Episode 116: What Do We Fight For? (5)
Episode 116: What Do We Fight For? (5)
June 23, 1791.
Kingdom of France, Somme Department.
Near Amiens, Villers-Bocage.
Revolution Is Also a Business G…
“Villers-Bocage… That village name sounds familiar. Where have I heard it…?”
I tried to seize the thin thread of memory tickling at the edge of my mind.
Mm… something… It feels like I’m about to remember…?
“Maybe you heard it while drafting some budget plan or something?”
“Ah, is that it?”
Yeah, what other reason would I have to know the name of some tiny village like this?
“Guillaume. Are supplies all sorted?”
“Even if you don’t ask, I already distributed plenty of ammunition and shells. Especially the central battery—I loaded it with double the shells, like you said.”
“Knew I was right to trust you with it.”
Napoleon gave a crooked grin, raised his spyglass, and carefully studied the enemy troops approaching in the distance, kicking up dust as they marched.
“Hah. They say they took Lille and rolled the city back to how it was before the Revolution—look at their faces. Greed spilling out of them. Guillaume, you want a look too?”
I took the spyglass and raised it to my eye.
Beyond the lens, golden flags embroidered with Bourbon fleur-de-lis fluttered, and royalist commanders—plump as if to say I’ve lived well and eaten well—oozed aristocratic airs as they led their soldiers.
In contrast, our army… the officers were all in uniform, but half the soldiers were in the everyday clothes farmers wore, and most hadn’t even been issued proper boots. And even this scene existed only because we’d managed to scrape together over three thousand sets in a few days.
Ah, we’re busy making guns—where would we find the time to make uniforms? A man can still fight without a uniform, but without guns and blades, he can’t fight at all.
“More importantly, those bastards are in a textbook-perfect formation. Clinging to nothing but the orthodox—real fitting for stale, old-fashioned royalists.”
“Veterans up front, line infantry in the middle. It’s practically identical to the manual.”
I handed the spyglass back to Napoleon.
“Judging by their pace, we’ll be facing each other in about an hour or two.”
“Sounds right. Alright, Guillaume, let’s head back. We’ve seen what we needed.”
Napoleon and I pulled the reins and turned our horses’ heads back toward headquarters.
“Huh. Their numbers don’t match the report.”
The enemy troops, lined up neatly with revolutionary tricolors hung here and there, were twice—no, nearly three times—what the first report to the royalists had said.
The Comte d’Artois’s brow creased.
“And… the middle line is heavily fortified too. Their left wing has discipline.”
In the middle line, cannons glittered in the sunlight in dense ranks. That upstart named Napoleon must have concentrated the guns on the central hill.
And the left wing… the left wing looked trained to the level of regular troops, forming their ranks remarkably well.
But only for a moment.
Artois couldn’t hide his confusion as he looked at the enemy right wing.
Everyone was in filthy clothes; some weren’t even properly wearing boots, standing in a sloppy formation—was that an army, or a bunch of farmers who’d shown up to work the fields? It was hard to tell.
Only one thing.
The fact that they were holding guns was the only difference from farmers.
“Wait… no matter how I look at it, the enemy right wing’s formation and dress are strange. This isn’t just loose discipline. Aide—what’s the composition of the unit holding the right wing?”
The royalist commander, the Comte d’Artois, wearing a golden cloak, took his eye off the spyglass and looked at his aide.
“Yes. I’ve heard they’re volunteers newly recruited from across the country, Comte d’Artois.”
“……Volunteers? Hahahaha! Volunteers?”
Artois tucked the spyglass into his chest and laughed for a long while.
Volunteers—so at best, just a militia, wasn’t it? Give a village farmer a rifle and he’ll suddenly fight bravely? Artois finally understood why the enemy looked so flimsy—like third-rate actors in a third-rate comedy.
This was the royalist army that had swept aside the regular troops of Lille’s National Guard in a single blow. What would change just because some militia had been added?
