The Commodore. C. S. Forester

“Have they been fighting here?” conjectured Essen, puzzled; there was no sign of blood.

Someone dismounted and turned him over; his face was mottled with mulberry-coloured marks, and his eyes, though open, were unseeing.

“Keep a way!” shouted one of the aides-de-camp suddenly. “That is the plague!”

Everyone drew away from the dying man, and then they realized that the plague was all around them. One of the huts was full of dead, another was full of the dying. Essen shook his horse into a trot, and the party jingled away.

“It is in our ranks already,” said Essen to Hornblower. “Kladoff had ten cases in his division two days ago.”

This, the first march in retreat of the invading army, was already finding out the weaklings. There were dead men, sick men, dying men alongside the track they were following, despite the fact that no fighting had taken place along it – Diebitch at the head of the pursuing force was on the Mitau road away on the left front, where the guns were still firing occasionally. When at last they reached the point where the track joined the high road the signs of real fighting began; dead and wounded soldiers, Russian, French, and German, where the Russian advance-guard had clashed with the rear-guard. Then they caught up with the Russian columns plodding sturdily up the road, and trotted past their interminable length, one division and then another; the men were silent with the exertion of stepping out as fast as their legs would carry them under their heavy knapsacks, and this ten miles of fast marching had greatly modified the first jubilation of pursuit

“Macdonald has made a good retreat,” said Clausewitz, “at the cost of leaving his sick and his guns behind. I wonder how long he will be able to keep this pace up?”

Hornblower did not trouble to enter into the discussion. Saddle soreness was making him abstracted, apart from his fatigue and his general feeling of malaise. But he had to be able to report to his government that he had followed up the retreating army for at least one march on its way back to Germany; it would be better if it were two or three. And there was something else. He wanted to catch up with the Prussians, even if it were the last thing he did – and it was odd that he had this feeling that it was the last thing he was ever going to do. His head was whirling, and there was something comforting about the knowledge that Brown was just back there with the mounted orderlies.

A messenger brought back news from the advance-guard, and Hornblower heard Clausewitz’s explanation as if in a dream.

“The Prussians are making a stand at the fork in the roads ahead,” he said. “They are covering the retreat while the other two army corps get away by the two roads.”

It was strange that this was just what he was expecting, as if it were a story he had already heard being retold.

“The Prussians!” he said, and without willing it he pressed his legs against his horse’s sides to urge it to a faster pace towards where the flat reports of the guns showed where the Prussians were holding back the advance-guard. The headquarters party was clear of the main body now, trotting along the deeply-rutted road, hemmed in here by a dense wood of coniferous trees. Beyond the wood the desolate landscape opened up to reveal a low ridge up which the road mounted ahead of them. On either side of the road here a brigade of the Russian advance-guard was halted, a battery of artillery was in action, and up on the ridge could be seen the Prussian infantry columns, black blocks against grey fields. Over on the right a grey-clad Russian column was plodding across country to turn the flank of the position, while between the two forces Russian horsemen – Cossacks – trotted in ones and twos on their shaggy ponies, their long lances vertical at their sides. A watery sun broke through the clouds at this moment, seeming merely to accentuate the gloominess of the landscape. A general came up to salute Essen, but Hornblower did not want to listen to what he had to say. He wanted to press forward towards the Prussians, and as the horses of the party followed the example of his own they moved steadily up the road, Essen half unconscious of the movements of his horse as he listened to the general’s report. He was only recalled to his surroundings by the howl of a cannon-shot which pitched at the roadside near him, throwing snow and earth in all directions.

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