, the Russians. That, too was the case with many of the other foreign contingents. Only the Poles, Saxons, Bavarians, Danes and some of the troops from the Rhineland and Italy could be fully relied on.
As for the French, apart from the Guards' Corps, Oudinot's Grenadiers and Murat's cavalry, in Roger's view to have had to lead them into battle would have turned any General's hair grey. They bore no resemblance whatever to the magnificent Army of the Coasts of the Ocean, which had been assembled in 1804 to invade England, and which later covered itself with glory at Austerlitz and Wagram. Over half the men were little more than boys, or bitterly resentful deserters who had been dragged from their homes and forced to march again.
The huge army's only asset was that it was led by the most able, experienced and courageous warriors in. the world. In addition to many of his foremost Corps Commanders, the Emperor had brought from Spain Junot, Lauriston, Montbrun, Vandamme, Hulin, Latour Maubourg, Jomini, the younger Caulaincourt, Grouchy, Sebastiani and a score of other paladins.
Yet against that had to be set off a consideration of great importance. Not only were Napoleon's troops much inferior to those of his early days, but he, too, was by no means the man he had been. It was over two years since Roger had seen him, and he was shocked by his appearance. The bulging forehead and prognathous jaw stood out more than ever, but his hair had thinned, his shoulders were hunched and he was now pot bellied.
Yet more important, he had deteriorated mentally as well as physically. Every day he still got through as much work as would have exhausted six other men: reading dozens of reports, dictating scores of dispatches, dealing with innumerable problems that were sent to him from all parts of his vast Empire; but he was much more irritable than of old, showed contempt for all opinions which did not coincide with his own, appeared to reach decisions without giving matters due thought and a weakness he had never displayed before he was at times subject to periods of lassitude during which he could not be brought to make up his mind.