They said there’s no bread without toil—Nul pain sans peine—and it seemed the toil of running here in one go from the Netherlands was finally paying off.
“Aide! Issue the order to the whole army: tomorrow we strike the enemy. Ignore their left wing! If we drive in their right wing, this war ends!”
“Yes! Comte d’Artois!”
Watching the aide hurry off to deliver orders to each unit, Artois slowly turned back toward the revolutionary army.
Beyond them was Paris, and beyond that, the Palace of Versailles.
“Yes. Once tomorrow passes… everything ends.”
With neither Louis XVI nor Louis XVII now, if he seized Versailles and swept away all the traitorous rabble…
The vacant throne of France would be Artois’s.
A wet, predatory smile rose on the Comte d’Artois’s face.
June 24, noon.
Amiens, Villers-Bocage.
“Listen! The enemy’s right wing is nothing but half-baked militia! You are the finest soldiers in the Kingdom of France! Send them all straight to hell!!”
“““Waaah!!”””
The royalist army began advancing toward Amiens, toward Paris, toward the revolutionary army.
“What the—… hng!”
Philippe, a soldier of the 3rd Volunteer Infantry Battalion, saw the bloodthirsty enemy marching from afar and blurted out with lips trembling without meaning to—then belatedly realized it and shrank back.
If a soldier made noise without an officer or non-commissioned officer’s permission, they’d say he was undermining the company’s discipline and a boot would come flying in—so it was only natural.
As always, Philippe squeezed his eyes shut, thinking a boot was about to slam into the back of his head—but strangely, unlike usual, no boot came flying.
Philippe cracked his eyes open and looked at the officer beside him.
“……”
A young man who, until recently, had been studying theology at the Sorbonne now wore second lieutenant insignia solely because he could read and write. He was chewing his lip hard.
So hard that blood streamed down from his lip, but the second lieutenant seemed not to notice, continuing to grind his bleeding lip between his teeth.
“S-second lieutenant?”
“Soldier! Eyes front. Execute!”
“There’s blood on your lip—”
“H-huh? Oh…”
Only after Philippe pointed at his own lip did the second lieutenant realize he was tearing it. He hurriedly covered his mouth with his sleeve.
The sleeve of his white uniform gradually turned red with blood.
“Second lieutenant, are you—”
“Soldier! Don’t worry about me. Look forward. If the enemy notices because of your movement, we’re finished.”
“Y-yes!”
Philippe obeyed and turned his head back to the front.
He’d enlisted thinking he’d hold a sword like Charlemagne and fight stylishly and win, but Philippe’s role was simply to follow the officer’s orders.
More precisely, the soldiers waited until their officers moved, and the officers waited until the commander—Napoleon Bonaparte—ordered them to move. That was Philippe’s role, and the role of the second lieutenant beside him.
But now—
“R-red flag! The main force raised the red flag!! Volunteer battalions, forward!!”
Philippe and the second lieutenant’s roles switched.
The hill to the east of Villers-Bocage.
The revolutionary army’s right wing—the place held by those shabby “militia.” If that hill were taken, the entirety of Villers-Bocage would be in view.
Toward that appetizing dish, Artois drove in a sharp knife.
“How is it not breaking?! They’re just a bunch of shabby militia bastards!”
Watching the battle through a spyglass from the rear, the Comte d’Artois’s face began to turn ashen in an instant.
“Regiment!! Hold!! Form for bayonet melee!! Hold for thirty minutes!!”
“Form for bayonet melee!!”
“Waaah!!”
If they were militia, their morale should’ve collapsed, their ranks should’ve broken—but for some reason, that militia held their ground like seasoned troops, solid as a wall.
“Aide! You said the enemy right wing was militia!! How is that militia?! Isn’t that regular army?!”
“Idiots—charging in thinking they’re really militia.”
“Napoleon Bonaparte. But the resentment among the soldiers was strong. You took the uniforms of the right-wing regulars and gave them to the left-wing militia?”
“Tell them properly, First Lieutenant Louis Charles Antoine Dezé. The goal is to win, not to die with style. And send word to the batteries—begin firing.”
Putting away his spyglass, Napoleon spoke while moving the pieces on the map laid out in the center of the tent.
The red pieces descending from the north were blocked by the solid square of regulars holding firm on the right wing.
• Three days of nothing but drill? Not learning how to fire?
• Even if they learn to fire, more than half of them won’t even be able to pull the trigger. Better to stab with bayonets in a you-die-I-die situation. So if you’re going to ram them in, at least drill them properly.
• …Then should I try drilling them? One day is enough to get their feet snapping in time.
• That’s possible?
• You’ll see.
“Really is a crazy bastard.”
Napoleon shook his head.
That Guillaume bastard—like he’d gotten a manual from Lucifer in hell on how to twist-squeeze people in pain—every bizarre exercise Guillaume taught made the volunteers scream.
And this morning, the recruits who couldn’t even load a gun could form ranks in fives and tens so perfectly they rivaled seasoned troops.
On top of that, the trap of swapping the right and left wings’ clothes.
The enemy’s spearpoint had been caught perfectly.
They’d obligingly rammed their heads into the sturdy anvil—now it was time to swing the heavy hammer down on that head.
Napoleon opened his pocket watch and checked the time.
The hour and minute hands were already well past noon. That meant the sun would be starting to tilt west.
If our left wing, positioned to the west, moved and stabbed the enemy in the waist, they would have to fight with their eyes surrendered to the harsh sunlight.
And even if they were militia, Napoleon had four thousand more men than the enemy. A gamble to seize the enemy gun line—now missing its main force—was a risk worth taking.
Napoleon slipped the pocket watch back into his chest and spoke.
“Commit the reserves and rip out the enemy gun line, Second Lieutenant Emmanuel de Grouchy.”
“Yes, Napoleon Bonaparte.”
“Drive the reserves in and push them back no matter what. And First Lieutenant Louis Charles Antoine Dezé—pull the middle-line artillery right now and have them follow behind Grouchy.”
“Understood.”
Napoleon pushed the piece representing the volunteer battalion waiting under his command on the left wing, stabbing it into the side of the royalist pieces neatly gathered on the right wing.
“Heh. This is gonna hurt.”
“The enemy left wing is moving!!”
“Our batteries will stop them! Focus everything on driving in their right wing!”
“O-our batteries have been suppressed by fire from the enemy middle line! They’ve concentrated all their cannons in the middle and are bombarding us—we can’t win the firepower contest!!”
“W-what are you talking about?! Map! Bring me the map!”
From atop his horse, the Comte d’Artois snatched the map his aide brought and dragged it up before his eyes.
“Comte—if this continues, we’ll be encircled and annihilated! We must break a path!”
“……Drive back the enemy left wing that’s attacking us now! Use the cavalry to open the flank!”
“But to attack the left wing, we’ll be fighting into the sunlight!!”
“We can’t fight sitting down, can we?! Push them back!”
“Understood! Cavalry! Follow me—drive back the enemy left wi—!”
“Huh?”
In that instant, the aide in front of Artois was blown to pieces.
“A-artillery! Shelling—shelling from our side!”
“The enemy has seized our gun line!!”
“W-what… It’s not over yet! If we break either their right or left wing—!”
“Enemy cavalry is charging down from the rear!!”
“Heh… hehe…”
Hah! Revolutionary army incoming! My name is Emmanuel de Grouchy!!
Waaah!! Slaughter the traitors!!
As if inside God’s palm, every order Artois gave shattered into pieces.
“It’s over. It’s over… Am I even fighting humans? Can an army move this flexibly?!”
“T-take the Comte d’Artois away! We must keep the Comte alive!”
“Heh… hehe…”
Artois let his head fall.